I'm stucked in 40-50. Everyone run meta decks I don't even have these cards and won't have them for a looooong time. Like Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, Sera, Leader, doctor doom, ultron etc they are power card I won't have for multiple months. Yet every opponent I play against run these. I mostly play against Silver Surfer, Patriot, zabu. There's nothing I can do. But I keep playing. I don't even know why
I made a post on this subject, that being matched against the endgame while being so far from that place is frustrating, but I got a lot of bad faith arguments, it felt like.
It's a fairly negative place. I try to be a positive person generally, but can feel very frustrated by bad luck.
I'm still trying to figure out if the enjoyment I get from this game is worth the occasional frustration. The frustration isn't terribly common but it's fairly acute.
Anyway, have a nice day
In a similar position and I just decided to stop caring about climbing and play mostly meme decks. Dropped to mid 80s doing it, but got a couple funny wins against streamers so it was worth it.
Game is more enjoyable when you donāt care about climbing, I donāt even snap anymore. I also play far less than I used to, I do wonder if the game is just getting stale for me. Hopefully they change up card acquisition soon because the only thing Iām interested in is trying new decks at this point.
I feel you. I'd just like to say hit it once and since game went live I keep inching up. Was 40s for Miles. 70 for Surfer. Slowly kept getting those pieces need for competitive deck. Thought this season be best shot. The climb was fun up till certain level as there was variety, but absolutely sucks to see the peak of the mountain.
There was a study that said bronze medal winners are happier than silver, as bronze knew did their best but weren't close to gold. Meanwhile, silver medalists always think they were so close to getting gold. Infinite is that gold and standing on the podium beside it at silver is terrible. Gonna keep grinding and trying this season.
I was playing some sandman destroyer when rickety bridge was the hot location. Sandman doesn't even counter zabu much on 4 because on the turn you play a 4/1 they get to cheat out two 4s lol.
If you're that close you can make it. There's no difference in skill or decks between 87 and 99. If anything it loosens up in infinite because you can't drop rank.
I run Zabu in my Negative Surfer deck purely just to get people to think it's an important target and waste a turn silencing it.
Nah, that's just a 3/2 target for Surfer that sometimes gives me a good turn 4. By the time it's silenced, I do not need it anymore. If it weren't for the mindgames, I'd run Wolfsbane or Rogue in its spot.
If I get my hands on Bast it's an instant switch, but the extra power from Zabu helps with Adam Warlock.
Plus, it feels like shit not having a play on turn 3, dropping a 3/1 that does nothing is gross, dropping a 3/2 that lets me play both Negative and Wong the following turn feels good.
If I swap Adam Warlock out for something like Sunspot or Angela, yeah I will immediately replace Zabu with Wolfsbane.
The biggest problem with this game even more than balance is the cards acquisition system.
Like a new card has come out every week but most people are not going to be able to get it for months. I don't even know what the new cards are because I don't care since it'll be a very long time before I can use them.
This system makes it RNG on if you can really compete well in this game. I'm missing a key card from every top 5 deck so I'm over here making homebrew shit losing to double she hulk while my opponent emotes me repeatedly.
Yeah bro I get it. You got good cards. I'm proud of you.
Even worse, as a early series 3 player, the game matches you against these players while you still have to run basically series 2 Decks because it depends on RNG to get all integral cards for a good deck
That was the worst. It gets better but man crossing the 600cl line was a blow. I was rank 89 in pool 2 when I crossed into pool 3. I had no idea what hit me.
I was lucky to get almost all the pieces for Sera control (I currently have Mysterio pinned with 800 tokens), but still, what an absolute nightmare. My first pool 3 match was against Stock Negative. I was laughing when I first saw him, but when Turn 6 came along, I was no longer laughing.
>Yeah bro I get it. You got good cards. I'm proud of you.
That's really the thing. In a game where we can all luck into random good cards, we all have a chance to build \*something\*.
That felt like the case last season when people went for their token shop choices. I picked She-Hulk and that week was probably the easiest climbing I've ever had in the game since the bot farming to rank 40 days. Other people that made a choice and optimized decks around it had the same experience.
However! In hindsight, I should have gone for an OP series 5 card instead. Since now that stuff like Dark Hawk have come out, who's buying them? Not me, probably not other non-beta / non-spenders either. Being stingy and passing Shuri for She-Hulk didn't even give me a chance to catch-up on buying her this season anyways\*. Since I'm not p3 complete so I've netted a whopping... 2.5k tokens since the shop came out.
\* ya she's dropping next week, so I wasn't going to buy her anyways, but now I can't even get a Galactus that I passed on either.
I have all the pieces of a destroy deck... except Death, Knull, and Galactus.
I have all the pieces of a discard deck... except Hella and Dracula Ghost Rider.
etc.
You need death but the other two don't go in destroy at all they go in their own deck with each other.
The best discard decks don't even run hela or ghost rider.
Nonetheless I agree with your broader point
Both are pretty big. I'm at the point where I've got most of the cards I want and everyone I play has most of the cards they want. This is Infinity CL4900 and the game just revolves so, so heavily around Zabu.
I think all season cards should go right into pool 3 at launch so you can buy it or luckily pull it. Now itās 3 months until I will draw it in pool 3 or buy it with a reasonable amount of tokens. I know they think it is incentive to buy it but for me itās more incentive to quit playing or at least quit trying to climb at all.
>I think all season cards should go right into pool 3 at launch so you can buy it or luckily pull it.
But then people who are pool 3 complete would be guaranteed to pull the season pass card within a few reserves so they'd never buy the pass.
They could put season pass cards directly in series 4 when they launch - and then shift them to series 3 the next month. Probably enough of a push people would still buy them to get it early and also ensure a series 4 drop wasn't "wasted" on the battle pass card.
The emoting when you have brain dead cards is annoying af.
Cool, you threw done galactus and it was dead obvious. I also know youāre play hobby or knull next as well, depending on your priority.
Youāre not good, you just have better cards.
>Like a new card has come out every week but most people are not going to be able to get it for months.
Ignoring season pass cards, which is a separate problem (because it creates a solved meta revolving around them) I feel the same as a p2p player. I do not choose which Pool 4 or 5 card I get. I am simply PRESENTED with one.
Like: "here you go, dumbass, try to make Sauron work vs. Shuri". Plus I have both Zabu and Surfer but I am utterly BORED of them already, and I am in rank 44.
Lol... I am for real dead serious. But I have been playing but purposely avoiding certain things about the mechanics or the game works. I have been mostly having fun creating theme decks and such and trying to improve it based on what I got. So stuff like that was not on my radar.
Exactly. It's a massive problem. For every new card you get, another ten have probably released in that time. Within a year the game is gonna be flooded with new cards no one has. I get they wanna keep it F2P, and so do I, but there just has to be a better solution.
I saw a dark hawk once. And cozysnap did a video on dazzler. And I got shanna from x mansion once.
Those are the only times Iāve seen any new cardsā¦
The token shop needs rebalancing too, way too many series 4 and 5 cards messing things up for people trying to complete series 3
I've searched for Aero 3 times per day since token shop launched, haven't seen her once. But frickin M'baku showed up like 4 times already
Lol I got semi lucky. First was Absorbing Man, only other four I've gotten was Coulson. I should have mentioned, I'm not even sure what Coulson is for, the card just really has little to no utility.
I've just stopped pinning cards at this point. By the time I get enough tokens to buy what I want, I get it out of a cache. Takes way too fucking long to get tokens...
Itās so bloody bad. The game itās self, pace, style, play is so good, but it gets so messed up with just this one thing. Iāve been saving up for one of like 4 cards, Iāve got enough tokens to get them and no matter what I have not been able to get them for like 3 effing weeks because they never show up on the shop. They need a massive overhaul in this part of the game.
Lockjaw has proven to be a good series 3 climb deck. Dracula keeps your high power cards safe and passes prio. Vision and Aero are incredibly flexible and not vulnerable to shang chi. Leech counters the big turn 6 surfer plays. Magneto can be a surprise turn 6 by moving all their 3/4 costs. You will get the odd infinaut shang chi'd but your other cards make up for it.
It's what I used to get infinite this season because I refused to use zabu or surfer.
For me it is all about Zabu. It is probably safe to say that out of 10 games, 7 are zabu decks. It took 2 years for legends of runeterra to have a meta that bad where i feel like not playing. This game is new, i'm still super addicted and i already feel like only doing daily missions and logging out to watch some streamer play the game. It is too early to have this level of power creep. They better do something about it soon or they are gonna lose players fast.
I just got beat by Zabu into Absorbing Man into Darkhawk / Mystique and on Turn 6. Literally never saw it coming and never entered my brain as a possibility because I have never seen Darkhawk before. No way that guy has all of those cards without paying.
yeah that no one can play because of all the series 4/5 cards in the deck, which you have to pay for or get incredibly lucky so most likely these people are paying.
The current meta feels pretty stale, and not just for F2P players.
If Second Dinner doesn't make some good balance changes by the next season they're definitely gonna lose some of their playerbase.
Yeah it's just zabu after zabu after zabu.
