Deck Building

I understand the basics of deck building, but I haven't seen an in depth deck building guide. I find it grating to watch youtube tutorials, people dragging on talking about very non essential points in 20+ minute videos is tedious to me. When actual information regarding the mechanics is spoken of in unsure terms.There any good textual guides on the forums? Or any way to post how you have your deck set up?

I'm mainly interested in making a soloing magic damage deck and a party healing deck.

What are the benefits of a dynamic deck?
What is the benefits of stacking?
What is the benefits of charging?
What is important for optimizing a dynamic deck?
Should I have 10 cards in each row or 2? Does that amount of glyphs in a slow affect draw speed or anything else?
Is the maxiumum different cards you can draw 10? And then you can add the 2nd, 3rd, 4th cards of the same type?

When I move cards from "available glyphs" to "deck" the slugs go down, regardless if they are in actual hotbar slots or not. Shouldn't the less slug benefit only happen if you have the glyphs in actual slots, not just the deck?

 

Welcome!

Deck building is like string theory. There's always another cord to pluck.

I'm not an expert, I'll try to answer these questions to my best ability though.

I've played several builds, and always use a hybrid locked/unlocked deck now. I think that unlocked is a little under powered in many situations at the moment, but I just have to have it, it keeps life exciting and opens up my options. That being said, I'm playing with double daggers with poison right now, and there are so many combos in blades that I think I would be missing out if I locked more.

What are the benefits of a dynamic deck?

• More choices. Access to combos which cannot be used on locked glyphs. But I can't imagine a situation where you would want to be 100% dynamic, there is always some glyphs you will want to charge and/or have constant access to. Defensive stance, specific attacks for your build, perhaps a heal spell.

What is the benefits of charging?

• Each charge level lowers the focus cost, and in many cases increases the damage or effects of the skill. Some skills are not worth charging unless you want to reduce the focus cost. Defensive stance is something I keep locked in many builds, but only activate it instead of charging it. I want it NOW when I want it, and charging doesn't provide much benefit as far as I know.

What is the benefits of stacking?

• I believe it is exactly the same as charging, just much much harder to get a high stack due to the randomness of the glyphs coming your way. However, properly loading your random slots gives you access to combos. So when I'm playing, I'm stacking or comboing random glyphs, or charging a locked one, all the time. What is happening often depends on what got dealt in the random section. Playing with Blades right now I'm doing a lot of stacking/comboing. When playing with Halberds I do a lot more charged attacks mostly because their combos are meh, but charged attacks are very high damage.

What is important for optimizing a dynamic deck?

• Very. Do I know if I'm doing it right? No. I hear my Halberd deck is way overloaded on glyphs (I have like 80). Blades I'm just starting with so I haven't managed to ruin it yet.

Should I have 10 cards in each row or 2?

• That is a suggestion of what you want to pop up there. It takes a lot of experimenting. My defense one is quite deep. Basic attacks + combo glyphs (like the flame/ice fists) I don't stack very deep, I want them only having the specific ones so I get a high probability of the glyphs needed for combos popping up. I leave one totally open for whatever needs space as well.

Does that amount of glyphs in a slow affect draw speed or anything else?

• I don't think so but could be wrong. There are some skills for speeding up your glyph draw speed though, one used to be able to kill you from drawing too fast

Is the maxiumum different cards you can draw 10?

• You can piles in and really mess up your world.

And then you can add the 2nd, 3rd, 4th cards of the same type?

• Yes, five max normally, 6 with Specialization.

When I move cards from "available glyphs" to "deck" the slugs go down, regardless if they are in actual hotbar slots or not. Shouldn't the less slug benefit only happen if you have the glyphs in actual slots, not just the deck?

• Imagine the right side as a virtual deck. If you have 5 of one glyph and 1 of another in that stack, you will draw the first 5/6ths of the time. So as you drag more over, you're moving closer to meeting the minimum deck size, and thus the slugs, blank cards essentially, are removed.

I hope that helped and I hope I wasn't too wrong on anything.

And typing all this out I'm struck once again with the need for us to formally adopt the most straightforward vocabulary. Do we call everything a skill? Or just the skill proper, not when it's on the bar? Skill vs. glyph vs. card?

