1
Akebono / Re: Oracle : Akebono
« on: August 24, 2011, 02:12:07 pm »Upped, for great justice~
*Whistles*
Guest Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by a guest. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Pages: [1]
2
Graviton / Re: Oracle : Graviton
« on: August 22, 2011, 04:30:27 pm »http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,24592.msg377887#msg377887 Rawr. Should've known TFO would post this after I brought it up in kong.Oh, that's where it came from heh, I completely agree with the -shockwave, + thunderbolt. I went back and playtested it some more. Decided to bump the # of explosions up to 4 due to the length of the games and the fact that early game titan spells doom if you can't draw explodes in time. Also swapped a chaos power for heavy armor to boost the draw %. I'm a little unsure of the -druidic staff + arsenic, but it's worked out so far and I do think the extra speed the arsenic gives outweighs the healing from the staff.
I like some of the changes you made modifying for Graviton, although 2X Thunderbolt > Shockwave, oty/charger can take a shockwave and 2is more than acceptable. Good call with towers > pends - you have to eat a lot vs Graviton. The tips you made are handy - deck is very fun to play i'd definitely recommend it
.
I've updated my previous post with the changes.
My win/loss ratio with this thing has been around 2:1. Not exactly a perfect counter, but at least you win more than you lose
3
The Arena / Re: Oh no! The Oracle gave me a bad card!
« on: August 18, 2011, 11:23:42 pm »I'd love to see a nymph deck that worked really well.Pretty easy to do do with golden nymphs
4
General Discussion / Re: Elements Nymph Count
« on: August 18, 2011, 01:30:34 am »
+ 
and 
back to back o__o
new total: 
and back to back o__onew total:
5
General Discussion / Re: Elements Nymph Count
« on: August 12, 2011, 10:23:24 pm »
+1 here too, for a total of
here too, for a total of
8
The Arena / Re: Gold League oracleBow: how to be better than mediocre without trying
« on: July 21, 2011, 02:08:12 am »
Eh, I think you're way overreacting. This deck is slow to start and prone to bad draws. A well-tuned deck built around the oracle card will easily outperform this, and there are already plenty of those archived in the arena section if people want to copy decks.
This deck isn't that popular in the arena either. Fire rush seems to be the flavour of the now, and if you go count all the time marks in the leaderboard (gold league), you'll notice there really aren't that many (given the generous assumption that all time marks = oraclebow, which is definitely not the case).
This deck isn't that popular in the arena either. Fire rush seems to be the flavour of the now, and if you go count all the time marks in the leaderboard (gold league), you'll notice there really aren't that many (given the generous assumption that all time marks = oraclebow, which is definitely not the case).
9
Graviton / Re: Oracle : Graviton
« on: July 19, 2011, 07:49:34 am »That deck idea is nomtastic
Buff 1 Scarab and start chewing on his creatures before he can get rushy. Order to eat: Otyugh>Charger>Firemaster>Armagio. The lone Gravity Force is to either use on one of his creatures to bring it to chewing level or to lure away to another scarab in case he gets 1 of his 2 Gravity Forces
I made a few changes to it after some time testing it in the trainer. I think this version is a bit more stable:
Getting familiar with it in the trainer is highly recommended. There are all sorts of weird little combos to pull off depending on your draws, and many times winning will depend on whether or not you can make the right decision.
2 buff scarabs is enough to keep up with his creatures if he didn't get a huge headstart. Be smart about it when you play your 3rd scarab. You don't want to trigger his firestorm if it will take away your field control. Sometimes he will firestorm with less than 3 scarabs out. It seems to be when he gets to around 110 hp (maybe 120 hp trigger like Gemini?).
Your healing sucks, so keeping his damage down is always priority #1. I usually eat chargers and firemasters before otys. Often, you'll have to skip eating otys entirely and save your gravity quanta for the damage dealers. For this reason, it's usually a bad idea to play extra scarabs if you can't buff them.
The thunderbolts are for elite chargers when you're really low on gravity quanta, or when he's spamming creatures and you can't eat them fast enough. In select cases they may be used to bolt creatures down to nomming level if your scarab is small and you're absolutely desperate to raise its hp.
