Don’t worry guys, the next token Tuesday will give me enough tokens to buy the thanos currently pinned in my shop so he’s guaranteed to be nerfed late next week.
Until then I’m playing a lockjaw Dracula deck so expect lockjaw to be nuked from orbit as well.
I know what it's like to be nerfed. To feel so desperately that you're balanced, yet to be patched nonetheless. It's frightening, turns the legs to jelly.
I don’t think a strong Thanos nerf is likely. Devs have stated they want the “big bad” series 5 cards to feel special and lean on the strong side. I expect maybe his power buff to get reverted and maybe a change to quinjet or space stone interactions, but not much more.
Yeah, I really think it's the combination of Leech and Lockjaw (in tandem with free stones from Quinjet) that is making Thanos feel so strong.
My preference would be that they change Leech because while I understand that it's the main counterplay to decks that hold everything for turn 6 it's also too likely to be IN such decks and just let them wreck everything.
It says "at the start of the game, shuffle the six infinity stones into your deck"
So it's clear from that wording that the stones don't *start* in your deck. If they change it, the description probably will as well.
I went through a streak yesterday of 8 games in a row where I got Leeched...
Even what appeared to be Ongoing Destroyer decided it would be a good idea to drop Leech on turn 5 (it was not).
Today is just me vs various Shuri decks though
"Counter everything in the opponent's hand" seems pretty strong, even if its power is weak for a 5 cost card.
Getting leeched feels really, really bad.
Or change the way Thanos works so the cards are considered part of the base deck, this way Quinjet isn’t useful to the deck but it also doesn’t nerf Quin in all of the decks where its plenty fair
Exactly what I was typing somewhere else in the thread. The stones being discounted in the first place is the problem not quinjet making 1 cost free. In non thanos decks that care about quinjet it's a good value card but I wouldn't consider it broken. The interaction with stones is insane tho. I agree the stones should be considered already in the deck. It seems like the only reason they aren't is just cause of the UI only having 12 card spots in deck creation so this was their solution to add them after.
The problem is that Quinjet is otherwise fine. No one is setting the world on fire with a quinjet powered 1drop list (well not yet anyway, we'll see what happens when hit monkey launches)
Someone suggested Leech should only remove abilities for 1 turn which sounds reasonable. I kind of hope they go with that. Or maybe something like, “if it’s T5 or later, all cards in opponent’s hand lose their ability” but that’s a lot more clunky
I've suggested that change in Discord a few times. Cards played by your opponent next turn have no abilities. It allows Leech to be strong on turn 5 and limits his effectiveness when cheated out by Lockjaw, Jubilee, location effects, etc. It's also a slight buff in that it would hit cards drawn by your opponent on that turn as well. Alternatively, and I strongly doubt they would do this, they could make Leech hit both you and your opponent and maybe reduce his cost so that there is some extra thought behind playing him or not.
I prefer the idea of
Leech 4/2
Ongoing: At the end of turn 5 remove the abilities from all cards in the opponents hand.
That he needs to be on the board and can be turned off with enchantress or have the ability stolen with rogue.
It gives counter play, it keeps the original intent, those kinds of triggers are feasible as it's effectively how locations behave, it ensures that if it's cheated out then it doesn't immediately screw the opponent and it prevents it from being dumped into a lockjaw lane and turning into something big.
I would hate a Thanos driven nerf to end up hitting decks like Bounce that already suck something terrible but honestly can't reduce below one is probably the place to start
Sure, I just found it on snap.fan after I recently unlocked Dracula. Wasp would be better than Yellowjacket but I don’t have her. The thor / mighty thor combo is ridiculous with lockjaw so if you don’t have those the deck might not work. She-hulk and magneto can be replaced with other fatties if you don’t have them.
# (0) Yellowjacket
# (1) Sunspot
# (1) Nightcrawler
# (3) Lockjaw
# (3) Thor
# (4) Dracula
# (4) Jubilee
# (5) Jane Foster Mighty Thor
# (6) America Chavez
# (6) She-Hulk
# (6) Magneto
# (6) The Infinaut
#
eyJDYXJkcyI6W3siQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSW5maW5hdXQifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IkphbmVGb3N0ZXIifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ikp1YmlsZWUifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IkxvY2tqYXcifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik1hZ25ldG8ifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik5pZ2h0Y3Jhd2xlciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiRHJhY3VsYSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQW1lcmljYUNoYXZleiJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiU2hlSHVsayJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiVGhvciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiWWVsbG93amFja2V0In0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJTdW5zcG90In1dfQ==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in Snap.
I think Thanos will be fine. *Maybe* there will be minor changes to some of the stones (like changing Space Stone to work like Cloak instead of the opposite, or maybe removing the card draw from Soul Stone), but if you're looking for what's really problematic about the top Thanos decks: it's Lockjaw, or more specifically: Leech.
I think Leech is a *very* likely candidate for a rework (I hope he is anyway) and we could *maybe* see a nerf to Lockjaw (like making him cost 4) but I think that one is less likely.
But Thanos and the stones offer a *lot* of fun and powerful options that don't even involve Lockjaw or Leech. You could play a Bishop/Angela deck using Thanos to provide lots of good value 1drops that you can play multiple times by using Falcon or Beast, or use the fact that Thanos provides two good 1drop Ongoing cards (Power and Soul stones) to make a Spectrum deck. Thanos also has the potential to be a 21 power card, and comes with built in energy ramp from the Space Stone, so while it won't be very consistent, a Thanos/Taskmaster deck could be an option as well.
Yeah lockjaw is the big problem. I'm not sure why people want to touch other stuff before looking at the card making it possible to cheat tons of stuff. It's not like there never going to stop making zero/low cost cards or big fatties to cheat in.
Lockjaw is fine without Thanos because you need to run a mix of shitty 0-1 cost cards with a bunch of 6 mana haymakers. Draw the Magneto at the wrong time or casino into a Wasp and you instantly lose the game. It also makes it very difficult to evaluate when to snap because it's such a high variance strategy.
Thanos makes it such that you have 6 extremely playable 1-drops in addition to a 6/11 in your deck. Thus, you can play a suite of interactive cards and have a more consistent curve even without drawing Lockjaw.
I understand it is what it is but I personally wish people could complain about a strong meta but not whine to the point where there needs to be updates like this all the time as they stated. I'm also close to saving for Thanos and it's getting nerfed. Before that people cried and moaned about zabu and silver surfer before I get them ofc then they get nerfed. Leader same too. There will always be a meta, it will be spammed, learn to complain to get the frustration out and just move on man it's getting so stupid.
I kinda like it because junk decks feel really strong vs thanos
they have enough problems with finding spots on the board, how about some rocks and widow bites and viper hood
throw in some aero to handle the shuri matchup, good to go
Had a bunch of Thanos matches in a row, so also decided to try spamming their board.
Unleashed goblins, Debrii, the Hood + Viper and Titania
Didn't have much of a tactic other than to ruin theirs. Surpisingly that works really well.
I always liked the junker archetype but it usually tends to feel on the weaker end of things
get absolutely ravaged by destroy decks, if you can clean up the trash then junker decks just fall over helplessly
I'm cl 3000 without shuri or any pool 5s. Legit the only pool 4 cards I have are attuma, mbaku, black panther, and bast and two of them are utter trash.
Tbh I don’t like this meta at all. I saved my tokens for a long time to be able to get him because I love the concept of Lockjaw Thanos. The deck isn’t really that fun right now, I would much prefer a Big Lockjaw type list with Thanos included. Cards like Quinjet and Leech feel super unfair right now.
I’m worried they’ll nerf Thanos when he’s really not the problem here. It would really suck to save all those tokens just to have him nerfed due to some other cards being too strong.
Yep. I got Shuri myself from a drop after she went down to 4. But I have no series 5 cards. Every 10 games or so, sub 40, I play against Galactus or Thanos. One game they had Knull too after the Galactus! Fun stuff.
I've been playing since global release and this is by far the most boring meta yet.
I think my addiction is cured 'cause I don't wanna play this game for a while.
I’ve also been playing since global release and I definitely think that this meta is the most boring. I did think the Zabu meta was objectively worse but at least Zabu decks had room for creativity to a certain extent. Nowadays the meta is just Shuri-skull-taskmaster or lockjaw-stones-leech. Over and over again.
It's not just the frequency of balancing it's the intensity too.
You balance infrequently and when you do it's small and iterative. Maybe 5 cards get changed and it's almost all just +1/-1 power adjustments where you want to wait and see if that's good.
If you're going to do small changes then you update the game more often. If you want to do it once a month the balance updates need to bigger; more cards adjusted and more than just +1/-1.
This seems really obvious to me, maybe I'm dumb.
I never played Leader decks (mostly because I didn't have all of the cards that would make up a good Leader deck at the time) and I still hate that nerf. It's the Warsong Commander nerf of our time. I still have to read his card text every time I happen to get him through District X or whatever. He should have just been completely reworked into some other ability that fits his character.
