think about how long it takes the oracleBow to viably kill someone? Yeah it gets a pretty good lock early, but it is one darn slow deck across the finish line. 2 acellerated armagios get up to 50 damage a piece per turn. It seems totally feasible to be able to get them out and win 14-18 turns later. The CC in the oracle bow doesn't really punish this kind of set up. I realize that "hard counters" to the oracleBow may take a while to work out, and I hope we find some that aren't dependant on 3 ultra rares. But clearly some decks are working against it because it surely doesn't win all the time. I suspect rainbow rushes or upped immo-nova rushes work well as they can clog the oracleBows hands with PC while there are no targets for it... slowing it's draw and killing it before it can stack enough regen.
And 200 upgrades in 2 months is so far past average in this game. I have been playing on and off for over a year and have less than 100 upgraded cards. Which is one of the important reasons behind this deck... it is an FG level deck with <10 upgraded cards in it. I know I can't reliably build decks around random cards that can win. I tried 3 times and failed because people are bringing full upped decks against mediocre decks without upgrades. When I spun cards that fit into good decks I ran them (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,28144.msg384891#msg384891 (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,28144.msg384891#msg384891)), but if I get a card I can't realistically build around with what I have, then this is a viable fall-back. If the arena was just about "look we play against player made decks" then I probably would make crazy fun or annoying decks... but the arena is also "look I build a deck and it farms for me", and to that end, why not make sure I am optimizing that aspect of the game?
How did I make my situation better? Well, by posting this I probably didn't... but the spirit of the EtG forums is when you discover something effective or useful you share it. Look CCYB is a good deck, look IGT has a really high FG win rate, grabbow and psnbow are solid pvp1 options. We don't expect every player that wanders across elements to reinvent everything useful, so we post it here to share that knowledge so others can learn from more than trial and error - community knowledge. The arena has been implemented, and I swear I am not the only person that got a card and was like "how the heck do I use this?" or "man I thought that deck would work but it went 0-4, I thought this thing was supposed to help me, not just make me frustrated and sad". I know the top members and active members seem pretty upset because they farm the arena more than the arena farms for them, but for someone with few upgrades but higher score... I hope the arena farms for me. I play mostly against silver league because I haven't worked out decks with a good win rate vs gold or plat. The arena isn't supposed to be set up so anyone can farm any league... if it takes ultra rares to farm platinum, that seems pretty legit to me... if it takes full upped well thought out decks to farm gold... yeah, it shouldn't be easy to beat player made FGs, whether they are immo rushes or rainbow control or spiders N wings or whatever.
The arena is still new, its meta is still being developed, there are lots of questions about if changes will be made to what is legal... they already raised the minimum card limit. Shards may get axed. QTs may get axed (unlikely though). I know a lot of people were looking for something new and challenging... and the arena is. We've both made and seen innovative decks. We've both lost games and went "really they can do THAT with THAT?" I know people are worried that oracleBows will take over the arena.. but it is every person who puts up a decks choice: Do I want to make something up? Do I have the cards to make this work? If I start farming here and play my own deck 2 or 3 times will it make me want to quit? Do I think of this deck as my deck that I built that I want to crush its opponents or is this a deck I want people to go "oh, that's neat" as they play against it? The arena is an asynchronous pvp experience. When I pvp, I want a deck I expect to win most of the time against most possible matchups, how should my arena deck be different?
When I build decks for the weekend tourneys, I don't go "oh that looks interesting I hope it works" and get smashed in round 1 by some mode of a deck in the pvp archive (no wait that totally happened my first tourney). I go look at the archive, think about what people will likely run and build a deck at least has a chance vs immo-nova rush and firestall. And when people build tourney winning decks we all want to see them, and we use them as reference points when we build decks. Yeah, most of us still try our hand at innovation... and sometimes "joke decks" win matches, and someone at some point in the past invented the decks that are now "the standard". But usually when people "get serious" the same decks show up over and over, modded slightly to taste or personal experience... the legendary "power" bows that "no one knows what's in it but me". And being secretive about it has advantages, but it doesn't benefit the community.
This oracleBow is my "arena" powerBow. It wins 75%+, it makes me money, and instead of hiding it away so that no one else could know... I posted it here. Everyone can see it, what it has, how it works. People can use it if they want, people can build counters to it if they want. It will slowly change and evolve if certain things become serious obstacles... but look, it's right here. You can say it discourages creativity, but that is up to the people that see it. They can copy paste the code, just like people can copy paste codes and go into pvp1 or pvp2 or BL or when they farm anything. Or they can be creative, mod this deck, rework this deck, make their own deck. I understand why people are reacting differently to this specific instance, and I agree that it is SUPER LAME that this works. But it works, and people should have access to what works in the arena just as much as to what works anywhere else in this game.
