It seems like whenever I put effort into an actual outfit that fits the theme I never win… anyone who usually wins have advice?
When I put no effort into it and use a premade or minima outfit I get 1st or 2nd place everytime… like shirtless mining helm Profession Theme or red stormwind guard with artifact weapon for Faction Theme.
If you see people from the same server and/or guild, drop group.
Let them pat themselves on the back. Don’t participate.
I have won a couple of times with this mog I currently have on. It’s my mog I use all the time now. I do need to get different gloves, but the gloves I want are from mythic Amirdrassil and still elude me. I’ve used it for the free style one, light and shadow, and there was another one that I won with it. I’ve been queuing by myself since my guild is mainly horde and I am alliance for the record. My ugly/mismatched mog also wins often since it’s large pieces that don’t match and are in all different colors and shades.
Also part of the problem I think is that people are trying to spread their votes out so they have a better chance at winning, so the ones that don’t match the theme or haven’t had much thought into it often win since people try to game the system only for it to backfire. Also skimpy mogs seem to win better with male characters instead of female characters from my observation. Do with that what you will.
Just never vote for elves to increase your chance of winning
Have you tried having some style?
Full sets are not true transmog.
I vote for people who make an effort. I vote against people who put on next to nothing and expect that to carry them.
I disagree. That person still took the time to go get the entire thing whether at level or through farming, and there are some really good looking older sets (Shaman T10 being my favorite). And it fits themes.
I have noticed that many people vote for the terrible mogs or mogs not themed hoping it will help them win, but more often than not it backfires and the people that have crap mogs end up winning first, second or third because of this.
Slopping it is a valid strategy.
In that case you’re meta-gaming on the other participants. They might vote against the better outfit to improve their own odds of winning, but if too many try to pull that then the terrible outfit really does win.
i think i got pity votes once because it was the profession one and i dont have any profession like mogs so i dressed as a christmas elf, i guess the people putting on barely there mogs not even trying were in the same boat
somehow i got 3rd place when i thought i would be dead last
It’s not that serious lmao. Why get the deserter debuff just because you might not win at Trial of Style? Just get your consolation tokens and move on.
The other day I won purely on the name recognition of my character. I have a handful of well made/dressed crossover personalities since warbands let me search EVERYWHERE for names. If there are enough fans of said crossover, that’s carried me to first place before.
Also,
In a game that uses endless shades of “blurpleteal” as “black,” and has no dye system to bridge two pieces that SHOULD match but never will, full sets are true transmog.
Its just you win some, you lose some. The tokens you get for losing, it adds up pretty fast. But if you are new and just starting collecting rewards, it seems like you need a lot. Also the themes need to be update, some are like huh.
Join with two other people and stack the votes. Trial of Style is anything but an objective contest.
I’m not saying whether or not full sets can look good, of course they can. The challenge and excitement of transmog is making the pieces fit even though they weren’t designed to.
That is transmog.
-Trial of style world champion one round concurrent
Maybe they need to do it like the Fashion report and give people rating based on how close they are to the theme. And not have other players vote on it, so it can’t be rigged.
You win some you lose some. I think the biggest cheese thing about it is groups voting together and the solo queuers get bonked. But, hasn’t happened much.
I decided to farm all the trial of style rewards this last week, and got first place around 23 or 24 times (20 on the main) while getting that done. I have some comments in this regard about winning.
That last point is often the most obvious factor for who will win, and you can see it coming during the competition. You have six competitors. In order for each competitor to face each other competitor, you would need 15 rounds. But the Trial of Style only goes 9 rounds. Each competitor only goes 3 times instead of 5, only facing three of their five opponents.
If a competitor who is trying gets matched 2 -3 times against people who aren’t trying at all, they are normally going to run away with the competition. They might not have the best outfit. You might see someone who didn’t even place in the top three having a better outfit than the guy in first place, but that guy got matched against the people who were also trying hard, and those votes were split.
People often think weaker outfits winning is the result of tactical voting. That’s likely to be the case when the absolute weakest outfit wins, or if you see people joining in the same guild (this was really very, very rare). But often the winner is someone who actually put in effort, wasn’t the best outfit, but was definitely better than the people he was matched against. People tend to lose track of who was matched against who though, so when they see that guy take first place, they immediately think the players rigged the vote through tactically voting for a weaker outfit.
Usually that assumption was wrong. The vote is “rigged” every time, but not by the players. It’s the actual mechanics of the event that rig it, by only giving 9 rounds instead of 15. You could easily improve the fairness of the Trial of Style by changing how votes are done, adding rounds, how we rank each other, etc. But I suspect the aberration in results caused by how many rounds we get is something Blizzard might have viewed as beneficial - a chance to give weaker competitors a chance at that winning feeling.
Anyhow, best not to take it too seriously. But thought I’d make some comments since I did just get a lot of experience over the course of winning 20+ rounds and purchasing all the cosmetics.
You can put hours into making a delicious meal for someone. But, at the end of the day that 10 min grilled cheese with tomato soup will get the praise. Content creators can put in hours of work for a video, and people just watch AI videos. No one cares about what effort you put in. Just what they like.
I agree and what you’re saying is the obvious answer but it seems like the guy wanted an alternative. We all know that when people win without following the theme that more likely than not it’s a group and the only thing you can do then is not participate 
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of them devolve into what I refer to as “horny” mogs which people go for as opposed to what the actual themes are but I’ll try and give some general advice.