Weather -An In-depth Look-

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Weather -An In-depth Look-

There have been many heated discussion about Weather. Most people agree something needs to change. However no one can agree on what. Some want to nerf Weather, while others want to buff it. So it’s time to take an in-depth look at Weather, by taking a step back.

Nerf vs. Buff
I think weather cards are very strong. But at the same time I think weather decks are generally weak. You might think this is a contradiction, but it actually makes senses. And it’s also the reason why people stand on both sides of the argument, because they look at it from a different way with an incomplete picture. Weather decks could use a buff, to have more ways to play weather, while individual weather cards should be nerfed to lessen the impact. Simply put, there is a middle road to walk, but it won’t be easy to find it.

Rows (Lanes)
One thing I want to mention in particular is how intergraded the weather mechanic is in Gwent. You might not have thought about it, but what if all weather is removed. What purpose do rows still have then? A few units and spells use it. Even so their impact is only minor if there would be one row (and can be tweaked easily). The reason rows exist is solely to play the weather mechanic.

Card Advantage
A lot of people associate card advantage with Decoy and spies. There is another form of card advantage, wherein Weather plays a huge part, namely neutralizing multiple cards with only one. Simply put, when you buff a unit twice and then the opponent uses a weather card successfully, you have traded three cards against one. Good deal for the opponent, not so much for you. This is why people are hesitant to buff units more than once and why everyone wants to have the final card.

Damage Spells
Direct damage spells (e.g. Alzur’s Thunder, Lacerate) are different in that they remove a fixed amount, rather than wrecking every non-immune unit. That’s mostly why damage spells are okay.

The Scorch Family is an interesting one. They remove the strongest unit, which can definitely hurt. But it’s also something you can play around and you can still safely buff units to a certain extend.

Solution
I don’t have a concrete solution for Weather. I think any real solution will have a severe impact on the gameplay of Gwent. Because Weather is entwined with Gwent, it cannot be removed. But other mechanics can be introduced that affect rows, to diversify the options (and maybe counters against Weather). Discussing these will make this thread even longer. So, I’ll wait first for people’s reactions.
 
4RM3D;n7517590 said:
There have been many heated discussion about Weather. Most people agree something needs to change. However no one can agree on what. Some want to nerf Weather, while others want to buff it. So it’s time to take an in-depth look at Weather, by taking a step back.

Nerf vs. Buff
I think weather cards are very strong. But at the same time I think weather decks are generally weak. You might think this is a contradiction, but it actually makes senses. And it’s also the reason why people stand on both sides of the argument, because they look at it from a different way with an incomplete picture. Weather decks could use a buff, to have more ways to play weather, while individual weather cards should be nerfed to lessen the impact. Simply put, there is a middle road to walk, but it won’t be easy to find it.
Yeah, on my thread about revamping weather system, i noticed a lot of people thought i was suggesting a nerf for weather decks, while the real target was to nerf decks focused on winning CA simply to have the last word when playing their only weather card, preventing you from answering to it. Perhaps i didn't find the right words to explain tho, but your point still proves valid.
4RM3D;n7517590 said:
Rows (Lanes)
One thing I want to mention in particular is how intergraded the weather mechanic is in Gwent. You might not have thought about it, but what if all weather is removed. What purpose do rows still have then? A few units and spells use it. Even so their impact is only minor if there would be one row (and can be tweaked easily). The reason rows exist is solely to play the weather mechanic.
I partly disagree here. Rows add a strategic component both when building and playing decks, not only because of weather, but also to play around row-targeted spells and also cards like Igni and row buffers.
Overall, solid thoughts i mostly agree with.

 

Guest 3973540

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I have an idea. If weather is so powerful as the last card, why not nerf it round-wise? Reduces all non-immune to 1 in 1st round, to 2 (if above 2, otherwise to 1) in the 2nd round, to 3 (if above 3; 3 to 2; 2 to 1) in 3rd.
- This step-wise action will indirectly buff low-strength units, so will need some balancing. Especially NR seems to profit (if Promote would still give +2), but also Skellige with their 3rd round siege row.
- And still this would not make 2 buffs on a single unit worthwhile.
- It doesn't solve the last card of a round issue.

