Was there really a need to increase Ball's cost?

[Slizzl]

I won't even argue that point because I'm you've been playing the game long enough to know that's not even remotely true.

You can select the leaders doing well currently to prove your point which is shortsighted given there are several leaders to consider. Let's use one from your very same faction....imprisonment, tactical decision. Both of which relies on the leader ability for a necessary point swing and has added specific units that rely on that. What then? Is that even? More often than not Lockdown is accompanied by Ball (not saying the op does) but I've rarely encountered one without the other. Against those leaders or even Shield wall you're almost assured a win with the added cheap removals at NG's disposal. Do SW players deserve it, yes..... Is that healthy for the game No.

Imprisonment and Tactical Decision should beat Lockdown yes. I don't really understand how you can argue NG decks with way more provisions will somehow lose to Lockdown unless you're looking purely at winrates which wouldn't make sense in this context.
You're definitely never assured a win playing Lockdown either. As I said the decks Lockdown counters the most all have ways to adapt if you don't instantly forfeit. Unless you're doing OH decks without consume units or Ursine without self-damage, which would be completely ridiculous.
Running a 15 provision Ball in Lockdown a leader with barely any provisions will most often result in a autoloss once it's Heatwaved, even if it sticks it will most likely lose due to the rest of the deck falling behind.
The only reason Lockdown was ever viable was double ball, now it's back to being a joke again which I'm perfectly fine with.

 

[ya1]

Funny how every thread in this forums eventually turns into a couple of guys trying to argue that NG is still strong. Please, people, read. TLG top500 stats => NG lowest by far, best Gwent players hardly break even. TEB pro rank stats => NG is 43% winrate which I think might be the lowest in recorded history. CDPR official stats => same vibes.

Objectively, I don't remember any faction ever being as weak as NG is now. And I know NG haters lately became more and more creative in paraphrasing the sentence "numbers lie." But, well, numbers don't lie. And I don't even care about NG. It's this stubborn dogmatism and almost religious zeal in denying reality which is... scary, to be honest...

 

[uber_croupier]

I play NG almost exclusively these days... And you know what? I have never even bothered to craft Ball... I did tinker a bit with poison decks in the past but never used Ball...I always found scenarios pretty annoying so stayed away from using them. I'm all about the lockdown... Then it's just your deck v my deck!

Well, not sure what your argument is, but just because you don't like using scenarios, doesn't mean others should as well

Running a 15 provision Ball in Lockdown a leader with barely any provisions will most often result in a autoloss once it's Heatwaved, even if it sticks it will most likely lose due to the rest of the deck falling behind.
The only reason Lockdown was ever viable was double ball, now it's back to being a joke again which I'm perfectly fine with.

Korathi on Ball is an auto-win in most cases - very popular card and defender is not always a thing to stop it. OP will see Ball coming after first poison is played.

 

[quintivarium]

Korathi on Ball is an auto-win in most cases - very popular card and defender is not always a thing to stop it. OP will see Ball coming after first poison is played.

So the solution to horribly overpowered cards is another horribly overpowered card. Great thinking.

Moreover; even if Masquerade Ball is immediately countered by Heatwave, that is hardly auto lose for your Ball. You have traded a 15 provision card for a 10 provision card but in return you get tempo of a 5 provision card on the board without needing an extra turn and potentially a third copy of one of the game’s most powerful engines. I fail to see this as a bad trade!

 

[uber_croupier]

Moreover; even if Masquerade Ball is immediately countered by Heatwave, that is hardly auto lose for your Ball. You have traded a 15 provision card for a 10 provision card but in return you get tempo of a 5 provision card on the board without needing an extra turn and potentially a third copy of one of the game’s most powerful engines. I fail to see this as a bad trade!

You're talking about trading for Heatwave ignoring amount of points Ball costs and generates versus other scenarios. Why?

 

[quintivarium]

You're talking about trading for Heatwave ignoring amount of points Ball costs and generates versus other scenarios. Why?

