its easy. devs promote a special type of play and try to abandon other ways of play. This thread is about different strategies of the game and which of them are allowed or not by devs. Rushing is not allowed. The cheese play around mid font, kill one champ each turn, put out one to replace is exactly the kind of game the devs promote. Some moves towards this: stop surprise shrine rush strategy stop rush mid front and take first strategy stop megachamp strategy take away most movement promoting abilities that could be used for font capture leave and promote defensive cheese movement abilities like swap keep lowering damage output but keep buffing defensive abilities healing awstuck etc etc don't remember all now, but I know devs think a long game is a good game
I feel u are just trolling and did not read this thread. But u want to kill it by filling it with some BS. OHH someone is writing something that is against the consensus of the top 50 posters who slowly kill this game...
My point is that shrine rushing is not bad for the game but that it CAN be too good. The entire purpose of the game is to destroy your opponents shrine, preferably in the most expedient way possible. The very first line of my forum signature is written by Sun Tzu and is the mantra by which I play this game. However, people were destroying shrines before players had even deployed a 3rd or fourth unit. Before half their deck had even been revealed. This meant that even if you built your deck specifically to counter shrine rush decks it was still a toss-up whether or not you would draw the runes you needed before your opponent achieved their "endgame". The nerfs targeting shrine rush decks is not intended to make it so the decks are unplayable. Just delay the point at which they reach their endgame to give the opponent a chance.
I still feel that devs (and most of the posters here) are in consensus that shrine rush is BAD BAD BAD and its to considered a glitch if it ever succeeds, except of course you are allowed to go for shrine when u have already won the champs/font fight and are outnumbering the opponenent... Shrine rush must be made viable from a balanced or even disadvantage position
I know that you understand that this statement rests on a very subjective premise. The lowest-common-denominator unenjoyable experience is losing, and the head-to-head population experiences just that 50% of the time. One of the most complained about archetypes, regardless of its power level, is FW's attrition deck and I have a hard time believing that you would let that one go for the greater good. One of the interesting things about pox's "meta" dynamics is the concept of unfair decks, and it's something that hasn't really received the discussion that it's deserved. Instead, we just get these specific nerf threads about how something shouldn't be in the game because it's "unfun." It's always seemed to me that "unfun" is codeword for "I don't understand how this works and instead of learning how to engage with it I would rather see the devs eliminate it". I think that this issue results because a huge % of the playerbase misinterprets "unfair" as "unbalanced". The idea of fair vs. unfair decks comes from Magic: The Gathering, and it's kind of like the lesser known brother of the aggro/control dichotomy. The difference between a fair and and unfair deck has nothing to do with powelevels. The difference is that unfair decks are resistant to conventional "best practice"/optimal moves, and require counterintuitive strategies that most players are uncomfortable with. In magic, unfair decks are balanced against the existence of counters and the game's central conceit as a race where your opponent's shrine is always within reach, which means that a conventional deck can simply outpace their opponent (the aggro/control dichotomy could be more of a factor than the fair/unfair dichotomy in a given game). Pox, of course, is not magic. There really is no aggro/control dichotomy in pox, as positioning and control points create the nuanced tactical environment that we all love. I think that players tend to gravitate toward the "counter-it-or-die" argument/strategy because it is so much easier to import the idea of counters from conventional play into unconventional games. @kalasle has already written a much better guide about adapting to unfair decks than I ever could, so I would recommend that as first reading before anybody makes a balance thread about an unfair deck. I think that the most important thing is to be able to make a distinction between "unfair" and "unbalanced". Recognize when an unfair module/deck is unbalanced without assuming that it must be both. Shrine rush decks tend to be "unfair," but it's not even an alternate win condition, they win by accomplishing the fundamental objective of the game. When it comes to balance, these sorts of decks have a right to exist (and many players love their playstyles because they create memorable games and can make you more infamous within the community than your conventional "skills" merit).
macca knows, he was vague with that phrase because polly is so frustrated that he is selective-ignoring half the points in the replys..
