This video is super long, so I have left chapters so that you can navigate to a specific section if you want. Let me know your thoughts down below! Also the Balance Walkthrough RETURNS today at 3:00 PM EST! I hope to see y'all there! :) twitch.tv/ferric
The issue I'm seeing is that a lot of people in Wiz PvP, especially Ratbeard, are 100% correct on some thing and just eating dirt in the middle of the forest on other things. Nerfing Hephy is stupid, Steal Ward is overpowered no matter how you try to square it (it removes a shield and shields you for a single pip), Ratbeard was saying the blade gambits weren't busted, PvE strats are busted and Roshambos don't change that because of deck fails and basic math, no pre-enchants isn't a pacing issue, it's a deck size and randomness issue; trying to act like we don't know who's stream sniping and shit is asinine, anyone saying Wrait is "overpowered" is a brainlet, timer games being "draws" that punish both players is stupid, etc. Just as pretty much an outsider, PvP seems like a shitshow because the people at KI don't actually know what they're doing and can't admit they're wrong, it's ruined by imbeciles who exploit constantly because they lack basic morals and principles, and too many PvP RUclipsrs are willing to parrot the same dipshit talking-points, even if they're laughably absurd (nerfing Hephy being among the top of that list, that spell was never busted and they just wanna nerf Fire into the ground; or making the schools even more similar instead of having an actual identity). Hopefully PvP gets better soon, I'd like to play it at some point, but I'm not investing the time to get the gear only to wanna slam my head through my desk and deal with dipshits all around me.
Well "nerfing hephy" isn't exactly the correct term. It has been audited, and even post-audit it still does more damage for how much other spells are valued based on audit rules. Even now, as a fire spell, for only one more pip, Hephaestus does a whopping 175 more average damage than storman which is a storm spell, aka the school that has average 25% MORE dpp than fire. Not to mention the fact that it being a 5 pip spell means that it can be enchanted for 50 more than solar surge. I personally don't believe the spell was broken before the audit, but this change gives it a nice middle ground between being too weak and being a little bit too strong. For reference, with fire's current stats, an unbuffed hephaestus does way more damage than storman for only 1 more pip. Also with Steal Ward, once again, it is only useful against tower shield, and that one specific spell mathematically buys you two turns of defense (in that it takes two buffs to counter a tower shield). Instead of nerfing tower shield, they made steal ward 1 pip so that it is the punisher to that spell. If you played PvP, you would quickly realize how useless of a spell it is against fire wizards, who typically don't even pack tower shield, but just use weakness. It is pretty much only useful against tower shield in gaining as much tempo as it does with very little exceptions. Weakness more than counters a blade (spell does .94 damge which is close to 1.00). However, it takes two 35% blades vs a tower to get the spell to do .91 damage which is still lower than 1. Not to mention if you are at low pips against someone at high pips, they worked to gain those pips and set up a really strong hit only for you to tower and now they've lost 2 turns in just 1 turn, not to mention they are forced to overtime or wand or use something else with no way of gaining that tempo back easily. That is what steal ward is designed to prevent. I'm pretty sure Ratbeard said that the trap gambits were not busted, I don't recall him ever claiming that the Blade gambits were not overtuned, in fact he said the exact opposite of that. All he said was that they were "working as intended" which means that they were designed to be ridiculously easy to setup and buff early on compared to the trap ones. However, not all things can be found out on paper, and while on paper that may have seemed like a good change, in play that made them broken which is exactly why they are changing them. Besides the blade gambits, PvE strats are very easy to counter if you have Righting the Scales. They are so easy, in fact that at one point I even stopped packing scales until I started facing better players. You just need to know how to cycle properly, and once again, you are not supposed to counter all of their traps, that was never the intention. The point of it was to buy yourself some tempo because you lose 0 pips effectively by using scales and then build your shadow meter at the same time. By doing that, a trap stacker doesn't have many ways of buying an extra turn off of you. On my Ice, I am currently undefeated against every type of trapstack strategy EXCEPT jade trapstack and even that match was a result of it going to timer rather than the trapstacker actually killing me. And still, even if a large group of people do think someone is stream sniping, you can't expect them to punish them based on external factors. Some of the so called obvious snipers don't even snipe, I have had many of my friends in the past accused of this who I knew were not sniping at all. Streamers have many things they can do to counter queue sniping already (overlay, PvPing from home, hidden to friends, etc) and if players are queue sniping through exploiting something in game, that was addressed in the dev diary as well and there will be infractions there as well. I do agree with you that Wraith is not overpowered, but strong. The reason why it is strong is because in a chip meta, the delta per pip (since half the hit gets converted to healing) is higher than fire and lower than storm, and all things that are used to buff it to do crazy amounts have counters except shrike. As for timer games, how else would you punish players for stalling to timer? I don't think timer should be a win condition at all, and by punishing someone for going to timer, it makes it less likely that they will continue to go for that.
I will add though that I agree with the general sentiment of your statement which seems to be that there is an issue of gatekeeping in PvP. It's the one game system that has so many people that are not open to hearing out other people's opinions and thinking differently just seems to be a foreign concept to a lot of people on this side of the community.
@@ferric Hephy was a spell before the change that added all the 4 pip hit and bubble spells. If we're going to complain about Hephy "having too much damage," then the issue is with the other spells, not Hephy, because Hephy was there first. Frankly, I think damage shouldn't be what people look at with those spells (if we nerf or buff them at all), rather their pips and the damage increase from the bubble. Wanna nerf Hephy? Ok, nerf the damage increase to like 15 or 20% instead of trying to make Fire even worse after removing Salamander from their arsenal. Put something that makes more sense is either buffing the damage of the others or lowering their pips to 3 (so Pip Conserve comes into play). I understand the rationale people have for Steal Ward being 1 pip, the issue is that it doesn't work in practice. Steal Ward being 1 pip to shield yourself while also taking away a shield from your opponent is extremely overpowered, because now it's just a game of luck in what cards each person pulls. With the amount of Pierce people have stock, on top of Infallible, Tower Shields are pretty damn balanced and the idea that Steal Ward at 1 pip is somehow balanced is necessary, again, makes no sense. If hit and bubble or hit and shield spells are all 4 pips, then where's the consistency? PvE strats are hated by all diehard PvP players because they're not easily countered. The issue is that the idea of, "Oh, just use this spell, forehead," is that you can only hold so many in your deck and require the luck to pull them in order for it to be a viable counter. Letting kids just spam blades or traps to win in one hit isn't fun for anyone, which is why *everyone* who plays PvP hates it. You can only hold so many cards, and being forced to try and discard your whole hand of cards you still need just means you're at an insane disadvantage, no matter how you try to slice it. I'm not all-knowing of stream-sniping, but I've watched enough of Sauce's streams and videos to see that the things you just talked about clearly aren't fool-proof enough. And the idea of "stream-sniping being outside the game" is laughable at best, because they're playing the game. It's been a rampant issue for years now, and they haven't even tried to implement any solution, like even just preventing people from matching against the same account(s) within a short period of time. But the attitude of trying to say we don't really know who's sniping and who's not only goes so far, because the egregious examples are obvious to Helen Keller, let alone anyone else watching. Are streamers 100% accurate in saying who's sniping and who's not? No, but when it's this huge of an issue, can you really blame them for "jumping" to that conclusion when their opponent consistently make perfect plays? I can't. I don't think the timer should be in the game at all if we're being honest, I think it's a lazy and asinine concept to try and fix other issues. If a good game is going to last a longer period of time, then so be it, who cares? I get why people think it's necessary, but if the rest of the game was up to par, I don't think it'd be necessary in any capacity. But if we're stuck with it, I don't disagree that it shouldn't be a win condition, but why should a draw being considered a "loss" for both parties? If one person is stalling and the other is playing normal, then punishing the latter is absurd. Just don't add or take any rank and leave it be for now. Again, I don't have all the answers to the issues with PvP, but I see plenty of the most absurd takes from all sides that're mind-numbing to me, and it doesn't help any thoughts I have about being one of the only level-headed, sane people around. You can't tell me Hephy is overpowered, but Steal Ward isn't in the same breath. Healing is a problem (with no real great solution that I've seen or thought of, it's honestly one of the harder issues to resolve), but if the people complaining are those who want the schools to be homogenous, then I can only laugh at their misery. People who think you should just be able to treat PvP like some typical PvE boss and that you can "just use spells to counter it," without realizing that basic math and the reality of cycling your deck debunk that concept, and that it's somehow a "viable and legitimate" PvP strat when it's so braindead that a lobotomized monkey could do it, concern me to say the least. Also, the idea that KI "isn't banning anyone for things done outside the game," is a bold-faced lie, they've done it in the past probably countless times, but Dakota EarthHorn is the first one that immediately comes to mind. And no, I'm not against gatekeeping for PvP, I'm completely for it. Gatekeeping is, for every single community, a necessity in order to keep the integrity of whatever circle that may be. Otherwise it'll always become corrupted, turn on the original members, and be used as some sort of skin for the infectors to wear and push whatever shit they wanna push. I don't want PvP to have "PvE strats" just to appease people outside the circle, they're extremely braindead and low IQ concepts that literally anyone could do and find high-levels of "success" with. Can issues arise with gatekeeping? Naturally, but that doesn't make it any less important, nor that it isn't a requirement to keep the integrity of the original group. Again, not all-knowing of every little detail, but it's why when I see diehard PvP people get mad at Ratbeard for some things he says, saying that he doesn't understand what he's actually talking about when it comes to PvP, it's hard for me to fault them, because there does seem to be a trend there (and I don't have an opinion on him one way or the other). Does that mean everything Ratbeard says is wrong or stupid? No, but it means that he's ignorant and, from what I've seen, fairly bull-headed. Like when he said the gambits were working as intended, even though they *clearly* weren't. Like I said, there are things that "both sides" have said that I think are patently insane and laughably stupid, but also things that're just undeniable. There just has to be some level of realization on both sides what those things are, and I don't think the issue is identifying what those things are, but getting both sides to admit that what they said or whatever their opinion is, is either smart or stupid. But honestly, I think arguably the biggest issue with the current situation is that KI is too slow on making necessary changes and adjustments, but will make some out of the blue without any Test Realm or heads-up given to players (regardless of whether or not the changes are good or bad).