But saving Aglais to replay Aeromancy as the last card might turn out less attractive.

ADD: To compensate the damage to single-weather cards, they may summon a small frost/fog/rain elemental, with power 1/2/3 depending on the round.
 
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TheWalkingHawking;n7518100 said:
the real target was to nerf decks focused on winning CA simply to have the last word when playing their only weather card

You would have to make sure that when nerfing certain cards you won't get collateral damage. Changing one card (like Mardroeme) can completely change the meta. That's why we are in beta, so the devs can test cards and get a feel of the situation.

TheWalkingHawking;n7518100 said:
I partly disagree here. Rows add a strategic component both when building and playing decks, not only because of weather, but also to play around row-targeted spells and also cards like Igni and row buffers.

Like I said, certain units revolve around rows, but that's only a handful. Most of them could easily be tweaked for playing only 1 row. The biggest impact on rows is weather. Most people fear weather, less people fear Lacerate or Igni. Also, if you would remove weather, you no longer have enough tactical reason to have different rows, because the impact is too small.

 
Rows have a lot of importance even without weather. Lacerate, Commander's Horn, Toruviel and a few others (Hawker support, traps) affect whole rows.
The weakness of weather is it's easily countered if one can play a single card, as it clears weather on all rows in one shot. If it cleared only one row, weather would get stronger.
The strength of weather is the same as many other cards: If played last, it can't be countered.
That could be circumvented by having cards which get played from your deck when the opponent passes under some conditions.
 
I think the biggest problem with weather is the fact that its an on-off-mechanic. Either you have almost no units because they are all covered in weather (except you play NR and buff everything to gold) or you have all units because you get to play FL last to remove weather.
Overall it could be better if spawning weather and removing weather would be less radical in that regard that it has less impact on units (aka it weakens them but doesnt set the strength to 1; could be -50% strength) and it is harder to counter (something similar to what LDiCesare suggested) so Clear Skies would only clear one row (or another option is that it doesnt remove weather but it reduces the weakness from it from -50% to -25% etc.)
That could also fix the card advantage thing since you would need to play more than 1 card to counter weather efficiently while spawning weather more than once isnt completely useless (given that units on those rows havent been buffed afterwards).
 
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LDiCesare;n7524200 said:
Rows have a lot of importance even without weather. Lacerate, Commander's Horn, Toruviel and a few others (Hawker support, traps) affect whole rows.

I kinda already explained that in the post above yours:

Like I said, certain units revolve around rows, but that's only a handful. Most of them could easily be tweaked for playing only 1 row. The biggest impact on rows is weather. Most people fear weather, less people fear Lacerate or Igni. Also, if you would remove weather, you no longer have enough tactical reason to have different rows, because the impact is too small.

Strollin;n7526150 said:
I think the biggest problem with weather is the fact that its an on-off-mechanic.

Yeah, like I said in another thread, it's usually one of two extremes: you either win by a mile or lose horribly.

 
I see two frustrating elements to weather cards:

1) The basic ones are bronze
2) Some of the them affect multiple rows

In my opinion, Ragnarok should be like the only weather spell - you can only have 1, and it allows any weather of your choice. People shouldn't have the ability to play 3,4 and 5 weather cards. And people shouldn't need to play 3 First Lights in every deck.

It feels like they've bottlenecked the play so that every player (from every deck) has the same 8-10 cards (nearly 40% of your deck), and players within a given deck type are playing the same 15-20 cards (or 80%). Feels bland.
 
ManwichTuesday;n7528270 said:
In my opinion, Ragnarok should be like the only weather spell - you can only have 1, and it allows any weather of your choice.
the leader, dagon, has that exact ability.
 
I think the problem comes from the hard counter nature of the weather-clear skies relationship. In decks that play like that, it comes down to luck of the draw. Hard counters are bad in general imho, as they always end up luck-based rather than skill-based (I.e did player B draw the counter or not, that determines the winner of the game), but also inevitably make up part of just about every ccg in existence.

