Suggestion: CDPR, Kill the one Ghost Of The Beta Past still lurking in HC

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rrc

Forum veteran
The one thing which many disliked in Beta was the extreme consistency and thinning which caused every single game almost auto-play and predictable. In HC, you guys took a hard stance on thinning/consistency fairly well. Every tutor is insanely costly and every thinning card is costly in provisions. All is good, except for one thing. SK Discard. I have been vocal about this from the open PTR and it still is a huge problem. It doesn't matter if SK is the least played faction or if the #1 leader is not from SK. The kind of consistency SK gives is ridiculous when every other faction has been denied any thinning. While every other faction has to pray to God for a good hand/mulligan/draws, SK can achieve it ridiculously easily without much efforts.

During one of the Dev-Stream, When Jason was telling about Sihil, the kind of passion he showed was huge. He even said "How the f**k a card can do 7 or 8 damage per turn? That is ridiculous" on a stream with thousands of people watching. I really loved the way he cared about it and it kind of reflected on every player who went through it. Now, in R3, I have 7 or 8 cards in the deck and 100% of the times, there is at least one Gold card in it. More than 50% of the time, there are two gold cards in the deck. And quite a few times 3+ gold cards are in deck. And when I am going through this kind of hand/draw, a SK player easily effortlessly thins the deck to 0 or 1 cards left (and generating incredible tempo in doing so) and can always ALWAYS pull of the combo they wanted to do when they started the game. Every time it happens I feel like "How the f**k is this fair?". The whole point of card games is, there is an RNG involved. Some time you get a good hand/draw/mulligan and sometimes you don't. But with SK it is nearly every single time they get what the want. There is absolutely no RNG for them while every single faction has to go through it.

You nerfed Emhyr (for 100% valid reasons) because every neutral card you design was impacted by him. And SK can play every card all the times and a high risk high reward Neutrals can always be played by them. When everyone else adds these costly cards, they incur a risk. What if I don't draw? Should I add a 15 provision Scoundrel which if I don't draw gives a huge dent in my game plan? This doesn't apply to SK. Any card they want, they will get it. All because of Discard. WatchFlake in his stream said that the casters in the last open tournament were willing to bet that every player will ban the opponent's SK leader. And also that, more than 80% of all the SK decks had the same cards. All those cards that discards and all those cards that benefit from that.

This severely affects SK player's flexibility in deck building too. When they have such golden cards, why would they try/add anything else? For example Draig-Bon-Dhu (yes, there is a card like that) needs just three warriors on board to break even. Almost all the cards in SK are warriors. A similar effect in other faction needs five cards on the board (with far lesser cards that can proc it), but for SK it just needs 3 cards on board. How many times he has been played? Such a high value card not even getting played because there is no space for him in the deck as it is filled with 80+% of auto-include cards in SK.

I am not saying remove Discard altogether. Let Discard be *an* archetype in SK. But it has to be toned down. Every card a player thins and unbricks himself should have a huge penalty. Cards that benefit from getting discarded, let them not give huge tempo. Make discard only worth for Bran, and for other leaders, they have to take a hit if they want to include a discard card. In the latest patch when Witcher Trio was murdered you increased the provision cost for Birna and reduced the power of Skald. Even after that they are 100% in all the decks along with Morgvarg. So, until now, SK players had +2 provision advantage and +2 power advantage. Let discarding incur a hefty price which only Bran can compensate and we will see people trying to build a deck with other cards.

Let Coral lose her Zeal. Coral is an insanely OP card. Not just because she can do (along with Bran) 13 points in turn and thin 3 cards in one turn, but because, she gives insane flexibility too. All SK decks have 4 provision specials which are absolutely useless for other factions and even for them, but when they get value, they are very good. Cards like First Light, Spores. So, they can add these cards without any fear of it getting bricked. Whey they think it can get bricked, they can discard it for 3 points damage and if it will be needed, they can use the card. How is this fair? Why such incredible flexibility when she is already helping in thinning the deck? Let Coral discard a card on Deploy and can discard another card by Order and let her damage be reduced to 1. Let Morgvarg has 10 provisions. Let Skald have 6 provisions and 4 power body.