@@ThatFalloutGod 1. Well no, if a certain spell is OP, the solution is not to make the other new spells OP. Hephaestus was initially made way back when hit and bubbles were all 3 pip item card spells rather than trained hits that could be enchanted. However it was also during a meta where shadow spells could be enchanted, and the meta itself did not revolve around spamming bubbles and hit and bubbles from main (back when you could pack tc bubbs). As for nerfing the Hephy damage by 15-20% that is literally exactly what they did. It received a 16% nerf. 2. You just used the nature of this being a card game and having RNG (of which pulling cards from a deck by nature will have randomness) as an argument against steal ward. You found pierce to be completely balanced at 0 pips, but steal ward which just does one more action than pierce (shielding yourself) in the same turn as being unbalanced at 1 pips. Hit and bubble and hit and shield spells are that amount of pips because the damage they do is adjusted accordingly to the amount of pips and utility they give. Steal ward is that way because it does two zero-pip actions in 1 turn, pierce and tower shielding yourself in effect. Once again, the only spell that makes this spell good is tower shield, there aren't any other situations where it would be useful. SImply using weakness instead of tower shield makes steal ward ineffective. 3. I never said you can blame streamers for jumping to the conclusions, although I think it's kinda weird that streamers become defensive whenever they are criticized over something, but they feel entitled to just throwing out cheating accusations willy-nilly with no repercussions, and not just stopping at that but outright advocating for having some of them banned in the same sentence. Sure they might want only the ones they know for sure are sniping to be banned, but I would not want a streamer (not referring to Thomas here specifically, just streamers in general) that falsely accuses multiple players of cheating to also have power in being able to punish snipers. It would have to be someone that can be fair and impartial, and in this case, only an automated system based on game-data can be. Once again, by streaming a game, you are taking a risk of being sniped, and I say this as a streamer myself. 4. I agree I don't like the timer, but unfortunately, it needs to exist since a game can technically last forever. There is no other competitive game at least that I play where the game doesn't end within an hour. I think the timer is way too short because it punishes defensive play completely. We can agree to disagree whether or not it should be allowed as a win condition, my reason for not liking it is only certain schools can use that as a win condition which makes it unbalanced, that is why it either needs to be both players gaining rank, which is obviously a huge no, neither player losing rank, which wouldn't do anything to discourage going for the stall just to save your rank and waste your opponent's time, so they need to be actively discouraged from doing it. By increasing the amount of time, they can hopefully balance the timer so that it punishes stalling, but still allows freedom in defensive play that doesn't last all day. 5. I feel like being level-headed or sane is more of a subjective term because there are those with disagreeing viewpoints that have legitimate reasons to think the way they do, so in that sense, there isn't objectively one way to balance the game. Game design and making a fair, balanced and fun competitive system is an art form, not an exact science, so there isn't always one best way to do things, and if there is, well then that's just your opinion. You CAN say Hephy is overpowered and steal ward isn't if you looked at the rules of the spell audit and realize that the way they factor utility into a spell makes both spells make sense, and Hephaestus does more damage than it is supposed to when considering all of that. There is a dev diary as well as a final bastion article detailing how the spell audit works and according to that audit, both spells are at the correct value for their pips (hephy technically is still higher than it should be, but at this point it has passed the audit, and once again its nerf is within that 15-20% threshold that you implied earlier was okay). Also when looking at it in play, you can also argue that a fire wizard being able to do 1700 damage with a single buff and change the bubble in the same turn for only 5 pips is much more overpowered than simply spending 1 pip to switch a single tower to you, which your opponent can remove also with a 0 pip spell or swing right back to them. 6. Well it would be fair to be okay if that gatekeeping community actually advocated for things that made sense to advocate for. There are veterans that legitimately believe non turn-based was a better system for PvP and believe that old PvP is better for the game to have simply because they enjoyed how unbalanced it was. There are veterans that preferred the old version of stack strats to where there were literally no counters to that stack unless you were a myth wizard. There are veterans that preferred the higher amounts of RNG that came with previous metas (bad rng in that it is RNG that doesn't make sense for a card game, not the rng of pulling cards themselves). I am not joking. PvP in the past never had integrity to begin with with its history of being pay to win, history of inaccessible/pay-to-win TC, history of level imbalanced gameplay, lower level experienced players farming rank off of higher level players that were not experienced enough to know how to play the game, etc. Ratbeard himself only calls takes bad when they are either extremely vague suggestions (the specific one where he did it to Lou was when he came into his stream and said and I can almost directly quote him here "you literally can't heal as a life." ) He called it a bad take because it is unhelpful to say a blanket term like that. WHY can't life heal? That is the kinds of stuff that is useful to someone leading the design elements of PvP. He calls some of my takes bad too, people can have bad takes. THAT is the issue with gatekeeping, simply accepting the ideas of veteran players even when they are bad or misguided, and completely rejecting ideas from others when in concept and in play work well and are fair simply because they are not a veteran of the game. If you think Ratbeard is ignorant, then you haven't seen his streams to where he literally addressed everything that players complain about with respect to PvP, how they plan on addressing it. Another reason why you can't use vague blanket statements to describe things in a PvP system that has so many different factors that could throw the entire system off if one element is unbalanced. 7. I can agree at the end that they are slow at making changes, but once again, slow is a relative term. They aren't capable of pushing out huge changes to things immediately such as a company like Riot Games, Epic Games, EA, Valve, etc. KingsIsle is a tiny company in comparison with a tiny amount of staff in comparison, so without realizing how much staff they have, without taking into consideration how many players actually play ranked 1v1 compared to the amount of players that play other game systesm, without taking into consideration that developers are human beings who take time off on the December holidays, without taking into consideration the fact that we are weeks away from a major test realm in which a major game system is being changed (spellements), it is very easy to say that the updates are not coming out fast enough. And yeah, as you said yourself, there are multiple sides to it all, and there are legitimate reasons for having different opinions.