If your superstar scarab gets grav pulled and you need to keep it alive, priortize eating unmomentumed firemasters. Consider doing it in advance if you only have 1 fat scarab on the field. Provided it doesn't come out early game, grav pull isn't as devastating as you might think. It's actually kind of rare for a buff scarab to die to pull when you have the field under control.
Early game titans should be exploded as soon as possible. The damage is just too much for you to keep up. Mid-game you can sometimes explode his shield before his titan if you have his field cleared of damage and have enough hp to tank the titan till victory. If you're in doubt, go for the permanent he doesn't have backup copies of (he only has 2 shields and 2 titans).
If he has no otys on the field early game, play your first scarab unbuffed. This will draw out a gravity pull if he has one and save you from wasting a heavy armor. You need to wait a turn anyways before your scarab can start eating.
The scarabs may be left unupped without lowering your win % too much.
10
The Arena / Re: Proposed Arena Changes
« on: July 17, 2011, 10:37:52 pm »
I'm personally fine with the arena as it is so far. It's been in for only a month or so and the metagame is still shifting as people come out with new counter decks and become more acquainted with how the AI handles cards. Because the decks are all player driven, it's hard to say whether or not the metagame will ever even stabillize. Placing bans and restrictions based on arena experiences after such a short time is a terrible idea imho.
Opposing element combos aren't that common in the first place, and are definitely not overused right now. Rainbows will work around it easily enough for most of the elements chosen. It'll just be a huge screwover for a specific selection of cards/strategies while leaving others untouched.
how about this. whatever card the oracle spins, you are not allowed to include cards of the "enemy" element. its a minor enough restriction, but should breed some more creativity.First things that came to my mind were steam machines and scarabs
Opposing element combos aren't that common in the first place, and are definitely not overused right now. Rainbows will work around it easily enough for most of the elements chosen. It'll just be a huge screwover for a specific selection of cards/strategies while leaving others untouched.
11
The Arena / Re: Disparity of outcomes?
« on: July 11, 2011, 02:40:53 am »
Thanks, I've been lurking for a while here, just never felt the urge to post until now
Yes, the player will always be smarter, which is why arena decks are allowed the FG-like advantages as a handicap, and which is why you'll have to build your decks for the AI. Generally, don't expect the AI to hold any cards for combos, and knowing their targeting priorities is always good. Throw your deck in the trainer and play against it. Does the AI do what you expect it to do? I've had a deck idea tank because of that; the AI prioritized fractalling arctic octupi before pufferfish, screwing up my intended win condition
Your deck will only lose lots and drop out IF you let people beat you. Gold league still has some very meh decks along with the mean decks. The whole point of the ranking system is to weed out the weak and keep the strong. Decks dropping in rank has to do with a combination of people submitting new decks, and the deck itself losing too much compared to the average. When decks are tied with the same rating, they are arranged by age. Older decks will be ranked higher than younger decks with the same rating. If you want to keep your deck in the top 500, the answer is to build a strong enough deck that defeats most of its challengers. Because of the way ratings work, the more new decks submitted each day, the higher your W-L ratio needs to be to stay above the inrush of newcomers. Also, the only way to get into the top ranks of a league is to not submit a new deck each day, as no matter how good a deck's W-L ratio is, it'll never build up enough rating in one day to reach the top.
Test play a few popular decks against your deck, use the trainer if you have to (I know the level 6 AI is stronger than gold league, and it auto-ups your cards for you, but usually it's close enough to find out if the AI behaves well or not. You can tweak the quanta balance and such afterward). If your deck consistently gets beaten, then find out why and fix it. Remember, you don't have to account for all counter decks, if your deck can rip through the majority of deck styles you throw at it (rush, control, stall, hope, creatureless, etc.), then it should be robust enough to survive in gold until people come up with new farm decks. That's the fun of arena though, think of it as an arms race between the farmers and the deck builders
Yes, the player will always be smarter, which is why arena decks are allowed the FG-like advantages as a handicap, and which is why you'll have to build your decks for the AI. Generally, don't expect the AI to hold any cards for combos, and knowing their targeting priorities is always good. Throw your deck in the trainer and play against it. Does the AI do what you expect it to do? I've had a deck idea tank because of that; the AI prioritized fractalling arctic octupi before pufferfish, screwing up my intended win condition
Your deck will only lose lots and drop out IF you let people beat you. Gold league still has some very meh decks along with the mean decks. The whole point of the ranking system is to weed out the weak and keep the strong. Decks dropping in rank has to do with a combination of people submitting new decks, and the deck itself losing too much compared to the average. When decks are tied with the same rating, they are arranged by age. Older decks will be ranked higher than younger decks with the same rating. If you want to keep your deck in the top 500, the answer is to build a strong enough deck that defeats most of its challengers. Because of the way ratings work, the more new decks submitted each day, the higher your W-L ratio needs to be to stay above the inrush of newcomers. Also, the only way to get into the top ranks of a league is to not submit a new deck each day, as no matter how good a deck's W-L ratio is, it'll never build up enough rating in one day to reach the top.
