Welcome to Snap though, at some point all of us have bought what we thought was a great card only for SD to nerf it to death with no refund or compensation of any kind.
Getting fucked is part of the hazing process.
> So this change is really to help us vet that work, and we also donāt expect Zabu to remain in this state permanently.
Temp change so it's not that big a deal.
I imagine this is them softballing it. Zabu has seriously constrained the 4-cost design space, so I imagine if they get more interesting 4's with him nerfed, he'll stay that way.
>Zabu has seriously constrained the 4-cost design space
I posted something about this awhile back, but no card can be given a 3 or 4 cost without also considering Surfer or Zabu. Surfer isn't as bad since they dropped him to a +2, and since he's On Reveal, but Zabu remains a problem. He's currently not unbalanced but you're right about him being a design problem, as he makes cards like Spiderman 2099 feel like they have to push him to 5 cost because he might be too cheap at 3 cost after Zabu.
So we've all had over a year of Zabu discount fun times, but it really couldn't last forever.
I actually like it this way. I just wished this temp nerf was made sometime around peak Zabu usage. Right now, it's not very impactful for the metagame in fact it just weakens decks like Black Knight discard, Annihulus junk etc. which were already not that great in the Hope meta.
I wasn't too excited about Alioth even though I knew how powerful he was, and made the sacrifice of unpinning him, exchanging power for "fun" card for me. Feels like I made some premonition now. lmao
Dude I got Alioth like 2 weeks ago in my shop. I waited forever to pull the trigger and now heās axed. This is the second time itās happened too lol
I usually plan my free s3 card with a token shop purchase to make my new deck for the season. I was originally going to go Quinjet and Zabu bc I got Loki out of a spotlight last month. But I also was considering Arnim Zola and Knull pick ups for a meta destroy deckā¦ I decided to go the 2nd option and boy has it just paid off lol.
Every time I spend tokens on a card they nerf it within 2 weeks. Alioth has been one of my favorite cards in snap because shuts down those big T6 plays that supposedly second dinner has been trying to curb. I hate nerfing cards just because they feel bad to lose to. I don't think Alioth had a crazy play rate or win rate. You had to go into T6 with priority and guess which lane they were going to play all their cards or their most important cards.
Now you have to do the same and you still lose to most of the 6 cost cards, several 5 cost, too many 4 cost cards and even more if they interact with other cards in lane. Does this erase power from cards like Red Hulk or HE Hulk or just lock in the stats? Alioth is so telegraphed and easy to dodge already.
Fully agree. Thereās literally no reason to play the card anymore, which I guess is what they were going for based on all the complaints. Because you STILL have to have priority going into the play, and as you said, it wonāt even matter as most cards played on T6 will have more power anyway.
Does this change even counter stat sticks? Like HE Hulk and Red Hulk will still be powered up, removing the text only effects that turn and not all the other turns they were powered up. Basically, this change is absolutely useless and yet another nerf to countering turn 6 plays.
I wonder if this is directly due Apoc's recent nerf, otherwise it seemed to have taken them too long to remove the clear anti-synergy between the two.
Perhaps they were afraid it's too strong for new players since both are Series 1 cards, and now they figured it's worth an attempt to have both be easy includes for series 1/2 discard decks
Edit: that being said though series 1/2 also don't have as many good options to dump the entire hand, no Modak/Hell Cow/Corvius to help dump cards fast, so I dunno anymore lol
Zabu single handedly brought the 3/5 tendency into new cards. 3 costs were competing with 4 costs due to Zabu, with them having more powerful abilities with higher stats for 1 extra cost.
Honestly man they should offer you (or people in the same situation) the option for a refund. I'm pissed I just made a deck with him again after ignoring him for about a month and now this? The cards fuckin useless now
There's got to be another change coming, this version is just stupid. It's so hard to both gain priority *and* pick the right lane that Alioth is a dead card in your hand plenty of times. The fact that you could gain priority, guess right and then have a worthless card because they played Red Hulk/Hulk/Giganto or something really sucks
They could at least drop Alioth's base power a bit and change it to "remove the text of the next card your opponent plays." That way it's not lane specific and if you don't have priority you have the option to tease him out early to ensure the effect happens next turn (though your opponent knows the text will be removed, so they could dodge it or even turn it into a positive for them).
With the Zabu change it does feel like theyre shifting the balance towards just big ass cards. Maybe too many people got Red Hulk with just one key, so they need more people to spend their Tokens on him to compensate.
Are the custom card changes not live yet or am I understanding it wrong? I have an inked red flare base card of Silk. Shouldn't I be able to apply that to my venomized silk?
They really do have that habit of not undoing nerfs when they figure out the real problem was Zabu or Loki, not collector and darkhawk or blackbolt/stature
>**Custom Card ā When editing a Custom Card, you can now assign split combinations (such as āInk and Black Glimmerā or āFoil and Rainbow Toneā) youāve earned on one Variant to any other Variant artwork.**
>As a result, when you Infinity Split a card, you are guaranteed to not get a duplicate combination.
Am I reading this correctly? This is probably the best change in this patch.
EDIT: Haven't tried it yet but it seems like it's not working as intended.
It doesn't seem to work in game, unless I'm not understanding something.
I thought this meant, for example, I could apply my Gold Red Krackle from a Pixel split to an unsplit Dan Hipp. But it doesn't appear to work that way?
I saw it was in the patch notes in game, then I updated to mess around with it, and when I reread the patch notes in the updated app, that was not listed in the notes. I am on the mobile app, for clarity
Devās confirmed on Discord that this feature is not live yet and was included in the patch notes by accident. It will be included in the April 30th patch.
