Deck system strategy

I'm curious how most people are using the deck system. I don't consider myself a hardcore PvP or PvE player at the moment, so my perspective is somewhat limited. I'm finding that the majority of the time, with my Bludgeon / Heavy Armor build, I pretty much just use whatever the available glyph is. There is hardly any strategy on my part. Occasionally if I notice a defense glyph come up that is already active on my character I'll pass on using it depending on the time until its expires. Out of my 5 card deck, on average I only seem to have 1 - 2 non-slug glyphs available, which I pretty much use the moment they come up. The time at which I use my attacks and defense buffs are pretty much directly tied to the randomness of the hand I'm dealt.

For the most part I'm really enjoying the encounters, and I think there is promise in the deck system. I am also very much aware that we are in the early/limited release phase, and things will change (which is in-part why its worth writing posts like these at all). Honestly though my current strategy of using-the-next-available-glyph should only viable up to a point, for both PvE and PvP. There hasn't been a moment yet where I've felt like I really needed to up my (strategy) game to be successful. Using the next available non-slug glyph has so far been a successful strategy for casual PvP and PvE up to level 37. Which for PvP I attribute my wins and losses more to the player level, gear, and randomness of the deck than any notion that I am any more or less skilled than my opponent. I'd be curious to hear what some of the more PvP centric players think about this, and how/if their strategy is different.

Combat to me still feels like the equivalent of button mashing an arcade game; I don't really care what I'm pushing, I just know that doing it is a good strategy. The only difference is instead of having 6 buttons at the arcade, I effectively have 2 non-slug buttons in SotA. Its really not all that entertaining choosing between 1-2 glyphs at a time, which I suppose is a build specific complaint.

I wish I knew a better way to manage creating combos and removing uninteresting glyphs as they come up. In my experience, it feels awkward doing either task using the keyboard, or the mouse. I always am left feeling like I need an extra finger to drive the keyboard shortcuts, or extra hand for the mouse actions. As a result this sometimes makes me feel like the cost of doing such an action mid-combat is not something I want to do, and its not because I don't like the idea of combos, or glyph management, but its because the mechanic to make it happens seems sucky to me.

I wish I had a good suggestion to make this criticism more constructive.

 

I to attempt to cycle through my glyphs as fast as possible and what you said regarding player level, gear, and randomness of the deck as any notion that I am any more or less skilled than my opponent is exactly why i have no interest in participating in any pvp. Theres no risk/reward and there certianly isnt any thrill of victory or agony of defeat. There simply seems to be no reason to pvp other than to pvp, the fights certianly arnt more exciting than a company of elves at vertas pass ....

my new complaint is the targeting system, it makes an already unintuitive system even less inuitive, its really dificult to focus on your glyphs while targeting, it gets even more dificult to manage if your chasing or being chased, heck, just moving sometimes can be to much to manage ....

 

something else I dont like about it is that its impossible to say anything during combat.

 

For example, "Save me! I'm dying!" and "Tis but a flesh wound!" ?

 

R9 and R10 I tested Locked Deck , so R11 was the time for dynamic deck testing.
Locked deck is ok in PVE but in my opinion locked deck player is in disadvantage against a dynanic deck in PVP.
Cooldown penalties are way too long to be effective in pvp, and you cant create combos so is not a good option.

Dynamic deck leaves no room for tactis or strategy when you just have no control over what hits you have available.
So I ended pretty much smashing keys for the first available skills, so far I cant see any valid strategy apart from that.
Creating combos and removing slugs is way to unpleasant so I just decided to let it go.
I want to enjoy the real action and not just constantly rearranging my glyphs what seems too cumbersome when fighting.
I just cant understand how anyone can enjoy this game mechanic, its like driving a car at 100mph and looking to a map at the same time.
I just cant stand for that in PVP so I just didnt PVP at all this release.

 

I've been playing with the Deck system almost all the way - I've come to like it a lot more than the standard 'Locked Glyph' set because I thrive on chaotic game play and improvisation. About button mashing - by some stretch, Locked Glyphs are not exempt from button mashing, one would just wait for the cool-down to end before spamming it too, right? In Decks, the difference only is a matter of When it appears as opposed to When it is ready in Locked Glyphs, at least that is what I see!

