ST Elves need work
As I predicted CDPR over-nerfed ST elves and over-buffed ST dwarves to see what would happen.
Here is a pretty decent deck I made that can get to rank 8 with little difficulty, after that it relies on opposing NG and Swim Dwarves to make mistakes. For those foolish enough to play anything else it's a little tricky but it gets through.
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/19148-y...orm-ravana-729
Any other ST option relies heavily on neutral cards so much...elves are pointless (see http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/18568-spelltael-control-stream-live)
The problem with this deck is that there is no one "really good" elf that can make this deck competitive. Yaevinn is very powerful but with Milva nerfed to hell I don't need her in my deck creating liabilities. She was one of the most balanced ST power cards. There are no reasons to put any dwarves in this deck so Saes is also very underwhelming except in the first round when the opponent has almost always already passed.
(Milva used to work on one's OWN units even after the opponent had passed, now she just fizzles - so now she's just a first round roach bouncer, and a liability in most other cases as Scorch is a better card for removing fat units)
I feel like dragoons are just ridiculously underwhelming, but there are few other options. The entire ST faction is slanted towards this stupid uninteresting move/discard deck no one wants to use except in casual. I mean it seems like every ST card is just pigeonholed into dwarves and very crummy Elf mechanics.
It's really bad game design to say the least and I'm not very enthusiastic about the future. I thought the public beta would be a lot more balanced, and I am just dreading the launch as I think it's going to be more problems. I guess I just can't see a reason for nerfing ST elves this hard except that it is a illogical kneejerk reaction to their performance in closed beta, failing to understand why ST was so OP. Basically they just nerfed everything that made ST work and buffed Dwarves into the Meta endgame which tells me CDPR has no idea what they are doing.
All ST needed was certain buffs in certain areas, because ST had too many good options. But they not only nerfed things they completely altered the mechanics on key ST cards like Aglais, Isengrim and Milva. So ST is just a big confusing mess with beefy dwarves now. There isn't a single ST deck from the closed beta which is buildable. That's complete overkill. The Isengrim small army swarm was a completely viable mechanic and made sense with the character. If they had debuffed the Commando Neophytes to 2 that would have worked.
Another fix would be to make Yaevinn act like the Elven Mercenary (draw him back with an ambush) he's already indispensable to any ST deck so why not give him the job of making elves viable. It won't make them competitive versus NG or Dwarves at the moment but at least it would give us elf lovers a reason to play Gwent.
Would love to see any other viable Elf decks people have discovered. Just not a lot of options here I feel but I have been wrong before.
As I predicted CDPR over-nerfed ST elves and over-buffed ST dwarves to see what would happen.
Here is a pretty decent deck I made that can get to rank 8 with little difficulty, after that it relies on opposing NG and Swim Dwarves to make mistakes. For those foolish enough to play anything else it's a little tricky but it gets through.
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/19148-y...orm-ravana-729
Any other ST option relies heavily on neutral cards so much...elves are pointless (see http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/18568-spelltael-control-stream-live)
The problem with this deck is that there is no one "really good" elf that can make this deck competitive. Yaevinn is very powerful but with Milva nerfed to hell I don't need her in my deck creating liabilities. She was one of the most balanced ST power cards. There are no reasons to put any dwarves in this deck so Saes is also very underwhelming except in the first round when the opponent has almost always already passed.
(Milva used to work on one's OWN units even after the opponent had passed, now she just fizzles - so now she's just a first round roach bouncer, and a liability in most other cases as Scorch is a better card for removing fat units)
I feel like dragoons are just ridiculously underwhelming, but there are few other options. The entire ST faction is slanted towards this stupid uninteresting move/discard deck no one wants to use except in casual. I mean it seems like every ST card is just pigeonholed into dwarves and very crummy Elf mechanics.
It's really bad game design to say the least and I'm not very enthusiastic about the future. I thought the public beta would be a lot more balanced, and I am just dreading the launch as I think it's going to be more problems. I guess I just can't see a reason for nerfing ST elves this hard except that it is a illogical kneejerk reaction to their performance in closed beta, failing to understand why ST was so OP. Basically they just nerfed everything that made ST work and buffed Dwarves into the Meta endgame which tells me CDPR has no idea what they are doing.
All ST needed was certain buffs in certain areas, because ST had too many good options. But they not only nerfed things they completely altered the mechanics on key ST cards like Aglais, Isengrim and Milva. So ST is just a big confusing mess with beefy dwarves now. There isn't a single ST deck from the closed beta which is buildable. That's complete overkill. The Isengrim small army swarm was a completely viable mechanic and made sense with the character. If they had debuffed the Commando Neophytes to 2 that would have worked.
Another fix would be to make Yaevinn act like the Elven Mercenary (draw him back with an ambush) he's already indispensable to any ST deck so why not give him the job of making elves viable. It won't make them competitive versus NG or Dwarves at the moment but at least it would give us elf lovers a reason to play Gwent.
Would love to see any other viable Elf decks people have discovered. Just not a lot of options here I feel but I have been wrong before.
Last edited: