There should not be any 4P Poison cards

[rrc]

Poison is the necessary evil to counter tall units focused decks. But it should come with a price. There are a few threads discussing about Poison, whether we even need this much support for Poison. But I want to make a point that there should not be any 4P poison cards. And guess what? SY is the biggest offender here too. They have 3 bronze cards (effectively 6 poison giving cards at 4P). This just allows them to add all strong gold cards and just fill the lower half with poison cards.

All of these 4P poison cards should get their provision increased by 1. And none of the poison cards should break even. There is lilterally no downside to playing poison cards if they break even. Even if you hadn't drawn a pair, just poison a unit and the opponent is kind of forced to give up the round. And when it works, it works extremely well, giving more points than any other 4P card can give. They can take down a huge unit which would have otherwise needed 10 provisions putting 3 points on board.

So, just increase the provision for all 4P poison cards and don't make them breakeven. They should always give less value than their provisions. Also, WTF is the matter with Rot Tosser? There is lilterally no disadvantage running Rot Tosser. Rot Tosser immediately gives +3 to the Thirsty Dame (the vampire who boosts when enemy gets a status) and the counter to Rot Tosser is very very minimal (should we lock that stupid carcass?). Rot Tosser should be changed or at least the carcass should be changed such that it has counters (like, it will only kill self if it power is 1 and/or if it is still spying so that boosting it or purifying it can counter it. Or at least poison the unit on its right or left).

Playing against Uprising, Svalblod (who represent NR and SK now) feels great. You are at your peace. Even though the f**ker Lippy and Cerys is going to infuriate you, they don't have poison. I lose, but I lose with peace.

Please CDPR, make poison a premium removal option as it can bully into winning R1 and just replaces any tall removal who are costly. Don't keep them as cheap 4P removal/bully option who break even.

 

[DRK3]

Amazing how i can already guess when a thread is made by rrc just by reading the title!
Although in all fairness, there aren't that many of us, frequent "thread-creating complainers", so its not that incredible

And im not saying i disagree. It's a good suggestion. Poison is in a terrible state, balance-wise.
When MoO expansion released i applauded, but now looking back, the domination by scenarios and poison, it made Gwent worse than any other expansion...

(Offtopic) And i have to confess, im one of those Lippy Svalblod bastards out there. I cant believe Lippy became meta, when i created the deck i thought i would be the only one playing it. Still, im running my beloved Kambi, and im loving discarding all those Matta Huuri-pulled scenarios and destroying anyone trying to bleed me R2. I think its the first time playing anything close to meta in over 6 months...

 

[4RM3D]

4P Poison cards are indeed pretty toxic. Toxic, get it!? Heh, okay, I'll let myself out now.
Funny enough, besides the above (okay, I'll really stop now), poison used to be pretty awful. The "double tap" mechanic has become pretty effective now with enough supporting cards.

Another way to balance poison is to split up the effect, requiring two different type of cards, instead. So, basically, what I am talking about is the Bounty mechanic (minus getting the actual bounty), especially Graden. If you make a neutral version of Bounty, you could call it "Marked" with two basic abilities: mark a unit and kill a unit that's marked. Having this setup also allows other supporting abilities, like: a marked unit receives one extra damage from all sources. This is redundant when you have the "kill mark" card, but it's a good backup in case you don't, without completely bricking.

I cant believe Lippy became meta [...]

There are two interesting parts in this statement. First off, when cards become viable again (without being buffed), that's usually a good sign. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen often in Gwent. Most cards either tend to stick around or fall off (i.e. get nerfed). And second, when those cards are unique that's even better. Since Homecoming, Gwent has too many basic deal x damage cards and too few cards with unique abilities like Lippy. We need more unique cards and we need them to be(come) viable. What usually happens, instead, is that combos become too overwhelming (e.g. Caretaker) and get nerfed as a result.

 

[Payus]

Amazing how i can already guess when a thread is made by rrc just by reading the title!
Although in all fairness, there aren't that many of us, frequent "thread-creating complainers", so its not that incredible

And im not saying i disagree. It's a good suggestion. Poison is in a terrible state, balance-wise.
When MoO expansion released i applauded, but now looking back, the domination by scenarios and poison, it made Gwent worse than any other expansion...

(Offtopic) And i have to confess, im one of those Lippy Svalblod bastards out there. I cant believe Lippy became meta, when i created the deck i thought i would be the only one playing it. Still, im running my beloved Kambi, and im loving discarding all those Matta Huuri-pulled scenarios and destroying anyone trying to bleed me R2. I think its the first time playing anything close to meta in over 6 months...

Go the SV route, I seem to be 1 of the 4 players in the world playing Sacrificial Vanguard

 

[Clanzy]

I agree. Poison is just too easy to use and it has almost no cons. Atleast CDPR should make that you can't apply 2 poison to 1 unit during the same turn. Now you can just excecute any unit without possible counterplay unless target has immunity status. Concidering that Scorch and Geralt: Igni were nerfed in the same way this change would be very good.

