Strongest PvP Deck?

[imanewb13]

Hello friends! Today I want to ask you which do you think is the strongesh PvP deck and why? I was pretty little(11 years old) when I have been playing Battleforge and I dont remember much from my personal experience(apart from that I was something like 45-90 on ranked).

Edited May 13, 2017 by imanewb13

[Deadman]

any deck with Mauler in it. 

[synthc]

Shadow/Frost is generally considered to be the strongest PvP deck for the following reasons:

• Strong, versatile, and easy to play T1.
• Cheap, high damage units like Nightcrawler and Darkelves, as well as very efficient offensive units like Mountaineer.
• Building protection, CC, and Aura of Corruption make for very strong defense.
• One of the strongest T3 in the game (up there with pure fire) due to things like Grigori, Tremor, Silverwinds, and Timeless One.

Stonekin is also very strong due to having the best building protection, CC, and knockback units (fairly unbreakable defense with all of this).  Adamant skin + Crystal Fiend means that they can just defend until the power pools are big and then they can streamroll their opponents.

One deck that's pretty underrated, but extremely strong is pure nature.  Pure nature has some insane strength (Energy Parasite, Deep One, Shrine of Memory, and Parasite Swarm are all absurdly strong), but also some huge weaknesses: no building protection, no direct damage spells, and no high damage ranged units (except for Spikeroot, which is expensive and has to root before attacking) makes them extremely weak on defense.  If played properly, however, I would argue that pure nature actually beats every deck except fire/nature and stonekin.

Note that this is for 1v1.  In 2v2 pure fire + stonekin is the strongest combination.

Edited May 13, 2017 by synthc

[RadicalX]

If I had to make a ranking for the strength of every deck it would be probably something like this:

 

Low Tier decks (you can still reach Prime with them, but the best players will abuse the sh*t out of you)

10. Bandits 

- No Crowd control

- Awful matchups against most meta decks

- worst defensive capabilities out of all decks

Average Tier decks (mostly with some massive strengths, but without being well rounded)

9. Pure Nature

- No reliable M Counter 

- weak defensive capabilities

- Nature T1 can get abused by stuff like Phasetower 

+ deals very well with L units

+ the pure cards are massive and can turn games around on their own

 

8. Pure Frost 

+ destroys pure Fire

+ very high scaling and arguably strongest T3 in the game

- Frost T1 is unreliable due to the lack of swift units

- T2 is very War Eagle reliant

 

7. Fire Frost 

+ high snowball potential against decks with weak defensive capabilities 

+ Finally got the much needed reliable M counter (Stormsinger buff, yay)

- very hard to play (shield micro has to be on point to apply any sort of pressure against Frost splashes) 

- Has just a mediocre S counter 

 

6. Pure Shadow 

+ massive dps units in the early T2 stage

+ Harvester can turn games around by himself 

+ no bad matchups apart from fire nature 

- unreliable crowd control

- Shadowmage-micro is one of the most difficult things to execute perfectly (makes pure Shadow incredibly hard to play when you reach a certain level)

 

5. Shadow Nature

+ arguably the strongest early T2 in the game (cheap units + cheap cc)

+ best colour to play against an extended T1 

+ destroys pure Frost & Shadow Frost 

- gets majorly destroyed by pure Fire

- falls off late game

 

Top Tier decks (definitely superior in some aspects and therefore ended up getting played very often):

 

4. Stonekin 

+ Pretty much the strongest T2 in the game

+ translates well from defense to offense in an overwhelming fashion

+ scales well into late T2 

+ combined strength of building protection and crowd control

- very slot intensive deck 

- you are forced to either play nature or frost T1, who are both sort of lackluster 

 

3. Fire Nature

+ the most well rounded T2 (deals well with S, M, L & XL units)

+ no bad matchups except for shadow frost

- arguably the worst T3 in the entire game

 

God Tier decks (most played & strongest decks for ranked games):

2. Shadow Frost

+ Low risk high reward deck 

+ perfect scaling curve (You start strong, but you get even stronger as the game progresses) 

+ absurd defensive capabilities (can come back from large deficites, especially in T3)