Because we are discussing Ball. I would honestly rather have all scenarios and heatwave just removed from the game.

 

[Philido]

Found a nice summary of the current state at TLG's data analysis of the last season: SK and NR got hit with a few well-deserved nerfs in the latest patch and accompanying them was, for some reason, a nerf to Masquerade Ball which is a textbook example of “beating a dead horse”. The rest of the meta looks relatively well balanced at the moment though.

 

[uber_croupier]

Because we are discussing Ball. I would honestly rather have all scenarios and heatwave just removed from the game.

Yeah, we're talking about a Ball, and you're talking about Heathwave ignoring Provision facts for all scenarios and Ball compared to them ;d

How's that a "discussion"?

 

[radesign]

Ball: 6+4+4+aChanceToKillOneUnit = 14+maybeOneUnitKilled

Here, I sprinkled some basic logic and common sense and fixed it for you

 

[Nerevarine228]

I don't know what NG needs. I guess it needs a serious rehash of the whole game. It seems to me that people are quitting and devs react by nerfing to the ground the most complained about faction. But the real reason people might be quitting is all that binary crap and toxic gameplay. All the non-games with zero player agency where there's nothing you can do but helplessly watch as they destroy you - or do the same to the other guy - just because someone a) got rock to your scissors and/or b) drew more golds. NG and Double Ball and poison were never the problem. The whole game is a problem. The way poison decks took advantage of outdrawing the opponent was very explicit but just about every deck does exactly the same thing: crush you no matter what you do if they draw well and you don't.

Careful, if they hear you, they may introduce double echo tutors.
Actually, at this point it kinda makes sense to just give players all 25 cards r1, because tutoring power is so high right now, it could as well be that. Would also free a lot of provision for fun stuff instead of thinning/tutors.


Also, control!NG needs to stay hard-to-play until the entire game is fixed (would be nice to see working spies/soldiers/mages though). As it stands now, control spam is simply too strong whenever allowed to be viable. No middle ground there. Like you said, it's a problem of the game mechanics rather than the faction, but in the end it doesn't change anything.

The reason for that is general fragility of medium/long combos against abundance and cheapness of control means. When CDPR introduces adequte and viable protective devices to fight control and safeguard key combo...then there will be something to discuss, at least. Better yet, as suggested in another threat, abolish easy 2+ pt./turn engines entirely and make all the single-target damage/removal cost 2 prov higher.

 

[uber_croupier]

Here, I sprinkled some basic logic and common sense and fixed it for you

And what if you don't land second poison cause it was purified, consumed, blocked with defender or my Ball Heatwaved?

If your "common sense" was right, poison would not be a thing for NG long time ago. It was recently countered with Veil and numbers of targets are very limited, sometimes bricking your cards.

Your argument is lacking any logic mate, sorry.

 

[Nerevarine228]

And what if you don't land second poison cause it was purified, consumed, blocked with defender or my Ball Heatwaved?

If your "common sense" was right, poison would not be a thing for NG long time ago. It was recently countered with Veil and numbers of targets are very limited, sometimes bricking your cards.

Your argument is lacking any logic mate, sorry.

Only a small handful of new units have innate veil, and these aren't the ones you want to poison, usually. A very poor argument. Having veil-granting units in your deck, on the other hand, equals carrying a maybe-helpful-once-a-blue-moon brick...and it does nothing against quick ball deployment with Roderick/Joachim, as such a turn equals instant death. Also you paint a nice bullseye for VVM, so why bother?
As far as purification goes...just a couple minutes ago my Gremist managed to cure a solid one poison before getting yeeted with YenInvo. Note that this happened after my defender got killed twice over. He then proceeded with 4 poisons and Bonhart. To spare you the counting - that's 5 cards removed without any regard for their power. All while putting out decent bodies and developing the Dame. And you only get 10 to begin with. Ball can eliminate your key targets no matter what you do, and purification has never been able to keep up (unless you're spamming diviners with Assimilate, that is).

