Thanks for all this detailed thoughts Neko, I really value your insight into the Blue side of this matchup after all the testing you’ve done with me on it.
I’ve been thinking on it this evening and I agree, Haunt is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this matchup, and it sorta makes sense to nerf him: the other “evasive” one-drops like Smoker and TD have worse drawbacks AND they cost 1, whereas Haunt’s drawback (not patrolling) is not a problem for Black (hello skeleton city, Black is the king of rinky dink patrollers) and its evasion (FULL UNSTOPPABLE) is better than Stealth or “Unstoppable against buildings”, AND IT COSTS ZERO???!? Breaking it down like that and then adding Graveyard’s infinite replay on top as you stated, it does feel totally crazy that its free. I would “add change Haunt to 1g” to the proposed testing list
I also agree with your gut on the “Deteriorate only targets exhausted units”. I don’t think it helps this matchup a lot, and I think it runs of the risk of over-nerfing Black against other colors. Flavor-wise I think it’s a neat idea, but it’s low on my list of priorities of things to explore.
I wonder if, perhaps, 1g + 1 damage to Vandy is too much to nerf Dark Pact? My gut there is I would still tech it pretty frequently, but combined with the Vandy level bands hit I have a hunch in practice it would become kinda like Community Service in its risk level. You’re basically trading Vandy’s combat utility for card econ utility, but you’re almost always wanting to use Vandy because of her combat utility… That’s the original proposal change I’m least sure about. Maybe 0g but 1 damage, or just 1g and no damage, would still be fine? Thoughts?
I also wondered what your thoughts would be on having Vandy’s maxband not target, but instead just buff each player’s weakest units? It could make it less wordy and removes the WTF OP-ness of it in this matchup against Illusions, where the “drawback” of it actually becomes a benefit. I’m guessing if you added up all the times I’ve maxbanded Vandy in this matchup, it’s probably
- 30% of the time I benefit from it via targeting
- 60% of the time it either buffs nothing or the buff doesn’t prove at all useful to Blue
- 10% of the time it’s a “true” drawback
This is unique to the Black vs Blue matchup so I feel like it’s an easy way to nerf Vandy vs Blue