The Aftermath of the Latest Patch

[4RM3D]

The Aftermath of the Latest Patch

Spoiler: Old observations

So, it has been 2 weeks since the patch. Time to look at the current meta. The observations are from both casual and ranked; green is good, red is... not so good.

General

- A lot of players (myself included) were afraid the locking mechanic would become too dominant. In most of my games I didn't see any locks; sometimes one, but no more than that. YenCon has survived quite a lot.
- A lot of players (myself not included) were afraid the new emotes would be spammed or abused. However, I have rarely seen anyone use any emotes.
- The positioning patch limited the power of row (de)buffer, but I rarely see any tactical play regarding the positioning of units.

Monsters (35%)

Monsters have an identity crisis (in a good way). They are all over the place with weather, semi-weather, breeding, consuming, Crones & big units. Actually, Monsters are the most unpredictable now, which is a good thing.

Northern Realms (30%)

Most opponents are using Foltest (popular once again) with Reinforced Trebuchet wannabe YenCons. On a rare occasion, I see Henselt's Gold (even before the hotfix). Radovid Control is dead. "Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!"

Scoia'tael (20%)

All I see is Brouver + Ambush. I rarely see Fran and strangely enough, the once popular Eithné is completely gone together with all the 7 dwarves.

Skellige (10%)

The discard deck has been discarded. It's all Axemen again with Harald. Sometimes I see Crachan Craite with Warcry.

Nilfgaard (5%)

Huh, oh right this faction still exists. The few times I did see them, it was usually some Emissary deck and once I saw a Reveal deck.

Conclusion

- Nilfgaard is lagging behind and needs some pizazz.
- Monsters and Nothern Realms are a tad too predominant (in numbers, not power).
- Scoia'tael lacks in variety and, to a lesser extent, the same goes for Nothern Realms and Skellige.

Finality

CDPR still needs to do some work.

Update (4 weeks after patch):

After climbing the ranks (15) even more, the opponents I've faced, changed a lot. Now 90% of the time it's either Brouver's Ambush or Henselt's Gold (evenly distributed). Monsters suddenly dropped off the map, Skellige I see every now and then and Nilfgaard is still nowhere to be found.

Brouver's Ambush has at least some variation in decks. But Henselt's Gold is nearly always the same. This predominance is a bit disturbing.

 

[Fimbulthrym]

Mh, i face every game (80%) at least 2 blocker cards. Cards (silver and golds) with an ongoing ability are useless right now.

 

[Ruthless95]

which MMR you play on? i definitely see more than 5% NG specially at casual but that can indicate that they are less competitive but more fun (what i think about them) i also see more than 10% SK. plz don't tell me all of this conclusion was from the rank 15 match ups because that's like 1 30th of the player base and deck archetypes

 

[God_of_Eredin]

I see mostly monsters on xbox

 

[Bl00dGeist]

I am only level 24 / rank 8 at the moment. I only play NG.

I dont have percentages of whom ive faced as the matches are all over the place. Some days I will face the same faction eight times in a row and others a little bit of everything.

.Monsters - Pretty spot on to OP. A lot of variety from deck types. Always fun to match against as you never know what type of deck you are going to face.

. Squirrels - I have noticed a huge spike in ambush decks. A major decline in resillience carry over units now.

. Skellige - A decline in the discard decks but they are still around. Ive been seeing more of Hlajmar though.

. Northern Realms - Foltest is making a comeback but majority of the time I match against NR gold.

. Nilfgaard - Still consists of voorhis. JC has been showing up more with spy deck. Emery and reveal deck is rare to face.



As for the added features and game mechanics.

- I love the position mechanic. Because of NG and their spies i can stagger units a lot to prevent a clump of units all getting a buff. Even better when your spy unit gets buffed and you can recall it from JC or treason. For monsters and consume decks, I enjoy the option to control in what order units can be consumed. If i want to feed them a huge and nuke with geralt igni i have that option.

- I really enjoy the emote system. Ive only faced one opponent that was spamming it. All other instances its been a great experience. Even best when they use " Bet this will come as a surprise" and they play a dead card. I always give praise and usually receive it when a good play occurs.

