The Metagame: a multi-purpose community project

[RootRanger]

The card ideas allowed into the game are limited, the cards that get nerfed are even fewer. Allmost nothing is banned from War, and none of the overpowered cards are banned from Leagues. In harsh times like these, the cards put into the game need to be anti-metagame cards; if not, Elements is just going to decline.

Fire is overpowered, or "complete". Whatever term you prefer. It's not just me, most of the good players have no doubt about it. And I really haven't seen anyone that can make a great argument against me. A couple other cards are overpowered as well. My list ends up looking like this:

Phoenix/Immolation
Fire Bolt
Graboid
Nova
Deflagration

Here are why these cards are overpowered (I'll edit this post each time I finish one of these).

The Phoenix + Immolation + Photon combo is extremely deadly with novas or a fire mark. Phoenix is an amazing card and only a couple creatures can match its strength. Phoenix is better than every single dragon in the game, which is unfair for Fire. It has a combination of a decent Attack:Cost ratio with very high resilience.

Phoenix has damage and resilience equal to Colossal Dragon with only 70% the cost. Phoenix has better resilience than Stone Dragon and only 1 less damage, but 3 less quanta cost. Phoenix has better resilience than Golden Dragon and 58% the cost to easily pay for the 3 worse damage. While Phoenix's damage and resilience is worse than that of Phase Dragon, Phoenix only has 54% the cost, making it the better choice. Phoenix has resilience just as good as the Colossal Dragon; both creatures can survive 3 Lightnings/Rage potions, or 2 Fire Bolts off of 20 quanta. Phoenix can also be killed by the user more easily if it is Antimattered or Frozen and revive, fully restored, something that Colossal Dragon cannot do. Phoenix possibly even has better resilience than the Stone and Golden Dragons. While it takes something like Infection more time to kill the Stone and Golden Dragons, common CC like Lighting and Rage Potion are much more effective on Stone or Golden Dragon. Phoenix can survive 2 Lightnings or Rage Potions, but Stone Dragon can only survive 1 before it is killed.

Phoenix easily beats the 6 Dragons with 10|5 or 9|6 stats. It can match or even have a better Attack:Cost ratio and much higher resilience. The 10|5 Dragons can't even survive a Lightning or Rage Potion, which are both very common. Phoenix can survive two and still have enough health to revive. Phoenix can beat the Attack:Cost ratios of 9|6 Dragons and has better resilience as well. The Dragons with 6 HP will die to a Fire Bolt off of 10 quanta or two hits from common CC cards: Lightning, Rage Potion, Shockwave, and a Fire Bolt off of <10 quanta. Phoenix can revive after taking 1-2 hits from these cards.

The only dragon that beats Phoenix's Attack:Cost Ratio is Crimson Dragon, but 3 hp with no ability is too frail for a 10-cost creature. Too many cards kill the Crimson Dragon for it to even compare to Phoenix, which is a much reliable and resilient choice with almost as much speed.

Just one dragon remains: Emerald Dragon. It is the only dragon that can match Phoenix's Attack:Cost ratio with good resilience as well. But Emerald Dragon is in an Element with no PC, no strong CC, and no Immolation. Phoenix has better resilience and better support, allowing it to be more easily used in a good deck.

It is normal for some cards to be stronger than others, for example, Phoenix being stronger than the Dragons. But what makes Phoenix overpowered is that it makes a perfect partner with Immolation. In a deck with 6 Immolations, 6 Phoenixes, and 6 Photons, Phoenix can be played on turn 1 more often than not. Any other deck with only 12 quanta sources will struggle to play a Dragon by turn 2, and often not even have a Dragon in play by turn 3. Immolation also gives 1 quanta of the other 11 Elements, which allows low cost cards such as Vampire Stiletto and Fog Shield to be splashed into an Immophoenix deck. Immolation gives Fire speed that no other Element can compare to. When it is combined with Phoenix, it becomes the fastest known unupgraded deck (source) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,17173.msg234266#msg234266) and also has resilience better than almost every other creature with its damage.

The Immolation Phoenix combo is in a tier of its own.