@@ferric 6) >You're strawmanning here. Where are the hordes of PvP people who've been around for years saying these things? I've literally never seen a single person say these things (not saying they don't exist, I imagine there's one imbecile who'd say this nonsense, but when well over 99% of people aren't saying the things you just said, what's the point you're making?). >I wasn't referring to players or game having integrity in the sense of it being good, but the integrity of the people who actually play PvP, i.e. the strength of the foundation of the group. Will everyone in the group of legitimate PvP people agree on shit? No. But they all agree that they like PvP and want to see it improved. And they should gatekeep from those who not only don't know what they're talking about, but don't actually care about educating themselves on PvP and being allowed into the group. If a PvE person wants to go play PvP for something he wants to get with Arena Tickets, then nobody's going to have a problem. When that same guy wants PvP to become like fighting some random boss in PvE and defends shit aspects of PvP that benefit him, then that's when the problem starts. >I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say Lou said, "Life can't heal," back when the meta was where Life literally couldn't heal, because people were doing just so much damage. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems like that'd be the case. And, just for sake of argument I'm going to assume it was, then that's not "vague," that's a pertinent and direct question. That being said, wasn't Ratbeard the same guy who said the blade gambit spells were "working as intended"? He's also the same guy who sees "no problem with PvE strats," merely because he doesn't understand that the Rhoshambo cards can't completely counter PvE strats due to basic math, deck capacity, and deck cycling. >I don't disagree that everyone's going to have a "bad take" in some capacity and for one reason or another, that just doesn't entirely matter in this context. >You're either misinterpreting or giving the uncharitable side of gatekeeping the more favor in your view of it. Yes, gatekeeping can easily devolve into petty nonsense where, "You're not a real Lord of the Rings fan because you don't know what time Tolkien took a shit on June 8th, 1940." It's also true that gatekeeping is a requirement if you wish to keep the integrity of the group you're part of. Just like with borders for countries, they have to exist and you have to vet who's coming in, otherwise you don't have a country anymore. A lack of gatekeeping is exactly why Star Wars and Star Trek, for example, have been overtaken by political succubi who couldn't care less about the original IP and are legitimate fans, but just want to use the original IP as a skin suit they can wear to push their agenda. The same goes for just gaming at-large over the last decade, look all the game "journalists" who don't actually play games and/or just bitch and moan about nonsense. Or hell, the perfect example would be Anita Sarkeesian. Honestly one of the best examples of good gatekeeping I could see right now is the resistance from hispanics all over (and I mean, pretty much all sane and rational people at-large as well, but obviously hispanics mean more for it in this context) against the bullshit concept of "Latinx," because it's an absolute perversion of an entire language for political purposes, at the very least pushed primarily by people who don't speak Spanish or know anything about, well, literally anything. (Here's a good video on gatekeeping if you're interested: ruclips.net/video/nOj_ickFYMI/видео.html ) >I don't entirely have an opinion on Ratbeard one way or another. I've seen him say some pretty stupid shit, I've seen him say some smart shit (like pointing-out that Wraith isn't overpowered and hasn't changed literally since the release of the beta, just that the meta's changed), and I think it's good that he interacts so much with the players. But, from what I've seen and do know, do I think he's flawed and simultaneously a boon and a curse on PvP? Yea. 7) >Sure, slow's relative, but I definitely think there are levels to it even within context (although, it was only like, what, two years ago that KI started actually paying attention to PvP?). I don't think anyone's expecting massive changes within a week, but disabling the blade gambits taking as long as it did is asinine at best. I think they can definitely be much, much quicker to make minor changes to cards if it's warranted. >This isn't aimed at the individual devs, like Ratbeard, but the size of KI and the population of Wizard 101 is entirely their fault. The game's been out (in beta) since I was in elementary school, and the population hasn't even remotely approached what it could be if they made basic and necessary changes to the way the game is monetized and managed. To put it bluntly and mildly, the only people that play Wizard 101 are people who've played for years now, and out of nostalgia and just already having so much time invested, because it's really not a great game if we're being objective. If we're being completely honest, KI's marketing-plan for Wizard 101 is to essentially scam ignorant kids and parents into spending inordinate amounts of money on gambling systems for desired items and extremely bloated aspects of the game that're required to play PvP (Gardening and Pet Training). Can you play the game without spending money outside of membership? Yes, obviously, but the time-investment is absurd and so mind-numbingly tedious on purpose to try and pigeonhole players into spending money. But they don't just stop there, because they wildly inflate the prices of items to gouge players' wallets. As much nostalgia and love I have for the game itself, KI is easily one of the scummiest companies in all of gaming, without question. (The point being that the reason they're a smaller studio is because the suits at KI not understanding basic marketing and economics, which led to a stagflation in player-counts, which led to a decrease in revenue, which led to a lack of employees to update the game over the years. And it could all be changed for the better if they'd just fix the monetization of the game.) I think there can be legitimate reasons for one opinion or another, but I don't think all opinions are either valid or correct just because people say they're an opinion. I think a lot of the changes to PvP that people think should be made could easily be agreed upon and have the details ironed-out. Where I think a lot of people get hung-up on are on changes to individual spells and whether or not school-identity should matter. The former would be on a case by case basis, obviously, but even there I think there are definitely good and bad options for whatever comes up. With the latter, I would definitely say going more towards school-identity is better for the game and would make it far more enjoyable, but a lot of people hate that idea, because they think that the schools largely need the exact same counters (like all schools having a hit and bubble, overtimes, etc.). Would going more towards individualizing the schools create other balancing issues? Sure, to one degree or another. But I think a lot of balancing issues we have right now have to do with the fact that the schools have become so damn homogenized due to people being incapable of accepting that, "Hey, you chose to play Life, so you're not going to be able to overtime as easily as Fire and do a lot of damage."
Since they nerf Tower shield. I feel like they need to make a no pvp version of the "set" shields for the sake of Deckathalon or at the very least in Balance Deckathalon we could have a NO PVP Balance shield spell to help with Decathalon.
I think Deckathalon players will survive. There are other more prevalent issues with the Deckathalon imo and personally, I am not super worried about this affecting it too much. If anything, Balance Deckathalon is the one most affected by this since you typically require MULTIPLE shields to counter hits and when multiple shields are nerfed by 5%, it does change things.
Why not limit the copies of tower shield like they did with bubbles? That way tower shield wouldn’t always be a good move. I feel like with steal ward they’re kinda just solving a problem with another problem.
Bubble limiting is because it is a permanent buff that both opponents have to fight for, so by limiting them, they only reduced the amount of time in a match that was spent fighting the bubble in a ping-pong format (2 pips to change bubble which means you can do it every single turn without losing pips). Tower shield is a tempo-gaining utility that is meant to be strong and people would agree is needed, but is a little bit too strong. That is why steal ward is in the game, to keep tower shield as strong as it is, but make it a risky move, just like how set shields are strong, but are also risky moves now because of jinn's defense. I play without packing tower shields on my ice, and in matchups where my opponent relies on weakness to debuff me, my steal wards are absolutely useless.
limiting shields would just create a wand hit meta to waste all of them, then murder your enemy. it would make pvp completely RNG. which is not what they want.
As an Ice player, I don't appreciate the amount of nerfs it got and I agree they went a bit overboard, but specifically the resist and damage change has no impact on ice's stats because of the way pierce works with resist and is a very tiny boost to storm and fire. As I showed in the video, it effectively only increases Storm and Fire's damage by 2% and nerfs ice's resist by 2% if and only if AFTER pierce is factored in, I still have that much resist (only possible if they hit through a shield and dont completely pierce through the shield).
Ok So I'm guessing that with ressist nerf brace wouldnt be as bad. Cause before it was still bad but i feel like damage wise it somewhat affects life and ice which is why I worried jading would be worse than ever before bit these changes seem to fix things but i hopefully KI doesnt some how mess things up minus the bugs.
The stat change will actually have a very tiny impact and likely won't even affect 99.9% of matches. The matches that it does affect won't even be noticeable because they are THAT small.
Jades are partypoopers, I'm on EU server where things are behind the schedule and ran 3 times vs a guy who set 112% res vs my school. At that point why even bother?
Hephaestus change seems a little weird. I’d have taken off more damage and made it 4 pips to align with the rest. Fire getting nerfed too hard here with this and with mander(spellement path is bad on it now). Hopefully the spellement update provides something to compensate for these things(still hoping for Naphtha Scarab spellements to buff trap instead of damage).
it's honestly not a weird change. that spell has always been too good. FIRE HAVE BEEN USING IT TO SINGLE HANDEDLY KILL THE ENEMY. that is something the devs don't want to see. they want fire to use attacks intended to do high damage to kill enemies.
I will agree that people complain a lot, but in a lot of cases, those complaints are warranted and players need to give their true opinions on the update because that is what helps them figure out how to balance the game as best as possible.
