Fix Skellige! 90% of the People are Only Playing That

[lomvicmarko]

Resurrection mechanic is theme of SK and it is tied in too deep to change it since it would just delete faction and I don't think we want that do we. It makes more sense to up(by that I mean finish unfinished archetypes) and do some tweaks here and there like weather and golds that give too much value. Resurrect is non issue for bronze at least I can't think of anything that makes a problem.
I mean if that is issue then any type of resurrect is and issue

Only issue I can think of where it becomes silly is in case of mork.

 

[myc24]

I would really like to see what this game would be like with out weather period. Frost is the main reason axe men are just ridicules!, not the only reason but I think the main one. This is such a good game that is being completely ruined by a few cards. I really hope they fix this shit soon. Its pretty sad that you run into these decks more often than not even in casual,,ffs people get an imagination!

 

[Laveley]

We had this discussion in another thread and yes you do the things you mentioned.. BUT.. There are some things which for some peculiar reason you ignore..

1) Kambi decks don't have one win condition.. their win condition can be axemen+spam weather too... Some times Kambi decks don't even use Kambi because they win WITHOUT IT!!!!
2) Kambi decks have one of the best Turn one tempo plays, around 20+ power in one play with Bran.. Then they pass forcing you to play two card to win the R1... If you answer with pass yourself forfeit the game cause you have already lost as you can't pressure R2..
3) So R2 starts and i am 2 cards behind, normally i could drag this out and even gain my CA back with a spy.. But no.. i am forced to play as much as i can in R2.. And what's happening now?? They use their spy so if i don't have my own i am now 3 cards behind.. which means that they can use Kambi in the R3 even if i play R2 till my last card.. And with Axemen + Weather spam they have a very solid R2..

So your statement is not compatible with reality.. Can i win against Kambi deck?? Yes after following your advice and if you know what you do, you can win against it but still it's not "easily counterable" as Kambi decks have a very good chance at winning even if you know what to do against them (which shouldn't be the case)....!

Kambi decks do have just one win condition. They use axemen because its the second best thing they can use to try to win one round and than finish the other with kambi. If you have a kambi deck and try to win 2 rounds with just axeman, than you simply using a worsened axeman build. Than why use a kambi build on the first place?

Also, your justifications giving examples of situations where a kambi deck can be good simply arent a good argument. That 20 point play is as good as an axeman build 20 tempo point play that are as good as a crone tempo point play that are as good as a ST tempo point play and so on and so forth. And sometimes, a tempo point play aint that good either. Dry passing after bran is rarely a good play anyways. If you end up round 3 with ca you are at advantage no matter how you got there.

You really think that kambi is a good deck? Like, REALLY?

Because, for me, its clearly a tier 2 to tier 3 build. Theres some days i dont play ladder now, but there were weeks since i didnt faced a kambi deck on the ladder (3k+), and when i did, it was more frequent wins than losses.

 

[Brenex]

If I would have known this game would cause so much frustration, I would have never started playing it in the first place.

The time it takes CDPR to hotfix SK is ridiculous, and the "we need to do a lot of testing" excuse makes no sense, I mean, didn't you test this patch in the first place before releasing it?

All I see is Spellike, Kambi, Spellige, Spellige, Monsters, Spellige, Spellige, etc.

 

[Sovta]

Problem is: they get to strengthen all their units, while others only boost them. That + resurrection is too strong.

 

[TriforceDragon]

Well, I hate to say it but the developers are being very lazy when it comes to patches. I've been apart of many Betas both opened and closed over the last 15 some years and I can tell you this: If this Axeman boosting shit was happening on any other game, the servers would have been shut down until the issue was resolved. No, way in hell would any MMO let such an infraction to the game go on- even this long.

And the Monday patch is only a Hotfix, which-in-turn means we will probably see only a dozen fixes.

I too have a Skellie deck in which I play here and there and I do not have bears, queens guard, axe men, weather or even Kambi in my deck.

I am mostly playing against Monster decks with NR and Nilf sprinkled in-between. I will however, run into a boosting/spamming Skellie deck once in a while. Thus it has forced me to bring out my Nilf deck.

Nothing is more fun watching a Skellie player put down Halmar only for me to return their Frost Giant to my hand with Mr. E.

Yeah, try to boost your Halmar card to 25 now.

Muhaaa.

If you call this lazy and unacceptable I would love to see you play Hearthstone. The nerf/fix cycle on that game is 3 months minimum and only in absolute worst case scenarios.

There is even a current example, a Card called Caverns Below which was released in the expansion 3 months ago and widely reviled by the community and which is only now seeing a nerf and it is the only nerf coming despite dozens of other problematic cards. Then there was an older problem, Mysterious Challenger, who was never nerfed, the cards that made him powerful simply rotated out of the standard metagame after 6 months of him dominating the ladder.

So the idea that any other game would shut down their servers for axeman is laughable, in fact I doubt many card games would. Nerfing/buffing requires data and you dont get data if the servers are down. Most importantly, any card game needs to give the game a bit of time to settle before nerfing/buffing again. A deck might appear that is dominant rather quickly, but sometimes the meta responds by coming up with counters to that deck.

In this case, yeah Axeman is too much, but i dont feel the developers have let it overstay its welcome, certainly not compared to Hearthstone. They needed to see if the meta adjusted accordingly. It has not and we can expect a nerf.

 

[Cantina12]

If you call this lazy and unacceptable I would love to see you play Hearthstone. The nerf/fix cycle on that game is 3 months minimum and only in absolute worst case scenarios.

There is even a current example, a Card called Caverns Below which was released in the expansion 3 months ago and widely reviled by the community and which is only now seeing a nerf and it is the only nerf coming despite dozens of other problematic cards. Then there was an older problem, Mysterious Challenger, who was never nerfed, the cards that made him powerful simply rotated out of the standard metagame after 6 months of him dominating the ladder.

So the idea that any other game would shut down their servers for axeman is laughable, in fact I doubt many card games would. Nerfing/buffing requires data and you dont get data if the servers are down. Most importantly, any card game needs to give the game a bit of time to settle before nerfing/buffing again. A deck might appear that is dominant rather quickly, but sometimes the meta responds by coming up with counters to that deck.

In this case, yeah Axeman is too much, but i dont feel the developers have let it overstay its welcome, certainly not compared to Hearthstone. They needed to see if the meta adjusted accordingly. It has not and we can expect a nerf.

No, I do not play Hearthstone and never will.

Secondly, Hearthstone was released in 2014, thus patches coming every few months is normal when a game is that old and live.

And, thirdly, since its a company made by none other then Blizzard, they have a low tendency to shut down their servers for an emergency fix. Furthermore. Blizzard is known to be slow in fixing much of anything. It is actually a very common complaint among players.

I do not devote my entire game time to playing just card games. So comparing Gwent which is still in BETA to a card game that came out in 2014 is laughable.

What you think just because this is card game, the developers do not get data? What they magically summon a fairy and ask for said data? They have loads of servers accumulating data regularly, not to mention the data pouring in from players.

Beta is the time to push patches out to get things fixed so the game can go live. Not spend your time twiddling your thumbs.

So, please next time you wish to insult my intelligence, be sure to come with a far better response. Because your was laughable.

 

[TriforceDragon]

Beta is the time to push patches out to get things fixed so the game can go live. Not spend your time twiddling your thumbs.

Beta is the time to make sure the game reaches live in a solid state. Pushing patches week after week without ever waiting to see what happens in a game so heavily dependent on community constructions as a card game is just gonna lead to an ever fluctuating mess from which no valuable data can be gathered. Yes, sometimes things settle down almost immediately, but not always and even if something quickly proves to be problematic, in the beta you can let that slide for a while so you can also look at what is weak and need to be buffed instead of just rushing in with a fix for every little thing. This is twice important since I know from my own experience in coding that changing one thing can sometimes have unexpected consequences in something else, making hasty changes can easily just result in new bugs or problems that might have been caught with a bit of patience.

Not that it necesarily avoids all problems, no card game has ever achieved perfect balance and frankly compared to Hearthstone, I infinitely prefer Gwent's current balance. But it is better that the problems are in balance rather than things outright breaking the game because someone just slapped on a patch without properly testing it first.

