The PvP Deck Builder Compendium

[indubitablement]

WIP. Only T1 and some T2 for now.

T1

• Purple Nightguard can help, if you have trouble against Master Archer spam.
• Skeleton Warriors are useful against shadow and fire T1 due to them not having a small counter that isn't medium size. After activating their ability they have 1332 effective hp.
• Phase Tower is extremely powerful against nature T1.

• Swiftclaw or Amazon as your main swift unit.
• Windweavers or Treespirit as your main ranged dps.

• Firesworn is still somewhat useful in t2 as large counter.

• If you take down a well by brute force with Sunderer, expect your opponent to retaliate with the army that killed your Sunderer and probably take one of your well.
• Mortar Tower can often pay for itself after firing only once.

• Ice Barrier's main purpose is enabling Home Soil and Ice Guardian's frost ward, but it can also absorb area damage(from Windweavers, Treespirit, Nasty Surprice,...) and enable Lyrish Knight's surge of strength.

 

T2

 

• You will want one shield generating card. I recommend Area Ice Shield.
• Ice Shield Tower's shield absorb 880 damage, unlike Area Ice Shield And Frost Sorceress which shield for 660 damage.

Edited February 6, 2018 by indubitablement

[Deadman]

There is this btw 

 

[Hirooo]

And you really dont want to use purple night guard against frost in any case. That wont help you against MA spam.

[indubitablement]

On 2/3/2018 at 7:54 AM, Hirooo said:

And you really dont want to use purple night guard against frost in any case. That wont help you against MA spam.

edit: disregard this. I was very wrong.

• Damage-wise, purple Nightguard is 10% more efficient than Nox (11/power vs 10/power) and has 5 aoe.
• Nox have 17% more healt per power (7.7/power vs 9/power) and counter Ice Guardian.

I would argue that purple nightguard are better than nox againt frost with the following statements:

1. Damage is more important than healt, because you want to kill as many MA as possible before your opponent cast Home Soil and Wintertide.
2. MA are often clumped together making 5 aoe quite useful.
3. Ice Guardian should be ignored, by microing your units away from them, untill there are no MA left. Coutering Ice Guarding is somewhat irrelevant unless they are on your well or dazed.
4. Nightguard is still useful in t2.

Edited February 6, 2018 by indubitablement

[xHighTech]

interesting discussion.

I dont think that it is profitable to play nightguards instead of nox's vs frost t1.

• Not enough HP (die very fast)
• You would over extend all the time.
• Motivate has more effect on nox spam because they are cheeper = more nox.
• Nox Rush M Counter -> Ice Guardian, Dreadcharger -> Ma's

Theory is 1 thing, practice another one.

 

@Hirooo @RadicalX @Anonymos @DuellLord @tbpeti Have you already tried Nightguard instead of nox against frost t1?

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by xHighTech

[Anonymos]

From my point of view the shadow vs frost machup is dominated by masterarchers ice guardians dreadcharger and nox troopers nightguard purple doesnt have a spot in there.

even though the nightgaurd has  decent stats (450/500) s counter (at least in the case of frost t1) u cant compare them to nox trooper those cards (appart from the nightgaurd never getting used ) would never fill in the same spot.

In egeneral there are 3 diffrent szenarios 

1. both palyers playing on equal powerlevel  (same well amount, no dissedvatages)

In this situation the frost player normally tries to build his army based on master archers because they are ranged and therefore are less vulnerable to kiting also they they got better base stats than nox troopers  in a master archer spamm vs nox spamm the master archers will win only exception being a skirmish including very little units for example 4 mas vs 4 nox because in that case motivate would be way stronger than homesoil.

