Should Poison Prevent Elemental Mastery?

[midg3333]

Honestly, if you don't like the way your deck is working out, change deck. SoG's used to be really rare before half the top50 decks used 6 of them per deck, and back when they were rare, those mono decks would never even have a chance at EM. Now you're complaining about how poison, which isn't all that common in a deck, makes it harder for someone with a bunch of rare cards with healing capabilities to get EM. That is a pretty rare situation you're talking about and you're hoping it gets 'fixed' by changing around the order of events in a turn. Just use something else to heal, or be happy without elemental mastery.

[TheMonolith]

Look, this isn't about MY deck at all, and I'm not looking to improve MY situation.  I constantly get this reaction on these forums from people whose answer is always 'just build a rainbow deck'.

What I want is to make healing more consistent across the elements. 

My proposal is to simply rearrange the order of events within a turn so that all healing occurs together, and all damage occurs together.  Thus, the spirit of the game is maintained. 

And I strongly disagree that EM is not that big a deal.  ONE EM vs. a L5 or FG is worth about 10 regular victories vs. L3 or T50.  In a game which now almost completely relies on farming/grinding to be able to compete, that is quite significant.

[Wisemage]

I am pretty sure its been proven getting EM also increases your odds at the slots.

[PuppyChow]

First off, lol @ EM improving slot chances. It doesn't .

And I strongly disagree that EM is not that big a deal.  ONE EM vs. a L5 or FG is worth about 10 regular victories vs. L3 or T50.  In a game which now almost completely relies on farming/grinding to be able to compete, that is quite significant.

And one card won from a FG is equivalent to about 100 regular victories vs. L3 or T50.

Makes those 10 regular ones seem pretty negligible, eh?

You should not get 2x reward just because you happened to have a weapon out, happened to not do enough damage during creature/spell phase, and happen to do enough damage with your weapon to kill.

Part of being a master is being manipulative, no? I commonly get EM against FGs with poison by manipulating the damage I'm doing and adding it up so that my weapon deals the final blow.

It isn't luck. It isn't random. It's a skill that you should learn.

[Delreich]

My proposal is to simply rearrange the order of events within a turn so that all healing occurs together, and all damage occurs together.  Thus, the spirit of the game is maintained.

Moving poison damage to the receiver's turn instead of just before the dealer's critters attack makes them occur together? I don't see it.

If you include spells in that, there's no way to do it, as you can play a bolt followed by a heal followed by another bolt and it's broken.
If you don't include spells, why should poison damage be moved? As it is, it's dealt just before critters attack. Doesn't get any more "together" than that.
And I don't see what this has to do with "the spirit of the game". Currently all critters act first, then all permanents act. That's a much easier distinction to make.

And I strongly disagree that EM is not that big a deal.  ONE EM vs. a L5 or FG is worth about 10 regular victories vs. L3 or T50.

Please, at least try to keep it honest.
The difference between EM and almost-EM is at most 60 electrum. That's 4-5 lvl3 wins with a speed deck (5 minutes tops).
For lvl5 it's 40 electrum, or about 3 lvl3 games. In other words, nothing.


<insert puppychow's post here>

[midg3333]

Also, different healing cards are more effective for different situations. Healing spells are obviously good for when you want one last burst of healing to increase your winnings, or for when you need just that extra bit of health to survive. Empathic bond is good for healing large amounts over multiple turns, for long drawn-out games where you have lots of creatures. It can be good for elemental masteries, but at the same time you have to make sure you get the timing right with it (so that you actually get to full health before you kill them, instead of killing them halfway through your attack step). Shards of gratitude are great for quick games because of their low cost. They are the best form of healing available in terms of getting elemental mastery by decking the opponent out (or killing them with a weapon, if you have a sundial out to stop your creatures from finishing the enemy off). As you can see, i have just brushed on some of the possible situations you could find yourself in. Different forms of healing have different advantages and disadvantages.

Now look at it this way: say all healing were to happen at the same time (maybe you get all your bond heals, permanent heals, and card heals before creatures start attacking, but after you press space to end your turn). Now cards like the life "heal" are pretty much useless because you could just use a few shards of gratitude to get the same effect every turn. Empathic bonds become even better for EM's. Now the healing cards would need to be balanced in some other way. Maybe your shards would heal less, maybe the heal card would heal more, maybe empathic bond will cost more...who knows? but that then creates more and more programming tasks, changing the game mechanics around (and possibly modifying AI to react to the changes more effectively) for what is currently an almost insignificant issue, if it can even be called an issue.

Yes, i can see that this makes it harder to get EM on a mono-deck, but mono-decks are meant to be specialized, and the only colours with good healing capabilities are life, light and darkness (and earth, kind of with stone skin or whatever it's called, but that doesn't affect masteries). Other mono-decks have other advantages such as immortality, better defensive capabilities, better offensive capabilities, etc. Some decks just weren't made for EM victories.