Firestall: Fire doesn't just have the best rush; it has the best stall due to three key cards: Fire Bolt, Rage Potion, and Fahrenheit. Since stalls cause games to last long, a stall deck will have a huge surplus of quanta late in the match. No other Element can match the damage per turn of a Fahrenheit without using something vulnerable to CC. Fire also has the best bolt. Since bolts are usually used for CC, damage is a top priority. Fire bolt does 50% more damage than the other two bolts, which is definitely more valuable than the secondary effects of Ice Bolt and Drain Life. Fire also has Rage Potion. The only damage based CC cards that can beat the speed of Rage Potion are Lightning and Shockwave, but Aether and Air don't have a Bolt or weapon that can become extremely powerful with a lot of quanta. In BL, I've seen Firestall more than any other stall, which is because the other stalls can't match Firestall.

Just look at its stats: 8 damage for 4 quanta and a one turn delay. Nothing in the game can match that. Graboid also has versatility. It can stay unburrowed or burrow (if it has already become a shrieker) if something like Maxwell's Demon or Owl's Eye comes in to play, threatening to kill it. Other attackers like GotP, Mummy, and Toadfish can't do this. Graboid is extremely powerful, and it's the main reason QP Grabbow dominated BL until Sanctuary and GotP came out. But Graboid is still an extremely strong card, and only one creature can match its strength (Phoenix).
Nova rainbows need fewer quanta producing cards than mono and duo decks. A Nova rainbow can work well with only 8-10 quanta producing cards, but monos and duos need 12-14. Nova rainbows can have a much more efficient Deck Size:Quanta card ratio and can have an advantage over a lot of decks that aren't hard counters. Grabbow was very common in BL 1/2011 and it's still a great deck, partly because Nova allows few quanta cards to be necessary. If you need evidence, I finished 2nd place in BL 1/2011 (with a better W/L ratio than 1st place) by using Nova based rainbows almost every single game.
Shields and Weapons are important in almost every deck. Most of them can be destroyed by Deflagration, and most Shields and Weapons have a cost higher than 2 quanta. A player that uses Deflagration can gain a quanta advantage over their opponent by destroying a weapon or shield with a much higher cost than Deflagration itself. Because it's very important to use Shields and Weapons, Deflagration is a useful choice in almost every deck that uses Fire, and sometimes Fire is even splashed into decks only because of Deflagration. It's useful in almost every deck and no other PC card can match its cost.

Cards like Skull Shield and Black Hole are bad examples of cards that should be made as anti-metagame cards. Skull Shield works against Immophoenix, but not against Firestall, and not very well against Grabbow. Black Hole is a decent card against Grabbow, but almost worthless against Firestall.

We need cards that are effective against most of the cards in my list. If you come up with an answer to Phoenix and Fire Bolt, don't make it weak to Deflagration. If you have an answer to Nova and Deflagration, don't make it fail against Fire Bolt. And lastly, don't make it overpowered itself. For example, Phoenix was created to counter heavy CC decks, but it became overpowered itself and solved nothing. If you need any help or clarification, just send me a PM.

[OldTrees]

We need to get more input on the Metagame Issues section. Both in the form of additions and in the form of corrections.

Disclaimer: I will need a more advanced pvper to doublecheck my estimations about the Metagame.
Warning: Some of the terms I use are unusual. I can try to explain any that you desire.
Disclaimer 2: I am biased towards using the addition of cards to solve problems.

Metagame Issues

Permanent Control
While permanent control is currently useful and decisive in the game it is not the only theoretical method to gain the same advantage. PC has two primary appeals, Evasion and Quanta Advantage. Evasion is the method of removing/negating/disabling/mitigating the opposing defenses so your offense is unhindered. Quanta Advantage comes either in the form of trading cheap PC for expensive permanents or through the destruction of pillars. Thus means of Evasion and Quanta Advantage should be spread though not necessarily as PC.

From a recent study on the completeness of the mono resources of each element I discovered that all elements except fire were deficient. This probably (almost certainly) is not the only reason for Fire's dominance. However it would give the other elements the tools to compete. Afterall, it is easier to add cards and nerf card than it is to remove cards and add replacements.

