Card Usage Statistics

[Bloodshadow]

As someone said before, if all elements have 40 or more cards, then mono decks will be much more viable, and rainbow decks won't be able to use all those 480 cards from all elements.

It's true that every new card in the game strengthens rainbow decks. However, there is only so much cards you can pack into a rainbow, so as more and more cards are added, the boost to rainbow decks will be less and less significant.

[prion]

i think that all these statistics wont be useful until pvp wont be fixed. right now it say only that people play against the gods and only rainbow can beat the gods. first fix pvp (desync bug, ranking, more rewards) and just than nerf cards, if they are too strong in pvp. i mean it is just senseless to nerf hourglass and firefly queen because they are used in rainbow while the normal FFQ deck and Time decks are not too dominant at all.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

i think that all these statistics wont be useful until pvp wont be fixed. right now it say only that people play against the gods and only rainbow can beat the gods. first fix pvp (desync bug, ranking, more rewards) and just than nerf cards, if they are too strong in pvp. i mean it is just senseless to nerf hourglass and firefly queen because they are used in rainbow while the normal FFQ deck and Time decks are not too dominant at all.

Quite surprised no one else thought of this. I completely agree. Balancing should be based on player against player aspects, instead of player against computer, since it really doesn't matter how we play against the computer, anyways.

[Xinef]

It's true that every new card in the game strengthens rainbow decks. However, there is only so much cards you can pack into a rainbow, so as more and more cards are added, the boost to rainbow decks will be less and less significant.

I wouldn't agree... if you add cards that work poorly with rainbow, but great in mono/duo, then rainbows in fact become weaker (relatively) than mono/duo decks.
For example take a look at the addition of fractal. Due to it's high cost I suppose a rainbow will use at most 1, and due to the fact it gives you a number of creatures costing the same element, using it on creatures with a cost of more than 2 quanta wouldn't be a good idea. Generally rainbows have a very limited use for fractal in comparison with mono aether and duo decks. On the other hand imagine Gemini using fractals instead of twin universe. He could fractal recluses and massive dragons. This would give him a huge advantage, especially if AI was designed to use it effectively (keep 1 recluse in hand in case of a RoF for example). In fact the addition of fractal (if FG decks are changed to include it) might decrease the effectiveness of rainbows against FG.
Add a few more cards of this type (I guess thorn shield also might have this effect) and rainbows in fact become much weaker against FG, and this also creates many possible mono/duo anti-rainbow PvP decks. Don't you think both fractal and a thorn shield would be great in anti-rainbow?

[Clathius]

I am not sure I am following this logic that more cards means monodecks will become better. 

It is not the decks or the cards that dictate this.   FGs have an inherent card and quantum advantage.    The *only* decks that are going to be able to defeat a variety of FGs are control/denial decks.   If you want to win vs FG, you need creature control, permanent control, massive healing, the ability to counter controls by the FG and some ability to do 200 damage.

Unless the individual elements all gain these abilities, you will never be able able to have mono FG decks.   And if all those abilities are given to each element there will be no distinction between the elements. 

I am actually chuckling at this idea of nerfing cards that are popular.
-Dev makes AI opponents which can literally only be tackled with 1 deck type.
-Statistics confirm there is 1 deck type.
-Dev proposes nerfing popular cards because they must be overpowered...

[Xinef]

In fact there are mono decks ( , but I heard about and too ) that can be used against FG, just with much lower winning percentage than a rainbow. I never used these though...

New cards generally offer new capabilities to elements. For example hope gives a good defense it lacked before (miracle was a sort of defensive spell, but not enough to make a viable mono against FG)
Now has butterfly effect, so it has both creature and permanent control...
gained a viable creature control in a form of thorn shield...

And I like these changes. In my opinion every element should have some kind of creature control and permanent control, especially because these are very broad terms, there are already very different kinds of creature control and each suiting it's element.
The harder question is if every element should have access to healing. Right now there are SoGs, but still some elements are good at EM and some are not. For me it's hard to tell if it is just and balanced - in fact and suit very well with healing, while I can't imagine a good reason to give healing ... though if someone has a good idea how to give each element a way to heal itself while making it still different for each one, I guess it should be so. Earth has stone skin for example - a perfect example of how healing can be different.

