193
Auction Archive / Re: RootRanger (Aether, Fire, Life)
« on: September 21, 2011, 11:03:16 am »
Rootenant, Strootegist... bwahahahahahahaha!
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194
Auction Archive / Re: RavingRabbid (Gravity, TBD, Fire)
« on: September 21, 2011, 11:01:03 am »
I also noticed you took 
off your ban list. Double hmmm...
off your ban list. Double hmmm...
195
Deck Help / Re: jmdt's uber deck thread of awesomeness
« on: September 21, 2011, 02:25:19 am »
I can haz Big M autograf?
196
Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: The Metagame: a multi-purpose community project
« on: September 20, 2011, 06:25:40 pm »
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.
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.
197
General Discussion / Re: Fire Stall's Status in the Metagame
« on: September 20, 2011, 02:25:00 pm »Yeah, I had been keeping an eye on that thread. Mostly because it is very interesting to see what people feel are the strongest decktypes that run the meta. I will comment there as well.I just think firebolt needs a nerf. It would probably make the entire element really close to being balanced. How is this accomplished? No idea. Until then, people will continue to display their public nudity.May I point you to this here discussion? (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,30797.0.html) I'd be eager to know your opinions and add your comments to the thread.
198
General Discussion / Re: Fire Stall's Status in the Metagame
« on: September 20, 2011, 03:25:03 am »
I just think firebolt needs a nerf. It would probably make the entire element really close to being balanced. How is this accomplished? No idea. Until then, people will continue to display their public nudity.
199
Farming Studies and Statistics / Re: FG Efficiency Study - Applying statistics to all of the myths
« on: September 19, 2011, 10:04:34 pm »
Stats updated. Looking forward to seeing what everything looks like with skips. Lets get 500 games on Fast-Draw Ghostal so we can see what it looks like with skips as well 
200
General Discussion / Re: FG Efficiency Study - Applying statistics to all of the myths
« on: September 19, 2011, 10:04:34 pm »
Stats updated. Looking forward to seeing what everything looks like with skips. Lets get 500 games on Fast-Draw Ghostal so we can see what it looks like with skips as well
202
War Archive / Re: War #4 Rules
« on: September 18, 2011, 08:19:03 pm »Like I said in chat, the numbers people have been posting here are wrong and not all variables have been considered. We'll take another look into starting Vault size, but I can say with 100% certainty that the "UW auto-win" is very far from the truth.I can only assume this means the 48-48-42 games played you mentioned in rounds 1-3. In order to give more clear numbers I will run a detailed simulation using the new rules for war 4, but using battle results from war 3. I will also ignore any vault penalties since these will assumed to be ironed out with the new system, but penalties for activity will be included. I will also include any event modifiers in this simulation. Also, I will have to assume an average starting vault of 375 for simulation purposes.
After Round 1:
| Element | Total in vault | Duels (48) | W | L | M | |
 | 362 | 8 | 6 | 2 | -1 | |
| 350 | 8 | 6 | 2 | -13 | |
 | 331 | 8 | 5 | 3 | -2 | |
 | 324 | 8 | 5 | 3 | -9 | |
 | 0 | 0 | ||||
 | 316 | 8 | 5 | 3 | -17 | |
 | 295 | 8 | 4 | 4 | -8 | |
 | 273 | 8 | 3 | 5 | ||
 | 291 | 8 | 4 | 4 | -12 | |
| 273 | 8 | 3 | 5 | ||
 | 266 | 8 | 3 | 5 | -7 | |
 | 260 | 8 | 3 | 5 | -13 | |
 | 202 | 8 | 1 | 7 | -11 |
As a result, I removed a battle of
vs. , which won. I also removed a hypothetical match which didn't occur between and .After Round 2:
| Element | Total in vault | Duels (48) | W | L | M | |
| 356 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 6 | |
| 260 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 12 | |
| 288 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 6 | |
| 255 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 6 | |
| 0 | 0 | ||||
| 213 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 12 | |
| 207 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 6 | |
| 259 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ||
| 220 | 8 | 4 | 4 | -3 | |
| 248 | 8 | 3 | 5 | ||
| 152 | 7 | 2 | 5 | ||
| 208 | 8 | 3 | 5 | -6 | |
| 82 | 6 | 1 | 5 | -6 |
| PENALTIES Replacement Player -6 |
After Round 3:
| Element | Total in vault | Duels (48) | W | L | M | |
| 272 | 0 | ||||
| 261 | 7 | 6 | 1 | -6 | |
| 195 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | |
| 215 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | |
| 214 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | |
| 314 | 8 | 5 | 3 | ||
| 246 | 8 | 5 | 3 | ||
| 122 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 6 | |
| 142 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 6 | |
| 143 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 3 | |
| 121 | 6 | 2 | 4 | -3 | |
| 31 | 2 | 0 | 2 | -3 | |
| 78 | 6 | 1 | 5 | -15 |
| PENALTIES Replacement Player -6 Inactivity Penalty -12 Replacement Player -6 |
- 8 - 8 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 4 - 3 - 3 - 2 - 1Only 2 other teams would hypothetically qualify for 8 matches besides UW in round 4. If this is how the rules were intended to play out, then so be it. I just wanted to put the information out there since there was some question as to whether or not realistic numbers were being simulated. This should give a good idea of how war vaults will be manipulated. Again, if there is additional unreleased information that intends to address vault sizes and matchups differently, then so be it. This is the rules sections and many of us are assuming this is how the rules will play out, just as explained.
203
War Archive / Re: War #4 Rules
« on: September 18, 2011, 04:33:17 pm »Torb's quick math doesn't take into account propaganda bonuses, event cards or penalties, which, in the past have weighed heavier on the side of penalties. The point is, if the average team spends 25 cards on the auction and has an average performance, they are looking at a vault size of 400-25-216= 159 for the AVERAGE team before penalties etc..UW would need at least 264 cards to field all 8 players.I'm just trying to figure out where & when UW comes into this whole deal. With 24 card discards some teams will be decimated quickly.UW will join War at the start of round 4.
By round 4, teams will have lost an average of 3x(4x24-4x6)=216 cards. Even if players could be bought from the propaganda bonus (while they're more expensive) that would give UW an advantage of at least 80 cards over the average team. On top of that, their vault will be completely unknown when they enter the war. Are we trying to get UW to win this war? o:
Conclusion, UW is heavily favored to win.
Edit: Reworked the auction numbers to 25 since auction prices will likely be lower this time around.
204
War Archive / Re: War #4 Rules
« on: September 18, 2011, 02:38:45 pm »
I'm just trying to figure out where & when UW comes into this whole deal. With 24 card discards some teams will be decimated quickly.