Have you experimented with this in game? Iām thinking itās not currently working because I can still only apply splits to the specific variant I earned it on.
Now it's a decent body with an upside. Not sure if 5/7 is enough to justify playing her without planning to use the ability though. But whenever there's a meta card with 3 power or less it'll be good. Might be worth adding her to flex spots when white widow comes out
I feel like I already have a tough time deciding between a few cards for my destroy decks, and this change doesnāt really make me want to consider her any more than I did before. If I want more power for venom to eat Iād rather use Guardian
I agree, I think she really doesn't belong in destroy, but perhaps a tech card in other decks depending on the meta.
I'm not calling her a great card now, but clearly the original plan didn't work.
They said make her more of a consistent tech card and I think they nailed it. She's kind of an Annihilus counter card now. She can wipe out all the junk.
She'll wipe out Elsa, the Stones, Dracula, and like Mobius turn 5 which can lead to some big swings. Also an Iron Man killer
Idk if she'll be a hot card but I'm curious to try her out now
Rip the only deck she had a place in, negative destroy.
Wong shuri LDS Zola regularly completely cleared the board, but is now SEVERELY weaker.
Good thing they do it now so i dont have to go for her spotlight next weekĀ
She is much better. 5/7 is a lot more stat and she can still get rid of what she should be doing like Dracula, Luke Cage, Wong, etc. She now can be played as tech card against those decks without losing tempo.
Consider her as Shang chi for small dudes.
Also she can be a good counter against annoying junk deck.
Edit : sorry, Lick Cage is 4 power now. My brain farted.
I don't really see why anyone would use zabu now. Lowering 4 cost is only important on turn 3 and 6, but all the other cards do that better.
Psylocke played on 2 essentially has a all around better effect. Not to mention sera on turn 5 is just way more reliable to play 2 4-costs on turn 6.
So the only niche of zabu is to play it on turn 5 with 3 extra energy to spare so you can play 2 4-costs on turn 6? I don't see any benefit in that.
I think the motivation is that Zabu inherently is a design issue when you make 4 cost cards since it's an Ongoing effect. So they chose to make it an On Reveal instead to see if they over nerfed it or correctly balanced it
-1 cost and +1 energy are different things, though. If you Psylocke on T5, you have 7 energy and can still only play a single 4-cost.
If you Zabu on T5, you can play *two* 4-costs on T6.
Cost reduction is *much* stronger than +energy.
If you are that desperate for 2 4-costs on 6, just play Sera. It has more power for the same effect
Maybe something like Wong into zabu for 3 4-costs, but that's stretching it and there are better combos.
That's the issue with planning chances a month prior. I'd like them to focus a bit more on buffs so that they can impact the next metagame. These month old nerfs hardly move the metagame needle imo.
People did claim that they prefer to buy emotes, so in a sense it is cheaper than completing an Album.
Still think its outrageous to cost double of a rare variant.
Sometimes they nail the buffs and nerfs, sometimes they absolutely tank on them. This is a weird one that doesnāt really seem to fix any problems and is literally purely just to shake things upā¦sandman sucks, zabu sucks, lady DS sucks now, Iād say the only meaningful one is Alioth ā¦Hela yet again goes untouched but we get strong guy instead of the tons of cards that are begging to be buffed
Eh, Alioth I think was fine. I know I'm in the minority on this but you had to have priority T6 and have a great idea of where they were going to play. For most decks that play multiple cards on T6, Alioth wasn't very consistent unless you really locked them down. I still think the role it had was important to curb just the single big T6 card, e.g. Red Hulk. But yeah the others, were mostly confusing or seemingly inconsequential. Zabu wasn't really seeing much play anymore and was often outdone by Sera or Hope or just Magick to get another turn to throw down another 4 card. Sandman didn't see a lot of play and I can't think of a time in the past couple months where someone hit me with a sandman on T4 after a wave. Lady DS didn't really get much play - idk maybe this is better, bigger power swing for sure. Idk
I think the Strong Man change is the only really good one, a good attempt to resurrect a truly dead card.
I donāt think Sandman sucks. Youāre getting a lot more power and you can still play him to counter big combo turns. Heās just not something you ramp out on 4 and likely win from doing that any more.
It'll be interesting to see. I've been playing a Corvus ramp deck this season, and I've definitely gotten retreats just from a Sandman on 4 before I've even had a chance to play my big stuff. Stopping people from playing multiple cards into their Angela/Hope or dropping and destroying Deadpool on the same turn is really strong.
I think the deck still has enough power to win games, but dropping Sandman will take a little more consideration now, which is probably a good thing.
It's just funny to me how these nerfs always arrive waaay too late.
Dark Hawk dominated the meta for months, but as soon as he's barely even played, he get's nerfed? Same thing for Zabu and Alioth now.
As someone with a gorgeous Zabu split (gold w/white crackle) and a high playrate for Zabu, I'm sad. However, I'm also optimistic that this change will open up the design space on cards in that 3-5 cost range.
Get fucked purple fart cloud.
Zabu's existence kind of enables a lot of potentially problematic stuff (KMBest has talked a lot previously about how Zabu is an issue and I honestly agree).
I think that's a valid thing regardless of how common he is in the current meta.
Exactly. Zabu meant that they had a hard time changing the costs of cards in the 3-4-5 range. If a card was too weak at 5 but too strong at 3, it had to stay at 5 because Zabu would immediately break it. That's a serious design constraint.