I don't know what you will do. I had created countless threads and posts before Morgvarg was made 9 provisions (it is insane right? to think Morgvarg had 8 provisions for months!). I have created a lot of threads/posts for discard too. I am actually tired of this. I wish you do something about it. I don't care if SK is not #1 or their win % is not very high. The mere fact that they can do whatever they want to do consistently is not healthy for the game. This is one thing HC wanted to address when it came out of beta. Please do something about this.
 
When will you be satisfied with SK?

As you mentioned, they have increased Birna's provisons by 2, decreased Skald's strength by 1 and heavily nerfed Derran.

You must come to accept that discard is an established strategy for the faction and that much of the fun/satisfaction in playing SK revolves around this.

If they further nerf discard to unplayable levels, It takes out much of the appeal. And so long as the purple flag is not steamrolling the others, why would you want to take that identity away from them? Because it doesn't involve what is and isn't fair anymore if winning percentages are similar across the board.

Just play them yourself. No one will judge you for taking a break from ST.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
Probably when they implement discard mechanic to green faction.
Definitely NOT! When discard and thinning is toned down so that SK decks can have some variety. When people play a deck which doesn't have Skald, Birna, Coral and couple of high variant 4P special card in high level. That will only happen if Discard cards are costly enough that one can't afford to put all the discard cards in their deck and thin to 0 in all the games.
 
Definitely NOT! When discard and thinning is toned down so that SK decks can have some variety. When people play a deck which doesn't have Skald, Birna, Coral and couple of high variant 4P special card in high level. That will only happen if Discard cards are costly enough that one can't afford to put all the discard cards in their deck and thin to 0 in all the games.

You're only thinning to 0 with Bran. Granted, he is the leader of choice for SK.

Regardless, we have different views on this one.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
The problem I am having is, every single SK leader can play every single Gold card they include every single fking time. While everyone else misses out at least a few Gold cards, SK can consistently play all their card they had added. This include a**h*le cards like Marauder, and special cards which are extremely situational that no one adds that in their deck. They have all the flexibility in the world. How is that not a problem in the game? How can an archetype lets you reap the benefits of even the extremely situational cards in the game and greatly benefiting from it?

Discard is not a fair mechanics. It removes the RNG inherent to card games to SK and gives them all benefits. No wonder in tournaments SK are the factions that get banned by EVERYONE. If it is fine in your view, well, good for you. But I at least hope CDPR sees the actual issue with it rather than only see the stats from lower rank people.

People are taking about ST and carryover. Even SK has great carryover. They discard Jutta and summon it with the special card. They discard GS and summon it on the last turn with Regis. They discard Cerys and use her later. The list goes on and on and on and every thing is from SK and the root of the problem is Discard.
 
The problem I am having is, every single SK leader can play every single Gold card they include every single fking time. While everyone else misses out at least a few Gold cards, SK can consistently play all their card they had added. This include a**h*le cards like Marauder, and special cards which are extremely situational that no one adds that in their deck. They have all the flexibility in the world. How is that not a problem in the game? How can an archetype lets you reap the benefits of even the extremely situational cards in the game and greatly benefiting from it?

Discard is not a fair mechanics. It removes the RNG inherent to card games to SK and gives them all benefits. No wonder in tournaments SK are the factions that get banned by EVERYONE. If it is fine in your view, well, good for you. But I at least hope CDPR sees the actual issue with it rather than only see the stats from lower rank people.

People are taking about ST and carryover. Even SK has great carryover. They discard Jutta and summon it with the special card. They discard GS and summon it on the last turn with Regis. They discard Cerys and use her later. The list goes on and on and on and every thing is from SK and the root of the problem is Discard.

I main SK so i will try not to be biased as mush as possible.

Technically the optimal SK deck in this meta has 2 Skalds and Coral so that's a total of 4 discards/thinning. That leaves 5 cards in the deck IF you draw your discards in round 1 and/or 2 so the point that SK can play all their gold cards is not always true BUT they have the highest chance to play all their gold cards. Some add Roach and Birna for a total of 7 thinning potential and that has higher consistency but needs more discard targets/fodder. Power and provisions on discards were recently nerfed too so that's something.

About the SK carryover, it is known that SK have a graveyard synergy mechanic even in beta. Among the 5 factions i think SK has the most solid identity.