And considering Hearthstone is the biggest digital card game on the market, comparing to them hardly seems laughable. I do not applaud Blizzard's way of handling things, in fact I hate it, but there is still a huge amount of difference in the time it takes them to make a hotfix or patch and the speed Gwent has shown so far. The last patch is only about 3 weeks ago, with a new livestream announcing new changes coming tomorrow.

 

[laptopman]

I am surprised not a lot of people play bekker's twisted mirror. It has lead me to very consistent plays against skellige weather decks, and on top of that it is still decent in dwarfs and consume decks.

 

[bojerbela]

I am surprised not a lot of people play bekker's twisted mirror. It has lead me to very consistent plays against skellige weather decks, and on top of that it is still decent in dwarfs and consume decks.

OFF: I lost so my 23 Str ekimmara and my opponent had suddenly a 23 Str Harpy Egg :cheers: Good play (last round, I lost that match)

ON: but I killed a 48 Str Axeman right now...

 

[Snake_Foxhounder]

The biggest issue for this game is agility. It allows both weather spam and placement of units that makes it easy to avoid debuffs. When axemen were tied to one row, you had to think twice about when and how to play them. Now place one on each row and don't worry about anything, because at least one will survive.

 

[Mombamambo]

Can the devs finally make Morkvarg a gold card already? This goddamn card caused nothing but balance issues since CB, and it is still going on now in OP. The balance team should have realized by now that a buffable and uncounterable (thanks to Sigrfrida) card doesn't have a place in a competitive game.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

If you call this lazy and unacceptable I would love to see you play Hearthstone. The nerf/fix cycle on that game is 3 months minimum and only in absolute worst case scenarios.

There is even a current example, a Card called Caverns Below which was released in the expansion 3 months ago and widely reviled by the community and which is only now seeing a nerf and it is the only nerf coming despite dozens of other problematic cards. Then there was an older problem, Mysterious Challenger, who was never nerfed, the cards that made him powerful simply rotated out of the standard metagame after 6 months of him dominating the ladder.

So the idea that any other game would shut down their servers for axeman is laughable, in fact I doubt many card games would. Nerfing/buffing requires data and you dont get data if the servers are down. Most importantly, any card game needs to give the game a bit of time to settle before nerfing/buffing again. A deck might appear that is dominant rather quickly, but sometimes the meta responds by coming up with counters to that deck.

In this case, yeah Axeman is too much, but i dont feel the developers have let it overstay its welcome, certainly not compared to Hearthstone. They needed to see if the meta adjusted accordingly. It has not and we can expect a nerf.

I'm not sure how company A taking a poor approach counts as a defense for company B taking a poor approach. But.... okay. He did it too doesn't go very far.

In terms of Axemen... Exactly how much data does it take to recognize the card is absurd with frost?

 

[TriforceDragon]

I'm not sure how company A taking a poor approach counts as a defense for company B taking a poor approach. But.... okay. He did it too doesn't go very far.

In terms of Axemen... Exactly how much data does it take to recognize the card is absurd with frost?

Not much, but just nerfing Axemen aint suddenly gonna make ST good. Axemen may be the pressing issue, but there are others as well.

The question is also what do you hit? The Axemen or frost? Weather is beeing complained about in general, so if you hit Axemen now and then weather later, will axemen then be completely useless due to double nerfs? And how exactly do you hit weather?

Just swinging wildly at one card when it pops its head above the pack can easily have more consequences down the line and I would rather wait 3 weeks and let them consider more than just an immediate fix than have a quick fix that might just cause more problems in time. Now, we dont know when the next patch is coming out, but we will be getting info tomorrow, roughly 3 weeks after the last patch.

3 weeks aint bad in my book, especially when this still is beta and not the actual release. But I will be honest, that might be just because 3 weeks is heaven compared to Hearthstone's 3 months for a single card change.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Not much, but just nerfing Axemen aint suddenly gonna make ST good. Axemen may be the pressing issue, but there are others as well.

