Buffs needed for Harmony to Thrive

[rrc]

[I know there is a thread which is asking/discussing if there are any viable Harmony decks here. I wanted to create a thread with suggestions for the buffs to make Harmony even remotely competitive.]

I tried to create and optimize a Call Of Harmony deck and I have played close to 10 games and I can feel that Harmony lacks a lot of power and is barely viable. The games I won are due to people playing quest decks in casual and actual tryhard serious decks just beat the crap out of Harmony even in casual. To make Harmony viable, I think the following buffs need to be made.

1) Dana should have Harmony 2
2) Water of Brokilon should be 11P. At 12P it is just too costly for the value it provides. In almost all the 10 games I played as soon as the WoB is played one of the Fledgling gets killed and making the card feel super slow and bad. It should be at 12P in ME era, but not now, especially in post MM period.
3) Oak should be 12P. Oak was also nerfed due to ME and how oppressive it was in ME. Currently people just drop Oak and I hardly see people playing Oak in ST decks. It is because of the huge cost it has.
4) Abandoned Girl should transform into Fledgling (or) Abandonded Girl should have Harmony (retaining the order ability)
5) Milva should be at 6P - Alpha Werewolf had been buffed again and again and again and now breakseven, but Milva is absolutely abandoned.
6) Dryad Ranger should have 4 power. Way too slow and with the very less poison options ST has, it is very unreliable to get value from poison of Ranger.

I think with these changes Harmony will be competitively viable.

 

[Celadyl]

7) change etriel and muierlega provision back to 7. the "bonded" effect is strong yes but with a 4 point body the first played almost never lives anyway so you end up with 2 7 for 8 cards.

not sure about dryad ranger, I think it should have melee: damage a unit by 2, range: poison a unit or something. but I dont like the poison package being part of harmony to begin with.

dana should have veil, if not even immune (maybe too strong). not only is she a deity, your leader, being an engine, can be locked by a 4p card in van moorlhem hunter.

other than that, I wholeheartedly agree. everything feels to expensive, WoB, Oak, Milva (I still think she's good in current removal meta), even half elf hunter. current meta is just too removal heavy for the toothless herbivore that is harmony.
btw, sirssa is an absolute joke, she should be 7p and get the symbiosis tag. it's almost impossible for harmony to procc the deathblow anyway.

 

[Markus_Wirth]

1) Dana should have Harmony 2
2) Water of Brokilon should be 11P. At 12P it is just too costly for the value it provides. In almost all the 10 games I played as soon as the WoB is played one of the Fledgling gets killed and making the card feel super slow and bad. It should be at 12P in ME era, but not now, especially in post MM period.
3) Oak should be 12P. Oak was also nerfed due to ME and how oppressive it was in ME. Currently people just drop Oak and I hardly see people playing Oak in ST decks. It is because of the huge cost it has.
4) Abandoned Girl should transform into Fledgling (or) Abandonded Girl should have Harmony (retaining the order ability)
5) Milva should be at 6P - Alpha Werewolf had been buffed again and again and again and now breakseven, but Milva is absolutely abandoned.
6) Dryad Ranger should have 4 power. Way too slow and with the very less poison options ST has, it is very unreliable to get value from poison of Ranger.

1) Reasonable, but would prefer this boost.

I would suggest the following boost: Dana´s strength equals the amount of unique SC tags in your deck.
=> Modified call of harmony would have a Dana with strength 9 in my deck which equals a value 10 and a total value of 25

2) Reasonable, 11 P for 8 value + 2 harmony appears reasonable

3) Great Oak can have a max value of 7 + 8 = 15 + Removal potential. Consider a 12 for 15 to be fair. Furthermore, you can expect disadvantages comitting to a row. When you play Symbiosis you also risk that a wandering ent blocks your great oak row.

4) Maybe to Feldgling on Melee and stay same on Ranged. Then the card is more flexible

5) Milva can be a 12 for 7 + Immunity in a long round. Playing a SC card is relatively more easily than playing a card being bigger than 6 (and later even higher). Especially Alpha Werwolfs is played late (after smaller thrive units). Would leave her as she is (maybe a small provision buff to 6).

