Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

So I replace Tove with Unica, Grimnar with Angelic Knight/Angel of the Word/Goblin Mage and maybe reconsider whether gobbo leader - but otherwise keep running my Phantom Cat chip damage deck as is??

But lemme go into each of these:
OgreBattle wrote:https://shadowverse.com/news/?announce_id=336

Tove is now 2/2 "gain rush when allied neutral drops"
This is crap. They might as well have banned the card over making it a bear with both a hose and an ability. Because everyone is just going to run one of the many bears-with-ability no hose that already exist instead.

Better options would have been to change the hose to work so that it can only attack on turns when you drop a neutral, to change it to a 3/1 with the hose as it, to drop the hose and make it a 2/2 that gains rush and +1/+0 until end of turn when you drop a neutral, etc.

Goblin Leader is 2/3 and 4 cost
This is probably correct. It's still outvaluing Courageous Knight and Conjure Twosome by 1 point of defense on the turn it drops. But both of those rate: "There are currently no decks that utilize this card." On top of that it still has the currently-hot neutral synergy and the chance to snowball -- but said chance is greatly reduced by the opponent having access to Evolution points as an immediate answer
Baphomet is "put a random bloodcraft follower in hand"
Mixed feelings here. The Enhance is what really made Spawn broken, but I'm gonna miss the tutor-for specific card build potential
Spawn is "deal 5 damage when ambush is up or killed with ambush" and no addtional powers
So with evolve, it's still potentially 13 to the face, but only Demon Key lets that happen before turn 9? Probably an okay nerf -- but I think I would have preferred the attacks from ambush clause to have become a "clash - if ambush is active" clause. That with the "dies in ambush" clause would have let it be a near guarantee of face damage without being such a huge damage potential in a single turn.
Snow White is 2/2 when evolved
Since this still powers Heavenly Hound on turn 3, it's a near-meaningless nerf. ProTip: If you want to nerf Aegis decks, nerf Aegis.

Grimnir is "deal 4 to enemy FOLLOWERS"
This is the most clueless design in the announcement. It is actually going to power up the Ramp decks it was intended to nerf. Because now Grimnar merely is a Ward that Enhances into a Sweep -- he is no longer a Ward that enhances into a Sweep with added direct damage. Some Midrange and all Neutral Aggro wanted Grimnar for the chance to get the final 4 damage through if the game went long, but now only decks running slower, more expensive cards are going to want the great defensive effect.

Oroboros loses its heal 3
This is two months and an expansion overdue. Oroborus is also NOT the card whose healing enabled TotG Ramp Dragon to laugh off aggro.

I would have much rather seen Wonderland just give Sword, Blood and Shadow transform/banish options to answer an opposing Oroborus.

Do they never buff cards though? I'd like to see other legendaries made useful
No, they don't and that's kind of sad. One of the great unrealized potentials of this electronic format with constant data collection is that they could literrally auto-buff the least played cards each iteration. You could take everything that shows up in less than point zero X percent of all decks at say Master level or above, and you could have the next update drop all of their costs by one automatically.
DSMatticus wrote: but not Eachtar?
"This Head Can't Be Nerfed" may be meming.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:31 pm, edited 5 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Buffing cards doesn't encourage buying new packs the way writing new better cards does.

Castrating Baphomet was kinda necessary; Spawn was never really the problem, being able to reliably whip out your late game finisher on turn 6 was and that was all Baphomet's Enhance effect did. Even seen arguments that Baphomet's overstatted for a tutor of any kind before factoring in how hardcore "tutor your win condition" is - c.f. Maid Leader.

Making Snow White no longer able to survive on trading with a 3-drop isn't precisely what I'd call meaningless. The apparently-intended way to beat Aegis is to not let it live long enough for Aegis to hit the field - making it easier to survive once Aegis joins the party doesn't really help with that.

