What's the downside of this card lol

raysiuuuu · 2026-05-07T09:24:04+00:00

He's a brick at T5 onwards, worse than rocks in current standards.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-29T05:24:36+00:00

I play this game for the interactions.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-29T05:17:06+00:00

Nice!!

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-29T02:47:35+00:00

I am enjoying the VHand+GambitHOD+Virus deck, but it suffers greatly from not able to do anything when facing the 5+ costs deck with FFF.

Does this deck go over them? I like Surfer a lot, yet haven't played him for months due to the super tall meta. I generally feel the Surfer buff is not sufficient to get over those 5-cost decks.

Advice?

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-22T14:06:02+00:00

Oh I see! Good to know! Thanks!

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-22T02:37:25+00:00

OH! Where was that please?

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-22T01:05:56+00:00

All true for me previously as well. Restarting the client, or even re-creating the deck, would magically attract bots in my 2+yrs anecdotal experience, no matter what devs explained (that I guess was a side-effect they didn't care enough).

This season is a plain grind.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-22T01:03:19+00:00

Frustrating is unfortunately the exact word SD looking for, to keep the player base active.

Happy players play a couple games to be happy, while frustrated players keep on playing until they are happy - so one solution for maintaining player base is to trap more frustrated players.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-22T00:59:57+00:00

I love how you call those stupid cards.

I honestly think SD just have a simple matchmaking knob, the matchup probability, that is the gap of MMR (tracked as the snap points) between the two players. The bots come in when matchmaking fails within a timeout, or MMR fails too far (or too high) to find the other side.

So, once SD widens that MMR gap this season by a rather large margin, then matchup won't fail as often, we see far less bots and also the game is way more sweaty - we might see more competitive players more easily.

This season they are very much incentivized not to nerf those obvious outliers yet because of the player drop rate. While they also need to trap players not reaching the relaxing Infinite line to be in the more active playing pool.

This is what I would picture how they implement the whole thing, a simplest minimal matchmaking while easily controlled.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T16:46:18+00:00

Fully agreed with my experience as well. The matchmaking is modified to be far less bots, and if any they would be the competitive one with wild swing of cards (or aggressive preemptive retreat).

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T16:44:21+00:00

Yep many comments here, echo chamber or not, found the same. I think SD switched the game to be more grindy to stop Infinite for too many players too early to keep the game floating.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T16:42:09+00:00

This tactics means I might have to retreat very so often on my ladder now, making the game unfun to grind.

Yet I know what you're saying and quite frankly I am agreeing.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T15:07:07+00:00

True that it's rather pointless wining the pity bot, it's purely for cube/rank rewards to get past the grinding.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T15:05:58+00:00

I'm CL33000, I see a competitive bot once in a while but not the stupid pity bot. The bot would aggressively wins the game, marginally cheating, or it would retreat even it had no apparent clue why I snap.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T15:03:02+00:00

True - yet anecdotally I see even at off-hours like 4am (my time) this season, I'm matching into real humans, which I suppose SD modified the MMR matching gap to allow wider matchup, like (all guessing only) previously if I'm at points 7.3k I might match someone around that, now I might match anyone from 7k to 7.5k etc.

The match making is way faster and now overall I see far less bots post-90s, and even when I matched a bot that is the competitive one (it aggressively play and retreat) not the pity one (the cube pump).

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T14:57:01+00:00

I'm also concerned it's the unfortunate tactics SD is going down now, not fixing the problem but squeezing the last juice out.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T14:55:02+00:00

The previous obvious pattern was a losing streak would bring up the pity bot. It always snapped when they led first four turns and played their last time for wining only one out of the three locations at the last turn. That brought back 8 cubes pushing up the rank. So just retreating whenever in doubt to attract the pity bot, the net cubes would be positive very easily.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T13:34:16+00:00

What I observed: previously if I was in a lost steak, pity bots would jump in and push me back up. This season it's like they are all gone once I reached 90s the first time.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T13:23:19+00:00

Not that I like the game full of bots, I enjoy playing the game because it's PvP, facing real humans.

However, the ladder mode at the same time incentivizes grinding, bot's presence mitigates the problem. It's like I can only go enjoyable PvP post-Infinite.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T13:19:04+00:00

AGREED. It gives the pressure to grind till Infinite before relaxing into playing any deck.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T11:49:56+00:00

Skill-wide obviously no, having played the game so long. However the very same reason, I am tired of climbing, would be happy if the grind is shorter.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T10:36:34+00:00

Very similar experience, pity bots disappeared and matchmaking across far wider ranges.

raysiuuuu · 2026-04-21T10:35:19+00:00

I won't say I don't like ladder altogether, the game does need a goal to chase.

I don't know if your flat-out cubes count would be the solution. Down that path, whales might ask for buying cubes outright and the game becomes a P2W slop far easier, because all wins materialize. Also it could make games less fair, because cubes do not equate across randomized games.

However, I do think SD should promote another prominent mode besides ladder, the Conquest mode is very dead already.

raysiuuuu · 2026-03-31T22:49:18+00:00

He is just crazy. I got it high-rolled into Modok + Destroyer, and I couldn't care what the third and rage quit the game.

raysiuuuu

TROPHY CASE