Cartel Competition Cycle 5, Cartel Rank, and SBs

As I suspected -- and as many players wanted -- Cartel Competition Cycle 4 was the last of its kind. Here's the official post from Kabam:

"At this time, we are not conducting Cycle 5," Kevin writes, "We do not have the means to execute this competition in a satisfactory way." Execute?  Ahem. Really?

So Cartel Comps are dead. For now. What precisely does this mean for KoB?

Essentially, cartel ranks mean nothing. Being a Top 50 cartel used to mean receiving special awards from the competition at the end of each cycle. Being a Top 100 cartel, on the other hand, used to mean chasing after a coveted spot among the Top 50. Of course, for us this means that such a chase is over.

This also means that one of the few remaining upsides to cartel membership is Cartel Influence, which yields powerful buffs. As you know, Cartel Influence is earned and defended through SB and IB ranking. In a nutshell, cartel rank for any SB is now particularly important.  

This is complicated by the fact that cartel rank depends in large part upon the individual ranks earned by cartel members: Recruit, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander, and General. Why complicated?

Well, a high SB rank requires a high number of banked BPs (Battle Plans) to use and, unfortunately, these are earned on Daily Assault Missions, which have become fairly meh for most high level players due to the introduction of the new Raids. Moreover, the 6 hour clocks for an Imminent IB tend to Kabam-block players from banking BPs, since we cannot earn them while any battle is imminent.

The moral of the story? SBs and IBs are more important now than they were before, and this comes at a time when fewer and fewer players bother to run either battle. So, why should we care?

While earning either Minor or Major Cartel Influence in a given system grants significant buffs, SBs in particular are still important because the reward structure is still useful for low-to-mid level players. I earned my first 4-6* weapon from a SB!

More to the point, although the opportunities to earn Event Crystals are more plentiful nowadays, the salient rank of Captain still yields 1 piece of Legendary Gear, which salvages Event Crystals, either 2 5* or, more importantly, 1 6*. Remember, it takes 10 5* Event Crystals to make only 1 6*. In other words, earning the rank of SB Captain is still very much worth the effort.  Especially if, like me, very expensive Force Powers make you grin.