Note, I said "in decks that play like that" because I think there are actually other ways to beat weather, and disagree with the idea that every deck needs to play 3 First Lights, or any in fact. Perhaps in buffing those soft counters, and nerfing first light (silver, or CS affects a single row, or two rows, for example) we could find the solution that the OP seems to seek?

In terms of Clear Skies, I think it favours the non-Monster, as the lack of stalling options for Monsters means it should, generally, be easier for the non-Monster to hold back Clear Skies as opposed to for the Monster to hold back their final weather effect. Of course there is a little more subtlety to it, since you may want to play Weather/CS earlier to enable/disable Ancient Foglet buffs or Geralt:Aard, for example. Even if Weather itself was buffed I suspect there would still be these auto-loss scenarios based off CS having the final say.

Otoh playing against Weather, if you are relying on CS just becomes the opposite equation - hope you draw it (not hard if you run 3 and lots of search/thin) and then stall out so you can play it after all the Weather has hit (although with multiples you may play one earlier to stop Foglet growth, force a response etc.)

What is interesting is if you don't play CS and rely on softer options. Let's take a few examples of other cards/approaches that help against Weather.

1) Northern Realms - basically as a faction, the ability to gold so many things, thus immunising them, makes the battle more tactical. It becomes a bit of a push-your-luck game of when to play Weather versus when to Promote etc. With PFI spam there's also simply getting more bodies out, even with reduced Str this might do the trick sometimes.

2) Dimeterium Bomb - especially useful if you spam lots of bodies as you'll likely end up better off than the Weather player. Fits into certain decks on its own merit not as a Weather counter. Does fall back into the CS bracket of who plays what last though.

3) Skellige guys who get stronger when your units get weaker. The Monster player has to drop a Fog late to bring them back down, but if there's 3 on a row, with a couple of other cards, they will also get a healthy boost from this.

4) Weather immune cards. When I play Skellige resurrect, and face Dagon, I just buff and resurrect my Ships instead of my Skirmishers. I still have to play around the possibility of Scorch, Igni, Caretaker, and deal with all the big Monsters, but that's good - becomes about how both players choose to use their cards, not merely whether or not they have the right ones.

5) Geralt:Aard. Great *in* Weather decks, but also great against them

6) Cards that stay in play. They need to be killed, or else you need to reapply the relevant weather every round. Helps that the deck that focuses on this also gets a Gold one.

Maybe giving all factions a decent immune card could work? A lot of decks buff stuff, so having something that can't be hit by Weather as a buff target doesn't auto-beat Weather, but also doesn't auto-lose to it. A Silver card that made a Unit (or all copies of a unit, but Poor Infantry would be yuck) immune could also be interesting. I would actually want to nerf First Light alongside it though, perhaps making that Silver too, since as long as triple CS exists in a competitive environment, some decks will just trounce Weather, which essentially makes the deck uncompetitive at higher tiers. Giving factions card that shift their units from one rank to another would also be interesting, if not for the fact Weather decks often cover all 3 rows.

Now, I'll happily admit, I haven't been in Ranked play long enough, to know what things are like at the top end; but I'm certainly at the point where I see people with all the cards, and face Such Weather decks frequently. I found them frustrating at first, but now would much rather play against them than against Poor Infantry spam or waiting all day for ST to complete their loops. Is Weather being played in some kind of special way at top ranks, whereby only Clear Skies can stop it? And where it can out-stall to beat CS too? I'd heard it was pretty meh at higher ranks, but if it is actually competitive up there, what makes it so?
 