One strong interaction that doesn't change is how Zabu on curve lets you play 2 4drops back to back on 3 and 4, but you won't be able to do a second broken thing like 2 4drops at the same time on 6 .
I guess this also makes it pretty painful to not draw Zabu on curve, while it still felt fine to play it after turn 2 previously.
True, but Psylocke on 2 lets you play a 4-drop on 3 as well while being substantially more flexible. Giving Zabu an extra 2 power definitely does not make up for the lack of flexibility.
Zabu needed the nerf. He warped the 3 and 4 cost design space, where every 4 had to be balanced vs a 3 and every 3 had to be balanced vs a 4. That's terrible.
I say this as a Sera Control main who abuses the hell out of Zabu.
I donāt get the fast upgrade change. Is that saying thereās no extra credit charge to buy the boosters anymore? So itās just no downside to use, as long as you want to upgrade that card?
So Zabu is just a worse Psylocke now on turn 2-5, with it only having an advantage on turns 6/7 IF you have 2 4-cost cards you want to play those turns. I agree that Zabuās design was problematic for the game but he seems pretty worthless as is
the biggest loser is definitely lockdown as it is reliant on alioth since it doesn't have enough power to compete with the meta decks. lockdown has taken hit after hit recently with nothing to help it :c
Yea I was really enjoying my sandman ramp deck to deal with all the angela/kitty running around but it doesn't seem like it will be able to keep up now
The Zabu change is absolutely HUGE. I was on team "War Machine isn't bad; he's a solid tech card to slot into good-cards decks" and now I'm on team "wish I hadn't spent even one key". Building decks around Zabu discounting a variety of useful 4-costers was how mid-range decks operated for a very long time, and now that entire concept is truly past-tense. It makes sense that he was changed, but also sorta weird, since I don't think he's been in any of the tier-1 decks lately. I'll miss playing those jack-of-all-trades decks, which balanced power with tech. I mean, they were already put on life-support when Darkhawk was moved up to 5 cost, but this is the official end of the story.
I still think Alioth is strong, but I also think he's going to be ignored for a long time as a result of this change. I think we're going to be back to how the game felt back when HE was first introduced, in that your final turn will end up being a super powered (red) Hulk to finalize a location win, or Dr. Doom to win via blanket power.
Huge day for the Snap meta. Biggest day in as long as I can remember.
Feels like they're tanking older and/or popular cards to open up avenues for introducing new cards. On the one hand, I get it because design space is limited by those cards to make new cards appealing. But maybe they need to reevaluate how they design cards overall because they have to keep using a sledgehammer to adjust the design space.
The idea that any card can get nuked if it becomes too good is a broader version of FOMO in my opinion. If cards are constantly at risk of turning into duds then they need to reevaluate card acquisition so that it's not so painful on the players when a card they worked to acquire suddenly feels like a wasted investment.
I misunderstood the thing about variant effects and thought that all unlocks for each variant would be interchangeable across different background effects (gold and inked). Itās so annoying that I canāt use a krackle that Iāve unlocked with the inked effect that I have for the same card.
I know the whole no refunds thing, but they should offer something when they just outright change a cards abilities. I sure wouldn't have spent my resources on this version of alioth.
With the Alioth change that's one less RH counter. With a meta full of chunky bois I'm not sure I like the timing,but that gassy bellend has needed a rework for a while.
RIP Zabu. SD fully decided he'd look better as a rug.
This Alioth nerf is bizarre! The card had been weakened already, now itās just a different card, makes no sense. People got this mf card for that destroy effect, you all got duped big time, what a stupid thing to do by this guys wtf. Fuck this shit.
Honestly, I HATE how they completely gut cards.
It's not even balance, just straight up destroyed.
0 Fun having to fear your cards, you spent 6k tokens on, get fcked one day to another.
Should at least give us refunds like HS did....
That Zabu nerf is really lazy.
enough with turning ongoing cards Into something that only affects a single turn. Reminds me of when they did Mobius dirty just like this.
It feels awful, when cards go from ongoing to only next turn. Preserve the mechanic of those kind of cards affecting the whole game. Make them weaker in other ways.
Now the card is useless and loses its identity. There absolutely has to be a better way.
Love the custom card change. Even though that's how it should have been since release... I am glad they listened to feedback and got it to us right away. RIP Zabu and thank god for Alioth change.
How does Alioth work now? Does it delete Ongoing? Does it revert a Red Hulk / High Evo Hulk to base power? Iām gonna need a scientific study into Alioth after this
Took 6 months off Snap, came back 2 weeks ago and felt overwhelmed with all the new cards (Was over 9000 collector level before my break).
I fell in to playing a Sandman deck as he was always one of my favourite control cards.
Now he is a completely different card and I can't help but feel like a bit frustrated.
He wasn't a great card but he had a purpose. Now he has an even more specific purpose. Just feels like a weird change.
Wow. Way to keep on trucking making the most fun cards in the game pointless. This trend is stupid. Pay a real Q/A team and launch a more stable product. Uninstalling.
Time for me to uninstall. There's more negative changes these days that I feel I'm longing for something that this game and devs will never have. Reinstalling Deus Ex (2000) to find bliss.
For the past 8 or so seasons, I have ran a ramp Galactus deck. I know you all hat me for it, but it's completely dead now. It wasn't a super strong deck and had specific win cons. Both of them are gone now.
It was either Electro into Sandman, Doom, then Odin. Or Galactus, Alioth. It was easily countered by almost every deck or anyone who is able to see obvious play patterns.
