General rules to be successful?

calisk · Feb 15, 2017

the deck building aspect is accurate, I do feel like I look at runes differently then other st players, and more often then not it boil down to what you get for the nora cost. even right now I'm trying to figure out a good champ combination to destroy the meta with a fun shield+mil quake+mill quake+ (possibly) strip armor deck

so many spider and skeleton decks running around I thought it could be fun

also agree with your awareness point.

but positioning is never more important then at high level play, tiny miscalculations is what causes the advantage to be lost, and it's what you capitalize on to get it back. between two equal weights a grain of salt can tip the scales, and imo positioning is pretty much the whole beach at high level play, possibly second only to the deck construction itself but you can't do anything about that once you are in the game, and you need to overcome disadvantages regardless.

Sokolov · Feb 15, 2017

Oh, another thing to consider is that positioning is likely MORE or LESS important depending on how you score the following factors:

More variety of abilities, particularly AE/ranged abilities

There used to be fewer champion abilities, and more global/passive ones as well, as a ratio

Greater ability to impact board state

Spell-based knockbacks, Relocates, more AP gen, etc.

Higher firepower

Despite the revamp/nerfs, the game is also much quicker than it used to be in terms of how fast things can die

More powerful abilities and combinations of effects in terms of being harder to play around

The old days, most abilities could be pushed thru or played around with positioning, now the emphasis is often more on which targets to take out first and deploying/using the right tools to deal things

Personally, I feel the net change here is that positioning is still important, but more nebulous, and much harder to teach/learn than it used to be.

edmek55555 · Feb 15, 2017

Sokolov said: ↑

Positioning
As mentioned, this is fairly fundamental. I do agree with kthx in that most of it is fairly "trivial." Most players will pick up the basics fairly quickly, and while positioning can make the difference between a good vs a great player, it's one of those cases where there is great diminishing returns at the top end.

Awareness
A lot of it will just come down to experience and recognizing patterns (i.e. this is a situation where the other player is likely to be using X or Y rune). There is no real way to "teach" this other than by experience, I think, as it is always a variable set of factors.

At the lower levels, the pendulum can swing back and forth, but I'd posit that most games are actually lost one or two critical turns at the higher levels of play. This is because between 2 players who make few mistakes, once an advantage is obtained, it can be difficult to overcome. At lower levels of play, many players will not even recognizing they have an advantage. And that's part of awareness too - understanding when/where on the board you have an advantage and can press, and when to back off or wait for a better opportunity.

Deckbuilding
This section will be a bit meandering, because I want to talk some Pox history.

I think that with kthx and shaz and some of the other old school players - their board play were likely not that much better than everyone else - but in many cases, these players put themselves ahead from the start with superior deckbuilding.

We saw this recently when kthx returned for a couple of months and started playing all kinds of stuff people weren't playing. Why is this? Is it just because he was messing around and didn't care if he was using bad runes?

Absolutely not. Again, with some of these players, their mindset for deck building is different, and also comes from a different era of Pox.

To explain a bit, let's back up a bit. For those who do not know, it used to be that players had much finer control over the individual nora costs of each unit. Each champion had a base build, and you could add stats to it (which would use up some CP and increase the nora cost). Abilities worked the same way. While for most players, there were standard builds, part of the skill of deckbuilding in this era was actually the entire structure of the deck to ensure a good flow of deploys - this is similar to mana-curves in MTG or similar things in other card games. By focusing on efficiency and deploy flow, a player like this only has to play as good as the opponent and leverage the deck advantage he already had.

In contrast, nowadays, the game (and players) are much more focused on inter-rune synergy rather than individual champion efficiency. It has meant that this older style of extreme focus on nora cost curve is much less impactful as a deckbuilding tool - because the synergy between runes can theoretically make up for inefficiencies.
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Great post. That's actually one of the first things I have noticed in pox. I have never seen a game with so much complacency. It seems almost all the players (atleast that are active on here) believe that making a bg is an absolute preset group of cards rather than trying your own things. Many people slam the idea of doing something different saying "that can't work, don't bother"

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General rules to be successful?

calisk I need me some PIE!

Sokolov The One True Cactuar Octopi

edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

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General rules to be successful?

calisk I need me some PIE!

Sokolov The One True Cactuar Octopi

edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

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