Who is the genius behind the Viper Witcher Mentor buff?

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Mi_V

Forum regular
NG Lock down deck with Kolgrim, Ciri and 3 viper mentors is the most [...] fun killer of the game. Each mentor worth 12 to 14 points because your top deck full of trash cards they polluted, while your best cards are deep in your deck. If you don't have answer for Kolgrim, 3 mentors, Ciri resilient AND Helge you'll lose, binary match up. AND NOW they buff mentor? I wonder who is the man behind buffing mentor? Has he ever played the game recently?
 
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If you don't have answer for Kolgrim, 3 mentors, Ciri resilient AND Helge you'll lose, binary match up.
I believe we both agree the same thing can be listed for literally every deck out there - if you don't have answers for their <insert any card that poses a challenge for you at the moment> you lose.

This has nothing to do with being binary, a word that is being used with such precision as TOXIC or BROKEN. :ohstopit:

As for buffing Viper Mentors, I also fail the reasoning behind that choice honestly. Definitely not the card from the entire NG selection that needed one in my opinion.
 
Haha, yeah, I'd like to know that as well. Was one buff from this patch that stood out as a clear wtf to me :D
 
NG Lock down deck with Kolgrim, Ciri and 3 viper mentors is the most [...] fun killer of the game. Each mentor worth 12 to 14 points because your top deck full of trash cards they polluted, while your best cards are deep in your deck. If you don't have answer for Kolgrim, 3 mentors, Ciri resilient AND Helge you'll lose, binary match up. AND NOW they buff mentor? I wonder who is the man behind buffing mentor? Has he ever played the game recently?

Binary matches are part of this game, especially in ranked ( not that much different in casual mode though ) but the problem lies even deeper and in the polarizing nature of the game. You basically have good cards and trash, no real in between and certainly not many ways to contest a round until the end. You win badly, lose badly or draw at most.
No cards should ever be " counter this immediately or you lose", that's a syndrome of a badly balanced game.
Also, before people start posting here stuff like "think forward, strategy, adapt", the current state of gwent is basically entirely dependant on how good or bad you draw, especially gold cards. Given the scarce quantity of actually viable leaders/ gold cards ( speaking about ranked, in casual anything is good as long as you have fun ) you basically face the same 3-4 decks and in the end all you can hope is to draw well.
 
NG is my favorite faction, but the clogger archetype is ridiculous, since you sell the game as a game that depends more on your skill than luck, it makes no sense for you to support an archetype that greatly amplifies the element of rng of the draws. Oh did you draw Purify and Korathi in the first or second round? then you won the match :D (y) . oh didn't you draw ? so you lost:sad:, because no matter how many tutors you put on your deck, we will not let you draw any by filling the top of your deck with trash.

And this mentor buff has no logic:shrug:, it makes me think that devs don't play the game.
 
I think the clogger archetype would be fine if all of the bronze cards shuffled cards into your deck and the gold cards put things on top of your deck.

In addition, for 5 provisions, Viper Witcher should not be able to
1) put doomed tokens back into your deck
2) give you bleeding 2
3) make you lose a mulligan

As is, it is just ridiculously overpowered
 
NG is my favorite faction, but the clogger archetype is ridiculous, since you sell the game as a game that depends more on your skill than luck, it makes no sense for you to support an archetype that greatly amplifies the element of rng of the draws. Oh did you draw Purify and Korathi in the first or second round? then you won the match :D (y) . oh didn't you draw ? so you lost:sad:, because no matter how many tutors you put on your deck, we will not let you draw any by filling the top of your deck with trash.

And this mentor buff has no logic:shrug:, it makes me think that devs don't play the game.
Totally agree, this clogging Archetype is really the most bs thing around and it also kind of promotes playing "no" unit decks because the clogging falls kind of flat if they don't find any decent targets to put on top of you're deck, if you play Swarm or another Archetype with a lot of Tokens on the other hand you're kind of screwed because you'll end up having tons of useless Tokens on top of you're deck.

I recently said that Lockdown is a necessary evil but with the current Clogging Archetype around I'm not so sure about that anymore, because with that Archetype it gets a lot worse if you aren't able to use at least you're leader skill, before there was kind of the argument that you should still be somehow able to beat lockdown because of the higher provision bonus but with the clogging Archetype the higher provisions of the leader doesn't really matter anymore when they put tons of crap on top of you're deck.

As for the Mentor buff I don't know what the heck they were thinking probably one of weirdest buffs ever in gwent history.
 
And this mentor buff has no logic:shrug:, it makes me think that devs don't play the game.
I think they play like 3-4 games per month at most and as a result of that (not playing often) they're not very good so they get pwned by average players and then conclude that the fault is that the deck they were playing and that it needs buffs lol.
Not a single person asked for Mentor and Experimental Remedy buffs but they made those. And both of those cards were already quite often being played (unlike one other NG card called Ivar Evil-Eye). It's like they completely forget that Exp Remedy also triggers all of your assimilate engines and that it's a card that only makes sense in an assimilate deck, but I assume they were trying to play it in a non-assimilate deck and ofc in that case they would see that the card isn't worth it :rolleyes: well duh cuz it's in a wrong deck!
 
