Begginers guide to draw deck building

This is a guide the the mechanics of deck building, this isn't a guide on how to make an uber death & fire magic deck.
It's simply a conversation about some techniques to help build better draw decks.

First some Vocabulary.
Glyph: an icon for a spell or active ability that can be locked or drawn onto a hot bar slot.

Locked Slot: a hot bar slot that has a glyph assigned to it and locked so it is never drawn.(you can lock a glyph to a hot bar slot by first assigning it to that slot by dragging it there, then clicking the open lock icon in the lower right hand corner of the slot so that the lock icon closed instead of open)

Draw Slot:a hot bar slot that may have zero or more glyphs assigned to it, but is not locked so it is always drawn. You can convert a locked slot into a draw slot by clicking the closed lock icon in the lower right hand corner of the slot so the lock is open instead of closed.

Locked Deck: a deck that every hot bar slot is a Locked Slot..

Draw Deck:a deck that one or more hot bar slots does not contain a Locked Glyph.

Stacked Glyph: Two or more copies of the same glyph stacked onto the same slot.

Combo Glyph: Two different glyphs placed onto the same slot to make a different glyph that combines attributes or effects from the original glyphs.

Stacked Combo Glyphs: Combo Glyphs that have been stacked, or stacked glyphs that have been combo'd to make a stack of the resulting combination glyphs.

Unassigned Slot: A hot bar slot that is not locked and has no glyphs assigned to it. Any glyph can be drawn into an unassigned slot, and any slot can be turned into an unassigned slot by right clicking glyph that is currently there and selecting clear. or by right clicking each individual glyph assigned to it and selecting remove.

Dedicated Draw Slot: An unlocked Draw slot that has only one glyph assigned to it. Only 1 particular glyph or slugs can be drawn into a dedicate draw slot. Some people also call this a "fixed draw slot", because the drawing is "fixed" to only be a certain card.

Multi Draw Slot: A Draw Slot that has 2 or more different glyphs assigned to it. Only the assigned glyphs or slugs will ever be drawn into a multi-draw slot.

Rot Slot: Dedicated Draw slot, or Multi Draw slot, that's main purpose is to remove glyphs from the draw pool rotation until they rot away and return to circulation. Usually Rot Slots a filled with extra copies of glyphs you don't intend to use as often as they would be drawn.

Slug: A blank Glyph that can not be assigned to Draw slots, that will be randomly drawn into any empty Draw slot. Unless you are using a Locked Deck, you always want to put enough glyphs into your draw pool that no slugs are added to your deck. Even if that means you have add glyphs you don't actually want to use, because Slugs can not be controlled, but unwanted glyphs can. see "Why would I include Rot Slots in my deck" and "What happens if there isn't an draw slot a glyph can be drawn into"

Ok that is over with now we can proceed with some couple of common questions.

What is the main advantage of a draw deck?
The main advantage is the Drawn glyphs don't have cool downs, while locked glyphs do.
For example if you Cast Healing Touch from a locked slot, you will need to wait 8 seconds to cast it again. If you cast Healing Touch from a Draw slot, you can cast it again as soon as it is drawn again.

But if I use a Draw deck won't my glyphs be in Random locations?
Not if you assign glyphs to draw slots (See definition of Dedicated Draw Slot and Multi-Draw Slot above)

Where will Glyphs be drawn?
That is easy, the game starts on the left (slot 1) and works its way right (slot 0) until it finds a draw slot the glyph it has decided to draw is legal to be drawn into. It looks for the first slot that is empty and either unassigned or that the assigned glyph list contains the about to be drawn glyph.
The only exception to this rule is Slugs, which will be drawn randomly into any draw slot that doesn't currently contain a glyph.

What happens if there isn't an draw slot a glyph can be drawn into?
That depends on why it has no destination, If the glyph has no destination because all the places it could be drawn into are full the draw is discarded back into the pool of glyphs available to be drawn. There is a short delay, and then another glyph will be selected from the pool and the game will attempt to draw it.
If the glyph has no legal destination (e.g. no unassigned slots and it's not assigned to any slots)
then the glyph is converted into a slug and follows slug draw rules instead.