Sorry but I didn’t watch the entire video, I just wanted to share my opinion. I started playing back in 2nd Age and honestly they should just revert things to how they were. In my opinion the only problems we had were boosters, healers, and Juju spammers. I agree with capping the incoming and outgoing health and I agree with the nerf to Juju. Everything else that has been changed in pvp has just been a scheme by Kingsisle. In this current stage were in, if you’re not max you can’t pvp! Back then you could join matches instantly from Journeymen, Adept, Magus, GRAND, LEGEND and now its rare to see matches for these levels. They destroyed the PvP Community. There were other ways to handle the problems pvp was having and this wasn’t it. PvP was the only thing I enjoyed doing and now Its not even enjoyable anymore. All the time we committed to farming for out gear, creating all these different pets to try and be the best. Coming up with different strategies to get an edge on the opponent , all of it GONE. Personally I don’t like turn based, the satisfaction you would feel when you’d go second and still find a wat to out play your opponent to get the victory, that’s what it was all about. It was meant to be competitive sometimes you win sometimes you lose. As a level 50 fire I managed to beat Exalts from second , jades from second, offensive legends from second. All this nonsense about making it fair for everyone, let them learn how to play like the rest of us did, banning preenchants , just like they banned elucidate and simplify. All these cards were used to outplay highly skilled opponents and to give yourself an edge as a lower level but now they screwed everyone over. Now you must be A level 130 in order to pvp because everyone else got nerfed. Okay Rant over, I can go into so much more detail but i feel that I’m probably already repeating myself or im no longer making sense…
I respect your opinion, I will add though that there was nothing fair about going second or first. Just because it was possible to win doesn't mean that a disadvantage such as going second should exist. If you were able to beat someone from second, you would much more easily win from first. I used to PvP before turn-based as well, and going second just limited you much more and you had to make predictions from second and lost a lot of control over the match simply due to a coin flip. The only way they would be able to make predictions in a 1v1 gamemode fair is if they switched it to the snake turn model which is a bit awkward in 1v1 scenarios. Basically, each player would get to make two moves in a row, but each turn would have both players making a move, just the person that goes first each turn switches. That is how it works in beastmoon and that is the only way they can make a fair implementation of that (they should try out a tournament mode where that is a thing so that people can test out this concept. As for matches at different levels, that just has to do with the fact that level bands are every 10 levels even at low levels. They do plan on implementing a lower level league, but that lower level league is looking to be more geared towards master, grandmaster or legend pvp. Still though, in order to bring these ideas, I highly recommend checking out Ratbeard's morning stream. He reads chat messages all the time there. Sure you managed to bet exalts from second as a level 50, but when you did that, you were effectively farming rank off of noobs in those matchups. Sure they had crazy stats or spells, but the point is a good level 50 player will never beat a good level 100 player. Banning pre-enchants was to add a skill element of deck cycling in PvP, something that you did not seem to mention here. In your opinion, they reduced the skill of PvP, but you didn't really mention that you have to learn to properly cycle your hand, something that is a direct result of both banning pre-enchants, and adding turn-based. Also, there is nothing balanced about being able to +300 enchant a 2 pip spell to do 500 base damage. That should not exist, I don't think there is any way to reasonably justify that. Just because everyone was able to do it, does not make it balanced IMO. "As for these cards being used to outplay highly skilled opponents." Well what is highly skilled about having an insanely rare treasure card or something that is not obtainable in a reasonable way by everyone? The point of banning certain treasure cards is that they provide too much value, or they are too difficult for someone to get with a reasonable amount of play time or without being pay to win. All of these issues are a lot more than just jades, jujus and boosters. If the only way to get a really useful treasure card is to be forced to pay money to get a plant to get them, that card either needs to be made accessible in other ways, or it needs to be banned until it is made accessible. Typically, TC are only banned if they have an important use in another gamemode and cannot be audited without destroying another gamemode, or they are not yet audited but need to be removed. I don't like everything about PvP right now either, but I think it is way more skill-based and balanced than past metas just based of those things I just mentioned above, and the existence of those unbalanced elements in the first two ages of PvP can be proven.
@@ferric I see what you mean and respect your point of view, but I still think there was better ways of balancing the game. A quick example, with pre-enchants, fine instead of adding +300 damage to some storm bats, make a Solar surge tc that will only add the +50 per rank of spell. When it comes to going second I also wont Disagree that it was a huge disadvantage but that being said predicting a triage or shift was always such a satisfying play and the arena would go NUTS, that was an amazing feeling lol though Turn based really ain’t that bad. When it comes to being skillful at cycling your deck, Luck will always play a huge part no matter what. Thats why it was always nice to have that hit in your side deck even though sometimes you still wouldnt pull it. That’s why people started using super concise decks, look at Cody Deathblade. When people were complaining about how bad death was, this dude was getting on leader beating exalts as a level 50 Death. At end of the day I just want to be able jump in queue on my level 50 and get a match and go toe to toe with someone and because of all these changes i haven’t been able too. Also why the hell did they stop allowing pre-enchanted spells in PvE ? That was dumb.
Nah you’re wrong. Turn based is an objectively more balanced system. This way the actual better player is more likely to win instead of an otherwise inferior player winning because of luck.
When I say no other game, I am referring to video games with a competitive PvP gamemode. The meaning of that statement can also be interpreted as "no other game has stalling for the timer based off of a coinflip as a win condition" which is essentially what a lot of people do right now.
Yeah so something that Ratbeard mentioned in stream today is that PvE Hard mode will enable Roshambos to be used so hopefully that mode will be the thing that gets you used to PvP.
@@ferric Good idea as we long time pve players that never got into pvp cause of the caustic player might actually want to now that they are doing something about that.
they need to fix the matches i hate the timer now. If someone can shield and stall enough they just win. You could out play them have more health better advantage and if they have more time then you you lose.
I think the timer needs to be increased for the mirror matchups between defensive schools. If they already address stalling through infractions, then the timer should be increased because some schools just play slower naturally.
@@ferric absolutely agree on that im hoping they can find some type of way to find better judgement on who wins also i feel like the timer is just not a good indicator on who wins. ive literally have complete advantages on blades pips and health and still took a L because of a Timer
I really hope they take a look at the gear people get especially from low levels cause the gear at low levels is so bad. Gear in game dont get somewhat decent until lvl 100. They really need to make the gear for low levels better so people dont have to pay a ton of money to buy gear. At least when you are high level you csn still use in game gear. With the only p2p piece of gear being the Motorist robe.
TRUE. I know they mentioned that all gear at max will be possible to get completely through spending time in game, but at lower levels there are so many pay-to-win pieces of gear that it makes me not want to try it at all.
@@TheUltimateRare I'm sorry but people shouldn't have to wait til lvl 30 to have decent gear. We need at the very least get somewhat decent gear at level 10 and then upgrade at level 30 but have gear we can use say a new hat or robe that we can use before lvl 30. Also between lvl 30 and 60 the gear should have decent to good stats so that there isnt a that much of grind at level 60 to get good gear. That and the level 60 gear needed a crit wand to go with its set.
@@sabercat5490 look at it from a game design standpoint, players at level 10 are only just beginning. all games you see, stats at level 10 are terrible. no matter how good you are at the game, if you don't intend to pay for better stats at level 10, do you really think game designers are going to make a bunch of strong level 10 gear sets? I think the main problem here is asking for too much, If pvp is too hard at level 10, that is by design. the higher level you go, the easier pvp should become.
@@TheUltimateRare The gear at level 10 is abysmal. At the very least it should have some accuracy and pip chance and maybe decent resist, universarsal resist and not the resist that helps to resist yourself. When we fighing mobs in schools apart from our own. If the game did that we would be ok before lvl 30 and not be fizzling all the time or fail pipping and mobs that arent your school wouldnt be doing a ton of damage to you at that level. Then at levl 20 you start geting more haalth and the damage stat and more accuracy. To deal wirh stronger foes before mount olympus gear. Maybe at lvl 20 is when we introduce damage stas and little bit more resist and acuracy
... I mean people were literally complaining about wanting them removed for the last 3 weeks, and that is what they did. They can't immediately fix them because there is a major update coming and these blade gambit spells only very recently became as big of an issue. They can't just hotfix it because that stuff takes time, so as a way to temporarily calm down things, the best course of action is to disable the problem.
@@vyseros Well they were ready, it's just after players tested them out, there wasn't anything immediately glaring or broken about them until they nerfed the other "broken" things. Once they did that, these spells stood out as completely unbalanced, so the short term fix before a major update is to temporarily allow them. So many other games do the exact same thing. If someone becomes a huge problem, the best course is to disable it until you find a fix. Even if it was truly due to a bug, bugs happen, it's just the nature of things. You won't find a single competitive game that won't have bugs from time to time.
timer stall jade strat is dead. ties will completely force them to go offensively or risk losing rank. I'd still like to see PVP bans for anyone who griefs.
This video is super long, so I have left chapters so that you can navigate to a specific section if you want.
Let me know your thoughts down below! Also the Balance Walkthrough RETURNS today at 3:00 PM EST! I hope to see y'all there! :)
twitch.tv/ferric
#1: Awesome new channel art and pfp!
#2 cool video, love to hear ur opinions on stuff
Ts, man. We love Ratbeard ❤️
1:46 you also can see the updates from past
The issue I'm seeing is that a lot of people in Wiz PvP, especially Ratbeard, are 100% correct on some thing and just eating dirt in the middle of the forest on other things.
Nerfing Hephy is stupid, Steal Ward is overpowered no matter how you try to square it (it removes a shield and shields you for a single pip), Ratbeard was saying the blade gambits weren't busted, PvE strats are busted and Roshambos don't change that because of deck fails and basic math, no pre-enchants isn't a pacing issue, it's a deck size and randomness issue; trying to act like we don't know who's stream sniping and shit is asinine, anyone saying Wrait is "overpowered" is a brainlet, timer games being "draws" that punish both players is stupid, etc.