6) Would leave her also as she is. Poison is really strong in harmony decks (can ellimnate easily 2 opponent units)

To my mind the biggest problem with harmony, that there are harmony cards, which do not fit the harmony approach:

e.g: Sirssa better fits to invigorate -> would change it´s deathblow to: Repeat the ability one more time and increase damage to 3. Then she would be a conditional 9 for 8 + harmony.

Half-Elf Hunter: The deploy better fits to Deadeye Ambush. In fact, it´s Elven Deadeye can be even painful at harmony as another elf won´t trigger after Half-Elf Hunter is destroyed. Would change to: Deploy boost all harmony units by 1.

Another big problem with harmony is that there is just a lack of cards with harmony cards (8 unique cards). Compare to assimilate 9 unique cards, Thrive 15 cards, Intimidate 13 unique cards. Especially because of expansions the other archetypes were supported but harmony was neglected. So give to a few cards harmony might also help

 

[Celadyl]

e.g: Sirssa better fits to invigorate -> would change it´s deathblow to: Repeat the ability one more time and increase damage to 3. Then she would be a conditional 9 for 8 + harmony.

Half-Elf Hunter: The deploy better fits to Deadeye Ambush. In fact, it´s Elven Deadeye can be even painful at harmony as another elf won´t trigger after Half-Elf Hunter is destroyed. Would change to: Deploy boost all harmony units by 1.

Another big problem with harmony is that there is just a lack of cards with harmony cards (8 unique cards). Compare to assimilate 9 unique cards, Thrive 15 cards, Intimidate 13 unique cards. Especially because of expansions the other archetypes were supported but harmony was neglected. So give to a few cards harmony might also help

sirssa should just join her dryad sisters and get a symbiosis tag, possibly a provision buff imo. deathblow and harmony dont go well together, although handboost could come in handy.

dont agree with that half elf hunter change. the card is very strong in elf decks, imo they should just give the harmony tag to another elf and make hunter a 5p without harmony.

there is indeed a lack of harmony cards but creating too many would end up making harmony too crazy. but 1-2 bronzes and a gold could fit, especially if they remove harmony from half elf and sirssa.

 

[Pacifixer]

Harmony was at the top for half a year, i say let it rest until the next expansion

 

[Celadyl]

Harmony was at the top for half a year, i say let it rest until the next expansion

it was for all the wrong reasons. an OP leader and poison. another part is the game not getting any significant patch for half a year.
harmony is so frustrating to play now, it's malding.

 

[rrc]

Harmony was at the top for half a year, i say let it rest until the next expansion

Letting too many things to rest makes the game so freaking stagnant and repetitive. Harmony tag was not the reason it was OP and annoying, but ME was and it had been handled. The only ST you face are low-unit (13 units 12 special Gord decks, with very slight variation from Precision Strike and Nature's Gift). Elves had been power crept, Dwarf were OP for one or two seasons (again due to ME) and were nerfed and made irrelevant.

Being an ST player it is hard to get to play the game as the only viable deck is a low-unit deck. I had tried Harmony and I had tried elves with very poor win rate (wins coming due to quest decks) and I had tried movement with GT and it was laughably saddening to play it. If that is what we want (just have one viable deck and just play it the multiple seasons per faction), then yes, we can let Harmony to rest.

 

[Barracuda88]

My few cents:
1. Since there's already a designated Harmony 2 unit, I think Dana should maybe be immune, but overall I don't think she's super-weak. I think it's more about tuning back the rest of the cards.
2. Yes. WoB needs to be restored to 11p.
3. Yes. Oak needs to go back to 12.
4. Not convinced about the Abandoned Girl.
5. Yes. Milva is just not worth 7p as it is. Either make her 6p, or start her at 5 health.
6. I'd be ok with Ranger going back to 3 body +2 deploy damage, plus poison.
7. Restore Etriel Muriega cards to 7p
8. Half-elf should probably be a 5p card.
9. Sirrsa has never made sense. Not really sure how to fix her. Maybe increase damage to 3. Maybe lower provisions to 7. It's just a real awkward card.

 

[wonderboy870]

The fix for harmony is to remove the faction specific tag. If non ST cards could ping then the archetype could compete a lot better. You would add vampire, bandit, etc... Look at assimilate, it doesn’t require NG cards not in your starting deck. Thrive doesn’t care if it is neutral or not. Fee based boosts from Smith in SY doesn’t only boost SY cards. SK doesn’t require faction specific alchemy cards for its various alchemy boosts. Even NR has no faction specific requirement for resupply. Soldiers are soldiers. Why is ST the only faction handicapped with this restriction. Especially when spies can cancel ST specific human bonuses. Fix this and the archetype is solid.