The question is also what do you hit? The Axemen or frost? Weather is beeing complained about in general, so if you hit Axemen now and then weather later, will axemen then be completely useless due to double nerfs? And how exactly do you hit weather?

Just swinging wildly at one card when it pops its head above the pack can easily have more consequences down the line and I would rather wait 3 weeks and let them consider more than just an immediate fix than have a quick fix that might just cause more problems in time. Now, we dont know when the next patch is coming out, but we will be getting info tomorrow, roughly 3 weeks after the last patch.

3 weeks aint bad in my book, especially when this still is beta and not the actual release. But I will be honest, that might be just because 3 weeks is heaven compared to Hearthstone's 3 months for a single card change.

One would think frost would be the recipient of the nerf. After all, Axemen would be perfectly reasonable if they couldn't hit 20-40 because.... weather. Or, they could just keep rotating adjustments to card, after card, after card, because.... weather. Isn't it great when you have a closed beta, rewrite the rules all over the place at once for open beta and run into, shall we say, issues? No way anyone coulda seen that one coming.

I suppose it would be the first time we see huge, radical change in one fell swoop without enough data if CDPR were to jump the gun.

As great as it would be if it were the case, Axemen aren't an isolated case. While collecting proper data is reasonable, waiting for the meta to shift to 40 card NR spam 7 point cards everywhere, or "Let us abuse awesome damn near uncounterable cards like Succubus or innovative, thought provoking concepts like Letho Dbomb" is a bit of a stretch. I distinctly recall watching the OB livestream for 10 minutes and thinking to myself, "Too many gimmicks.". Guess what, too many gimmicks.

 

[fartingunicorn]

One would think frost would be the recipient of the nerf. After all, Axemen would be perfectly reasonable if they couldn't hit 20-40 because.... weather. Or, they could just keep rotating adjustments to card, after card, after card, because.... weather. Isn't it great when you have a closed beta, rewrite the rules all over the place at once for open beta and run into, shall we say, issues? No way anyone coulda seen that one coming.

I suppose it would be the first time we see huge, radical change in one fell swoop without enough data if CDPR were to jump the gun.

As great as it would be if it were the case, Axemen aren't an isolated case. While collecting proper data is reasonable, waiting for the meta to shift to 40 card NR spam 7 point cards everywhere, or "Let us abuse awesome damn near uncounterable cards like Succubus or innovative, thought provoking concepts like Letho Dbomb" is a bit of a stretch. I distinctly recall watching the OB livestream for 10 minutes and thinking to myself, "Too many gimmicks.". Guess what, too many gimmicks.

Personally I'd say just hit the Axemen. Hitting frost will effect Monsters as well. Make them doomed (can't be resurrected) and/or can't be buff with weather damage.

Hitting too many things will just make the balance messy again. Other gimmicks you mentioned is no where as bad as Axemen+weather. Axemen and Bears are bronze cards. Succubus is gold. NR spam has weakness because units are mostly same strength plus Axemen+weather shits on them. Letho+Dbomb is a gold+silver card.

What I prefer is they nerf SK a bit, leave Monsters and NR alone, buff NG a bit and rework ST.

 

[Beren_93]

This game is starting to affect my health. I am getting nervous and frustrated and really need to stop to play. I play only NR. I just wanted to hit 2800 rating for the icon and the title. Believe me if you want now i will tell you my terrible journey. Until rank 14 it was normal. Now from 1 week or more i am in 2500-2700 range. This 2 days i played a lot and managed to hit 2730 around 10 times maybe.I cant get pass 2730. In ranked it get me vs Monster Weather Spam, more rare Monster Consume, rare Spellatel, rare another NR and almost every game is vs Skellige. I play currenlty Swim Zerglings, because before that i played Machines but when i hitted 2500 started to lose almost every game. I want to hit 2800 only with NR. I never played another faction and i dont want to play another faction. I cant do that no matter how hard i try and i am starting to feel if i dont manage to stop to play somehow this game will destroy me literally. Above all the shit i am in right now i hate most of all Axemen Operator Weather spam. This is not game, this is torture for me. I am down to almost 2500 again after i made rage lose series after the last time i got to 2717 and every time i get Skellige. I dont know how the other players are feelling but game witch can get you heart attack is not good. I am stubborn and i dont want to give up but its getting like the biggest shitfest ever.