Just as pretty much an outsider, PvP seems like a shitshow because the people at KI don't actually know what they're doing and can't admit they're wrong, it's ruined by imbeciles who exploit constantly because they lack basic morals and principles, and too many PvP RUclipsrs are willing to parrot the same dipshit talking-points, even if they're laughably absurd (nerfing Hephy being among the top of that list, that spell was never busted and they just wanna nerf Fire into the ground; or making the schools even more similar instead of having an actual identity).
Hopefully PvP gets better soon, I'd like to play it at some point, but I'm not investing the time to get the gear only to wanna slam my head through my desk and deal with dipshits all around me.
Well "nerfing hephy" isn't exactly the correct term. It has been audited, and even post-audit it still does more damage for how much other spells are valued based on audit rules. Even now, as a fire spell, for only one more pip, Hephaestus does a whopping 175 more average damage than storman which is a storm spell, aka the school that has average 25% MORE dpp than fire. Not to mention the fact that it being a 5 pip spell means that it can be enchanted for 50 more than solar surge. I personally don't believe the spell was broken before the audit, but this change gives it a nice middle ground between being too weak and being a little bit too strong. For reference, with fire's current stats, an unbuffed hephaestus does way more damage than storman for only 1 more pip.
Also with Steal Ward, once again, it is only useful against tower shield, and that one specific spell mathematically buys you two turns of defense (in that it takes two buffs to counter a tower shield). Instead of nerfing tower shield, they made steal ward 1 pip so that it is the punisher to that spell. If you played PvP, you would quickly realize how useless of a spell it is against fire wizards, who typically don't even pack tower shield, but just use weakness. It is pretty much only useful against tower shield in gaining as much tempo as it does with very little exceptions. Weakness more than counters a blade (spell does .94 damge which is close to 1.00). However, it takes two 35% blades vs a tower to get the spell to do .91 damage which is still lower than 1. Not to mention if you are at low pips against someone at high pips, they worked to gain those pips and set up a really strong hit only for you to tower and now they've lost 2 turns in just 1 turn, not to mention they are forced to overtime or wand or use something else with no way of gaining that tempo back easily. That is what steal ward is designed to prevent.
I'm pretty sure Ratbeard said that the trap gambits were not busted, I don't recall him ever claiming that the Blade gambits were not overtuned, in fact he said the exact opposite of that. All he said was that they were "working as intended" which means that they were designed to be ridiculously easy to setup and buff early on compared to the trap ones. However, not all things can be found out on paper, and while on paper that may have seemed like a good change, in play that made them broken which is exactly why they are changing them.
Besides the blade gambits, PvE strats are very easy to counter if you have Righting the Scales. They are so easy, in fact that at one point I even stopped packing scales until I started facing better players. You just need to know how to cycle properly, and once again, you are not supposed to counter all of their traps, that was never the intention. The point of it was to buy yourself some tempo because you lose 0 pips effectively by using scales and then build your shadow meter at the same time. By doing that, a trap stacker doesn't have many ways of buying an extra turn off of you. On my Ice, I am currently undefeated against every type of trapstack strategy EXCEPT jade trapstack and even that match was a result of it going to timer rather than the trapstacker actually killing me.
And still, even if a large group of people do think someone is stream sniping, you can't expect them to punish them based on external factors. Some of the so called obvious snipers don't even snipe, I have had many of my friends in the past accused of this who I knew were not sniping at all. Streamers have many things they can do to counter queue sniping already (overlay, PvPing from home, hidden to friends, etc) and if players are queue sniping through exploiting something in game, that was addressed in the dev diary as well and there will be infractions there as well.
I do agree with you that Wraith is not overpowered, but strong. The reason why it is strong is because in a chip meta, the delta per pip (since half the hit gets converted to healing) is higher than fire and lower than storm, and all things that are used to buff it to do crazy amounts have counters except shrike. As for timer games, how else would you punish players for stalling to timer? I don't think timer should be a win condition at all, and by punishing someone for going to timer, it makes it less likely that they will continue to go for that.
I will add though that I agree with the general sentiment of your statement which seems to be that there is an issue of gatekeeping in PvP.
It's the one game system that has so many people that are not open to hearing out other people's opinions and thinking differently just seems to be a foreign concept to a lot of people on this side of the community.
@@ferric Hephy was a spell before the change that added all the 4 pip hit and bubble spells. If we're going to complain about Hephy "having too much damage," then the issue is with the other spells, not Hephy, because Hephy was there first. Frankly, I think damage shouldn't be what people look at with those spells (if we nerf or buff them at all), rather their pips and the damage increase from the bubble. Wanna nerf Hephy? Ok, nerf the damage increase to like 15 or 20% instead of trying to make Fire even worse after removing Salamander from their arsenal. Put something that makes more sense is either buffing the damage of the others or lowering their pips to 3 (so Pip Conserve comes into play).
I understand the rationale people have for Steal Ward being 1 pip, the issue is that it doesn't work in practice. Steal Ward being 1 pip to shield yourself while also taking away a shield from your opponent is extremely overpowered, because now it's just a game of luck in what cards each person pulls. With the amount of Pierce people have stock, on top of Infallible, Tower Shields are pretty damn balanced and the idea that Steal Ward at 1 pip is somehow balanced is necessary, again, makes no sense. If hit and bubble or hit and shield spells are all 4 pips, then where's the consistency?
PvE strats are hated by all diehard PvP players because they're not easily countered. The issue is that the idea of, "Oh, just use this spell, forehead," is that you can only hold so many in your deck and require the luck to pull them in order for it to be a viable counter. Letting kids just spam blades or traps to win in one hit isn't fun for anyone, which is why *everyone* who plays PvP hates it. You can only hold so many cards, and being forced to try and discard your whole hand of cards you still need just means you're at an insane disadvantage, no matter how you try to slice it.
I'm not all-knowing of stream-sniping, but I've watched enough of Sauce's streams and videos to see that the things you just talked about clearly aren't fool-proof enough. And the idea of "stream-sniping being outside the game" is laughable at best, because they're playing the game. It's been a rampant issue for years now, and they haven't even tried to implement any solution, like even just preventing people from matching against the same account(s) within a short period of time. But the attitude of trying to say we don't really know who's sniping and who's not only goes so far, because the egregious examples are obvious to Helen Keller, let alone anyone else watching. Are streamers 100% accurate in saying who's sniping and who's not? No, but when it's this huge of an issue, can you really blame them for "jumping" to that conclusion when their opponent consistently make perfect plays? I can't.
I don't think the timer should be in the game at all if we're being honest, I think it's a lazy and asinine concept to try and fix other issues. If a good game is going to last a longer period of time, then so be it, who cares? I get why people think it's necessary, but if the rest of the game was up to par, I don't think it'd be necessary in any capacity. But if we're stuck with it, I don't disagree that it shouldn't be a win condition, but why should a draw being considered a "loss" for both parties? If one person is stalling and the other is playing normal, then punishing the latter is absurd. Just don't add or take any rank and leave it be for now.
Again, I don't have all the answers to the issues with PvP, but I see plenty of the most absurd takes from all sides that're mind-numbing to me, and it doesn't help any thoughts I have about being one of the only level-headed, sane people around. You can't tell me Hephy is overpowered, but Steal Ward isn't in the same breath. Healing is a problem (with no real great solution that I've seen or thought of, it's honestly one of the harder issues to resolve), but if the people complaining are those who want the schools to be homogenous, then I can only laugh at their misery. People who think you should just be able to treat PvP like some typical PvE boss and that you can "just use spells to counter it," without realizing that basic math and the reality of cycling your deck debunk that concept, and that it's somehow a "viable and legitimate" PvP strat when it's so braindead that a lobotomized monkey could do it, concern me to say the least. Also, the idea that KI "isn't banning anyone for things done outside the game," is a bold-faced lie, they've done it in the past probably countless times, but Dakota EarthHorn is the first one that immediately comes to mind.
And no, I'm not against gatekeeping for PvP, I'm completely for it. Gatekeeping is, for every single community, a necessity in order to keep the integrity of whatever circle that may be. Otherwise it'll always become corrupted, turn on the original members, and be used as some sort of skin for the infectors to wear and push whatever shit they wanna push. I don't want PvP to have "PvE strats" just to appease people outside the circle, they're extremely braindead and low IQ concepts that literally anyone could do and find high-levels of "success" with. Can issues arise with gatekeeping? Naturally, but that doesn't make it any less important, nor that it isn't a requirement to keep the integrity of the original group. Again, not all-knowing of every little detail, but it's why when I see diehard PvP people get mad at Ratbeard for some things he says, saying that he doesn't understand what he's actually talking about when it comes to PvP, it's hard for me to fault them, because there does seem to be a trend there (and I don't have an opinion on him one way or the other). Does that mean everything Ratbeard says is wrong or stupid? No, but it means that he's ignorant and, from what I've seen, fairly bull-headed. Like when he said the gambits were working as intended, even though they *clearly* weren't.