 

[Bellatrix_]

The fix for harmony is to remove the faction specific tag. If non ST cards could ping then the archetype could compete a lot better. You would add vampire, bandit, etc... Look at assimilate, it doesn’t require NG cards not in your starting deck. Thrive doesn’t care if it is neutral or not. Fee based boosts from Smith in SY doesn’t only boost SY cards. SK doesn’t require faction specific alchemy cards for its various alchemy boosts. Even NR has no faction specific requirement for resupply. Soldiers are soldiers. Why is ST the only faction handicapped with this restriction. Especially when spies can cancel ST specific human bonuses. Fix this and the archetype is solid.

How many tags are there in neutrals? This sounds pretty op at first glance

 

[wonderboy870]

How many tags are there in neutrals? This sounds pretty op at first glance

It kinda depends on primary vs secondary. For example Witcher is a primary, whereas mage is a secondary. All in I would guess about 7 or 8 unique primary tags. However, remember that non of those cards has harmony as well and provisions costs being what they are it is not easy to fit all of them in.

The biggest issue with harmony is right now it is almost a de facto devotion deck. Devotion for ST is heavily geared toward symbiosis which is a special card heavy archetype. Harmony needs units not nature special cards. In fact the Treant spawns actually block a harmony ping. My suggestion unshackles Harmony and allows for a more diverse deck selection.

 

[Celadyl]

It kinda depends on primary vs secondary. For example Witcher is a primary, whereas mage is a secondary. All in I would guess about 7 or 8 unique primary tags. However, remember that non of those cards has harmony as well and provisions costs being what they are it is not easy to fit all of them in.

The biggest issue with harmony is right now it is almost a de facto devotion deck. Devotion for ST is heavily geared toward symbiosis which is a special card heavy archetype. Harmony needs units not nature special cards. In fact the Treant spawns actually block a harmony ping. My suggestion unshackles Harmony and allows for a more diverse deck selection.

now that you mention it, shouldnt witcher be the secondary tag and mutant the primary one?
I think harmony would be fine if cdpr would just update (provision buff) alot of the cards that got hit with the nerf hammer because they couldnt handle mystic echo.

neutral tags that arent in ST are: vampire, construct, witcher, specter, demon, ogroid. if you dont count dana then relict as well.

 

[Madlax1992]

Harmony was at the top for half a year, i say let it rest until the next expansion

IMO, that is not right. Aside from SK having almost all its leader abilities viable and competitive, all the other major factions rely on mostly 1 or 2 leaders, while the others are pretty much dead and forgotten.

NR relies heavily now on Shieldwall, with Uprising still being in use but taking a huge step back.

NG mostly relies on Imposter or Tactical Decision now, although none of its leaders are now particularly great.

SY relies on HC and Congregate to a lesser extent while the new leader ability is kinda meh compared to its predecessor.

MO is all about OH, the rest being rather underwhelming.

ST got a nice new leader ability in Nature's Gift and still has its thing with Precision Strike because of Schirru.

So no, Harmony should get a buff and a proper leader to make it competitive again. And work should be done on the other leader abilities too, for all factions. I don't have a problem if one leader ability is better than the other, but I would like all or as much of them to have a chance to be competitive.

 

[wonderboy870]

IMO, that is not right. Aside from SK having almost all its leader abilities viable and competitive, all the other major factions rely on mostly 1 or 2 leaders, while the others are pretty much dead and forgotten.

NR relies heavily now on Shieldwall, with Uprising still being in use but taking a huge step back.

NG mostly relies on Imposter or Tactical Decision now, although none of its leaders are now particularly great.

SY relies on HC and Congregate to a lesser extent while the new leader ability is kinda meh compared to its predecessor.

MO is all about OH, the rest being rather underwhelming.

ST got a nice new leader ability in Nature's Gift and still has its thing with Precision Strike because of Schirru.

So no, Harmony should get a buff and a proper leader to make it competitive again. And work should be done on the other leader abilities too, for all factions. I don't have a problem if one leader ability is better than the other, but I would like all or as much of them to have a chance to be competitive.

