No. Psion does not need a nerf at all. Not even a little bit. This ‘problem’ is similar* to Devour, Goblins extra turn, or etc… before the developers created an immunity/defense (counter) to the specific mechanic. It would be nice if they put the counter to mana drain out some time this year though.
*psion is not in the same league as the ones I mentioned though
Thanks everyone for your feedbacks, it look like the big majority are against a nerf, now i want to know if you guys use it in invasion? Or you just want to annoy your invaders?
Also from what i read, there is only 2 solution to fix the problem
1- fix the crazy cascade. And we all know it
Never gonna happen
2- @Nimhain mentionned possibility of adding mana drain immunity to mana shield. But mana drain and mana steal are 2 different things. So i wonder if it will also add immunity to mana steal? If not, im affraid it won’t fix anything and psion will keep stealing then drain, so we back to the same result.
Sorry, my mistake.
Oh, both! Psion (traited) is the best front man in the game, IMHO. I use him on both Blue and Purple GW teams every week.
Ah, but TDS generates 15 souls every time you cast him… at least that’s what his power says, thanks to whatever bonuses I find it’s more like 45 souls.
Meanwhile Pharos-Ra’s attack is dependent on souls collected-- at the start of the match his attack is nearly useless. After 1 TDS explosion, my Pharos-Ra does something like 50 damage. After 2 TDS explosions, or 1 TDS and 1 Pharos-Ra attack, Pharos-Ra is doing somewhere around 110 damage.
By the time I’ve filled my souls quota (3 TDS/Pharos Ra attacks) the Chicken God is good for about 145 damage, enough to one-shot almost any opponent you might face.
This makes my ‘soul farming’ team my current choice in PVP-- it wins over 90% of 3 trophy matches and brings in 270 souls/match (420 on Explore but no trophies)!
Funny you admit you put it to annoy people who invade you, this is exactly the problem the people put this in defense and they don’t care about def win or lost, they just want to piss off people.
If you only use Pharos-Ra in explore, two attacks max the soul count. And the first challenge in Divinion Fields is recommended because even his crappy no-souls first shot can kill the first and second enemy (on Warlord II; lower difficulties let you one-shot everything right away) and that’s all it takes to then be able to kill the rest.
That a combo of TDS/Pharos-Ra can be used in PVP to set up Pharos as a one-shot killer is absolutely valid and I can imagine it working well. I just can’t see how losing a Necromancy bonus for low-spread damage can be beneficial in soul grinding when there’s a challenge that allows Pharos to snipe even with his first shot and max soul count in two hits (and every enemy also dies by skull so the mop-up afterwards is easy and quick).
I get 560 souls per battle with my team. And well, I hate PVP and don’t care about trophies, so I don’t need a soul-farming team that can also do PVP. Khorvash/Valk/Ysabelle/Mab and Forest Troll/Loyalty/Yasmine’s Chosen/Aurora are my PVP teams of choice, though the latter is just a backup in case there’s only Anariel+Plague to choose from.
I only finished traiting my Psion like… two days ago? And he was one of the first legendaries I got in the game. So nope. Never used him. I’m strange and different.
So guys. Okay. I just… I don’t get it.
From what I’ve read here, you guys don’t hate Psion for his skill (which is my personal issue with him) but for his Mana-steal upon skull hit, hence him refilling himself to cast. And that he can’t be silenced.
Thing is… I never, ever had a problem with that. Ever. Because, uh, Psion is not immune to stun. Just put Korvash in your team. Heck, I run Khorvash+Valkyrie, I spam blue like crazy so potentially even help Psion fill, but I have very, very few issues with his stealing. Simply because Valkyrie means setting up nice four-matches for lots of nice stuns and also filling Khorvash to drain whatever Psion has already collected. Khorvash fills fast enough to do that with a single Valkyrie cast (which probably everyone knows here). I… I don’t get it.
I hate Psions skill, but I actually don’t really care about the drain at all?
Despite Mab being in my personal PVP team, I would love to see her lose ground, to be honest. She’s way too good in way too many teams. Simply because it’s not her skill, but her trait that makes her basically good in every team. She rarely fills in my team ever and indeed a lot of things are immune to Mana Burn (hi, Plague, I hate you), but that freeze is what matters.
Storms are random as heck. They are very helpful, but also a huuuuge problem if you use an exploder - you might hand your opponents a lot of good matches if you fail with getting an extra turn, freeze or RNG-unluck. I actually don’t see many people (ab)using storms for that very reason; trolls or gem changers are far more reliable and allow for much more control… which doesn’t help you at all when you’re frozen. But storms are not realiable and used enough to really feature in the balance much, I feel.
