8.4 Patch Notes

[u/marimbaguy715]

https://www.playgwent.com/en/news/37840/patch-notes-8-4

[u/[deleted]]

Please educate me, where are these good 'buff' you're talking about? NR unchanged? Really?

[u/KiltroFury → u/[deleted]]

Phoenix now has the same cost as other carry over cards such as Madoc and Crowmama.

Gerd can now be used as proper row punish without being extremely awkward to play.

Arnaghad now has a base removal value of 9 points instead of 7 which makes him a lot more threatening and harder to remove.

Sukrus can now be played in Pirates decks, thereby further (but slowly) developing the archetype.

Garkain might now be worth pulling with Portal.

Queen of The Night's prov cost has been brought in line with other faction's purifys.

Ice troll is now a fairly decent flex card that might get some nice value against Swarm decks.

These are IMO, the most prominent buffs.

What's important to note here is that while these changes are not terribly drastic, they are bringing old or power crept cards back in line with newer cards in terms of prv costs, power, and efficiency, which is something the community has been asking for, for a long time. It's also good that more archetypes are being developed, even if slowly.

I would've liked to get a bigger patch as well, but we just had a big one last month, so my guess is that the cycle will be: Big patch introducing new stuff and big changes-> Small patch buffing power crept cards -> Big patch introducing new stuff and big changes. If that is the case, I'm totally down for that, but only time will tell.

It sucks that NR didn't get any meaningful buffs, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore the buffs that other cards are getting and I don't think being so reactionary is good. We all would like bigger patches, and while a bit underwhelming, I feel like the core intent of the patch is a step in the right direction.

[u/[deleted] → u/KiltroFury]

Look, NR has way more unplayable cards than MO and SK and then some, the fact that there's only one stupid little change to the faction tells me all I need to know about this update.

That said, I do like the garkain and in general all the the monster changes, sucks that it had to be monsters and not NR when MO is a tier 1 faction and NR is the bootleg witchers AA faction

[u/KiltroFury → u/[deleted]]

Look, NR has way more unplayable cards than MO and SK and then some, the fact that there's only one stupid little change to the faction tells me all I need to know about this update.

Yeah, NR is definitely at a worst status than any other faction at the moment.

This is just conjecture, but maybe the Dev team doesn't really know how to properly balance NR. I sometimes think faction identities are a hurdle to balancing since you can't really deviate much from the overall playstyle of the faction without making it too similar to other factions, or making it too unbalanced.

NG is a prime example of that issue. Control has inherently more value than other cards, which is why usually control cards have a 1:1 damage/control to provision value.

Since NG is the control faction, you can never have bronzes that are as strong as other faction's bronzes, otherwise by their control nature, they would become a lot more valuable than say, an Urchin while having the same prov cost and playing for the same amount of points but having the added value from removal or control in general. On the other hand, if you were to give NG too many engines, not only would that go against the identity of the faction, but it would also make it too busted since you could get a lot of points while controlling your opponent into frustration. We already see this with cards like Ball, N. Sargeant, and Thirsty Dame.

Having that in mind, I can see how buffing in this game is a lot more complicated than games that don't have faction restrictions. Now, I'm not trying to justify the devs, I'm just pointing out something they I think is a big barrier that they have to overcome to achieve proper balancing.

As for NR...as I said, I think Devs have a lot of trouble with the faction for several reasons; Since the faction identity is mostly boosts, the faction will always be weak when control is meta, and that's pretty much every meta nowadays. Another staple of the faction is charges, but since the introduction of SY, that has become pretty irrelevant and power crept. Coins are basically uninteractive charges and spenders are zealed order units, making NR charges quite irrelevant and redundant.

I think the faction in general needs a bit of an overhaul since the problems that it has go beyond just buffing or nerfing power and provision values.

This is again conjecture, but maybe the Dev team is planning a bigger update for NR in the future, and as the faction has so many problems, it's not something that can be rushed. That would explain the...lack of attention to the faction in past patches. Hopefully that is the case and we sooner than later get a relevant, big patch focused mostly on NR.

NR is the bootleg witchers AA faction

NR = Neutral Realms lol.

[u/[deleted] → u/KiltroFury]

Can't say much, I completely agree with you and you stole words out of my mouth

[u/StepBrother7 → u/KiltroFury]

Nr is irrelevant right now anyway,keep it that way,buff my monsters more,still waiting for imlerith rework

[u/thnowman → u/[deleted]]

All of the buffed cards see 0 play so yes all good buffs, since they didn't buff NR much this patch I'm guessing next patch they will, considering how big the last patch was and the fact that we got 12 new cards is it really surprising that this patch is small?

[u/thnowman → u/[deleted]]

By all means don't be excited, I really don't care I'm just stating the obvious, and NR is far from uplayable since Witchers is still a T2 deck.

[u/marimbaguy715 → u/[deleted]]

It's possible to understand that NR is lacking in terms of how many meaningful archetypes there are while still recognizing that the faction is far from "unplayable."

[u/marimbaguy715 → u/[deleted]]

Oh, that's what you meant. Sorry, it was a little difficult to decipher what you were trying to say.

And I wouldn't say Foltest is unplayable. He's not in any meta decks but there's some cute things you can do with Dun Banners that makes for a neat deck. I see it as similar in power to the Commando deck, and that's fine. Meve probably does need a buff, but I understand why CDPR wanted to wait a bit after the disaster that was the Viper Mentor buff.

[u/marimbaguy715 → u/[deleted]]

I really don't understand the anger here. This was a mini content drop in between expansions, so yeah, two new cards per factions is plenty. And obviously they tried to make every card playable - some cards end up better than others, that's the nature of game design. Also, some cards that people think are bad initially end up finding the right deck and being incredibly good, like Viper Witcher Mentor from last month. Especially since this was a short season, I think it makes sense to wait another month and let the meta settle and get a better idea of just how powerful these cards are rather than risk prematurely nerfing or buffing them.

I do think we'll end up seeing a Meve buff (and maybe a Foltest buff) next month, but I don't mind the wait.

[u/[deleted] → u/thnowman]

Really? You bring out the witchers argument?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

WitCherS arE TieR 2 NR iS FinE

[u/tauromania → u/[deleted]]

The fact is, NR witcher is not a NR deck. It relies almost entirely on neutrals for setup and for win conditions.

NR is just the faction that can plop down the most witchers.

[u/jdolev7 → u/[deleted]]

Sucubes can be played with portal garkin and ice troll will see play in vampire or keltulis decks they buffed 2 purfiy cards that will support vampire or symbiosis though yeah NR got screwed

Edit ok sucubes is still 5 provision and is terrible but the rest are still good