I have not done a probability comparison on how often a particular skills will appear versus the amount of time it takes to cool-down in Locked setting (I'll get down to that in R12 probably, since Chris has already stated that Deck caps will be 25 then - this is a hugely important change!). Anecdotally, these skills appear a lot more available in Deck Strategy (you must have maximum Glyph Bar at 9 and Fastest Drawing Speed passives).

So about Deck Strategy - my play style is a close combat mage, with some heavy armour, but mostly light armour. At Level 47:

1. PvE Deck (30/30):
   • Flame Fist x 5, Fire Arrow x 5,
   • Death Touch x 5, Death Ray x5,
   • Healing Touch x 5,
   • Lightning Bolt x 5

When fighting normal enemies (elves, kobolds, skeletons), I usually take on about 3-5 at a time, elves being weaker, I take on as many as I can (5 - 10+). Because the UI is not streamlined at this point, I become transfixed like a turret, my play style is:

1. Character does not move at all, my eyes focused purely on the Glyph Bar
2. Using Keyboard and Mouse to create high level combos
3. Watching the skills light-up (in range) and throw once combo level achieved
4. Upon target kill, hit 'Tab' to find next enemy
5. Rinse repeat

It's still quite a lot of fun, because it's like a mini-game of sorts. I think there urgently needs much more refinement so I could actually "enjoy" the combat and look at my character in animation for a change. (Feedback submitted in a separate thread). The main reason for combos at this point is to reduce Focus cost (needs rebalancing) and extending spell effect (longer DOT/ damage?). When you successfully combo multiple spells in a continuous chain, you literally expend almost no focus and deal a handy amount of damage within a small time frame.

I stress again to the Devs that there should a instant combo key (upgrade all similar glyphs on press). If we want to do fancy complex combos, we can manage that manually. This will cut down the amount of attention on the Glyph Bar.

The time when I really have a lot of fun with Deck Strategy is when I fight (solo of course) a Single Difficult Enemy - This being the Lich Fighter (as of R11). Because the enemy is a real threat to a lightly armoured character, I have to think tactically and adjust myself. My game play becomes something like this instead:

1. Setup combos while watching distance
2. Kiting and estimating time to cast spells
3. Applying as much damage in the windows of opportunity
4. Healing the damage I've taken in the windows of opportunity
5. Watch my own health and focus bar constantly
6. When my Deck decides to hand me all the wrong cards based on the battle's outcome, I keep my distance and keep discarding

I should say that it's very rare for me to get a bad string of cards, maybe 1 out of 20 battles? And these battles are only when I'm fighting a challenging creature.

I won't comment on PvP because right now it's so imbalanced, but I'll try to do a more detailed analysis in R12 once Magic gets reviewed for scaling with levels.

 

Definitely agree with this. I wish there was a better way to manage this mid-fight.

 

Thanks for the comment Sunswords! You are right about the button mashing. Its not exclusive to deck system. I think my complaint here was stemmed from the fact I only had 1-2 glyphs available and to me exasperated the problem. I actually noticed I hadn't invested as many points in the Heavy Armor skill Endurance which reduces slug count. Its a bit better now. It looks like on average I hae 2-3 glyphs, which is a noticeable improvement. I still sort of feel as though my options are limited and I just end up using the first available glyph. I probably need to invest more points into a larger deck hand and see if that experience is better for me.

You mentioned 'tab' targeting. I found it hard even with 'tab' targeting knowing who my actual target was. The red glow around the enemy isn't quite enough for me. It might be because I am red-green color blind, but I think the targeting could be improved some.

I have fought some of the Liches you mentioned, and found them difficult. I was in a sizable group though, so my perspective is probably different. I'll have to try out your strategy. Thanks again for your thoughts!

 

Oh I forgot to mention - the Devs have said that slugs are going away! (we can all rejoice!)

 

or: "Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! Khazâd! Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!"

