Cactuar Crate: Planar Disturbances

The ability drains HP now, I think, but it doesn't have a registered tool tip and the ability itself didn't get a patch update. Patch Notes aren't perfect records, unfortunately.

 

Any update on what is being done with heroes?

 

I think we are talking about different things. Arroyo Portal is the relic.

I do vaguely remember it not losing HP now though but I don't think that change had any significance in spirits falling out of favor. The relic is as effective as it needs to be the fact that it didn't lose HP was just an oversight that allowed it to produce too much value if lefta lone over a long period of time.

 

I know what I am talking about -- the "Arroyo Portal" ability that is on the relic now drains HP from the relic.

There is no hover-over text to describe it in the checklist.

 

You are correct about the December patch, which takes spirits out of the equation but leaves Calisk's knockback deck (February 2017) and the other current decks which you are now handwaving away in the equation.

December 2016, under FW
Arroyo Portal [Forsaken Wastes, Shattered Peaks]

• Nora Modifier decrease (-15)
• Description: This relic has Desecrated Zone 3 (Area Effect 3: Affected spaces are <mechanic value=dead_magic_zone>Dead Magic Zone</mechanic>) and Arroyo Portal (When an enemy champion comes into play, this unit loses 3 HP and a Rift Spirit without upgrades is summoned to an adjacent space).
• Now loses 3 HP per summon, limiting the potential number of summons and nora cost reduced.

On top of those two concurrent changes, the surge mechanic has been mostly nerfed. This has taken surge spirits from an easy and prescriptive deck, and changed it to a mediocre one. I am not ready to say that FW spirits are bad yet, because the pox population overreacts to changes to flavour of the month decks. It was not a coincidence that I mentioned skeletons - a lot of players are happy to move on to the next already developed deck rather than to try and make something work for themselves. Most pox players aren't innovators.

Here is a revised version of my statement, perhaps it meets your approval now?


A quick search in the patch notes forum tells us that the last time arroyo riftlord was changed was December 2016.
http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/patch-notes-winter-patch-of-2016.25392/

Since then, the same arroyo riftlord that you can play right now was an integral (ie. you always start building the deck with 2x this rune) part of a top5 deck: the SP/ST knockback spirit deck that was developed by calisk (a variant of SP/x The Resistance decks, all of which featured the current arroyo riftlord).

While this archetype has been dismantled, riftlord is still a solid include. As I have already mentioned, I am running it in my primary deck. Chris is also running it in his SP/ST deck (which has also been copied by many "top" players). We have already heard his take on this rune (it good).

So what this suggests to me is that Arroyo Riftlord, as currently designed and costed, can be run in top competitive decks. The reason why Arroyo Riftlord is not played more frequently right now is contextual rather than because of some innate badness that you would like to correct with a 3n cost decrease. While Arroyo Riftlord is not an auto-include champ, it clearly is capable of filling a niche role in a fairly robust theme (spirits is second only to beasts in terms of the amount of possible theme deck archetypes) or in other decks that might want to include a versatile meat generator.

To me, this niche state is the ideal spot for a rune to be in. If it's not an autoinclude it isn't first in line for nerf cries but, as other runes are added and changed around it, I am confident that this rune will be included in top decks in the future (assuming pox continues at a reasonable pace of development + release).

Regarding this statement:
The point I am making is that he is overcosted because of the increases that Arroyo Rift received which are no longer justified because it has much less usefulness since the Surge changes.

I think you were bang on when you noticed that Riftlord is only as good as the Arroyo Rift ability. He is only viable as long as the ability is efficient. I am not convinced that Arroyo Rift is an inefficient ability. It might look overcosted relative to bone prison if you believe that the extra versatility of being able to target the summons anywhere + having a few turns of DMZ is not worth the extra 5 n, but it does look quite efficient relative to a lot of other summoning abilities such as Mika's crested fesh. Could you elaborate on your main point for us?

 

also makes a fine gale sandwich
blocks champs contesting a font
gathers rouge nora globes
all round good guy, now i think about it why arent I running 2 of them xD

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

I think my point is fairly self explanatory.

1. The ability was nerfed when it had greater potential due to the prevalence of Surge: Spirit. This was almost certainly a factor which lead to it being nerfed.
   
2. This and other nerfs made the Arroyo theme weaker overall but still relatively strong and very playable.
3. The Surge changes were implemented and Arroyo lost a significant amount of damage sources.
   
4. On top of the previous nerfs this weakened the theme further leaving them far less viable than they had been on release.
5. The theme has now been nerfed for having too much synergy with surge and then lost half of it's surge sources.

A cost decrease in light of these surge changes would have a relatively minor impact on Riftlord and the decks he is currently included in but along with other small changes might help improve Arroyo/Spirits decks where they have suffered due to the loss of surge. I very much doubt that the mass surge removal would have been taken into account when these cost increases were calculated.

 

Yo, Gravewatcher is deck limit 1, what's up with that? I just forged a second of these little crapbags before I realized.

 

the old argument used to be so you couldnt drop a second gravewatcher to remove the 20 turn cooldown after exhune gets used

 

Could Fleshweaver get Consume on U1? U1 is pretty much complete trash because Elsari Coven and Reconstruct: Blackguard are useless on her, Consume would be particularly handy as it would give you a good option on U2 in Transfer Life.

 

Just noticed that Skeletal Rifleman has Aim both on Base and on Upgrades. Pyro only has it on upgrades, and also doesn't have Vulnerable (and I think he is supposed to just be a Lim version of the Rifleman?). Not sure what exactly you want to do about that.

 

Minor usability change recommendation: Mischief grants AP to champions within 5 spaces of the Imp using the ability, rather than within 5 spaces of the target. This would mean the Mischief-user only has to consider one zone of effect, the one displayed, rather than two.

 

Can we get some textual notation somewhere that a reanimated champion gets the "Reanimated" permanent condition, which prevents reanimation? I get why that mechanic was made, but there's literally no explanation of it anywhere.

 

I think that got changed already, but I think I remember that the description wasn't updated.