In the case of shrine rush, I don't think "unfun" is a codeword for "I don't understand." I think most players understand what makes shrine rush decks not fun to play against and it's less about losing and more about the non-interactivity of the entire experience. While it's true that shrine rush is simply fulfilling the objective, it's clearly doing it in a way that tries to eliminate or bypass the interaction with the other player. Of all the complaints about anything, shrine rush is probably the most fundamental to understand. For an analogy - in Chess, there are many positions in which the two sides are "equal" and where the computer gives an evaluation of 0-0-0, which is a draw. However, you will often find that one side is described as "suffering." Why is this? This is because for the one side (Side A), they have many interesting moves and ways to continue the game, while the other side (Side B) is simply parrying. Often, the Side A has many ways to continue to draw, but each time the other side is regulated to finding ONLY moves to survive (they have one move which results in a continued drawn game, and many other moves which loses). Shrine rush decks, when they are really good, often play out like this. They don't necessarily win more than they should, and the game is technically "even" but the only one who is making interesting choices is the player shrinerushing, while the defending player is almost playing a puzzle game rather than a tactics game. Some players find this fun, but most, as in Chess, find it more frustrating or more akin to "suffering." At the same time, Shrine Rush decks also tend to be particularly difficult for lesser skilled players to deal with (due to lower deck building and decision making skills in terms of where to spend nora), thus they also get more scrutiny from that perspective. Again, if you will allow a Chess analogy, there are many openings which experienced players can use against less experienced players which have extremely high winrates (or even ridiculous stuff like winning in 10 or less moves), but which never work against more experienced opponents who has seen that trick before. No one who plays Chess seriously uses those openings (other than to get a cheap win against a noob), but they exist as a consequence of the rules of the game. That said, shrine rush decks has always existed and will continue to do so precisely because killing the shrine is obviously the main objective. One of the fundamental things about something like PoxNora is that when a new ability or rune is added to the game is that the new stuff will general end up helping multiple types of things and sometime like Shrine Rushing (or Superchamp decks) tends to benefit from a larger variety of things than other deck types because they are looking to leverage a different aspect of the game. Something like Mirrored Shield can potentially find a place in a shrine rush deck even tho by design it offers nothing specifically to a Shrine Rush deck. Even something like removing Cliff-diving could be a boon to shrinerush/superchamp type decks by having one less thing for the deck to worry about (imagine your buffed shrine rush champ getting thrown off a cliff before, but now you don't have to counter that because it cannot happen). A good standalone meta champ might be really great for Shrine Rushing even if it doesn't have any specific anti-shrine abilities simply because it has some combination of abilities (for example, a champ with built-in Shielded and a movement ability might end up being really good for a shrine rush deck). Even a shift in the meta can tremendously help Shrine Rush if that shift is towards defensive play - because typically nora invested in buffing/defensive strategies is not effective at countering shrine rushing. Thus, even if nothing comes out for "shrine rushing" and things get nerfed, we have to recognize that Shrine Rush decks are always creeping stronger in a way that most standard decks don't, and don't need specialized tools to exist.
It's not so much that this is not allowed, but the lack of interactivity in it is not something that needs to be specifically promoted because as I said in my previous posts - these kinds of decks are generally slower getting stronger. It's going to happen, and having hidden information is often quite interesting and we have Stealth and other types of abilities for that. But the combinatorial effects over time of various things tends to make shrine rush decks much stronger in certain situations without real interactivity and that's not a great situation. I don't know what this means. Most maps originally didn't even have mid fonts, and these have been added over time. If anything, taking mid has gained increased prominence. Now, that HAS changed is the ability to take mid font without a fight simply because you went first and deployed an 8 SPD flyer and the other player had no option to even respond - again, the problem isn't the strategy, the problem is when it can be excuted without interactivity. I actually quite enjoy megachamp decks, and have even recently designed a few things specifically for it. However, again, the combinatorial effects of a game like Pox can often lead to a situation without real interactivity when you stack enough things on the same champion. I don't know what this means. In fact, we've actually dramatically increased the number of movement abilities in recent history - it used to be that it was just Pounce, Leap and Teleport, now we have a wide variety of these, some deal damage, others debuff, others move when something else attacks - we even have crazy stuff like Swap, Portal and Air Drop all of which can be used in this way. Again, what did change was the ability to capture early contested fonts without interactivity - this is different than not allowing it to happen at all. For a long time, damage crept increasing it's been curtailed more recently (particularly ranged), but defensive abilities have also been adjusted - healing and awestruck were both actually recently nerfed, Hunter/Foe abilities no longer provides huge swings defensively, etc. Interestingly, the stronger defensive buffing abilities are, the stronger Shrine Rush/Superchamp decks can often be, because: the benefit of living one more turn in those decks are much greater than living one more than in standard decks (e.g. you win the game vs you delay the death of the champ) other players are going to invest more nora into defensive abilitites/effects, which do not help them against shrine rushes Games actually haven't changed much in terms of median/average lengths for many years now.
I have made this same argument (less articulate though) regarding the cataclysm deck so I understand exactly where you're coming from. In the case of shrine rushes though, I am not sure that you can characterize the rushee as the suffering player. In all the games that I've played, the rusher essentially loses as soon as the first rushing champ is removed from play, even if that champ reduced shrine hp to <10, because at that point the rusher is basically resetting the game when the rushee already has ~200 nora and safe fonts on the board. The rusher's lone champ thus ends up as a shrine surrogate, and I would argue that they are the ones parrying for survival as they try to get this single champion in position without being found.
The difference for me is that the person attacking is the one holding the cards - they have the extra tempo. It's true that in both Pox and Chess, if you go all in on an attack and it fails, you can often end up losing - and that is a risk you take, but in the case of Pox, you aren't starting on equal footing as the other guy. Their deck has some mix of standard stuff, while your's is honed for a very particular task. Thus, you, as the rusher, will tend to have a wide variety of tools at your disposal and interesting choices to make, while the defender, the one who is "suffering" is hoping to draw the few counters he MAY have in the deck and get them in place in time. In most cases, the things that the rusher is doing is often going to nullify the action the defender is attempting to take: "oh, my spell got Snowblinded, ok then." And, say the rush fails, now the rusher can surrender, or just drag the game out while making the defender move his champs across the map to kill the shrine in a very non-interactive way (maybe while sneaking in a stealth champ to try and finish off the shrine). The key is that the defender isn't really getting to play in a meaningful way because one side's goal is explicitly to bypass the standard avenues of interaction within the game.