What skill levels do I get more copies of Glyphs?
First glyph at skill level 1.
Second copy at skill level 10.
Third copy at skill level 20.
fourth copy at skill level 40.
fifth copy at skill level 80.

How do I combine or stack Glyphs?
There are several ways to do that. Please note that Comb'ing or Stacking Glyphs is done during combat, not while building your deck

1. Click and Drag the first glyph to the destination Glyph.
2. Press combo hotkey "R" by default then press the hot key for the first glyph, then press the hot key for the destination Glyph.
3. Press and hold the hot key for the First Glyph, then press and release the hot key for the destination glyph, then release both hot keys.

Is there a limit to how many times a glyph can be assigned to Locked Slots on the hot bar?
Yes there is actually, a Glyph can only be Locked Glyph in 1 Slot. Even if you could make 2 Locked Slots of the same glyph it would serve no purpose because both copies would share a single cooldown.

Is there a Limit to how many Draw slots can be assigned with the same Glyph.
Not really you can assign a draw glyph to as many draw slots as you want. As long as you have at least 1 free copy in your draw pool. For example if I know two copies of Healing Touch, and lock one of those copies to slot 0. That will leave the other copy in my draw pool so I can assign it to slots 1-9 as a Draw Slot. If I remove the second copy, it remove itself from the assigned draw list of slots 1-9.

Why would I include Rot Slots in my deck?
There are a few reasons

1. Avoiding slugs. You can't assign slugs to a draw slot, they can be randomly drawn into any draw slot. At certain points during character development your minimum deck size to avoid slugs may be greater than the number of useful glyphs you have. Usually this happens if your changing your weapon line from the one you were given during character creation to something else. E.g. you started as swords but want to use polearms instead. You won't have enough polearm glyphs to replace all your sword glyphs when first switching over, but if your close to having enough a few Rot slots would let you avoid locked deck cool down timers, and still be faster skill rotation.
2. Setting up for burst healing. You may not need to heal often but when you do, you might need lots of it. Because a 2x stacked healing touch is not guaranteed to heal for at least 2x minimum heal, but two separate castings of healing touch are, and each casting is another chance at a crit heal, it can be a good strategy to add extra copies of healing glyph in rot slots. This keeps them out of normal rotation, but also allows you to chain spam healing when you need it most.
3. Multiple situational glyphs. during your normal grinding you may not normally cast defensive skills like dodge, parry, deflection, etc, but sometimes you get into trouble and would like them to be available. Rot slots can let you add those glyphs while limiting their effect on your draw rotation speed.

I don't care about what combat glyph comes up I just want to spam one button and make stuff die, how do I do that?
That is easy, you create a Multi-Draw slot as the first draw slot that contains all of the glyphs you want to spam. E.g. Slot 1. You assign all of you spammable skills to it. E.g. thrust, double slash, whirlwind. you fill the rest of your bar with Locked slots , or dedicated draw slots for other skills and your done. Now combat is just a matter of spamming the "1" button as fast as you can, until you need heals, or run out of focus. Doing this you can fire off skill before they are completely drawn or even visible, and will "feel" quicker, because you don't have to wait on the animation to fully draw the card before the next one starts drawing.
For example ranged Draw deck might look something like this.
In this deck, Aimed shot, Piercing Shot, and Blinding shot are set up to be spammed, the rest of the slots are rot slots, or locked buffs.

1. Aimed Shot, Piericng shot, Blinding shot
2. Disabling shot
3. Multi shot
4. Rapid fire
5. Healing touch
6. Healing touch
7. Healing touch
8. Healing touch
9. Sprint (locked)
10. Air's Grace (locked)

How do build my deck so that I'm always able to stack glyphs?
That is also easy. First you create a series of Dedicated Draw slots on the left hand side of your bar. These will be your stack destination slots. Then you create a Multi Draw slot anywhere to the right of those glyphs, that contains all the cards you want to be able to stack. What happens is the first copy of your stacking glyphs will land in the dedicated slots, and the duplicate copies wil land in the Multi-draw slot. When stacking you would always stack from the Multi-draw slot to the dedicated slot. This leaves the duplicate slot open for more copies to be drawn. There are a couple things to note. If you create a combo glyph e.g. Thrust + double strike = Quadrouple strike, you will want to use it as quickly as possible because whatever slot the combo is created on, won't be available for duplicates, and won't be available as a destination until it has been spent or rots away. Secondly, if you Combine stacked Glyphs you will make a stacked combo glyph.

