Mono saph/empress and how to make it a fair deck.

Pandaemonium · May 15th 2017, 7:33am

arub wrote:

Darkwonders wrote:

Honestly, if Copycat was as oppressive as some people say, it'd be as expensive as Hierophant or Bride.

I wish it would actually go up in price. I'm sitting on a playset of both versions I bought at base level hoping to turn a profit here!

Not arguing in either way of whether the card is oppressive or not. But you can't compare the price with these two cards.

There are the three points that Scars is still being drafted, thus new supply enters the market, and Bride being a legendary as well as hiero and bride being in several archetypes opposed to one single deck.

However, the major difference is that copycat has an AA that can be gotten from chests. And the drop rate seems to be very high with the possibility of dropping from every rarity of chest. Just due to this factor it is not comparable as the supply of that card is absurdly high compared to other rares like commander prompt.

Yea copycat I can understand, empress I have a hard time understanding why it is still so cheap. Unless alot of set 7 cards like bride are overinflated due to people cornering the market. Hierophant is arguably the strongest troop in the game so I see why it is expensive.

Edit: I will bet you a legendary that set 7 will be multi shard focused. This will likely hurt bride since it wont have a huge extra card pool to bring in.

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 7:43am

Swigmonkey wrote:

It isn't the deck. It is the meta you don't enjoy. I think dreadlings in theory is a great idea, then set 6 pushed the envelope on it to much for my taste. I am happy once rotation comes in limited, and hopefully a few more quick answers to the dread scourge that also gets a boost from scrounge will help alleviate my cringing to that scourge I am facing constantly.

I agree with you on this completely... even in Limited I feel like dreadlings was way too overdone in Scars.

Not saying they're broken or OP, they're just an archetype I don't enjoy and they're a bit too common for my tastes at the moment.

Transience · May 15th 2017, 7:50am

DraXor wrote:

Transience wrote:

DraXor wrote:

Transience wrote:

Gregangel wrote:

yes the only issue is Uzzu charge power.
the champions should not be used for ramp but only for shard fixing.
This is clearly a flaw designers did not see coming.

Why?

Becouse uzzu gives opportunity to get empress effect or play copycat 1 turn earlier, that changes a lot.Uzzu was designed probably to give opportunity to play tri or more shards deck. They didnt thought that this could be used to somehow speed up some effect/card.

Regardless of whatever the initial design reasons were I'm pretty sure the designers knew what they were making.There is no difference in having Uzzu make your first ruby shard to cast Zakkaz or having him make the fifth Sapphire shard to cast Copycat. It's not ramp, it's making thresholds.

If there is a problem, then it lies within Copycat being too cheap in terms of resources. Not in Uzzu being able to make thresholds. I don't think there is a problem yet with Copycat though.

im not saying that uzzu is problemtic, just wanted to explain.
In normal enviroment you have to play 5 shards to play copycat, its turn 5, but with uzzu you can play it turn 4, so its technicly 'ramp'

You don't have to play five shards at all. You have to get 5 Sapphire thresholds. You could get that without playing any shard at all.

It's a distinct difference.

You could argue that one can ramp both resources and thresholds but they're still distinct. 'Ramping' threshold for Copycat is a very singular line of play while ramping resources like Wild classically does is a game mechanic.

If this line of play is too oppressive and needs to be answered it would be a much better idea to release something that hates on the play. Like a card that takes away a threshold.

Olfff · May 15th 2017, 8:31am

The cost of having to play Uzzu for a sapphire based deck is greater than it seems, where most other sapphire build would leverage a draw champion power, copycat uzzu only draws with consult the talon, which needs to already have a board presence to be efficient.

It's a good design, one that asks for sacrifice and comitment to your strategy in term of deck building, what the deck gains in explosiveness, it loses in resilience : If you wreck his first copycat play and limit the widening of his board, chances are Uzzu will have problems to fill his hand back up and recover from it.

Furthermore, while accelerating the copycat/empress sapphire requirement is powerfull, it makes the champion power almost useless past turn 5, considering that further champ power activations only serve to trigger empress tapping effect.