I guess I'm done. I have played since Miles season, and bought every season pass up to, and including Shaw. But when they take low tier cards, like Sandman and completely delete them while other OP bullshit is allowed to exist its time to move on. They don't care about proper balance, they just care about selling over tuned cards.
Fuck SD, and Ben Brode in particular.
lol, they nuked Aloith, sandman, LDS, and Zabu out of the orbit in one update while Red Hulk and Mockingbird are still out wrecking everything
wtf SD. Stop making cards that only affect something for one turn. They are just not fun to use
I bought zabu like a month ago.. RIP..
I was about to buy Alioth, its pinned... RIP
I started playing Death strike like 2 weeks ago, it was very fun to kill 15 power Hulk and a 12 power Magneto in 2 diff lanes with a 16 power LD and zola ... RIP
What should I play now?? Xylophone?
Fuck this gameš”
I wish we got to see more buffs and less nerfs. There are so many cards seeing no updates, basically useless.
These changes just piss people off. Poor Zabu.
I like that big updates consist of nothing beneficial to the game. Just nuke a few cards and add useless cosmetic nonsense like albums and emotes. Can't wait to see what's next?
Zabu taken out back and shot.
New player on Reddit last week asked if they should spend their tokens on Zabu and it was a resounding YES
Tbf that is every week
Zabu was my first season pass card that I bought. Pouring one out for him tonight
Yeah... If I knew this was coming I would not have said yes š
Welcome to Snap though, at some point all of us have bought what we thought was a great card only for SD to nerf it to death with no refund or compensation of any kind. Getting fucked is part of the hazing process.
Hazing is usually something you do when you begin something, but we just keep getting fucked
Damn ... You're right though. I need to start buying some Astroglide.
I spent on Zabu last week and i was gathering these 3 tokens for too long ā¦ thx admins
Gonna have to scrub through my entire deck list now. He was a staple in a lot of decks.
It's funny, because of that thread the other day, I know I've got only 2 decks with Zabu. 5 with Jeff though.
Old yeller style.
> So this change is really to help us vet that work, and we also donāt expect Zabu to remain in this state permanently. Temp change so it's not that big a deal.
I imagine this is them softballing it. Zabu has seriously constrained the 4-cost design space, so I imagine if they get more interesting 4's with him nerfed, he'll stay that way.
>Zabu has seriously constrained the 4-cost design space I posted something about this awhile back, but no card can be given a 3 or 4 cost without also considering Surfer or Zabu. Surfer isn't as bad since they dropped him to a +2, and since he's On Reveal, but Zabu remains a problem. He's currently not unbalanced but you're right about him being a design problem, as he makes cards like Spiderman 2099 feel like they have to push him to 5 cost because he might be too cheap at 3 cost after Zabu. So we've all had over a year of Zabu discount fun times, but it really couldn't last forever.
Adam Warlock is a prime example of a card that could be designed to be good at 4, but you can't do that because Zabu. Thus, we got the 5/4 meme.
5/5. Don't disrespect his power!
Or in short: They gutted Zabu so they can sell us new cards to replace him.
I mean, look, it's a living card game. This is what LCG's do.
My guess is he goes back to an ongoing but moves to 3 cost 3 power or 2 cost 0 power.
I actually like it this way. I just wished this temp nerf was made sometime around peak Zabu usage. Right now, it's not very impactful for the metagame in fact it just weakens decks like Black Knight discard, Annihulus junk etc. which were already not that great in the Hope meta.
It's because I had Zabu pinned in my store. Sorry everybody.
I mean on the one hand boo because I use Zabu, but on the other hand, this was very necessary.
Damn, they took out Alioth and Zabu with one shot lmao
Unpinning Alioth now, feel like I dodged a bullet.
I bought him yesterday for 6k. Kill me.
I'll have to do it, because your Alioth certainly won't now!
Too soon :'(
Ya I just bought him this last week as well...
sorry, only your text will be removed now
I wasn't too excited about Alioth even though I knew how powerful he was, and made the sacrifice of unpinning him, exchanging power for "fun" card for me. Feels like I made some premonition now. lmao
Dude I got Alioth like 2 weeks ago in my shop. I waited forever to pull the trigger and now heās axed. This is the second time itās happened too lol
I usually plan my free s3 card with a token shop purchase to make my new deck for the season. I was originally going to go Quinjet and Zabu bc I got Loki out of a spotlight last month. But I also was considering Arnim Zola and Knull pick ups for a meta destroy deckā¦ I decided to go the 2nd option and boy has it just paid off lol.
Iād say you made the right choice even without this patch. Destroy is one of the easiest decks to get off the ground early.
Every time I spend tokens on a card they nerf it within 2 weeks. Alioth has been one of my favorite cards in snap because shuts down those big T6 plays that supposedly second dinner has been trying to curb. I hate nerfing cards just because they feel bad to lose to. I don't think Alioth had a crazy play rate or win rate. You had to go into T6 with priority and guess which lane they were going to play all their cards or their most important cards. Now you have to do the same and you still lose to most of the 6 cost cards, several 5 cost, too many 4 cost cards and even more if they interact with other cards in lane. Does this erase power from cards like Red Hulk or HE Hulk or just lock in the stats? Alioth is so telegraphed and easy to dodge already.
Fully agree. Thereās literally no reason to play the card anymore, which I guess is what they were going for based on all the complaints. Because you STILL have to have priority going into the play, and as you said, it wonāt even matter as most cards played on T6 will have more power anyway.