- I have seen a slight increase in locks. Nothing overboard.


I have really been enjoying the changes and steps with NG. With the much needed emissaries ability to choose what bronze unit to play has been tremendous. Spy theme is a lot more fun to play. Reveal still needs help or a major overhaul. I would like to see more types and variations added to NG.

Unfortunately i can not add about other factions as I dont play them.

 

[God_of_Eredin]

It's interesting playing against monsters. I always find people playing cards that I thought weren't worth using, but actually worked well in their combo.

 

[isnadtochiev]

Some good points, also its important to understand reasons behind them
1 - locking isnt used much because special cards arent used much outside of ST. Its pure numbers game, with decks having 2-3 special cards bein a norm (outsite of ST).
2 - true on emotes
3 - rarely see any tactical play at all*
4- monsters have an identity crisis because consume is as boring of gameplay as it gets, and weather simply doesnt work. So yeah, people experimeting combining the two.
5 - Radovid being "dead" isnt a good thing. It was not just nerfed, it was murdered (special mention for unnececery nerf to Borkh). So now we have pure numbers game. Wohoo, much interactive, such interesting gameplay, that much better than control strangulation contest.
6 - Yep. When you get the single most broken mechanic in game as faction-specific, and the only existing counter to it is specific to that faction as well - thats what you get.
7- A deck build around 11 power (round1) weather immune units and 5/6/7+3 pings for both sides of the board WI archers is not about axeman. Its about 2 units that are ridicuous powercreeps, we now have a bronze Eredins (well, slightly better for SK passive) and stictly better unconditional WH warriors. Turns out you can force an archtype if we overstat its units like no tomorrow. Because a deck with 22 untis in it is exactly what we need in game!
8 - well, Nilfgaard is still the most fun to play faction. But its not the easiest, nor the strongest. And yeah. when ladder is infested with 3+ scorch ST, you not gonna have much fun with just 2-3 big units.

Pehaps i just burned out, or maybe a huge "Its CD project, man" credit is finnaly spent, but i just find no incentive to play. Ill probably get back for it to get R15, but thats that.
There can never be a perfect balance in CCG, but it needs some at least. In Gwent we have stuff like Sarah and Frightener in silver slot unchanged for monthes. You cant have a good half of you card damn uselss when you have that few cards in game. And what we get from patches? More powercreep bronzes (Hawker smugglers? Raging bersekers? serously? They just render allready weak units further into "unplayable dumpster" tier) and more unique mechanics removed. Those that werent removed, like Borkh, were nerfed to the ground. Was he OP? No. Did he allready get a slap with a d.shackles change? Yes. Why was he nerfed? Scrubs whined about it. He was litterally the best designed (well, mb one of 2-3) card in game and one of only few truly interesting, game-changing ones.
I do know that its beta, i know they experiment, but everything shall be done within reason. Meta where 22 units + Igni decks for pure power race is viable (moreover, preferable) at 3500+ MMR is plainly boring.Thats quite a big drawback when you're making a game. And CD project conciously forced it with continiously pushing power level of bronze cards to "incentivise testing new archtypes". So yeah, waiting for the next patch. But there isnt much optimism left.

 

[NatoGreavesy]

I've been running a Foltest deck since I started playing, but since this latest patch I've seen a definite spike in other Foltests, particularly ones running Reinforced Trebuchets. That said, Henselt has still been pretty commonplace.

I've seen a distinct decrease in the number of Monsters and Scoia'tael, Nilfgaard has remained about the same, but I'm seeing a lot more Skellige axemen decks.

As for the locking issue, I've seen a few more Cleavers around than usual, but overall it hasn't been too bad. I know before the patch that there was a lot of concern about rounds devolving into un/locking back and forth with D'shackles, but I haven't seen much of that. What I have noticed, though, is that a lot more people are using Decoy.