I now feel like I have to work out a way to make a Wallet Dragon deck that spurns Ouroboros altogether, for at least the duration of the next month.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Josh wrote:This is crap. They might as well have banned the card over making it a bear with both a hose and an ability. Because everyone is just going to run one of the many bears-with-ability no hose that already exist instead.
New Tove has no penalty. It's just a 2/2 for 2 whose power is that if you play it on the same turn as another creature it can rush attack. Neutral Blood probably would rather run any of a number of Neutral Bears in the slot, but it's still decent enough. The comparison would be to Maelstrom Dragon. Full stats instead of partial stats, and the enhance kicks in much easier, but it only gains Rush instead of Storm when you have enough PP to play it and another creature in the same turn.
Josh wrote:This is two months and an expansion overdue. Oroborus is also NOT the card whose healing enabled TotG Ramp Dragon to laugh off aggro.
The Ouroboros nerf is completely bizarre. The justification is complete nonsense - Dragon was Tier 1 last fucking expansion, so they decided to nerf it now? That's so fucking stupid that even writing that down seems like I should be making a straw man to make fun of Cygames - but that's their actual justification. Ramp Dragon was a tier 1 deck before Wonderland Dreams came out, so they are nerfing two cards that they had considered nerfing back then. What changed? I mean, other than Ramp Dragon being currently a negative winrate deck that hasn't seen any joy since the beginning of the expansion.

It makes Cygames look like a bunch of fuckups. I mean, more than every other part of the disaster that is Wonderland Dreams has been. Remember when they opened up the expansion by immediately nerfing Shadow right before the Bloodcopalypse? Or how they are not nerfing BKB, Scarlet, or Phantom Cat and there's a very real chance that this won't even fucking stop the Bloodcopalypse that is destroying their fucking game? Ugh.

-Username17
DSMatticus
King
Posts: 5271
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:32 am

Post by DSMatticus »

Omegonthesane wrote:Castrating Baphomet was kinda necessary; Spawn was never really the problem, being able to reliably whip out your late game finisher on turn 6 was and that was all Baphomet's Enhance effect did. Even seen arguments that Baphomet's overstatted for a tutor of any kind before factoring in how hardcore "tutor your win condition" is - c.f. Maid Leader.
Baphomet or Spawn is a design decision. If Blood is supposed to have strong lategame wincons, then Baphomet's ability is imbalanced. If Blood is supposed to have weak lategame wincons, then Baphomet turns a relatively weak T7/T8 play into a relatively strong T6 play in exchange for tempo and occasionally undesirable draws (you're going to occasionally draw your wincon normally, at which point it's either a dead card or an inoptimal play). It's basically the same story with Dragon; their early access to lategame cards means Dragon (and neutral) have to have weaker lategame cards. Nerfing Baphomet or Spawn made sense, and was really just a question about whether you wanted to support midrange decks that played slightly weaker than average T7/T8 cards early or control decks that played normal T8/T9 plays on curve. Nerfing both is just kind of fucking dumb.

Which describes these nerfs pretty well, I think - "kind of fucking dumb." They nerfed neutral blood's perfect curve, but did nothing to address the underlying engine. Goblin -> Lyrica -> Grimnir -> Alice is still the best T1-T4 in the game by far, it still favors the player who goes first, and even if your opponent lucks into their answers Blood has the best package for midgame board denial and reach to close things out.
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

So post nerf it is starting to look like the best decks are

Carabosse Vengeance / Control: Run Carabosse behind Knuckles, Scarlet, Diabolic Drain, Hungering Horde, Vampiric Kiss, Revelation, Spiderweb Imp etc. The main design decision is how heavy you want this to overlap with the TotG Vengeance archetype. It also feels weird to call something with a curve that tops out at 6 (well aside from Revelation( a "Control" deck.

Midrange Shadow: Demon Eater and Necro Assassin slot back in where Catacomb and Reaper were. Death's Breath seems to be out in favor of the Attendent into Urd on turn 6/7 to set up Eachtar win on turn 7/8
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Going into the latest nerfs, the questions were whether the Blood nerfs were savage enough and whether the somewhat perplexing Haven and Dragon nerfs were justified.

The highest winrate top eight deck is Aggro Blood, meaning that Blood just substituted Cthulhu for Carabosse and Phantom Cat and slightly lowered their curve and continue to be the best deck.

Meanwhile, Haven and Dragon are now #5 and #6 in playrate and winrate, which is almost literally the worst showing you could have in a field of 7. So those nerfs look like absolutely horrible ideas.

So a complete strikeout for the balance team. The blood nerfs were not savage enough, and the Haven and Dragon nerfs were not justified. Total failure all around.

Unless the actual goal was just to eliminate Control from the meta entirely. Because right now the only positive winrate Control deck is Nephthys. Control Blood, Aegis, and Ramp Dragon all suck now.