 

[NickStrife]

Kambi decks do have just one win condition. They use axemen because its the second best thing they can use to try to win one round and than finish the other with kambi. If you have a kambi deck and try to win 2 rounds with just axeman, than you simply using a worsened axeman build. Than why use a kambi build on the first place?
Also, your justifications giving examples of situations where a kambi deck can be good simply arent a good argument. That 20 point play is as good as an axeman build 20 tempo point play that are as good as a crone tempo point play that are as good as a ST tempo point play and so on and so forth. And sometimes, a tempo point play aint that good either. Dry passing after bran is rarely a good play anyways. If you end up round 3 with ca you are at advantage no matter how you got there.
You really think that kambi is a good deck? Like, REALLY?
Because, for me, its clearly a tier 2 to tier 3 build. Theres some days i dont play ladder now, but there were weeks since i didnt faced a kambi deck on the ladder (3k+), and when i did, it was more frequent wins than loss

I strongly disagree with everything you said.. They can have an easy 2-3 card CA because they force you to pressure R2... So they win R3 almost automatically..

Also about the tempo play.. The other examples you mentioned are clearly inferior to the one Bran is using in a Kambi deck..

 

[Laveley]

I strongly disagree with everything you said.. They can have an easy 2-3 card CA because they force you to pressure R2... So they win R3 almost automatically..

If you force a r2 kambi, there is virtually no r3 win condition on a kambi deck. Axemans wont give you any value on a short r3. CA round 3 is good if you have kambi on hands.

Plus, the tools for CA on a kambi deck are virtually as good as any other tools for CA on pretty much any other deck. Which leads me to your tempo play argument. So you are arguing that what makes kambis deck good is this so "superior tempo play" with bran? Really? Than its not really kambi thats good, its virtually any other deck that uses that tempo play too.

Also about the tempo play.. The other examples you mentioned are clearly inferior to the one Bran is using in a Kambi deck..

Inferior why? They can put the same numbers on table. Potentially even more on ST case. Bran tempo play is as good as any other 20+ tempo play on the game. If you force one more card out of your opponent to beat that score, great, but you cant say you always will and thus you are basically giving away one turn and giving the opportunity to your opponent pressure you r2 and forcing you to spend your win condition to stay alive.

Anyways, if you want to stay saying how good kambi decks and asking for nerfs, go ahead, i wont discuss anymore, once you get to high mmr (if ever) you will discover how good kambi decks really are (or better; arent).

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Personally I'd say just hit the Axemen. Hitting frost will effect Monsters as well. Make them doomed (can't be resurrected) and/or can't be buff with weather damage.

Hitting too many things will just make the balance messy again. Other gimmicks you mentioned is no where as bad as Axemen+weather. Axemen and Bears are bronze cards. Succubus is gold. NR spam has weakness because units are mostly same strength plus Axemen+weather shits on them. Letho+Dbomb is a gold+silver card.

What I prefer is they nerf SK a bit, leave Monsters and NR alone, buff NG a bit and rework ST.

It wouldn't break my heart to see it effect MS too. Frost is typically the best bronze weather, so changing it only seems right. I'm sure MS can manage. They aren't exactly in a bad spot at the moment. In fact, they tend to fly under the radar due to all the SK hate.

Succubus may be gold. She is still a twisted, evil bitch of a card to deal with. About the only counter is to force the play of Succubus into an awkward spot and anticipate it.

I strongly disagree with everything you said.. They can have an easy 2-3 card CA because they force you to pressure R2... So they win R3 almost automatically..

Also about the tempo play.. The other examples you mentioned are clearly inferior to the one Bran is using in a Kambi deck..

I wouldn't say Kambi is the reason Kambi decks can win either. It's more due to Hjalmar/Regis/Avalach with Kambi, and the strong bronze/silver options SK has everywhere. You can stop Kambi decks without shackles by getting +2 CA, sure. Doing that is the tricky part.