 

[reliusclover]

Im mostly playing Casual matches nowadays, trying to get to rank 13 is stressing me a lot lol, but anyway, Ive have been bumping a lot on Nilfgards mostly with Morvran Voorhis if not, then its SK Crach an Craite, since the patch, they love running bears, bears and more bears.
Ive recently been using Monster, consume deck are a lot of fun, im enjoying using the taunt "wrong, another mistake" after i cast weather on a row just behind there strongest unit, then thell pass only to have geralt:aard finish the job XD

 

[Mercam]

The game has completely reversed since this patch. I mean when i first started playing NR there were several deck variations and it was hard to specify which deck was the best, now i have to play this absolutely boring bullshit gold-combo henselt deck. It's incredibly boring trying to set up combos on your own board with literally 0 enemy board interaction. snooze.

 

[Ninschi]

I like these kind of evaluation threads so I would like to join in and share my personal experiences.

on locking: I share the experience in that I very rarely see it. The creature locks (cleaver & auckes)are fine , butI believe that the initial value loss you create might be too much to verify dshackles. For that, cards I considered dead like yencon and borkh survived.

on emotes: I rarely see it being used, but when it is used its 90% bm. Can we pls generally disable it in the options menu?

on monsters: they seem to be in a good spot with many ways to go for. The crones (unlike the witchers) survived the nerf and weather seems good, but not overpowered. Thumbs up

on northern realms: Radovid is dead as the whole control archetype took a huge hit with the downgrade of triss and co + pavetta. The way I experience gwent recently is a pure tempo game in which the winner of r1 most of the time takes the game. This is... at least a little sad. Anyway, I congratulate foltest to his big comeback.

on scoiatel: In the top 1000 I face broover in at least every 2nd game. St still lacks balance and I already showed my hopefully constructive view on ambush in other posts. Spoiler: its nuts. I believe the hit on relentless was a little too harsh and not compensated enough by the +1 the dwarfs received.

on skellige: it feels like an on off story to me in which for each patch either axemen or discard is viable, but rarely both. I might be a little biased here, because I mostly pay sk, but the nerf in morkvarg and dash and bran together was too much (mork was stupid before I have to admit).

on milfguard: I love the faction and how it pays, especially the new cahir. Thumbs up. Anyway the power level is yet not there and I sometimes feel like ng has a lot off unnecessary cards in stock like fire scorpion. Reveal as a mechanic is unfortunately doomed to be either poor or overpowered with not much in between. Gwent loses alot of appeal, when all your plays are 100% predictable as well as when your plays are totally hidden (I look at you ambush).

tldr there is still alot of work and I can't wait for the next patch to come

 

[Cagey75]

I'm only at 3K MMR atm and seeing a fair amount of NG, playing spy NG myself. I wonder do we see more of one or other faction based on what we play? Also seeing one too many Monsters still, which is bad because my deck is weakest against them. I handle ST, Sk and NR not too badly.

After a few Monsters in a row I give in and switch to my own version of consume, then I meet nothing but ST :/

 

[Nimraphel]

I think the game took a turn for the worse, to put it mildly. I firmly believe that if they had just released positioning patch, with the positioning-related changes to buffs such as Thunderbolt potion etc as well as the new locking mechanism, and left everything else as it was.. The game would have been a lot better.

Negative things first:

1) Certain deck archetypes were outright killed while others suffering from severe problems were unaddressed. Discard Skellige is no longer viable. Control Radovid is no longer viable. John Calveit spies are still not viable as long as Consume monsters remain a thing (thinking mainly tournament play here) - and consume monsters should remain a thing, but Ekimmara's (and, in later rounds, Katakan and Caretaker) hardcounter JC to the extreme. Fransesca is still underwhelming.

1.1) Redesign Emhyr and Reveal mechanic. Aside from my personal opinion, which is that too much Reveal (i.e. more than 2 cards) takes out a large portion of what makes CCG's interesting, namely the dance between two players with numerous unknown variables to account for, it is and will always be too hard to balance. Ask yourselves this: What is revealing actually worth? In terms of raw board power, nothing. In terms of gameplay, it is immensely, incalculably valuable. The only offset to it is that Emhyr decks are, without exception, not competitive at high level. And as long as reveal is as prevalent as it is, provided the deck is designed around maximizing reveal, they can and should never be.
Reveal is too hard to balance, having immense yet incalculable value. This, in turn, undermines Nilfgaard as a faction, whose only competitively viable archetype is currently the "mass thinning Morvran Frankenstein" deck.