[EmeraldTiger]

Does everyone agree on what the issues are?

If no, then can we figure out what most think the issues are?

If yes, then can we be presented with a challenge or series of challenges that attempt to address the issues?

[The_Mormegil]

Added OldTree's take on the PC issue to the OP.

Does everyone agree on what the issues are?

If no, then can we figure out what most think the issues are?

If yes, then can we be presented with a challenge or series of challenges that attempt to address the issues?

The point of this thread is mainly to define what the true issues are. Some of these issues are not very controversial (for instance, practically everyone thinks something should be done on both PC and Fire issues). Some are more controversial. I'd like to understand what everybody thinks about them and if anyone has more issues to mention.

When this is done, we can think of some more applicative solutions as Idea Factory too, but analyzing the problem is still required. As OldTree said, we need to get a better picture of the actual metagame before trying to fix it. I made an attempt, but I'm sure there will be better ones if we manage to analyze the situation thoroughly.

[silux]

To balance number of cards per element:
   Pillar
    Weak attacker
    Mid attacker
    Dragon
    Weapon
    Shield low cost
    Shield high cost
    CCreature spell
    PC spell
    Elemental spell
    Alchemy spell
    Creature with an activated ability
    Creature with an activated ability duo
    Nymph
    Special attacker
    Special attacker2
    Use all quanta spell
    Special permanent1
    Special permanent2
    Pendolum
[/quote]
Fire has many of the cards listed above, but still lacks of many  kind of card.Aether and fire are the elements with less cards among all, but most of fire cards can do things that  are fobidden to many other elements.
I'm currently making a graph showing the differences between elements and kind of card

[ddevans96]

Modifying the list above. Feel free to reply if you disagree.

All elements, as I see them, have at least one of these:

Pillar (perm)
'Token' creature
Mid-range creature
Dragon (creature)
Weapon (perm)
Alchemy spell
Variant spell
Activated-ability creature
Duo creature (mummy and cat count here)
Nymph (creature)
Pendulum (perm)

The rest of the cards, as I see them, fit into one of these categories:

High-range creature
Low-cost shield
High-cost shield
Perm Control spell
Alternate damager
Use-all-quanta spell
Quanta-pump spell

Of course some cards can fit into multiple categories (for example the bolts are both alternate damagers and quanta-pump spells).

[OldTrees]

Be very careful such detailed categorization might dilute the differences between the Elements too much.

I prefer the broader brush strokes of wanting every Element to have competent:
Offensive Methods [Win condition]
Defensive Methods [Slow down the Opponent's Win condition by Removing,Negating,Disabling or Mitigating their Offensive Methods]
Evasion/CounterDefense [Be able to beat a counterdeck by Removing,Negating,Disabling or Mitigating their Defensive Methods]

These are the areas where Fire draws its advantage.

[The_Mormegil]

Be very careful such detailed categorization might dilute the differences between the Elements too much.

This is something I personally agree upon. The only "types of card" I feel every element should have are proficient cards (meaning "always useful" here) for each of the three broad cost categories: low-cost (1-3), medium cost (4-6), high cost (7-12). Dragons cover the latter, and most elements have additional high cost cards or pump spells. Many elements have low cost cards too, but I feel some of them are particularly lackluster in the "splashable" cards. In particular Darkness. Also, for the medium cost cards, I believe the best solution would be to have a good mid-range attacker. Some elements can live without it (or have a pretty weak one), thanks to awesome defensive support they already have: Aether and Entropy, for instance. Some elements really need one to be further rounded out (for instance, Gravity and Air). However, even adding a good midrange attacker to every element might be perceived as flattening the elements and producing a less varied game: I remember Higurashi commenting upon this once. It's difficult to try and force some "card types" upon all the elements without really affecting the varied charm of the game...

[silux]

More cards will be and better elements will be defined and be able to give more options to both deckbuilders and  card creators.
Most of cards are created by zanzarino and each one adds to his elements completely new abilities.
Now you can't think at aether without fractal, but that card was one of the most discussed in the forum.

