Actually, this spell does more to combat first turn advantage than any other. One of the reasons first turn advantage is such an advantage is that an opponent can cancel out your attack immediately with a 0 pip shield. That is no longer a factor. This further negates some of the advantages of first in that blade stacking becomes much less viable. If your second turn opponent has such a strong offensive potential then you will be hardpressed to do any kind of stacking.
Yes, it does help the person going second, no question, and I agree it can cancel out the shield to some degree. The problem is, the person going first has a clean short at your gear, and this amplifies the first turn advantage to a mega degree. Stacking is still very viable, no question and maybe even more viable now that ever before. After using the spell for a few days now, I can tell you, it will be a huge factor in pvp. Ignoring Central, where they will put in controls to keep things balanced. In ranked, I can see this spell being used on a constant basis, once the right cards are in hand. The Shadow pips show up on a regular basis, almost every four pips, for my Ice. My complaint is not on the amount of pierce it has, but on how often the Shadow pips show up. At 20%, it just too often, and the attacks from first position will be out of control, imo.
Agrreed. MasterSorcerer was speaking like there are only Jade vs. Shrike matches in the arena. :)
Yeah KI didn't fix the problem with this new gear they just replaced one problem with another. If only they had taken the time to test and adjust the hades gear, they could have found a lower value of pierce, damage boost and critical that would take down jades defense but not completely over power it. Instead of doing more testing and finding a balance they just gave us what they thought was a quick fix to the complaining. I hope that when or if they release some new gear to to counter the mass critical of the hades that they take the time to get it right and restore the balance rather than just giving us something else overpowered.
Unfortunately, the age of control decks and long term strategy died with the release of Jade Gear. Jade Gear completely preempted all first age strategies: It had too much resist for first age set-ups to realistically handle, too much heal boost for first age tactics to limit and the ability to destroy multi-turn setups in one go. There was(and remains) no counter to trap stacking-shatter so jades would often just run you out of cards and then slowly trap stack to shatter. The reshuffle update further buried first age tactics by making a structured reshuffle strategy much harder to pull off. Jade Gear often led to matches that lasted anywhere from 2-6 hours. I am going to point out that I much prefer a 10 minute match against a Hades player to a several hour match against a Jade. Short of a nerf to Jade gear(and by extension ice gear) or a complete revamp of the pierce system KI really had it's hands tied to correct this scenario. KI chose to go about it by offering a new fast tempo metagame. The new fast tempo strategy may not be ideal but I much prefer it to the old Jade metagame.
Nicely thought out post. I basically agree with your thoughts. Having a Promethean Balance wizard, I very much enjoyed my structured reshuffle strategy which you pointed out so well has not worked since Jade Gear. And I certainly concur that 10 minute matches are way better than 6 hour matches, if those are my only two options.
The main issue for me is this new metagame has a single path to victory, "All Out Attack or Die". For me, a successful PvP has a variety of pathways to victory. And unfortunately, the "All Out Attack or Die" strategy is completely uninteresting to me, and therefore my retirement from PvP.
KI is going for all these new crown tournaments now anyway. It's all about the crown income. They really aren't interested nor have the time to make a competitive and multi-dimensional F2P PvP.
Sad for me to see PvP become basically a dice rolling game, but oh well. There are other PvP games out there.
I have to say the 50% pierce is way too much, i would think 30% is better because you can still shield against that. with 30%, storm would really be the only one who can break a full shield and that's what storm is, pure power.
Shadow Magic hits live realm soon. As KI stated in an official announcement shadow spells won't be PvM only as the new minion spells were, so they will change PvP a lot.
One of the new shadow spells give you +50% pierce for three rounds. The spell has some disadvantages, but let me ask you something... Who cares about disadvantages if you can finish your opponent in a few rounds?
How can you stand your ground against a fire or storm wizard with 75% pierce 500+ critical 100+ damage boost?
Will you start using the same tactic or find a way to defend yourself? (i don't know any defensive tactic that should work against a wizard with offensive stats mentioned above)
i agree with you and dont shadow magic will cause a new style in pvp me and my friends pvped and none of use used shadow magic but 2 rounds in the match we have killed them all so the age of the 2 minute battles are here
