4th Trials - Phase 1 - Proving of Worthiness

[ddevans96]

Wow not being able to take screenshots is seriously gonna screw me up for Task 1

Download a snipping program.

[johannhowitzer]

I disagree on principle with Task I.  A Master's (and therefore a General's) duties are to support the community and help their team prevail in War.  I don't see Task I being representative of either... which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't very prone to RNG problems.  Because of the advantages afforded Arena decks, this is the equivalent of asking us to defeat six consecutive False Gods with the same deck three times - using a decktype that is uncommon or original - and due to the rock/paper/scissors nature of this game and blind matchups, winning six times in a row against the odds is quite a feat, but not one that represents Master-like skill.  I rarely go six-in-a-row with my FG rainbow, mono-Aether, or RoL/Hope, but that's not a good indication of my skill or even my deckbuilding prowess.

Last Trials, we had to form decks and then grind with them against AI5 in order to provide statistics, which would be helpful to the community, in particular newbies - in many cases it provided the community with a new deck and statistics to show it's one that you can thrive with.  This Trials, we're just supposed to show that our decks can go the six-in-a-row at least once in a week?  That's not helpful to the community, and since it's a bit of a shot in the dark, don't be surprised if half the challengers bow out at the end of the week due to not having gotten lucky in the Arena.  Why not have us collect statistics again?  We could give TTW on specific Arena tiers, or even average-rings-before-a-loss.

I'll do it, I signed up and I intend to follow through... but I'm curious to know why this task in particular was chosen.  It seems almost arbitrary.

[kev]

I disagree on principle with Task I.

I appreciate the feedback.  Task I hasn't really ever spoken to a Master's duties but rather his qualifications.  Historically participants have been asked to use their element to beat AI5, FGs, and the like.  Here participants have been asked to use their element to beat Arena opponents.  Providing ttw statistics over 40 games was a good idea for last Trials but truthfully nothing really meaningful came out of that task because 40 games is far too small a sample.  ttw statistics in the Arena would be even less meaningful.

I'm hearing a lot of frustration in chat, but I remember vividly similar frustration from the previous two Trials that ultimately turned to satisfaction.  It seems to me that some frustration is over the "tried and true" rule.  I've commented on it several times but I'll try to clarify it one more time.  I'm nonplussed by some decks that have been submitted, but none so far have appeared in the ttw study and I've been unable to find extremely similar decks on the forum.  I won't eliminate such decks but I expect everyone will remember candidate choices when voting on the player that's best fit to be Master during phase 3.  I would hesitate to vote for a fire candidate who took a deck extremely similar to v2, a well-known and heavily tested grinder.  Lastly, originality of ideas will be considered when I look to distribute bonus points.

Hope this helps.

[johannhowitzer]

Task I hasn't really ever spoken to a Master's duties but rather his qualifications.

Aren't his "qualifications" just a measure of his ability to perform his duties?  This is circular.

Providing ttw statistics over 40 games was a good idea for last Trials but truthfully nothing really meaningful came out of that task because 40 games is far too small a sample.

I disagree.  Examination of permutations such as are possible with the number of cards this game involves mandates first taking smaller samples of many possibilities, in order to develop "leads" - candidates that look promising.  In other words, last Trials' Task I laid the foundation into investigation of several decks built on every element.  And 40 isn't as small as you might think... many decks showed promise against AI5, with a consistency that one would expect to continue in a longer study.  We may not have narrowed our statistics down to the hundreds place, but we got a pretty decent ballpark on a large variety of decks.

Now you have me curious about the frustration from the last two Trials; I don't remember any part of Phase 1 last time around that would provoke something like what you're describing.  Was it the ttw study?

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Isn't this feedback and suggestions?

Either way, I have to agree this arena stuff is more frustrating than ttw. I think I got about 20 losses during the ttw, now I've already gotten at least 200 (tarnishing my wonderful win/loss ratio ;_;). But the deck did succeed in the end. It's just "slightly" (ahum) hard to beat hard counters with twice your hp and/or draw.

[MrBlonde]

Definitely agree with Torb here. Some elements are going to have a really really tough time beating this challenge. Lots of frustration from my side anyhow. This definitely is the hardest deck challenge i've had so far.

[LongDono]

I have gotten 3/4 rings filled now SEVEN times and failed the 4th match each time. *cries*
Then I need silver and bronze...... *sigh*
Maybe before a challenge is given someone should run through the challenge to see how possible it is for the next trials???

[Higurashi]

Gold was impossible to win 4 in a row for my deck. The best I got was 2/4 after hours of trying. But the thing is, I rushed Platinum pretty quickly long before that. Some days, the deck pool in different leagues is horrible for some decks, so you can try your luck in different ones, or even on different days.

[LongDono]

Gold was impossible to win 4 in a row for my deck. The best I got was 2/4 after hours of trying. But the thing is, I rushed Platinum pretty quickly long before that. Some days, the deck pool in different leagues is horrible for some decks, so you can try your luck in different ones, or even on different days.

Yeah i know what you mean. I got uber lucky today. 4 rings on Gold, and now I am about to post my 5 on silver. Bronze should be cake. (Was down to less than 5 HP in 3 of the silver games. O.O How did I pull this off? )

[willng3]

Heh. I spent over 10 hours on decks to beat Platinum yesterday, messed around some more this morning for about an hour and then decided to take a rush against Gold and breezed right through on the first try.  Arena really is fickle; I hate to think of how my rage went to waste yesterday looking back.

[Bonestorm]

Arena really is fickle

Can't describe how true this is

I tried my hand at the arena part of the trial just for fun under the death trialist rules, took me about 1 hour to do platinum with the deck and about 40mins for the rest (silver&bronze). Just seems as though it's largely about avoiding those truely nasty decks on any sort of decent draw.

Atleast all the effort people are putting in to make a capable deck and carry out the task (especially if it was difficult with whatever element/whatever card restrictions that player had) will show people how much you cared/committed yourself to get through it come the voting phase.

Anyway, I had fun doing the task I of the trials, I'll probably choose another element to have a whack at it with over the next day or so.

P.s. Over 10 Hours is pretty intense, insane props to anyone who has had to work this hard.

[pikachufan2164]

Time spent trying to chain three wins: 20 hours and counting -_-"

Two hours later: got lucky against Gold and Silver, semi-struggled against Dim Shield chains in Bronze, but finally finished.