2) Worse Game Flow. As I predicted in my "top 200 perspective"-thread when patch notes were released, the game's flow has changed from more organic and varied fights between rounds into a binary fight for round 1, leaving more diverse strategies largely behind. As a previous poster commented in this thread, it is sad that the game has degenerated into a pure tempo-fest rather than a rhythmic dance.

3) Card Advantage (CA) being the ultimate alpha and omega. While it was always very, very, very strong, it has now become the defining metric by which a match is decided most often. This, in turn, has naturally propelled Scoia'tael to absolute dominance at higher ranks, only occasionally challenged by NR and Monsters getting either their ridiculous ress chain going, or a big keep.

4) Sappers and, to a lesser extent, Ambush. Preface: I like Ambush as a mechanic. I like the concept of Ambush, and certain cards like Fireball trap provide meaningful disruption when used wisely, such as vs. Priestess of Freya, Reaver Scouts, Vicovaro Medics, Kaedweni Siege Sergeant etc... However, Ambush should never, ever have high raw strength and agility. Sappers being agile and easily a 20 point swing (40 if we could Operator + Morenn, an easily achievable combo for Brouver), make Scoia'tael dominating. The best counter to Scoia would arguably be weather, yet with both Sappers, Toruviel, Ciaran, Marksman (usual Dragoon targets) being agile, it is nigh impossible to place the proper Aeromancy unless you have CA... And achieving CA vs. Scoia'tael in the current meta is nigh impossible.

5) Overstatted Bronze units. As someone mentioned, several bronze units have been ridiculously overstatted (looking at you in particular, Bears and Re.Trebs), forcing out a lot of non-interactive decks with, at most, pings for interaction (looking at you, NR, Skellige and Monsters) with 22 units. It makes for a ridiculous powercreep and has limited deck diversity severely.

6) Nilfgaard in need of redesign. I already touched upon this in 1.1 above, but in addition to reveal mechanic, the reliance on ranged row for competitively viable Nilfgaard decks is extremely problematic. Additionally, Nilfgaard has a slew of niche tech cards (think: Peter Saar Gwynleve, Assire Var Anahid, to a lesser extent Sweers and Auckes) which can be very, very good, but which can also risk being more or less dead draws depending on match-up. The niche cards are nice and great, and I am not advocating less of them or removal of the existing... But the balance between niche and all-round units is skewered for NG.


Positive things

1) Positioning: Necessary to enable the game to expand long-term beyond the row-stacking and row-buffing decks that were prevalent pre-patch. It does not have a large, profound impact yet, but it is apparent that it is a necessity that expands gameplay rather than limit it.

2) Emotes: It's nice being able to praise magnificent plays by opponents, and it hasn't proved disruptive or problematic at all in my experience. Worth monitoring for full release, but for now it works well.

3) Resillience change. A great change making resillience less of a "deal with it or lose the entire match", and more about putting pressure on the opponent to win the round, potentially forcing a card disadvantage long-term.
On a sidenote but related to this, I would suggest changing the Monster passive to reflect this. Make it so that Monsters can only carry over the same mob for one round. It would prevent the very binary nature of a large keep (unless the Monster player gets greedy: think 18 pts. Ekimmara from r1 - thus out of Gigni range - consumed by another Ekimmara in r2 to preserve the high keep for r3, but bringing it into Gigni range) that forces CA disadvantage (CA is already immensely powerful for Dagon). Furthermore, it could make it easier for new players since a resillience token could be applied to any "last played from hand" mob that the Monster player plays, thus making it easy for new players to comprehend and keep track of.

4) Dimetirium Shackles. I was wrong in my predictions - I actually think Shackles turned out really well. They aren't too prevalent, contrary to my expectations pre-patch, and they come across as a meaningful, if risky, inclusion into decks (topdecking one in r3 is usually quite bad unless vs. NR with Shani unused, which is a nice element of risk to offset its otherwise strong potential). Rarely a dead draw, but rarely a game-deciding one either. All in all, I'm positively surprised.