4RM3D;n7527420 said:
I kinda already explained that in the post above yours:

Like I said, certain units revolve around rows, but that's only a handful. Most of them could easily be tweaked for playing only 1 row. The biggest impact on rows is weather. Most people fear weather, less people fear Lacerate or Igni. Also, if you would remove weather, you no longer have enough tactical reason to have different rows, because the impact is too small.
I disagree and that is why I posted in the first place.
Here are the cards that work with rows, followedby those that spawn weather or affect it. I didn't put weather immune units, except the Drowner, and I put both it and Aard in both categories because I agree that the biggest importance of rows is about weather, but I don't think it defines rows:

Commander's Horn
HENSELT
GE'ELS
Lacerate
Hawker Healer
Dol Blathanna Trapper
Vrihedd Sappers
Clan Heymaey Skald
(Drowner)
Odrin
Blueboy Lugos
Champion of Champions
Skjall (well, actually Craven Revived)
Toruviel
Yaevinn
Geralt:Igni
Zoltan: Animal Tamer
(Geralt:Aard)
Keira Metz
Imlerith
Philippa Eilhart

Weather ones:
Ragh Nar Roog
Merigold Hailstorm
Skellige Storm
White Frost
Aeromancy
Biting Frost
First Light
Impenetrable Fog
Torrential Rain
(Foglet)
DAGON
Arch Griffin
(Drowner)
(Ancient Foglet)
(Sarah)
Water Hag
(Ice Giant)
(Geralt:Aard)
Coral
Woodland Spirit
Caranthir

That's 21 vs. 20. Add weather immunes and you get more weather unit, but not that many (+4 if I'm right).

There are 2 leaders whose special ability is based on rows vs. 1 based on weather (2 if you count Eredin, but he can be played without any weather).

So IMO there are lots of reasons to keep rows. Igni changes the way people play. They avoid getting more than 20 on one row. It may not change strategies, but it changes tactics. Commander's Horn, Henselt, Ge'els, Skalds, Healers, to a lesser extent Toruviel and to an even lesser effect Keira or Skjall all make you want to put units on the same row. Weather makes you want to avoid it, but so do Igni, Lacerate, Philippa. To a much lesser extent, sappers, trappers, Imlerith. Zoltan can do both, so it's a tactical decision if you have him.
The difference is that, while rows have the same amount of 'Mass all on one row' and 'Spread them out' cards, weather effects are numerous and there is exactly one counter to the effect itself (D-bomb kinda counters it too but is not weather-related).
So, I think you are wrong. There are 21 reasons to have rows in addition to weather. Out of 241 cards (if I'm right, it's 252 - the duplicate art ones), that's a lot. Also, 2 leaders out of 12. It's far from insignificant. Removing the rows mechanism would have slightly more impact than removing weather from the game (I consider weather immunity mostly irrelevant).
The impact of weather is the same as that of Philippa, except it's 20 times more common than her, which is why it seems more important.

Making Clear Skies silver only makes weather more prevalent, but it would be boring. People put 3 Clear Skies because so many monster cards revolve around weather. People play clear skies to counter weather, but without the extra effect it wasn't worth it and playing against weather was even more boring than playing against PFI.
Nerfing clear skies to affect only a single row would make weather more interesting.
Removing rows mechanisms would mean changing next to 20% of the gameplay (aforementioned cards, including weather). Rows also have a very important visual effects: Since you tend to spread units over rows, the board is easier to "read". Aesthetically and from a cognitive point of view, it's much better to have units organised in several rows than all in a single one.
 
People play 3 First Lights because it's a deck thinning card as well. All the dual-purposing further supports my position that CDPR has bottlenecked most play so that you see the same cards over and over. When people talk about strategic or tactical play at this point, they mean they saw someone use 2-3 cards out of the ordinary. It's never: that guy has a deck that did something interesting. And when it is, they probably lost because it was too interesting to be useful. I feel this way about a lot of "fun" Skellige discard decks. They involve a lot of tactic and timing, but you really only have hopes to beat about 30% of the decks you face on a regular basis. The rest are hard meta decks that are wash/rinse/repeat.

Weather isn't a problem in my opinion - it's the simple lack of variety right now. I've said in another post that once we see Nilfgaard, my hope is that it introduces a new mechanic to account for, so that all decks must adapt to stay viable against the chance of playing vs it. A minor change in all decks to account for something new means every match not involving the new deck just got more dynamic too. Just too little variety right now.
 
LDiCesare;n7534360 said:
So IMO there are lots of reasons to keep rows.