For this reason shadow usally goes for dreadchargers in order to counter the ma's and only uses nox troopers to counter ice guardians which the frost player needs in order to block the dreads so a normal unit composition from frost would include like 4-6 mas and 2 ice guardians when shadow would fight with 3-5 dreads and 2-4 nos troopers 

2. frost being behind in power (took a well in advance) in this case shadow would invest the power frost spend on building a well in nox troopers on top of the normal unit composition and go for the rush because ranged units do very well when opposing a weaker army since they can switch targets way faster increasing actual dmg output when comparing to melee units which loose some time running around in between spawning units or when kited 

 

3. frost being ahead in power because shadow took a well in advance 

well in this situation there are 2 deciding factors one being phasetower anoither one the distance between shadows wells and frosts army

if there is no phase tower and frost doesn't have to spend 3 ice barriers in order to reach the shadow player frost should have a good time.

however in case of phase tower or a huge distance frost in generally better of taking a well in reply 

 

tldr:

nightguard doesn't compete with nox troopers it competes with dreadchargers and dreads do have way better stats and a nice passive. Also nightguard deals  very little dmg to everything else then mas and therefor invites the frost player to just well up.  

[DuellLord]

23 hours ago, xHighTech said:

interesting discussion.

I dont think that it is profitable to play nightguards instead of nox's vs frost t1.

• Not enough HP (die very fast)
• You would over extend all the time.
• Motivate has more effect on nox spam because they are cheeper = more nox.
• Nox Rush M Counter -> Ice Guardian, Dreadcharger -> Ma's

Theory is 1 thing, practice another one.

 

@Hirooo @RadicalX @Anonymos @DuellLord @tbpeti Have you already tried Nightguard instead of nox against frost t1?

 

 

 

 

Never tried this. I think spam of Nox or Dreadcharger works okay both if you choose it in the right situations.
But i was in general never a big fan of nightguard...

But btw i wouldnt agree to all classifications from @indubitablement. Shadow without Motivate and Fire without Thugs for example isnt really a good choice.

Edited February 4, 2018 by DuellLord

[tbpeti]

On 2018. 02. 03. at 4:20 PM, xHighTech said:

interesting discussion.

I dont think that it is profitable to play nightguards instead of nox's vs frost t1.

• Not enough HP (die very fast)
• You would over extend all the time.
• Motivate has more effect on nox spam because they are cheeper = more nox.
• Nox Rush M Counter -> Ice Guardian, Dreadcharger -> Ma's

Theory is 1 thing, practice another one.

 

@Hirooo @RadicalX @Anonymos @DuellLord @tbpeti Have you already tried Nightguard instead of nox against frost t1?

 

 

 

 

Naturally, I tried almost everything (even the usage of snapjaws), BUT the nightguard-spam is something you never want to use against anything (except for sunderer-spam, but it will never happen). True, it has more dmg over the nox-spam, but you also never want to spam only 1 unit at all against anything, ma-spam simply beats the shadow if you cannot use dreadcharger / witchclaws / skeleton warriors with nox troopers AND forsaken as a backup (except if you use phase tower, that beats almost everything from frost and nature). Simple reason is the master archers' stats. These are 300/600 with S-counter for 50 power, it's just stronger than any shadow t1 ranged unit. The dreadcharger-spam will not work against players who plan to do ma-spam from the start because they'll use wintertide for an easy trade against the trampling of the horses. Also I'm missing the Witchclaws from the list, it is a decent cheap-version of the dreadcharger if you do not own that card, and also against the frost it is not worse at all (unlike against nature /see amazon/ and against shadow and fire /because of being a squad unit, 1 dies too soon to nox charge or to scavanger bite + sunstriders/ ).

Against the frost players (with ma-spam rushing tactics) I mostly used 1-2 dreadcharger, with 1 skeleton warrior on the front (ability used, if gets disregarded first use it for constant dmg, maybe bomb with nasty - even though it's damage is not that useful against frost, the knockup from the explosion can help. If the ma-spam falls back, just use the dreadcharger's ability on it), and with mostly noxes on the back with 1 forsaken squad at a time, naturally ability used as well. The motivate was only needed if the frost used home soil, frost bite or wintertide.

Also, what @Anonymos wrote is totally correct, I only wrote this because I played an unconventional niche deck - talking about my time, heard that later more shadow-nature players rose, don't know their decks - which contained 8 cards on t1 without using phase tower.

[A Potato in HD]

This topic is a really good resource, thanks for starting this one guys. PvE was my strong suit, but this has given me some more insight into the PvP elements of the game.