Of course an element can lack of a kind of card, but should have concept or abilities that can supply to that lack.
Aether can survive a battle even if the opponent has 23creatures without the need of  a rain of fire because most of his creatures are untargetable and phase shield prevents all the damage.

However it's hard to decide what is missing without  graph. It's like describing a picture when you are blind-folded.

[OldTrees]

More cards will be and better elements will be defined and be able to give more options to both deckbuilders and  card creators.
Most of cards are created by zanzarino and each one adds to his elements completely new abilities.
Now you can't think at aether without fractal, but that card was one of the most discussed in the forum.

Of course an element can lack of a kind of card, but should have concept or abilities that can supply to that lack.
Aether can survive a battle even if the opponent has 23creatures without the need of  a rain of fire because most of his creatures are untargetable and phase shield prevents all the damage.

However it's hard to decide what is missing without  graph. It's like describing a picture when you are blind-folded.

Perhaps you are interested in this thread? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,30640.0.html
It is a discussion about mono completeness/deficiency and takes into account how both RoF and Dim Shield are defenses against Swarms.

[kirchj33]

There is one specific ability which I don't think has been discussed yet in this thread (I skimmed through most of it).

Flying:  I can tell you as master of earth, this is one hurdle that is difficult to deal with.  There are indeed other elements that have a hard time dealing with wings/lack of airborne creatures (entropy, life come to mind off hand), but earth has a particularly hard time with it because it is only a semi-complete element.  We have no great means of addressing the problem easily.  1.  Our dragons don't hit hard and are expensive.  2.  In order to run a pulvy to deal with it, you are then committing to gravity quanta generation and leaving yourself more easily exposed to other battle tactics by making this commitment.

This whole concept fits in with OldTrees broad discussion of a complete element.  Earth has to go to extremes to deal with this flying problem since it has no real in-element solutions.  Other elements have this problem in relation to other concepts (light has no pc or cc, gravity has no creatures with a favorable quanta/attack ratio unupped), but fire is much more "complete" in this sense.

Which leads me to the next discussion: league play.

I have largely participated in league play in the past because I feel it is absolutely essential if someone really wants to take their game to the next level as far as understanding pvp.  I started off last BL season in last place through the first couple of weeks and by the midway point I had worked by way up to 2nd at one point.  My problem with leagues is, in an environment where the sky is the limit creativity-wise, there is a real lack of creativity promoted.  If one gets too creative with their decks, they are only shooting themselves in the foot.  In Beginner's League, not everyone uses grabbows or firestall, but to make a deck that doesn't at least take these two decks into account as far as counters is a big mistake.  There then becomes a stigma that people using these decks are "noobs" and that they are playing unfair.  On a side note: for some reason grabbows have less of this stigma than firestalls do.  I ran out of motivation pretty quickly in BL to grind games in an unoriginal environment and ended up 5th.  I found that events and tournaments were much more enjoyable to me because they were generally crafted in a way that promoted thinking outside of the box.

I have joined CL this season, again, mostly for the learning experience.  I find CL to be more balanced in a way that there are more than two decks that dominate the meta, but I find that it is less balanced in that playing anything outside of 5 or 6 decks is again, shooting yourself in the foot.  CL decks are also so quick in that I notice a lot of times the game is decided as soon as the opening hands are drawn.  I am again, quickly losing the motivation to play them because I find other game modes to be more enjoyable.  I have literally already played three DBH rainbow mirror matches that resulted in the winner being determined by a cointoss because of the following mechanic:  Turn 1 - play QT, Turn 2 - wait for 2 quanta so you can Supernova, Turn 3 - play Supernova & Blackhole and win.

I would consider TStar to be the king of BL.  He takes an aggressive approach to firestalls and grabbows in chat in that he calls out their users and makes an example of them.  This seemed to have the effect that most people were scared to use at least firestalls by halfway through the season.  Myself included, I made a point to focus on countering these two decks as opposed to playing them about 4 weeks into the season.  My decks became categorized as the following (without getting into the specifics): Strong counters to grabbows - weak to firestalls, decent counters to both, and strong counters to firestalls - weak to grabbows/rushes.