To put it as simple as possible (and pretty black & white): Rows are needed to use the current weather mechanic, however rows aren't needed to use the current (row) buffs. Though hypothetically speaking, if there would be only one row, those buffs do need to be adjusted a little (Commander's Horn, a lot). The reason why we need something like a weather mechanic to justify rows, is because otherwise everyone would just put all units on the same row. When we look at the risks, besides weather, of the current board of three rows we basically got Lacerate and Igni. There are others, but they either aren't played often or have to little of an impact to be feared, traps not withstanding, but that's a special case.

So I still stand with what I have said: if you remove weather completely, what's left is only a novelty and not enough reason to keep the rows. Something needs to fill the void.

Having said all that, doesn't mean I want weather to be removed. Weather can be pretty destructive and the whole mechanic (First Light included) should probably be changed. But I am not entirely sure how it can be improved. I already made a suggestion of adding other mechanics that either counter or complement weather.
 
ManwichTuesday;n7534720 said:
Weather isn't a problem in my opinion - it's the simple lack of variety right now.

It's true that I also suggested to add more mechanism to create more variety. Still, this should be thought out carefully. Otherwise we just get another repetition of Mardroeme and Fist Light, resulting in even more auto-include (must have) cards and even more stale decks.
 
GKZhukov;n7528950 said:
I think the problem comes from the hard counter nature of the weather-clear skies relationship. In decks that play like that, it comes down to luck of the draw. Hard counters are bad in general imho, as they always end up luck-based rather than skill-based (I.e did player B draw the counter or not, that determines the winner of the game), but also inevitably make up part of just about every ccg in existence.

Well said.


GKZhukov;n7528950 said:
Maybe giving all factions a decent immune card could work?
Interesting idea. While some factions have a few weather-immune cards, a special card to grant immunity could offer interesting play options.


 
4RM3D;n7534770 said:
To put it as simple as possible (and pretty black & white): Rows are needed to use the current weather mechanic, however rows aren't needed to use the current (row) buffs. Though hypothetically speaking, if there would be only one row, those buffs do need to be adjusted a little (Commander's Horn, a lot). The reason why we need something like a weather mechanic to justify rows, is because otherwise everyone would just put all units on the same row. When we look at the risks, besides weather, of the current board of three rows we basically got Lacerate and Igni. There are others, but they either aren't played often or have to little of an impact to be feared, traps not withstanding, but that's a special case.

So I still stand with what I have said: if you remove weather completely, what's left is only a novelty and not enough reason to keep the rows. Something needs to fill the void.

Having said all that, doesn't mean I want weather to be removed. Weather can be pretty destructive and the whole mechanic (First Light included) should probably be changed. But I am not entirely sure how it can be improved. I already made a suggestion of adding other mechanics that either counter or complement weather.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I forgot one important effect: Most Elves, and a few other cards, can be played on any row. This ability is not linked to weather. You say that traps are a special case, which is a case of refusing to accept the point that there are cards linked to rows that are not weather., because it doesn't fit with your hypothesis. In the same way you said that there were only few cards that affectrows, when there are as many as those which affect weather. Weather is not even special in terms of targetting specific rows, since most units can only be played on one row too.

Making Clear skies something weaker than card thinning but still solid (spawn a 4-5 STR unit on the row of your choice?) would still make it useful.
The problem with weather is you need some counters for it in your deck. Either you build your deck around such counters (you can only have one D-bomb in deck after all), which means everyone who play an anti weather deck plays the same cards, or you give a cheap counter like Clear skies, which means everyone either puts 3 of them in their deck, or it's too weak, noone uses them and weather becomes OP.
Both weather and Clear skies need changing. The former, in order not to be forced to devise a deck either around or against it. Make weather powerful even when it doesn't last, as it is for ancient foglets, and weaker when it remains, particularly as the last card:

Weather effect: Reduce non immune, non gold units STR by 2, and again by 2 at the start of every turn until they reach 1
Clear skies: Summon STR 5 unit on the row of your choice which clears the weather on both this lane and the opposite lane. No longer recover STR lost from weather.

