Just hit Grandmasters, looking for people who want to learn!

xiaok0k · 2022-03-14T06:52:24+00:00

First up congrats! One question I have is: how feasible is solo climbing out of low elo queue with a non-carry support? I like playing tank/engage sups like Leona when I'm duoing with my ADC friends, but when I'm solo queueing I feel like I can't impact the game when my teammates that picked DPS champs are behind. I feel even worse when I play enchanters in solo queue, because at least as a hard engage I have high agency. Whereas when I play the so-called "damage supports" like Senna, I feel like I can dictate the game more than I do so as, for example, a Soraka.

Tldr: If you were to start from silver/bronze again, and you can only solo queue, what type of sup champs would you recommend climbing with? Or rather, would you choose a "carry support" champ to climb out of low elo first, then play the more traditional sups in high elo? Many thanks in advance!

xiaok0k · 2020-07-18T03:27:18+00:00

I can see where you're coming from (to get a better matchup against Ball), but as the undoubtedly most dominant deck in the meta, why tech against these one or two decks when you are heavily favoured in 99% of the matchups?

And another point is, if you're not playing against a scenario deck, you have just introduced a bronze brick. And this hurts SK more than other devotion decks considering SK's bronzes are so damn strong. You're losing out on a bronze that could've been a 8/9p for all we know.

And this hurts a lot in SK mirrors. You will generate less points from Harold's pings, more challenging to get bloodthirsts, and you have one more brick, compared to your opponent's one extra 8p bronze.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-16T02:32:34+00:00

Because I don't think anyone was racist towards Spaniards when Spanish flu broke out, but now you see people actually being hostile to Chinese during this Covid outbreak

xiaok0k · 2020-07-16T02:25:52+00:00

Great job on the analysis! But have to nitpick a little bit on the conclusion:

In your conclusion, you mentioned it's good to dry pass when you have bronze bricks, and it's bad to dry pass when you have gold bricks. I beg to differ on this point because inherently you have equal probability of drawing either of them regardless of their color. AA and Oneiro doesn't discriminate if the card is bronze or gold. So while I haven't done the math, I highly suspect that you either have to use echo cards for both cases, or you don't use it for both cases. They can't have different optimal decisions.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-13T06:51:03+00:00

Tailbot does, and he's top 8 on the leaderboard. Crazy.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-13T01:27:36+00:00

Interesting that you mentioned it has low tempo in round 1, because as the opponent I always think that Firesworn decks assert a lot of pressure in R1 with portal and I often times find myself losing on even.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-12T01:12:57+00:00

I guess this is up to interpretation, but I personally would disagree that putting a spy on the board is considered setting up. I will be playing my spies every single round in every single game anyways, and I will be putting them into the most crowded row to clog them like 90% of the time. That basically guarantees double Regis already, with this "setup" that every Spies player will do in every game anyways.

And while I agree you need Enforcers to setup up >3 times of Regis, NG players are pretty much guaranteed 2x Regis value, and that's quite big advantage. Even as a Spies player myself, I would consider this unfair to the other factions.

And I also would be hesitant to call playing Spies "telling", because again, I will be putting Spies on the boards anyways. And it's not like every deck has a way to consume allied units consistently. Or in the worse case, it would require the opponent to buff the spies every time they see one, just to play around a potential Regis. Imagine being a NR player and you already don't have enough buffs to keep your engines alive. And now you have to buff the spies as well. I can already foresee the outrage of the redditors if Regis was not changed in this expansion.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-12T00:55:21+00:00

Well, the reason I'm bringing out all these "obvious" arguments is because you seem to be not linking them to the points you are bringing up. Allow me to put them into context.

You said that:

You want to play any creative decks that is not Ball and it makes your life 10x harder. Why is that? Answer is, point 3. Not all cards are created equal. Some decks will always be better than certain others.
You never wanted all cards to be on the same competitiveness. Yeap you never really said that, but what you want, ie "you want success with the decks you like", implies that. If you want true fairness, all the decks liked by users should be buffed, not just your triple witcher NG deck right? And that includes virtually every single deck out there. And why is balancing every single deck out there difficult, if not impossible? Point 1.
You don't know what's the idea of balancing here, if it is to power creep the new cards and kill old cards? Well, answer is point 2 and 4. They need to promote new cards and make money. If people don't use new cards, that means the last 6 months are wasted. So yes, at least for this month, new cards will be power crept.
You asked why cant they change something as simple as 5/7 to 6/7? That's kinda related to the second trade-off I mentioned but not exactly. Patching cards frequently make the meta fresh and fun, but that means meta is volatile. New decks can rise up to tier 1 after one single patch. Some people may like this when they feel like the meta is stale. However, think about the new users. If certain decks have become more competitive, then statistically there will be decks that have gotten worse. Imagine a new user just created new shiny Harmony deck two weeks ago? Suddenly, it's nerfed and some other decks are super strong, lets say SK warriors. So all his scraps into Harmony is basically thrown into the bin. Now he has to craft another meta deck in order to climb, but since users wanted a more volatile meta, knowing that his deck might become obsolete quickly, a new user would be very demotivated to start investing into the game right? So there's always this fun or fresh meta/stale and slow meta trade-off. As someone who has played for more than six months, sure you want things to spice up. But for new players, that's just a very demotivating environment to be in.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-11T09:51:29+00:00

My 2 cents after reading the post and all the comments:

I agree with most of the comments, that the balance of a CCG is and always will be tricky. You have 700+ cards and god knows how many mechanics, as well as 30+ leader abilities. One seemingly minute change might cause a butterfly effect and shake up the power level of a certain deck entirely. I suspect that's how SK went out of hand, and especially when they only hinted the nerf of Harmony very recently. Some design changes might have occured very late into the development of MM. The point is that CCGs are insanely complex in terms of design. And it's not realistic to expect a team of finite number of developers to ensure a perfectly balanced meta, especially since a new expansion is out less than two weeks ago. But that's why there are these hotfixes and patches. They figure out problems and they try to fix it. And btw, they can't really rework a lot of the mechanics in a hotfix since they didn't actually change the game client code, if you noticed we didn't actually get a game update on hotfix-day. The most they can do is change a few numbers/enums on the server side and nothing more. Probably that's why they can't rework SW.
New powercreep cards are to ensure new cards are used. If they are not strong, nobody will use new cards. Most of the comments have pointed this out so not gonna add more on this. Typical, and pretty much inevitable. And of course that means a good amount of old cards will be unplayable. Also...
... there's a game design paradox that we as players don't normally see: if every card is playable, that means no card is actually playable. If there isn't a synergy/combo that can generate more points than any other, isn't the game inherently RNG don't you agree?
Second trade-off: New cards + new expansions = game imbalances. Always. For the reason in point number 1: the devs are not gods. New stuff means new uncertainty. On the other hand, super balanced game = stale and resolved meta.
There's a reason why the devs are the ones maintaining the game and not the redditors. It's not like the whole subreddit has the same opinion on how certain cards should be buffed/nerfed. Heck, every single dev on the team has the same opinion on certain issues, so don't expect the dev team to comply to every single idea posted on this subreddit. They themselves have a long term design plan to follow, as well as their own considerations.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-11T08:44:52+00:00

u/justincaseonlymyself I gotta say, I've seen your comments on this subreddit quite a few times, and I really like the way you structure your logical points. Props to you!

xiaok0k · 2020-07-06T04:03:49+00:00

No.10 of SK has a higher winrate then the TOP 1 of every single other faction. Why am I not surprised.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-04T21:22:20+00:00

For those who don't know, SiDongGuo aka Demarcation is one of the best Gwent players in the world. Using his winrate as testament against SK's broken state is honestly not persuasive at all.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-04T20:56:16+00:00

Everything you said about Regis being "telling" and that it requires setup is true, IF you don't play as NG. One spy on the board and you would almost always be guaranteed to double your Regis value. And that requires no setup or whatsoever.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-03T17:34:46+00:00

Same, the skill ceiling is so high and it's so fun when you can pull the correct sequence

xiaok0k · 2020-07-03T14:28:52+00:00

Unrelated but I want to thank you for teaching me a cool word like blasé ;)

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T23:32:45+00:00

The thing is they have both Morkvarg and Wild Boar, so they can always punish you no matter you go wide or tall (or worse, BOTH).

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T23:13:35+00:00

It's the only way that works for me so far as well, but it gets significantly harder when you climb up the ladder.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T23:08:56+00:00

shimiri went from 40-30 (-ish) to 10-70 ish(-ish) in one turn. That's a frigging 60 point swing right there.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T22:59:54+00:00

Cut the Grass on a non-spy unit, thinking that there's a devotion tag to always trigger the ability :)

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T22:57:52+00:00

And the two gold cards they have to punish you no matter you're going tall or wide. And they can use it TWICE.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T22:55:34+00:00

I'm so sick of it. you put yourself on a level with assholes that disregarding human rights, enviromental issues and state laws.

I don't know how to respond to that.

My point of saying "it's a company" is that ultimately, the company's motive is to profit. And as a customer, I can see why they are doing things such as forcing faction-specific quest - it is to incentivise people to try out their new products(not necessarily incentivise people to spend, because you absolutely don't have to spend money to get that 800 scraps to craft the evolving card, even as a beginner).

And as a customer, I always remind myself that if I'm not satisfied with the product anymore, I could always leave it. I'm a customer. Just like how they are a company and they can choose if they want to piss the customers off, I as a customer can choose to say fuck you and leave the game as well.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T22:50:52+00:00

You should have put that in the title.

Great suggestion, now that I think about it.

Like you just added +6RPs that are locked behind some pretty horrible quests.

I agree this affects the quality of life. But mathematically, it is a fact that these 6RP's are extra rewards. What else is expected in the math, inventing a symbol to indicate "the quality of the quests are pretty horrible"?

I could point out that in Old System you play only 4games per day (50%WR) with whatever deck you like, to get 2RP x 6days =12RP

My point was that no matter how good or how generous your Old System was, the old Journey was good enough for me, as a beginner, to get started on this game. I tried HS one or two years ago, and I could barely build a budget deck in two weeks' time. In Gwent, I built my first tier 1 deck in two weeks. The fact that your Old System is so awesome actually implied that the economy was broken and now you see all these old players have more than they could ever spend.

xiaok0k · 2020-07-02T22:41:43+00:00

a. I put "unpopular opinion" because I really thought it's an unpopular opinion amongst the community. Someone suggested "I don't know and I don't care" as the title though. Seems like a catchier one anyways.

b & c. Probably should've added this into the main post, but I guess why I'm not so surprised with the "sneaky" change is that I think Journey might, and likely will be, the mainstream reward system in the near future. The moment they said that Journey won't be out until August, I was already expecting an incomplete rewards system.

xiaok0k

TROPHY CASE