 

[Anciluart]

I agree. Poison is just too easy to use and it has almost no cons. Atleast CDPR should make that you can't apply 2 poison to 1 unit during the same turn. Now you can just excecute any unit without possible counterplay unless target has immunity status. Concidering that Scorch and Geralt: Igni were nerfed in the same way this change would be very good.

The best way would be to use the poison as a counter.

"Add a poison counter to a unit that does not have poison counters. Poison counter: At the start of the opponent's next turn this unit will be poisoned" (read from the perspective of the side the unit belongs to)

This should work like this at least for bronze units. If any gold unit is poison specific it could continue to do so instantly, however they do not achieve the 2 counters in the same turn if they are played together.

In this way, the poison must be used with more care and lets play around it with more security since they cannot use it as a finisher with two bronze at least.

Anyway it's still a ridiculous mechanic even if controlled, whoever plays high unit decks as long as the poison is easy to use would do so just because they like to lose.

Perhaps there should be a rule that when a unit reaches a certain power it automatically gets Poison resist.
For example, every 20 power gains 1 resistance, that resistance is consumed by applying a poison charge (therefore a unit of that power would require 3 poison charges instead of 2)

 

[Payus]

I still think the "cure" to the poison issue would be to create a new effect besides purify which only removes poison without purifying. This could be added to certain cards as a secondary effect. Also I'd love for Mahakam Ale to "cure" or purify instead of just removing locks.

 

[Riven-Twain]

I still think the "cure" to the poison issue would be to create a new effect besides purify which only removes poison without purifying.

So, basically, an antidote. Seems logical to me.

 

[Clanzy]

The best way would be to use the poison as a counter.

"Add a poison counter to a unit that does not have poison counters. Poison counter: At the start of the opponent's next turn this unit will be poisoned" (read from the perspective of the side the unit belongs to)

This should work like this at least for bronze units. If any gold unit is poison specific it could continue to do so instantly, however they do not achieve the 2 counters in the same turn if they are played together.

In this way, the poison must be used with more care and lets play around it with more security since they cannot use it as a finisher with two bronze at least.

Anyway it's still a ridiculous mechanic even if controlled, whoever plays high unit decks as long as the poison is easy to use would do so just because they like to lose.

Perhaps there should be a rule that when a unit reaches a certain power it automatically gets Poison resist.
For example, every 20 power gains 1 resistance, that resistance is consumed by applying a poison charge (therefore a unit of that power would require 3 poison charges instead of 2)

I haven't slept for 20 hours so I don't fully understand what you suggest but I agree with what you say XD
In my opinion, poison is one of the dumbest mechanics that could possibly exist in game. It's not fun to play against poison, it's not fun to play poison by yourself (setting 2 stacks of this status seems so routine work for me).
I understand that CDPR won't delete entirely and won't rework it. So the only thing I really want be done - stop this retarded targetable executions in one turn. Give me chance to outplay it. At this moment poison is just ridiculously unbalanced.

 

[ReaperTek]

I agree that the poison Units should be higher than 4 provisions. 4 provisions was fine when there were only a handful poison Cards before MoO but now it's way to cheap.

It always kind of bothers me that you can poison Machines (Trebuchet etc.) and Constructs ( Golems).

I would prefer it if they would add some kind of Sabotage skill for those units, kind of like bleeding in a different color.

They could change the poison Units in to Melee: poison a Unit. Ranged: Sabotage an Enemy Machine by 2 (4) that would make poison at least more unreliable.

 

[Alch1mist]

Scoia'teal is the only faction that has a good balance approach regarding poison, because all of their poison bronzes are at five provision, they come at a high enough price that they'll impact your deck building.

On the other hand Syndicate has more poison bronzes than any other factions, but they're also all at four provision, making them insanely efficient removal tools which are frankly auto-include in most decks. If those cards were to be nerfed by just one provision, including all of them in your deck would result in losing six provision, therefore it'd come at a price high enough that poison would be considered to be a tech option, but wouldn't be a value one anymore.

In the case of Nilfgaard, I don't mind too much the double Masquerade Ball, but because it exist it makes their only direct poison bronze more dangerous, hence why it should also be nerfed at five provision, particularly since Nilfgaard has the most synergy from the effect through Thirsty Dame, amongst other cards.

Furthermore, I'd like to note that the cheapest Purify effects are at five provision, at least the playable ones, and even if Purify can counter a wide array of effects, it's also the only direct counter to Poison, I'm not counting indirect ones like Consume, Defender ... Therefore if your opponent spend four provision to poison your cards, and you have to spend five or more to Purify yours, you're severely trading down provision-wise in that exchange.

 

[DRK3]

Also, it seems after the nerf to Damien and Stefan, and with the new NG ability being quite lacking, now the only popular NG deck is double poison scenario, which makes the faction even more hateful.

I hate poison so much that for this week's journey quests that requires an aristocrat deck, i made one but without any poisons at all, at least it catches opponents by surprise.