Esmer;n10841051 said:
Ofc it's just my experience these last two weeks or so, may be small-sample size, and also limited because of my rank.
Ofc it's just my experience these last two weeks or so, may be small-sample size, and also limited because of my rank.
Pruny;n10842311 said:
Swordmaster-based decks reached #1 on the ladder, so ... do you run the Brouver combo? If so what's the big difference from elfswarm? Re engines, we have different definitions of engines.
rrc other cards could be a problem but since 1) the current meta is decently balanced and 2) they're investing manpower hours into Homecoming, I would only fix the most pressing issues. Hence I only mention two changes in the OP.
rrc;n10844331 said:
These cards seem OP, but you are missing some critical points:
Greatsword: low tempo play which requires another low tempo play (a ship) to start growing. Furthermore, this combo can be disrupted by removal (on either swordsman or a ship), movement effects, a disloyal unit between the ship and the greatsword. Finally, your greatswords can be stolen with Muzzle, turned into a statue/coraled, scorched/ignied, and, most of all rezzed by the Caretaker or eaten by Ozzrel. In short, greatsword are only great (pun intended) against decks with little control.
Viper Witcher: requires a lot of alchemy cards to be good, not always provides full value (especially against ST decks).
Fire scorpion: it's actually 22 points (5 + 5 + 12), since it gets buffed by 2 when concealed. But these points don't come from 1 card. Moreover, conceal is a low tempo play (you spend a silver card to get only 9 points immediately!), and the first 5 and 5 damage from scorpions actually come from the reveal effect. For instance, Daerlan foot soldiers provide 4 points when revealed (only 1 point less) and let you thin your deck, which is much better value.
Spotter: NG handbuff is easily beatable by almost any top tier deck. You just have to win R1 (it's usually easy since handbuff has to do a lot of low tempo plays to get a revealed knight or a manticore in hand), and bleed him in R2 forcing to play his revealed unit. Again, spotter requires some setup to be played.
Battering Ram: it's 14 points at best (6 + 5 + 3) and requires a lot of setup. Siege master is also max 14 points on a ram (6 + 5 + 3), could be more if the ram was damaged, but opponents are usually smart enough.
In short, all of the cards above require some synergies to provide value.
Compare them to a bearmaster or a half-elf which both provide 12 points with no setup at all. So a question: which cards are healthier for the game? The ones that require combos or the ones that give simply give you points? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
ser2440;n10840951 said:
Skellige isnt the most popular faction btw. Meta report suggest around 18%. Brouver alone is 30%. Considering top 3 leaders - Brouver, An Craite and Calveit constitute around 55% of decks, that shows how poorly developed most decks are, they just cant keep up with these 3. I always advocate for making other archtypes and leaders more viable instead of nerfing good combos, so that there are more options, more diversity.
151Huntsman;n10848721 said:
That's not what I said. What I meant is that SK has at least 3 viable archetypes for competitive play to the highest rank, not that it's the most popular. I know everyone and their mother plays Brouver I am at 4.2k MMR almost, right now.
When I talked about the "representation" each faction has in the highest tier, I didn't mean popularity, simply the amount of good decks they have. Machines are the second most popular deck but the fact remains that NR only has 1 top tier deck. Same goes for Alchemy NG. While Monsters currently have none, only 2 high tier 2 decks (nekker spam and deathwish), one of which can perform well due to the lack of techs.
On the contrary SK has 3 (Veterans, greatswords and axemen) and ST 3 more (Brouver swap, Brouver Shupe, Eithne control). That's a great disparity. And yeah, there needs to be more variation, hope they achieve that with homecoming
ser2440;n10849121 said:That's not what I said. What I meant is that SK has at least 3 viable archetypes for competitive play to the highest rank, not that it's the most popular. I know everyone and their mother plays Brouver I am at 4.2k MMR almost, right now.
When I talked about the "representation" each faction has in the highest tier, I didn't mean popularity, simply the amount of good decks they have. Machines are the second most popular deck but the fact remains that NR only has 1 top tier deck. Same goes for Alchemy NG. While Monsters currently have none, only 2 high tier 2 decks (nekker spam and deathwish), one of which can perform well due to the lack of techs.
On the contrary SK has 3 (Veterans, greatswords and axemen) and ST 3 more (Brouver swap, Brouver Shupe, Eithne control). That's a great disparity. And yeah, there needs to be more variation, hope they achieve that with homecoming
ou ok I see what you meant, poor wording, no problem. Yeah, SK and ST have a couple of good decks and variants, I agree with that.