Like I said, there are things that "both sides" have said that I think are patently insane and laughably stupid, but also things that're just undeniable. There just has to be some level of realization on both sides what those things are, and I don't think the issue is identifying what those things are, but getting both sides to admit that what they said or whatever their opinion is, is either smart or stupid. But honestly, I think arguably the biggest issue with the current situation is that KI is too slow on making necessary changes and adjustments, but will make some out of the blue without any Test Realm or heads-up given to players (regardless of whether or not the changes are good or bad).
@@ThatFalloutGod
1. Well no, if a certain spell is OP, the solution is not to make the other new spells OP. Hephaestus was initially made way back when hit and bubbles were all 3 pip item card spells rather than trained hits that could be enchanted. However it was also during a meta where shadow spells could be enchanted, and the meta itself did not revolve around spamming bubbles and hit and bubbles from main (back when you could pack tc bubbs). As for nerfing the Hephy damage by 15-20% that is literally exactly what they did. It received a 16% nerf.
2. You just used the nature of this being a card game and having RNG (of which pulling cards from a deck by nature will have randomness) as an argument against steal ward. You found pierce to be completely balanced at 0 pips, but steal ward which just does one more action than pierce (shielding yourself) in the same turn as being unbalanced at 1 pips. Hit and bubble and hit and shield spells are that amount of pips because the damage they do is adjusted accordingly to the amount of pips and utility they give. Steal ward is that way because it does two zero-pip actions in 1 turn, pierce and tower shielding yourself in effect. Once again, the only spell that makes this spell good is tower shield, there aren't any other situations where it would be useful. SImply using weakness instead of tower shield makes steal ward ineffective.
3. I never said you can blame streamers for jumping to the conclusions, although I think it's kinda weird that streamers become defensive whenever they are criticized over something, but they feel entitled to just throwing out cheating accusations willy-nilly with no repercussions, and not just stopping at that but outright advocating for having some of them banned in the same sentence. Sure they might want only the ones they know for sure are sniping to be banned, but I would not want a streamer (not referring to Thomas here specifically, just streamers in general) that falsely accuses multiple players of cheating to also have power in being able to punish snipers. It would have to be someone that can be fair and impartial, and in this case, only an automated system based on game-data can be. Once again, by streaming a game, you are taking a risk of being sniped, and I say this as a streamer myself.
4. I agree I don't like the timer, but unfortunately, it needs to exist since a game can technically last forever. There is no other competitive game at least that I play where the game doesn't end within an hour. I think the timer is way too short because it punishes defensive play completely. We can agree to disagree whether or not it should be allowed as a win condition, my reason for not liking it is only certain schools can use that as a win condition which makes it unbalanced, that is why it either needs to be both players gaining rank, which is obviously a huge no, neither player losing rank, which wouldn't do anything to discourage going for the stall just to save your rank and waste your opponent's time, so they need to be actively discouraged from doing it. By increasing the amount of time, they can hopefully balance the timer so that it punishes stalling, but still allows freedom in defensive play that doesn't last all day.
5. I feel like being level-headed or sane is more of a subjective term because there are those with disagreeing viewpoints that have legitimate reasons to think the way they do, so in that sense, there isn't objectively one way to balance the game. Game design and making a fair, balanced and fun competitive system is an art form, not an exact science, so there isn't always one best way to do things, and if there is, well then that's just your opinion. You CAN say Hephy is overpowered and steal ward isn't if you looked at the rules of the spell audit and realize that the way they factor utility into a spell makes both spells make sense, and Hephaestus does more damage than it is supposed to when considering all of that. There is a dev diary as well as a final bastion article detailing how the spell audit works and according to that audit, both spells are at the correct value for their pips (hephy technically is still higher than it should be, but at this point it has passed the audit, and once again its nerf is within that 15-20% threshold that you implied earlier was okay). Also when looking at it in play, you can also argue that a fire wizard being able to do 1700 damage with a single buff and change the bubble in the same turn for only 5 pips is much more overpowered than simply spending 1 pip to switch a single tower to you, which your opponent can remove also with a 0 pip spell or swing right back to them.
6. Well it would be fair to be okay if that gatekeeping community actually advocated for things that made sense to advocate for. There are veterans that legitimately believe non turn-based was a better system for PvP and believe that old PvP is better for the game to have simply because they enjoyed how unbalanced it was. There are veterans that preferred the old version of stack strats to where there were literally no counters to that stack unless you were a myth wizard. There are veterans that preferred the higher amounts of RNG that came with previous metas (bad rng in that it is RNG that doesn't make sense for a card game, not the rng of pulling cards themselves). I am not joking. PvP in the past never had integrity to begin with with its history of being pay to win, history of inaccessible/pay-to-win TC, history of level imbalanced gameplay, lower level experienced players farming rank off of higher level players that were not experienced enough to know how to play the game, etc. Ratbeard himself only calls takes bad when they are either extremely vague suggestions (the specific one where he did it to Lou was when he came into his stream and said and I can almost directly quote him here "you literally can't heal as a life." ) He called it a bad take because it is unhelpful to say a blanket term like that. WHY can't life heal? That is the kinds of stuff that is useful to someone leading the design elements of PvP. He calls some of my takes bad too, people can have bad takes. THAT is the issue with gatekeeping, simply accepting the ideas of veteran players even when they are bad or misguided, and completely rejecting ideas from others when in concept and in play work well and are fair simply because they are not a veteran of the game. If you think Ratbeard is ignorant, then you haven't seen his streams to where he literally addressed everything that players complain about with respect to PvP, how they plan on addressing it. Another reason why you can't use vague blanket statements to describe things in a PvP system that has so many different factors that could throw the entire system off if one element is unbalanced.
7. I can agree at the end that they are slow at making changes, but once again, slow is a relative term. They aren't capable of pushing out huge changes to things immediately such as a company like Riot Games, Epic Games, EA, Valve, etc. KingsIsle is a tiny company in comparison with a tiny amount of staff in comparison, so without realizing how much staff they have, without taking into consideration how many players actually play ranked 1v1 compared to the amount of players that play other game systesm, without taking into consideration that developers are human beings who take time off on the December holidays, without taking into consideration the fact that we are weeks away from a major test realm in which a major game system is being changed (spellements), it is very easy to say that the updates are not coming out fast enough.
And yeah, as you said yourself, there are multiple sides to it all, and there are legitimate reasons for having different opinions.
@@ferric
6)
>You're strawmanning here. Where are the hordes of PvP people who've been around for years saying these things? I've literally never seen a single person say these things (not saying they don't exist, I imagine there's one imbecile who'd say this nonsense, but when well over 99% of people aren't saying the things you just said, what's the point you're making?).
>I wasn't referring to players or game having integrity in the sense of it being good, but the integrity of the people who actually play PvP, i.e. the strength of the foundation of the group. Will everyone in the group of legitimate PvP people agree on shit? No. But they all agree that they like PvP and want to see it improved. And they should gatekeep from those who not only don't know what they're talking about, but don't actually care about educating themselves on PvP and being allowed into the group. If a PvE person wants to go play PvP for something he wants to get with Arena Tickets, then nobody's going to have a problem. When that same guy wants PvP to become like fighting some random boss in PvE and defends shit aspects of PvP that benefit him, then that's when the problem starts.
>I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say Lou said, "Life can't heal," back when the meta was where Life literally couldn't heal, because people were doing just so much damage. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems like that'd be the case. And, just for sake of argument I'm going to assume it was, then that's not "vague," that's a pertinent and direct question. That being said, wasn't Ratbeard the same guy who said the blade gambit spells were "working as intended"? He's also the same guy who sees "no problem with PvE strats," merely because he doesn't understand that the Rhoshambo cards can't completely counter PvE strats due to basic math, deck capacity, and deck cycling.
>I don't disagree that everyone's going to have a "bad take" in some capacity and for one reason or another, that just doesn't entirely matter in this context.