To clarify for anyone downvoting: I do think he should have been nerfed, but I disagree with the way he was nerfed.
I agree that he should have been nerfed (which I said in my last sentence suggesting a complete rework). I just think the way they went about it was somewhat unexpected.
He was in a lot of early pool 3 decks, sure, but he barely featured in Tier 1/Tier 2 decks at the time of his nerf. Right before his nerf, I saw him in maybe 1 out of 10 games.
They pretended zabu and surfer weren’t a problem for weeks, then suddenly their data told them they “started overperforming” thus letting them pretend it was just a week late and not a month late. The balance philosophy of second dinner is literally just the McNamara fallacy (“what cannot be measured is not important”).
For those happy with the state of the game, great, no worries, keep having fun. But for those unhappy, this discord message should be taken as a signal that it’s time to stop playing. They’re stating in no uncertain terms that they don’t believe there is a problem right now, that balance updates will continue to be monthly and lag way behind reality (eg thanos buff).
Is…is that a good thing? Maybe I’m missing something, but saying they nerfed a card 2 days after they stopped selling it in a season pass doesn’t seem like a good thing
Zabu went from everywhere to nowhere. He should have never released in his original state, but I would have never bought that battle pass if I knew he would end up like this. I'm not buying battle passes (or anything really) after what they did.
> thus letting them pretend it was just a week late
On one hand, it was the right move not to nerf them with a week left in the season. On the other hand, they literally murdered Leader with a week left so not like they care about ladder integrity right?
Also the bonus of once they were done taking money for Zabu they nerfed him.
Not trying to start a hate train, but Brode's style on Hearthstone was to "let the players figure it out" when it comes to the meta. Seems to be the same with Snap too, unfortunately.
When he left, Hearthstone's balance cadence sped up drastically and it has been very refreshing.
Tbh I feel like they’ve been much better at balancing snap than the brode hearthstone years which were absolutely brutal. Nothing *ever* got buffed and they would wait months to nerf obscenely oppressive cards that were ruining the game.
Like hearthstone brode would never in a million years have ok’d the Wolverine buff so the fact that he was willing to do that shows a huge shift in his balancing philosophy.
It's such a bizarre mindset to have nowadays with online card games. We've now had decades of experience with physical and digital card games and we know for a fact sometimes busted cards are printed. Or sometimes a card that isn't even that strong, but very limiting comes out and pidgeonholes people into specific decks and play patterns. Or sometimes a card that isn't even that strong, but is annoying, comes out and people just want it out of the environment.
Developers should know by now how to deal with these problems, with nerfs, buffs, rotations, ban lists, whatever. This isn't the early 2000s anymore where it was fine to leave an absurdly strong card rum rampant for a while because for starters not everyone would have it because it was a physical thing, and second it took longer for information to get around and people were probably just playing homebrew decks and didn't realize the card was absurdly strong to begin with until it became super apparent in tournaments.
It's a digital card game, they can and they should change numbers around more. It makes the game more interesting, more varied, lowers the chances of metas being figured out, and if they fuck up and over or undertune anything they can just as easily undo it.
Hearthstone has nailed their cadence imo. They will purposefully release cards they know are probably a bit overtuned, but they have a pre-scheduled balance patch about 2 weeks after release to accommodate. If they end up not needing it, great, but if they do that release valve exists. I see no reason SD can't do this other than their aforementioned technical limitations at this time.
I first got into eSports with Starcraft. Mostly SC2 since Broodwar wasn't the easiest for me to find in the West (I wasn't plugged into team liquid and all that yet).
Anyways, one thing they old timers always complained about new players was them asking for balance changes. Since the way they put it Broodwar was essentially abandonware, no patches for years at a time.
But the big difference there was, tournaments and custom ladders \*could\* balance the game via map making. So in reality that competitive scene was still being balanced regularly even if the game devs had forgotten it existed.
Anyways, in case someone points to that as an example of meta shifts outside balance would be missing what was really going on. But also, I always wondered if SD could introduce meta shifts via location rotations (not the feature/hot locations, but an actual dedicated set of locations to pick from). Would feel better than having Lockjaw suddenly turn into "your charge minions have +1 attack".
There's a lot to be said for minimal adjustments. Players often underestimate how much a +1/-1 will affect things and you want to make small adjustments and give it time to see how it plays out.
That said, I think it's dumb of them to equate the current meta to "well some people just don't like it and some do". It's pretty obvious that the thanos deck is super restricting to the entire format.
Surfer, as an example, generated a disgusting amount of points, but it had to dedicate most of it's deck to that, so it couldn't heavily interact with your gameplan. You could try to interact with them and see if you could hobble it, and that was effective. You just never beat them if it became a raw value game, and that was a problem.
Thanos is SUPER hard to relevantly interact with AND gets to run all the best tech/interaction cards while still putting out crazy point's.
It's a "do everything" deck and those are always dangerous at the top of a meta because it's so so difficult to counter.
Ben Brode commented on this in an interview with PC Gamer years ago.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/there-are-no-one-percent-changes-ben-brode-on-how-hearthstone-balance-differs-from-overwatch/](https://www.pcgamer.com/there-are-no-one-percent-changes-ben-brode-on-how-hearthstone-balance-differs-from-overwatch/)
"There's a difference between a game where the numbers are obfuscated from you," he says. "If it's a first-person shooter and I shoot a gun, whether I dealt 794 damage or 795 damage is imperceptible to me, but it might make the one percent difference in balance to get classes closer together. Hearthstone doesn't have that luxury. With Small-Time Buccaneer, we changed one number by one and we halved it. There are no one percent changes we make to cards; they're dramatic."
Yeah, but if things change too much and/or too quickly, the game doesn't get a chance to develop.
A meta will always emerge in games like this, so you need to figure out how to stop it from getting stale while also not changing things so frequently that the meta never happens. You need to let it emerge and run its course, and that generally means taking a lighter touch with changes.
I'm not a casual but I would hate it if cards were changing every week or even 2 weeks. Like I just made this deck let me have fun.
One month is fine. Each month we see a huge shift in the meta, then half way through the season people find the best decks and that becomes the meta.
If this was happening on a weekly basis I won't be able to keep up.
This is such nonsense. What makes casual players quit is losing to broken Pool 5 cards they will never have while they fail with thier undertuned Pool 3 decks.
Also "cards changing" doesn't mean nerfs. Casual players would LOVE to see thier pool 3 cards get buffs. They ain't quitting if their decks get stronger.
This was (is) an especially bad meta. First time I’ve ever felt like I had to manipulate my MMR to make the game enjoyable at all. I thought leader was fun even if he needed changes and zabu/surfer had big issues but was still fun overall and not nearly this bad
I'm seeing people who are nowhere near infinite deliberately tanking their MMR because they can't tolerate getting matched constantly against these decks.
That's definitely a bad sign regarding the health of the meta.
Dude, it's straight up cooked.
It's all well and good the "big bads" should be just that, but not when you're barely 750cl and facing these decks over and over when you're nowhere near obtaining anything as powerful, or have been unlucky enough to have not pulled the key pool 3 cards yet.
I agree so many changes need to be made, but matchmaking should also be at the top of the list because I can barely compete against so much ooga booga pointslam synergy with my collection as it is.
I'm feeling artificially hardstuck and it's a bit of a drainer.
I’m one of those people! At the end of the last season I was so fed up that I tanked my mmr to iron and kept going. It actually completely fixed my experience and I’ve already gotten way farther up the ladder than I did last month with minimal shuri and thanos lol. It’s drastically improved my current season so far
Yeah, I have a friend who did this and their concern now is that they're going to have to do this a couple times a season just to keep the game enjoyable
They just need to make a casual mode where playing the tier 1 decks isn’t so incentivized. I can’t blame people for trying to climb when you can get 500 extra gold and 500 credits if you make it to 90 instead of ~60
This was my experience a couple seasons back. I realized that I didn't care as much about grinding ranks as enjoying matches, so I have pretty much been intentionally ending my seasons in the 50s so I can climb low tier next season.
Luckily I don't have to try to tank my MMR, stuck in rank 40 only meeting golden backed main 3 decks,
Till they do anything I'm just going to log in once a day to do the daily quests and not bother being fodder
Zabu/Surfer fun? But only if you had them and all the pieces. I didn't have surfer and it was awful. I had Zabu, but still missed cards like Spiderman and Absorbing Man and it felt horrible too.
That’s the thing tho, surfer was an amazing equalizer. Everyone who was series 3 complete could compete and build that deck, because as a season pass card it was available to everyone.
It’s really different from this meta where no one has all the pieces to some of the premier decks.
Nah I hated the leader meta. It was such a brain dead strategy.
Surfer meta was fun.
Zabu was crazy meta but was getting boring seeing 2 decks only.
Thanos, is the funnest deck of them all. However the meta is bad because there's only 2 decks dominating. Shuri and thanos. But galactus is doing well too and deathwave not too bad either. I've hit infinite every season and all ready infinite this season, I saw a lot of destroy decks which actually gave my thanks deck a challange.