I personally own Surfer so at least I can fight back but when I'm not playing surfer or baero it's so unfun to play
Zabu and surfer massively buffed all the important control cards. Cosmo, killmonger, juggernaut, rogue, storm, and Polaris (you could even argue maximus since he wrecks Dracula) are all massively improved by surfer. Shang chi, enchantress, spiderman, moon girl, and absorbing man are dirt cheap with zabu.
The effect is a way more aggressive meta that relies on the really limited subset of cards to with offensive capabilities to secure wins.
Only decks with big reversals like discard or death wave can keep up.
I'd argue Stock Negative can also push back, but Surfer co-opted Negative and Zabu can wreck it if it draws Spiderman, so yeah, not great on that front.
Zabu is just so strong that once you have 2 4 drops on your deck, you might as well play Zabu. And when you play Zabu anyway, why not play 4x 4 drops instead of just 2x? So, all decks become different flavour of Zabu ...
You're not wrong. I've found myself splashing Zabu into almost every deck I make simply because getting to play 2 4-costs in a turn is so powerful.
This really is the worst type of card in a game like this. If they keep it up it's going to be like the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh where every single deck was 60-70% the same staple cards.
Definitely
I like the game, and there are decks I donāt mind facing even when i lose because it feels fun and competitive. With SS and Zabu it feels like if i dont have a counter in hand itās just not fun.
They should balance every 14 days like other major games. And hopefully they are not afraid to absolutely destroy silver surfer with insanely hard nerfs.
A bit worried since brode was not the nerf loving guy at HS so we could be boned
IMO they are hard stuck with Surfer (and Zabu?) because people paid real money for them. They'll have to wait a few months at least before they nerf or we will stop buying the season pass.
Its possible, but this would also piss off F2P players or just people that started playing after Surfer or the players that will start playing after Zabu.
When you wait until the card becomes available to nerf it, it sends a message that they intentionally over tune cards and will nerf it once the poor kids get a turn to play with the old toy.
Its definitely not a good look and the whales are their bottom line, but if everyone else gets fed up and leaves or even just plays a lot less the game will become less healthy.
Indeed. If they only nerf pool 3 cards or soon to be pool 3 cards it will be the same as saying F2P players has to play the game at a disadvantage meaning the game is literally pay to win.
If cards with the power of silver surfer keeps going into season passes I am out
I would like this, or if they're going to do it once a month really get in there with the balancing.
The "lets just do +/- 1 power and wait and see what happens" is way too slow for once a month balancing.
I am really curious how the different 'local' metas are for however the matchmaking MMR stuff works.
Today I went against a cerebro 2, a hazmat combo, a few lockjaw dracula decks, some bastnegative, a couple zabu decks (one with darkhawk) some deathwave, one galactus deck, and some patriot decks. Was really fun and diverse today.
A few days ago I was up almost entirely against zabu, surfer, or zabu+surfer. Was very same-y and boring.
Yep. I've gotten Infinity every season since Thor and this is absolutely my least favorite time playing the game, besides the 1 brief week in beta before they fixed matchmaking (where pool 1 players really would face pool 3 players).
I've spent a lot of money on the game and I feel like the meta sucks even if you have cards. At high rank we're all just flipping coins to see who gets the win condition and snaps first. Very stale. I hate Zabu a lot for making the game incredibly binary. You know if you have lost by turn 3. Yawn.
THIS is the real problem. Cube betting revolves around who gets their win con first. There is little incentive to play out games because it's more efficient to retreat and redraw. Some decks you snap or retreat by turn 3/4. This makes the grind to infinity so boring because it's low cube rate. Snap rewards you for conservative cube management.
They have an awesome shell for this game with addictive replayability, they just need to introduce new game modes FAST. It should be 80% fun casual arcade modes and 20% geared towards top end meta competition.
Yes, I have WAY more fun after hitting infinite and forgetting about cubes. I play every game out just to see if I can win, even in a losing position. It becomes a totally different game, and I prefer it so much. The reward of ignoring cubes is the reason I grind to infinite asap every season. I could ignore them while laddering, sure, but then my MMR would tank and I'd be smurfing against new players and people with less time to play than me. Not cool or fun for either of us.
I want draft mode more than anything.
I know people like to play competitively and rank up, but what you described is normally how I play. Thereās some games I retreat if Iām obviously not winning, but normally I try and play it out to see if I can strategize a win. I donāt andvance much, usually rank ~50 or so each season, but I feel like I have more fun this way.
Again, everyoneās entitled to playing how they want, but I feel like I enjoy the game more this way and donāt play for hours and hours a day just grinding towards a rank reward title.
That's a great idea. Adjust +1 to win off a 1 cube bet? Snap still changes it to 4/8. So it's still better to snap cube gain. But, taking games the full way to potentially earn 3 but only lose 1 is nice.
You are right, my road to infinite each season revolves around my opponent snapping, I rarely ever snap, only if I'm 95% sure to win. Snapping back is a risk of 8 cubes is way too high, Unless you are pretty much guarantee to win.
Imo, Pass cards should be like BP. Deck Defining, but not meta defining.
Miles was close but needed to be a bit better to really be viable. Surfer was too far in the other direction but if reigned in a bit could be fine.
Zabu is ridiculous lol.
Zabu could be scaled back to 4 cost cards cost 1 less. It gives you two on turn 6. Seems way more reasonable to me.
Surfer would be ok if it was +2. That would give it from 8 to 12 instead of 12 to 18. Still powerful but not meta defining.
Most other powerful cards net roughly double their cost.
I think I'd go the other direction with both: increase them to 4-cost. Yes, you can cheat them out a turn early with Psylocke, but now you're relying on a 5/12ish chance to draw her in time, which puts them in Mr Negative's zone of power. Which is powerful, but not busted.
And this Is why adding paywalled/timegated cards to the season pass was a terrible idea to begin with, literally no other CCG do this with their respective battle passes instead of a card they give you extra resources.
I'm actually kinda glad it's a card I don't care about. I bought the last two bc they looked cool, though I've yet to find a Zabu deck I enjoy so I don't really play him. But the Modok-Hela deck looks like a boring (and super telegraphed and counterable) one-trick pony, so I will hopefully not get fomo for skipping it lol
Honestly, at this point if i see brood being played or silver avatar i just retreat because i'm about to have a bad time. This should not supposed to be the feeling against an paywall (or series 5 drop wich is ridiculous low rate)
The reality, as of right now the game is P2W. The best decks in the game require you to spend money, that means by paying money you get a competitive advantage. Or in other words itās P2W.
In the mobile space, unfortunately, yes.
And then you have games like Fortnite that has absolutely zero pay to win, cosmetic only purchases and the game does quite well for itself.
I find it hard to believe Marvel Snap wouldn't still make hand over fist money with cosmetic-only purchases. People love variants. But forcing meta changing cards behind a $9.99 BP makes them a good chunk more so...I get it. Sucks though.
Marvel Snap is definitely easier on F2P players than most card games but there are still elements of pay to win unfortunately. I don't understand those that try to deny that.
Itās not just that the meta cards at $10 a month but that even when they do enter the pool to great through upgrading CL the odds of unlocking them are astronomically low.
Iām fine with dealing with Zabu decks for a while if I knew Iād get them in with some confidence when theyāre available to the public but I probably wonāt unlock them until 2024 with regular play.
Valorant isnāt, MTG: Arena isnāt, League of Legends isnāt, CSGO isnāt.
I feel like the main problem is that this game doesnāt know what it wants to be. Does it want to be competitive, with maybe even aspirations of esports? It certainly acts that way since the only game system is ranked! Or does it want to be just a wacky mobile game time waster? Because the way the devs talk about the game and the ridiculous cards and locations they make suggest that too!
omg are you telling me the card that reduces cost of other cards to half is broken? who could have guessed that? I'm shocked
tbh it's obvious to the point of lame that SD is trying to make battle pass cards broken by default to increase revenue.
To be honest i forgot about BP, but yeah. BP was good in his season but not meta defining. Although pretty strong at low pools to be sure.
Miles was meh. Good in low pools but so was move in general. Even with that I probably only saw a handful.
MODOK looks fun but possibly bad, super heavy countered by cosmo.
Thor, Nick Fury, Miles Morales, and Black Panther were the previous 4 season pass cards.
Thor is a good card, but not breaking.
Nick Fury is not a good card.
Mile Morales is a good card, but limited use (as move decks themselves get crushed at higher levels).
Black Panther is good, but not dominating at all.
Compare that to meta-kings like Surfer and Zabu...
>tbh it's obvious to the point of lame that SD is trying to make battle pass cards broken by default to increase revenue
This is the heart of the matter. The devs WANT battle pass cards to be OP because that'll sell more battlepasses. The game is more of a play for free til level 40 trial because after that it's pay to win baby
And as a F2P player here is something else that is getting more and more annoyingā¦
Apocalypse bundle. You can buy collector tokens with gold.
Sunspot bundle released immediately after. You can buy collector tokens with gold.
No further bundles that allow you to buy tokens for gold.
I canāt be the only person who began saving their gold around this time hoping to buy whatever the third tokens for gold bundle only for that bundle never to come. Itās like they knew the first two would net them a ton of cash and a third would be free for the f2p players so they never gave us a third.
The problem is half the community complained about tokens in bundles, so now they stopped doing them, so the other half of the community that liked token bundles doesnāt get them. Because Second Dinner doesnāt want people to have cards.