So...Ball build is allowed to kill 5 targets and go up to decently high points. If swarm/low body/removal spam meta ended tomorrow, Ball would be back with vengeance, even at 15 prov. Which, obviously, is something only poison abusers themselves would enjoy.
It's still outrageous even now, but at least you can bleed it out sometimes.

P.s. it's kinda funny how people defend this toxic family of Ball decks referring to "interactivity", failing to see that this very card is uninteractive as hell. You can't possibly defend against it, and if you aren't scumming t1 decks or some unitless/extrawide swarm nonsense, you're out of luck. And that means you're out of luck the second you try something even remotely non-meta.

 

[Philido]

Only a small handful of new units have innate veil, and these aren't the ones you want to poison, usually. A very poor argument. Having veil-granting units in your deck, on the other hand, equals carrying a maybe-helpful-once-a-blue-moon brick...and it does nothing against quick ball deployment with Roderick/Joachim, as such a turn equals instant death. Also you paint a nice bullseye for VVM, so why bother?
As far as purification goes...just a couple minutes ago my Gremist managed to cure a solid one poison before getting yeeted with YenInvo. Note that this happened after my defender got killed twice over. He then proceeded with 4 poisons and Bonhart. To spare you the counting - that's 5 cards removed without any regard for their power. All while putting out decent bodies and developing the Dame. And you only get 10 to begin with. Ball can eliminate your key targets no matter what you do, and purification has never been able to keep up (unless you're spamming diviners with Assimilate, that is).

So...Ball build is allowed to kill 5 targets and go up to decently high points. If swarm/low body/removal spam meta ended tomorrow, Ball would be back with vengeance, even at 15 prov. Which, obviously, is something only poison abusers themselves would enjoy.
It's still outrageous even now, but at least you can bleed it out sometimes.

P.s. it's kinda funny how people defend this toxic family of Ball decks referring to "interactivity", failing to see that this very card is uninteractive as hell. You can't possibly defend against it, and if you aren't scumming t1 decks or some unitless/extrawide swarm nonsense, you're out of luck. And that means you're out of luck the second you try something even remotely non-meta.

Why wouldn't you want to poison the new veiled cards? The evolving cards. They're engines in their last form. And the new 7 provison cards. They're also engines. Oh, and there's also Kerack City Guard. And Fallen Knight. And Tuirseach Invader. All of them can't even be touched by poison and are almost always staples. I'm pretty sure I forgot about some other units here. And you can't even LOCK them.

 

[Nerevarine228]

Why wouldn't you want to poison the new veiled cards? The evolving cards. They're engines in their last form. And the new 7 provison cards. They're also engines. Oh, and Kerack City Guard. And Fallen Knight. And Tuirseach Invader. All of them can't even be touched by poison and are almost always staples. I'm pretty sure I forgot about some other units here. And you can't even LOCK them.

And they're specifically new overtuned t1 stuff that I pointed out as exception.

Got me with the fallen knights, though. But as far as the rest of the list goes, there's almost always a bigger fish to fry. Heimdall, Hama, Donimir/Vysogota, frigates...so being unable to kill these specific units with poison is hardly a big impediment... especially because they automatically fulfill the condition for VVM, so there you go.

That's not to say I approve of innate veil as a mechanic, though. it's a huge surge of powercreep for the game, and a lazy design that did more harm than good (and I say it even though I consider it powercreeping poison spam a feat of great valor and an amazing thing, lol).
But yeah, not being able to bleed/lock/bounty is...pretty bad.

 

[Philido]

And they're specifically new overtuned t1 stuff that I pointed out as exception.

Got me with the fallen knights, though. But as far as the rest of the list goes, there's almost always a bigger fish to fry. Heimdall, Hama, Donimir/Vysogota, frigates...so being unable to kill these specific units with poison is hardly a big impediment... especially because they automatically fulfill the condition for VVM, so there you go.