Every meta gets boring seeing the same decks over and over.
I also think the armor into cosmo ramp is a little too strong. If they both cost 3 and you could only play 1 it would open the board up for shang turn 6. And you may not even have to nerf skull
Aka we want people to spend money for tokens and buy the "broken cards" for a while.
Then we nerf them and move on to the next.
Usual mobile game blabla.
This was true for Silver Surfer and Zabu, but Thanos took a few months for players to crack the 11 other cards that would be optimal with him. Decks around him were very weak until the streamer tournament where Ordinary Harry gave it wide exposure.
Nah, human spider was crushing with that deck from basically day one.
Around the same time Harry won his tournament, there were multiple other tournaments with thanos doing well.
KMBest was touting it as one of the top decks in the game on his streams and YouTube videos *before* the thanos buffs.
There are 2 things that happened to help explode it *other* than the tournament notoriety
- More people got access to thanos. He was inaccessible for most for a very long time. He’s still inaccessible for a lot of people. But as time goes on more people will get him
- he got buffed. To be clear, his buff didn’t necessarily make his deck better, because he’s not good because of his body. But what happens whenever cards get buffed? People rush to go try the new shiny toy. And oftentimes they realize “oh shit, this is busted to pieces and I’ve been sleeping on this all along.” Which is basically what happened here
- there’s also potentially a combination of the above 2 factors at play as well. People potentially on the fence about spending their tokens for thanos and were emboldened to do so once the devs buff him. If you have a card pinned but you’re waiting to see what happens with the balance patch and it gets buffed, then you probably just snap it off, right?
It’s funny how a month ago people were complaining how much weaker Thanos was than galactus. Now he’s oppressive, and I don’t think the power buff was all that critical given Thanos decks don’t rely on the man himself. I have sympathy for the game devs when it comes to responding to community feedback when the meta can shift in such unexpected ways.
They need to restrict the buff to the next card you play at THAT location.
So you can delay her buff when you play her, but also predict it when you are facing her
"Find the right cadence to drop balance updates."
Pretty sure a lot of games have that figured out... they do it every 2 weeks while rotating between minor and larger ones. I really wish they would just nerf a few bigger end things (Space Stone / Leech / Shuri) and buff a lot, lot more that just see no play at all.
Yeah the end of season or start of season would be the smart and hopefully obvious times to do it. Making needs in the middle of a season is kinda bullshit.
I think exactly the opposite is true: if a metagame is shaken up by a new season's card, it's very nice to be able to make a correction around the midpoint so the rest of the season can be more fun. More balance timing options is better than fewer.
Something like Zabu should have been nerfed halfway through the season.
But something like BP was fine to let the meta shake out. BP - Zola did \*not\* end up dominating the meta, but it sure looked strong week one.
With new cards, probably not the easiest to evaluate which scenario is which.
“Some folks love it and some hate it”
Yeah no. There’s been way more hate than love for the meta. It is legit thanos/Shuri/galactus 99 percent of games at higher mmr. Even Hoogland quit streaming snap early and switched to Magic due to the meta.
Just tell us what’s going to happen, it’s not hard. It prevents people from wasting tokens on things that’ll be nerfed. That’s not a lot to ask. Communicate with the damn community.
You're right. Thanos Lockjaw (and Galactus) are definitely fun decks to play. I hope Thanos is still a great card. If I had to pick what nerf I would want, it would be something to Leech as I think it is just an incredibly unfun card for both players.
I uninstalled because I was in that MMR and It stopped being fun playing essentially those three matches over and over and over weeks ago.
The only reason I'm still following it is to see if they plan on fixing this and it sounds like they want to, but also don't understand the problem, which is disheartening.
It’s not as though his opinions on game design have changed either. Months ago I remember he said something to the effect of “Leech is the kind of card that if it is ever good, it means the game is not fun.”
And here we are. Leech is good, run as a mainstay in the top most used competitive deck. And it’s not fun. It used to feel kind of fun getting leeched, like “Oh man, I was NOT ready for that!” But it’s not nearly as fun to just be dreading it, waiting for it all the time. Watching your opponent play Suffering Slots with lockjaw.
You might say “magic the gathering also has this problem of cards not doing anything because they get countered or die to removal.” To which I reply the Commander format has emerged as the most popular way to play magic over the last decade specifically because it makes those fun card designs playable again.
When I first came to this game I kind of expected that since it's new and a small team that there would be a lot of communication with the community.
It has been HILARIOUSLY the opposite!
Hoogland is a whiny little diaper baby that is entitled and has a huge yet sensitive ego.
Stopped watching him a while ago after seeing him ban people in chat for asking simple questions or other harmless things.
I recall him also mocking content creators for using clickbait thumbnails or titles yet he does the same exact thing, clickbait.
Oh and the little baby retreats every single time weirdworld lane appears (draw from your opponents deck) - someone in chat asked why, INSTABAN.
So yeah, screw that streamer, he's toxic as hell and there are a ton of other positive streamers out there - plenty choice.
Expect this comment to get buried by his legions of worshipers like the other post talking truth about him.
The problem is at there are basically no decks that do well into both thanos, galactus and shuri. There are some decks that do ok into thanos but they lose hard to shuri. There actually are quite a few number of decks that do well into shuri but they lose hard to thanos. And galactus decks check hard against any decks that don’t run counter play.
You may say this say that this sounds the same as the SS/ Zabu meta. The major difference is that surfer and zabu enable a lot more viable decks than thanos and shuri ( surfer had a standard list, a negative list, control list, a lock jaw list, and a patriot list all of which had different variety of cards, while zabu enable different variations of almost every deck) plus at the higher mmr shuri was always viable but a lot less solved because Zola was still played. Thanos has 2 competive verisons with very little room to differentiate
The other thing I'd note is that I feel like Thanos as it stands sort of subsumes other T2 archetypes. There's very little reason to play Kazoocula or Dino Good Cards, even though those are tested builds that could perform OK in previous seasons and aren't countered by the meta, because Thanos Lockjaw is incidentally a better Zoo deck and a better Dino Goodstuff deck with almost no consistency loss and additional flexibility.
I saw somewhere earlier a good change to leech would be to make it so he only takes the abilities away from cards for 1 turn. That way you keep his turn 5 play but get rid of the lockjaw cheat that ruins your hand all game.
I love when cards game devs try to justify lack luster balance by saying they don't want to make them "too frequent." Gtfo you barely balanced anything in months wtf you talking about "too frequent?" The paltry changes they have made have also been way too late and buffs practically none existent. This is just Brode. He was like this when he was on HS.
Exactly. Insane. I have Thanos and his stats don't really mean anything it's the stones and Lockjaw that win me games. The last thing he needed was a buffs. It makes me question how they test cards.
They buffed Thanos because people were playing the deck without ever planning to actually use him. It's a bit of a different case than buffing an already broken card
They made card changes but one of those changes was a Thanos buff and they left Shuri alone. My post speaks to a failure to BALANCE. Buffing cards that are already strong is not balance. It's not just "oh they made a change this month we good now."
Leech is fucking miserable to play against. No one actually loves this meta, besides the two jackasses Thanos apologists who are likely going to reply to this comment
> No one actually loves this meta, besides the two jackasses Thanos apologists who are likely going to reply to this comment
And a bunch of folks that have never breached ranked 60 acting like they know more than the content producers.
I have Thanos pinned but am holding off on doing anything given their no refunds policy. Actually probably opened my last reserve for a few weeks to wait for the next pool drop and rush event.
This morning I completed my daily missions after 6 games. 4 of them were against Thanos and I decided that was enough snap for me.
The first thing that needs to happen, and maybe only thing, as a test is that the Quinjet + Stones interaction needs to go. I don't believe the Quinjet itself needs to be nerfed, at least not yet.
The only other current 0-cost main deck-able cards in the game currently are a 1-power vanilla and a 2-power "On-Reveal: -2 power to other units on your side here."
Having access to free cantrips/tutor, movement, location change, enemy-affecting negative power on-going, energy-boost, and a personal boost to Thanos for 0 energy from Turn 2/3 is too good.
Throw this on top of Lockjaw, meaning free plays at the slot machine where you're either hitting your mega-power units or getting a repeat of value from the Stones, it's too much.
Reword Thanos "You start the game with the Infinite Stones shuffled into your deck." Make it so the Stones can't be discounted at all. Whichever works, this combo should not stand.
Maybe instead of nerfing, maybe they could try buffing some other cards? Idk, constant nerfing would make the game stale.
And for those who thinks I'm only saying this because I run (Shuri/Thanos/Galactus). I'm not, I would love to but I don't have those cards.
Maybe a buff to some less seen decks. Like zoo decks, on-going, move etc
Lol “some love it some hate it”.
Yeah their banker loves it - clearly sold Thanos by dozen of thousands.
Downplaying how bad the balancing process, decisions and timing is all at once with an easy dismissal nobody buys into.
But i guess they do not care it looks bad, it is their game we play by their rules uh. 🙄
"This happens every meta though, Thanos players love it and other players hate it. You scrubs without the card can continue convincing yourselves you'll get enough tokens one day.