Things I hope the May balance patch is going to answer:
Nilfgaard – (Jan Calveit) Rainfarn of Attre alongside Roach into Cantarella, Cantarella becomes a (-1) 4.
Northern Realms – (Alzur’s Double-Cross into) Thaler when you’re (6) 8 points behind, which triggers Dun Banner, Thaler becomes a (3) 1.
Scoia’tael – Brouver Hoog into Yaevinn, Yaevinn becomes a 9, but it doesn’t depend on the draw.
Solutions: Card advantage spies cannot be pulled from the deck outside of Alzur’s Double-Cross, The Last Wish, and Marching Orders, and Dun Banner are nerfed. However if there are less ways to tutor card advantage spies, then they're going to become more draw dependent, which leaves more place to rng, but I don't think there are good solutions until the coin flip is fixed, which isn't going to come before Homecoming.
- Abusing from card advantage spies, what I mean by that are ways to play a card advantage spy from the deck, or eventually from hand, and then deny most of its value, so its drawback, the same turn it’s played, here are few example:
Nilfgaard – (Jan Calveit) Rainfarn of Attre alongside Roach into Cantarella, Cantarella becomes a (-1) 4.
Northern Realms – (Alzur’s Double-Cross into) Thaler when you’re (6) 8 points behind, which triggers Dun Banner, Thaler becomes a (3) 1.
Scoia’tael – Brouver Hoog into Yaevinn, Yaevinn becomes a 9, but it doesn’t depend on the draw.
Solutions: Card advantage spies cannot be pulled from the deck outside of Alzur’s Double-Cross, The Last Wish, and Marching Orders, and Dun Banner are nerfed. However if there are less ways to tutor card advantage spies, then they're going to become more draw dependent, which leaves more place to rng, but I don't think there are good solutions until the coin flip is fixed, which isn't going to come before Homecoming.
- Hard removal vs locks. The over-abundance of bronzes that are able to remove engines are simply making engine based decks non-competitive, and locks in general useless as they'll achieve the same goal, neutralizing an engine, for less value, the worst offenders being hard removal units, Viper Witcher being the most ludicrous example, but Panther is also a slightly weaker one, but it also goes for Alzur's Thunder or Mastercrafted Spear.
- Wardancer. I don't think I have to say too much, the card is obviously busted.
- Nerfing 12 points units that require not set-up, such as Bearmaster or Half-Elf Hunter.
- Removing high-roll Create cards (Runestone, Black Blood ...) from ranked, alongside all Create bronzes, and reworking Create leaders to fit better into archetypes.
- Minor buffs/nerfs.
- Few major buffs to unplayed cards, such as Draig Bon-Dhu amongst others.
- Nerfing some of the strongest tutors, Pirate Captain being one of them, Vesimir: Mentor is also played in most decks only to pull Mandrake, while I think Mandrake is alright, the fact that you can tutor it to make the card more reliable isn't.
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rrc;n10844331 said:
Viper Witcher is not ridiculous. In fact they are not even worth that much. The conditions necessary to use all ointments on Vipers are so many, that it's easier to play your entire deck during the match. Plus, anything more than 9 - 10 and you are hurting yourself because you are including too many alchemy cards, which are not powerful enough on their own. I agree they are the strongest Bronze removal in the game and have definitely had an impact in shaping the meta and Gwent as we know it. I also agree that they are partly the reason why no engines can stay on the board. But compared to other decks and bronzes, these rank pretty low on how strong they are, considering that Alchemy is the weakest top tier deck (don't take my word for that. Check the latest meta report. Alchemy will even lose to Axemen, even though control should beat engines)
as for Fire Scorpions, yes... If you even get 2 in hand. Reveal is one of my favorite mechanics in the game, and yet it's so weak that even the best Reveal deck is not anything more than Tier 2. First of all, conceal requires too heavy investment on the fire scorpions. you need to keep them in your hand for the entire game to reveal and conceal them over and over again. Which means that the Fire Scorpions themselves will be the last cards you play. Which potentially leaves you in Round 3 with only 2 or 3 Scorpions in hand, and one will not even have a target if you are going first. Even if you are a card up, that's not enough. Experienced opponents can bleed you out of everything else in Round 2 and you will simply lose due to the lack of a finisher. What good are 3 fire scorpions, one of which has no target, when your opponent has a Ciri Nova and a Hattori? I have tons of reveal decks, and I've tried every way in the internet to make this archetype work. Meta report also agrees with me, seeing as Fire Scorpions don't have a good winrate (45%) Which clearly means they aren't as good as they seem.
