Personally, I do not find lock weak.
That would only ever be the case if all factions relied on deploy abilities however the majority of them don't and have abilities that have to be activated through order or some external action like damage or boost. Adding 4 or 5p to the board and locking and or stealing an opponents unit or straight up destroying it because of the status is far from being less valuable. Obviously locks are used in conjunction with other cards, it's purpose is to lock your opponents strategy by hindering their units abilities so having high pts and low provision in addition to that would be overkill. I'm not sure who exactly you're playing against but if locks were so less valuable then NG wouldn't be the nightmare that it is currentlyLocks are not so weak, it's more that other cards are very strong now and there is the increased risk due to purify. I think the problem is that if you play any of the available locks you will be outpaced in the round due to the slow tempo.
Compared to many other bronze cards now, many of them see value far above their provisions, while lock is basically a 5p for 5p, if you count the lock itself as 1p. You get 4p on the board, plus the lock.
It didn't use to be this way, is why I bring it up at all. The punishment for playing locks in terms out out-tempo was negligible even if the reward for the lock itself was not good. So, due to changes in the game, locks are being double punished if you compare to the situation as it was before. Locks themselves are more prone to removal, and the tempo is worse, meaning the tempo punishment for playing a lock card is higher.
I'm comparing it to the situation previously, which is natural for me. I don't know how a new player would see it exactly. But compared to before locks have lost value.
That would only ever be the case if all factions relied on deploy abilities however the majority of them don't and have abilities that have to be activated through order or some external action like damage or boost. Adding 4 or 5p to the board and locking and or stealing an opponents unit or straight up destroying it because of the status is far from being less valuable. I'm not sure who exactly you're playing against but if locks were so less valuable then NG wouldn't be the nightmare that it is currently
There are decks that beat poison. I’ve had good success using Skellige second wind playing my defender repeatedly (with Sigrdrifa’s rite and second wind). By the time a poison deck removes my defender 3 times, they have too little poison left to combat my engines.
Timers could be used to balance things with other "problematic" mechanics as well, not only poison.
What do you think, @mazeebra ?
No argument there. Scenarios in general are one of the worst additions to the game. You either have to use them or forced to have a card in your deck to counter them which more often than not has no synergy with the rest of your deck. Looking at you bomb heaver >.>Well, as you've perhaps seen, I've come to change my view on poison a bit. I think the problem is scenario, and without it, poison would not be that good.
Besides that I think there is still room to adjust some of the cheaper poison cards, especially for SY and ST to make it less of an "auto-include" round starting thing. I think Dryad Ranger is still the main issue in regards to ST and Fisstech uninteractive for SY. It should probably be 5p and not 4p.
I like the ideas of NG spies, and I think in some way Fangs could be changed into some kind of Spy card with poison and something else.
No argument there. Scenarios in general are one of the worst additions to the game. You either have to use them or forced to have a card in your deck to counter them which more often than not has no synergy with the rest of your deck. Looking at you bomb heaver >.>
Nah, they're valid arguments. A part of Gwent, or at least initially was psychological. Baiting your opponent into making certain decisions that could cost them the match....that has become less and less prevalent as some of these mechanics are just point and shoot and requires very little thinking. The optimization is just not there at the momentWell, as far as I have observed, it seems clear that alot of good and/or big players in this game generally see the whole heaver/scenario situation as problematic.
So it's not just me as a more observant and more casual player who consider this an issue. I like analyzing and I like Gwent, which is probably why I'm such a pain in the ass in regards to nagging about optimizing Gwent in this way or that way or pointing out problems.
If you really want to nerf poison, minor changes would do a lot more than most people think. Remove the bronze neutral poisons and make Maraal SY only. That would limit all ST decks to 5 poisons, and NG could never instant kill a unit with Maraal + scenario.
The NG players here will tell you to use purify or defenders but the problem is the faction has the most proficient cards in the entire game so if you play caretaker or a defender then with yen's Invocation you just handed them a weapon to use against you and now you can't target anything on their side. and unless you plan to fill your deck with 50% purify cards then you're out of luckI absolutely refuse to play against a NG deck anymore. Last one I played against had 14 poison cards used against me.
Fangs 6 times, 2 rot tosser, Maraal etc.
Never again until they rework it.
What do you think?