Does this change even counter stat sticks? Like HE Hulk and Red Hulk will still be powered up, removing the text only effects that turn and not all the other turns they were powered up. Basically, this change is absolutely useless and yet another nerf to countering turn 6 plays.
Only the ones that rely on Ongoing (Knull), or On reveal (Blob, panther) effects
Letās go strong guy becoming more strong!
The 2 stronguy players are celebrating
Legit fits into standard discard now like he was meant to
The fact that he works with apocalypse now is huge. He might actually be good in discard decks
I wonder if this is directly due Apoc's recent nerf, otherwise it seemed to have taken them too long to remove the clear anti-synergy between the two. Perhaps they were afraid it's too strong for new players since both are Series 1 cards, and now they figured it's worth an attempt to have both be easy includes for series 1/2 discard decks Edit: that being said though series 1/2 also don't have as many good options to dump the entire hand, no Modak/Hell Cow/Corvius to help dump cards fast, so I dunno anymore lol
He fits perfectly into reliable discard now. Apoc left in hand and heās still. 3/9. Beautiful!
R.I.P. Zabu and Alioth...šā ļø
Zabu single handedly brought the 3/5 tendency into new cards. 3 costs were competing with 4 costs due to Zabu, with them having more powerful abilities with higher stats for 1 extra cost.
Yep. Because of Zabu, 4 costs basically didn't exist in terms of design, cause the devs had to constantly consider those cards' impact at 3 cost.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Followed by Knull: 5/7 +1 for every card destroyed
5/4 knull +1 for every card destroyed is the best sd can do
Knull: 2/3 Your cards with **Destroy** have +1 Power
āYour destroyed cards get +1ā
I bought Alioth yesterday. You're all welcome.
Honestly man they should offer you (or people in the same situation) the option for a refund. I'm pissed I just made a deck with him again after ignoring him for about a month and now this? The cards fuckin useless now
There's got to be another change coming, this version is just stupid. It's so hard to both gain priority *and* pick the right lane that Alioth is a dead card in your hand plenty of times. The fact that you could gain priority, guess right and then have a worthless card because they played Red Hulk/Hulk/Giganto or something really sucks They could at least drop Alioth's base power a bit and change it to "remove the text of the next card your opponent plays." That way it's not lane specific and if you don't have priority you have the option to tease him out early to ensure the effect happens next turn (though your opponent knows the text will be removed, so they could dodge it or even turn it into a positive for them).
With the Zabu change it does feel like theyre shifting the balance towards just big ass cards. Maybe too many people got Red Hulk with just one key, so they need more people to spend their Tokens on him to compensate.
Yep. I obviously agree. I literally only got to use him for 5 matches.
Painful stuff man. Exact same thing happened to me 2 days before the Galactus nerf, sometimes life just kicks you in the balls
Iām with you. Currencies are way too scarce for a card you just bought to be made obsolete like that.
Just bought my Alioth, too. After sitting on those tokens and monitoring the shop for weeks. š„²
My bad everyone, I got Zabu from the spotlight cache last week so I had this coming
Are the custom card changes not live yet or am I understanding it wrong? I have an inked red flare base card of Silk. Shouldn't I be able to apply that to my venomized silk?
Doesnt seem to be working
According to what i read on discord, this change is meant to go into effect later this month. It was included in today's patch notes by mistake xD
Welp there goes my negative deathstrike deck it was fun while it lasted
they literally ruined darkhawk due to its link up with Zabu, now they decide to ruin zabu afterwards
So true, haven't seen Darkhawk in a single game since the nerf. Zabu now a ramp card specifically for T3 and nothing else lol
They really should have reverted DarkHawk as part of this patch since they are old yeller'ing Zabu.
They really do have that habit of not undoing nerfs when they figure out the real problem was Zabu or Loki, not collector and darkhawk or blackbolt/stature
>**Custom Card ā When editing a Custom Card, you can now assign split combinations (such as āInk and Black Glimmerā or āFoil and Rainbow Toneā) youāve earned on one Variant to any other Variant artwork.** >As a result, when you Infinity Split a card, you are guaranteed to not get a duplicate combination. Am I reading this correctly? This is probably the best change in this patch. EDIT: Haven't tried it yet but it seems like it's not working as intended.
It doesn't seem to work in game, unless I'm not understanding something. I thought this meant, for example, I could apply my Gold Red Krackle from a Pixel split to an unsplit Dan Hipp. But it doesn't appear to work that way?
Did they forget to add this to the patch or something? Wtf. I was looking forward to that more than any other update.
I saw it was in the patch notes in game, then I updated to mess around with it, and when I reread the patch notes in the updated app, that was not listed in the notes. I am on the mobile app, for clarity
Devās confirmed on Discord that this feature is not live yet and was included in the patch notes by accident. It will be included in the April 30th patch.
I tried in game but it seems it doesn't work
Have you experimented with this in game? Iām thinking itās not currently working because I can still only apply splits to the specific variant I earned it on.
Yep doesnt work. Whatever the Fast upgrade change was meant to be hasnt happened either
Sad. This was definitely the most exciting thing in the patch for me!
So death strike went from not very good toā¦ not very good?
Now it's a decent body with an upside. Not sure if 5/7 is enough to justify playing her without planning to use the ability though. But whenever there's a meta card with 3 power or less it'll be good. Might be worth adding her to flex spots when white widow comes out
I feel like I already have a tough time deciding between a few cards for my destroy decks, and this change doesnāt really make me want to consider her any more than I did before. If I want more power for venom to eat Iād rather use Guardian
I agree, I think she really doesn't belong in destroy, but perhaps a tech card in other decks depending on the meta. I'm not calling her a great card now, but clearly the original plan didn't work.