That's not to say I approve of innate veil as a mechanic, though. it's a huge surge of powercreep for the game, and a lazy design that did more harm than good (and I say it even though I consider it powercreeping poison spam a feat of great valor and an amazing thing, lol).
But yeah, not being able to bleed/lock/bounty is...pretty bad.

Don't see how any of the units I mentioned aren't good poison targets. Just recently had a game where my SK opponent pushed me into a short round three with having Ball and some mediocre aristocrats left. He dropped Harald, Invader and Herkja. Similar stuff has already happened with MO. This was when I decided to stop playing NG and switched to NR, they have a quite controlly game plan too. And I simply can't play a deck with engines only, that's boring as hell. Uprising was impossible to play for me.

 

[G3nome]

the most clear one is that nilfgaard was so realiant in one single card to be even competitive , now that ball got the worst nerf of all scenraios is easy to spot that the faction is at the bottom

 

[lor1keet]

Definitely.

NG doesn't have the points.

For example, SK bronzes will just outclass what NG can put down.

My NG bronze will play for 4, while the SK bronze will play for 7. Not much NG can do.

I'm not sure if CDPR really knows how to balance the game properly.

Maybe in this next patch, CDPR will again give some worthless NG unit +1 power, but then, nerf something important like Braathens again. Sad times for NG right now. Patch after patch, NG has been nerfed, even though NG has been showing the worst win rates among all 6 factions season after season.

 

[uber_croupier]

Only a small handful of new units have innate veil, and these aren't the ones you want to poison, usually. A very poor argument. Having veil-granting units in your deck, on the other hand, equals carrying a maybe-helpful-once-a-blue-moon brick...and it does nothing against quick ball deployment with Roderick/Joachim, as such a turn equals instant death. Also you paint a nice bullseye for VVM, so why bother?
As far as purification goes...just a couple minutes ago my Gremist managed to cure a solid one poison before getting yeeted with YenInvo. Note that this happened after my defender got killed twice over. He then proceeded with 4 poisons and Bonhart. To spare you the counting - that's 5 cards removed without any regard for their power. All while putting out decent bodies and developing the Dame. And you only get 10 to begin with. Ball can eliminate your key targets no matter what you do, and purification has never been able to keep up (unless you're spamming diviners with Assimilate, that is).

So...Ball build is allowed to kill 5 targets and go up to decently high points. If swarm/low body/removal spam meta ended tomorrow, Ball would be back with vengeance, even at 15 prov. Which, obviously, is something only poison abusers themselves would enjoy.
It's still outrageous even now, but at least you can bleed it out sometimes.

P.s. it's kinda funny how people defend this toxic family of Ball decks referring to "interactivity", failing to see that this very card is uninteractive as hell. You can't possibly defend against it, and if you aren't scumming t1 decks or some unitless/extrawide swarm nonsense, you're out of luck. And that means you're out of luck the second you try something even remotely non-meta.

I could agree, it was too much when Ball was played twice, but now nerf makes no sense really.

Forgive me my tone. Did you even play Ball decks recently that you know so much about them?

the most clear one is that nilfgaard was so realiant in one single card to be even competitive , now that ball got the worst nerf of all scenraios is easy to spot that the faction is at the bottom

It's not that. Many bronzes in other factions got buffed or just got new ones - like Veterans for example. Moorlehem Hunters for example are still 3-5 power plays, while many 4P cards in other factions play for 6-8 power.

 

[Nerevarine228]

I could agree, it was too much when Ball was played twice, but now nerf makes no sense really.

Forgive me my tone. Did you even play Ball decks recently that you know so much about them?



It's not that. Many bronzes in other factions got buffed or just got new ones - like Veterans for example. Moorlehem Hunters for example are still 3-5 power plays, while many 4P cards in other factions play for 6-8 power.

Just a few months it was just Ball all over the ladder. Had plenty of time to get acquainted. And these decks didn't really change much, apart from Assire.

 

[uber_croupier]

People still run Assire - for double Invo or Vincent