They claim the deck is a lot of better if you drop Wayfarer completely and if you use Ethereal Oracle. Nowhere on the stats collected is it shown that that’s clearly better; in most cases it’s worse; when it’s not bad it doesn’t look clearly better anyway.
Are those people just desperate for the sub money? Their takes and especially the netdecks they push to their subscribers are consistently bad.
They said it is early data, since they recorded the podcast early in the patch. I haven’t seen the data but Wayfarer is a horrendous card, I’d very much agree spending 4 mana on it to discount 1 mana on librams is an awful deal. Also oracle draws spells and gives spell damage on the 1 mana lifesteal so seems like a generally good addition.
Anyway, no libram paladin deck is very good regardless. Probably the worst out of all competitive paladin decks whatever the list.
You talk as if the card is just divine shield and stats which is what they said too almost . It’s an enabler of the archetype itself. Also the divine shield happens to be OP against random damage buffed by +spell damage from asteroids.
I think their bad takes are often sourced on taking too seriously the low win rate of very popular decks. They are played very badly even in the 1K but new decks are played better by their homebrewers (but mainly by them).
These kind of conversations from VS often speak to the highest end of players that are seeing the tightest of metas. In that context, dropping a 4 mana 4/2 is a recipe for disaster when you are facing a weapon rogue or a swarm shaman, doesn’t matter how much it is advancing your late game. These decks will kill you by turn 5 very often.
In that context, cutting wayfarer in place of more proactive cards makes a smoother curve that has an easier time keeping up with tempo and leans more on faster lethality. Leaning more on Lynessa and using librams as a shell rather than a game plan is a much better idea in that meta.
This might all seem wrong if you are facing a meta that is more forgiving, where a pure libram game plan may be more successful against stuff like dungar or funny homebrews. The meta over 5k legend right now will not forgive you spending your turn 4 on a 4/2 with divine shield. That 1 mana less on your librams will matter little.
None of that is on the stats conclusively. The only deck labeled “libram” which looks much better without Wayfarer …is not even really a libram deck to begin with. It appears to be heavily a HOLY deck; it uses Flickering Lightbolt; it even has ETC and Sanc’Azel.
They even put Keeper’s Strength in there. It’s at best a mix of at least 2 archetypes.
Oracle is certainly better especially if you factor in lynessa being in most libram lists with the damage spells adding reach
You dont need to discount the libram of faith or w/e summons 3 divine shield 3/3s to zero, just the spells.
As vs said, breaking both weapons gets you to free divinity. Playing two weapons is 6 mana and 4 swings/turns. That is 1.5 mana for each discount much more efficient than wayfarer.
Wayfarer’s cost would be worth it if the reward is really that amazing… And free divinity is both amazing and not amazing. It is amazing in that it is “infinite”, but it isn’t because it is infinite over a long time.
The other thing is that you need minions to add stats to, so I can see why va would think drawing through your spells and indirectly your deck is better.
Consider that Handbuff on paper adds less stats, but it adds them faster, to multiple units at once. It was and is often a better deck. Who cares if you can add another 30/30 stats over the next 5 turns if the game will end in this turn cuz their leeroy one shots your face?
Wayfarer is one of those cards that you really only need an excuse to cut.
It is that bad.
Still remember people talking about surfalopod and How in the BSM survived Far longer to it’s nerf.
If you not going Full draenei with your libram deck you should CUT him.
Wayfarer need to be reduced in mana that is true, but if I use Astral Vigilant right after it, I get another copy right away. Etheral Oracle helps to draw out the spells but not to reduce their cost in time… and that is the biggest problem still with the Librams… their mana cost is still too high like it was and too hard to reduce it in time. Libram Paladin is still too weak compared to many other builds and decks. It just needs more Libram cost reduction options, add older Libram mana cost reducer minions into the core could help I think. These are my experiences, however I have one last idea to make it work, but I think it will be viable only after the rotations… just like Sun Screen and Sea Shanty… all of them proved to be bad design in the current meta.
They’re right. Smeet has a Libram Paladin list he was playing at rank 600 and said the same thing. Dropping the 4 mana minion IS better.
Yeah, as much as you’d think you need the redundancy of wayfarer, you really don’t.
Weapon x2 is consistent enough to discount divinity, which is the only libram you need to hit 0. Wayfarer requires you to draw and play two of them in order to make a difference on the divinity discounts. You can almost certainly find better card options than him.
That said, librams are still just a bit lacking overall. It’s very easy to get under them before they start doing anything scary, or just blow them up from hand.
All you talking about a 4 mana 4/2 ds minion when rogue is forced into a 5 mana 5/4 with no ds, talk about a tempo killer
It’s a heavy tax for a rogue to pay, but the miniaturize minion justifies it. If they ever nerf Sonya that card would massively lose value for sure.
Edit: I thought you meant the miniaturize pirate, didn’t think much about the statline. Yeah the replicator is pretty bad, like all starship stuffs.
At least that one doubles the power of your next starship.
Wayfarer uhh, marginally reduces the cost of cards that will go to 0 anyway without him.
I think oracle is probably good in the deck, librams should cost 0-1 pretty frequently which is an easy combo with oracle.
You can all theorize it all you want, but the stats don’t lie. In all rank brackets Wayfarer is better at Draw than oracle.
It’s not great to be in the Mulligan though,
which points to a psychological problem.
Wayfarer doesn’t draw.
If you’re talking about Draw winrate, don’t look at that. That’s based on the deck itself that it’s physically in.
Instead, look at Paladin Libram deck overall win rate with Wayfarer and overall win rate with Oracle.
Oracle is about +1% better win rate.
There’s a reason people at higher legend aren’t running Wayfarer and are running Oracle or something else instead. It’s because Libram paladin is built better and performs better without Wayfarer. Wayfarer is that bad.
Draw stat obviously, which d0nkey explictly defines as “that’s how you build decks” (you mulligan with the mulligan or/and kept stats but you do not build decks with those).
That’s easily inside the statistical error.
There’s a novelty factor,
new decks are played better by their homebrewer (their winrate plummets if they become popular).
However you want to slice it or justify it, the people who are better at this game than you who play at high legend disagree with you and the people who devote their entire job around statistics disagree with you.
So what you want is for people to disregard people who are better than you, people who play more than you and people who make it their job to look at HS statistics and listen to you instead.
If that’s not what you are doing, than what’s the purpose of this thread?
That’s pure credentialism, and hence a non-argument. You remind of kassadin/altair/???.