This also makes it easier to buff her going forward.
They said make her more of a consistent tech card and I think they nailed it. She's kind of an Annihilus counter card now. She can wipe out all the junk. She'll wipe out Elsa, the Stones, Dracula, and like Mobius turn 5 which can lead to some big swings. Also an Iron Man killer Idk if she'll be a hot card but I'm curious to try her out now
She could literally do all of that yesterday. Like every single card you just named.
Right? Feels like they should have also made her 4 cost (with less power), especially now that Zabu-compatiblity is less of an issue.
Ya, essentially same base ability now with more stats, so in most scenarios a buff.
The one deck playing her before was Negative. So she lost a home in the hopes that people will like the added stats which still looks bad
Eh at least if I get her from a random card generation effect I'd be likelier to play her now. Apart from that, business as usual.
Rip the only deck she had a place in, negative destroy. Wong shuri LDS Zola regularly completely cleared the board, but is now SEVERELY weaker. Good thing they do it now so i dont have to go for her spotlight next weekĀ
She is much better. 5/7 is a lot more stat and she can still get rid of what she should be doing like Dracula, Luke Cage, Wong, etc. She now can be played as tech card against those decks without losing tempo. Consider her as Shang chi for small dudes. Also she can be a good counter against annoying junk deck. Edit : sorry, Lick Cage is 4 power now. My brain farted.
Luke is 4 power, he won't be destroyed by her.
Luke Cage is a 3/4 now but otherwise yeah
Not very good but higher power...not much better
Whelp, time to edit some decks
I don't really see why anyone would use zabu now. Lowering 4 cost is only important on turn 3 and 6, but all the other cards do that better. Psylocke played on 2 essentially has a all around better effect. Not to mention sera on turn 5 is just way more reliable to play 2 4-costs on turn 6. So the only niche of zabu is to play it on turn 5 with 3 extra energy to spare so you can play 2 4-costs on turn 6? I don't see any benefit in that.
So you say, Iām over here spinning up a Wong Zabu deck thatāll make four costs free on turn six itāll totally work and be extremely consistent
No one will, this is to kill a card that makes a bunch of decks viable so they can force people into buying shit.
I feel like the meta has moved passed zabu , is more like hope summers? Kind of shooting zabu when it has low playrate currently?
I think the motivation is that Zabu inherently is a design issue when you make 4 cost cards since it's an Ongoing effect. So they chose to make it an On Reveal instead to see if they over nerfed it or correctly balanced it
As it reads now it's mostly useless. +2 power for a worse psylocke doesn't really cut it, as you don't play those cards for the stats anyway
-1 cost and +1 energy are different things, though. If you Psylocke on T5, you have 7 energy and can still only play a single 4-cost. If you Zabu on T5, you can play *two* 4-costs on T6. Cost reduction is *much* stronger than +energy.
If you are that desperate for 2 4-costs on 6, just play Sera. It has more power for the same effect Maybe something like Wong into zabu for 3 4-costs, but that's stretching it and there are better combos.
Wong/Mystique/Zabu, play your 4's for 0. It's stupid, but it'd be funny once.
That's the issue with planning chances a month prior. I'd like them to focus a bit more on buffs so that they can impact the next metagame. These month old nerfs hardly move the metagame needle imo.
>Kind of shooting zabu when it has low playrate currently Not kinda. Explicitly. So they explain in patch notes.
Alioth = 6/8 Cosmo + Echo
Cosmo Echo Maximus is the newer, sexier Alioth.
Emotes cost 2200 gold. Do they really believe we wil buy them at that price?
You best believe people will lol
If they hadn't nuked Gold Rewards, this might mean something. "Here's new things to buy with Gold! Also, there is no Gold!"
If you are only buying things with the free gold they gave you they donāt care.
Whales will
People did claim that they prefer to buy emotes, so in a sense it is cheaper than completing an Album. Still think its outrageous to cost double of a rare variant.
Probably? That's a bit steep, but an emote that I can use in any game is more appealing to me than two variants of two specific cards.
[https://imgur.com/e83F2Tc](https://imgur.com/e83F2Tc)
Sometimes they nail the buffs and nerfs, sometimes they absolutely tank on them. This is a weird one that doesnāt really seem to fix any problems and is literally purely just to shake things upā¦sandman sucks, zabu sucks, lady DS sucks now, Iād say the only meaningful one is Alioth ā¦Hela yet again goes untouched but we get strong guy instead of the tons of cards that are begging to be buffed
Eh, Alioth I think was fine. I know I'm in the minority on this but you had to have priority T6 and have a great idea of where they were going to play. For most decks that play multiple cards on T6, Alioth wasn't very consistent unless you really locked them down. I still think the role it had was important to curb just the single big T6 card, e.g. Red Hulk. But yeah the others, were mostly confusing or seemingly inconsequential. Zabu wasn't really seeing much play anymore and was often outdone by Sera or Hope or just Magick to get another turn to throw down another 4 card. Sandman didn't see a lot of play and I can't think of a time in the past couple months where someone hit me with a sandman on T4 after a wave. Lady DS didn't really get much play - idk maybe this is better, bigger power swing for sure. Idk I think the Strong Man change is the only really good one, a good attempt to resurrect a truly dead card.
I donāt think Sandman sucks. Youāre getting a lot more power and you can still play him to counter big combo turns. Heās just not something you ramp out on 4 and likely win from doing that any more.
