Is exaltation too good?

[morbius]

Which card are you referring to? You can PM me if you want, to avoid derailing this thread.

But, for what it's worth, posting that something is OP is not the same as proving something is OP. The gameplay needs to back up what people are saying, and that kind of proof should be easy to find if it's a broken card because highly competitive players will abuse it and then continue to abuse it even when the meta has established around it.

Plenty of examples over the years, but let's take CoF as a fresh one. Everyone was crying OP, as Jericho and Lance raped everybody, but devs claimed that the card is fine, until finally nerfing it. While I do appreciate that they didn't do the knee-jerk reaction and nerf the card before taking time to think about what they are doing, it didn't exactly need a genius and a lot of playing to figure out that the change was needed. It's as if devs don't play their own game.

Second of all, just because highest competitive decks don't directly show that some strategy is broken, it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't. Tournament decks are fine tuned to beat just a couple of the top decks, while in ranked your deck has to be able to deal with anything. And just because some strategy is good for taking out a specific troublesome deck, it doesn't mean it's good for general usage. Last patch ago you could shut down elite Lance deck with Ythan easily, but Ythan was weak to rangers and mages, while Lance wasn't nearly as much. So you could go and say: "We don't need to nerf Lance, Ythan is owning him!", but in reality, Lance needed nerf.

I can already tell you that Elementalis will need nerfing and the biggest culprit is exactly Exaltation. YES there are ways to deal with it, NO they are not practical enough. I go with Victor which theoretically has the best tools to deal with Elementalis, but in reality Elementalis just clears snare traps with Stardust Extractor and buffs his allies faster than Victor can take them out while Victor's key card Retreat! doesn't help. We have a situation which will need to be addressed.

[Gondorian]

Plenty of examples over the years, but let's take CoF as a fresh one. Everyone was crying OP, as Jericho and Lance raped everybody, but devs claimed that the card is fine, until finally nerfing it. While I do appreciate that they didn't do the knee-jerk reaction and nerf the card before taking time to think about what they are doing, it didn't exactly need a genius and a lot of playing to figure out that the change was needed. It's as if devs don't play their own game.

Umm. It got changed the version immediately after it was buffed. And we were playing with the nerfed version in PFG since 13th May...

[Daemon Rayge]

I can already tell you that Elementalis will need nerfing and the biggest culprit is exactly Exaltation. YES there are ways to deal with it, NO they are not practical enough. I go with Victor which theoretically has the best tools to deal with Elementalis, but in reality Elementalis just clears snare traps with Stardust Extractor and buffs his allies faster than Victor can take them out while Victor's key card Retreat! doesn't help. We have a situation which will need to be addressed.

That may be the issue that particular Victor build than Victor itself. My personal build doesn't run Snare Traps nor Retreat and focuses mostly on keeping the opponent and their allies down as much as possible by heavily utilizing and re-using on-Summon effect allies. Don't think I ever had a big issue with Elementalis at all. This was mostly before the Extractor buff, but Exaltation was exactly the same and gave me no real issues.

[LucasBlitz]

Don't MS, Bloodfang, Victor and Boris all counter ele?

[Tria]

A quick random selection of top score/rating players show that the vast majority do not in fact play elementalis.
Elementalis is mostly common in the 220-250 range, pretty much where it was before the extractor buff.

Is she more common? Yes.
Elementals in general are the only buffed group with 2.91x because of getting what is usually a cantrip draw.

Stardust Ampliflyer is still situationally a better 5cc play than exaltation is. The only difference is Exalt is essentially a hasted being.
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I played Elementalis at 300+ before the extractor buff, with pretty much the exact same ally pool in meta ele.

If the current pool of elementalis players is to be considered, I would have to say from my perspective adding Exaltation weakened my deck.

Also MS hard counter ele. Go away.

[fordfff]

With extractor and shadowspawn ms is more like a 50-50 now, depends on who starts and with what.

[morbius]

Umm. It got changed the version immediately after it was buffed. And we were playing with the nerfed version in PFG since 13th May...

But WE didn't get it for two more months, leaving us with a boring game with 4 viable heroes. Think of the player base when you're experimenting.

[morbius]

That may be the issue that particular Victor build than Victor itself. My personal build doesn't run Snare Traps nor Retreat and focuses mostly on keeping the opponent and their allies down as much as possible by heavily utilizing and re-using on-Summon effect allies. Don't think I ever had a big issue with Elementalis at all. This was mostly before the Extractor buff, but Exaltation was exactly the same and gave me no real issues.

Kindly read my previous posts in this thread.

[fordfff]

Kindly read my previous posts in this thread.

If a victor run cards that are subpar in the current meta, no wonder it gets beaten. When the meta changes you either adapt or die. A proper victor build eats ele alive. And if I say that, you can believe it.

[Gondorian]

But WE didn't get it for two more months, leaving us with a boring game with 4 viable heroes. Think of the player base when you're experimenting.

The Design Team don't decide the release schedule. But what we can do is aim to have far fewer buffs on the live server in future, especially with Lost Lands. Be sure to throw this quote back in my face if we don't stick to that.

p.s. Retreat!?!?!? is a key Victor card?

Victor's key card Retreat! ...