No, it’s not all of one or all of the other. You missed a lot of back log – people have been arguing about different klan vanilla options since last March. My note was written from the perspective of someone who had used big klan vanilla strategically within a small klan and watched it slowly become less strategy and more a matter of sheer numbers.

When the debate is raging people tend to scoot further into their corner about it. Of course klan vanilla takes team work. People cooperating – being willing to show up, use their visits, paying attention. Is it an epic undertaking? Not at all. The hardest part is getting people together at the same time.

Currently the reward for klan vanilla, when done to it’s most effective with alts, really contributes to eliminating strategy and team work. If a serious vanilla klan is not opposed by either another serious vanilla klan or a klan dedicated to solo/klan disruption, the medals are simply guaranteed. The players can choose at their leisure who will be winning what each week. The excessive benefit offers so much security that it takes the use of klan vanilla as a strategy and forces it to become the only viable or necessary strategy. That is what eliminates the need for klan player A to help klan player B in any way beyond showing up.

Some players love having it completely locked in and not needing to worry. I get that. Some weeks, I just don’t want to think about it. Overall though, it just doesn’t feel like a competition if no one else can compete. And yes, I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect players to need lots of alts to be competitive. It also detracts from the team work aspect. There is nothing to “high five” at the end of the Dom week, if the round was decided on day one, you know?

Currently the only reasonable choice to combat klan vanilla is klan vanilla. The interruption that Amasius mentioned can work, but is far more time intensive than simply raiding. (You have to keep checking in throughout the day every day to see if anyone is raiding, so it’s really not a viable strategy.) But even that is just not possible without a large stable of alts to combat the first stable of alts.

Realistically alts currently aren’t just an alternative to gathering a large group, alts are far more effective and powerful. That is cool if that is the way it is supposed to be. I think it’s great when people donate to support the game, and alts are a fun way to use the BPs. It’s just a bit silly at this point to say that upper bracket Dom is a competition of scoops and destruction. Upper bracket Dom is pretty solidly a competition of who has the most alts. It’s just a simple matter of alts being able to funnel scoops into a main, and alts ending up grouped in the same bracket so that one or more can be used for crowd control while the other goes for medals.

Until awhile after Episode 2 rolls out, I can’t imagine that CZ will have the time to do anything Domination focused, so just hang in there. Maybe try joining one of the non-raiding klans and then see if there are actually members in there that are interested in trying it. The Wiki articles on klan vanilla are helpful.