 

Great couple of posts from the OP and Sunsword. Just my halfpenny's worth. I've been playing hybrid with semi heavy armour (no breastplate), spells, sword with shield. I know it's a bit of an odd combo and certainly not the maxed out melee set up that most people have gone with but I wanted to discover how possible "Combat Mage" was. With the right focus skills I fizzle about 30% of the time at level 31 which for my set up is pretty acceptable as I hit most of the time for good damage with sword and I'm a lot tougher than a standard light armour all magic build. The build does give a lot of flexibility but also requires reasonably careful management of my skills. I tend to lock four so I always have access to heals and fire arrows and let the other 5 ride.

I tend to find that I do play my spells pretty tactically and I do find myself running combos or stacking quite frequently so I don't think I've had quite the same level of frustration with the deck system that all melee players might have had. That being said I do have some gripes and suggestions:

1. Please can we have auto-combos. Either pop the combo up at a % chance modifiable by skill or allow for single click to combine...click left side for combo, right side for stack. Either of these two options would make combat more fluid.

2. Variety!! I know at the moment we're heavily in alpha but I'd like to see a much greater variety in spell effects so that spells can be used more tactically. Multi-root, limited tp, dash, confuse, invis., sneak attack, just more options than hit or root which is pretty much all we have at the moment.

3. Chaining. I've seen this done well in other games where pulling down one spell automatically gives you access to more powerful spells in the same chain allowing you to deliver a wide vareity of different attacks and effects. It would be great to see something like this in SotA.

4. Spell Caster items. Damage resistance rubbish in your light armour...want to last more than two minutes in a melee without having a halberd enema? No problem sir! For a small price (you may have to sell your children and give me your wife as a plaything) I can sell you this ring which will protect you against damage....honest!

I don't think the deck system is really to blame for the key mashing problem per se. I just think we need a little more thought and variety around combat.

DF.

 

What you do find fun I just find BORING. how can I imagine going to a dungeon to just sit down next to a mob and start rearranging random glyphs?
Is this the ultimate combat system SotA has to offer? Really? Seriously?

Let me know what you think about Dynamic deck when playing PVP. ( Do you think you will manage killing a real player just staring at your deck?)

 

@Borg - I actually agree that something is wrong if I have be transfixed on the Glyph Bar - it's the unintended kind of fun I feel like I'm playing Bejewelled or something and not SotA during those moments.

During my limited PvP experience, it's definitely more complicated because you're battling a human brain on the other side - I ended up more like scenario 2 (kiting and discarding a lot). And panicking at times

 

Deck system is not the problem, I'm up for the chaining combo system.
The problem is the way we have to deal with this random delivering, macro creation , removing slugs we are forced to do manually.

Now to be serious, its time to give some REAL FEEDBACK about the dynamic deck system.

I was going to post some interesting info here, but as some people would consider it as some kind of exploit
I'm not going to post here. But I can give some hints, you don't need to be so smart to figure out.

How to deal with Slugs.
Can we blame people for buying Razer keyboards?
If you guys give us unpleasant game mechanics people is forced to find ways to overcome them.

 

That's why I use a fixed deck. I'm too old and slow to do anything fancy. I know it's less powerful, but I like to watch the action, not stare at the Glyph Bar. It's been good enough to get me to level 39 doing PVE on my own, so it's not terrible.
BTW, I did that without any potions or healing whatsoever (apart from normal out-of-combat healing), using light armour. I find it's more fun for me that way.

 

Slugs just need a 1 second cooldown then auto reroll.

 

Totally hear you on this, and agree with the unpleasant game mechanic. I sure hope I don't find myself considering purchasing one of these fancy pants Razer keyboards just so I can overcome a broken game mechanic.

 

by the way, I deal with slugs by speeding up the draw and slowing the discard as well as maxing my hand size, in conjuction with mind wipe, I almost, a say almost lol , always have a glph to attack with, usually the one i want, whirling blades lol .....

 

I found the ultimate solution dealing with slugs and random glyphs drawing.
Totally removing them from view as if they never existed....
Oh man what joy.
I wish I could even remove skill particle effects.
I found every skill has its own animation so there is no need for particles.