I observed CL going through a similar transformation last season.  Jen-i dealt with it by crafting his decks so that he made sure to counter both firestalls and TADAbows.  xn0ize made his go-to deck (poisondial) so that he had a mathematical advantage at beating both.  I've now found that the decks consist more of hard counters to each, but are highly draw dependent.  CL is just a big guessing game at the moment, with the winners still tending to play "overpowered" decks that have consistent opening draws.  I am still intrigued enough to play a few games here and there, but my motivation has been much less than it was at the start of BL.  Tourneys/war/events are still king for me.

I would now like to take the discussion back to fire and "complete" elements themselves.  It is crucial to bring other elements into a more competitive situation with these elements.  Like OldTrees mentioned, this is best done by buffing general concepts within each element, without compromising the originality each style brings.  Random thought: death and entropy definitely have deficiencies, but death's powerful win condition and discord for entropy make them huge competitors.

In my opinion, firebolt needs a nerf in order to scale fire back some.  It has other awesome cards (immo, pheonix, rage pot, deflag), but it is firebolt's power and synergy with its weapon that make it such a huge threat.  If firebolt were to receive a nerf to 2 damage per 10 quanta, I feel 7-8 other elements would not have a problem competing.

End of TL;DR text.  I would really like to be able to go through some of the specific BL decks that are strong counters to the meta, but don't want to do players the disservice of releasing this information.

[The_Mormegil]

There is one specific ability which I don't think has been discussed yet in this thread (I skimmed through most of it).
Flying

I personally don't see this as a true issue compared to the Evasion issue introduced by OldTree. My point is as following: what beats Wings? Dragons, of course, and airborne creatures in general. But also Permanent Control and Momentum. Evasion of Shields in general. So, if you answer the general "PC problem" and introduce more PC cards, you should solve the Wings problem too. Say Air, Life, Gravity and Time obtain PC cards (random elements): you can the run Graboid Rush with PC, Gravity Duo with PC / Momentum, Life/Earth duo with PC, Air/Earth duo with PC... Wings is immediately much less of a problem because while Earth itself hasn't obtained a true answer (something that I feel is kind of thematically appropriate too), its deckbuilding options greatly increased to cover a lot more possible answers.

Which leads me to the next discussion: league play.

I don't fully understand the point you are making here. I suppose it is along the lines of "League play is boring because to be effective you are confined to the same old decks without true variation". I think the goal of this thread is exactly to provide ways to increase such variation and enhance the creativity of deckbuilding as opposed to having a limited Metagame.
However, the description you provided is certainly intresting enough to be added to the OP.

I would now like to take the discussion back to fire and "complete" elements themselves.  It is crucial to bring other elements into a more competitive situation with these elements.  Like OldTrees mentioned, this is best done by buffing general concepts within each element, without compromising the originality each style brings.  Random thought: death and entropy definitely have deficiencies, but death's powerful win condition and discord for entropy make them huge competitors.

In my opinion, firebolt needs a nerf in order to scale fire back some.  It has other awesome cards (immo, pheonix, rage pot, deflag), but it is firebolt's power and synergy with its weapon that make it such a huge threat.  If firebolt were to receive a nerf to 2 damage per 10 quanta, I feel 7-8 other elements would not have a problem competing.

You mention something important: death and entropy, while not being complete, have powerful enough cards and strategies to compensate and become truly competitive in the Metagame. This of course means a direct buff to some elements might produce similar effects. However, having strong cards and strategies is only half of a solution and, more importantly, could unbalance the game in another direction.

Regarding the Firebolt nerf: it seems clear by the absence of predominant Water stalls that 2 damages instead of 3 are a lot less powerful. However, the presence of Fahrenheit allows for strong predominance even after such a nerf: I doubt the firestall template would be annihilated. As such, I approve of this solution, although I doubt that the effects would be as mandatory as you put them, mainly due to the presence of other strong factors in firestall's power.