-Username17
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

I've been having fun with Elana's Prayer Havencraft.

Image

So what kind of nerfs are still needed for the game?

Something that bugs me is the prevalence of certain cards, not so much they are overpowered but it's hard to not use them. Like Albert in Swordcraft and Levi in Runecraft. I have 3x Old Levi and 1 Albert, they're great cards but I wish there was incentive to use others. I'd love to see golemrune get more support.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Mon Aug 07, 2017 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

Something that bugs me is the prevalence of certain cards, not so much they are overpowered but it's hard to not use them. Like Albert in Swordcraft and Levi in Runecraft. I have 3x Old Levi and 1 Albert, they're great cards but I wish there was incentive to use others. I'd love to see golemrune get more support
Albert is just a hair overpowered -- and yet completely necessary for Sword to be viable in any game than goes past turn 6.

Albert is a storm finisher for Aggro - midgame normally and enhanced if the opponent drags things to turn 9. Albert is also the strongest finisher for Control Sword.

On the aggro side, you could make Albert less essential by giving swordcraft late midgame cards along the lines of Forte (Higher midgame storm damage, but fragile) or Phantom Cat (a reasonable sized body that has fanfare damage to the enemy's face). Talking about almost-alternatives that swordcraft already has: If Charlotte was a bit cheaper (opr could be cheated out earlier), she'd be viable, and I'd love to see Fangblade Slayer's ability on some cheaper, weaker, more fragile cards.

On the control side, you would first have to do some things to makle control sword a viable life choice. { cardflow, healing, non-targeted, sweep, or sticky board } and then you would need to print other 8-10 cost finishers that were equivalent to Albert, but worked in different circumstances. (Got through wards, answered Mordecai, held off an opposing Aegis, or something like that.)


Timeworn Levi is a bit more significantly overpowered as a super-bear. If Rune was actually good, he would deserve a nerf -- but as it is the only way he would become less attractive is if Rune/Neutral get more cards like Unica -- that is 2/2 for 2 Bears with potentially meaningful abilities that do not require evolutions to trigger.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Mon Aug 07, 2017 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Albert is underpowered as a turn 5 finisher and underpowered as a turn 9 finisher. But not by very much in either case, and he can be used in either capacity.

People keep saying that he's mostly better than Imp Lancer in that he's only a single stat point lower and comes out a whole turn earlier. But there's a couple important things to note about that:
  • Imp Lancer is a bronze card.
  • Imp Lancer isn't actually very good.
  • The better 6 cost card to compare Albert to is Alwidas, which is the same total toughness and the same amount of immediate face damage, but it comes in two bodies and the second body is a 2/3 speed bump.
And of course, Turn 9 Finishers are shit like Seraph and Aegis. 6 points of storm damage with an extra two points of face damage from an Evo is not actually very much for turn 9.

The real issue is the complete paucity of finishers for Sword. Other than Albert there isn't a whole lot. Control Sword doesn't have any other options than to just try to hold onto the board until Albert comes online on turn 9. It's not like you could choose to do Wolf Bolt or Aegis or something instead.

Which is the core issue. Nerfs aren't really the answer, although right now aggro decks are a bit too good as Alice can literally kill you on turn five right through you playing an on-curve follower on turns 2, 3, and 4 just by playing on-curve and clearing your board on turn 4. There are various deck gimmicks, but most of them lack support. There simply aren't enough low-cost Commanders to make Commander Sword. There simply aren't enough payoffs for Ambush Sword to be a thing. And it's not just Sword archetypes. Discard Dragon only has two discard fuel cards and only one discard synergy card that survives Dragonslayer's Price. And so on.

There are a lot of archetypes that don't have enough support to make a whole deck. You have shit like Fairy Cage that exists to be one part of a combo but the other part doesn't even fucking exist. You got stuff like Support Cannon that exists to act as a turn 5 conversion from Aggro to inevitability but then demands that your deck be filled with cards that don't actually exist. I mean, remember that 2/2 for 2 Commander that Support Cannon wants you to play? No you don't, because it doesn't fucking exist.

And then there are a lot of archetypes that aren't really playable because they can't survive long enough to do their cool thing. Most Rune archetypes are like that. You could do a Ginger Rune deck with a whole lotta card draw and Abomination, but how do you survive the Alice Rush with that deck? You don't.