 

hi jacksweather

Deck building is the most interesting element of combat in this game and can be as simple as using a Fixed Deck and some avatars always play this style or making it more complex with a random deck and some mixing of both.

you start off with a single glyph to place as a random selection or on your combat bar as a fixed deck. As you train in the skill then more glyphs are given these can be placed in your deck to increase the chance you will see them more on your combat bar, OR you can hold your mouse on the fixed glyph and charge the ability to the amount of glyphs you have.

best answer is you can use more than 10 glyphs and I hope not to confuse you more but you can match some glyphs to make a combo attacks.

it is a method used to make sure a tile will only appear in that slot.

charging a skill will give the skill greater power and slightly use less focus but takes more time to use.

have enough glyphs and then be creative it is your style of play that will determine and is there a optium deck.

this is the personal creativity as answered in the above question.

the amount of glyphs does not affect the speed of combat itself but having to many of a lot of different glyphs will cut down the chance of seeing the desired glyph.

only on a fixed deck.

you start a skill with 1 card then as you improve the skill then more cards become available
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.
and if you choose to specialize in the skill at level 80 a sixth glyph

slugs appear if you have not used enough glyphs in the deck and the amount of glyphs required goes up as your level goes up this should only affect you for a short time as soon you will have so much trained you will not have the problem to meet the minimum glyph requirement.

and just as a footnote I have created a playlist and tried there to explain deck building as best as I can for a complex topic
the first video is for very new players so I would look a the second in the playlist and then the third looks at more complex tasks and basic advice.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw9-ukIjQVaRpvAgxhxjaK4m5Sr_jvHmP

and I stream the game on twitch fridays 2PM central until portalarium community stream goes live
and on saturdays and sundays from 2PM US central time feel free to watch and ask questions.

 

My two cents on this topic for you @jacksweather

When it comes to a dynamic deck, you may find that you want some skills to be locked, so that you can charge them. You may find that you want to have certain buffs or skills coming up to combine them for combos too. In a sense it gives you more flexibility. Making a dynamic deck can be fun (from what I have heard) once you are comfortable with playing with both locked/unlocked.

Stacking makes the skills stronger, but not all skills improve. Some only reduce the focus count, but for example if you stack say strength of earth you will get higher stats from that skill. The same goes for pretty much all attacking skills, it increases the damage output for that stack.

Charging is pretty much the same thing, but stacking happens through unlocked decks and charging comes from locked decks. So as I said previously, not all skills necessarily improve, you only get a reduced focus cost for example.

When it comes to what is important for optimizing a dynamic deck, it all boils down to you want to be comfortable with both the unlocked and locked formats. Once you are settled, then try experimenting. You may want some buffs to come up in your unlocked slots, you may find that you want to have a combo of different skills to mix it up. It just takes forward thinking and familiarity.

Just like Skeggy said, 10 cards in each row or 2 comes down to your preference, there is no real rhyme rule or reason to not try different things out. If anything you will always find you are swapping skills out from time to time. When it comes to unlocked skills, you can level up skills in the focus tree to help you with draw speed and so on.

The maximum cards that you can draw really depends on how you have built your deck. 10 cards naturally is the maximum for a locked deck. However if you bring some unlocked skills into a deck, you can have (I think) 6 skills lined up maximum to show on one unlocked slot in each deck too. So in short it is down to your own play style rule-set.

@skeggy Media has pretty much covered the point on slugs.

 

You gave a really good account of your points. We all see it pretty much the same way, but from a slightly different point of view for sure!

 

My suggestion is... Do what works best for you. With the ability to hot-key decks this has become a lot easier. I find with my characters I find that locking the skills I ALWAYS need access to or want to level quickly, locking them is best. This changes as you progress. I use keys to perform my combos and never the mouse... so I don't do as much stacking as others. None of my 4 accounts decks are configured the same with exception of heal decks.

