Serena in [SF]

[snipnigth]

They cannot change her ability without offering a new version of her in a future set and saying it replaces the old one.

Supplementing would be good.
Elicit Information - cost too much to be useful, IGG is better at 4cc.
Pay Day - bad compared to Blood Moon, I do not know how both got in DP this way.
Lyra Blackrose - depends too much on opponent.
Thoughtripper's Cutlass - expands on her but at mid to late game.

Things that could benefit her.
- Allowing Serena player to pick card without looking.
- Item that increases the discard by +1 or +2.
- Cheap Weapons.
- Item that prevents anything causing an effect when discarded to be negated.
- Oliver Fagin needs work, too gimmicky at 7cc.

I agree in everything Storknst is saying, everything but, allowing serena players to pick the card without looking...there is really no point in allowing this since in the end its random... but if this becomes reality then you will be somehow able to guess the card you what to discard from your opponents hand since i think they arrange themselves in your hand in a specific order, alphabetic order i think.

Payday will be a great discard card if it didint say "When an opponent player start their hand with 4 or more cards", just that sentence makes this card useless, at least in early mid game.

i think the best way to help serena is giving her something that allows her to discard more than 1 card in 1 turn.

[Gondorian]

Hi there.

I'm pleased to announce the main change we made with Serena in mind:

Fates 195 Thoughtripper's Cutlass. Durability increased to 4 (from 3). Ability changed to "When your hero kills an opposing ally in combat, that ally's controller draws a card and discards a random card from their hand. While this weapon has at least 3 attack, cards discarded from opposing hands are placed in yours."

The intent is not to buff hand destruction (sorry if you really like that), but instead steer Serena in a new direction to disruption and stealing. If she hits the opponent with her ability active now, she gets the card they lost! Similarly, if she kills an ally with it while her ability is active, she gets a card ... even if their hand was empty!

Garth, meanwhile, lost his destruction and got disruption instead. He may well choose not to use the weapon now, and that's OK because we agree with the masses who said it was dumb that Serena's weapon was used better by others. Especially if she is the art on the card!

Also, as I said above, whilst the draw before discard takes away the card advantage, it does mean that the strategy of opponent emptying their hand before your turn (which I run into often as Serena) will not stop you discarding something on an ally kill, for disruption or for stealing if your ability is active.

In terms of interaction with Tenacious Buccaneer, Reactory, Brimstone Devourer and Plightbred Runt, the stealing will prevent the first two from hitting the board since they never made it to the graveyard and went to your hand instead. (The latter two will still respond to their own discard, but will go into your hand).

Whilst I know some people wanted stronger hand destruction, I stand by my comments as to why we don't want to buff that. Until I had a really long think about Serena, I couldn't see a way to help her without that buff, so we were stuck. Now, I feel really positive about her in this new direction (especially having tried out this change) and we can help her further in future sets as required.

Make no mistake, she can still cause just as much NPE as before (some, but not too much!), if you like that kind of thing, but now you also get some added card advantage and opponent's cards to use! This should make her more viable, which will ultimately lead to more NPE showing up via the hand destruction after a hero whack, so we will have to monitor that carefully.

Cheers!

[Storknest]

Thanks for clarifying on the hand destruction. I can understand not wanting more though having the choice be Serena's somehow is interesting.

The Cutlass change seems odd but then I have not had a good Garth deck and I am trying this Serena deck here, will be adding a few other Heroes to that topic, that Sernea deck is why I asked for Trader to get a stat change here.

[bobrossw]

Wow! Looks like a fun change! I definitely think it works to make cutlass a Serena specific weapon! It may also help night prowler get some more play now. Garth players won't be happy, but maybe they'll find ways to make Chains of torment work, which seems like it was designed for Garth anyhow.

I'm curious about the discard effects, would this still trigger Elicit Information? Also it's easy to get why Buccaneer winds up in my hand after a discard, but it's not as obvious whether Brimstone Devourer should deal damage or not. All of these cards have effects that trigger on discard, not on entering graveyards from hands. So the fact that they leave play (to go to my hand) before their effect is triggered (since it's on my turn) means the effect never gets triggered. This will mostly be consistent because right now as rogue, there are no ways (without opponent cards) to buff cutlass on opponent's turn. However, in meltdown, or with the help of stolen cards (i.e. Reserve Weapon), or with potential future cards, this can change. In those situations, it creates a possible situation where an opposing ally attacks me and my buffed cutlass, dies, and discards a devourer, that devourer then deals damage and goes into my hand. This inconsistent behavior, depending on who's turn it is will be confusing to players, similar to the exiling from sledgehammer. I suppose the ruling could be similar to the hammer ruling: 'Discards' preceeds 'Discarded'. Just something to think about...