For example a stacking swords deck might look like this

1. Thrust
2. Double Slash
3. Riposte
4. Whirlwind
5. Thrust, Double Slash, Riposte, Whirlwind
6. Parry (locked)
7. Deflect (locked)
8. Inner Strength (locked)
9. Healing touch (locked)
10. Healing Ray (locked)

I want to do Lots of Combo's how do I build a deck for that purpose?
There are a several ways to go about that.
First off lets discuss Unassigned Slots, if you put them in the left hand side of the hot bar, they are a legal draw slot for any glyph that can be drawn. So the unassigned slot will draw and fill up first before any draw slots to the right of it. So you will want to put unassigned slots on the right hand side of the bar, and have a few of them so you you have places to draw cards feeding you Combo's.

For example if you wanted combo's from a swords deck using unassigned slots, Using the Combo Thrust + Double Slash to make Quadrouple Slash, and Rend + Whirlwind to make Buzzsaw. you might set something up that looked like this.

1. Thrust
2. Double Slash
3. Rend
4. Whirlwind
5. Unassigned
6. Unassigned
7. Unassigned
8. Inner Strength (locked)
9. Healing touch (locked)
10. Healing Ray (locked)

Several Multi-Draw slots get rid of this problem of needing to put unassigned slots to the right of all draw slots So a combo deck that wanted burst healing abilities might look like this.

1. Thrust
2. Double Slash
3. Rend
4. Whirlwind
5. Thrust, Double Slash, Rend, Whirlwind
6. Thrust, Double Slash, Rend, Whirlwind
   
7. Inner Strength
8. Healing touch
9. Healing touch
10. Healing touch

I want to get rid of slugs but I don't want to use rot slots, how do I do that?
You could use a Locked deck.
Other than that you could use a single rot slot and add glyphs you don't want to use and assign all of them to a single multi draw slot. Since the slot will fill up on the first drawn card the rest will be auto discarded until the card rots away. If you were changing from Swords to bow, but didn't have enough glyphs to make a full deck yet, you could set up something like this.

1. Aimed Shot,
2. Piericng shot
3. Blinding shot
4. Disabling shot
5. Multi shot
6. Rapid fire
7. Healing touch
8. Healing touch
9. Sprint (locked)
   
10. Thrust, Double Slash, Rend, Whirlwind (Rot Slot)

 

Brilliant work Rofo !
I learnt new things.
Thank you.

 

Now we just need the video to supplement these materials. Thank for sharing the knowledge.

 

~Time Lord~

 

Good guide, thank you!

 

Excellent guide, 1 extra piece of info Id add in is that you can put as many copies of a glyph onto the bar as you like, even though you can only have 1-5 in your deck you may still place the glyph in all slots to increase the chance of it being
able to be dealt out if there is just 1 empty slot and you havent hit you limit of cards dealt. Also the number of Copies of a glyoh in the bar both increases the number in the deck and therefor the deal chance aswell as being the total
number of glyphs of that kind that can be dealt at once.

 

I added it as it's own Question, thanks for pointing that out, I didn't even think about it.

 

I am not trying to make his work seem less but if you only have one glyph in a slot and it is a draw slot then if the card doe not get dealt the slot stays empty. Migh as well leave it locked since the cool down is the same.


1 - 4. Aimed / Piercing / Disabling / Blinding / Rapid Fire
5 and 6. are more ranged spells
7. Root
8. Airs Embrace (int)
9. Str of Earth (Str = Dmg)
10. Flury (Attack Speed)

Notice in the above picture I use all my ranged skills one in each of the slots 1 - 4 this way as the cards are being dealt I am pretty much ensured I have a attack ranged shot avail no matter what. True I do not know exactly where but not to hard to watch and see to make stacks or combos.
in 5 and 6 I have spells that are ranged and I am again pretty much ensured I have on of them avail during the whole fight.
The buffs in the last three are just helpers to the basic fight.

