War #9 - Suggestions and Feedback

[Aves]

Small note-- previous rounds is 10-5. Kaker is up to date for partial rounds.

And I'd argue that 50-50 is pretty reasonable for a deck like their dark duo vs a deck like our drainbolt. It's really really scary to face. Summary statistics don't provide the whole story. Anyways, yeah-- the underlying message is the same. I appreciate the support, lastmerlin ^^ But there's no need to say air has no chance in any individual match-- they've had a pretty formidable record, and we're happy to face them in the final round. The EC itself, on the other hand...

[Lastmerlin]

Another neutral comment: It seems that this community is really relaxed and mature. Or the number of potential posters is just below a certain critical threshold. I cant look behind the curtains, but it seems that this events comes with immense effort from lots of players. If something like this happened in other games I played - an event this big ended in such a farce - the forums would be burning and overflowing with dozens of angered and hateful posts. Just the fact that argueing with math is somewhat useful and appreciated here is a sign of quality. Keep up the great sportmanship

[dawn to dusk]

This community is definitely one of the better ones. You see something like LoL where people flame, curse, troll and so on, however those are rarely seen here. It may be because we are a relatively small community, but in any case, we are proud to be like we are

[Vangelios]

Yes, this community is more a brotherhood than really community,
this does not mean that everything is wonderful here, we have many problems that happen, but maturity and tolerance are still prevalent.
in general the balancing what's good and bad, the good things are even greater, I hope to continue like this or better

[mrpaper]

Now that is over and that decks are revealed.... EC was still more helpful to us then Darkness I won't deny that... but the 5 vs 5 thing was never really one...

We had a scrap rainbow deck with some denial in it but no damage so it would even lose to AI 1, but it would force the opponent the opponent to play many cards before winning so at least we would scout a deck, we put all cards we had left in vault in it except an immo... FAILED to scout as they sent the deck we had seen already!

We had a squid deck and a water nymph which are both situational and easy to counter plus we could not tweak them in any way since we had no other cards... and since we we're 100% forced to bring em they we're a real long shot at anything cause darkness cause just pick whatever counters it! both went down fast and easy.

We had a bonewall deck... now this was darkness mistake in round 15... they sent at us a great card to counter many of the things they had and it was one of our 2 good decks.  That said, it was also expected and with drain life it was a sure win for them which I assume is why they brought 2 decks of this!

Lastly, we had the dark sideboard.  Sideboard is OP... by a mile!  Being able to play with upgrades made it even stronger.  Maybe if you could just remove add pillars and pends it would be an ok boost.  Yet, it was a bad match-up for devtal and a 50/50 matchup vs bolts at best so it had to go down at some point. To me it was our best deck of the war, but it has limits.


So all of that to say, it was mostly a 2 vs 5 decks match-up and yet we did really good at it.  I guess if CUCN said we would have go with the ratio of cards left, there is a high chance it would have been the exact same matches except we would not have lose the 3 lame decks we had so he did not deserve all that heat.
BUT this a the point where WMS needs to take a note, there should never been an EC to end the war, make EC that will speed things up mid-war if needed, not when it is going on forever, it was too late... and at the point where it was, we would have win a couple of rounds with BWS and dark duo and would have make this war going to roughly round 18-19.
If we would have come out on top, we already suggested a while ago to www that both team should be declared winners ... hunger games style... afda even proposed as a joke to refused to play the last match so we are both winners!

[Afdarenty]

Time to get this thread back on topic. Sorry for the wall of text. I'd be interested to hear others' opinions.


Auction vs Draft
Might as well start at the start. I love auction. There's a lot more strategy involved than with the drafting system, and you have a greater say about what your final team will look like. On top of that, it's much more fun, both to be a General and a spectator. Just make sure to get the team sizes right to avoid the crazy inflation.


Player Roles and Upgrades
I liked the 3 in element upgrade rule. I didn't like the Lieutenant role having the same power level as a Soldier boost.

Tinkerer was perhaps the most controversial role this war. Personally, I'm not a fan. One of the things I love about war is creative deck building to patch up an elemental weakness. Two excellent examples are the Time Disco Pharaohs, and the Darkness Pandematter stall. Disco Pharaohs was designed to beat both Devtal and Bonebolt from Aether, two decks that Time struggles with greatly. The Pandematter stall was a clever counter to RoL/Hope, in addition to other popular Aether/Light decks.