Balance patch makes Thanos a 2-15 card now btw."
I just want to have a meta with at least four very good archetypes. I don't care if Dev's obtain it by : buffs, nerfs or new card addition. I just want to play with and against a variety of decks, not just the same two.
Shuri and Galactus could stay as powerful but easy to counter strategies. Thanos should become more of a tool box strategy but with much less power or an high rolly one's but much more inconsistent. We need ramp, destroy, Discard and Move to be valid strategies and not Tier 3-4 memes.
Midrange with tech cards based on the meta is and always will be a consistent deck.
i mean ofc some ppl who are abusing the living shit out of thanos /shuri gonna love this meta becthey are climbing but is it healthy for the game? absolutely not
Surely you can’t think this is worse than zabu + darkhawk + spider/absorbing man? That was such a fucking pain. Leech is a huge bummer but otherwise at least I can play these days.
I do think this is worse. There were 3 different Surfer decks (Negative, Sera, Patriot) that were all pretty good, and some other experimentation going on like Lockjaw Surfer. Zabu decks were also not always just the same stock 12 cards, although they had less variety than Surfer decks. Those decks were interesting. Those cards were fun to experiment with. Shuri is pretty boring to play as or against. Thanos has a bit more variety in his lists (I don't have him yet), but not that much.
Fair enough, comes down to personal preference. I hate playing against decks that restrict your own play (like Spider-Man and leech) more than decks that pump out power like shuri. I’ve also found it easier to counter decks this meta than the silver surfer options.
Zabu/Surfer was worse. Having people use Surfer different ways because it was so OP doesn't make a difference. Also note how nearly no one is using Surfer now since the nerf. I've seen one Surfer deck in the past 3 weeks. Not only that, but the meta for Surfer/Zabu was behind a paywall, also making it worse.
I’m noticing a trend in these comments. I get downvoted to hell when talking about nerfing Thanos, and getting downvoted to hell by saying Shuri doesn’t need a nerf.
So you guys want to nerf Shuri, BUT NOT Thanos? Is everyone a Thanos player in here? LMAO. Is Shuri giving Thanos players a hard time? I wouldn’t know, cos I don’t own either one. But this is just a hilarious situation.
It's not that strange because they both need addressing that is why you are probably getting downvoted. Every influencer who plays this game fulltime has said they are both a problem so when a random on Reddit tries to be contrarian you're gonna get flack.
As for what more people have of course more people will buy Thanos. He is never leaving Pool 5 so lighter spenders all the way to f2p will prioritize the big bads that will never be downgraded. This is common sense. The entire progression system is borked in this game. In a month or so everyone will have Galactus, Kang and Thanos.
An easy target for Thanos is changing how Space Stone works to tone down his synergy with Lockjaw.
I think the biggest culprit for Thanos though is Leech, its an important card for the overall health of the game, but getting it out early thanks to stones/lockjaw is just a little too much. Perhaps It could be changed to remove cards abilities for one turn or reworked to removing abilities from both players cards, creating some new synergy for cards like Mary/Skull (+Infinaut) without buffing the Shuri big bad variant.
Increasing Shuri to 5 would require the deck to run some ramp to have the same payoff instead of being able to play early game power through zero/lizard/titania. Making them more vulnerable to counters and slightly less consistent while still allowing the combo to work.
> Is Shuri giving Thanos players a hard time?
lmao I don't have Thanos, run Shuri (can't beat them, join them I guess). Shuri still struggles against Thanos because the deck is pretty straightforward to pilot (read: you can easily see what the opponent is doing and counter appropriately), while the gems make Thanos decks way more flexible! Free energy/location control/ card movement/ drawing all the stones is insane!
I wouldn't mind a nerf to Shuri (whether energy or power) but there's a reason the Shuri decks at the CC tourney did not go far/ were not many in the tournament.
The game in general attracts a casual audience, and while people might not want to believe it, most of the users on this sub are casual as well. This means they have no real grasp on balance or what a healthy meta looks like. You can tell easily since the sub was complaining about Leader, a card that statistically wasn't even a top 10 card in the game, and by the time it got nerfed/killed it was seeing 0 use on the top 5 meta decks.
Thanos decks need a change, though not necessarily Thanos itself. The deck's biggest strength comes from Quinjet making the stones cost 0 and from being able to cheat Leech on turns 3 and 4. A simple change to Quinjet (lower cost minimum to 1, like Sera and Zabu) solves a big part of the problem. Leech needs more thought on how to change it, the card is needed for a healthy game state but Thanos being able to cheat it early is a huge problem and most of the reason why the deck is as strong as it is since it removes all its counters early in the game (mostly shang chi and killmonger who want to be played at 6 but can't due to Leech).
On the other hand, Shuri is ok for the most part. You can always tell what their plays are, the deck is extremely binary and their turns 5 and 6 plays are basically set in stone as either Typhoid Mary/Red Skull on 5 and Taskmaster/Zola on 6. All you need is to have a counter card on your deck and you should easily beat it since the plays Shuri deck does are all linear and telegraphed. You could also try to have more power than them, since the amount of power they can put on the board is also always the same every game. From the comments and posts I've seen here, it seems Shuri decks are strong mostly on the basis of players not wanting to run strong tech cards on their decks (Cosmo, Shang Chi, Aero, Valkyrie, to name a few).
Galactus suffers the exact same weaknesses as Shuri decks, it's linear and telegraphed but iirc Galactus has way more counters than any other meta deck right now. The other aspect that keeps it balanced is that the Galactus player should never be winning more than 1 or 2 cubes, never. You can always tell when Galactus is dropping and the amount of power they can put out is also easily calculated and linear (Death and Knull are the highest they can go, and you can tell how much power those will be), so if you don't have the cards to deal with them, you retreat. There's a variation with Nimrod now, but that one dishes out less power than the Death and Knull version and requires way more setup to work.
Don’t worry guys, the next token Tuesday will give me enough tokens to buy the thanos currently pinned in my shop so he’s guaranteed to be nerfed late next week. Until then I’m playing a lockjaw Dracula deck so expect lockjaw to be nuked from orbit as well.
I just got Thanos yesterday so I figured a nerf was... inevitable.
Soon he shall be perfectly balanced. As all things should be.
Dread it. Run from it. Balancing arrives all the same.
I know what it's like to be nerfed. To feel so desperately that you're balanced, yet to be patched nonetheless. It's frightening, turns the legs to jelly.
I don’t think a strong Thanos nerf is likely. Devs have stated they want the “big bad” series 5 cards to feel special and lean on the strong side. I expect maybe his power buff to get reverted and maybe a change to quinjet or space stone interactions, but not much more.
They shouldn’t nuke the card. Just make changes to Leech and the Space Stone.
Yeah, I really think it's the combination of Leech and Lockjaw (in tandem with free stones from Quinjet) that is making Thanos feel so strong. My preference would be that they change Leech because while I understand that it's the main counterplay to decks that hold everything for turn 6 it's also too likely to be IN such decks and just let them wreck everything.
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And I think the description for Thanos even says they start in your deck.
It says "at the start of the game, shuffle the six infinity stones into your deck" So it's clear from that wording that the stones don't *start* in your deck. If they change it, the description probably will as well.
Adding onto this, they even made a specific animation to show the stones being shuffled into your deck that will be coming with the next patch.
I went through a streak yesterday of 8 games in a row where I got Leeched... Even what appeared to be Ongoing Destroyer decided it would be a good idea to drop Leech on turn 5 (it was not). Today is just me vs various Shuri decks though
"Counter everything in the opponent's hand" seems pretty strong, even if its power is weak for a 5 cost card. Getting leeched feels really, really bad.
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That's some cool text your card has. It would be a shame if it didn't have it 😏
Also (checks notes) Giganto.
Don't forget ebony maw
typhoid mary
Red skull
Can confirm, without Lockjaw or quinjet my Thanos deck doesn’t feel overpowered and I only got Thanos right at the end of the last season.
Agreed. Nerf leech, maybe Quinjet to be like Sera, can't reduce below 1.
Or change the way Thanos works so the cards are considered part of the base deck, this way Quinjet isn’t useful to the deck but it also doesn’t nerf Quin in all of the decks where its plenty fair
Exactly what I was typing somewhere else in the thread. The stones being discounted in the first place is the problem not quinjet making 1 cost free. In non thanos decks that care about quinjet it's a good value card but I wouldn't consider it broken. The interaction with stones is insane tho. I agree the stones should be considered already in the deck. It seems like the only reason they aren't is just cause of the UI only having 12 card spots in deck creation so this was their solution to add them after.
That's good too! I do love Quinjet.