Now this deck is all out a offensive deck and I have an alternate deck and many other to do different things. I have a close in fight, fighting with a pet, fighting with a part, healing . . . . .

But again if you place a draw glyph in one slot and that is all that is there if that card is not dealt the slot is empty, I don't want that. I want glyphs up as much as possible. If you are going to leave one glyph so it is the only glyph for that slot you might as well lock it since the cool down is the same locked or not, and at least locked all you have to do is wait for the cool down and not worry if the card gets dealt or not.

This is IMO a much more affective draw deck, less programmed as where glyphs come are not only one place but.

Also remember to make sure you have used as many of the glyphs you can if the number behind the glyph is 2 / 4 in the avail glyph side then there are only 2 cards in your deck.

 

??

You are saying if you skills are only level 10 (only 1 glyph?) then they come up faster? Sorry but you then end up with slugs, now if you can work it so no slugs sure but then if you use a level 10 aimed shot and have in your deck 20 other skills and the deck deal 10 skills other than Aimed Shot then the aimed shot stays empty until one is dealt or if you have a slug a slug can show up. If you just locked that slot as soon as the cool down expires then you can fire it again. Now if the mechanic is broken and that one glyph which was the exact one you used since you only have 1 is avail immediately then that is a bug since it should have suffered a cool down.

 

Thanks for the great guide @Rofo ! It helped me

 

Starting all over because I've edit so much neither post is what you've replied too...

First off what you are saying is generally true..
If you only have 1 dedicated draw slot for a glyph you are normally better off just locking that glyph.

However, it is also slightly incorrect.
Most drawn glyphs ignore cool downs. (There are or were a few exceptions to this, but I haven't run into them lately).
E.g. If you cast Crippling Shot from a Locked Slot you must wait 8 seconds to be able to Cast it again.
If you cast Crippling Shot from a Draw Slot and you draw it again, in less than 8 seconds, you can cast it again, without worrying about the cool down.

This means that at really low levels you can for a very breif time exploit this to chain cast a glyph even if you only have one copy of the glyph.
(this is commonly used for gust ball training, type activities, and doesn't get much use in actual combat, because it only lasts until you start getting slugs.)

The basic technique is very simple. You assign a skill you want to level to a Draw slot. you fill the rest of you bar with Locked Glyphs or dedicated draw glyphs, until your slug count is zero.
This effectively leaves you with 1 or very few skills Glyph in your draw pool, and because it's cast from draw it ignores the cool down, and can be cast again repeatedly much faster than the cool down of the skill

The only other time it is a benefit to assign a skill to a single Draw slot, is when locking that slot would cause you to add slugs back into your deck. e.g. you don't really care how often a 45 second buff comes up, if locking it would give you a slug, you'd better off with it unlocked.

No being skill level 10 has nothing to do with it. Most Draw skills ignore cool downs only locked skills have cool downs for the most part. (trying to remember the 1 skill I ran into several Releases ago that could be drawn with a cool down still active)

 

Thank you very much for this helpful guide.

 

I'm with you guys... @Rofo is really kool like that You Rock Rofo!
~Time Lord~

 

This is not valid anymore because:

September 6, 2016

Build Number 479 12:30 PM CDT

• /bloodrain now teachable (like all other pledge and bundle emotes)
• Fixed Charm spell so charmed animals will no longer attack everything except caster (like the caster’s pet, party members, etc.)
• Added Farming section to recipe book
• Fixed bug where when you would create a deck and drag the skills into the abilities bar, then remove the skill out of the bar, it would stay in your deck counting towards the total glyph count. Now glyphs that cannot be drawn to any slot become slugs. They turn grey in the deck list and “(Slug)” is appended to their name. The tooltip for these glyphs explains why they are a slug. The tooltip for the slugs (drawn in combat) also explains why the slug exists.
• Fixed missing roof, zfighting and other visual bugs on Blue Tile Roof Two-Story (Row Home)

 

Thanks updated.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...od-and-how-to-modify-it-for-your-needs.58341/

 

This guide was very helpful.

 

Please sticky this @Berek.

 

Great guide! Learning the deck system is the hardest part of being a new player.

 

So, is it better to stack glyph's or use combos? I like to use quadruple slash, but would I deal more damage stacking thrust and double slash instead?