Harmony was the first draft of the devotion experiment. It doesn’t require only ST units but penalizes any tag that overlaps with an ST tag. Human neutrals, dragon neutrals, dwarf neutrals, etc... all have significant risks when playing harmony. Then devotion comes along and symbiosis is the ST focus. The biggest issue with harmony is that it interferes with devotion, and vice versa. Harmony needs units, symbiosis needs special cards. The playing of any nature card when a symbiosis unit is on the board causes a treant to appear. This actually blocks a major ping in the harmony archetype. It is time to open harmony pings to units outside of ST. Without it, harmony will not be viable.

 

[sfruzz]

Buffs needed for Thrive to Harmony!

 

[Fargothwave]

IMO, that is not right. Aside from SK having almost all its leader abilities viable and competitive, all the other major factions rely on mostly 1 or 2 leaders, while the others are pretty much dead and forgotten.

NR relies heavily now on Shieldwall, with Uprising still being in use but taking a huge step back.

NG mostly relies on Imposter or Tactical Decision now, although none of its leaders are now particularly great.

SY relies on HC and Congregate to a lesser extent while the new leader ability is kinda meh compared to its predecessor.

MO is all about OH, the rest being rather underwhelming.

ST got a nice new leader ability in Nature's Gift and still has its thing with Precision Strike because of Schirru.

So no, Harmony should get a buff and a proper leader to make it competitive again. And work should be done on the other leader abilities too, for all factions. I don't have a problem if one leader ability is better than the other, but I would like all or as much of them to have a chance to be competitive.

I see all kinds of leader abilities being used effectively atm.
Actually, the decks that deviate from meta are most fun, usually (except that one with rat flood, it either falls flat or aggravates the hell out of you), and while each of them sees relatively little play individually, there's a lot of such precious maverick little designs going around. People still try new stuff, even in this oppressive meta, and still succeed sometimes. I've seen a guy who uses Sabrina's inferno with Pincer to great effect today. I have been running Guerilla Tactics for a while now and fried many a metahead in green fires if you know what I mean. These abilities aren't as dead as they seem to be, and even then, mostly because of lazy players and not because they're truly bad.

The thing is, Harmony may actually be okay. We just don't know for sure because few people even try to run it, and most go for the greediest setup that impies a Harmony tick every turn instead of sprinking in some supporting cards/auxiliary engines to ensure every proc actually matters in the end. Heck, what if this leader ability only really needs waters of brokilon and then maybe Barnabas, and the rest of your deck might consist of any units you like - movement package, for example - you still get two ticks of Harmony off elven sentries and the boar, plus there may be a dwarven miner to set up movement thing more safely, and then Barnabas to top it all off. Sounds like a fine combo to me.

 

[Barracuda88]

I see all kinds of leader abilities being used effectively atm.
Actually, the decks that deviate from meta are most fun, usually (except that one with rat flood, it either falls flat or aggravates the hell out of you), and while each of them sees relatively little play individually, there's a lot of such precious maverick little designs going around. People still try new stuff, even in this oppressive meta, and still succeed sometimes. I've seen a guy who uses Sabrina's inferno with Pincer to great effect today. I have been running Guerilla Tactics for a while now and fried many a metahead in green fires if you know what I mean. These abilities aren't as dead as they seem to be, and even then, mostly because of lazy players and not because they're truly bad.

The thing is, Harmony may actually be okay. We just don't know for sure because few people even try to run it, and most go for the greediest setup that impies a Harmony tick every turn instead of sprinking in some supporting cards/auxiliary engines to ensure every proc actually matters in the end. Heck, what if this leader ability only really needs waters of brokilon and then maybe Barnabas, and the rest of your deck might consist of any units you like - movement package, for example - you still get two ticks of Harmony off elven sentries and the boar, plus there may be a dwarven miner to set up movement thing more safely, and then Barnabas to top it all off. Sounds like a fine combo to me.

It's not that fine, honestly. You're talking about either not using Guerilla for your movement deck, which limits your row punish reach, amother other things, or not using CoH for your harmony, which means 12p Waters drops 2 4-point, 1 point per turn engines on the board which you cannot immediately proc to 5, one of which is likely getting instantly removed. leaving you with a 12p engine that's about as good as a Garkain or a crier. It might work for memes, but you can't really compete with inelegant stuff like that, imo.