Question: Are you proposing to remove/limit the discard archetype of SK or asking for the same potential for other factions? I believe either of those will completely make discard archetype pointless.
 
I am absolutely all for this. It is not funny when you've crippled all the other Factions' thinning options, but there is one among them that does have a cheap and deadly effective way to do it.

Now, there was some movement in that direction with the CC with ST, where they now have this few new tutoring options that play for a decent amount of points, but NG and NR are left far behind both ST and SK (and perhaps for the good with NR and their Orders, Zeals and Stacking of Pings and whatnot). Even MS have two Bronze tutor cards, one of which I consider extremely cheap and easy to trigger.
 
I'd rather see the other factions get more thinning tools not in the form of discard. Add some interesting abilities that enable the others to thin so that the variety is there all while improving the consistency.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
I main SK so i will try not to be biased as mush as possible.

Technically the optimal SK deck in this meta has 2 Skalds and Coral so that's a total of 4 discards/thinning. That leaves 5 cards in the deck IF you draw your discards in round 1 and/or 2 so the point that SK can play all their gold cards is not always true BUT they have the highest chance to play all their gold cards. Some add Roach and Birna for a total of 7 thinning potential and that has higher consistency but needs more discard targets/fodder. Power and provisions on discards were recently nerfed too so that's something.

About the SK carryover, it is known that SK have a graveyard synergy mechanic even in beta. Among the 5 factions i think SK has the most solid identity.

Question: Are you proposing to remove/limit the discard archetype of SK or asking for the same potential for other factions? I believe either of those will completely make discard archetype pointless.
Every single time I faced SK, they also play Birna (but nowadays I see Derren instead of Birna a few times). So, it doesn't stop at 4. It's always either 5 or 6 and combined with Bran, it's 9 which results in 0 cards in deck.

Last game I played against Bran, I went first and played Smuggler (melee row hamdbuff) and used tactical advantage. If I didn't use tactical advantage, it would have been killed by Marauder. Guess what happened? Coral and discarded 3 cards and my 9 point unit was killed in one turn. Of course a Cleaver or Geralt also could have done that, but they don't think your deck by three while doing so while unbricking yourself with three 4P junk cards.

In the same game, the opponent played: Coral, Birna, BigWolfGuyWhoDamagesHalf, Shupe, Muzzle, Hjalmar, Jutta, Morgvag.. I might have forgotten what other golds (s)he played. All the freaking golds, and when discarding all the 4P cards generating tempo.

How is the fair? If I had access to all my golds I would stand a chance too.

I am not asking removal discard. One should not be able to add discard cards in their deck. They should be costly. Also, Coral should be toned down. May be 1 damage? One discard on deploy and one on Order? Skald provision and power increased by 1?

Something.
 
As a very basic player with not much knowledge, this thread interests me. Of course I can only speak from my experiences, but maybe the perspective of low level players may help seeing it from a different perspective?

From all the decks I experiment with, SK is my favorite. But, I don't have the usual stuff in my deck. No witcher trio, no Roach, no Coral, no Birna. Yes I use Bran, but only as an option to change strategy if my opponent is too strong. My deck contains a lot of gold cards of course, and I'm always looking for a good compromise between offense and defense. And by far the most games I win is with this deck. The most enjoyable games (aka close calls) are with opponents that play ST or M.

There is only one opponent I always lose against, and that's NR. That spying is extremely powerful and frustrating, since some decks don't even have their own strategy, but simply rely on the power of my deck.

And indeed, when experimenting with spy decks, I have great success. But it's so boring, that I stay with my SK deck.

So, instead of a certain strategy, I'm way more worried about the ridiculous power of stray cards like Foltest's Pride or this new card (I forgot the name) where you do damage according to charges. That's an exponential power card!

Most will probably think "oh this noob, has no clue but speaks". But I can only repeat that I played a lot against discard decks. And I didn't feel challenged more by them than any other deck.
 
Every single time I faced SK, they also play Birna (but nowadays I see Derren instead of Birna a few times). So, it doesn't stop at 4. It's always either 5 or 6 and combined with Bran, it's 9 which results in 0 cards in deck.