+ Insane T3 

+ easy to play 

- low outplay potential in T2 (struggles against perfectly excecuted Shadow Nature & pure Fire) 

 

1. Pure Fire

+ Most aggressive deck in the game (if you are ahead you will be able to destroy your opponent)

+ Only T3 that can match timeless one defenses 

+ best M counter in the game 

+ Cliffdancers are the most abnoxious thing in the entire game 

+ Wildfire is the most powerful damage spell in T2 

- lacks air control

- requires a long T1 to prevent snowballing through early L units 

 

The differences between the decks aren't as big as you may think, you can do well with every single one as long as you are skilled enough and there are only a few scenarios that result into a true autolose (cliffdancer on yshia hehe).

[ImperatorSK]

Some Matchups can be pretty hard for some Decks (like Pure Fire vs Pure Frost), but every deck have in some scissors stone paper
style good and bad matchups. But overall the better player will win in the most cases.

 

For me Pure Fire and Shadow/Frost are the strongest decks. And Shadow/Frost, Pure Frost or Pure Shadow need the least effort to climb ranks. Frost t1 can be played pretty spammy and will not be punished in lower rankings, and Shadow has a overall good t1 with strong abilitys.

 Also a buffed Harvester or a Wareagle spam was easy to play and pretty effective in lower rankings (until higher gold) ^^.  

Edited May 13, 2017 by ImperatorSK

[synthc]

I think pure fire is overrated.  All of pure fire's strength is focused on offense, so if you just play offensively against them and keep them on defense, you win.  Firedancer is only really useful for offense and Wildfire is usually inefficient unless it's hitting a well/orb while killing units.  Even decks with terrible defense like pure nature can beat pure fire by constantly pressuring with Deep Ones.  As long as you don't fall behind in T1 against pure fire, you should have an advantage with every deck except bandits, shadow/nature, and fire/nature (unless it's a cliffdancer map).  It is true though, that pure fire can snowball hard in the early game and just kill you in early T2.  Juggernaut can also save them when they are behind.

[anonyme0273]

In my opinion, there never was (and hopefully never will be) a deck that's "strongest". The balance in this game was awesomely made, and although certain cards could be considered slightly overpowered, when compared to other cards of matching Power costs measured by stats or abilities, there always was a way to win. Which, of course, is the best possible thing.

All decks had strenghts and weaknesses, counters and strategies. But the biggest input on the game is the player, either way. The worst player with a good deck has little chance against a good player with a crap anti-meta troll deck. I'd say, from my PvP wannabe perspective, that decks made about 25% of the impact on the game, while player strategy, unit and Power management and decision making overall was 75%, if not more. 

When it came to picking and using a deck, it too could be mastered and sharpened alongside the game skills overall. I'd say I performed best with a Pure Shadow deck or Pure Frost, simply because I liked the playstyle of it, where I can very much choose whether to be defensive or offensive, whereas Fire had less of that choice and should probably, meta basedly, be more aggresive from start. 

So yea, imo, there is no best dack, just one that suits the player the most. For me that'd be Pure Shadow or Pure Frost. Otherwise from a general perspective, I mostly agree with @RadicalX and his list above, and since he is a much better player than me, I suggest you listen to him. Or perhaps @LagOps could give his opinion as well, although I think most people already know his answer  

For lazy people who don't want to read: There is no best deck, I like Pure Shadow and Pure Frost though. 

Edited May 14, 2017 by anonyme0273

[imanewb13]

Thanks for all the replies! Ill definetely have the things you all said in mind when I have the chance to log in the forge once again.

Edited May 14, 2017 by imanewb13

[MephistoRoss]

I once made a matrix with all PvP decks in which I rated all enemies from most easy to hardest (1-10) mostly based on the PvP deck overview by @RadicalX and @Hirooo: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/2486-battleforge-pvp-deck-overview-by-hirooo-radicalx /. I added up the sum of each deck score from all enemies (in the column Enemy score) to see which deck is the hardest to face for all decks.