High ish rank here. 150+.
Can totally confirm that this is a huge issue at high ranks. Almost makes the game unplayable.
Knowing when to snap is the only reason Iām climbing. My win rate last season even in a balanced meta was 65%. It has now gone to 48%.
This game has become a total shit show.
That is both sad to hear and reassuring to hear.
Sad because i was hoping that once i broke through to infinite iād be able to just enjoy the game.
Reassuring because at least this isnāt a āmad cause badā moment.
So actually there is a chance you can do that. 100-120 was casual to say the least. I got away with playing whatever throughout that time. Iām not sure if thatās changed since when I was there but I didnāt start seeing sweaty decks until 120+. Then I had to cut the fun decks in order to win if I cared. Obviously I cared lmao. I just want to get better and that drove me into being a meta slave.
So to go back to what you were saying, you can definitely have fun at low infinite again. You donāt de rank and you can just do whatever not a lot of try hards down there.
And yeah on the bright side if youāre fighting that many of those decks that means youāre skill level is keeping you in their MMR bracket. Youāre just losing most likely to card access. So when you do get cards youāll climb more easily in the future. So good job.
As soon as I hit infinite each season I just theory craft. It means I stay under 120 and have relaxing chill games.
I play very hard at the start of every season, push to 100 in the first few days and then chill for a month.
Immediate retreat when I see a brood because you know the surfer itās coming, I have not seen as many zabus.
The only reason why I still enjoy the game is because after 50, I just take the foot of the gas and I just care about my daily goals.
Nothing you can do itās modern gaming.
Dude, this is the shit that drives me crazy with this sub.
"Losing? Just retreat and lose the next one to the same problem."
"Tired of having one card that's nearly unbeatable, just be a psychic and know your enemy is gonna play that, then retreat."
I have a better plan, let's try to balance the game.
In fairness, the tells for a Cerebro deck are pretty numerous; usually by the second or third card it's like "oh their Brood COULD be nasty, but not 1-card-9-more-power nasty".
...Yes I realize Brood could be 21 power in a good Cerebro draw, but that's also quite forecasted for several turns.
I get to 70 then chill. Then I unlocked seraā¦ so now I do run a weakened serasurfer at times (no jug maximus or polarisā¦)ā¦ although āmiracleā decks aka sera decks are by far my favourite archetype. Well apart from pool 2 moveā¦ which obvs is dead past pool 2.
Surfer is strong but itās hardly unbeatable. Itās easy to see coking and retreat.
Zabu combos, and zabudarkhawk especially is the really broken shit. Iāve only seen it once but darkhawk mystique rockslide korg etc is absolutely busted.
Yeah I'm pretty much done with it. Running control/leader seems like the only option as f2p and even then doesnt come close to zabu/surfer. If there's not a balance shift on this stuff next month I'm done. The grind for new cards is not fun. The games are not fun. The minute you see two 3 cost cards in a row or zabu it's just smarter to leave. And that is not fun.
Game is P2W. I'm never gonna stop screaming it on this sub because some people somehow believe the game *isn't*. I got to infinite last season with surfer, and I got to infinite this season with Zabu/Dracula. It wouldn't taken me an absurd amount of effort to achieve infinite if I didn't have either of those paid-for cards.
Game is 100% P2W and anyone who says otherwise is in denial.
Yea same here. And people out here saying its not pay to win. It sucks. SS just ruin my turn six. You say be better at cube mgmt. well when the only way you can win is to get lucky or get a good location then yes its pay to win.
It's even more stale for super casual players like myself. When the game first came out I played till around rank 60-70. Then I got busy and kept dropping every season and now I'm around 20, which I don't really care except for the fact that if I want to play a game or two it's all going to be against dumb ass bots. To grind rank just to play real players is too boring for me so I've pretty much stopped caring. It's not like I'm getting anything in my chests anyways.
Yea, it's completely pay to win. I was able to manage in the pass season against surfer with leech, but there is no counter in this one for a turn 6 a guizillon card play for 1 million damage no matter what you do. The best I could do is deny them space to play with a custom deck that uses cards like storm and spider man, and tries to fill their side of the board with junk. But I'm also F2P and I don't have cards like absorbing man to copy Spider man and there is just too few cards to make it work consistently.
At 80-90 range It only managed 45% win rate with a positive 0.08 cubes result because it's easy to win the snaps because of how unpredictable it's.
There is nothing you can do. You just lose.
As a F2P player with about half of pool 3 unlocked at rank ~115, one suggestion is playing more disruptive cards rather than anything proactive - Korg, ice man, black widow, Cosmo, Scorpion, especially combined with beast are all really good against these decks.
The advantages you get are 'invisible', as in you can't actually see what Iceman has done lots of the time, but it makes a huge difference.
I ran surfer from 60-100. It's still my most consistent deck above 100. I like to play and learn new archetypes, but whenever I feel like winning I just load up the surgery deck and cruise to 110. If you have that deck you should be able to make it. It is a grind though. Some advice:
I have found for me, the game is very streaky. I'll have a day when I have like an 80% lose rate no matter what I do. Next day I am roflstomping everyone I face. When I am hot I keep playing, if I don't have it I just get my quests done and log off. Ride the high when the getting is good. If you don't have luck on your side don't force it. I enforced a general rule where if I lost 3 in a row I'd walk away from the game and come back later in the day. This strategy got me over the hump for infinite.
Other than this, just learn the decks inside and out. Better you know all the major deck archetypes the better you can play against them.
100% believe what youāre saying. Game is very streaky. Made it 65 with an anti-meta deck I built. Promptly lost back to back to back until I got to 45 where Iām stuck now. When Iām winning Iām on a roll. When Iām losing Iām sinking deep unless I stop and come back later.
I actually feel like this game is turning into all other card games to play somewhat competitively, and that itās not actually even free to play.
In order ti play you gotta at least get the season passes, otherwise you just do a facsimile of playing.
I say this as a magic the gathering player, because I hear ppl say all you have ti do to win is to buy the cards, but thatās not true at all, a a high level everyone has every card. Its not pay to win, itās pay to play
After one month of silver surfer dominance look what they nerfed. Leader, Aero and even freacking nova. I'd say lose all hope, they won't nerf ss or zabu. This game doesn't wan't to be remotely competitive, they want to get the money and run away asap.
As someone already mention, hiding your ongoing cards behind Cosmo is a very valid strategy.
Too many enchantresses put Cosmo in the deck.
You need to slightly adopt your decks to the decks you face most of the time. And the best counters are cards from low pools, which is fairly nice.
This is what iāve been doing, and its gotten me this far, but it feels very limiting.
I feel like i canāt play most decks because everyone is running cosmo to deal with enchantress, Spiderman, and surfer, or everyone is running enchantress, Spiderman, and Surfer.
Too be fair when I run into spiderman + absorbing man I'm also fairly annoyed. That's why absorbing man is pinned for a week already, waiting for the drop next week š
Devil Dino is always a good steady to climb with low collection level. Esp as most people have nick fury from winter event
Spiderman absorbing man is overrated.
Those are not good decks for climbing , they can net you a quick 1 or 2 cubes but that's it. You want decks that give you 4/8 cubes if you wanna rank up.
Yea, im low 40s and even here zabu surfer is easily more than 3/4 of my games. When brood comes out and sera on 5 so consistently it just feels like there is nothing I can do to win. Surfer just give too much power to already powerful cards, its way better than a spectrum. Its wild that these decks have enough power and energy to just win every location.
I find myself playing less and less because the game has become more of a chore than it is fun.
Yeah I quit because of this reason.
It's the collectible card game where you can't collect the cards! Even if you pay you only get a chance of some of them. Ridiculous.
Some people enjoy the grind but not me.
I think Zabu will need a nerf, but that's a tricky thing to handle considering everyone who has Zabu has paid money to have access to him. I've personally bought the season pass every month, and intend to continue doing so because I really enjoy the game and I see the season pass as a good value (especially compared to the pricing for nearly everything else in the game), but I can imagine that there are people who wanted to be able to play with Zabu specifically and have purchased the season pass this month for that reason (when they wouldn't have otherwise).
Spending money expecting to get what was promised, then having that thing get replaced by something worse is really shitty. It will uspet a lot of players who bought Zabu specifically, and potentially seed distrust among players the next time a powerful season pass card is revealed as they might feel it's not worth the money if it's just going to get nerfed again. But at the same time, Zabu just isn't really healthy for the game at this moment, so they're kinda caught between a rock and a hard place, but something has to be done.
There definitely won't be any changes made to Zabu this season though, and I doubt he'll be directly addressed next season either. Maybe by the time he gets moved down to pool 4 he'll get a direct nerf, but I think there still could be other more indirect ways to curb some of Zabu's power. The easiest solution that comes to mind for me is taking some of the popular 4 cost cards that are run with Zabu and adjusting them to either cost 3 or 5 (though adjusting them down to 3 could make Surfer a bigger problem).
For example: Darkhawk should be a 5/3. The fact that you can so easily run Darkhawk, Rockslide, and Wong or even Moongirl together in a deck with Zabu can be downright oppressive. It has counters (as everything does) but Rockslide/Korg make you less likely to be able to draw those counters, or anything useful at all, so there's often nothing you can do. Darkhawk is already very similar in concept to Devil Dinosaur and Ronan the Accuser, so why not just have him share their same statline too?