The first change makes it less necessary to have weather-specific counters and makes it much less valuable on the last turn (almost useless actually).
The second makes Clear skies an anti-weather card only again, but weaker (one lane), not deck-thinning, while still useful even when there is no weather effect.
To strengthen weather short-term effect, you could boost all immune units STR by 1 when the effect appears (much like foglets, and boost foglets a bit).
 
LDiCesare;n7535290 said:
We'll have to agree to disagree. I forgot one important effect: Most Elves, and a few other cards, can be played on any row. This ability is not linked to weather. You say that traps are a special case, which is a case of refusing to accept the point that there are cards linked to rows that are not weather., because it doesn't fit with your hypothesis. In the same way you said that there were only few cards that affectrows, when there are as many as those which affect weather. Weather is not even special in terms of targetting specific rows, since most units can only be played on one row too.

You are dodging my rebuttal. The rows are there, not for the sake of buffing units, but rather because of the threat against units. The threat is the sole purpose; a higher risk should give a higher reward principle. To counter this threat, units have special abilities. Elves have agility, NR has promotion and Skellige/Monsters have immunity. The biggest threat is weather, because it can be the most devastating and any faction can use it.

When you look at other threats, the only dangerous one is the trapper. Why the trapper is a good implementation of row damage (compared to weather):
- The trap can be seen, but cannot always be avoided.
- There are different ways to play around this (e.g. avoid the row or have a unit soak up the damage). This is also true for weather up to a certain point.
- Once sprung the threat has passed (and a new threat could possible be played).
- It's unique to one faction. Heck, it goes even further. It's unique to a specific tactic of one faction.

We need more (faction exclusive) mechanism like the trapper and less generic carpet bombs like weather.

That's why I said traps were a special case. Trappers are fine, however they are not enough to justify rows. Lacerate is an okay neutral card to impose some threat. Still it's not enough. The rows are a nice mechanic, but weather plays too large a role.

(PS. If there would be only one row, trapper obviously needs to be reworked.)

LDiCesare;n7535290 said:
Weather effect: Reduce non immune, non gold units STR by 2, and again by 2 at the start of every turn until they reach 1
Clear skies: Summon STR 5 unit on the row of your choice which clears the weather on both this lane and the opposite lane. No longer recover STR lost from weather.

There is another issue with Monsters. It's commonly accepted they lack variety, but there is an important distinction with other factions. Monsters have a whole weather focused deck. However, weather is not a Monster specific mechanism. Heck, some factions do weather even better than Monsters. Skellige also lacks variety, but they have at least some strong cards.

If weather is changed, then Monsters should at least receive a substantial buff, otherwise it's R.I.P. Monsters.
 
Yes, monsters need some love. I think making all their units immune to weather instead of a single specific weather would make them immune to Aard to begin with and make the weather themed decks playable. That is just one step though. It''s a pity that, as the faction with most cards, monsters don't have more varied cards.
 
4RM3D;n7538040 said:
We need more (faction exclusive) mechanism like the trapper and less generic carpet bombs like weather.

I hate traps so much, because they feel more overpowered than weather. But for this same reason, I completely agree that more factions need to have access to these. Even from a lore perspective, I'm not sure why every deck doesn't have some form of "surprise" cards that trigger the way traps do. They would fit pretty seamlessly into all factions.

I think traps are far more devastating than the typical weather for a couple reasons:
1. Traps don't give the cards they affect the chance to trigger their abilities. Some of them are 100% unavoidable, others like Fireball will affect, for instance, almost every Skellige card in round 1, most in round 2, and all of Skellige resurrect cards even in round 3.
2. Their affects cannot be cancelled as easily as weather. You can clear skies weather, you can dbomb weather, you can buff units after weather, some cards are immune to weather, etc. Nothing is immune to a trap.
3. The very act of a player using weather often tells you how their deck is composed. You have a sense of how to approach play vs these players and what cards are most vital to hold onto.
4. Weather affects both sides of the board. Traps are only helpful.
 
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