The time has come for the waves to settle, as our battles conclude, and our tears are shed.
Phase 1, I cannot say I completed. My work was far from satisfactory, however, I hope that everyone can tell that, in each and every one of my posts, that I strive to help, guide, and learn.
Phase 2, a folly of head-to-head comparisons, was where I rose above my opponents. But can I truly say that I was supported through my ingenuity? No, I cannot, for the tide was clearly turned to my favor, and the current that brought me there was the very same as the whirlpools that cruelly kept my companions stranded.
The time has come for the waves to settle, as we trudge along this muddy road, knocking from door to door outside where the rain pours and soaks and drenches ... but we pay no heed to the rain, for we are one with the rain.
The time has come for you to vote. Welcome to the Water Trials.
Welcome to Phase 3.It is not strange for you to be curious of my identity. I am patchx94, also known as aznkid66, and I had my first experience handling Water during the 3rd War, where General RavingRabbid himself, along with Lieutenant nilsieboy, TikoTribe, Bootzsa, vinvick3714, Jappert, The dictator... Where we all demonstrated the power of Water. From my very first step into our secret Team Chat, I felt at home. Whenever I look back to what I was before War #3, I feel the true magnitude of how much I've grown ... how much knowledge I've received. Until then, water cards seemed like an element to splash, with its needlessly repeatable-ability weapon, its low damage-to-cost dragon, its inability to rush with only one creature that had a damage-to-cost ratio greater than one, and its creatures' heavy reliance on second elements. Only now, after falling in love with Water, do I realize its true potential.
But enough about me. After all, this Phase isn't about me. Phase 1 was about my faith in myself. Phase 2 was about my faith in my decks.
Phase 3 is about my faith in you.As the charismatic Kamina says to Simon, "
Just believe in yourself! Not in the Simon that I believe in, not in the Kamina that you believe in, have faith in the Simon... that believes in you!" That's right, I'm not asking you to just vote for me just because I want you to, and I'm not just asking you to vote for me because of what I think. I'm asking you to vote for who you
know is the best. May the best candidate win.
Q&A:
Q: “True or False: Water is CURRENTLY the weakest element because most of its creatures/spells rely on other elements in order to have a true effect in battles. Explain your reasoning if you agree or disagree with the statement.”
False. Now, I could tell you about a poor element that has basically no defense against reverse time, or I can point out a flaw in your reasoning.
If we added 20 weak duo-reliant Fire creatures, it wouldn't make Fire the weakest element. The thing is that Water has plenty of good cards. In a duo-less environment, Congeal is great for 4 turns of respite against any high-hp creature, and it barely puts a dent in your quanta. Mindflayer, Blue Crawler, and most definitely Toadfish are good, low-cost cards. Ice Dragon, with 9 damage and a hefty 6 hp, is a beautiful and reliable beat-stick. Ice Bolt, although weaker than Fire Bolt, can be combined with the cheaper cards in Water as shown (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,12691) Permafrost is one of the most devastating shield against non-momentum'd PC-less decks. Although you can't use many of the creatures' "true effects" (although I'd rather call them "supplementary effects"), the fact of the matter is that they still have plenty of good effects in a mono environment, plenty of good decks, and plenty of surprises to catch people unprepared.
And why is a mono environment so important, anyways? There are many non-mono decks where water is a strong contributor, you can't say that the water does nothing. In an air mark Toadfish deck, is Toadfish not the star player? Doesn't this prove the capability of Water? This supposed weakness can also be a strength. As Water's meta-game is balanced towards integration with other elements, to mono-focused players Water will seem week. However, the game allows all kinds of decks, and elements balanced in the other direction, where mixing with others usually causes a loss of efficiency, are more predictable since they technically have a smaller card pool.
In conclusion, since Water decks can be made without the use of supplementary, duo-reliant effects, Water is still strong in the mono environment. In addition, the mono environment isn't a true representation of the actual meta-game, so nothing can be concluded from saying one element can't make mono decks.Sorry, I'm not an expert at War, since I was new last War. I'm not entirely sure on how the vault works, and I have little to no experience in the War meta-game. As for the previous War, I didn't participate nor follow it, so I don't know exactly how the two previous Wars are different from each other, and I am even less qualified to give judgment on the individual Team Water members. I'll try to get back to this if I have enough time to snoop around the old War threads.