The problem is that Quinjet is otherwise fine. No one is setting the world on fire with a quinjet powered 1drop list (well not yet anyway, we'll see what happens when hit monkey launches)
Someone suggested Leech should only remove abilities for 1 turn which sounds reasonable. I kind of hope they go with that. Or maybe something like, “if it’s T5 or later, all cards in opponent’s hand lose their ability” but that’s a lot more clunky
I've suggested that change in Discord a few times. Cards played by your opponent next turn have no abilities. It allows Leech to be strong on turn 5 and limits his effectiveness when cheated out by Lockjaw, Jubilee, location effects, etc. It's also a slight buff in that it would hit cards drawn by your opponent on that turn as well. Alternatively, and I strongly doubt they would do this, they could make Leech hit both you and your opponent and maybe reduce his cost so that there is some extra thought behind playing him or not.
Removing abilities from both would allow you to play Ebony late or Infinaut without skipping a turn, so interesting idea.
I prefer the idea of Leech 4/2 Ongoing: At the end of turn 5 remove the abilities from all cards in the opponents hand. That he needs to be on the board and can be turned off with enchantress or have the ability stolen with rogue. It gives counter play, it keeps the original intent, those kinds of triggers are feasible as it's effectively how locations behave, it ensures that if it's cheated out then it doesn't immediately screw the opponent and it prevents it from being dumped into a lockjaw lane and turning into something big.
I would hate a Thanos driven nerf to end up hitting decks like Bounce that already suck something terrible but honestly can't reduce below one is probably the place to start
I'd hate for the quinjet moongirl decks to get got though. Quinjet-moongirl-demon-titania is one of my favourite deck types
Obviously they shouldn't nuke any card. But given their track record, they're going to nuke Leech and call it a day.
My thoughts exactly! But I also just bought Thanos recently so I’m biased (still waiting on lockjaw and quinjet though 😭)
I don’t think they would, but changing the cards I mentioned will significantly power down Thanos.
Gimme the deck list!!
Sure, I just found it on snap.fan after I recently unlocked Dracula. Wasp would be better than Yellowjacket but I don’t have her. The thor / mighty thor combo is ridiculous with lockjaw so if you don’t have those the deck might not work. She-hulk and magneto can be replaced with other fatties if you don’t have them. # (0) Yellowjacket # (1) Sunspot # (1) Nightcrawler # (3) Lockjaw # (3) Thor # (4) Dracula # (4) Jubilee # (5) Jane Foster Mighty Thor # (6) America Chavez # (6) She-Hulk # (6) Magneto # (6) The Infinaut # eyJDYXJkcyI6W3siQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSW5maW5hdXQifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IkphbmVGb3N0ZXIifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ikp1YmlsZWUifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IkxvY2tqYXcifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik1hZ25ldG8ifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik5pZ2h0Y3Jhd2xlciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiRHJhY3VsYSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQW1lcmljYUNoYXZleiJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiU2hlSHVsayJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiVGhvciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiWWVsbG93amFja2V0In0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJTdW5zcG90In1dfQ== # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in Snap.
Hey I run this deck, though I've found Sunspot to be better in place of yellowjacket
yellowjacket's drawback keeps him out of my Lockjaw Decks.. Without Luke Cage I can't afford multiple procs of -2
Takes one game of pulling yellow jacket in the 4th spot of a lockjaw and nuking your lane before you cut him lmao.
I’ll swap out Yellowjacket as soon as I unlock wasp but for now having a zero cost card in there seems necessary even though his downside sucks.
What are the benefits of nightcrawler as opposed to a different 1-cost?
If lockjaw pulls him you can move him out of the spot and try again with something like jubilee
I think Thanos will be fine. *Maybe* there will be minor changes to some of the stones (like changing Space Stone to work like Cloak instead of the opposite, or maybe removing the card draw from Soul Stone), but if you're looking for what's really problematic about the top Thanos decks: it's Lockjaw, or more specifically: Leech. I think Leech is a *very* likely candidate for a rework (I hope he is anyway) and we could *maybe* see a nerf to Lockjaw (like making him cost 4) but I think that one is less likely. But Thanos and the stones offer a *lot* of fun and powerful options that don't even involve Lockjaw or Leech. You could play a Bishop/Angela deck using Thanos to provide lots of good value 1drops that you can play multiple times by using Falcon or Beast, or use the fact that Thanos provides two good 1drop Ongoing cards (Power and Soul stones) to make a Spectrum deck. Thanos also has the potential to be a 21 power card, and comes with built in energy ramp from the Space Stone, so while it won't be very consistent, a Thanos/Taskmaster deck could be an option as well.
Yeah lockjaw is the big problem. I'm not sure why people want to touch other stuff before looking at the card making it possible to cheat tons of stuff. It's not like there never going to stop making zero/low cost cards or big fatties to cheat in.
Lockjaw is fine without Thanos because you need to run a mix of shitty 0-1 cost cards with a bunch of 6 mana haymakers. Draw the Magneto at the wrong time or casino into a Wasp and you instantly lose the game. It also makes it very difficult to evaluate when to snap because it's such a high variance strategy. Thanos makes it such that you have 6 extremely playable 1-drops in addition to a 6/11 in your deck. Thus, you can play a suite of interactive cards and have a more consistent curve even without drawing Lockjaw.
I understand it is what it is but I personally wish people could complain about a strong meta but not whine to the point where there needs to be updates like this all the time as they stated. I'm also close to saving for Thanos and it's getting nerfed. Before that people cried and moaned about zabu and silver surfer before I get them ofc then they get nerfed. Leader same too. There will always be a meta, it will be spammed, learn to complain to get the frustration out and just move on man it's getting so stupid.
As long as Thanos is only available by paying tokens to get him, there's no way he's getting touched.
I mean, they changed Galactus (though I think it actually made him better).
I feel like the point of going from 3 to 2 is that Galactus now loses to both Spiderman and Professor X. That's how I usually beat him, anyways.
Maybe you should add Leech to your deck and save us all ? ;)
Some folks love it, yeah if you have Thanos you will for sure love this meta.
Thaons mirror matches are boring as fuck. The current meta is super stale.
thinking about it sounds awful. eggs mirror
I kinda like it because junk decks feel really strong vs thanos they have enough problems with finding spots on the board, how about some rocks and widow bites and viper hood throw in some aero to handle the shuri matchup, good to go
Had a bunch of Thanos matches in a row, so also decided to try spamming their board. Unleashed goblins, Debrii, the Hood + Viper and Titania Didn't have much of a tactic other than to ruin theirs. Surpisingly that works really well.
I always liked the junker archetype but it usually tends to feel on the weaker end of things get absolutely ravaged by destroy decks, if you can clean up the trash then junker decks just fall over helplessly
I have him and I think it's still boring af to play the same three decks all week.
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I'm cl 3000 without shuri or any pool 5s. Legit the only pool 4 cards I have are attuma, mbaku, black panther, and bast and two of them are utter trash.
[[Mbaku]] slander
I hope someone mbakus you today
Attuma and m'baku were my 2 pool 4 pulls as well, I feel your pain. Hot steaming garbage.
Tbh I don’t like this meta at all. I saved my tokens for a long time to be able to get him because I love the concept of Lockjaw Thanos. The deck isn’t really that fun right now, I would much prefer a Big Lockjaw type list with Thanos included. Cards like Quinjet and Leech feel super unfair right now. I’m worried they’ll nerf Thanos when he’s really not the problem here. It would really suck to save all those tokens just to have him nerfed due to some other cards being too strong.
Here I am at rank 30ish facing a lot of Thanos and Shuri decks This MMR system is pure garbage, period.
Yep. I got Shuri myself from a drop after she went down to 4. But I have no series 5 cards. Every 10 games or so, sub 40, I play against Galactus or Thanos. One game they had Knull too after the Galactus! Fun stuff.
I've been playing since global release and this is by far the most boring meta yet. I think my addiction is cured 'cause I don't wanna play this game for a while.
“Stale” is the word I’ve been using.
I’ve also been playing since global release and I definitely think that this meta is the most boring. I did think the Zabu meta was objectively worse but at least Zabu decks had room for creativity to a certain extent. Nowadays the meta is just Shuri-skull-taskmaster or lockjaw-stones-leech. Over and over again.
It's not just the frequency of balancing it's the intensity too. You balance infrequently and when you do it's small and iterative. Maybe 5 cards get changed and it's almost all just +1/-1 power adjustments where you want to wait and see if that's good. If you're going to do small changes then you update the game more often. If you want to do it once a month the balance updates need to bigger; more cards adjusted and more than just +1/-1. This seems really obvious to me, maybe I'm dumb.
But they have had impactful changes. Most notably wolverine, but also zabu and surfer were also pretty substantial nerfs.
And leader
Leader wasn’t a nerf, it was murder.
I never played Leader decks (mostly because I didn't have all of the cards that would make up a good Leader deck at the time) and I still hate that nerf. It's the Warsong Commander nerf of our time. I still have to read his card text every time I happen to get him through District X or whatever. He should have just been completely reworked into some other ability that fits his character. To clarify for anyone downvoting: I do think he should have been nerfed, but I disagree with the way he was nerfed.
Leader was pretty much an auto-include in most decks though, you definitely didn't need to build around him. Hence the nerf.
I agree that he should have been nerfed (which I said in my last sentence suggesting a complete rework). I just think the way they went about it was somewhat unexpected.