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DRK3

Forum veteran
Seriously, the viper witcher mentor BEFORE was already one of the best bronzes of the expansion, probably even in the game in general, buffing it is absolutely ridiculous, and might take the prize on the dumbest decision on the this balance patch.

A bronze that consistently plays for 10-13, usually it would play for less because with thinning and tutoring, you can get most expensive cards out of your deck, but with clogging, takes extreme luck to reach R3 with all your big cards in hand or played... and even if you manage that, they can just put a big card of your GY back into the deck with their location card.

If i was still naive, i might would've expect an hotfix soon to revert this change and maybe some other adjustments, so we wouldnt have to endure this mess for one full month, but the devs never admit their mistakes and bad decisions, or when they do is way too late and its been so long the meta already changed because of external factors - so i wouldnt count on anything until next season.
 
I think the clogger archetype would be fine if all of the bronze cards shuffled cards into your deck and the gold cards put things on top of your deck.

In addition, for 5 provisions, Viper Witcher should not be able to
1) put doomed tokens back into your deck
2) give you bleeding 2
3) make you lose a mulligan

As is, it is just ridiculously overpowered

I agree, being able to put tokens back into your deck really salts the wound when playing against this deck, especially when swarm is supposed to be a way to counter control.
 
It is totally logic, as when they removed Sacrificial Vanguard because it was "too much carryover" and inmediately released Allgod, NR witchers, circle of life and many Gord boosts, Archgriffin and Viy.

I thought it was as logic a decission as buffing mentor.

I've only seen that kind of logic here and in Monty Python.

I'm pretty sure this is the ministry of Silly Balances
 
An awful change (and I like Nilfgaard).

I just had a game in which I played Arnaghad (buffed with Battle Trance) behind a Defender. The opponent traded his/hers first Viper Witcher Mentor with Arnaghad. I know Arnaghad is not a very competitive card, but still... I traded a 10 pt. gold card + leader ability + low tempo defender against a 6 pt Bronze card (which you can play 3 time without too much effort).
 

Mi_V

Forum regular
Sometimes your best cards are at the bottom of your deck. Even with thinning you can't draw Oneiromancy or scenario. So each mentor viper equals 13 ~ 14 points.

Even if you're lucky and draw Oneiromancy in round 3 (after mulligan 3 points golem, 1 point token, etc) they just use location to put my Oneiromancy from my graveyard to my topdeck!
 

ya1

Forum regular
As for the Mentor buff I don't know what the heck they were thinking probably one of weirdest buffs ever in gwent history.

I'd say that must be the Vabjorn inclusion after SK had over 65% winrates for two months. But this is similar. Apparently, devs either lack insight into the global interfactional balance or simply don't care about it. They have those little dogmas that overwrite the big picture for them. Like "all faction specials got tutors and raids don't" or "90% NG players would choose Formation" or finally "every ST deck plays Justice" and "we made a new NG archetype but everyone is still playing the soldier ball." So they go charging at those little windmills with their lance and shield of nerfs and buffs, and sometimes happen to mess up the global game balance.

Sometimes those little memos written in a red marker on a conference room board blind the hell out of them to the point they don't even see they are outdated. The thing about Kolgrim archetype being underplayed, yeah, it was true at first month, but not lately. TLG Meta Report from Feb 3 got Nova clog tied with the Ball as the best NG deck, with Viy out, it's top 5 decks is the game (with ST and Lippy out now, maybe even top 3!). And now the major buff to the mentors?

Let alone the subjective (but shared by the majority) belief that clog and mill should not be top tier competitive because they are toxic, oppressive and capitalize on misdraws more than anything. So in instead of "I won because I played my cards better" you get "I won because I played my cards and they didn't." IMO this is an unhealthy approach to diversifying the game.
 
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I'd say that must be the Vabjorn inclusion after SK had over 65% winrates for two months.
All jokes aside, I fully agree. This feels very similar.

I was really trying to come up with a logical explanation for this awkward (and 100% unwarranted) buff, but the best I could manage was that they wanted to make the ordering of Adrenaline cards below Ad4 a bit more flexible for NG, thus creating a less predictable sequence. Previously the typical order would look like:

Ad4: anything
Ad3: Defender setup
Ad2: Kolgrim
Ad1: Letho-Kingslayer or Mentor
Final: Mentor

This recent buff however only ends up in a massive pointslam fiesta starting from Ad4 being a Defender to protect Kolgrim's row, followed up by 3 Mentors and Kolgrim.

The more I think about this, the more I believe this card should have received quite the opposite, a NERF to Adrenaline 1 instead. That way you could still pull combo plays with a Location putting the highest card on top, but could not auto-benefit from those crazy amounts every round starting at Ad3.
 
That moment when a 6 provision bronze does a way better job than a 8 provision Gold. :giveup:

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And sadly Gascon is just the tip of the iceberg stuff like Vivienne de Tabris, Vivienne Oriole and even Ozzrel also come to mind. :ok:
 
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