Of course what is missing in this calculation is the popularity factor, for example Pure shadow has the highest score because it has a good match against many decks, but most of those easy enemies are not widely played. Against popular decks like Lost souls, Pure fire and Fire Nature, Pure shadow has a lot more trouble.

 

[Equinox98x]

Any deck with worldbreaker gun & a battleship/lost ship spam xD

[ferevus]

On 5/14/2017 at 11:16 AM, Defqon said:

Any deck with worldbreaker gun & a battleship/lost ship spam xD

The best deck is obviously the one that includes the most advanced units for your civilization.

Also:

A 1:1 unit/building ratio is required to maintain your troops happy and in good conditions (especially in some of those winter/ice maps). 

Ancient Mesopotamia taught us that if  you want to make your culture civilized you must build yourself a temple (Shrine to MO is preferred)... so your lads have something to pray to..

You also needs some water source... Healing Gardens should do it.

 

If you can establish a solid city... you'll likely win every PvP game as your opponent's units will look upon your civilization and willfully decide that you're not worth fighting. 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2017 by ferevus
Grammar

[LagOps]

On 14.5.2017 at 10:38 AM, anonyme0273 said:

In my opinion, there never was (and hopefully never will be) a deck that's "strongest". The balance in this game was awesomely made, and although certain cards could be considered slightly overpowered, when compared to other cards of matching Power costs measured by stats or abilities, there always was a way to win. Which, of course, is the best possible thing.

All decks had strenghts and weaknesses, counters and strategies. But the biggest input on the game is the player, either way. The worst player with a good deck has little chance against a good player with a crap anti-meta troll deck. I'd say, from my PvP wannabe perspective, that decks made about 25% of the impact on the game, while player strategy, unit and Power management and decision making overall was 75%, if not more. 

When it came to picking and using a deck, it too could be mastered and sharpened alongside the game skills overall. I'd say I performed best with a Pure Shadow deck or Pure Frost, simply because I liked the playstyle of it, where I can very much choose whether to be defensive or offensive, whereas Fire had less of that choice and should probably, meta basedly, be more aggresive from start. 

So yea, imo, there is no best dack, just one that suits the player the most. For me that'd be Pure Shadow or Pure Frost. Otherwise from a general perspective, I mostly agree with @RadicalX and his list above, and since he is a much better player than me, I suggest you listen to him. Or perhaps @LagOps could give his opinion as well, although I think most people already know his answer  

For lazy people who don't want to read: There is no best deck, I like Pure Shadow and Pure Frost though. 

Yes, the player has a huge impact but in high level pvp it becomes very obvious that some decks can just totally be absued. The main reason why you can do whatever you want in lower elos is because nobody knows how to abuse certain decks... to be honest, one of the main reasons why i win in high elo is because others just have no experience against bandits and if they knew the matchup better i would have a much harder time. So as long as you can take the skill out of the equation by playing an "autowin" tactic, player skill won't save you... however if you don't/can't do that you will not have much of an advantage.

Aside from bandits, nature and some isolated matchups (fire vs frost), player skill is much more important than the deck, but the deck still matters (at least in high lvl pvp).

 

i agree with radi here, his tier list is pretty legit.

[Aragorn]

I think Sontekin is the best by far in 2v2 and one of the best in 1v1 but I'm biased I only play this deck. However for a top tier deck it is not popular, but I heard in lower elo you get to see it more often (to confirm).

[MrDanilov]

On 5/15/2017 at 10:56 PM, LagOps said:

Yes, the player has a huge impact but in high level pvp it becomes very obvious that some decks can just totally be absued. The main reason why you can do whatever you want in lower elos is because nobody knows how to abuse certain decks... to be honest, one of the main reasons why i win in high elo is because others just have no experience against bandits and if they knew the matchup better i would have a much harder time. So as long as you can take the skill out of the equation by playing an "autowin" tactic, player skill won't save you... however if you don't/can't do that you will not have much of an advantage.

Aside from bandits, nature and some isolated matchups (fire vs frost), player skill is much more important than the deck, but the deck still matters (at least in high lvl pvp).

 

i agree with radi here, his tier list is pretty legit.

Very very true