Just to make it clear, my issue isn’t the mana
Steal but the fact 98% of the fights are against them,
People who don’t want a nerf probably only do 50-100 invasions in a week, but just try to be in the top 10 for once and fight this team 1000 x in the same week, im pretty sure you gonna see it differently
So this is the thing that absolutely confuses me. Why would people who are blowing through 1k+ battles even care what teams they’re playing against??? If you’re trying to be in the top 10 or even top 100 its about speed, NOT about how boring it is to see the same team over and over.
I’m going to call BS. If you’re already grinding 1k+ battles you’re fooling yourself to complain how boring the meta is when in fact your real complaint is having to fight teams that are slowing down your grind or beating you more frequently than others. If grinding through that many battles isn’t boring on its own, fighting the same team 200 times isn’t going to be either.
No one complains about the vanilla explore defense teams that just keep repeating themselves but for a single different troop (unless they have to explore for an event which is suddenly more boring than normal explore). Why? Because they’re easy to finish a ton of them with nothing getting in the way.
I find the argument more than acceptable if you’re playing less than a few hundred battles. Then you might want to see more variety if you’re time is more limited and you want to experience more of the game in the smaller amount of time playing.
One of the issues as I see it is that the power curve is gradually increasing and it gets to a point beyond the power of new cards across rarities. Once you get to that end game or at least late game point, your team has to generally do one of two things. Loop or cascade at an increasing pace, or slow down the opponent. Cards like spirit fox or manticore were despised for immediate brakes on your teams spells by removing your collected mana right from the start. While the game has evolved, the “worst” metas all generally do the same ultimate grief of simultaneously crippling the opponent at a faster and faster speed.
Some recent grief teams remain infamous, as while there ARE counters, they can still win through lucky drops or just looping harder to win. Justice league for example had impeccable looping power, while slowing down the opponent, with justice boosting life and attack which even prevent full impervious teams with a high enough success rate. It has gotten to the point where short of balancing rng aspects of the game, it doesn’t matter. Some new gem generator will come up or a new troop will find their niche.
In cases where it matters like gw, losing to a team especially when you have a counter team ready, just plain sucks. In pvp, whether you win or lose it just is annoying, especially if you win most of the time as losses just feel like the coin flipped against you rather than being outplayed.
I honestly hate pvp as even during events where you have to kill specific troops, most of my opponents use the same dang meta teams instead of being nice and at least trying to help out other players.
I do understand the challenge side of it. My favorite matches outside of gw are when its a one on one or a complete comeback through careful planning. Getting lucky as all hell with an infernus loop 3 times to kill your whole team isn’t planning from an ai, it’s just dumb luck. I would rather no extra turns outside of troops spells as I would rather win with strategy, then flipping a freakin coin in most matches nowadays.
On a side note, as an mtg player, especially in commander, this general dynamic holds true. It also holds true in that there are top tier, expensive as hell decks that do one thing and with an extremely high chance to accomplish that goal in as little as 3 turns in a format that typically goes on for 15+ full turn rotations amongst at least 3 to 4 players. Even for most players that use them agree its not fun. On the other hand, when a unique deck is used with still paths to victory, but a slower, more relaxed pace, it is more fun for everyone. No one likes the blue who just sits there saying no while comboing off for a repeatable, or even automatic counter combo. There is always a groan when someone winter orbs the board to a standstill as a brago deck gradually slaps you to death with a napkin. Everyone leaves, as you play solitaire with a jeskai enlightened master, getting extra turn, after extra turn for free until you win. I know that a lot of people like quick minute or even quicker matches but for crying out loud isn’t that what freakin explore is for? I don’t think it would really kill anybody for there precious 50 gems and 25000 gold or the bragging rights to play for 12 hrs straight a day for couple bucks worth of rewards if pvp was reworked so that it doesn’t continue to be a chore instead of, dare i say… FUN???
I don’t think that the developers would be so short sighted not to change ‘Mana Shield’ to protect vs: Mana Burn, Mana Steal, and Mana Drain. Or create something new for Steal & Drain, and create a few new troops with this new defense/counter. The developers move way to slow for my taste but they usually make sound design decisions.
That’s valid too, just a different style. For myself, I don’t mind PVP and even if I’m only getting 1/2 the souls you are per match, the 270 I get in PVP feel ‘free’ because I’d be playing those matches anyway to get the glory rewards and/or event points, etc.
I also like variety! I’d go insane playing the same Divinion Fields team over and over and over and… 
I have to agree here. I’m pretty much against any troop getting nerfed, I don’t think there’s an obvious unbeatable-meta right now, but if I had to choose a troop to weaken it would be Mab, for exactly the reasons you state. The passive freeze is just too easy!