Last game I played against Bran, I went first and played Smuggler (melee row hamdbuff) and used tactical advantage. If I didn't use tactical advantage, it would have been killed by Marauder. Guess what happened? Coral and discarded 3 cards and my 9 point unit was killed in one turn. Of course a Cleaver or Geralt also could have done that, but they don't think your deck by three while doing so while unbricking yourself with three 4P junk cards.

In the same game, the opponent played: Coral, Birna, BigWolfGuyWhoDamagesHalf, Shupe, Muzzle, Hjalmar, Jutta, Morgvag.. I might have forgotten what other golds (s)he played. All the freaking golds, and when discarding all the 4P cards generating tempo.

How is the fair? If I had access to all my golds I would stand a chance too.

I am not asking removal discard. One should not be able to add discard cards in their deck. They should be costly. Also, Coral should be toned down. May be 1 damage? One discard on deploy and one on Order? Skald provision and power increased by 1?

Something.

Honestly, the provision nerf on Skald will not solve it because players will still find a way to incorporate those to their deck. Birna should be 9 provisions and Coral should be the one with 10 provisions and she should be the only one who can trigger her passive ability. That tempo play you mentioned is only unique to Bran decks, other SK leaders can't do that. The typical Bran deck has 9 discard targets (2 Skirmishers, Morkvarg, Jutta, and the rest are trash) while other typical SK leaders have 4 discards targets (2 Skirmishers, Morkvarg, 1 trash). Discard has been nerfed numerous times already, it would just be too much/faction hate if it gets nerfed more. Again, I main SK so pardon me if i may sound biased. :shrug:
 

rrc

Forum veteran
As a very basic player with not much knowledge, this thread interests me. Of course I can only speak from my experiences, but maybe the perspective of low level players may help seeing it from a different perspective?

From all the decks I experiment with, SK is my favorite. ...
First of all, welcome to Gwent! Trust me, you have chosen the best faction in the game which has always stayed on the top of the game all the time. Never has been a time in which SK was considered weak or not Tier 1.

In fact, whenever a new player asks for recommendation, I always suggest SK. It is the easiest faction to play and with so much consistency they can come up with a plan (with whatever cards they have, as a new player) and execute their plan. So, congratulations for your choice of faction to start with! If you want to try some other faction, I would recommend MO to you. Good luck.

Honestly, the provision nerf on Skald will not solve it because players will still find a way to incorporate those to their deck. Birna should be 9 provisions and Coral should be the one with 10 provisions and she should be the only one who can trigger her passive ability. That tempo play you mentioned is only unique to Bran decks, other SK leaders can't do that. The typical Bran deck has 9 discard targets (2 Skirmishers, Morkvarg, Jutta, and the rest are trash) while other typical SK leaders have 4 discards targets (2 Skirmishers, Morkvarg, 1 trash). Discard has been nerfed numerous times already, it would just be too much/faction hate if it gets nerfed more. Again, I main SK so pardon me if i may sound biased. :shrug:

I didn't suggest provision nerf to Skald. I said +1 to both provision and power. So, it is not a nerf, right?

To be honest, in the last game I mentioned, I only last by 2 points (that is because the opponent's Shupe took my 1 point Dwarven Skirmisher instead of the only other unit my 8 point immune Dragon.. damn it I should have video recorded it and submitted to The Great Dandelion Show for fame and glory.. back to topic). So, I am not saying it is impossible to win against Bran. But just that it is just unfair to have gold cards back to back thrown at our face when we have to play bronzes and golds mixed. The only way to do it to disallow the chance to add all the discards card and still have a lot of other golds.
 
First of all, welcome to Gwent! Trust me, you have chosen the best faction in the game which has always stayed on the top of the game all the time. Never has been a time in which SK was considered weak or not Tier 1.

In fact, whenever a new player asks for recommendation, I always suggest SK. It is the easiest faction to play and with so much consistency they can come up with a plan (with whatever cards they have, as a new player) and execute their plan. So, congratulations for your choice of faction to start with! If you want to try some other faction, I would recommend MO to you. Good luck.
Thank you!

I'm way more worried about the ridiculous power of stray cards like Foltest's Pride or this new card (I forgot the name) where you do damage according to charges. That's an exponential power card!
I just played against this card again. It's a vampire non-faction card and the name is similar to "Kiyan". A ridiculously OP card. With 5 charges it does 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15 damage. And it is not limited in receiving charges. Since blocking cards are rather rare compared to charging cards, you will have a very high chance to get "Kiyan" through.

