So thoughts on Crystals

Anyone try Crystals since patch?

 

they are pretty much the same

 

heh...I'm liking them quite a bit atm.

they got a solid beater with yeti, howler is much more effective at this range, and devotion is sooo much easier to pull off.

they aren't perfect but imo they are in a great spot for a theme that hasn't been looked at since soko made them the first time around.

meta viability aside they are a lot of fun to play with now.

 

too much set up for too little return and the breakability of the set up. Howling facinate is the only decent thing in crystals

 

have you guys played the theme ?

they have setup, that's true but the endless devoution is the cherry on the cake not the whole cake.

the units of yeti, howler, wolverine, and crystal elemental make the core of the deck, and all 4 are efficient and capable units on there own now. I don't run crystal dragon, he's to expensive and doesn't do enough imo, in this deck.

I supplement the strong effecient crystals with strong jakei like kento and shadow striker that are hard to remove, and work from there.

late game once i get two or three crystals out and they start tossing eviscerating aura and deafening aura, it becomes very hard for them to move in or position around my crystals.

I'll agree the theme isn't finished it currently lacks relevant jakei to support the crystals, but the theme works now it's just very limited, I played crystal before this patch and after this patch and they play completely different now.

 

Hey Calisk, you got too much of a "viable" perspective. Most of us seek more flavour than anything else.

If we are FORCED to play with few Jakeis, and some Crystals are too "fat" to play with, the theme isn't appealing.

 

Crystals are pretty good after I've played them especiallywith my 3-8 range howler (Ice eke and keeneyee

 

it's not fun to lose, and yes i agree that's the down side not a lot of options atm, that said the only 2x2 in my deck is crystal elemental.

atm at least one build is viable with crystal, that's betetr then the zero we had before.

 

i've been playing crystals from before this patch, maybe my build is wrong but wolverine is super squishy with evasive 1. and yeah there are too many 2x2s in crystals, it makes them bulky and hard to move/position.

i think crystal elemental is pretty trash, 70 nora for what it does it meh.

 

wolverine is squishy at first, to some degree, if you engage with him twice he stops being squishy.

his luminescence is actually really good as well for a defensive style, if your opponent tries to engage and you have 2 eles with it they'll take 11 damage by the start of their turn more if you spread it across more units. I've had wolverine survive for entire games with a little help from cloak on key turns with stats in the 20+ damage with 6+ def.

crystal ele is like my all star though I run him with damage not range. this is mostly because eles have a very weak damage output normally and he's like +3 damage an attack for all my eles if he's nearby, it's why I covet my DOTs from wolverine and howler softening things up for them. ele can just walk up to most BG's with frost aura lower their defense, increase my damage, and front line my wolverine eviscerating aura, if they choose to stay engaged their units will just get picked to death by howlers and kento with psychic ping, or yeti will sneak in for a 30 damage charge.

I lower his deploy value if i'm against mostly physical attackers, but if non-physical is on the board he's a high deploy order, also if shaman is out he's even more valuable as he enables the frozen trigger for ice snap, though to be honest it's been rare for me to deploy either of these units.

 

Crystal howler is pretty decent I would have preferred 2-4 range and 7 speed, but it still really good. The yeti is okay.

 

ill try improve dmg, i don't like revere icesnap for 2 reasons, 1. it costs 6 more, 2. you lose the -10 from leverage and only get back 10% which is 8 nora. Basically paying 8 nora to do double damage IF snap gets deployed. Also snap isn't a crystal so eh.

how do you get your yeti to 30 dmg charge?

 

11base ice makes 12 marker makes 13, ice ele makes effective 16, charge brings it to 19 add 10 for heavy charge not quite 30 but if you want to get fancy you can cast tundra discipline i guess. was rounding really his hits are generally strong enough to make a significant impact and calcify is more then enough in most cases to not allow him to be one rounded.

end of the day it's more then enough to get the job done.

as for leverage it's not free either, you pay for your discount, and even if you don't you are forcing your next deploy to be an elemental and it needs to be within the next turn, most of my elementals are about 60-70 nora so at best this ability nets me 7 nora and doesn't do anything else after that.

revere nets me 8 or 16 depending on one or two snaps, and as a bonus allows my shaman to hit in the 30's, with no restrictions on my deploys aside from the fact that i can hold deploying a snap as a threat. if snap is not on the field it's already doing work cause they constantly need to be nervous of the potential for a snap to be deployed and double my shamans damage output

 

Yep love the shaman snap combo in crystals. One question though; do you run cloak of ice or am I the only one. My bg has lots of freezing aura but I feel spot freezing aura is much more useful to pull off the combo when my opponent least expects it.

 

I do not as it's not the focus of my bg, just something nice when it happens.

I can apply frozen with elementalist, snap, and ice ele.

it's not a lot of source but it's also not a combo I make use of frequently

 

You run jakei elementalist in crystals? Why?

 

why not? he's a low cost 7 speed jakei with control options and decent damage output.

until some good synergistic jakei come out those are pretty much the criteria for jakei in an elemental deck.

the number of times freeze and frost nova helped me control a situation are crazy.

 

He's squishy and you kind of need your Jakei to he alive especially when facing opponents with range champs. I see him as being killed almost instantly in that scenario. I don't see the needed survivability to serve the role of a jakei in this type of bg.

 

I wouldn't classify him as squishy, don't get me wrong IF i let my opponent wail on him yes he's quite squishy, but that's why he has control options.

you only need one jakei to be alive, with the range on endless dev that's enough now, so if I have my kento or shadow striker out my bg isn't being shut down if the elementalist dies.

 

Sounds reasonable I'll stick with shadow striker and kento though and maybe do a test run with elementalist.