There are many more things, which I haven't touched upon. Individual cards, individual match-ups, certain synergies... It'd make for a much longer post, and currently I have neither the will nor the patience to go through it all. All in all, however, I think this patch, while laying a good foundation for future patches, exposed more weaknesses and flaws in the game than strengths, which I think is a shame. I won't judge the game going in the wrong direction, because I think that truly depends on the next patch, which this one laid the foundation for, but... For the first time during my time in Closed Beta, I can honestly say that I am no longer completely confident in CDPR's direction.

However, I am a huge fan of and hold enormous respect for the company, by far being my favorite developer, so I trust that long-term the game will turn out great. I just hope they will settle for a vision (and communicate it much more clearly to us, the community!) before the game hits Open Beta and/or Release. Once we hit release, one or two bad patch cycles can kill a competitive CCG in its infancy.

 

[Norinoo]

I like a YouTuber named Eric Stockhousen and in one of his recent vids i asked him about the current META and his thoughs on the future of the game. (btw. I forgot to ask him as to shy two effect cards left unchecked by CDPR, talking about Weather and Lacerate and NO, by that i do not mean nor imply or complain about weather):



My question:

I have seen a good variation of working decks after the last patch. A, META with such a variety is very healthy, would you agree and how do you feel about it and the future of balancing. Considering that.

Most Efficient Tactic Available is Tactic(s) Available, i would say the game looks much more balanced than before. I am saying this because i think many rush into conclusions like, "Radovid is bad now" etc., which i don't believe to be the case. Especially so close after the patch.

All in all, very positive feeling out of this. gg CDPR. btw. i hope they include more PvE content for after wipe, it is important to balance the difference between the paying and the F2P player, imo.



His answer:

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. After every patch, there will be a lot of variety. For some people near the top, it felt like a monotonous game where the majority of players were Henselt. The hotfix will probably kill, or really hurt, Henselt, giving us some more variety.

My feelings about the future balance is that everything that has no clear upper limit will be given a limit. Thunderbolt potion goes from all the same units so (4 times X) to three adjacent units (12 maximum power). Commander's horn use to double the row's strength, now only has a maximum of 20 points added to the board. Promote and Henselt received basically the same change. I kind of expected the Henselt change immediately after the patch so the hotfix came as no surprise.

Capping the maximum points cards can give you prevents certain strategies from getting out of control and allows you to more easily balance the newer cards coming into the game. This also pushes the game further and further into a tempo style game where comboing is uncommon and all that matters the individual power of a card and its lack of situationalness. This actually makes the games more dynamic as players will be interact with each other more since combo decks mostly ignore their opponent since they have a preset strategy.



Overall i would say, variety is the keyword here. A faction should have -not an infinite i guess- but a healthy amount of efficient and working Decks. Not just one or two. If we see that in the current META it means it was a good balancing patch. As in any CCG i do not expect anything less than an ongoing process of balancing.

 

[Nimraphel]

Overall i would say, variety is the keyword here. A faction should have -not an infinite i guess- but a healthy amount of efficient and working Decks. Not just one or two. If we see that in the current META it means it was a good balancing patch. As in any CCG i do not expect anything less than an ongoing process of balancing.

I am not saying variety was good before - obviously it wasn't, with NR being purely Radovid, SK purely Bran, Nilfgaard purely Morvran, and Monsters purely Dagon (in terms of leaders - ST had viable Brouver and Eithne decks). Within those leaders, there was variety, but obviously it was a limited metagame.

However, I don't think the current situation is much different. SK is purely Harald. NG is purely Morvran (his hero power being too good, simply put). NR is mostly Foltest with a few clinging to Henselt, which is sub-par. ST is now purely Brouver. Monsters have seen a few Ge'els variations but is generally considered inferior to Dagon at top-tier - just like before.

I honestly don't think substantial progress has been made. Less is alright, too, but I won't sugarcoat the current patch, which had more misses than hits in my opinion, especially at high level (see my post above).

 

[el_Bosco]

So.. my 2 cents on the deck stats based on 60 matches made since the last patch only casual matches (lvl53): 9 NR, 11 ST, 11 Mons, 14 SK and 15 NG.

So, faction variety seem to be pretty well distributed. But when we breakdown faction stategies, my stats confirm what 4MR3D stated in the OP.