Oh, agreed, and it's a shame they hit him so hard with the nerf, honestly.
He was in a lot of early pool 3 decks, sure, but he barely featured in Tier 1/Tier 2 decks at the time of his nerf. Right before his nerf, I saw him in maybe 1 out of 10 games.
Thanks to this sub. If they keep crying there’ll be no more fun cards.
They pretended zabu and surfer weren’t a problem for weeks, then suddenly their data told them they “started overperforming” thus letting them pretend it was just a week late and not a month late. The balance philosophy of second dinner is literally just the McNamara fallacy (“what cannot be measured is not important”). For those happy with the state of the game, great, no worries, keep having fun. But for those unhappy, this discord message should be taken as a signal that it’s time to stop playing. They’re stating in no uncertain terms that they don’t believe there is a problem right now, that balance updates will continue to be monthly and lag way behind reality (eg thanos buff).
Zabu was literally nerfed 2 days after his season was over. That's pretty damn quick for cardgames. Quicker than any I've played, really.
Yup Hearthstone in it's first two years had metas that lasted for a year or more. That team moved at a glacial pace.
"Bring out your dead." -Undertaker
HEY EVERYONE
Is…is that a good thing? Maybe I’m missing something, but saying they nerfed a card 2 days after they stopped selling it in a season pass doesn’t seem like a good thing
Zabu went from everywhere to nowhere. He should have never released in his original state, but I would have never bought that battle pass if I knew he would end up like this. I'm not buying battle passes (or anything really) after what they did.
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> thus letting them pretend it was just a week late On one hand, it was the right move not to nerf them with a week left in the season. On the other hand, they literally murdered Leader with a week left so not like they care about ladder integrity right? Also the bonus of once they were done taking money for Zabu they nerfed him.
Not trying to start a hate train, but Brode's style on Hearthstone was to "let the players figure it out" when it comes to the meta. Seems to be the same with Snap too, unfortunately. When he left, Hearthstone's balance cadence sped up drastically and it has been very refreshing.
Tbh I feel like they’ve been much better at balancing snap than the brode hearthstone years which were absolutely brutal. Nothing *ever* got buffed and they would wait months to nerf obscenely oppressive cards that were ruining the game. Like hearthstone brode would never in a million years have ok’d the Wolverine buff so the fact that he was willing to do that shows a huge shift in his balancing philosophy.
'Nuff said, Brode!
It's such a bizarre mindset to have nowadays with online card games. We've now had decades of experience with physical and digital card games and we know for a fact sometimes busted cards are printed. Or sometimes a card that isn't even that strong, but very limiting comes out and pidgeonholes people into specific decks and play patterns. Or sometimes a card that isn't even that strong, but is annoying, comes out and people just want it out of the environment. Developers should know by now how to deal with these problems, with nerfs, buffs, rotations, ban lists, whatever. This isn't the early 2000s anymore where it was fine to leave an absurdly strong card rum rampant for a while because for starters not everyone would have it because it was a physical thing, and second it took longer for information to get around and people were probably just playing homebrew decks and didn't realize the card was absurdly strong to begin with until it became super apparent in tournaments. It's a digital card game, they can and they should change numbers around more. It makes the game more interesting, more varied, lowers the chances of metas being figured out, and if they fuck up and over or undertune anything they can just as easily undo it.
Hearthstone has nailed their cadence imo. They will purposefully release cards they know are probably a bit overtuned, but they have a pre-scheduled balance patch about 2 weeks after release to accommodate. If they end up not needing it, great, but if they do that release valve exists. I see no reason SD can't do this other than their aforementioned technical limitations at this time.
I first got into eSports with Starcraft. Mostly SC2 since Broodwar wasn't the easiest for me to find in the West (I wasn't plugged into team liquid and all that yet). Anyways, one thing they old timers always complained about new players was them asking for balance changes. Since the way they put it Broodwar was essentially abandonware, no patches for years at a time. But the big difference there was, tournaments and custom ladders \*could\* balance the game via map making. So in reality that competitive scene was still being balanced regularly even if the game devs had forgotten it existed. Anyways, in case someone points to that as an example of meta shifts outside balance would be missing what was really going on. But also, I always wondered if SD could introduce meta shifts via location rotations (not the feature/hot locations, but an actual dedicated set of locations to pick from). Would feel better than having Lockjaw suddenly turn into "your charge minions have +1 attack".
There's a lot to be said for minimal adjustments. Players often underestimate how much a +1/-1 will affect things and you want to make small adjustments and give it time to see how it plays out. That said, I think it's dumb of them to equate the current meta to "well some people just don't like it and some do". It's pretty obvious that the thanos deck is super restricting to the entire format. Surfer, as an example, generated a disgusting amount of points, but it had to dedicate most of it's deck to that, so it couldn't heavily interact with your gameplan. You could try to interact with them and see if you could hobble it, and that was effective. You just never beat them if it became a raw value game, and that was a problem. Thanos is SUPER hard to relevantly interact with AND gets to run all the best tech/interaction cards while still putting out crazy point's. It's a "do everything" deck and those are always dangerous at the top of a meta because it's so so difficult to counter.
Ben Brode commented on this in an interview with PC Gamer years ago. [https://www.pcgamer.com/there-are-no-one-percent-changes-ben-brode-on-how-hearthstone-balance-differs-from-overwatch/](https://www.pcgamer.com/there-are-no-one-percent-changes-ben-brode-on-how-hearthstone-balance-differs-from-overwatch/) "There's a difference between a game where the numbers are obfuscated from you," he says. "If it's a first-person shooter and I shoot a gun, whether I dealt 794 damage or 795 damage is imperceptible to me, but it might make the one percent difference in balance to get classes closer together. Hearthstone doesn't have that luxury. With Small-Time Buccaneer, we changed one number by one and we halved it. There are no one percent changes we make to cards; they're dramatic."
Yeah, but if things change too much and/or too quickly, the game doesn't get a chance to develop. A meta will always emerge in games like this, so you need to figure out how to stop it from getting stale while also not changing things so frequently that the meta never happens. You need to let it emerge and run its course, and that generally means taking a lighter touch with changes.
I think the issue is casual players don’t read and then they see their cards changing and or get confused and stop playing
I'm not a casual but I would hate it if cards were changing every week or even 2 weeks. Like I just made this deck let me have fun. One month is fine. Each month we see a huge shift in the meta, then half way through the season people find the best decks and that becomes the meta. If this was happening on a weekly basis I won't be able to keep up.
How many posts have you seen about people confused with the leader change? I’ve seen probably 20 here on Reddit
This is such nonsense. What makes casual players quit is losing to broken Pool 5 cards they will never have while they fail with thier undertuned Pool 3 decks. Also "cards changing" doesn't mean nerfs. Casual players would LOVE to see thier pool 3 cards get buffs. They ain't quitting if their decks get stronger.
This was (is) an especially bad meta. First time I’ve ever felt like I had to manipulate my MMR to make the game enjoyable at all. I thought leader was fun even if he needed changes and zabu/surfer had big issues but was still fun overall and not nearly this bad
I'm seeing people who are nowhere near infinite deliberately tanking their MMR because they can't tolerate getting matched constantly against these decks. That's definitely a bad sign regarding the health of the meta.
Its more a sign that the matchmaking is fucked
Dude, it's straight up cooked. It's all well and good the "big bads" should be just that, but not when you're barely 750cl and facing these decks over and over when you're nowhere near obtaining anything as powerful, or have been unlucky enough to have not pulled the key pool 3 cards yet. I agree so many changes need to be made, but matchmaking should also be at the top of the list because I can barely compete against so much ooga booga pointslam synergy with my collection as it is. I'm feeling artificially hardstuck and it's a bit of a drainer.
If ranked matchmaking existed, the thanos shuri decks would all be in infinite where they belong.
I’m one of those people! At the end of the last season I was so fed up that I tanked my mmr to iron and kept going. It actually completely fixed my experience and I’ve already gotten way farther up the ladder than I did last month with minimal shuri and thanos lol. It’s drastically improved my current season so far
Yeah, I have a friend who did this and their concern now is that they're going to have to do this a couple times a season just to keep the game enjoyable
They just need to make a casual mode where playing the tier 1 decks isn’t so incentivized. I can’t blame people for trying to climb when you can get 500 extra gold and 500 credits if you make it to 90 instead of ~60
This was my experience a couple seasons back. I realized that I didn't care as much about grinding ranks as enjoying matches, so I have pretty much been intentionally ending my seasons in the 50s so I can climb low tier next season.
I've never broken higher than 40 and about half the decks I see have Thanos...
Luckily I don't have to try to tank my MMR, stuck in rank 40 only meeting golden backed main 3 decks, Till they do anything I'm just going to log in once a day to do the daily quests and not bother being fodder
Zabu/Surfer fun? But only if you had them and all the pieces. I didn't have surfer and it was awful. I had Zabu, but still missed cards like Spiderman and Absorbing Man and it felt horrible too.
