The terminology itself is not that crucial as long as it’s common in the same texts so I won’t go too far into it; I’ll just say again it’s not that useful to say “it’s combo because the cards aren’t that great on their own”; I struggle to find a single deck in the current meta that most of its cards aren’t just BAD plays if they are played randomly without a synergy/combination with other cards(ok maybe Arena(but that’s practically FORCED because of the extreme randomness of the selection(if they take too many synergy/combination cards they just lose because they rarely find the paired cards and frankly the best decks even there are heavily synergistic anyway but I digressed too much))).
If you want 3 categories that do not take into account the factor of “time” how about these INGREDIENTS of a deck (not necessarily DECKS):
a) Defense cards devastating against specific opponents (usually called “Tech cards”)
b) Immediate action cards (e.g. Fireball, a big minion, a shield)
c) Value cards (e.g. Shadowstep, Crusader Aura, ramp mana)
Obviously a) b) and c) are never 100% in a single card (not even in my examples (e.g. Fireball can be synergized with spell damage combinations or Crusader Aura is partly immediate etc.)); but there’s room using those 3 wide categories to identify decks based on the PORTIONS from each category; however the factor of time is related because for example a fast(“aggro”) deck will usually minimize the tech cards (unless it wants a bad win rate) and maximize the more immediate action because otherwise… it would be a slow deck that has no TIME to deal with longer sequences of combinations (again: unless it wants a bad win rate/instability).
You’re using impure categorization to form a pure one. Not gonna work.
The goal here is to use PURE categories to form an almost-pure categorization (none of the categorizations will ever be 100% pure, in practice, but I want to come close to it in theory because then our statistics and data can help get actionable intel out of it)
Defense cards vs action cards vs value cards is a classification I would rather be doing BACKWARDS - I would determine if a Fireball is action card, defense card or value card based on the deck archetype it’s played in, not the other way around.
If you wanna help me with this categorization, you better start from that, not from something else, because I put a lot of thought in it and everything is there for a reason.
It can and it has to be better, but any other approach will hit one of the challenges I’ve already avoided in my own classification, and you better believe it.
That goal is not useful at all and it puts you back for no reason. No card in the game is 100% value or 100% immediate or 100% “tech”; each card may have a sum of the 3 itself; you can claim “it’s hard to find the percentages for a single card” but that’s not too important at this stage (you could make rough approximations (e.g. Crusader aura is 33% immediate and 66% value for 2 future rounds etc (not saying that’s the right way for that card: it’s just an example)).
But it’s VERY useful if e.g. you say “on average the TOTAL of the cards of the DECK are 35% value and 10% tech”; it makes you say things like “this deck takes immediate actions for 55% of the cards”; it might for example predict better if a fast deck is good before seeing its performance because e.g. it’s probably bad if it has a high percentage of tech/defense and long term value because there’s often no much time to need those.
Why are you even talking about this? I don’t care for individual cards, I’m trying to make a classification of DECK types, not card types.
Deck is complex, and it has synergies within it, so it’s much more than just a sum of individual cards. I don’t see ANY advantage in classifying individual cards if their nature will depend on the nature of the deck they’re found in.
You can use fireball as a removal, as a burn or as a finisher, but in the end it’s still 4 mana deal 6, and what it’s gonna be used MAINLY for, depends on the deck it’s played in AND on the deck it’s played AGAINST.
I don’t need to and I don’t want to enter this discussion.
If you can’t focus on DECK TYPES, let’s end this right now.
Also, you’re trying to work backward from data to make a theory, which is fine, but I’ve already made a theory. I need improvements to it based on the data.
Can you find which of the classifiers I mentioned that aren’t supported by the data?
You have to be really creative with data interpretation to even begin to answer this. It’s gonna take time and playing around. You might even learn something.
Sure it has synergies; it must have synergies to even work and compete; every deck has them unless it’s a bad deck. After the synergies are put in place you can make further labeling; e.g how much mana it spends and saves; e.g. how much it’s defensive.
the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
Source: Oxford dictionary
Notice the part
“…a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.”
Therefore, you are wrong. Stick to the facts or be gone.