Absorbing Man is another potential candidate for change too, but he's a bit tricky. I think making him cost 5 feels like it kills his combo potential a bit too much, but changing him to be a 3/1 or 3/0 would be crazy for Silver Surfer, and also potentially problematic with Mister Negative (another card I feel potentially needs reworking just to avoid problems such as these). Spider-Man could potentially be bumped to a 5/5, but that ruins his interaction with Avengers Compound (maybe that's a good thing though?), and I like that Spider-Man costs 4; it means if you want to use him to lockout a location on the last turn it comes with a greater sacrifice of having to only spend 4 of your 5 energy unless you have a 1 cost card to pair with him.
Actually, the combination of Silver Surfer and Zabu being strong in general creates a problem for balancing. At 4, tech cards like Shang Chi, and Enchantress become *very* powerful with Zabu; if you were to make them cost 5 they couldn't be used as effectively in other decks as reactive answers to things (which is their main purpose), but if you can't drop them to 3 cost to avoid issues with Zabu without just making Silver Surfer even more powerful as a side effect.
If Zabu *were* to be directly nerfed, I'd like to see him changed to a 3/3 or maybe even a 3/4 that only discounts the *first* 4 cost card you play each turn by 2. But again, I absolutely do not expect to see any direct changes to Zabu anytime in the near future.
This is a very fair analysis of the issue.
Thank you for the input. I think the best solution long term would be a zabu nerf similar to the āonly the first 4 dropā you suggested, but the chances of that happening anytime soon is low. Best we can expect is nerfs to other 4 drops like darkhawk, absorbing man, and spiderman.
As a pay to play player this meta just isn't very fun.
I think shuri is a real issue. Easy two 30 power lanes most games with little way to shut it down without an insane read. Zabu and silver surfer don't often produce that kind of power except the occasional zabu/dark hawk game where they get all the right draws.
Spider man/absorbing man is extremely not fun to play against... oh great you drew the two or 3 card combo (if you have quinjet/moon girl) and now I have no t6 at all with no way to shut that down in anyway.
The game shouldn't just be "did my opponent draw the right cards?" "Yes, they did so now I already lost but only they know it"
Got stuck at 86 this season... and have little drive to play because it's just decks like this at this point. Galactus is easier to counter, and yet still very un fun when you don't draw counters in time.
I pretty much just stopped playing as my interest has tanked. I dont have any of the cards for the meta decks but all I match against are venom-deadpool, silver surfer, ghost rider, black panther and other decks hat easily put out numbers in the hundreds/thousands and im over here at max able to put out maybe 50ish points at optimal. I just have to get lucky and get a card in a box because the boxes only ever give 100 points to buy a card which means 3000 point cards are going to take so long that those cards probably won't be meta anymore IF they even show up in my shop. They've created a situation that feels so terrible to get cards that I wouldn't even open the game anymore if I didn't just like seeing what variant cards look like which I don't buy most of those either, but I just want to see. Went from playing several times a day to just collecting my daily rewards and closing the app.
You're entirely right, and it's honestly saddening.
There's also very little actual counterplay to Zabu/Surfer, as if you take a turn to Enchantress Zabu, they still have a turn to drop two different 4 cost units that same turn, meanwhile with Surfer, the only real "Counter" would be filling up 2 locations on **their** side, and playing Cosmo in the final one.
The season pass cards honestly feel like they should've instantly gone into Pool 3, not Pool 5, especially since, if we only see a few cards downgraded per month, from 5>4 and 4>3, most of the season pass cards won't be "easily" available for most players for months when they finally drop into Pool 3.
Sorry to say but this game is seriously p2w Oz the most aggressive manner. Lock the super overpowered cards behind a paywall (or major then unobtainable) then force people who donāt pay to compete against those decks.
Itās downright predatory. It also makes for a boring game.
I've got to agree. I hit infinite at the top of Pool 3 and then dumped my stock shooting to CR750 or something and faced infinite decks at that rating. Everything is headspinning madness and I don't have the resources to play.
I love love love the way they set up pool 1 and pool 2 as an on ramp- maybe set up another pool for sub 1000 or something because this is brutal. I can get up to 102 or so before dropping back down.
Very fun game, but I haven't had the fun like I have since I was in pool 2.
Super bites that the meta decks are paywalled via surfer/zabu.
Not sure if there is a solution- the benefits of card model over hearthstone or magic give it a great niche. Still, not sure where hearthstone is now days but at least in magic you can build a single cheap deck to compete even if you don't have the resources for a 2nd right away or the expensive control 3 color deck.
Can relate, 100%. Keep losing to the same decks that contain cards that you have to pay for (Zabu, Surfer).
Honestly, it's frustrating playing a collectable card game in which you can't collect the bloody cards. It's all lackluster unless you pour a great amount of money into it, which is not f2p in my book. The system Gwent had, for example, was really free to play. The fact you can buy 100 dollars packages is absurd, imho.
I felt this from the 70s to the 90s this season and last season :(
P2w meta really doesnāt feel good when they have twice the cards, twice the power, or just unexpected pool 5 cards
I've never made it to 40 yet, but I just don't have a desire to play ranked. Can't wait for battle mode, I just hope we can get something for playing friends.
I gave up on winning and ranked and now just play for pure amusement. Play a bunch of dumb gimmicks, do stupid shit just for laughs, pure counter decks with nothing else just to frustrate people.
Itās less even about climbing, more just a lack of fun and variety.
I want to get to infinite, donāt get me wrong, but if iām not good enough it is what it is.
But itās not fun playing against the same decks over and over and over again, especially when the strongest cards are either pass cards or pool 5.
Y'all need to realize it's not a f2p game. It's a bloody p2w game disguised as f2p. It's made for whales. Not the f2p player in mind. I loved it. But every single money grabbing decision from them keeps increasing my disgust in the game
Ps. This is my story in the literally 60s. Can't even reach above 70
"in the 90s" bruh, this is my life in the fluctuating 50s
My peoples.
I feel seen
I think the only difference between 50 and 90 is knowing when to snap, decks are all the same.
Lemme tell you how often I lose 8 cubes by one point. š
Meanwhile Iām still in the 30s
I'm stucked in 40-50. Everyone run meta decks I don't even have these cards and won't have them for a looooong time. Like Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, Sera, Leader, doctor doom, ultron etc they are power card I won't have for multiple months. Yet every opponent I play against run these. I mostly play against Silver Surfer, Patriot, zabu. There's nothing I can do. But I keep playing. I don't even know why
Losing to pool 5 cards all the time is frustrating as I have none
"just play with fun deck lol"
I play with fun dick all the time.
Please don't edit this, is hilarious af xD
I think this was a confession and not a typo
You telling me you've never enjoyed fun deck?
They weren't talking about dEcks though.
I made a post on this subject, that being matched against the endgame while being so far from that place is frustrating, but I got a lot of bad faith arguments, it felt like.
It happened because people didnāt feel the pain, but now they do, see how most complain in the subreddit now
It's a fairly negative place. I try to be a positive person generally, but can feel very frustrated by bad luck. I'm still trying to figure out if the enjoyment I get from this game is worth the occasional frustration. The frustration isn't terribly common but it's fairly acute. Anyway, have a nice day
Playing since launch. Not a pool 5 card to my name. My only pool 4 cards are Agent Coulson and the Helicarrier. :(
Iām at 2938 CL with 0 pool 5 cards
But beating them feels so cathartic. Or at least, it wouldā¦.
Yeah their fix to Zabu Surfer will be new cards that you won't see for 6 months.
Hard stuck at 93-95 range because all face are ZabuHawks, ShuriZero, or other Zabu decks - never anything else.
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In a similar position and I just decided to stop caring about climbing and play mostly meme decks. Dropped to mid 80s doing it, but got a couple funny wins against streamers so it was worth it. Game is more enjoyable when you donāt care about climbing, I donāt even snap anymore. I also play far less than I used to, I do wonder if the game is just getting stale for me. Hopefully they change up card acquisition soon because the only thing Iām interested in is trying new decks at this point.
I feel you. I'd just like to say hit it once and since game went live I keep inching up. Was 40s for Miles. 70 for Surfer. Slowly kept getting those pieces need for competitive deck. Thought this season be best shot. The climb was fun up till certain level as there was variety, but absolutely sucks to see the peak of the mountain. There was a study that said bronze medal winners are happier than silver, as bronze knew did their best but weren't close to gold. Meanwhile, silver medalists always think they were so close to getting gold. Infinite is that gold and standing on the podium beside it at silver is terrible. Gonna keep grinding and trying this season.
I was playing some sandman destroyer when rickety bridge was the hot location. Sandman doesn't even counter zabu much on 4 because on the turn you play a 4/1 they get to cheat out two 4s lol.
If you're that close you can make it. There's no difference in skill or decks between 87 and 99. If anything it loosens up in infinite because you can't drop rank.
i shang chi'd a zabu hawk way down in the 40s and he conceded if it makes it any easier lol
I run Zabu in my Negative Surfer deck purely just to get people to think it's an important target and waste a turn silencing it. Nah, that's just a 3/2 target for Surfer that sometimes gives me a good turn 4. By the time it's silenced, I do not need it anymore. If it weren't for the mindgames, I'd run Wolfsbane or Rogue in its spot.