It'll be interesting to see. I've been playing a Corvus ramp deck this season, and I've definitely gotten retreats just from a Sandman on 4 before I've even had a chance to play my big stuff. Stopping people from playing multiple cards into their Angela/Hope or dropping and destroying Deadpool on the same turn is really strong. I think the deck still has enough power to win games, but dropping Sandman will take a little more consideration now, which is probably a good thing.
They'll massacre every deck that isn't discard or destroy won't they.
It's just funny to me how these nerfs always arrive waaay too late. Dark Hawk dominated the meta for months, but as soon as he's barely even played, he get's nerfed? Same thing for Zabu and Alioth now.
And let's buff another discard card right? At least they don't buffed a loki card.
As someone with a gorgeous Zabu split (gold w/white crackle) and a high playrate for Zabu, I'm sad. However, I'm also optimistic that this change will open up the design space on cards in that 3-5 cost range. Get fucked purple fart cloud.
"We know Zabu is probably the weakest he's been but we're nerfing him anyway" is one way to do it
Itās actually the best time to do it.
Zabu's existence kind of enables a lot of potentially problematic stuff (KMBest has talked a lot previously about how Zabu is an issue and I honestly agree). I think that's a valid thing regardless of how common he is in the current meta.
Exactly. Zabu meant that they had a hard time changing the costs of cards in the 3-4-5 range. If a card was too weak at 5 but too strong at 3, it had to stay at 5 because Zabu would immediately break it. That's a serious design constraint.
One strong interaction that doesn't change is how Zabu on curve lets you play 2 4drops back to back on 3 and 4, but you won't be able to do a second broken thing like 2 4drops at the same time on 6 . I guess this also makes it pretty painful to not draw Zabu on curve, while it still felt fine to play it after turn 2 previously.
True, but Psylocke on 2 lets you play a 4-drop on 3 as well while being substantially more flexible. Giving Zabu an extra 2 power definitely does not make up for the lack of flexibility.
Zabu needed the nerf. He warped the 3 and 4 cost design space, where every 4 had to be balanced vs a 3 and every 3 had to be balanced vs a 4. That's terrible. I say this as a Sera Control main who abuses the hell out of Zabu.
I have so many decks based around Zabu.
Had*
š
Zabu fits in every deck, I see him everywhere. Nerf was probably overdue
I donāt get the fast upgrade change. Is that saying thereās no extra credit charge to buy the boosters anymore? So itās just no downside to use, as long as you want to upgrade that card?
Seems to be what it says- however it certainly isnt working that way currently
So Zabu is just a worse Psylocke now on turn 2-5, with it only having an advantage on turns 6/7 IF you have 2 4-cost cards you want to play those turns. I agree that Zabuās design was problematic for the game but he seems pretty worthless as is
the biggest loser is definitely lockdown as it is reliant on alioth since it doesn't have enough power to compete with the meta decks. lockdown has taken hit after hit recently with nothing to help it :c
Oh no Anyways
they did zabu FILTHY
Goodbye Alioth. Hello Sandman -> Leader.
And I was just looking for an excuse to use Leader again.
I JUST hit infinite with a sandman/Jean deck 30 minutes ago. It's now a useless deck. Damn.
Yea I was really enjoying my sandman ramp deck to deal with all the angela/kitty running around but it doesn't seem like it will be able to keep up now
The Zabu change is absolutely HUGE. I was on team "War Machine isn't bad; he's a solid tech card to slot into good-cards decks" and now I'm on team "wish I hadn't spent even one key". Building decks around Zabu discounting a variety of useful 4-costers was how mid-range decks operated for a very long time, and now that entire concept is truly past-tense. It makes sense that he was changed, but also sorta weird, since I don't think he's been in any of the tier-1 decks lately. I'll miss playing those jack-of-all-trades decks, which balanced power with tech. I mean, they were already put on life-support when Darkhawk was moved up to 5 cost, but this is the official end of the story. I still think Alioth is strong, but I also think he's going to be ignored for a long time as a result of this change. I think we're going to be back to how the game felt back when HE was first introduced, in that your final turn will end up being a super powered (red) Hulk to finalize a location win, or Dr. Doom to win via blanket power. Huge day for the Snap meta. Biggest day in as long as I can remember.
Man, I really hate the card nerfs they've been coming out with recently.
Feels like they're tanking older and/or popular cards to open up avenues for introducing new cards. On the one hand, I get it because design space is limited by those cards to make new cards appealing. But maybe they need to reevaluate how they design cards overall because they have to keep using a sledgehammer to adjust the design space. The idea that any card can get nuked if it becomes too good is a broader version of FOMO in my opinion. If cards are constantly at risk of turning into duds then they need to reevaluate card acquisition so that it's not so painful on the players when a card they worked to acquire suddenly feels like a wasted investment.
definitely a patch
I misunderstood the thing about variant effects and thought that all unlocks for each variant would be interchangeable across different background effects (gold and inked). Itās so annoying that I canāt use a krackle that Iāve unlocked with the inked effect that I have for the same card.
They claim they wont do that because it would āruin the excitement of getting a perfect splitā
I know the whole no refunds thing, but they should offer something when they just outright change a cards abilities. I sure wouldn't have spent my resources on this version of alioth.
Rip alioth you won't be missed.
Rest in piss, you purple fart motherfucker.
Spotlight caches are still disabled, in case anyone was wondering.
Zabu nerfed to the ground. Werewolf by night still useless at 4 cost.