For instance on my main bludgeon guy (who I have 8 combat decks, 2 utility decks):

One 1st deck: This is a total of 17 glyphs, keeps good rotation of skills but not a lot of flexibility. However, I'm NEVER waiting for attack. Buffs can be rotated through, locked on unlocked.
1 Body Slam (because if they can't move they can't hurt me)
2,3 Float for combos (bludgeon skills, parry, trip)
4 Ice arrow (for runners)
5 Healing touch (quick heal)
6 ignite weapon (for healing debuff)
7 inner strength
8 glancing blow
9 douse (never changes, but sometimes moves to slot 8)
0 Soothing Rain, Elysian illumination (Aoe Heal Over Time)

On deck 2 which I use for blades. I don't main blades, so this is more for doing a lot of damage with a healer backing me up on bosses. - 16 Glyphs

1 Body Slam (because if they can't move they can't hurt me)
2 Rend (stacks 3 times)​

3,4 Float for combos (blade skills, parry, trip)5 Coup De Grace

6 inner strength
7 glancing blow
8 douse (never changes, but sometimes moves to slot 8)
9 Healing Touch
0 Soothing Rain

On deck 3 ranged, and less critical as I'm at a distance. - 19 glyphs
1 Disabling Shot
2 Aimed shot
3,4 (Ranged skills, Gust and Static Discharge for combos, Searing ray)
5 Rapid shot
6 Shield of Earth
7 Inner strength
8 Berserkers stance
9 Ice Field
0 Healing Grace, Healing Touch, Healing Ray, Soothing Rain, Elysian illumination

On deck 4, Shield and Spear - 24 Glyphs
1 Deflection
2,3,4 Polearm skills, Ice fist, Shield Bash, Shield Charge
5 Skewer
6 Taunt
7 Glancing Blow, Bolster Stance, Fortify Defenses, Inner Strength
8 Douse or Purify
9 Healing Touch
0 Soothing Rain, Elysian illumination

On deck 8, Heals - all are locked
1 Healing Blast
2 Healing Ray
3 Healing Grace
4 Purify Burst or Healing Burst
5 Soothing Rain
6 Elysian illumination
7 some attack or debuff glyph, very situational
8 Douse
9 Ressurection (not used very much )
0 Healing Touch (for me)

so deck 5 through 7 I won't post because those are specialty decks but the reason I configure my decks this way is because:
1) I don't use mouse stacking
2) I combo on the keys that I feel comfortable reaching.
3) I can adjust these on the fly with simple swaps here and there to meet the situation.

Like @Vladamir Begemot I used to have decks with a lot of cards in them, and while they worked so I didn't have to constantly update. I found myself mousing too much, to dismiss cards I didn't want. However, my caster decks tend to range from 18 to 30 in contrast to my melee.

Also, keep in mind:

1) if the card is locked, is does not need to be in your deck on the right hand side. That only slows up the rotation for unlocked cards.
2) Even if you put a card into multiple floating slots, you only need to increase the number of instances in the deck higher than 1, if you want the ability to stack or combo it multiple times. For instance, where I will have my polearms skills stackable to 3 times, I put 3 cards in. Where as skills like Trip or Parry that I just want to execute immediately, I put one. My decks and floating slots are small enough that it will come back quickly.
3) To combo: you CANNOT have cards you want to combo both locked, at least one of the skills must float.
4) With the multiple decks, you can specialize and swap quickly. Remember to update your key mappings. Mine are Left-Alt+1 thru Left-Alt+0. My warlock for instance has main-type magic decks tied to each hotkey)
5) Adjust your decks to your playstyle (less is not always more regardless of other peoples opinions)
​

 

Thanks, I understand the system much better now. One key aspect I was missing was the deck. I understood the cards would come and go with the dynamic deck, but I didn't understand it was a virtual process of drawing from a virtual deck like a real life card deck. I was also confused because my heals just didn't seem to be getting any stronger with charging, but I guess charging/stacking making a spell stronger is dependent on the spell/ability?

I think I understand the mechanics for the most part now, now it's just a matter of optimizing the flow of a dyanmic deck for combat. So tricky with every ability available to put in the deck.

 

I feel like there is something I'm doing wrong though, cause I'm never running out of focus (though I do have alot of exp in the focus tree and the truth cloth armor set).

 

So say you have 20 cards you put on your dynamic hotbar. Will the drawing of those cards coming up on your hotbar be equally as frequent if you only have 20/26 (6 slugs) cards in your deck as if you have 26/26 cards, but only use 20 of the cards in your hotbar. So 6 of the cards are unused, but they're not slugs.

 

Sounds like you are doing something right by not running out of focus. If you want to run out, repeatedly beat on one locked glyph, so you use it over and over. Each use will make the next use cost more.