Do you see the element water best in liquid form, gas or ice?
Explain.
Optimally, I always see water in all forms, so I can't discern between them. Water droplets are everywhere, clumping above us in the form of clouds, surrounding us in rain and snow, and pelting us with hail.
If I had to choose one, I'd pick ice, because being solid means that you are immovable, ice takes up more volume, and my favorite effect in the game is the ability to freeze things, which is perfectly supplied by Arctic Squid, Freeze, Ice Shield, and Ice Bolt.
It is generally accepted that Water is one of the weaker PvP elements. What balancing measures do you think would help make water more competitive? Is there a buff to an existing card you think would help with balance? Perhaps a new card? (You don't need to design a new card to answer obviously but a suggestion of what it might look like would be great) Something else?
I am not looking to make Water over-powered but rather to address a perceived imbalance with this element. If you don't think the imbalance exists then perhaps you could say why you think so?
Taken from my answer to Kuroaitou's first question, not because I'm too lazy to generate new ideas, but because I believe that it fully addresses your question and I don't want to be redundant:
The thing is that Water has plenty of good cards. In a duo-less environment, Congeal is great for 4 turns of respite against any high-hp creature, and it barely puts a dent in your quanta. Mindflayer, Blue Crawler, and most definitely Toadfish are good, low-cost cards. Ice Dragon, with 9 damage and a hefty 6 hp, is a beautiful and reliable beat-stick. Ice Bolt, although weaker than Fire Bolt, can be combined with the cheaper cards in Water as shown (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,12691) Permafrost is one of the most devastating shield against non-momentum'd PC-less decks. Although you can't use many of the creatures' "true effects" (although I'd rather call them "supplementary effects"), the fact of the matter is that they still have plenty of good effects in a mono environment, plenty of good decks, and plenty of surprises to catch people unprepared.
And why is a mono environment so important, anyways? There are many non-mono decks where water is a strong contributor, you can't say that the water does nothing. In an air mark Toadfish deck, is Toadfish not the star player? Doesn't this prove the capability of Water? This supposed weakness can also be a strength. As Water's meta-game is balanced towards integration with other elements, to mono-focused players Water will seem week. However, the game allows all kinds of decks, and elements balanced in the other direction, where mixing with others usually causes a loss of efficiency, are more predictable since they technically have a smaller card pool.
In conclusion, since Water decks can be made without the use of supplementary, duo-reliant effects, Water is still strong in the mono environment. In addition, the mono environment isn't a true representation of the actual meta-game, so nothing can be concluded from saying one element can't make mono decks.
So Water is just as balanced as all the other elements, I see no reason to focus on improving its ability. There are obviously some cards that don't fit perfectly in the current meta-game (Trident, Flooding, Purify), but those cards would not be fixed by forcing them into a niche of the current meta-game but by creating not-necessarily-water cards to promote a broader addition to the meta-game where they would naturally find their niche.
What is your favourite deck, and why?
As with everyone else, I don't have a favorite deck. However, the deck that I always have the most fun playing with is my Frozen Toad Shutdown (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,14529), which I do not promote as a good deck or as an
original deck.
5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gn 7gn 7gn 7gn 7gn 7gn 7gr 7gr 7gr 7gr 7gr 7grThe reason I love this deck is because of its thorough and efficient control capabilities. Since you need to deduce which frozen (we're assuming all the opponents' creatures are frozen at this point) creature to infect each turn in order to efficiently kill and maintain the lowest number of creatures using the least amount of freezes/infection... Using this deck truly requires more thinking/strategics than playing creature after creature in a rush or doing a calculation for whether or not you can kill an opponent with bolts. This deck must be played at a level AI cannot reach, for AI will never be able to understand how inefficient putting 5 poison counters on a 3 HP creature frozen for 3 more turns is, and that is why this is my favorite deck.