-Username17
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Going into September they nerfed Eachtar, they nerfed BKB, they nerfed Sabreur. Also some probably-meaningless words about a new design philosophy in which they don't rely on single ridiculous cards that flip the table board control when they hit.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Omegonthesane wrote:Going into September they nerfed Eachtar, they nerfed BKB, they nerfed Sabreur. Also some probably-meaningless words about a new design philosophy in which they don't rely on single ridiculous cards that flip the table board control when they hit.
After having such success pre-nerfing Shadow and Haven going into the Bloodcopalypse and then looking extremely foolish, they then decided to pre-nerf Dragon and Haven coming out of the Bloodcopalypse and again looked very foolish.

Now they are nerfing all three Tier 1 decks at the same time despite none of them having an excessive playrate or winrate in order to pre-nerf them for the next environment. I... have lost all respect for the dev team. I don't think this will work and I'm legitimately offended they haven't even pretended to learn their lesson.

The number 1 overpowered card from this set is still Alice, and they aren't touching her. It's ridiculous. Blood has to go back to being Alice Blood because they literally do not have any playable 4 drops left. Midrange Shadow can just shrug and go back to being Aggro Shadow or swap to an Immortal Thane heavier lineup. Alice Rune honestly barely notices because Falise's enhance isn't why that deck is good. The key card is Witch of Sweets.

So yeah. Very good chance people are going to be able to salvage one or two of the current three Tier 1 decks and we'll go from a 3 deck balanced metagame to an unbalanced metagame. And there was no data used to justify this. At all.

This is honestly the last straw for me. I'd been bumming around playing Take 2 and doing Solo missions, but I don't think I'm even doing that any more. I need a new phone game.

-Username17
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

FrankTrollman wrote: The number 1 overpowered card from this set is still Alice, and they aren't touching her. It's ridiculous. Blood has to go back to being Alice Blood because they literally do not have any playable 4 drops left.
Aggro Blood is seriously looking at Demonic Strike in the 4 slot, but Vengeance Blood is perfectly happy to keep running Belphegor and swapping Dark General back into the BKB slot.
Midrange Shadow can just shrug and go back to being Aggro Shadow or swap to an Immortal Thane heavier lineup.
Not so sure about this. Now Eachtar gives you fewer, more necro-expensive zombies so he's much worse as a reset/board clear in longer grindier games, but Eachtar+Board==WIN is still true.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Yeah 3 out of 4 of those nerfs are unarguably "slap on the wrist" as opposed to "castrate". Sabreur is still "splat a weak thing and heal with stats", Eggtart still fills 3/5 of your board, Falise still has her headline abilities.

As for BKB, I used to use Demonic Strike in my RoB era Aggro Bat deck so I can totally see that slotting in for BKB offhand. (and hadn't even twigged that Vengeance Blood was using BKB to the exclusion of Dark General, but I miss a lot of details)

(And the subreddit has people claiming Spawn is still fine in Control Blood as well as people for whom this is what brought them back after Cthulhu In Wonderland.)
Up until now, we’ve tried to balance certain classes or strategies by designing strong cards. Unfortunately some of these cards ended up being stronger and more popular than anticipated. From our next card set (due to release at the end of September), we’ll be reexamining our previous design direction of creating extremely powerful cards to strengthen certain classes and strategies. But we will, however, continue to pursue a design direction of creating an environment for new deck archetypes to emerge.
Sounds like pretending to learn a lesson to me. Don't know which lesson but a lesson.

And Alice is power creep that every class can tap into, that plus being the figurehead of the expansion meant nerfing her was out of the question.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
DSMatticus
King
Posts: 5271
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:32 am

Post by DSMatticus »

Falise is a moderately painful nerf; enhanced Falise was the largest of the deck's few sources of reach. But they should have just fucking nerfed Alice; there is always going to be one deck that can complement the neutral Alice engine with reach and sustainability and that deck is always going to put up winrates somewhere between "high" and "too high" because Alice is still the best T1-T4 in the fucking game. Alice is individually broken as shit and neutral cards are not actually weaker than their craft-specific counterparts. As is, Alice is just going to rampage from craft to craft bringing nerfs in her wake, crying "I'm going to change the world!" as everything burns down behind her.

BKB is another stupid nerf where instead of fixing the card into something balanced but viable they're just trying to price it out of the strong decks that are currently using it. "Oh, you like that card huh? Sure would be a shame if something were to happen to your curve..."