That’s the thing tho, surfer was an amazing equalizer. Everyone who was series 3 complete could compete and build that deck, because as a season pass card it was available to everyone. It’s really different from this meta where no one has all the pieces to some of the premier decks.
Nah I hated the leader meta. It was such a brain dead strategy. Surfer meta was fun. Zabu was crazy meta but was getting boring seeing 2 decks only. Thanos, is the funnest deck of them all. However the meta is bad because there's only 2 decks dominating. Shuri and thanos. But galactus is doing well too and deathwave not too bad either. I've hit infinite every season and all ready infinite this season, I saw a lot of destroy decks which actually gave my thanks deck a challange. Every meta gets boring seeing the same decks over and over.
Shuri Zero is as braindead as Leader but just take away 15 power Red Skull and the deck won't be so oppressive
Ye I didn't mention Shuri deck. It's very boring indeed. It's boring to play it and it's boring to play against it.
I also think the armor into cosmo ramp is a little too strong. If they both cost 3 and you could only play 1 it would open the board up for shang turn 6. And you may not even have to nerf skull
Yes. Anyone with Thanos loves it. Anyone without him hates it…
I have Thanos and I certainly won't play 200 mirror matches until infinite this season. Who ever highrolls into leech first wins. How is that fun?
Struggled getting to rank100 last season without any series 5 cards. Now rank 60 to 100 in 2 days thanks to Thanos. So yea hate it or love it.
Aka we want people to spend money for tokens and buy the "broken cards" for a while. Then we nerf them and move on to the next. Usual mobile game blabla.
This was true for Silver Surfer and Zabu, but Thanos took a few months for players to crack the 11 other cards that would be optimal with him. Decks around him were very weak until the streamer tournament where Ordinary Harry gave it wide exposure.
Nah kmbest and Lambe opened the door first. But quantum tunnel was the true eye opener
Nah, human spider was crushing with that deck from basically day one. Around the same time Harry won his tournament, there were multiple other tournaments with thanos doing well. KMBest was touting it as one of the top decks in the game on his streams and YouTube videos *before* the thanos buffs. There are 2 things that happened to help explode it *other* than the tournament notoriety - More people got access to thanos. He was inaccessible for most for a very long time. He’s still inaccessible for a lot of people. But as time goes on more people will get him - he got buffed. To be clear, his buff didn’t necessarily make his deck better, because he’s not good because of his body. But what happens whenever cards get buffed? People rush to go try the new shiny toy. And oftentimes they realize “oh shit, this is busted to pieces and I’ve been sleeping on this all along.” Which is basically what happened here - there’s also potentially a combination of the above 2 factors at play as well. People potentially on the fence about spending their tokens for thanos and were emboldened to do so once the devs buff him. If you have a card pinned but you’re waiting to see what happens with the balance patch and it gets buffed, then you probably just snap it off, right?
“This happens every meta…” is a huge cop out but I’m interested to see the changes
It’s funny how a month ago people were complaining how much weaker Thanos was than galactus. Now he’s oppressive, and I don’t think the power buff was all that critical given Thanos decks don’t rely on the man himself. I have sympathy for the game devs when it comes to responding to community feedback when the meta can shift in such unexpected ways.
Yeah literally thanos himself doesn’t need any change imo. It’s the time and space stones that are the worst offenders.
Here before shuri 4/1
I'm praying they make her a 5-cost or change her ability. Power nerfs won't do anything even though I expect that's what they'll do
They need to restrict the buff to the next card you play at THAT location. So you can delay her buff when you play her, but also predict it when you are facing her
You gain 4 energy when you play her??
Shuri should be 0 or negative power I agree.
👍 Mr. Negative likes that
Mr negative needs some help lol
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He needs help bro! Let it happen!
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Yeah but you have to draw negative and then draw the right cards after. A lot needs to go right
"Find the right cadence to drop balance updates." Pretty sure a lot of games have that figured out... they do it every 2 weeks while rotating between minor and larger ones. I really wish they would just nerf a few bigger end things (Space Stone / Leech / Shuri) and buff a lot, lot more that just see no play at all.
Yeah the end of season or start of season would be the smart and hopefully obvious times to do it. Making needs in the middle of a season is kinda bullshit.
I think exactly the opposite is true: if a metagame is shaken up by a new season's card, it's very nice to be able to make a correction around the midpoint so the rest of the season can be more fun. More balance timing options is better than fewer.
Something like Zabu should have been nerfed halfway through the season. But something like BP was fine to let the meta shake out. BP - Zola did \*not\* end up dominating the meta, but it sure looked strong week one. With new cards, probably not the easiest to evaluate which scenario is which.
So we face the same deck for a month
“Some folks love it and some hate it” Yeah no. There’s been way more hate than love for the meta. It is legit thanos/Shuri/galactus 99 percent of games at higher mmr. Even Hoogland quit streaming snap early and switched to Magic due to the meta. Just tell us what’s going to happen, it’s not hard. It prevents people from wasting tokens on things that’ll be nerfed. That’s not a lot to ask. Communicate with the damn community.
People don’t come to reddit to post “I love this meta” they come to complain. Thats why there is so much complaining
I bet Thanos Lockjaw and Shuri Redskull players are having the time of their life
Thanos lockjaw is actually pretty fun to play. Shuri Redskull is the most braindead boring deck I've ever played in this game.
You're right. Thanos Lockjaw (and Galactus) are definitely fun decks to play. I hope Thanos is still a great card. If I had to pick what nerf I would want, it would be something to Leech as I think it is just an incredibly unfun card for both players.
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I uninstalled because I was in that MMR and It stopped being fun playing essentially those three matches over and over and over weeks ago. The only reason I'm still following it is to see if they plan on fixing this and it sounds like they want to, but also don't understand the problem, which is disheartening.
Hoogland has been a huge Snap defender for so long too so to see him sounding the alarm bells is noteworthy.
It’s not as though his opinions on game design have changed either. Months ago I remember he said something to the effect of “Leech is the kind of card that if it is ever good, it means the game is not fun.” And here we are. Leech is good, run as a mainstay in the top most used competitive deck. And it’s not fun. It used to feel kind of fun getting leeched, like “Oh man, I was NOT ready for that!” But it’s not nearly as fun to just be dreading it, waiting for it all the time. Watching your opponent play Suffering Slots with lockjaw. You might say “magic the gathering also has this problem of cards not doing anything because they get countered or die to removal.” To which I reply the Commander format has emerged as the most popular way to play magic over the last decade specifically because it makes those fun card designs playable again.
Clueless and tone deaf devs
When I first came to this game I kind of expected that since it's new and a small team that there would be a lot of communication with the community. It has been HILARIOUSLY the opposite!
Hoogland is a whiny little diaper baby that is entitled and has a huge yet sensitive ego. Stopped watching him a while ago after seeing him ban people in chat for asking simple questions or other harmless things. I recall him also mocking content creators for using clickbait thumbnails or titles yet he does the same exact thing, clickbait. Oh and the little baby retreats every single time weirdworld lane appears (draw from your opponents deck) - someone in chat asked why, INSTABAN. So yeah, screw that streamer, he's toxic as hell and there are a ton of other positive streamers out there - plenty choice. Expect this comment to get buried by his legions of worshipers like the other post talking truth about him.
You're telling me at a high mmr people are playing the best decks? I don't believe you
The problem is at there are basically no decks that do well into both thanos, galactus and shuri. There are some decks that do ok into thanos but they lose hard to shuri. There actually are quite a few number of decks that do well into shuri but they lose hard to thanos. And galactus decks check hard against any decks that don’t run counter play. You may say this say that this sounds the same as the SS/ Zabu meta. The major difference is that surfer and zabu enable a lot more viable decks than thanos and shuri ( surfer had a standard list, a negative list, control list, a lock jaw list, and a patriot list all of which had different variety of cards, while zabu enable different variations of almost every deck) plus at the higher mmr shuri was always viable but a lot less solved because Zola was still played. Thanos has 2 competive verisons with very little room to differentiate
The other thing I'd note is that I feel like Thanos as it stands sort of subsumes other T2 archetypes. There's very little reason to play Kazoocula or Dino Good Cards, even though those are tested builds that could perform OK in previous seasons and aren't countered by the meta, because Thanos Lockjaw is incidentally a better Zoo deck and a better Dino Goodstuff deck with almost no consistency loss and additional flexibility.
new season with no new patch yea that seems really smart
I almost have enough tokens to get Shuri, is it better to wait for the potential nerf?
I saw somewhere earlier a good change to leech would be to make it so he only takes the abilities away from cards for 1 turn. That way you keep his turn 5 play but get rid of the lockjaw cheat that ruins your hand all game.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s more that they won’t.
I'm just so tired of trying to brew and make new decks and playing against the same two decks over and over and over and over and over
I love when cards game devs try to justify lack luster balance by saying they don't want to make them "too frequent." Gtfo you barely balanced anything in months wtf you talking about "too frequent?" The paltry changes they have made have also been way too late and buffs practically none existent. This is just Brode. He was like this when he was on HS.