 

[Slizzl]

I don't think the issue with Harmony lies in the leader at all, I quite like the new one. But there needs to be more options for certain categories like Dwarves and Gnomes.
I find that many categories don't have any cards that really synergize well with the rest of the Harmony cards, I blame this on ST archetypes not really playing well when mixed.
So yeah, I think rather than blaming the leader a better direction would be to introduce more cross-category synergy.

Maybe a proper Harmony card for Dwarves? What if resilience Zoltan somehow got Harmony?
What I would absolutely love is if Saskia got Harmony and instead of spawning a category of choice she PLAYS it. This is also lore-friendly.

 

[Fargothwave]

It's not that fine, honestly. You're talking about either not using Guerilla for your movement deck, which limits your row punish reach, amother other things, or not using CoH for your harmony, which means 12p Waters drops 2 4-point, 1 point per turn engines on the board which you cannot immediately proc to 5, one of which is likely getting instantly removed. leaving you with a 12p engine that's about as good as a Garkain or a crier. It might work for memes, but you can't really compete with inelegant stuff like that, imo.

I didn't really mean it to be a full movement deck. The round should play something like this - waters+Dana into defender into movement setup (3 to 4 units) This way you proc off dwarves and elves, and at some point, off a gnome. Losing a fledgling is acceptable, because you bait removal for a less important engine. But at this point it is just matrons cheese with a couple of side harmony engines, so...yeah, not much of a harmony deck.


Okay, take 2.
Defender into 2x fledgling portal into waters+ Dana. Sucks to lose Dwarf proc, but this way you have five Harmony sources deployed and at least relatively safe in 3 turns. Add Percival, then either poisonous treant+dryad or sentry+boar, whatever. This is as close to Double Waters as you can get these days. Few people run Yrden currently, so your greed will probably be rewarded. There's triple duel business, sure, but that one is a pain for any non-swarm deck and since you go fairly wide, it should be at least decently resistant to that.

 

[Barracuda88]

I don't think the issue with Harmony lies in the leader at all, I quite like the new one. But there needs to be more options for certain categories like Dwarves and Gnomes.
I find that many categories don't have any cards that really synergize well with the rest of the Harmony cards, I blame this on ST archetypes not really playing well when mixed.
So yeah, I think rather than blaming the leader a better direction would be to introduce more cross-category synergy.

Maybe a proper Harmony card for Dwarves? What if resilience Zoltan somehow got Harmony?
What I would absolutely love is if Saskia got Harmony and instead of spawning a category of choice she PLAYS it. This is also lore-friendly.

Definitely agree on Saskia, including the lore. Also, miner used to have Harmony tag, another casualty of the sad harmony nerfs. Maybe it could get it back, as well.

Post automatically merged: Sep 19, 2020

I didn't really mean it to be a full movement deck. The round should play something like this - waters+Dana into defender into movement setup (3 to 4 units) This way you proc off dwarves and elves, and at some point, off a gnome. Losing a fledgling is acceptable, because you bait removal for a less important engine. But at this point it is just matrons cheese with a couple of side harmony engines, so...yeah, not much of a harmony deck.


Okay, take 2.
Defender into 2x fledgling portal into waters+ Dana. Sucks to lose Dwarf proc, but this way you have five Harmony sources deployed and at least relatively safe in 3 turns. Add Percival, then either poisonous treant+dryad or sentry+boar, whatever. This is as close to Double Waters as you can get these days. Few people run Yrden currently, so your greed will probably be rewarded. There's triple duel business, sure, but that one is a pain for any non-swarm deck and since you go fairly wide, it should be at least decently resistant to that.

Running portal and Waters in the same deck is interesting (though you're probably sacrificing oak to do that), but running both in the same round is not. It's super slow, and draw-dependent, especially in R3 and with a defender as the first play. Hard mulligans (and crazy deck construction limitations) aside, it pretty much requires a long round, because otherwise either Dana or Percival don't do anything aside from proccing the fledglings. This means you need to win R1, which you don't really have anything to win it with.

In short, the best bet is probably something that's similar to the old Harmony decks, where you treat Dana as the poor man's MEcho Waters, but again, with the dozen nerfs that went into Harmony as CDPR struggled to comprehend the idea that MEcho Waters MIGHT be the source of Harmony's power, the archetype is hopelessly powercrept and likely will not be viable until those nerfs are reversed.