The loss of Sabreur's face ping potential may be enough to get her cut from vengeance and carabat, but no one actually cares because she was never the reason those decks were good to begin with. This is an incredibly marginal nerf.

Eachtar's nerf is a great big fucking nothing. He is still 8 follower damage riding in on a 5/6 body on an empty board for the low, low cost of 7 orbs. If you have as little as two skeletons, that's 8 follower damage, 6 face damage, and the 5/6 body. The best way to think of the nerf is that back-to-back Eachtars give you 4 zombies for 16 shadows instead of 5 zombies for 15. Woopty-fucking-doo. Eachtar is going to destroy Shadow the way roach has destroyed Forest; he's so good the craft will never be allowed to have anything else nice ever. The only "good" news is that Eachtar is so single-handedly bullshit he will carry Shadow in a way roach could never carry forest.
Omegonthesane wrote:(and hadn't even twigged that Vengeance Blood was using BKB to the exclusion of Dark General, but I miss a lot of details)
It wasn't. Dark General and BKB (alongside Belphegor) are 3x in vengeance. BKB's a 2-3x in carabat. As for Sabreur, there are basically two versions of vengeance; the one that caps out at 5 (Airjammer) and the one that caps out at 7 (Emeralda). The one that caps at 7 usually runs 1-2x Sabreur. In carabat, Sabreur is a 2-3x.

I would not be surprised if the way things pan out is that decks cut Sabreur, run Knuckle in the Sabreur slot, and then use the empty Knuckle slot to pick up some of the crazy good 2-3 drops they couldn't fit before.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

So are the current good decks just AggroBats and Midrange Shadow ?

Or am I missing some?
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Tue Sep 05, 2017 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Josh_Kablack wrote:So are the current good decks just AggroBats and Midrange Shadow ?

Or am I missing some?
Post nerf Aggro Bats is Tier 2 alongside Nephthys. Midrange Shadow just isn't good anymore and is Tier 3 with a fifty/fifty winrate.

The Tier 1 decks are just Alicecraft. Alice Haven, Alice Rune, Alice Sword. Technically there are still three Tier 1 decks post nerf, but all three of them are just Alice running slightly different card drawing engines.

Nerfing all three Tier 1 decks just for lulz remains an incomprehensible decision.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

A new tier list

Neutral Haven at the topm that darn lion
https://manasurge.team/svtierlist/

Spoilers for the Starborn expansion have also been coming out.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Manasurge continues to be a bunch of crazy people. Specifically they give decks Tier 1 status fr having high playrates regardless of whether their winrates are good or not. This is especially atrocious for Ramp Dragon, because that's not actually a deck - it's a collection of different decks that have very different win conditions and very different mana curves but which are hard to tell apart because Dragon decks have very few identifiable archetype cards and there's no aggreement as to what nomenclature should be used to define Dragon archetypes.

Dragon is, overall, the second-worst performing craft. It beats out only Forest for lowest winrate. And it has no identifiable positive winrate archetypes. Seriously. Not even one. And it is in the bottom half by playrate as well, being more popular overall only than Forest and Haven. But "Ramp Dragon" is nonetheless the single most popular deck choice - because that's just the bucket that two out of three Dragon decks get put into because of the lack of aggreed upon nomenclature.

TL;DR: Ramp Dragon is not a deck. The multiple decks that are collectively labeled Ramp Dragon have noticeably negative winrates and are bad decks.. Depending on how you define Tiers, Ramp Dragon should be either "Tier 3" or "Meme Tier" or whatevers. The Manasurge hobos have that deck listed as Tier 1 because they are idiots who can't read a data set to save their lives.

In the real world there are exactly three decks in the Top Twenty by playrate that also have a winrate north of 53.5%: Alice Rune, Alice Haven, and Alice Sword. Calling anything else Tier 1 is retarded. Top Twenty decks with a winrate north of 51.5% are: Aggro Blood, Ambush Sword, Nephthys, and Aggro Sword. That's your Tier 2. Top Twenty decks with a winrate around fifty fifty are: Midrange Shadow, Vengeance Blood, OTK Forest, Aegis, and Alice Forest. That's your Tier 3.

It's a pretty shit meta, and Cygames made this happen by deliberately derp nerfing decks that weren't oppressive in winrate or playrate. Not once, but three fucking times in a row. The people in charge of their nerf cycle are fucking idiots, because they are crashing the game into the fucking sun.

