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

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

Can you like fix the game, or at least the balance? 90% of the people are currently playing 1 faction, and basically 1 deck with a few card variations, is that what you intended?
 
And with the new ranked mechanics, expect to see it even more. Ranked seems real grindy now and everybody will play the safe best choice otherwise it can be really difficult to reach new ranks.
 
I just built a SK deck with a few key cards missing but it tends to work out and wow I can see why everyone plays it. Though I feel dirty doing so, it's a very flexable deck with a lot of options and is easily built on a budget too. Furthermore it is insanely easy to learn and use. It no wonder why I haven't seen many other decks now. Even without netdecking these things are pretty easy to copy.
 
The other things that makes SK so popular is the Boat, and Kambi. You can lock the Boat but, it never gets rid of it. They just revive it. If they made it so a demoted Gold's ability could never be used again.. it would be too strong but, the only way to solve that problem.

As for Kambi.. That thing is quite literally a nuke. All you need is Ciri Dash, Hjalmar, Mork and Olgierd for the core. After that you keep an eye out for locks, or the Succubus. If all goes well.. Kambi blows everything up. Hjalmar gets 25 Strength, and Mork comes back.

I can agree that SK does need balance. I am unsure of where to start with that though.
 
How weird that after NG got hit hard with the nerfbat only SK would remain on the top.

So far the only thing I can do is to not GG to everyone playing SK. I can understand the need to win, but I do not need to support it.

Fixes? Kambi requires very specific counters that would just sit around against anyone else. If it were not immune to regular damage (as it used to in CB) removal would be more viable with means that do not drag you down in another matchup.

Also I personally find the whole "I come back only slightly irritated when you kill me" feature of Olgierd, Mork and the Nekkers highly irritable, especially since every one of these can be buffed to ridiculous values in their respective decks. Lock helps, sure, but there are so many things to lock in these decks that you would again hamper you own gameplan by including more than one. NG had a pretty flexible answer in auckes, but it is not strong enough anymore to counter it effectively.
 
It's true around 2/4 matches seem to be against Skellige and to be honest I have been planning on making a deck from them simply because I have watched Merchant Gwent on YouTube and he does amazing with them. However I don't have enough of the good cards of this class to run it properly yet.
 
Nothing new. We've been round and round like this, but this time we've finally gone backwards I think. Doc, can we go back to the future asap.
 
The only counters to Kambi that I can see of with the meta is Shackles but, not everyone carries that at 3K-4K MMR. Though not a direct counter you can include the Succubus or locks. Succubus or locks can remove Mork from the equasion which is your additional Strength after Kambi blows up.

Even then that is counterable. If you look at my theory craft deck for testing out Kambi.. You will notice I have Cleaver, Donar and Shackles. With Sigrdrifa that gives me the option to revive Mork, Olgierd or one of my two non shackle locks.

As for the Strength buffs that is true. If you use Shieldsmiths.. That Strength helps Mork keep at 10+ for the first 2 rounds. Because Shieldsmiths are bronze that means Priestess's can revive them.. Keep the cycle going. If you Craite you can go higher than that. The fattest Mork I got in my experiments was 20 Strength. Shieldsmiths are strength not a boost so that carries over. Pretty disgusting. Here is a link if you wish to see what I did.

 
Kambi and QG's are the least problematic SK builds right now. They are both very easily counterable because they are too heavy-focused on one win condition. Once you figure out your opponent might be using kambi, you have two options:

1) hold your d-shackles (obviously, if you have one) and pretty much auto-win
2) pressure the first 2 rounds so he have to spend kambi to win a round and thus loose his win condition for round 3.

It might work on the lower elos, but high rank players know how to deal with those builds without having to rely on specific counters.

Pretty much there are 3 top tier sk builds right now: axeman, morkvag/olgier buff and anti-axemen/berserker. There are some hybrid builds among those too.

All of them run shieldmaidens and a variable number of bears (one to three) for bronzes, morkvag/sig/gremist/donar for silvers and renew/hjalmar/lugos for golds.

If you play SK without one of this cards, you are doing it wrong, unless you are purposedly running a tier 2 build like kambi/QG's.

This sets of bronzes, silvers, golds are extremely powerful on this meta and are the backbone of what is making SK strong. Specially shieldmaidens and the silvers ihmo (no, i dont think bears are the main problem here, although i agree they shouldnt be what they are now).

So, if you guys want to find something wrong with the faction, start looking on those cards.
 
That decks seems to be pretty close to what I have seen in ranked (albeit more extreme).

Thinking about lock: I think part of the issue might be that lock and reset are different things. Even though lock blocks "magic effects" strength already gained by it remains for some reason which makes it weird to use by itself. Similar thing with strengthen versus boost (or weaken versus damage), it just feels very arbitrary when it is which. While my Sergent buffed NR soldiers come back from the graveyard as their meager 3-4 point selves, SK has this weird additional bonus of having options that are just better and highly abusable.