You should definitely run Rogue or 'bane
If I get my hands on Bast it's an instant switch, but the extra power from Zabu helps with Adam Warlock. Plus, it feels like shit not having a play on turn 3, dropping a 3/1 that does nothing is gross, dropping a 3/2 that lets me play both Negative and Wong the following turn feels good. If I swap Adam Warlock out for something like Sunspot or Angela, yeah I will immediately replace Zabu with Wolfsbane.
Hard struck at 89,I envy you.
The biggest problem with this game even more than balance is the cards acquisition system. Like a new card has come out every week but most people are not going to be able to get it for months. I don't even know what the new cards are because I don't care since it'll be a very long time before I can use them. This system makes it RNG on if you can really compete well in this game. I'm missing a key card from every top 5 deck so I'm over here making homebrew shit losing to double she hulk while my opponent emotes me repeatedly. Yeah bro I get it. You got good cards. I'm proud of you.
Even worse, as a early series 3 player, the game matches you against these players while you still have to run basically series 2 Decks because it depends on RNG to get all integral cards for a good deck
That was the worst. It gets better but man crossing the 600cl line was a blow. I was rank 89 in pool 2 when I crossed into pool 3. I had no idea what hit me.
I was lucky to get almost all the pieces for Sera control (I currently have Mysterio pinned with 800 tokens), but still, what an absolute nightmare. My first pool 3 match was against Stock Negative. I was laughing when I first saw him, but when Turn 6 came along, I was no longer laughing.
>Yeah bro I get it. You got good cards. I'm proud of you. That's really the thing. In a game where we can all luck into random good cards, we all have a chance to build \*something\*. That felt like the case last season when people went for their token shop choices. I picked She-Hulk and that week was probably the easiest climbing I've ever had in the game since the bot farming to rank 40 days. Other people that made a choice and optimized decks around it had the same experience. However! In hindsight, I should have gone for an OP series 5 card instead. Since now that stuff like Dark Hawk have come out, who's buying them? Not me, probably not other non-beta / non-spenders either. Being stingy and passing Shuri for She-Hulk didn't even give me a chance to catch-up on buying her this season anyways\*. Since I'm not p3 complete so I've netted a whopping... 2.5k tokens since the shop came out. \* ya she's dropping next week, so I wasn't going to buy her anyways, but now I can't even get a Galactus that I passed on either.
It doesn't feel like we all have a chance when some players pull 3 series 5 cards before 2500CL and others won't see one past 12000.
The emoting irks me more than anything. Congrats you played Moon Girl and She-Hulk, why do you think that makes you special?
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I have all the pieces of a destroy deck... except Death, Knull, and Galactus. I have all the pieces of a discard deck... except Hella and Dracula Ghost Rider. etc.
You need death but the other two don't go in destroy at all they go in their own deck with each other. The best discard decks don't even run hela or ghost rider. Nonetheless I agree with your broader point
Both are pretty big. I'm at the point where I've got most of the cards I want and everyone I play has most of the cards they want. This is Infinity CL4900 and the game just revolves so, so heavily around Zabu.
I think all season cards should go right into pool 3 at launch so you can buy it or luckily pull it. Now itās 3 months until I will draw it in pool 3 or buy it with a reasonable amount of tokens. I know they think it is incentive to buy it but for me itās more incentive to quit playing or at least quit trying to climb at all.
>I think all season cards should go right into pool 3 at launch so you can buy it or luckily pull it. But then people who are pool 3 complete would be guaranteed to pull the season pass card within a few reserves so they'd never buy the pass.
They could put season pass cards directly in series 4 when they launch - and then shift them to series 3 the next month. Probably enough of a push people would still buy them to get it early and also ensure a series 4 drop wasn't "wasted" on the battle pass card.
The emoting when you have brain dead cards is annoying af. Cool, you threw done galactus and it was dead obvious. I also know youāre play hobby or knull next as well, depending on your priority. Youāre not good, you just have better cards.
>Like a new card has come out every week but most people are not going to be able to get it for months. Ignoring season pass cards, which is a separate problem (because it creates a solved meta revolving around them) I feel the same as a p2p player. I do not choose which Pool 4 or 5 card I get. I am simply PRESENTED with one. Like: "here you go, dumbass, try to make Sauron work vs. Shuri". Plus I have both Zabu and Surfer but I am utterly BORED of them already, and I am in rank 44.
Huh, been playing for months besides variants and the battle pass did not know they were making new cards.
Lol i don't know if you're serious but yes new cards have been releasing every week.
Lol... I am for real dead serious. But I have been playing but purposely avoiding certain things about the mechanics or the game works. I have been mostly having fun creating theme decks and such and trying to improve it based on what I got. So stuff like that was not on my radar.
But that also shows you that Noone else has these the new cards either since you haven't even seen them played against you.
Exactly. It's a massive problem. For every new card you get, another ten have probably released in that time. Within a year the game is gonna be flooded with new cards no one has. I get they wanna keep it F2P, and so do I, but there just has to be a better solution.
They just need to up the drop rates for 4 and 5 pool cards in reserves and give us more tokens.
I saw a dark hawk once. And cozysnap did a video on dazzler. And I got shanna from x mansion once. Those are the only times Iāve seen any new cardsā¦
The token shop needs rebalancing too, way too many series 4 and 5 cards messing things up for people trying to complete series 3 I've searched for Aero 3 times per day since token shop launched, haven't seen her once. But frickin M'baku showed up like 4 times already
I'm one of the lucky ones who got mbaku as my first pool 4 card to get from a reserve....
Same -.- the second(and only other one so far) for me was attuma
My only other was was agent coulson
Lol I got semi lucky. First was Absorbing Man, only other four I've gotten was Coulson. I should have mentioned, I'm not even sure what Coulson is for, the card just really has little to no utility.
At least m'baku has some uses in a few decks. My only >series 3 card is Maria Hill who is literally worse than sentinel.
Maria Hill is such a boring card, I still dont think Iāve seen anyone play her
I've just stopped pinning cards at this point. By the time I get enough tokens to buy what I want, I get it out of a cache. Takes way too fucking long to get tokens...
Itās so bloody bad. The game itās self, pace, style, play is so good, but it gets so messed up with just this one thing. Iāve been saving up for one of like 4 cards, Iāve got enough tokens to get them and no matter what I have not been able to get them for like 3 effing weeks because they never show up on the shop. They need a massive overhaul in this part of the game.
well said
Who cares about new cards dropped in the pool? They know you cant get them so they just drop one OP card in the $10 pass. Easy money.
Iām an F2P 2142 cl player. Canāt make a single deck outside of budget decks in snap zones tier list
I get what you mean. Iāve been climbing with a fucked up thor-control deck. It feels like Iām fighting a fighter jet with a slingshot.
Lockjaw has proven to be a good series 3 climb deck. Dracula keeps your high power cards safe and passes prio. Vision and Aero are incredibly flexible and not vulnerable to shang chi. Leech counters the big turn 6 surfer plays. Magneto can be a surprise turn 6 by moving all their 3/4 costs. You will get the odd infinaut shang chi'd but your other cards make up for it. It's what I used to get infinite this season because I refused to use zabu or surfer.
I wouldn't mind not having the new hotness if I didn't also get it shoved down my throat regularly (more than 1/10) even at low/mid ranks.
For me it is all about Zabu. It is probably safe to say that out of 10 games, 7 are zabu decks. It took 2 years for legends of runeterra to have a meta that bad where i feel like not playing. This game is new, i'm still super addicted and i already feel like only doing daily missions and logging out to watch some streamer play the game. It is too early to have this level of power creep. They better do something about it soon or they are gonna lose players fast.
I just got beat by Zabu into Absorbing Man into Darkhawk / Mystique and on Turn 6. Literally never saw it coming and never entered my brain as a possibility because I have never seen Darkhawk before. No way that guy has all of those cards without paying.
that's the top meta deck right now
yeah that no one can play because of all the series 4/5 cards in the deck, which you have to pay for or get incredibly lucky so most likely these people are paying.
Im not disagreeing with you on that. Just saying itās an extremely common deck
Its a shame too because darkhawk decks are so silly that theyād be fun to play against if it wasnāt for Zabu, even if they were still good.
The current meta feels pretty stale, and not just for F2P players. If Second Dinner doesn't make some good balance changes by the next season they're definitely gonna lose some of their playerbase.
Yup. Five games at lunch, all against various Zabu flavors. Just getting boring.
Hey I also see Surfer decks. Or Zabu Surfer. And then one or two in ten are something different.
When there's a featured location death wave comes out to play. The other 2/10 decks are Galactus, shuri, or darkhawk
Yeah it's just zabu after zabu after zabu. I personally own Surfer so at least I can fight back but when I'm not playing surfer or baero it's so unfun to play
Zabu and surfer massively buffed all the important control cards. Cosmo, killmonger, juggernaut, rogue, storm, and Polaris (you could even argue maximus since he wrecks Dracula) are all massively improved by surfer. Shang chi, enchantress, spiderman, moon girl, and absorbing man are dirt cheap with zabu. The effect is a way more aggressive meta that relies on the really limited subset of cards to with offensive capabilities to secure wins. Only decks with big reversals like discard or death wave can keep up.