To an extent, Tinkerer will remove this kind of deck from War. Teams will just use a different element altogether to address their weaknesses. It will also have a negative impact on the variety of decks we see in war. We already see the majority of teams running very similar Grabbows, Dark splashes, Dim/Fractal decks, and more. I'd prefer not to see several teams running 'mono' Darkness/Fire/Aether with 1 or 2 useful in element cards next war in addition to all these other duplicates. Finally, I feel that it takes away from the theme of war.

I thought sideboard was balanced well. 3 cards is not an overwhelming advantage, and the decision to force players to use the full 33 card deck in the first game also helped keep the power level in check. I'd be happy to see this unchanged next war.

I feel that mercenary was designed to give trio decks more of a chance, but in reality it was mostly just a buff to Grabbows. I'd like to see this changed - perhaps have it only effect decks with exactly 2 or 3 elements?


War Duration, Salvage and Discard
Well, obviously this War was a little on the long side. I think the change from 6 salvage, 24 discard to 4 salvage, 15 discard in addition to some enormous starting vault sizes were to blame. Perhaps increase discards for next war?


Market Prices, and Vaults without Pillars/Pendulums
Market Prices put far too much emphasis on how well teams performed during the previous war. It led to a bizarrely large vault for an element as strong as Gravity. Admittedly, that was an extreme case, but it's a good example of what could go wrong. Currently, an effective long-term strategy to win War would be to bomb hard the first time around, and to play very seriously the war after. It's not the sort of strategy I think should be encouraged. Other than that, it's a great idea.

I like the unlimited pillars/pendulums.

[serprex]

A note on market prices: the values were based on the cards' power in use by _all_ teams. Vagger resulted in a higher winrate, irrespective of the element using it. Most gravity cards don't find much use outside of Team Gravity. That we used the winrates of cards more than the winrates of elements was shown in how Light's cards cost too much. Light's good cards don't have a bad winrate-- outside of Team Light

On Tinkerer: estimate of power the role would've had if it was only "Pends count as in element" rather than Pillars? The real motive behind wanting pends to count is so we can have trio decks such as grabghostmare (mark of time, earth pends, darkness pends)

[Newbiecake]

I was thinking for Tinkerer, pillars and pendulums should both count as usual, but a small nerf to it would be force the addition of at least 6 in-element cards within the deck. That way, it could prevent the silliness of decks such as Darkness Tears Tinkerer my team used in desperation round 15 and 16, or mono Aethers by any team.

[Aves]

Another option to reduce tinkerer's attractiveness is to reduce or even remove all upgrades for using the boost. Maybe something like 'Your pillars/pendulums become target element for the match. Your mark must be your element. Upgrades are reduced to the number of non-pillar/pend in-element cards you use or 7, whichever is lower.'

[majofa]

Just make it so you have to still have 'X' amount of in-element cards after the tinker ability swaps the pillars/pendulums.

[Higurashi]

Regarding the last EC: it was not about to pass through the filter that is me. www and I managed to work out a mostly fair outcome that changed the EC completely if needed. It kept in mind that Air played according to the rules and would've won that round fairly if they did, and that meant we had to reward them in some way at least. Just not by destroying Darkness' vault completely. As long as I'm around, we won't have a repeat of War 4.

[Basman-1453]

Just make it so you have to still have 'X' amount of in-element cards after the tinker ability swaps the pillars/pendulums.

To be honest, there are some Tinkerer decks I came to like (a good example would be Gravity's 'Death Rush' (they made good use of splashing the insanely durable Grav Guards), which I think I had the pleasure of facing), and then there are some Tinkerer decks I came to dislike (most notably Light's PsionTal and Earth's RoL/Hope).

I won't lie, I swear I brushed off the possibility of Light's PsionTal Tinkerer early in R2 deckbuilding discussions when we were discussing their shield-piercing options when it was already a fact back in R1 (to be fair, early in R1 Friday UTC, my comp suddenly get knocked out and failed to start due to faulty ventilation systems, forcing dd to sub for me and forcing me out of the loop).