And heals should be more powerful with charging, perhaps you aren't seeing much because they need to be skilled up some?

 

I don't totally get the question, but just imagine a slug as a blank card. When it gets dealt it's still sitting there, but of no possible use.

 

So I'm saying there's two decks that are different with the same dynamic hotbar with 20 cards in it. 1 deck has 20/26 cards, 6 slugs. The other deck has 26 cards, but it only utilizes 20 of the cards in the hotbar. How will the drawing compare?

 

With the deck with 6 slugs, when a slug is drawn, it would enter into your hotbar, and you'd have to wait for it to fade away. Where if you have a card in your deck drawn (if it can be drawn?) that is not on your hotbar, it does not fill up a hotbar slot. But I'm wondering if there is some other type of penalty.

 

I'm honestly not under standing the question, but slugs mean you have too many floating slots and not enough cards in your deck.
If you are trying to build a deck similar to what I was posting.... where I use 1 card in a slot, that indicates it's a locked slot.

You don't want slugs, they will slow you down. So your option is to either lock more slots, or add more cards to your deck.

Deck1 from above:

 

I figured out more things, but still not how unused cards compared to slugs.
I'm guessing slugs are the same as unused deck cards, with the exception that unused deck cards don't fill up a slot space when drawn.

1) Even if you have 5 possible glyphs/cards for an ability, and you only have 2 of that glyph/card in the deck, you can't stack that glyph/card 5 times (on the hotbar), only 2.
2) Extra cards in your deck that aren't used will make the drawing process slower.
So say you have two decks. They both need 23 glyphs to not have slugs. You put 23 glyphs in one deck and all those glyphs have a corresponding glyph on the hotbar (if you have 5 ice arrow, you don't have to have 5 ice arrows on hotbar, just 1. How many you have on hotbar just affects which cards come up on that slot). The second deck has the same hotbar setup, but you put 67 more glyphs in the deck. The virtual glyphs/cards that aren't in the hotbar still take a drawing turn from the deck, so when you're in combat, the drawing of the glyphs in your hotbar takes longer.
3) Even if you have the minimum amount of glyphs/cards in a deck, say 23, but some of them don't correspond on the hotbar, they will make the drawing slower, than if all 23 corresponded to a card/glyph on the hotbar. They don't need to be on the hotbar, just correspond. (2 ice arrow in the hotbar with 5 ice arrows in your deck draws just as fast as 5 ice arrows on the hotbar with 5 in your deck) (but if you have 5 lightning in your deck and no lightning on the hotbar, you will draw slower).

 

The end result is the same - A
slug is drawn and put in one of your slots, you need to wait for a new draw.
A non-hotbar card is drawn, held in limbo, you need to wait for a new draw.

EDIT
The difference is that a slug will fill an empty slot, while a non-hotbar card will not.

 

Personally, in the combat deck page, I think instead of saying "deck" above the drawing deck it should have the word "drawing" in it, either "drawing deck" or "drawing pile". Imo, realizing my combat bar was drawing from that pile/deck made the mechanics much more intuitive.

 

Also note that if you want to lock a glyph to your hotbar and be able to fully charge it, DO NOT put any of those glyphs into your "Draw Pile", as each Draw Card diminishes the charge limit.

 

I'll drop a small guide I had made on here, where I try to show how to combine both methods of deck building. I have changed a bit my playstyle since, but it is a decent "General Idea". Just so you know, I have now changed it so I use 1 slot (G) for Offhand attack + Pull or a shield skill and pull, while slots Q, W, R, T have a freefill of my Polearms skills, where I attempt to 5/6 stack Puncture & Skewer (My main damage) along with Leg sweep if fighting small bunches (1-2) or Spinning attack if fighting more at the same time.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...k-building-cards-or-heat-why-not-both.126507/

 

Ok I think I understand the questions.

Think of the unlocked cards on your bar as a"Please deal here if possible" marker, nothing more.

You'll notice when you drag a glyph/card down to the bar, and then unlock it, it appears back in the right hand list of glyphs in your deck.

If you have a card in the deck, but no indicator on your bar of where you want it to come up, it means "deal it anywhere there is a blanks space." So if you don't have any blanks spaces, those glyphs won't be dealt, and I would assume are the same as slugs. To get access to those cards leave a random "Any Glyph" spot open.