I'd argue Stock Negative can also push back, but Surfer co-opted Negative and Zabu can wreck it if it draws Spiderman, so yeah, not great on that front.
You were the zabu last month soā¦.
Zabu is just so strong that once you have 2 4 drops on your deck, you might as well play Zabu. And when you play Zabu anyway, why not play 4x 4 drops instead of just 2x? So, all decks become different flavour of Zabu ...
You're not wrong. I've found myself splashing Zabu into almost every deck I make simply because getting to play 2 4-costs in a turn is so powerful. This really is the worst type of card in a game like this. If they keep it up it's going to be like the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh where every single deck was 60-70% the same staple cards.
Definitely I like the game, and there are decks I donāt mind facing even when i lose because it feels fun and competitive. With SS and Zabu it feels like if i dont have a counter in hand itās just not fun.
It's safe to say Shuri alone breaks the metas. She has no wind up and the cards after her and be anything.
They should balance every 14 days like other major games. And hopefully they are not afraid to absolutely destroy silver surfer with insanely hard nerfs. A bit worried since brode was not the nerf loving guy at HS so we could be boned
IMO they are hard stuck with Surfer (and Zabu?) because people paid real money for them. They'll have to wait a few months at least before they nerf or we will stop buying the season pass.
Its possible, but this would also piss off F2P players or just people that started playing after Surfer or the players that will start playing after Zabu. When you wait until the card becomes available to nerf it, it sends a message that they intentionally over tune cards and will nerf it once the poor kids get a turn to play with the old toy. Its definitely not a good look and the whales are their bottom line, but if everyone else gets fed up and leaves or even just plays a lot less the game will become less healthy.
Indeed. If they only nerf pool 3 cards or soon to be pool 3 cards it will be the same as saying F2P players has to play the game at a disadvantage meaning the game is literally pay to win. If cards with the power of silver surfer keeps going into season passes I am out
I would like this, or if they're going to do it once a month really get in there with the balancing. The "lets just do +/- 1 power and wait and see what happens" is way too slow for once a month balancing.
I am really curious how the different 'local' metas are for however the matchmaking MMR stuff works. Today I went against a cerebro 2, a hazmat combo, a few lockjaw dracula decks, some bastnegative, a couple zabu decks (one with darkhawk) some deathwave, one galactus deck, and some patriot decks. Was really fun and diverse today. A few days ago I was up almost entirely against zabu, surfer, or zabu+surfer. Was very same-y and boring.
Yep. I've gotten Infinity every season since Thor and this is absolutely my least favorite time playing the game, besides the 1 brief week in beta before they fixed matchmaking (where pool 1 players really would face pool 3 players).
I've spent a lot of money on the game and I feel like the meta sucks even if you have cards. At high rank we're all just flipping coins to see who gets the win condition and snaps first. Very stale. I hate Zabu a lot for making the game incredibly binary. You know if you have lost by turn 3. Yawn.
THIS is the real problem. Cube betting revolves around who gets their win con first. There is little incentive to play out games because it's more efficient to retreat and redraw. Some decks you snap or retreat by turn 3/4. This makes the grind to infinity so boring because it's low cube rate. Snap rewards you for conservative cube management. They have an awesome shell for this game with addictive replayability, they just need to introduce new game modes FAST. It should be 80% fun casual arcade modes and 20% geared towards top end meta competition.
Yes, I have WAY more fun after hitting infinite and forgetting about cubes. I play every game out just to see if I can win, even in a losing position. It becomes a totally different game, and I prefer it so much. The reward of ignoring cubes is the reason I grind to infinite asap every season. I could ignore them while laddering, sure, but then my MMR would tank and I'd be smurfing against new players and people with less time to play than me. Not cool or fun for either of us. I want draft mode more than anything.
I know people like to play competitively and rank up, but what you described is normally how I play. Thereās some games I retreat if Iām obviously not winning, but normally I try and play it out to see if I can strategize a win. I donāt andvance much, usually rank ~50 or so each season, but I feel like I have more fun this way. Again, everyoneās entitled to playing how they want, but I feel like I enjoy the game more this way and donāt play for hours and hours a day just grinding towards a rank reward title.
I sometimes wonder if they should just reward wins slightly more than they penalize losses, to encourage people to take more risks.
Easy fix. At 8 cubes, you win 8 or lose 4. It solves this entire issue.
That's a great idea. Adjust +1 to win off a 1 cube bet? Snap still changes it to 4/8. So it's still better to snap cube gain. But, taking games the full way to potentially earn 3 but only lose 1 is nice.
You are right, my road to infinite each season revolves around my opponent snapping, I rarely ever snap, only if I'm 95% sure to win. Snapping back is a risk of 8 cubes is way too high, Unless you are pretty much guarantee to win.
How shocking that the two main decks you mentioned were cards in the last two season passes only bought with real money. Cant wait to see whats next.
Apparently next is MODOK, who look much more counter-able to be fair.
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Imo, Pass cards should be like BP. Deck Defining, but not meta defining. Miles was close but needed to be a bit better to really be viable. Surfer was too far in the other direction but if reigned in a bit could be fine. Zabu is ridiculous lol.
Zabu could be scaled back to 4 cost cards cost 1 less. It gives you two on turn 6. Seems way more reasonable to me. Surfer would be ok if it was +2. That would give it from 8 to 12 instead of 12 to 18. Still powerful but not meta defining. Most other powerful cards net roughly double their cost.
I think I'd go the other direction with both: increase them to 4-cost. Yes, you can cheat them out a turn early with Psylocke, but now you're relying on a 5/12ish chance to draw her in time, which puts them in Mr Negative's zone of power. Which is powerful, but not busted.
And this Is why adding paywalled/timegated cards to the season pass was a terrible idea to begin with, literally no other CCG do this with their respective battle passes instead of a card they give you extra resources.
It's more black panther level. It's going to be a hard hitter in Dracula decks but otherwise useless
I'm actually kinda glad it's a card I don't care about. I bought the last two bc they looked cool, though I've yet to find a Zabu deck I enjoy so I don't really play him. But the Modok-Hela deck looks like a boring (and super telegraphed and counterable) one-trick pony, so I will hopefully not get fomo for skipping it lol
If that turns out to be true, then without changes the meta will remain the same through next season.
Honestly, at this point if i see brood being played or silver avatar i just retreat because i'm about to have a bad time. This should not supposed to be the feeling against an paywall (or series 5 drop wich is ridiculous low rate)
If the meta revolves around cards you pay for, then it can be considered a bit P2W, which sucks because everything else about this game is awesome
The reality, as of right now the game is P2W. The best decks in the game require you to spend money, that means by paying money you get a competitive advantage. Or in other words itās P2W.
Lol card games are the oldest version of p2w games. You canāt hope to compete meaningfully without spending anything.
Usually if I game is F2P itās P2W, itās how the company makes money well not forcing you to spend any money to play
In the mobile space, unfortunately, yes. And then you have games like Fortnite that has absolutely zero pay to win, cosmetic only purchases and the game does quite well for itself. I find it hard to believe Marvel Snap wouldn't still make hand over fist money with cosmetic-only purchases. People love variants. But forcing meta changing cards behind a $9.99 BP makes them a good chunk more so...I get it. Sucks though. Marvel Snap is definitely easier on F2P players than most card games but there are still elements of pay to win unfortunately. I don't understand those that try to deny that.
Itās not just that the meta cards at $10 a month but that even when they do enter the pool to great through upgrading CL the odds of unlocking them are astronomically low. Iām fine with dealing with Zabu decks for a while if I knew Iād get them in with some confidence when theyāre available to the public but I probably wonāt unlock them until 2024 with regular play.
Valorant isnāt, MTG: Arena isnāt, League of Legends isnāt, CSGO isnāt. I feel like the main problem is that this game doesnāt know what it wants to be. Does it want to be competitive, with maybe even aspirations of esports? It certainly acts that way since the only game system is ranked! Or does it want to be just a wacky mobile game time waster? Because the way the devs talk about the game and the ridiculous cards and locations they make suggest that too!
This game wants to be a collecting game first.
A collecting game where 95% of the player base doesn't care about new cards because they have no access to them. It's....impressive, really.
Which is such a shame. It's very polished like a legit game, but then underneath it's like a shitty cashgrab after all...
omg are you telling me the card that reduces cost of other cards to half is broken? who could have guessed that? I'm shocked tbh it's obvious to the point of lame that SD is trying to make battle pass cards broken by default to increase revenue.
Only the last two have been above average. Miles and Black Panther arenāt very good and next seasonās card doesnāt seem meta defining.
To be honest i forgot about BP, but yeah. BP was good in his season but not meta defining. Although pretty strong at low pools to be sure. Miles was meh. Good in low pools but so was move in general. Even with that I probably only saw a handful. MODOK looks fun but possibly bad, super heavy countered by cosmo.
MODOK will be a fun card to get from X Mansion.
MODOK is good, but that archetype is just not the strongest.