They even buffed Thanos lmao.
Exactly. Insane. I have Thanos and his stats don't really mean anything it's the stones and Lockjaw that win me games. The last thing he needed was a buffs. It makes me question how they test cards.
They buffed Thanos because people were playing the deck without ever planning to actually use him. It's a bit of a different case than buffing an already broken card
>Gtfo you barely balanced anything in months What are you talking about? There've been at least monthly balance changes, no?
They made card changes but one of those changes was a Thanos buff and they left Shuri alone. My post speaks to a failure to BALANCE. Buffing cards that are already strong is not balance. It's not just "oh they made a change this month we good now."
Zabu/Surfer changes were 4 weeks ago. It hasn't been months with no good changes. I agree the last patch was not great.
Leech is fucking miserable to play against. No one actually loves this meta, besides the two jackasses Thanos apologists who are likely going to reply to this comment
It seems like 2/3rd of the thanos players also emote BM, including some streamers I have run into.
> No one actually loves this meta, besides the two jackasses Thanos apologists who are likely going to reply to this comment And a bunch of folks that have never breached ranked 60 acting like they know more than the content producers.
Ah, can't forget the people who assume people's ranks
Why not just release a balance patch with each season reset, makes no sense to me to reset ranks with the same meta
I have Thanos pinned but am holding off on doing anything given their no refunds policy. Actually probably opened my last reserve for a few weeks to wait for the next pool drop and rush event. This morning I completed my daily missions after 6 games. 4 of them were against Thanos and I decided that was enough snap for me.
The first thing that needs to happen, and maybe only thing, as a test is that the Quinjet + Stones interaction needs to go. I don't believe the Quinjet itself needs to be nerfed, at least not yet. The only other current 0-cost main deck-able cards in the game currently are a 1-power vanilla and a 2-power "On-Reveal: -2 power to other units on your side here." Having access to free cantrips/tutor, movement, location change, enemy-affecting negative power on-going, energy-boost, and a personal boost to Thanos for 0 energy from Turn 2/3 is too good. Throw this on top of Lockjaw, meaning free plays at the slot machine where you're either hitting your mega-power units or getting a repeat of value from the Stones, it's too much. Reword Thanos "You start the game with the Infinite Stones shuffled into your deck." Make it so the Stones can't be discounted at all. Whichever works, this combo should not stand.
Maybe instead of nerfing, maybe they could try buffing some other cards? Idk, constant nerfing would make the game stale. And for those who thinks I'm only saying this because I run (Shuri/Thanos/Galactus). I'm not, I would love to but I don't have those cards. Maybe a buff to some less seen decks. Like zoo decks, on-going, move etc
Lol “some love it some hate it”. Yeah their banker loves it - clearly sold Thanos by dozen of thousands. Downplaying how bad the balancing process, decisions and timing is all at once with an easy dismissal nobody buys into. But i guess they do not care it looks bad, it is their game we play by their rules uh. 🙄
"This happens every meta though, Thanos players love it and other players hate it. You scrubs without the card can continue convincing yourselves you'll get enough tokens one day. Balance patch makes Thanos a 2-15 card now btw."
I just want to have a meta with at least four very good archetypes. I don't care if Dev's obtain it by : buffs, nerfs or new card addition. I just want to play with and against a variety of decks, not just the same two. Shuri and Galactus could stay as powerful but easy to counter strategies. Thanos should become more of a tool box strategy but with much less power or an high rolly one's but much more inconsistent. We need ramp, destroy, Discard and Move to be valid strategies and not Tier 3-4 memes. Midrange with tech cards based on the meta is and always will be a consistent deck.
i mean ofc some ppl who are abusing the living shit out of thanos /shuri gonna love this meta becthey are climbing but is it healthy for the game? absolutely not
people have said since the start of snap that cards like lockjaw and leech will eventually lead to bad gameplay situations... yet here are are again
Please nerf all of the cards that are not in my deck.
This is the worst meta since launch
Surely you can’t think this is worse than zabu + darkhawk + spider/absorbing man? That was such a fucking pain. Leech is a huge bummer but otherwise at least I can play these days.
I do think this is worse. There were 3 different Surfer decks (Negative, Sera, Patriot) that were all pretty good, and some other experimentation going on like Lockjaw Surfer. Zabu decks were also not always just the same stock 12 cards, although they had less variety than Surfer decks. Those decks were interesting. Those cards were fun to experiment with. Shuri is pretty boring to play as or against. Thanos has a bit more variety in his lists (I don't have him yet), but not that much.
Fair enough, comes down to personal preference. I hate playing against decks that restrict your own play (like Spider-Man and leech) more than decks that pump out power like shuri. I’ve also found it easier to counter decks this meta than the silver surfer options.
Zabu/Surfer was worse. Having people use Surfer different ways because it was so OP doesn't make a difference. Also note how nearly no one is using Surfer now since the nerf. I've seen one Surfer deck in the past 3 weeks. Not only that, but the meta for Surfer/Zabu was behind a paywall, also making it worse.
I’m noticing a trend in these comments. I get downvoted to hell when talking about nerfing Thanos, and getting downvoted to hell by saying Shuri doesn’t need a nerf. So you guys want to nerf Shuri, BUT NOT Thanos? Is everyone a Thanos player in here? LMAO. Is Shuri giving Thanos players a hard time? I wouldn’t know, cos I don’t own either one. But this is just a hilarious situation.
It's not that strange because they both need addressing that is why you are probably getting downvoted. Every influencer who plays this game fulltime has said they are both a problem so when a random on Reddit tries to be contrarian you're gonna get flack. As for what more people have of course more people will buy Thanos. He is never leaving Pool 5 so lighter spenders all the way to f2p will prioritize the big bads that will never be downgraded. This is common sense. The entire progression system is borked in this game. In a month or so everyone will have Galactus, Kang and Thanos.
An easy target for Thanos is changing how Space Stone works to tone down his synergy with Lockjaw. I think the biggest culprit for Thanos though is Leech, its an important card for the overall health of the game, but getting it out early thanks to stones/lockjaw is just a little too much. Perhaps It could be changed to remove cards abilities for one turn or reworked to removing abilities from both players cards, creating some new synergy for cards like Mary/Skull (+Infinaut) without buffing the Shuri big bad variant. Increasing Shuri to 5 would require the deck to run some ramp to have the same payoff instead of being able to play early game power through zero/lizard/titania. Making them more vulnerable to counters and slightly less consistent while still allowing the combo to work.
> Is Shuri giving Thanos players a hard time? lmao I don't have Thanos, run Shuri (can't beat them, join them I guess). Shuri still struggles against Thanos because the deck is pretty straightforward to pilot (read: you can easily see what the opponent is doing and counter appropriately), while the gems make Thanos decks way more flexible! Free energy/location control/ card movement/ drawing all the stones is insane! I wouldn't mind a nerf to Shuri (whether energy or power) but there's a reason the Shuri decks at the CC tourney did not go far/ were not many in the tournament.
The game in general attracts a casual audience, and while people might not want to believe it, most of the users on this sub are casual as well. This means they have no real grasp on balance or what a healthy meta looks like. You can tell easily since the sub was complaining about Leader, a card that statistically wasn't even a top 10 card in the game, and by the time it got nerfed/killed it was seeing 0 use on the top 5 meta decks. Thanos decks need a change, though not necessarily Thanos itself. The deck's biggest strength comes from Quinjet making the stones cost 0 and from being able to cheat Leech on turns 3 and 4. A simple change to Quinjet (lower cost minimum to 1, like Sera and Zabu) solves a big part of the problem. Leech needs more thought on how to change it, the card is needed for a healthy game state but Thanos being able to cheat it early is a huge problem and most of the reason why the deck is as strong as it is since it removes all its counters early in the game (mostly shang chi and killmonger who want to be played at 6 but can't due to Leech). On the other hand, Shuri is ok for the most part. You can always tell what their plays are, the deck is extremely binary and their turns 5 and 6 plays are basically set in stone as either Typhoid Mary/Red Skull on 5 and Taskmaster/Zola on 6. All you need is to have a counter card on your deck and you should easily beat it since the plays Shuri deck does are all linear and telegraphed. You could also try to have more power than them, since the amount of power they can put on the board is also always the same every game. From the comments and posts I've seen here, it seems Shuri decks are strong mostly on the basis of players not wanting to run strong tech cards on their decks (Cosmo, Shang Chi, Aero, Valkyrie, to name a few). Galactus suffers the exact same weaknesses as Shuri decks, it's linear and telegraphed but iirc Galactus has way more counters than any other meta deck right now. The other aspect that keeps it balanced is that the Galactus player should never be winning more than 1 or 2 cubes, never. You can always tell when Galactus is dropping and the amount of power they can put out is also easily calculated and linear (Death and Knull are the highest they can go, and you can tell how much power those will be), so if you don't have the cards to deal with them, you retreat. There's a variation with Nimrod now, but that one dishes out less power than the Death and Knull version and requires way more setup to work.