I'm aware that this is ot, but since I just mentioned it without specifying, I thought I'd add the details now.
 
The only way to do it to disallow the chance to add all the discards card and still have a lot of other golds.

This is not okay at all, limiting a play/deck building because it has higher consistency than others. If this pushes through then it would just be fair to limit other mechanics too like Thrive, Order, Charges, Harmony, Traps, etc......
 
Played against Bran some last night too and even though I've managed to get on top with the victories (something like 4/2) - it is nothing less but annoyingly irritating to watch how Oppo goes through his ENTIRE DECK while putting tons of points on his side of the board. Especially irritating are cards like Coral, which needs at the very least to have Orders to use her ability. It is stupidly strong and gives simply unfair amount of flexibility for the SK player.

Meanwhile I am struggling with my draws, missing counters or key cards all the time and have to play around it, while Oppo is just following his formula of cycling through his deck and piling on that score. I squeezed my wins mostly by the skin of my teeth, cause I have a couple of surprising (I think) tech cards in my decks and I'm pretty sure Oppos screwed their sequincing more than once, while the times I lost I was SQUASHED, just because I had 4 Golds and 2 Bronzes left in my deck while Oppo was putting just preposterous amount of points on the board with each and every of his plays, while cycling through his deck and finding exactly what he needs for the deal that I was given.

It's just nothing less but irritating and makes you wonder WHY would you allow this to still be in the game, considering how you crippled the other factions' thinning abilities? Why is Bran at 16 Provisions (thins by 3 while putting points + deals precise ping damage on a target) but Calveit and Dana are at 15? Why is thinning in other factions so expensive, while in SK it is not only free, but actually beneficial?

... than I go to Aretuza's page and see the other enormous Homecoming issue - Monsters are occupying 4 out of the 5 top spots on the list (with Bran as the only exception at second position, which can tell you even more about his issue).

This is just wrong.
 
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I've been playing Bran quite a bit in the past week and I will actually agree that he needs a bit of toning down. The discard mechanic should remain as I've expressed earlier in this thread but Bran's provisions should be knocked down to 14.

I love playing the control variant; it fits with my play style. Nonetheless, the wins are coming by too easily and I think a "soft" nerf is the best answer with my proposition above as I would still want him to be prevalent in the meta.
 
I've been playing Bran quite a bit in the past week and I will actually agree that he needs a bit of toning down. The discard mechanic should remain as I've expressed earlier in this thread but Bran's provisions should be knocked down to 14.

I love playing the control variant; it fits with my play style. Nonetheless, the wins are coming by too easily and I think a "soft" nerf is the best answer with my proposition above as I would still want him to be prevalent in the meta.

I auto forfeit your deck. It's just plain boring to sit there and watch people thin through literelly every card while wiping my board at the same time. It takes forever each turn and is exactly zero fun to play against. Playing the training bot is more exciting imo. Thinning is not an archetype and even if it was you shouldn't be getting control out of it at the same time. Thinning is fundamental to the game, nothing you plan will play out if you don't get the cards you need. Why should one faction get to play every card while the others gimp their decks to try and pull a few key cards for their win condition? Imo this needs to be nerfed into the ground. NR order decks need to be looked at too.
 
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I auto forfeit your deck. It's just plain boring to sit there and watch people thin through literelly every card while wiping my board at the same time. It takes forever each turn and is exactly zero fun to play against. Playing the training bot is more exciting imo. Thinning is not an archetype and even if it was you shouldn't be getting control out of it at the same time. Thinning is fundamental to the game, nothing you plan will play out if you don't get the cards you need. Why should one faction get to play every card while the others gimp their decks to try and pull a few key cards for their win condition? Imo this needs to be nerfed into the ground. NR order decks need to be looked at too.

I don't think nerfing things to the ground is ever the best solution. The goal should be to achieve balance, not to make certain leaders/strategies obsolete.

On top of my proposed provision reduction for Bran, I think it would be alright if Coral would lose 1 dmg ping while discarding specials.

This would still make her a staple in Bran decks and a strong consideration with any other leader.
 
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