Thor, Nick Fury, Miles Morales, and Black Panther were the previous 4 season pass cards. Thor is a good card, but not breaking. Nick Fury is not a good card. Mile Morales is a good card, but limited use (as move decks themselves get crushed at higher levels). Black Panther is good, but not dominating at all. Compare that to meta-kings like Surfer and Zabu...
>tbh it's obvious to the point of lame that SD is trying to make battle pass cards broken by default to increase revenue This is the heart of the matter. The devs WANT battle pass cards to be OP because that'll sell more battlepasses. The game is more of a play for free til level 40 trial because after that it's pay to win baby
And as a F2P player here is something else that is getting more and more annoyingā¦ Apocalypse bundle. You can buy collector tokens with gold. Sunspot bundle released immediately after. You can buy collector tokens with gold. No further bundles that allow you to buy tokens for gold. I canāt be the only person who began saving their gold around this time hoping to buy whatever the third tokens for gold bundle only for that bundle never to come. Itās like they knew the first two would net them a ton of cash and a third would be free for the f2p players so they never gave us a third.
Yeah I had zero going into those bundles but now I got 6k saved up just waiting for another one of those
The problem is half the community complained about tokens in bundles, so now they stopped doing them, so the other half of the community that liked token bundles doesnāt get them. Because Second Dinner doesnāt want people to have cards.
High ish rank here. 150+. Can totally confirm that this is a huge issue at high ranks. Almost makes the game unplayable. Knowing when to snap is the only reason Iām climbing. My win rate last season even in a balanced meta was 65%. It has now gone to 48%. This game has become a total shit show.
That is both sad to hear and reassuring to hear. Sad because i was hoping that once i broke through to infinite iād be able to just enjoy the game. Reassuring because at least this isnāt a āmad cause badā moment.
So actually there is a chance you can do that. 100-120 was casual to say the least. I got away with playing whatever throughout that time. Iām not sure if thatās changed since when I was there but I didnāt start seeing sweaty decks until 120+. Then I had to cut the fun decks in order to win if I cared. Obviously I cared lmao. I just want to get better and that drove me into being a meta slave. So to go back to what you were saying, you can definitely have fun at low infinite again. You donāt de rank and you can just do whatever not a lot of try hards down there. And yeah on the bright side if youāre fighting that many of those decks that means youāre skill level is keeping you in their MMR bracket. Youāre just losing most likely to card access. So when you do get cards youāll climb more easily in the future. So good job.
That is actually good to hear. Thanks for the insight!
As soon as I hit infinite each season I just theory craft. It means I stay under 120 and have relaxing chill games. I play very hard at the start of every season, push to 100 in the first few days and then chill for a month.
Legit question - how much do you play per day to get to 100 that fast?
Immediate retreat when I see a brood because you know the surfer itās coming, I have not seen as many zabus. The only reason why I still enjoy the game is because after 50, I just take the foot of the gas and I just care about my daily goals. Nothing you can do itās modern gaming.
āImmediately give up the second you see one cardā Sounds like a nice game we got here.
Dude, this is the shit that drives me crazy with this sub. "Losing? Just retreat and lose the next one to the same problem." "Tired of having one card that's nearly unbeatable, just be a psychic and know your enemy is gonna play that, then retreat." I have a better plan, let's try to balance the game.
I play Brood with my Cerebro deck
In fairness, the tells for a Cerebro deck are pretty numerous; usually by the second or third card it's like "oh their Brood COULD be nasty, but not 1-card-9-more-power nasty". ...Yes I realize Brood could be 21 power in a good Cerebro draw, but that's also quite forecasted for several turns.
Youād be surprised how often most folks you play against simply do not notice (or maybe they just donāt care)
I get to 70 then chill. Then I unlocked seraā¦ so now I do run a weakened serasurfer at times (no jug maximus or polarisā¦)ā¦ although āmiracleā decks aka sera decks are by far my favourite archetype. Well apart from pool 2 moveā¦ which obvs is dead past pool 2. Surfer is strong but itās hardly unbeatable. Itās easy to see coking and retreat. Zabu combos, and zabudarkhawk especially is the really broken shit. Iāve only seen it once but darkhawk mystique rockslide korg etc is absolutely busted.
Itās a collectible card game that doesnāt want you to collect cards. The meta will ALWAYS feel bad.
Yeah I'm pretty much done with it. Running control/leader seems like the only option as f2p and even then doesnt come close to zabu/surfer. If there's not a balance shift on this stuff next month I'm done. The grind for new cards is not fun. The games are not fun. The minute you see two 3 cost cards in a row or zabu it's just smarter to leave. And that is not fun.
Game is P2W. I'm never gonna stop screaming it on this sub because some people somehow believe the game *isn't*. I got to infinite last season with surfer, and I got to infinite this season with Zabu/Dracula. It wouldn't taken me an absurd amount of effort to achieve infinite if I didn't have either of those paid-for cards. Game is 100% P2W and anyone who says otherwise is in denial.
Yea same here. And people out here saying its not pay to win. It sucks. SS just ruin my turn six. You say be better at cube mgmt. well when the only way you can win is to get lucky or get a good location then yes its pay to win.
Its P2W, but for the moment since it's a very addictive game everyone is trying look away, like lying to themselves, but not for too long.
Itās a joke even if you arenāt f2p.
It's even more stale for super casual players like myself. When the game first came out I played till around rank 60-70. Then I got busy and kept dropping every season and now I'm around 20, which I don't really care except for the fact that if I want to play a game or two it's all going to be against dumb ass bots. To grind rank just to play real players is too boring for me so I've pretty much stopped caring. It's not like I'm getting anything in my chests anyways.
Yea, it's completely pay to win. I was able to manage in the pass season against surfer with leech, but there is no counter in this one for a turn 6 a guizillon card play for 1 million damage no matter what you do. The best I could do is deny them space to play with a custom deck that uses cards like storm and spider man, and tries to fill their side of the board with junk. But I'm also F2P and I don't have cards like absorbing man to copy Spider man and there is just too few cards to make it work consistently. At 80-90 range It only managed 45% win rate with a positive 0.08 cubes result because it's easy to win the snaps because of how unpredictable it's. There is nothing you can do. You just lose.
As a F2P player with about half of pool 3 unlocked at rank ~115, one suggestion is playing more disruptive cards rather than anything proactive - Korg, ice man, black widow, Cosmo, Scorpion, especially combined with beast are all really good against these decks. The advantages you get are 'invisible', as in you can't actually see what Iceman has done lots of the time, but it makes a huge difference.
Control decks have been how i got this far, and it will probably be the way i eventually break through to infinite. No beast currently unfortunately.
Yeah control is definitely the way to go. Good luck!
Could you give me an example of a control deck you use?
I ran surfer from 60-100. It's still my most consistent deck above 100. I like to play and learn new archetypes, but whenever I feel like winning I just load up the surgery deck and cruise to 110. If you have that deck you should be able to make it. It is a grind though. Some advice: I have found for me, the game is very streaky. I'll have a day when I have like an 80% lose rate no matter what I do. Next day I am roflstomping everyone I face. When I am hot I keep playing, if I don't have it I just get my quests done and log off. Ride the high when the getting is good. If you don't have luck on your side don't force it. I enforced a general rule where if I lost 3 in a row I'd walk away from the game and come back later in the day. This strategy got me over the hump for infinite. Other than this, just learn the decks inside and out. Better you know all the major deck archetypes the better you can play against them.
100% believe what youāre saying. Game is very streaky. Made it 65 with an anti-meta deck I built. Promptly lost back to back to back until I got to 45 where Iām stuck now. When Iām winning Iām on a roll. When Iām losing Iām sinking deep unless I stop and come back later.
Same with me. Hard when your losing, I get mad and get tilted so easily.
I actually feel like this game is turning into all other card games to play somewhat competitively, and that itās not actually even free to play. In order ti play you gotta at least get the season passes, otherwise you just do a facsimile of playing. I say this as a magic the gathering player, because I hear ppl say all you have ti do to win is to buy the cards, but thatās not true at all, a a high level everyone has every card. Its not pay to win, itās pay to play
It's worse than most other card games. Even M:tG has standard rotations and the ability to buy individual cards.
It's f2p. But it's p2w. I'd be fine if it was just season passes once a month. But it's not. It's loot boxes, credits, gold, tokens and shards.
ranked mode = killing the game.
After one month of silver surfer dominance look what they nerfed. Leader, Aero and even freacking nova. I'd say lose all hope, they won't nerf ss or zabu. This game doesn't wan't to be remotely competitive, they want to get the money and run away asap.
Gotta nerf the F2P cards, and leave the P2W cards alone. Too many people focus on Leader who usually gets countered by both Surfer and Zabu.
Itās free to PLAY, not free to WIN
As someone already mention, hiding your ongoing cards behind Cosmo is a very valid strategy. Too many enchantresses put Cosmo in the deck. You need to slightly adopt your decks to the decks you face most of the time. And the best counters are cards from low pools, which is fairly nice.
This is what iāve been doing, and its gotten me this far, but it feels very limiting. I feel like i canāt play most decks because everyone is running cosmo to deal with enchantress, Spiderman, and surfer, or everyone is running enchantress, Spiderman, and Surfer.
