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.
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.