Maybe it might help to change the shakles to include either a small amount of damage or reset to make them more viable in enough siturations to be used as a counter.
 
That is true Lavely.. That it is focused on a 1 win condition. It does work at 3K+ MMR though. If you look at some of the top tier builds, some of them dont even have Shackles though. I saw a few NR Machine builds at 3.8K MMR with no shackles.

I am aware that there is 1 Streamer right now who was around 3.2K MMR with a Kambi Deck using King Bran or whatever. Win rate was 70%. I gave them my deck to try out. If they do try my experiment.. We will see how it holds up.

Trent.. Even if you did that the boat would still reign supreme. Unless you can find some way from blocking it's ability.. It's too easy to revive. Renew or Sig can bring it back.
 
Dreatlan;n8979970 said:
That is true Lavely.. That it is focused on a 1 win condition. It does work at 3K+ MMR though. If you look at some of the top tier builds, some of them dont even have Shackles though. I saw a few NR Machine builds at 3.8K MMR with no shackles. I am aware that there is 1 Streamer right now who was around 3.2K MMR with a Kambi Deck using King Bran or whatever. Win rate was 70%. I gave them my deck to try out. If they do try my experiment.. We will see how it holds up. Trent.. Even if you did that the boat would still reign supreme. Unless you can find some way from blocking it's ability.. It's too easy to revive. Renew or Sig can bring it back.

It can work yes. But it doesnt mean its good. I myself play at +3k with a tier 2 deck that can work (spell tael), but it doesnt mean it isnt still a tier 2 deck. In a world where the builds i described as top tier didnt exist and the best build of SK was actually kambi, than SK would be on a really bad spot (like ST is now) because its such easy counterable.
 
Is this why people are disconnecting on me? I just started playing as few days ago, and I just happened to start playing this deck because I liked the theme artwork of it. So now people are going to start getting pissy every time I play this deck? Seems unfair. Things like this are why I rarely play multiplayer games...
 
I think there was a small miscommunication somewhere Laveley. I don't think that Kambi build I did is T2. Maybe like T1.8. I have noticed how easy it is to bully someone out of R1. The only decks I know that can out bully that is Foltest Witchers, Consume Monsters, and SpellTell (because of the ability to revive shackles). Outside of that.. The deck has yet to be out bullied. I guess thats just me. I will wait to see if some higher ranked player can run it.
 
The biggest issue is SK has more counters for most of the counter cards. The counters to the counters don't hamper the core of their build vs anything, really. If you lock a bear, axe, etc. they can unlock it and steal a card, which they can then use BTW, decoy it or resurrect it. They can even decoy Donar to double unlock/steal 2 cards. Even killing such cards doesn't hurt them very bad because they can bloodcurdling the healer they bring it back with using a mage (then replay the 12 pt bear). The only true counter to many of these cards is to steal or banish them. Banish only works on cards like axes if you use something like Mardroeme/Cyprian R1, because axes are veteran. Otherwise you need something like Necromancy/Regis.

Cards like shackles must be held if there is any chance of Kambi, making it a dead card until Kambi is played....

The secondary issue is you can't run enough counter cards without hampering yourself against other decks. Even if you do and take your chances vs these other decks, SK can still win.
 
It seems to me that the real issue here, as Restlessdingo32 rightly said is "SK can still win".
Hopefully they fix this in the next update.
Skellige has to be a niche faction and their sole purpose in the game should be giving easy victories to others.
;)
 
Its more than just the counter that the bear has. Its the value. Its 6 strength now and can hit everything once through out the game. Most decks run 2-3 bears. This mean over the course of the game you can expect at minimum 30 damage (unless its locked). That's alot of value for a bronze.
 
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Quintino77;n8980210 said:
It seems to me that the real issue here, as Restlessdingo32 rightly said is "SK can still win".
Hopefully they fix this in the next update.
Skellige has to be a niche faction and their sole purpose in the game should be giving easy victories to others.
;)

Not sure what you're getting at here. Let me clarify... You can build specifically to stop current popular SK decks and it still feels like they have a slight edge. By build for them I mean take the CB Henselt counter approach, and kill/lock/remove everything they put on the board.
 
Restlessdingo32;n8980350 said:
Not sure what you're getting at here. Let me clarify... You can build specifically to stop current popular SK decks and it still feels like they have a slight edge. By build for them I mean take the CB Henselt counter approach, and kill/lock/remove everything they put on the board.

Sorry, it was not a comment related to yours but a more generic one related to the whole "Skellige OP" situation, and it was intended as ironic.
English is not my native language so I apologise for the misunderstanding :).
 
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