This is from all sources. If Genbu is Gravity Pulled, the damage is reduced for each creature. Multiple hitting spells (Fire Bolt, Ice Bolt, Drain Life) only have the damage reduction 1 time. So a Fire Bolt at 10 
would do 5 damage.
If this card was introduced into the game: What impact would it have? How would you utilize it? What decks would you build? How would it change 
? (You don't have to answer each question individually)
It would have the same impact that GotP had when that was introduced; it would be a new, viable creature for decks that can use 6
or 7
creatures with higher damage-to-cost than dragons of that element. For me, I would replace the ice dragons in any of my water rushes with it because it is cheaper and more durable, and in any deck that uses fractal dragons. That's basically how it would change mono-water, it'd be a new creature. It'd affect the meta-game, but its effect on the meta-game surely won't be specific to just water.
The decks that can be built around it? Its ability is more of a resilience factor against opposing cc than a combo factor. The only combos I can think of is unupgraded pandemonium, rage potion, and gravity-pull+basilisk-blood. Maybe in a nymph's tears deck utilizing auburn nymphs and tridents? Each use of petrify would be a 20-hp heal and the Genbu would be a nice titanium shield. I'm assuming that poison counters such as those from liquid shadow would ignore Genbu's ability, like how poison ignores your shields. If not, then a nymphomania deck with adrenaline'd 8-attack genbus, LS'd/raged Genbus, etc? All of the ability-utilizing combos I can think of would work better with voodoo doll...
Link a piece of music that best represents water.
....I'm serious.
Kiss the Rain (Yiruma) (
)
It has the word "rain" in it, and the melody flows nicely. It's kind of sad, but there's that beautiful key change where you can just imagine the rain letting up and the sky clearing up to reveal the rain's true purpose: to create a beautiful rainbow.
Water has not received a new card an a few patches. What do you think water needs and propose an idea for a new card for water.
I think that Water, being a fluid element, should have some more cards with flexible uses, like Ice Bolt after its buff and Nymph's Tears. Compared to Fire, which has the spells Deflagration, Cremation, Fire Bolt, Rage Potion, and Rain of Fire, Water has very little spells. It also has a low amount of permanents, with only pillars/pends, the rare weapon, and one shield. Water is a fragile element, with its greatest control cards being in the form of low-resilience creatures . Therefore, it needs more cards that react against the opponent in an efficient way. An example of such a card would be:
It can be used defensively with Flooding and offensively with Fractal, it's not too much stalling and can be a double-edged sword.
How important is community (both keeping existing players and attracting new ones) to you? How much influence do you think Masters have in effecting community and how do you think you could contribute if you were to be Master?
The community is very important to me because it's what keeps me playing elements. Masters have a large effect on the community because they are the ultimate embodiment of their element. As of now, I contribute to the community by being an awesome guy, or someone that anyone can ask questions to both in the Official Chat and Kongregate's Elements - Room #1 and someone who tries to introduce newbies to this official community present in the forums. If I was a master, I would only have to maintain my awesomeness by being an awesome master, being not only the guy who knows all about his element, not only the guy who tries to show new players the attractiveness of water, but by being one of the 12 who know anyone can ask for anything about the game.
Some of us has more than one "favorite" element. That often gets talked about when said in applications for war, trials, and general chat. But consider "play style" and "technique". Can you name your favorite tactics, play style, and/or technique?
As I mentioned in my reply to The dictator's question, the games which I've enjoyed the most are those with Frozen Toad Shutdown, simply because...
...of its thorough and efficient control capabilities. Since you need to deduce which frozen (we're assuming all the opponents' creatures are frozen at this point) creature to infect each turn in order to efficiently kill and maintain the lowest number of creatures using the least amount of freezes/infection... Using this deck truly requires more thinking/strategics than playing creature after creature in a rush or doing a calculation for whether or not you can kill an opponent with bolts. This deck must be played at a level AI cannot reach, for AI will never be able to understand how inefficient putting 5 poison counters on a 3 HP creature frozen for 3 more turns is, and that is why this is my favorite deck.