Gravitygroove · May 15th 2017, 12:06pm

Make the cat cost 1 resource? Seems better then making uzzu cost 5 charges. That pushes the dump turn back to 5 at least without just nuking the card entirely. I think that's a reasonable solution.

Ossuary · May 15th 2017, 12:19pm

There will be no changes to released PVP cards, ever. Even if there WAS something wrong with this card (there isn't), it would not be changed post release. You can just go ahead and abandon that foolhardy idea altogether.

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 12:22pm

Gravitygroove wrote:

Make the cat cost 1 resource? Seems better then making uzzu cost 5 charges. That pushes the dump turn back to 5 at least without just nuking the card entirely. I think that's a reasonable solution.

At least for the short term, Hex is sticking to the foolsih, outdated idea that modifying cards post-release is bad for the environment - a remnant of classic tcg ethics where modifying cards was damn-near impossible. Since a lot of the people playing this are stubborn ex-paper tcg players who lack appreciation for what a digital game can mean and what advantages changes could have overall, for the moment that policy is unlikely to change.

Maybe someday, but even if it did I doubt Copycat would be a candidate for change. It's simply nowhere near oppressive enough to justify.

Vroengard · May 15th 2017, 12:28pm

Uzzu is fine. It has exactly 2 decks it's ok to play him/her: 1) rainbow decks, 2) super threshold-heavy decks.
She is useless in anything outside of those two instances.

DraXor wrote:

Becouse uzzu gives opportunity to get empress effect or play copycat 1 turn earlier, that changes a lot.

I could play Blood Shard -> Inkheart Infuser on 1, Sapphire Shard on 2, Shapphire Shard -> Empress of Ice + Copycat on 3. Is Inkheart a mistake that shouldn't have been too, like Uzzu?

nqumyf · May 15th 2017, 1:28pm

Vroengard wrote:

Uzzu is fine. It has exactly 2 decks it's ok to play him/her: 1) rainbow decks, 2) super threshold-heavy decks.
She is useless in anything outside of those two instances.

DraXor wrote:

Becouse uzzu gives opportunity to get empress effect or play copycat 1 turn earlier, that changes a lot.

I could play Blood Shard -> Inkheart Infuser on 1, Sapphire Shard on 2, Shapphire Shard -> Empress of Ice + Copycat on 3. Is Inkheart a mistake that shouldn't have been too, like Uzzu?

Thats not how Inkheart works, he just transforms thresholds to blood, so you would need 5 Blood then.
You could still use stuff like ROID Bot to "Ramp" Thresholds though.
Alltogether I think the Uzzu deck is fine though. It just profits from multiple decks in the Meta like the general multitude of Aggro on ladder and the missing of burn spells right now. Because of that every aggro deck needs troops which get countered by Empress. Imagine if old Angus was still around.... Uzzu would just straight up die because its not doing a lot until the feared t4.
I agree with the deck being very strong though.

But: There will always be a strongest deck. If we were to nerf the Saph Uzzu, people would complain about Kagu Crusader again, or something else.
Its just pretty much impossible for designers to make a perfect balance where every deck is the same strength.

Gravitygroove · May 15th 2017, 1:28pm

Ossuary wrote:

There will be no changes to released PVP cards, ever. Even if there WAS something wrong with this card (there isn't), it would not be changed post release. You can just go ahead and abandon that foolhardy idea altogether.

Oss are you a dev? not trolling, just asking how would know this. =-0

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 1:36pm

Gravitygroove wrote:

Oss are you a dev? not trolling, just asking how would know this. =-0

I believe it was stated during the kickstarter that they never would. Recently they've stated they have no plans to change any PvP cards(a much less pointed statement, but still relevant)

It's probably a mistake long-term, but given the number of players who refuse to acknowledge any possible positive outcome to changing cards at this specific point in time, it's the only decision they can make for the moment. As the population grows, this may change... for now, it's prettymuch stuck this way.

Gravitygroove · May 15th 2017, 2:38pm

AH, i'm only 3 months maybe into hex? i had no idea. Thanks for that Eraia.

Sukebe · May 15th 2017, 2:54pm

Gravitygroove wrote:

Ossuary wrote:

There will be no changes to released PVP cards, ever. Even if there WAS something wrong with this card (there isn't), it would not be changed post release. You can just go ahead and abandon that foolhardy idea altogether.