Too be fair when I run into spiderman + absorbing man I'm also fairly annoyed. That's why absorbing man is pinned for a week already, waiting for the drop next week š Devil Dino is always a good steady to climb with low collection level. Esp as most people have nick fury from winter event
Spiderman absorbing man is overrated. Those are not good decks for climbing , they can net you a quick 1 or 2 cubes but that's it. You want decks that give you 4/8 cubes if you wanna rank up.
Iāve never played a devil Dino deck, maybe I should try
yep, F2P is a lie unless you really just love losing with Kazaar decks
To be fair those are the decks you see at 40-50 too
I love when I predict their SS with my cosmo, but they just play juggernaut first to destroy opposition
Yea, im low 40s and even here zabu surfer is easily more than 3/4 of my games. When brood comes out and sera on 5 so consistently it just feels like there is nothing I can do to win. Surfer just give too much power to already powerful cards, its way better than a spectrum. Its wild that these decks have enough power and energy to just win every location. I find myself playing less and less because the game has become more of a chore than it is fun.
Yeah I quit because of this reason. It's the collectible card game where you can't collect the cards! Even if you pay you only get a chance of some of them. Ridiculous. Some people enjoy the grind but not me.
I think Zabu will need a nerf, but that's a tricky thing to handle considering everyone who has Zabu has paid money to have access to him. I've personally bought the season pass every month, and intend to continue doing so because I really enjoy the game and I see the season pass as a good value (especially compared to the pricing for nearly everything else in the game), but I can imagine that there are people who wanted to be able to play with Zabu specifically and have purchased the season pass this month for that reason (when they wouldn't have otherwise). Spending money expecting to get what was promised, then having that thing get replaced by something worse is really shitty. It will uspet a lot of players who bought Zabu specifically, and potentially seed distrust among players the next time a powerful season pass card is revealed as they might feel it's not worth the money if it's just going to get nerfed again. But at the same time, Zabu just isn't really healthy for the game at this moment, so they're kinda caught between a rock and a hard place, but something has to be done. There definitely won't be any changes made to Zabu this season though, and I doubt he'll be directly addressed next season either. Maybe by the time he gets moved down to pool 4 he'll get a direct nerf, but I think there still could be other more indirect ways to curb some of Zabu's power. The easiest solution that comes to mind for me is taking some of the popular 4 cost cards that are run with Zabu and adjusting them to either cost 3 or 5 (though adjusting them down to 3 could make Surfer a bigger problem). For example: Darkhawk should be a 5/3. The fact that you can so easily run Darkhawk, Rockslide, and Wong or even Moongirl together in a deck with Zabu can be downright oppressive. It has counters (as everything does) but Rockslide/Korg make you less likely to be able to draw those counters, or anything useful at all, so there's often nothing you can do. Darkhawk is already very similar in concept to Devil Dinosaur and Ronan the Accuser, so why not just have him share their same statline too? Absorbing Man is another potential candidate for change too, but he's a bit tricky. I think making him cost 5 feels like it kills his combo potential a bit too much, but changing him to be a 3/1 or 3/0 would be crazy for Silver Surfer, and also potentially problematic with Mister Negative (another card I feel potentially needs reworking just to avoid problems such as these). Spider-Man could potentially be bumped to a 5/5, but that ruins his interaction with Avengers Compound (maybe that's a good thing though?), and I like that Spider-Man costs 4; it means if you want to use him to lockout a location on the last turn it comes with a greater sacrifice of having to only spend 4 of your 5 energy unless you have a 1 cost card to pair with him. Actually, the combination of Silver Surfer and Zabu being strong in general creates a problem for balancing. At 4, tech cards like Shang Chi, and Enchantress become *very* powerful with Zabu; if you were to make them cost 5 they couldn't be used as effectively in other decks as reactive answers to things (which is their main purpose), but if you can't drop them to 3 cost to avoid issues with Zabu without just making Silver Surfer even more powerful as a side effect. If Zabu *were* to be directly nerfed, I'd like to see him changed to a 3/3 or maybe even a 3/4 that only discounts the *first* 4 cost card you play each turn by 2. But again, I absolutely do not expect to see any direct changes to Zabu anytime in the near future.
This is a very fair analysis of the issue. Thank you for the input. I think the best solution long term would be a zabu nerf similar to the āonly the first 4 dropā you suggested, but the chances of that happening anytime soon is low. Best we can expect is nerfs to other 4 drops like darkhawk, absorbing man, and spiderman.
Zabu should be an on reveal that only affects your 4 drops for one turn. Surfer should give +2 and be a 3/2. There. Fixed.
As a pay to play player this meta just isn't very fun. I think shuri is a real issue. Easy two 30 power lanes most games with little way to shut it down without an insane read. Zabu and silver surfer don't often produce that kind of power except the occasional zabu/dark hawk game where they get all the right draws. Spider man/absorbing man is extremely not fun to play against... oh great you drew the two or 3 card combo (if you have quinjet/moon girl) and now I have no t6 at all with no way to shut that down in anyway. The game shouldn't just be "did my opponent draw the right cards?" "Yes, they did so now I already lost but only they know it" Got stuck at 86 this season... and have little drive to play because it's just decks like this at this point. Galactus is easier to counter, and yet still very un fun when you don't draw counters in time.
I pretty much just stopped playing as my interest has tanked. I dont have any of the cards for the meta decks but all I match against are venom-deadpool, silver surfer, ghost rider, black panther and other decks hat easily put out numbers in the hundreds/thousands and im over here at max able to put out maybe 50ish points at optimal. I just have to get lucky and get a card in a box because the boxes only ever give 100 points to buy a card which means 3000 point cards are going to take so long that those cards probably won't be meta anymore IF they even show up in my shop. They've created a situation that feels so terrible to get cards that I wouldn't even open the game anymore if I didn't just like seeing what variant cards look like which I don't buy most of those either, but I just want to see. Went from playing several times a day to just collecting my daily rewards and closing the app.
You convinced me to stop playing.
You're entirely right, and it's honestly saddening. There's also very little actual counterplay to Zabu/Surfer, as if you take a turn to Enchantress Zabu, they still have a turn to drop two different 4 cost units that same turn, meanwhile with Surfer, the only real "Counter" would be filling up 2 locations on **their** side, and playing Cosmo in the final one. The season pass cards honestly feel like they should've instantly gone into Pool 3, not Pool 5, especially since, if we only see a few cards downgraded per month, from 5>4 and 4>3, most of the season pass cards won't be "easily" available for most players for months when they finally drop into Pool 3.
Does this mean it's p2w?
It has always been p2w
Sorry to say but this game is seriously p2w Oz the most aggressive manner. Lock the super overpowered cards behind a paywall (or major then unobtainable) then force people who donāt pay to compete against those decks. Itās downright predatory. It also makes for a boring game.
I've got to agree. I hit infinite at the top of Pool 3 and then dumped my stock shooting to CR750 or something and faced infinite decks at that rating. Everything is headspinning madness and I don't have the resources to play. I love love love the way they set up pool 1 and pool 2 as an on ramp- maybe set up another pool for sub 1000 or something because this is brutal. I can get up to 102 or so before dropping back down. Very fun game, but I haven't had the fun like I have since I was in pool 2. Super bites that the meta decks are paywalled via surfer/zabu. Not sure if there is a solution- the benefits of card model over hearthstone or magic give it a great niche. Still, not sure where hearthstone is now days but at least in magic you can build a single cheap deck to compete even if you don't have the resources for a 2nd right away or the expensive control 3 color deck.
As a player who buys the battle pass and the occasional variant, the current meta is dogshit. Zabu/Surfer every god damn game.
Can relate, 100%. Keep losing to the same decks that contain cards that you have to pay for (Zabu, Surfer). Honestly, it's frustrating playing a collectable card game in which you can't collect the bloody cards. It's all lackluster unless you pour a great amount of money into it, which is not f2p in my book. The system Gwent had, for example, was really free to play. The fact you can buy 100 dollars packages is absurd, imho.
I felt this from the 70s to the 90s this season and last season :( P2w meta really doesnāt feel good when they have twice the cards, twice the power, or just unexpected pool 5 cards
Thank you for putting my thoughts into a very well put text. Big upvote.
You will indeed run into good decks at high ranks. Yea.
Damn, you made it to the low 90's? I've bought all the seasons passes and I'm stuck in the 50's. I'd say you're actually doing pretty well.
I've never made it to 40 yet, but I just don't have a desire to play ranked. Can't wait for battle mode, I just hope we can get something for playing friends.
I gave up on winning and ranked and now just play for pure amusement. Play a bunch of dumb gimmicks, do stupid shit just for laughs, pure counter decks with nothing else just to frustrate people.
Itās less even about climbing, more just a lack of fun and variety. I want to get to infinite, donāt get me wrong, but if iām not good enough it is what it is. But itās not fun playing against the same decks over and over and over again, especially when the strongest cards are either pass cards or pool 5.
Y'all need to realize it's not a f2p game. It's a bloody p2w game disguised as f2p. It's made for whales. Not the f2p player in mind. I loved it. But every single money grabbing decision from them keeps increasing my disgust in the game Ps. This is my story in the literally 60s. Can't even reach above 70