So I think it is possible to give each element a kind of control needed to face FG... it only needs a bunch of good ideas how to make it different for each element and suiting it's theme.

Though there is one thing that concerns me... permanent and creature protection. Against FG it seems necessary - they can play creatures twice as fast as you, while still removing all your creatures and permanents... so every element should have a way to protect it's creatures and permanents, but right now only and have it ( and have some indestructible permanents though), and I guess it would be really hard to design 12 different ways to protect creatures and permanents. If there were no gravity pulls, firebolts, icebolts and drain lifes I would consider guardian angels healing and rewind a way to protect creatures, but with these spells even 8 or 10 hp is low against a FG...

I have an idea of creature/permanent protection for (through making cards destroyed by opponent reappear in your deck), but no one has commented on it yet (probably due to much more interesting events like v.1.20 and 1.21 happening in the meantime )... and I guess that idea would require a lot of balancing so that it cannot be abused... and I see a problem with it, that it still needs a PA on that one permanent to make it work, so maybe that permanent should be made immaterial, but this would make it OP probably...
( http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3939.msg43160#msg43160 )

[bigreen69]

i believe that the only thing that mono needs is perm control and ceature controll.  with the addition of butterfly effect i can see this will slowly become true for each element.  as these aspects are added to each individual element there will be more mono god killers.

show me a mono that has higher winning % against the gods than rainbow and i'll switch

[xiongwen8]

Some have suggested giving each elements creature control and permanent control. Keep in mind that we still want to maintain a theme for every element (fire=destruction, life=vitality, etc.). Giving each element creature and permanent control might not live up to their individual style (e.g. giving life creature and permanent control) and would be quite redundant. However, I do admit that many creative ways of creature control already exists in many elements (e.g. fallen elf, reverse time, gravity pull, etc.), so the main issue could be more to do with permanent control. Forgive me if my opinion sounds nutty, it is just a personal standpoint.

[Lex]

I can imagine giving life a permament control in form of "target permament loses its abilities and becomes a 1/1 creature"

It will suit life's theme very well.

[Bloodshadow]

Only rainbow decks can potentially beat all the FGs. To make mono and dual decks more popular, there should be more Oracle-like things where it predicts the next FG you meet. That way it encourages people to design decks that specifically counters some FGs, instead of forcing them to use rainbows to counter all FGs.

[Xinef]

I can imagine giving life a permament control in form of "target permament loses its abilities and becomes a 1/1 creature"

It will suit life's theme very well.

A very good idea, though make it X/X where X is the cost of target permanent. This way you will think a bit longer before changing that permafrost into 7/7 creature (though it would still be worth doing - usually has a lot of low damage creatures, so permafrost usually blocks more than 7 damage)

As for Bloodshadows suggestion, although I am pretty sure it would make mono/duo more popular than rainbow it would cause a number of new problems. First - FG would be too easy, if you make a counter-deck (eg. reflective shield against octane) against most false gods your winning percentage would be around 80-90% I guess... maybe 70% unupped. The second problem I see is that people would need to have a lot of cards from all the elements to make counter decks... though I guess it wouldn't be that bad of a problem. Beginner should not be able to fight FG, so they will need to at least gather some cards before going for FG, and it would only shift importance from upgrading cards to gathering different cards (now, that we have deck saving it would be a reasonable solution). The only remaining problem would be that people will have to switch mark all the time and generally if you have your favorite element, you will rarely have an opportunity to use it (while boosting mono-decks would on the other hand allow everyone to fight FG with their favorite element while keeping a reasonable winning percentage, let's say 50% upped, ~30% unupped).

[arzoo]

What it comes down to is that, as of right now, playing mono, or even certain duos, completely removes certain options (card draw being a HUGE one). It's understandable that different elements should have different strengths, but right now it's not a matter of strengths and weaknesses, but simply whether or not you have a certain type of ability  AT ALL. Unfortunately the only real solution is more cards; as was mentioned earlier, the problem is that compared to other TCGs in elements each element has a pathetic selection of cards.