Test play a few popular decks against your deck, use the trainer if you have to (I know the level 6 AI is stronger than gold league, and it auto-ups your cards for you, but usually it's close enough to find out if the AI behaves well or not. You can tweak the quanta balance and such afterward). If your deck consistently gets beaten, then find out why and fix it. Remember, you don't have to account for all counter decks, if your deck can rip through the majority of deck styles you throw at it (rush, control, stall, hope, creatureless, etc.), then it should be robust enough to survive in gold until people come up with new farm decks. That's the fun of arena though, think of it as an arms race between the farmers and the deck builders
12
The Arena / Re: Disparity of outcomes?
« on: July 10, 2011, 09:05:07 pm »
It sounds like you're worried about your lack of upped cards significantly affecting your ranking in gold. It's really not that big of an issue if you spend some time thinking about your deck. Some cards have huge gaps between upped and unupped forms, and some have very little. Being in gold league also means you can afford both 200hp and double draw, which greatly overwhelms not having upped cards if you build it right.
You did say you have little experience playing a lot of cards, which is probably the biggest reason you're finding it hard to build a successful deck. The best arena decks see oracle cards as an integral part of their win condition, not random cards that you shuffle in and hope they don't get in the way. Some cards are definitely sub-par to others (my oracle today was protect artifact...I'm sticking with my dragons kthx), but a good deck can remain effective for at least 5 days with full hp boost, giving you some time to wait for another good oracle card.
If you're lacking experience with cards, maybe start by reading up on your oracle card of the day? There are also lots of archived decks in this forum that lay out their win condition and explain their strategies nicely. Get familiar with the classic strategies, and soon enough you'll be able to come up with your own.
My current deck in gold is a duo with 10 upped cards, and it's 9-1 and rank 110 at 1 day old. I've built 4 decks for gold league so far, including 1 for a friend, and I've never found it hard to stay in the top half of the rankings. I think most people are still slowly getting the hang of AI stupidity and trying to do too many things at once/making decks that are simply too slow. It will get harder to stay in the rankings as time passes, but atm high ranking in gold isn't as hard as you make it out to sound with a proper deck, upped or not.
You did say you have little experience playing a lot of cards, which is probably the biggest reason you're finding it hard to build a successful deck. The best arena decks see oracle cards as an integral part of their win condition, not random cards that you shuffle in and hope they don't get in the way. Some cards are definitely sub-par to others (my oracle today was protect artifact...I'm sticking with my dragons kthx), but a good deck can remain effective for at least 5 days with full hp boost, giving you some time to wait for another good oracle card.
If you're lacking experience with cards, maybe start by reading up on your oracle card of the day? There are also lots of archived decks in this forum that lay out their win condition and explain their strategies nicely. Get familiar with the classic strategies, and soon enough you'll be able to come up with your own.
My current deck in gold is a duo with 10 upped cards, and it's 9-1 and rank 110 at 1 day old. I've built 4 decks for gold league so far, including 1 for a friend, and I've never found it hard to stay in the top half of the rankings. I think most people are still slowly getting the hang of AI stupidity and trying to do too many things at once/making decks that are simply too slow. It will get harder to stay in the rankings as time passes, but atm high ranking in gold isn't as hard as you make it out to sound with a proper deck, upped or not.
Pages: [1]