NG Handbuff (which I personally HATE) Like pointed out above, the trick is to win Round 1 or bleed them out of every high power bronze that you can during the first 2 rounds. Mandrake and Scorch, staples of many Tier 1 decks, make sure that this deck is going nowhere in the top tier. Btw, if you are playing ST, I recently won against NG handbuff the same way twice in a row: Isengrim into Morenn before they played Emhyr. That works even better than Sweers does on Nekkers. Morenn snipes Emhyr, they go an extra card down and the unit is not returned to their hand. Good for making opponents auto forfeit, also easy to pull off because of how predictable NG handbuff is
as for Battering Ram, the problem is mostly Winch, allowing Henselt to pull 3+ from the deck is what makes it ridiculous.
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i dont play spy,barclay,warduncer,elvenscout, my deck is full removal. it destroys henselt, greatswords, axemen. its decent against vipers .Jeydra;n10846081 said:
i lose against elfswarm on bluecoin, but i have big satisfaction when i win. the problem is warduncer that block my pass in round 2, hope cdpr fixes that braindead card
:rage:
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151Huntsman;n10848251 said:
Oh you must be new here..Henselt is NR coinflip abuse.
ser2440 I agree with most of what you said. But alchemy cards are definitely not weak by themselves. Mahakam Ale is a 12 points bronze. When used with Novice, it becomes a 14 point play which they can use for stalling until the opponent plays a good card.
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151Huntsman;n10848251 said:
When you run Thaler + Dun Banners - e.g. opponent starts with 8-strength unit, you play Thaler, they don't have spy so they pass. If you didn't have Dun Banners you have to make up 21 points in a single card, which is hard. But if you have Dun Banners you only need 9 points, and voila, you win round 1 on equal cards.
It's not as effective as Brouver since you can always drypass round 1 on the blue coin, but it's a coin-flip abusing strategy as well.
I have a problem with the immune cards. They are highly inconsistent, they seem to work at one point, yet at other times they simply don't work at all. Maybe it's because immunity means that you are only immune to certain things, but that is not clear from the discription. It would be nice if this would either be specified, or fixed if it was broken.
rrc;n10858721 said:
Υes but really, Mahakam Ale and ointment are the only 2 alchemy cards which get consistently good value. As such, taking more alchemy cards will hurt you, as no other card is good enough to be worth the inclusion, or, in the case of Mardroeme, getting more than one copies of it. Those who run one Mardroeme usually run 2 Mahakam Ales instead, so even they don't take any more alchemy cards than 9 - 10 at best. The rest of your options are Thunderbolt Potion, Swallow, stuff like that, none of which is particularly good. Crow's Eye is a decent option but outclassed by the Ale and Ointment so there's that.
Pzyon;n10863681 said:
Immune cards are not inconsistent. The description of Immune states: "Cannot be targeted". That's it. All spells and abilities that requires a manual target (e.g. Alzur's Thunder) do not work on immune targets. Everything else does work, including Scorch effects and abilities that randomly target an enemy (e.g. Harald).
So they'll release a balance patch in May, and now we have to play in this bad meta? Or it's impossible to ban Brouvers/barclays/spies before the end of the month? Or do they think that everyone needs their tournaments? With a 4-month-long-unchanged meta, their tournaments became bad, like the whole game.
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LevokosM;n10864181 said:
You seriously think that Brouver into Barclay into Cleaver is THE thing? Really?
Are the viper witchers really a problem? Is the slave driver that can brick 50% (depends on deck you playing vs) ? Is alchemy the problem if you lose coin flip vs elves that 99% of my games in ranked are vs shupe ,swarm or nova bruver you just lose the game on the spot? The leader that have the ability to pull spy anytime you want and that spy 100% guarantee a gold card and that is shupe in most broken deck in the game that he is and some of you wants to rework alchemy? Are you serius ,monster faction needs a better rework so it can be playable again and if anything that needs nerf rework is nothing else but Elves and maybe rework shupe and nova to be scoia'tael units bicouse to be fair thay are both op cards and just playable and best fit in the guess what ,scoia'tael decks.......So i hope CDPR balance this things up and fix this game bicouse i dont want it to be dead Tnx and gl CDPR!!!
Tnx and gl CDPR!!!