And yea, I don't know what I am doing with Cataclysm yet as part of the Charged abilities revamp, but it's a worse example of what you are saying here. These things are of course the same reason that the old AP denial in FW/FS (not the new AP removal SL has) was eventually nerfed even tho it was never actually very good.
I agree 100% with your intent here but I think that there is a real difference between non-interactivity and unconventional-interactivity. In the case of Zeya's transfusion/blitz shrinerush move, there was no risk on his part because the shrinekiller began its game-ending turn in the shrine deployment zone some 20+spaces away from its target and easily out of range of the battle that was still going on. In this case there was no interactivity with the shrine-rushing element but there was a ton of conventional interactivity taking place before that turn. Interactivity which was immediately rendered moot by 200n of saving/stalling and a fully-drawn deck. In the case of the princeleaf betrayal shrinerush, there was no conventional interaction at all BUT there were several avenues for non-conventional interaction that made that deck fun and exciting to play against for me personally. Detection - or even the threat of detection through damage - created a kind of cloak-and-daggers kind of interaction, where you could herd the attacking champion to one place on the map simply by deploying a detection source on the other side, or save up nora for two different damage-type detection sources accepting that one would get eaten by protection. The deck's biggest weakness wasn't even a counter: just deploying any equipment onto their killer champ could end the rush because they needed two betrayals to get the job done cost-effectively. With some 3000 runes, there are going to be a lot of "broken" interactions but there are also a ton of tools to beat unfair decks without relying on counters. If a winning strategy doesn't give any room for interaction then I'm 100% against it, but emergent interactions are one of the things that makes pox great.
Thanks for really long replies and sorry I did not have time to comment this carefully until now. Also Ill just start with the first one now. So you say shrine rush is part of the game and is "allowed" strategy and in fact is growing slowly in Power with each expansion/change. Well I dont agree. I took a break maybe 1 years from this game and i came back just last week. For the last couple of Days I have played around 60-100 ranked games between all from top rank to newbies. I have found myself win a bit more than each second game, climbing a bit in rank. However, in these nearly 100 games I did not have the pleasure to witness even one attempt to shrine rush me. As a matter of fact I did not even see anyone trying to damage my shrine except one game with long range unit. I won that game. In my first 5 games or so I trued my old shrine rush by surprise tactic. I gave it up really quickly. Just impossible. Did not even come into position to make a try. Also I noted nearly every game that I played against top players was including only one strategic element: to try to kill one of my Champs each turn or to go away if not possible. No games were about killing the shrines. And most games there was just some fight at mid font, nothing else. Just mid font is neutral and then kill Champs until one guy surrenders. Thats how every game was more or less. So I think desptie what you wrote, you made a damn damn good job to take away shrine rush and shrine damage and surprise shrine rush and some other tactics from the game. Also I can mention I was playing in past 8 years or so with some variations back and forth and with very mixed results a Garu / SL melee font capture + surprise shrine rush deck. Here are the combinatory effects, new runes, changes etc that I found the past week that are usefull for my surprise rush strategy deck: NOTHING And here is a list of changes that are direct nerf of my surpirse rush deck: 1. Time slip removed, it was good for killing transformed avatars and some surprise font capture 2. Forced transfusion changed. This spell was really versatile for surprise moves and for mixed offensive strategies 3. Shrine damage for rune reveal removed: this was great to get all the needed runes out quicker 4. Shrine damage for rune reveal removed: this was used by most players and gave average HP of shrine around 70-80, now its always 93. 5. KF ap saving -1: this was great for saving up ap and allowed for more flexibility during the rush move 6. hibernate change: the short time of stealth makes it tricky to move in place 7. Siege change: this basically makes the Garu hurler useless 8. Solitary garu change: this makes the solitary garu useless for shrine rush 9. magnetize cant remove equipment. this was usefull in some cases, maybe there is some other way to get equipment removal now 10. range band was made max range 2 so it can not be used on garu hurler So in conclusion, GOOD JOB Sokolov. U totally killed my surpirse rush deck I used for 8 years with your 10 changes. AND u managed to make so in 100 ranked games not even ONE was a shrine rush attempt and only 1 was a "try to damage shrine" game. And all games against skilled opponents was about "how to kill one champ per turn". Not about surprise font capture. Not about shrine damage. Not about getting a nora advantage. Not about anything else just kill a champ a turn.
@polltroy If you know your old BG doesn't work the way it used to, why don't you come up with a new one?
This is not about my BG. Its about the way I played pox for last 9 years and how devs have decided to delete this and many other interesting tactics from the game. My BG is just an example of what SOK said is wrong.
Wait so your entire whine on this subject is about you being angry that your 8years old deck does not work anymore? were you expecting the game to be on hold for you til you come back? You didnt even take the time to search WHY those changes were made..