[AbYsMaL]

They sort themselve by card number from my understanding.

[raizoir]

Change to Thoughtripper's Cutlass

The change to Thoughtripper's Cutlass is wonderful. I absolutely despised the original effect from the start, for it ruined a key feature of Serena of judging if it was worth attacking the hero for the discard.

Also with this change, Serena just needs a weapon for resource destruction & disruption to complete the trinity. It should be noted, in the write-up I will be posting tomorrow providing detailed rogue feedback and suggestions, I have listed such a weapon, which will also be playable in a Garth swarm-control deck.

Buffs for Serena

I am concerned from reading the recent comments, as the foremost way of buffing Serena which people are suggesting is heavily reliant on improving her discard capabilities. From playing her almost exclusively during CotC and DP, I would state that the main weaknesses of Serena from my point of view are:

1. Extremely dependent on Fan of Blades (a 6 cost weapon which you need to use her ability to make it worth it) to deal with multiple low cost and low health allies, that is provided the ally does not have stealth or is immune to/reduces physical damage.

Solution: Have an ability that deals ability damage and targets a minimum of two opposing allies.

2. Partly related to the first point, her damage is limited only to weapons and allies. This at times, make getting back board control and maintaining it difficult, even if you have more cards in your hand and resources than your opponent.

Solution: While FFM is helpful by shuffling unneeded weapons back into your deck, offering more ability damaging cards that are playable for Serena would be ideal.

3. Her inability to deal 3 and 5 damage with most weapons. You would not believe how many times you are short of one damage while playing Serena. As a result of this, there are times that you are unable to or have to heavily invest in taking out an ally.

Solution: For cards which are intended to buff Serena, some of them should have a +1 damage or -1 health effect.

4. You almost always had more resources than your opponent due to using ST and having to have a large amount of resources to play a weapon + another card. This was an issue as Layarian Seductress was used in DP to help regain and control the board. Sword Thief has fixed this issue to some extent, however due to her(his?) low health, she (he?) can be a liability.

Solution: Buff the health of Sword Thief.

Examples of buffs

To prevent repeating too much information from my write-up, below are two suggested changes and one new possible card aimed to help Serena control (aggro-control and midrange are also addressed in the write-up). The cards are discussed in more detail in the write-up and each card also helps out other decks too.

Garth's Concoction

Current stats and effect: Rogue Ability - 3 cc - Exhaust your hero: target opposing ally takes 3 poison damage and is poisoned.

Suggested change: Rogue Ability - 4 cc - Up to 2 different target opposing allies are poisoned. Until the start of your next turn, the first source of damage dealt to those targeted is increased by 1.

(If the effect is lacking, then a possible buff could be “Remove a Garth's Concoction from your graveyard to reduce the cost of this card by 1.”)

NOTE: I have brought back the original effect as Rogue Ability 7, with a tiny buff to reward Garth for running it over Assassination. Anarchic Looting could be moved back an expansion and replaced with this card instead, as Anarchic Looting is not urgently needed.

Sword Thief

Current stats and effect: Rogue Ally - 3 cc - 2/3 - When Sword Thief is summoned, target opposing ally can't attack or defend until the end of its controller's next turn.

Suggested change: Rogue Ally - 3 cc - Unique - 2/4 - When Sword Thief is summoned, target opposing ally can't attack or defend until the end of its controller's next turn and loses 1 health.

Just to confirm, the health loss is permanent.

Rogue Ally 3

Suggested Card: Rogue Ally 3 - 3 cc - 3/3 - When Rogue Ally 3 is summoned, target opposing ally or weapon loses one attack and target other friendly ally or weapon gains one attack. If Rogue Ally 3 targets an opposing ally with 0 attack when summoned, that ally is killed.

NOTE: Just in case I got the wording wrong, you can target an opposing ally with 0 attack and still pump up the attack of a friendly ally or weapon.

[snipnigth]

Good job, tour right gondorian more card destruction will be hard to deal with specially since you sac a card to gain resource, i really like this change finaly the cutlas can be used by her true owner

Question: whats npe?

[Twio]

Words

No to everything. Serena just got a new favourite toy and as a result QM is going to be saturated with her. Be content with that. Stop trying to make Serena tier 0.

[bobrossw]

No to everything. Serena just got a new favourite toy and as a result QM is going to be saturated with her. Be content with that. Stop trying to make Serena tier 0.

I agree...I like the creativity there, and those suggestions all look fine by themselves, but you add them up and throw in cards like Vozitian orders and it makes for some ridiculous combos. Cutlass by itself is a game-changer for Serena. Lets give it a chance and see how it plays out.