-Username17
Mask_De_H
Duke
Posts: 1995
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:17 pm

Post by Mask_De_H »

Maybe Alice is someone on the dev team's waifu? :tongue:
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

What should a neutral card do to remain balanced and leave uniqueness for each faction
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

OgreBattle wrote:What should a neutral card do to remain balanced and leave uniqueness for each faction
I've only played the game a little, but generically a neutral card should be:

Slightly overpriced, to encourage use of faction cards first.
Incomparable (doing something nothing else exactly does) so that if you want that effect, slight overpayment is the only option.
and then either:
• Support for a broad style of strategy (e.g. aggro) so that it appeals to many decks,
or
Counter to a specific strategy (e.g. weenie swarm) so that all decks have access to it should that strategy become over-prominent.
Last edited by angelfromanotherpin on Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

Yep, that about describes everything I don't like about Alice decks.

Starforged Legends reveal chart
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowverse/co ... eal_chart/

Image
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

Okay, it's way early yet, but from those teasers, the Neutral cards are looking pretty strong.

The 6 cost 3/3 Aegis Counter is pretty specific, and two expansions late.

The 5-cost 5/5 would find a home in a fair number of midrange decks without any enhance effect.

Zodiac Demon is going to have a bunch of Shadowvraft combos -- but it remains to be seen if it can make Dark Alice decks viable.

It also looks like they remembered Commandercraft was a thing they were trying with this expansion -- they've already teased more Commanders than they had in Wonderland.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

wait, an Earth Sigil with an Earth Rite effect?

After Witch's Cauldron I would've liked to see some Earth Sigils where the Deathrattle Last Words are the headline of the package. Like a 3-drop sigil with "Last Words: Summon a Dragon" or something.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Mask_De_H wrote:Maybe Alice is someone on the dev team's waifu? :tongue:
Alice is the face of the expansion, and appears in promotional materials at the moment. She is absolutely bulletproof until Starforged comes out.

What I do not understand, is why they insist on nerfing non-problematic decks that aren't Alice. Eachtar's deck had a playrate of 12.9% and a winrate of 53.5%. That made it Tier 1 by the standards of the time, but those numbers are in no way unreasonable.
Omegon wrote:an Earth Sigil with an Earth Rite effect?
The Spyglass is an Earth Sigil that costs 1. But if you already have a dirt sigil you aren't using you can play the Spyglass and get your card back. Essentially it's a dirt sigil that cycles for 1 mana when you are sigil flooded. It'll make Dirt Rune more consistent, but it doesn't add anything to the ceiling of the deck.
Josh wrote:Zodiac Demon is going to have a bunch of Shadowvraft combos -- but it remains to be seen if it can make Dark Alice decks viable.
Zodiac Demon is just a trash mythic. He's a 7 mana Gryphon Knight who doesn't have on-curve stats. He's a Sahaquiel that gets +1/+1 in exchange for the creature you cheat out always dying, you having to attack at random, and not being allowed to use to cheat out followers costing 8+.

You could imagine scenarios where playing a 7-cost follower and then immediately suiciding it into an enemy would be what you wanted to do anyway - and obviously if one of your other cards is Zodiac Demon you'd be strictly better off playing Zodiac Demon and then sacrificing the other card. But you don't pack 7 cost followers in your deck for minor tempo play bullshit.

You could imagine a scenario where you had followers with sweet Last Words abilities and getting them killed off was kind of the point and you might as well get a 5/5 out of the deal. But Shadow already has that deck, it's called Nephthys, and it sure as fuck doesn't want a 7 cost follower with no Last Words abilities of its own to draw instead of Thane/Khawy.

The only deck that would want that card would be Dark Alice. And Dark Alice is sub-meme tier because that deck is fucking hot garbage. The problem with Dark Alice is that she has too many backlashes for you to effectively work around her limitations. She banishes all of the Shadowcraft Followers, Spells, and Amulets from your Hand, your Board, and your Deck. That means you can't use her for deck thinning because if she winnows a significant amount of your deck you lose too much value when she winnows your hand. You can't use her for last words synergies because when you double her with Urd she banishes her own copy. And it's all Banishment so you can't even use it for turbo-shadows. The devs were way too fucking cautious with Dark Alice and she will never have a viable deck in any format.

-Username17
Post Reply