I am making this topic to argue against the changes made to bone mine and dark rising. I believe these were both nerfed too heavily due to a lack of understanding of how skeletons operate as a unit, and how they were designed. The design aspect is pretty boring, so a quick history lesson; originally skeletons were units that recieved a lot of buffs through things like commander and defender, and all complimented each other. During the later phase of @Sokolov 's development, they lost these auras and were buffed with surge on three key units; tomblord, skeletal lerper, and blackblade baron. Lerper lost surge, because of shrine rush tactics. I understood this nerf, but not why they weren't compensated for it (I'll explain further) The play style skeletons is very micro intensive. Generally you try and produce many weak units and try and gode the opponent into making a mistake by getting his units out of proper positioning. Generally, you need to make some sort of play, because you won't win an even game with the opponent. Skeletons are fragile, and the reward is not very impressive if you aren't winning on tempo agaisnt most factions. Let's talk about tomblord, the defacto best unit for skeletons. He offers boost, surge, and summon skeleton for 73-79 nora. He has a very high base damage, and great stats, and can get up to 20 damage fairly consistently. However, that's not to say he isn't without a few flaws; attack psychic is over used in fw, and it's actually one of the weakest alt damage types. It shares with xulous and eye of serkan, as well as several other fw ranged units, and there is no real benefit of the damage type; not much is weak to psychic damage, and for good reason; everything has attack psychic in pox nora. Knowing these flaws of tl , it's a good way to segway into the weakness of skeletons; damage types. Nearly all melee skeletons have attack physical. The theme is very fragile and it becomes an issue when you are able to build up the fragile army of skeletons, but cant break a defense oriented deck. The other damage type they have , as mentioned, is psychic (for ranged). This is one of the weakest alt damage types to have (the best probably being sonic), because of Firk Mask, and the amount of immunity / resist psychic. In fact, the reliance on physical attacks is a reason why Tomblord is a great asset to skeletons; he is a main source of damage for something with physical defense (resistance, immunity) .... will finish this later.
This is bad man......u can't spend half ur post talking about lack of damage types for a theme in the faction that has soulreave. If there is a future, should skellys be designed to have more damage types? Maybe, and even probably. Does that somehow warrant buffing them now? Not even close.
Wasn't even meant to be 1/4th of my post, but I lost my ambition a bit tbh. Also in regards to soul reave, ill answer that next as to why soul reave isn't a very strong choice in the next paragraph (for skeleton decks)
I am making this topic to argue against the changes made to bone mine and dark rising. I believe these were both nerfed too heavily due to a lack of understanding of how skeletons operate as a unit, and how they were designed. The design aspect is pretty boring, so a quick history lesson; originally skeletons were units that recieved a lot of buffs through things like commander and defender, and all complimented each other. During the later phase of Sokolov 's development, they lost these auras and were buffed with surge on three key units; tomblord, skeletal lerper, and blackblade baron. Lerper lost surge, because of shrine rush tactics. I understood this nerf, but not why they weren't compensated for it (I'll explain further) The play style skeletons is very micro intensive. Generally you try and produce many weak units and try and gode the opponent into making a mistake by getting his units out of proper positioning. Generally, you need to make some sort of play, because you won't win an even game with the opponent. Skeletons are fragile, and the reward is not very impressive if you aren't winning on tempo agaisnt most factions. Let's talk about tomblord, the defacto best unit for skeletons. He offers boost, surge, and summon skeleton for 73-79 nora. He has a very high base damage, and great stats, and can get up to 20 damage fairly consistently. However, that's not to say he isn't without a few flaws; attack psychic is over used in fw, and it's actually one of the weakest alt damage types. It shares with xulous and eye of serkan, as well as several other fw ranged units, and there is no real benefit of the damage type; not much is weak to psychic damage, and for good reason; everything has attack psychic in pox nora. Knowing these flaws of tl , it's a good way to segway into the weakness of skeletons; damage types. Nearly all melee skeletons have attack physical. The theme is very fragile and it becomes an issue when you are able to build up the fragile army of skeletons, but cant break a defense oriented deck. The other damage type they have , as mentioned, is psychic (for ranged). This is one of the weakest alt damage types to have (the best probably being sonic), because of Firk Mask, and the amount of immunity / resist psychic. In fact, the reliance on physical attacks is a reason why Tomblord is a great asset to skeletons; he is a main source of damage for something with physical defense (resistance, immunity) .... will finish this later.
Bone elemental is indirectly nerfed, in this game is over abused the bombs and abilities. The bone elemental no can generate his summons anymore. The same happens with bonewing, his elusive is bypassed all time. Feel very bad play skeletons. @Sokolov
Tbh, they really aren't a tier 0 deck, which was the whole point of this topic. The #1 thing that has helped skeletons more than anything else is the current meta being "only fs". I've never played pox in a time where literally every deck has fs in it like i am right now. I see even less SL than i normally do, which was honestly the entire faction gets a near auto win agaisnt skellies. Another example; I wiped the floor with ur skeleton deck with my stitched combo deck, clearly showing it's a meta issue not a "skeletons op" issue.
