Hey, been a lurker for a long time, finally decided to start posting.
I've been at this game for a little over year now, only about 1450 or so games though, as I only have time to play 3 to 6 games a day.
Over the past year I've noticed the uncreative trend in elements players too... but I've noticed something else too.
Basically the collective 'prefered deck' happens, then it changes within a few weeks. When I started, sundial was recently nerfed, mono fire was constantly being played, then it seemed everyone started doing was shrieker decks with earthquake/quicksand, so then it seemd countered with speedbow decks featuring immoliation/phoenix then , then frog decks... oh god everyone played shrieker and frog decks, then aether decks, then shadow decks, then Golem decks, then nightmare...
I think the point is made, the pvp was always counter/recounter.
The reason I think is there are two few types/ability/and number of cards per element still, and just a few card adjustments completely change how games are played, and that is where the the speedbow rush with blackholes that everyone is playing come in. What you are seeing is the effect of the shard war. So, far it's really hurt delay and deck out decks and somewhat hurt mono decks. Divinity and gratitude were nerfed, readiness buffed, void whose sole purpose seems to be to overcoming the delay and the other two aren't that useful. Result: speedbow. Look at the upcoming shard, speedbow will only be further buffed. I think the developers are aware that the game balance was lost in this last round of updates, they started having people vote in the arena if a deck had any creativity in it, my hope is the developers will see this and respond with the rest of the shards in the shard war accordingly. Until then, I've been staying away from pvp, just doing level 4 and periodically FG grinding adding cards to my collection in general, until next month or two comes along and hopefully the balance is restored.
My suggestion hang in there, it happens sometimes, not a single CCG or Strategy game has not been subject to this, Magic the Gathering had a lot of rough runs, with the first being lotus/channel/fireball 1 turn kill back in the day, WCIII when first launched was all demonhunter/huntress rush, rush all but the undead and win in 5 minutes, if undead stop by the shop and pick up a wand of devastation (I think that was it's name) and wait a bit for the necromancers, proceed to pwn. That was until the first couple patches. Depth is hard to achieve until you see how everyone plays the game. Elements even though being around for a while has a long way to go but so far they haven't stumbled too hard.
