Is a theme necessary?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by edmek55555, Jan 19, 2017.

  1. edmek55555

    edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

    In your opinion, is a theme necessary for a successful bg or is a mix of solid champions, spells, and equips viable without any sort of theme binding them together?
     
  2. GemmaXylia

    GemmaXylia Forum Royalty

    Yes, that's called meta :) a mix of all the good bits and pieces.
     
  3. edmek55555

    edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

    Thanks for your reply. I have been struggling a bit online since I started last week. Someone I was playing yesterday said no one ever wins without a theme. I wasnt sure if that was the general consensus or just one opinion
     
  4. Markoth

    Markoth Lord Inquisitor

    Themes are not required but usually have inherent synergies that can give them an advantage. When you start building a new deck you want to find runes that work together. You want to cover as many potential things your deck may encounter. You will need detection, anti-equip, anti-perserverance, etc. In fact there are so many things that could potentially need a counter that you cannot possibly fit them all in a single deck. A good way to counter the things you dont have answers to is to force your opponent to focus on countering you instead of playing to their own deck's strengths. For this to work you need synergetic bonds between your units. Themes typically have those bonds inherently included in their designs.

    Constantly be tweeking your deck. If your deck consistantly has issues facing certain things take a close look at it and decide if the failure is a result of your deck or your playstyle. I often see players fail to kill certain units even when they have all the tools to do so available to them. They just dont know the potential combos between units or think abstractly enough to make something work. This isnt the fault of their deck this is meerly player knowledge and something that can only be gained with time.
     
  5. edmek55555

    edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

    My biggest issue currently is taking out those uber defensive angel themes decks in iron stronghold ( I think that's the name) bg. So many defensive cooldowns and heals. That on top of every unit having riposte and my units for some reason missing almost all melee attacks. Its a rough time. Any suggestions? Forglar swamps give me the same issues with heals. I play mainly ud
     
  6. calisk

    calisk I need me some PIE!

    meta is great just tricky to get right, takes forever to for me to get a meta deck right =/
     
    Dolcebrodude and Xirone like this.
  7. darklord48

    darklord48 Forum Royalty

    Sounds like you're fighting against Granite Bracers, an equipment that causes the first attack each turn to miss, and then gives the bearer a free counter attack.

    Look at champs that have Cauterize, Inhibiting Blows, or even the spell Cauterize. That will stop healing until they cleanse the unit.
     
  8. Dolcebrodude

    Dolcebrodude The King of Potatoes

    This. But also I find the "takes forever to get right" aspect to be a positive one.
     
  9. Markoth

    Markoth Lord Inquisitor

    In theory a meta deck can never be *right* because the decks you will be facing will constantly be evolving to counter the meta.
     
    Tweek516 likes this.
  10. edmek55555

    edmek55555 Devotee of the Blood Owl

    Thanks for the tip! And they could be it with the granite bracers. Guess it will just take some time to feel put a good deck. I just hate seeing my w/l ratio falling so fast
     
  11. Dolcebrodude

    Dolcebrodude The King of Potatoes

    Pox is like every competitive 1v1 board game: gotta get the floor moped with your miniatures/cards/runes first then start getting better
     
  12. DiCEM0nEY

    DiCEM0nEY I need me some PIE!

    all decks give a % chance of winning the game, if the number of players were infinite, because the number of deck combinations is finite. Cool way to think about it.
     
  13. DiCEM0nEY

    DiCEM0nEY I need me some PIE!


    However, for the cost and long term cost, themed BGs are the best. Things get nerfed and buffed alot, and if you are planning on keeping your wallet and your sanity, find a strong theme and stick with it.
     
  14. MaruXV

    MaruXV Corgi Lord of FW

    Also remember that theme doesnt mean only race themed bgs. a bg could be build about a class (or more classes) like archers, paladins etc. or on a dmg type like frost amp, magic amp, fire amp etc. or on an ability like knockback bg. or on a terrain type, like sand bg. also remember that these can be mixed. like knockback focused monks, or magicamp wizards. you can also build on a combo. like ethereal pool bg or charge leviathan bg.
     
    Etherielin, bambino and DiCEM0nEY like this.
  15. kalasle

    kalasle Forum Royalty

    If your deck doesn't have a plan, you are going to lose. Meta/goodstuff/junk often gets cast as a collection of strong runes with no direct relationship, but if those runes do not fit into a larger deck, that's bad. Most themes provide the same gameplan, and the competitive environment -- map rotation, other decks out there, player attitudes -- currently supports the canonical theme gameplan of "build up a board of synergy champs and keep them together." Having a theme per se is not important, and many themes will do more harm than good in deck construction. "UD wizards" is a theme, as is "FW/KF relic summons," but those are both trash decks, because their gameplans are terrible.
     
  16. GoldTiger

    GoldTiger I need me some PIE!

    • I feel like the only way to get good at deck construction (I.e know whether a theme is necessary or not) is play games/watch games I.e experience strangely enough my experience in hearthstone has made me a much better pox player because I understand the key concepts that makes a BG great. Only experience can bring about this understanding tbh. Some things to think about in your BG construction are:
    Tanks (real tanks)
    Ranged dmg
    Spot burst
    Counters
    Win conditions
    If your BG has a strong range of these you should be able to win way more than 50% of games.

    For example last patch many player used a rushy UD BG with no idea of its counters or win condition. A good player could exploit the lack of late game, ranged and cleanse vs an inrxperienced player (or bad player), whereas rxploiting this vs a player such as tiny would be much much harder.

    I don't cosider myself a good tactical player on the board. I just believe I'm better at deck creation and curving out the board than my opponents. The rest is simply solid play to achieve high ranks in this state of the game.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
  17. bambino

    bambino I need me some PIE!

    this, very much.
     
  18. DiCEM0nEY

    DiCEM0nEY I need me some PIE!

    I do feel like conventional (such as dwarves) themes are healthy for the game, because they make it easier to balance the game and vary the game play. The fact that meta decks exist I find to be mainly due to the nature of old Pox Nora as a pay to win game. I think many of the unrelated meta runes will be weeded out, and the game will (hopefully) become more thematically based. As for strategies , I think each theme will end up having a few strategies, such as AP denial witches, or disease zombies, and variance will come from how players put together their themed decks.

    That's the direction I hope the devs take pox in personally, I feel this way actually offers way more deck variance and exciting matches.

    But pertaining to your comment, I want to add that micro skills exist in pox. Even though they are easy to learn, if you can't micro the units to be effective, you are going to have a bad time no matter what rune you play.
     

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