>You're either misinterpreting or giving the uncharitable side of gatekeeping the more favor in your view of it. Yes, gatekeeping can easily devolve into petty nonsense where, "You're not a real Lord of the Rings fan because you don't know what time Tolkien took a shit on June 8th, 1940." It's also true that gatekeeping is a requirement if you wish to keep the integrity of the group you're part of. Just like with borders for countries, they have to exist and you have to vet who's coming in, otherwise you don't have a country anymore. A lack of gatekeeping is exactly why Star Wars and Star Trek, for example, have been overtaken by political succubi who couldn't care less about the original IP and are legitimate fans, but just want to use the original IP as a skin suit they can wear to push their agenda. The same goes for just gaming at-large over the last decade, look all the game "journalists" who don't actually play games and/or just bitch and moan about nonsense. Or hell, the perfect example would be Anita Sarkeesian. Honestly one of the best examples of good gatekeeping I could see right now is the resistance from hispanics all over (and I mean, pretty much all sane and rational people at-large as well, but obviously hispanics mean more for it in this context) against the bullshit concept of "Latinx," because it's an absolute perversion of an entire language for political purposes, at the very least pushed primarily by people who don't speak Spanish or know anything about, well, literally anything. (Here's a good video on gatekeeping if you're interested: ruclips.net/video/nOj_ickFYMI/видео.html )
>I don't entirely have an opinion on Ratbeard one way or another. I've seen him say some pretty stupid shit, I've seen him say some smart shit (like pointing-out that Wraith isn't overpowered and hasn't changed literally since the release of the beta, just that the meta's changed), and I think it's good that he interacts so much with the players. But, from what I've seen and do know, do I think he's flawed and simultaneously a boon and a curse on PvP? Yea.
7)
>Sure, slow's relative, but I definitely think there are levels to it even within context (although, it was only like, what, two years ago that KI started actually paying attention to PvP?). I don't think anyone's expecting massive changes within a week, but disabling the blade gambits taking as long as it did is asinine at best. I think they can definitely be much, much quicker to make minor changes to cards if it's warranted.
>This isn't aimed at the individual devs, like Ratbeard, but the size of KI and the population of Wizard 101 is entirely their fault. The game's been out (in beta) since I was in elementary school, and the population hasn't even remotely approached what it could be if they made basic and necessary changes to the way the game is monetized and managed. To put it bluntly and mildly, the only people that play Wizard 101 are people who've played for years now, and out of nostalgia and just already having so much time invested, because it's really not a great game if we're being objective. If we're being completely honest, KI's marketing-plan for Wizard 101 is to essentially scam ignorant kids and parents into spending inordinate amounts of money on gambling systems for desired items and extremely bloated aspects of the game that're required to play PvP (Gardening and Pet Training). Can you play the game without spending money outside of membership? Yes, obviously, but the time-investment is absurd and so mind-numbingly tedious on purpose to try and pigeonhole players into spending money. But they don't just stop there, because they wildly inflate the prices of items to gouge players' wallets. As much nostalgia and love I have for the game itself, KI is easily one of the scummiest companies in all of gaming, without question. (The point being that the reason they're a smaller studio is because the suits at KI not understanding basic marketing and economics, which led to a stagflation in player-counts, which led to a decrease in revenue, which led to a lack of employees to update the game over the years. And it could all be changed for the better if they'd just fix the monetization of the game.)
I think there can be legitimate reasons for one opinion or another, but I don't think all opinions are either valid or correct just because people say they're an opinion. I think a lot of the changes to PvP that people think should be made could easily be agreed upon and have the details ironed-out. Where I think a lot of people get hung-up on are on changes to individual spells and whether or not school-identity should matter. The former would be on a case by case basis, obviously, but even there I think there are definitely good and bad options for whatever comes up. With the latter, I would definitely say going more towards school-identity is better for the game and would make it far more enjoyable, but a lot of people hate that idea, because they think that the schools largely need the exact same counters (like all schools having a hit and bubble, overtimes, etc.). Would going more towards individualizing the schools create other balancing issues? Sure, to one degree or another. But I think a lot of balancing issues we have right now have to do with the fact that the schools have become so damn homogenized due to people being incapable of accepting that, "Hey, you chose to play Life, so you're not going to be able to overtime as easily as Fire and do a lot of damage."
Since they nerf Tower shield. I feel like they need to make a no pvp version of the "set" shields for the sake of Deckathalon or at the very least in Balance Deckathalon we could have a NO PVP Balance shield spell to help with Decathalon.
I think Deckathalon players will survive. There are other more prevalent issues with the Deckathalon imo and personally, I am not super worried about this affecting it too much. If anything, Balance Deckathalon is the one most affected by this since you typically require MULTIPLE shields to counter hits and when multiple shields are nerfed by 5%, it does change things.
41:42 yeah that happens a lot: you win win, lose, lose, win, lose, win, lose, win, lose, lose, win, win... and your rank stays the same
Every time they say “players” or “people” complain. Just fill that in with awesomethesauce
Why not limit the copies of tower shield like they did with bubbles? That way tower shield wouldn’t always be a good move. I feel like with steal ward they’re kinda just solving a problem with another problem.
Bubble limiting is because it is a permanent buff that both opponents have to fight for, so by limiting them, they only reduced the amount of time in a match that was spent fighting the bubble in a ping-pong format (2 pips to change bubble which means you can do it every single turn without losing pips).
Tower shield is a tempo-gaining utility that is meant to be strong and people would agree is needed, but is a little bit too strong. That is why steal ward is in the game, to keep tower shield as strong as it is, but make it a risky move, just like how set shields are strong, but are also risky moves now because of jinn's defense. I play without packing tower shields on my ice, and in matchups where my opponent relies on weakness to debuff me, my steal wards are absolutely useless.
limiting shields would just create a wand hit meta to waste all of them, then murder your enemy. it would make pvp completely RNG. which is not what they want.
kinda getting sad at this point how every change has its way to nerf ice in a way, the school thats already weak imo
As an Ice player, I don't appreciate the amount of nerfs it got and I agree they went a bit overboard, but specifically the resist and damage change has no impact on ice's stats because of the way pierce works with resist and is a very tiny boost to storm and fire. As I showed in the video, it effectively only increases Storm and Fire's damage by 2% and nerfs ice's resist by 2% if and only if AFTER pierce is factored in, I still have that much resist (only possible if they hit through a shield and dont completely pierce through the shield).
Ok So I'm guessing that with ressist nerf brace wouldnt be as bad. Cause before it was still bad but i feel like damage wise it somewhat affects life and ice which is why I worried jading would be worse than ever before bit these changes seem to fix things but i hopefully KI doesnt some how mess things up minus the bugs.
The stat change will actually have a very tiny impact and likely won't even affect 99.9% of matches. The matches that it does affect won't even be noticeable because they are THAT small.
Jades are partypoopers, I'm on EU server where things are behind the schedule and ran 3 times vs a guy who set 112% res vs my school. At that point why even bother?
Hephaestus change seems a little weird. I’d have taken off more damage and made it 4 pips to align with the rest.
Fire getting nerfed too hard here with this and with mander(spellement path is bad on it now). Hopefully the spellement update provides something to compensate for these things(still hoping for Naphtha Scarab spellements to buff trap instead of damage).
fire is still pretty strong imo, they just needed to get knocked down a peg before somethings added to counteract drains
Considering fire has better stats than storm and more health I don’t see the problem
@@qualitypanda but the spell is still under whelming can't compare stats vs a spell. Tf..
it's honestly not a weird change. that spell has always been too good. FIRE HAVE BEEN USING IT TO SINGLE HANDEDLY KILL THE ENEMY. that is something the devs don't want to see. they want fire to use attacks intended to do high damage to kill enemies.
Nah man people complain way too much in this game. There is always something someone is crying about..
I will agree that people complain a lot, but in a lot of cases, those complaints are warranted and players need to give their true opinions on the update because that is what helps them figure out how to balance the game as best as possible.
they have too much passion for a kids game. I don't even play pvp because i hate that stuff. I just come back whenever PVE gets something cool.
Sorry but I didn’t watch the entire video, I just wanted to share my opinion. I started playing back in 2nd Age and honestly they should just revert things to how they were. In my opinion the only problems we had were boosters, healers, and Juju spammers. I agree with capping the incoming and outgoing health and I agree with the nerf to Juju. Everything else that has been changed in pvp has just been a scheme by Kingsisle. In this current stage were in, if you’re not max you can’t pvp! Back then you could join matches instantly from Journeymen, Adept, Magus, GRAND, LEGEND and now its rare to see matches for these levels. They destroyed the PvP Community. There were other ways to handle the problems pvp was having and this wasn’t it. PvP was the only thing I enjoyed doing and now Its not even enjoyable anymore. All the time we committed to farming for out gear, creating all these different pets to try and be the best. Coming up with different strategies to get an edge on the opponent , all of it GONE. Personally I don’t like turn based, the satisfaction you would feel when you’d go second and still find a wat to out play your opponent to get the victory, that’s what it was all about. It was meant to be competitive sometimes you win sometimes you lose. As a level 50 fire I managed to beat Exalts from second , jades from second, offensive legends from second. All this nonsense about making it fair for everyone, let them learn how to play like the rest of us did, banning preenchants , just like they banned elucidate and simplify. All these cards were used to outplay highly skilled opponents and to give yourself an edge as a lower level but now they screwed everyone over. Now you must be A level 130 in order to pvp because everyone else got nerfed. Okay Rant over, I can go into so much more detail but i feel that I’m probably already repeating myself or im no longer making sense…
They should keep a classic PvP mode in like practice PvP or something.