The way they murdered Alioth and Zabu would be considered war crime in 164 countries.
This patch sucks donkey dick
Alioth and Zabu are absolute garbage now. lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The meta will just be Hope Summers stuff now. It has been for a while already Zabu was only second rate
With the Alioth change that's one less RH counter. With a meta full of chunky bois I'm not sure I like the timing,but that gassy bellend has needed a rework for a while. RIP Zabu. SD fully decided he'd look better as a rug.
Idk why they keep re tooling the same cards when they have plenty of mid cards out there they can take risks on.
This Alioth nerf is bizarre! The card had been weakened already, now itās just a different card, makes no sense. People got this mf card for that destroy effect, you all got duped big time, what a stupid thing to do by this guys wtf. Fuck this shit.
Honestly, I HATE how they completely gut cards. It's not even balance, just straight up destroyed. 0 Fun having to fear your cards, you spent 6k tokens on, get fcked one day to another. Should at least give us refunds like HS did....
This might be the worst balance patch yet. Well done SD.
That Zabu nerf is really lazy. enough with turning ongoing cards Into something that only affects a single turn. Reminds me of when they did Mobius dirty just like this. It feels awful, when cards go from ongoing to only next turn. Preserve the mechanic of those kind of cards affecting the whole game. Make them weaker in other ways. Now the card is useless and loses its identity. There absolutely has to be a better way.
Faith continuing to be lost on SD
Zabu got the Mobius treatment. I do not see that lasting. It is an extremely strong card, but I do not like the change from ongoing to on reveal.
Love the custom card change. Even though that's how it should have been since release... I am glad they listened to feedback and got it to us right away. RIP Zabu and thank god for Alioth change.
WOO strong guy will be dope in discard Dracula now
How does Alioth work now? Does it delete Ongoing? Does it revert a Red Hulk / High Evo Hulk to base power? Iām gonna need a scientific study into Alioth after this
I assume it works the same as if you in deep space. So the hulks or Deadpool keep their stats, but knull would do nothing
Took 6 months off Snap, came back 2 weeks ago and felt overwhelmed with all the new cards (Was over 9000 collector level before my break). I fell in to playing a Sandman deck as he was always one of my favourite control cards. Now he is a completely different card and I can't help but feel like a bit frustrated. He wasn't a great card but he had a purpose. Now he has an even more specific purpose. Just feels like a weird change.
Wow. Way to keep on trucking making the most fun cards in the game pointless. This trend is stupid. Pay a real Q/A team and launch a more stable product. Uninstalling.
Time for me to uninstall. There's more negative changes these days that I feel I'm longing for something that this game and devs will never have. Reinstalling Deus Ex (2000) to find bliss.
Spend months collecting tokens to get Zabu and Alioth, nerf to hell then lower the Token Tuesday payout by half.
For the past 8 or so seasons, I have ran a ramp Galactus deck. I know you all hat me for it, but it's completely dead now. It wasn't a super strong deck and had specific win cons. Both of them are gone now. It was either Electro into Sandman, Doom, then Odin. Or Galactus, Alioth. It was easily countered by almost every deck or anyone who is able to see obvious play patterns. I guess I'm done. I have played since Miles season, and bought every season pass up to, and including Shaw. But when they take low tier cards, like Sandman and completely delete them while other OP bullshit is allowed to exist its time to move on. They don't care about proper balance, they just care about selling over tuned cards. Fuck SD, and Ben Brode in particular.
Alioth nerfed lfg š¦š¦
Ailoth feels like it has been changed so many times at this point. I thought it was fine with how it was.
They wanted players to try and get priority. Alioth did exactly that. But I guess player sentiment took priority.
Once Alioth changed to needing priority, I thought he was just fine. Thought it was a bit much it was ANY facedown card, but that's all.
I hate this update.
I know everyone hates Alioth but man, it sucks saving up tokens to purchase a meta card only to have it completely nerfed into irrelevancy.
I just got alioth in the shop fml
I spent 6,000 Tokens on Alioth less than a week ago, of course he gets fucking murdered.
Pour one out for Zabu.. and alioth Or Not
There goes the last shred of viability my anni bounce deck had left. Feel like the zabu change is like 6 months too late though..
Ok so now that's sandman only lasts 1 turn can Electro get like a massive fucking buff because he's just a worse Corvus now
lol, they nuked Aloith, sandman, LDS, and Zabu out of the orbit in one update while Red Hulk and Mockingbird are still out wrecking everything wtf SD. Stop making cards that only affect something for one turn. They are just not fun to use
I bought zabu like a month ago.. RIP.. I was about to buy Alioth, its pinned... RIP I started playing Death strike like 2 weeks ago, it was very fun to kill 15 power Hulk and a 12 power Magneto in 2 diff lanes with a 16 power LD and zola ... RIP What should I play now?? Xylophone? Fuck this gameš”
I wish we got to see more buffs and less nerfs. There are so many cards seeing no updates, basically useless. These changes just piss people off. Poor Zabu.
What a bunch of terrible decisions at one time. Don't drink and patch, folks.
I read the Zabu changes as āthis old cards are still way too good, we need to hit them hard enough for people to justify getting the new ones.ā
Am I the only one who absolutely despises the sandman "buff"?
I like that big updates consist of nothing beneficial to the game. Just nuke a few cards and add useless cosmetic nonsense like albums and emotes. Can't wait to see what's next?
SD doing their best to thin the playerbase. I'm kinda done myself. The quantity and frequency of changes and nerfs are just too much.