My second favorite playstyle is complete and utter denial where I completely undermine the opponent's attempts to win. Whether it's with Nightmare and RT for draw denial, devourers, earthquake, and black hole for quanta denial, or Frozen Toad for uber creature control, forcing the opponent to be unable to do what his deck was built for always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, just like how everyone gets a shot of dopamine when he thinks someone believes a lie he told.
And games wouldn't be fun if I just used the same tried-and-tested decks over and over again, so most of the decks I use are those that the opponents don't expect, where I sacrifice win-rate for surprise. Examples include Voodoo Sudden Killer (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=15743.0) and the Nymphomania deck I used in Phase 2 of Trials.
Discuss your most "heated" and/or "exhausting" moment in war. What made this scenario so difficult? What would you do differently?
Hm...heated or exhausting? Well, the most devastating battle would have to be my Round 3 match (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25266.0.html). Basically I used the same exact deck I used the round before, a 31-card trident-squid deck with 6 dragons as the only form of damage. Zblader used a 32-card firestall with sanctuaries and plenty of CC in the form of bolts and rage potions, so it was a deck match-up that I just couldn't win. Obviously, if I had to redo that round, I would actually test decks and try not to run a predictable deck that can easily be hard-countered.
We've seen many wonderful and exciting changes to the game since the last war. One key feature that was added was the arena. But before that, Traditionally players would grind Top 50 to boost their rankings, grab those cards, etc etc... In your opinion do you feel the arena can help team mates as much as Top 50 did for previous wars?
No it cannot help teammates as much because you can't specifically fill out your teammates rares by putting up a rare farm for those rares. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as rares should be kept rare and shouldn't be passed around to level a playing field, that would be terrible for the people who spent the intended effort collecting those rares. As a whole, however, Arena is better than T50 because of how easy it is to make money, so new players have a chance to compete since the money needed to buy the decks are much easier to obtain.
Rather than using a method of "Open Synergy" like Aether (PU, Fractal, etc.) Water focuses on forced duos.
With that said, do you consider this fact an advantage or a disadvantage?
I don't really see how balanced cards in an element can make the element (defined as the set of cards) "better" or "worse" than another element (a different set of cards). A deck isn't composed of exactly one copy of every card in one element. Since none of the cards in the game are devastatingly imbalanced, underpowered, or overpowered. Therefore, if there is at least one mono-water deck that can do as well as the other mono decks in a competitive environment, then I guess you could say that water is as balanced, advantageous, etc. as the other elements. The only thing against my "at least one" theory about decks that use exactly one quanta type is the amount of competitive decks that can be made from those cards. The only benefit that comes from being able to make more than one is when, in the beginning of the match when your opponent only sees your pillars, you may be able to force the opponent to make bad judgments because the opponent thinks you have a different deck.
When you stray from one quanta type, then you lose consistency in your quanta generation, I will admit that. However, that's a difference between monos and duos, not a difference between "open synergy" and "forced duos." As long as there is at least one water duo that does just as well as all the other duos, then we could say that "forced duos" are just as advantageous/disadvantageous as "open synergy." Now, the original problem in my "at least one" theory doesn't pertain to Water duos vs. Aether duos, since there are only so many cards that you can play with the now smaller quanta pools you have. In the area of being less predictable, at least when comparing Water and Aether, Water's creature abilities can be SoR'd and many can be played off of rainbow quanta generation, while, if you're focusing on fractal in an Aether duo, you most likely aren't doing a trio and the opponent can narrow down the possibilities based on the size of your quanta pool to figure out your deck. Again, predictability is only a factor when you can play two drastically different decks (like in It's A Trap!) and the opponent doesn't know your deck beforehand.
So basically, this was just my round-about way of repeating my answer to Kuroaitou and Bootza's questions: you can't really use those adjectives to describe two elements.
Question to challengers:
This is the element I love [most]. Give me your reason, why did you choose Water?
Its blue-ness is astounding. I love blue.
Plus, I just love Arctic Squid | Arctic Octopus, and the freezing mechanic in general. Most CC usage is limited to what the damage can kill, however, freeze will always freeze the target for 3/4 turns. Delay is cool too, but Warden isn't as amazing as Squid, and there's no delay shield in Earth.
Did I mention how blue it is?
