A thing to mention before this: No one is superior ever for winning in a game unless you’re a popular streamer or tournament player.
Deck creation does require skill to consider a few things such as consistency, synergies and scenarios. But without playing to see what actually happens, your assumptions can be all wrong, therefore unless you hit the 0.1% you generally have to change a few cards in your deck after a few games, and there’s a high chance you faced a meta, or really good (maybe decent) but not popular deck. Then you probably do one of these things:
-change your deck based on a good, viable, decent decks
-copy your opponent’s deck and start playing it. That’s how many meta decks are born.
Netdecking is not 100% copying or plagiarism. You get a deck, start playing it, and you’re gonna have to master the strategy yourself, because every time there will be different draw order, opponents and mulligan. And decks and the meta changes all the time, you’re gonna have tweak your deck when the meta shifts, and your strategy won’t always be the same. Getting the general concept is not the entire thing, you master what you learned about the deck yourself unless you hired/invited a coach to teach you live on what to play. Therefore both netdeck and homebrew players must adjust their decks and sometimes strategy as the meta shifts, and this is a critical skill. Both type of players must revise their decks. And the starting deck creation isn’t the most important since if you already understand the cards, maybe even more than other people do, you can save time instead of trying to follow an invisible rule.
Deck revision =/= creation. Getting a netdeck (even if you created it yourself, many other people would probably have similar, if not the same idea as you) then swapping a couple of cards are great for innovative ideas, but is NOT close to deck building at all. Imagine you bought a house, repainted it yourself and say you built it yourself, that’s lying for illusion all respect. You took other people’s ideas, changed it a bit and called it your own, that’s the true copying. Just understand you did not built, but revised a deck if you didn’t get the core idea yourself. The house is built by other people, you just renovated it with paint.
That’s a long essay. But I have a personal dislike of delusional credit due to misinterpretation of language.
Netdecks are there for a reason, they are the tried and tested best decks for ranking up. If you want to conjure up some Frankenstein creation go right ahead but don’t compare it to net decks they are on a completely different level.
Lets face it you might be great at piloting your homebrew to legend but netdecks are made for 3 year olds to pilot, its that braindead and easy.
I have yet to see a streamer that pilot a deck on ranked better than average player in diamond. So I wouldnt call these lads and lasses superior in any way. Sure, there might be some great streamer or tournament player that plays better than average player though. Its possible for sure. Though I havent seen one so far.
Or you actually improve your current homebrew deck instead of copying opponents deck or going to netdeck. Thats actually the deck refining. To refine a deck. Not to scrap it. Sure sometimes its the only move if the deck isnt working well in current meta but statement “Well, my homebrew isnt working, lets just copy a netdeck.” isnt actually deck building nor refining so no idea whathave you meant there.
I agree its not 100% plagiarism. Though its still 100% copying for sure. And nothing wrong with that. Its part of the games - optimal build, specs, gear whatever is part of the games. Does streamers plays original decks for climb? Here and there with various results and usually at rank floor. So even if they are ok with 100% copyinng netdecks I guess its no problem for anyone.
I agree there. If you copy 100% netdeck and add some tech cards while leaving the core of the netdeck untouched, its still a netdeck.
I’d only disagree that homebrewing takes a lot more skill than netdecking.
When you netdeck, you can learn how the deck plays and learn the deck strategy, true. But when you homebrew, you actually have to test/improve/test/improve your deck with many different variations and you get to know your deck a little more intimately. Furthermore, when you create your own deck, you understand the intricacies of the synergies a lot more and other people playing your deck won’t necessarily see those synergies. I took a Bwonsamdi/Spirit of the Dead Priest to legend and had a very successful win rate with it, but when I posted the decklist people couldn’t quite understand how to pilot it. They couldn’t pilot it because no streamer was actively running the deck to show them how to play the deck. For example, I was running Cult Master in my Bwonsamdi/Spirit deck…something that looks absolutely absurd to any player in this game…and yet the synergy was off the charts.
There are many streamers (RDU being one) that openly admit they suck at deck creation.
Creating decks from scratch and making them work is definitely a skillset not everyone possesses. It’s vastly different from copying a netdeck and then trying to improve on it.