Oss are you a dev? not trolling, just asking how would know this. =-0

This a promise during the kickstarter and it has been repeated many, many times since then. it is also the only way the in game economy will work and still have cards retain real world value. I do not see this ever changing and strongly feel that it is the right choice.

AceBladewing · May 15th 2017, 3:05pm

Enough Kickstarter promises have been broken, what's one more?

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 3:42pm

Sukebe wrote:

only way the in game economy will work and still have cards retain real world value

This is unproven speculation. It is something people in favour of immutable cards state over and over again but there is no actual proof nor any examples to provide as proof of the opposite failing.

Plotynus · May 15th 2017, 4:36pm

Eraia wrote:

Sukebe wrote:

only way the in game economy will work and still have cards retain real world value

This is unproven speculation. It is something people in favour of immutable cards state over and over again but there is no actual proof nor any examples to provide as proof of the opposite failing.

We're not going to have this debate again.

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 4:47pm

Plotynus wrote:

We're not going to have this debate again.

It's not a debate. It's fact that there's no proof. People SPECULATE that it will have a negative perception. There is no proof, and the only people who agree with it are the tcg old guard.

So you're right, we're not going to have a debate, there's no debate to be had. There are two sets of opinions here, neither have any basis in anything except opinion. The older tcg players believe it'd be harmful, people who come from other backgrounds generally either have no strong opinion or prefer the concept of balance changes. It's really as simple a divide as that.

Winds · May 15th 2017, 4:55pm

Eraia wrote:

Plotynus wrote:

We're not going to have this debate again.

It's not a debate. It's fact that there's no proof. People SPECULATE that it will have a negative perception. There is no proof, and the only people who agree with it are the tcg old guard.
So you're right, we're not going to have a debate, there's no debate to be had. There are two sets of opinions here, neither have any basis in anything except opinion. The older tcg players believe it'd be harmful, people who come from other backgrounds generally either have no strong opinion or prefer the concept of balance changes. It's really as simple a divide as that.

Why does your post sound so much like people who argue that there is no proof that climate change is happening?

Eraia · May 15th 2017, 4:58pm

Winds wrote:

Why does your post sound so much like people who argue that there is no proof that climate change is happening?

Because you're on the side I'm arguing against and are prone to dislike posts that counter your opinion.

In that case, there is proof. Historical records show it. In this case, there is no proof. There is no previous sample case to judge by at all. It is LITERALLY 100% speculation.

And what's worse is it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Edit: And just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that modifying cards WOULD be factually better. I am of the opinion that it would lead to a better gamestate and thus more potential players willing to invest overall, which would counterbalance any other effects. But that is just speculation as well. What pisses me off is the attitude that it is an inarguable fact that it would be better to never change cards that the stubborn old guard in this community have... when their speculation is EVERY BIT AS MUCH BASED in personal opinion as mine, with every bit as little fact to back it up.

Reeplay · May 15th 2017, 5:12pm

Eraia wrote:

Winds wrote:

Why does your post sound so much like people who argue that there is no proof that climate change is happening?

Because you're on the side I'm arguing against and are prone to dislike posts that counter your opinion.
In that case, there is proof. Historical records show it. In this case, there is no proof. There is no previous sample case to judge by at all. It is LITERALLY 100% speculation.

And what's worse is it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

"There's no proof". Okay so say you don't like dark chocolate. You might choose to buy a milk chocolate bar instead. If you were told that the milk chocolate bar might at any time become dark chocolate (maybe it's tainted with blood magic I don't know) you sure as hell wouldn't be prepared to pay as much for it or even buy it.

If you can find any reasonable argument that something you're looking to pay money for could at any time become something you don't want and then also pay the same amount for it as if it wouldn't then there's a debate. But I'll be honest I can't think of a single reasonable reason why anyone would do that.

I can debate. I actually like to do it. But I have no heard a single reason as to why buffing/nerfing is a good idea for anything with an open market. For a closed market where you aren't trading between eachother sure it's great but when you're game is set up in a system where anything you spend is an investment instead of just an expenditure you just can't go messing with what people own.

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