 

[Tir_na_Lia]

I think the patch addressed main problems like Autoinclude Yencon (who now is shacklebait), and nerfed Discard Bran, Control Radovid and Weather Dagon.

Those 3 were so META that the post-patch META pale in comparison.

Also, locking and positioning features have been introduced, both of them without creating OP situations (by no means shackles are necessary and part of any deck, unlike some Cassandra speculated).
Neither of them created a brand new tacticism, but I suppose you create the unbalanced feature first, then you develop it.
I expect future cards to be heavily involved with positioning and locking.

As a final thought, I do not think META feedback and complaints have much sense.
All I read is: "Before patch X was META, now X is dead and Y is the new META. Damnit!".
The devs stated over and over than their aim is the game to be balanced, without a particular faction or leader to soar.
An OP deck is like another imo, they all make the game stale.
Stop complaining only because your OP deck is not viable anymore.

 

[Nimraphel]

I think the patch addressed main problems like Autoinclude Yencon (who now is shacklebait), and nerfed Discard Bran, Control Radovid and Weather Dagon.

Dagon is still by far the most viable Monster hero. Eredin is completely disappeared. Ge'els is inferior to Dagon.

As a final thought, I do not think META feedback and complaints have much sense.
All I read is: "Before patch X was META, now X is dead and Y is the new META. Damnit!".
The devs stated over and over than their aim is the game to be balanced, without a particular faction or leader to soar.
An OP deck is like another imo, they all make the game stale. .

On the contrary I see many succinct posts, including in this thread, exploring fundamental mechanics and potential flaws/pitfalls rather than "X is OP, nurf." I don't think you paint a correct picture, at least not for this thread; there's plenty of constructive feedback, both here in this thread, on this forum, and elsewhere (competitive Discord channels, other forums).

Stop complaining only because your OP deck is not viable anymore.

Stop being ridiculous and derail the thread. This hasn't been the case in this thread. Go beat your horse elsewhere where it's merited (I am sure such threads exist on this forum).

 

[soph912]

As a final thought, I do not think META feedback and complaints have much sense.
All I read is: "Before patch X was META, now X is dead and Y is the new META. Damnit!".
The devs stated over and over than their aim is the game to be balanced, without a particular faction or leader to soar.
An OP deck is like another imo, they all make the game stale.
Stop complaining only because your OP deck is not viable anymore.

The devs fail miserably at making their decisions balanced! It's difficult sometimes I have to admit but still this is the reality.

For example they completely nerfed 800 scraps Pavetta although she was arguably weaker than 800 scrap Borkh overall. Borkh can still scorch the two strongest units and can not be targeted by Radovid, Iorveth, Vernon Roche or Triss Merigold now.
The three points nerf is negligible.
What sense does it make? Zero
Common sense is something you don't find often in a game developer.

 

[Norinoo]

I am not saying variety was good before - obviously it wasn't, with NR being purely Radovid, SK purely Bran, Nilfgaard purely Morvran, and Monsters purely Dagon (in terms of leaders - ST had viable Brouver and Eithne decks). Within those leaders, there was variety, but obviously it was a limited metagame.

However, I don't think the current situation is much different. SK is purely Harald. NG is purely Morvran (his hero power being too good, simply put). NR is mostly Foltest with a few clinging to Henselt, which is sub-par. ST is now purely Brouver. Monsters have seen a few Ge'els variations but is generally considered inferior to Dagon at top-tier - just like before.

I honestly don't think substantial progress has been made. Less is alright, too, but I won't sugarcoat the current patch, which had more misses than hits in my opinion, especially at high level (see my post above).

It also important to see were happens what. I mean in low levels or on high levels of the ladder? We already know we see different decks.

Personally, i do think this update greatly improved the gameplay experience and variety of decks. Though, i only compare it to the previous meta. All in all i think it is hard for any CCG to have a huge variety and again, personally, i just want to have a game with at least better and larger variety than Hearthstone, who i find is very strict and narrow at it's (most efficient tactic available).

Having said that, seeing they are taking steps towards that route, i think they are on the right track but it's still a long way ahead for a more balanced experience.