I respect your opinion, I will add though that there was nothing fair about going second or first. Just because it was possible to win doesn't mean that a disadvantage such as going second should exist. If you were able to beat someone from second, you would much more easily win from first. I used to PvP before turn-based as well, and going second just limited you much more and you had to make predictions from second and lost a lot of control over the match simply due to a coin flip.
The only way they would be able to make predictions in a 1v1 gamemode fair is if they switched it to the snake turn model which is a bit awkward in 1v1 scenarios. Basically, each player would get to make two moves in a row, but each turn would have both players making a move, just the person that goes first each turn switches. That is how it works in beastmoon and that is the only way they can make a fair implementation of that (they should try out a tournament mode where that is a thing so that people can test out this concept.
As for matches at different levels, that just has to do with the fact that level bands are every 10 levels even at low levels. They do plan on implementing a lower level league, but that lower level league is looking to be more geared towards master, grandmaster or legend pvp. Still though, in order to bring these ideas, I highly recommend checking out Ratbeard's morning stream. He reads chat messages all the time there.
Sure you managed to bet exalts from second as a level 50, but when you did that, you were effectively farming rank off of noobs in those matchups. Sure they had crazy stats or spells, but the point is a good level 50 player will never beat a good level 100 player. Banning pre-enchants was to add a skill element of deck cycling in PvP, something that you did not seem to mention here. In your opinion, they reduced the skill of PvP, but you didn't really mention that you have to learn to properly cycle your hand, something that is a direct result of both banning pre-enchants, and adding turn-based. Also, there is nothing balanced about being able to +300 enchant a 2 pip spell to do 500 base damage. That should not exist, I don't think there is any way to reasonably justify that. Just because everyone was able to do it, does not make it balanced IMO.
"As for these cards being used to outplay highly skilled opponents." Well what is highly skilled about having an insanely rare treasure card or something that is not obtainable in a reasonable way by everyone? The point of banning certain treasure cards is that they provide too much value, or they are too difficult for someone to get with a reasonable amount of play time or without being pay to win. All of these issues are a lot more than just jades, jujus and boosters. If the only way to get a really useful treasure card is to be forced to pay money to get a plant to get them, that card either needs to be made accessible in other ways, or it needs to be banned until it is made accessible. Typically, TC are only banned if they have an important use in another gamemode and cannot be audited without destroying another gamemode, or they are not yet audited but need to be removed.
I don't like everything about PvP right now either, but I think it is way more skill-based and balanced than past metas just based of those things I just mentioned above, and the existence of those unbalanced elements in the first two ages of PvP can be proven.
@@ferric I see what you mean and respect your point of view, but I still think there was better ways of balancing the game. A quick example, with pre-enchants, fine instead of adding +300 damage to some storm bats, make a Solar surge tc that will only add the +50 per rank of spell. When it comes to going second I also wont Disagree that it was a huge disadvantage but that being said predicting a triage or shift was always such a satisfying play and the arena would go NUTS, that was an amazing feeling lol though Turn based really ain’t that bad. When it comes to being skillful at cycling your deck, Luck will always play a huge part no matter what. Thats why it was always nice to have that hit in your side deck even though sometimes you still wouldnt pull it. That’s why people started using super concise decks, look at Cody Deathblade. When people were complaining about how bad death was, this dude was getting on leader beating exalts as a level 50 Death. At end of the day I just want to be able jump in queue on my level 50 and get a match and go toe to toe with someone and because of all these changes i haven’t been able too. Also why the hell did they stop allowing pre-enchanted spells in PvE ? That was dumb.
@@misterman1144 Nah man, I need that 16 lol
Nah you’re wrong. Turn based is an objectively more balanced system. This way the actual better player is more likely to win instead of an otherwise inferior player winning because of luck.
hi👍🏻
"no other game has a timer as a win condition" I mean chess has a timer as well.
When I say no other game, I am referring to video games with a competitive PvP gamemode.
The meaning of that statement can also be interpreted as "no other game has stalling for the timer based off of a coinflip as a win condition" which is essentially what a lot of people do right now.
Pokémon does as well
Is pvp free now ? Forever?
Yes, ranked PvP has been free to play for awhile.
Problem is a pve player just learning to pvp will have no idea how to use these spells.
Yeah so something that Ratbeard mentioned in stream today is that PvE Hard mode will enable Roshambos to be used so hopefully that mode will be the thing that gets you used to PvP.
@@ferric Good idea as we long time pve players that never got into pvp cause of the caustic player might actually want to now that they are doing something about that.
they need to fix the matches i hate the timer now. If someone can shield and stall enough they just win. You could out play them have more health better advantage and if they have more time then you you lose.
I think the timer needs to be increased for the mirror matchups between defensive schools. If they already address stalling through infractions, then the timer should be increased because some schools just play slower naturally.
@@ferric absolutely agree on that im hoping they can find some type of way to find better judgement on who wins also i feel like the timer is just not a good indicator on who wins. ive literally have complete advantages on blades pips and health and still took a L because of a Timer
did you even read these notes? stalling is a tie now. not a win.
I really hope they take a look at the gear people get especially from low levels cause the gear at low levels is so bad. Gear in game dont get somewhat decent until lvl 100. They really need to make the gear for low levels better so people dont have to pay a ton of money to buy gear. At least when you are high level you csn still use in game gear. With the only p2p piece of gear being the Motorist robe.
TRUE. I know they mentioned that all gear at max will be possible to get completely through spending time in game, but at lower levels there are so many pay-to-win pieces of gear that it makes me not want to try it at all.
low level gear is always gonna be bad by default because good gear won't start until those stats are needed for the content.
@@TheUltimateRare I'm sorry but people shouldn't have to wait til lvl 30 to have decent gear. We need at the very least get somewhat decent gear at level 10 and then upgrade at level 30 but have gear we can use say a new hat or robe that we can use before lvl 30. Also between lvl 30 and 60 the gear should have decent to good stats so that there isnt a that much of grind at level 60 to get good gear. That and the level 60 gear needed a crit wand to go with its set.
@@sabercat5490 look at it from a game design standpoint, players at level 10 are only just beginning. all games you see, stats at level 10 are terrible. no matter how good you are at the game, if you don't intend to pay for better stats at level 10,
do you really think game designers are going to make a bunch of strong level 10 gear sets? I think the main problem here is asking for too much,
If pvp is too hard at level 10, that is by design. the higher level you go, the easier pvp should become.
@@TheUltimateRare The gear at level 10 is abysmal. At the very least it should have some accuracy and pip chance and maybe decent resist, universarsal resist and not the resist that helps to resist yourself. When we fighing mobs in schools apart from our own. If the game did that we would be ok before lvl 30 and not be fizzling all the time or fail pipping and mobs that arent your school wouldnt be doing a ton of damage to you at that level. Then at levl 20 you start geting more haalth and the damage stat and more accuracy. To deal wirh stronger foes before mount olympus gear. Maybe at lvl 20 is when we introduce damage stas and little bit more resist and acuracy
Bro they made the Onis and Jinns as Pvp only spells.... and because their incompetence now they have to put them on hold? Wow
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I mean people were literally complaining about wanting them removed for the last 3 weeks, and that is what they did. They can't immediately fix them because there is a major update coming and these blade gambit spells only very recently became as big of an issue. They can't just hotfix it because that stuff takes time, so as a way to temporarily calm down things, the best course of action is to disable the problem.
@@ferric I know but my point of view is that why released broken spells if they arent ready lol
@@vyseros Well they were ready, it's just after players tested them out, there wasn't anything immediately glaring or broken about them until they nerfed the other "broken" things. Once they did that, these spells stood out as completely unbalanced, so the short term fix before a major update is to temporarily allow them.
So many other games do the exact same thing. If someone becomes a huge problem, the best course is to disable it until you find a fix. Even if it was truly due to a bug, bugs happen, it's just the nature of things. You won't find a single competitive game that won't have bugs from time to time.
timer stall jade strat is dead. ties will completely force them to go offensively or risk losing rank.
I'd still like to see PVP bans for anyone who griefs.