O-kay cowboy, can we dial it back a bit? I didn’t realize I was testifying in court!
I use Psion in both a GW defense and, currently, in my PVP defense. I don’t do it to annoy people, I do it because it helps me win! Which is no doubt annoying to my opponents, that’s all I was getting at. 
Psion is one of my favorite troops for this reason: I personally find it very easy to beat a Psion team but many other people apparently don’t. So when I fight with him, I win. When I fight against him, I win.
What’s not to like? 
I agree with your post except for this line. GoW is as much a collection and relaxation game as a strategy game. For many players, the grind they need is for gold to meet guild requirements, buy keys and so on - and PvP is the only place to do this. People go to explore for souls or traitstones, and the battles are trivial. In PvP we don’t need them to be trivial, but we would like them to be varied and fun too.
It’ll always have a degree of chore, it’s a grind in the end. But yes, make it a more fun one. Repetition of stalling fun-sucking mana drain mechanics kills the fun more than anything.
Some may play 1000 per week. Others will still see that 1000, over the course of a couple of weeks. It doesn’t change the monotony of the encounter.
It would still be nice to see a variety of teams, no matter the amount of opponents played. It would be nice to see a mix of Dawnbringer teams, Mab teams, Kraken teams, Dragon teams, Goblin teams, Scorpius teams, EK teams, Humility-Plague teams etc. Each encounter will have different troops with different priorities of danger associated, and actually gives you something to think about per play. The overabundance of any one encounter is what makes things tedious.
Even if the end goal is still to win as fast as possible, the gameplay doesn’t have to play the same. I don’t see why people that play a lot aren’t allowed to see a variety compared to the people that are more limited in time.
Explore defenses do change enough to keep it interesting, which is why no one says anything. Multiple base teams + a 4th different troop. I’m sure the people farming Divinion Fields challenge 1 can tell you how tiring it is to see the same enemy team over and over, if it wasn’t for the fact it is efficient for what they’re doing.
I don’t even get that far less from PVP thanks to Valkyrie and all my bonuses, to be honest. It does add up nicely when I do my weekly ranking tier stuff, I have to agree.
And booooy, Divinion Fields 1. I’m close to insanity and have 940k souls to go (and if I want Xathenos one day, it’s 1,3mil more…).
The problem is not the same enemy team, actually. If I would use Sunbird/Fire Bomb I couldn’t care less. But between me painstakingly racking up Mana for Pharos, that damn skull-dodging Centaur Scout in first spot and, above all, that Boar Rider leeching off of Pharos’ purple conversion and all the green I don’t need is. a. pain. And I don’t even get any gold for it. That is actually the real issue with using a challenge compared to explore. Lack of gold gain.
That one, yes.
TDS does not have Necromancy but it hits all opponents and explode while gaining 15 souls each time, which makes him a gem in any contest. In Explore - normal setting, he can kill everybody while reaching the maximum soulage allowed. Chicken Ra gains soul all by himself, but also has gigantic Necromancy, so it would still be good to have him sitting in the team doing nothing. Which is why I forged him, actually.
Then I noticed that TDS exploding charged Ra in a couple explosions (with the blue-brown colors) then Ra would do a lot of harm and help recharging TDS. I also get a lot of surprise knights.
I’m taking Elspeth-TDS-Ra-Ghoul in PVP and it’s fun! I’m not winning everytime but each battle is different and I’m doing serious soul farming while getting trophies. Also, I have seen Pharos kill everybody in one turn and that’s awesome.
Yes, sometimes it seems we are using completely different troops in a completely different game 
To be clear, it’s RNG that makes every defense troop ever to need a nerf, if you want to put it like that.
Try something else. BTW Silent One does not work on Psion in any day, Psion cannot be silenced. I could name several low-cost troops that can deal with Psion, if Psion is your main priority. But I think your main priority should be find different attack teams.
This year we’ll deal with Fairy Fire and down the line there are some troops that damage both armor and life. Wait for them.
I don’t. He’s too squishy in first position, and elsewhere he drains too little life. RNG being the way it is, I need a big tank on top. A big tank Psion can drain mana off without starving the rest of my team.
Didn’t read the whole thread as it seems to digress from the topic quickly, but as for nerfing Psion, there is absolutely no need for it.
Among the annoying troops(and yes he is annoying if unanswered) he is one of the few with several strict and effective hard-counters and weaknesses. His trait can be countered in many ways from position swapping to entangling, denying skulls alltogether or even simply making sure your leadtroops mana is not important for your teams windup.
His spell drains vastly less mana per own mana point spent than other manadrain offenders… so no don’t nerf him.
There’s a recent spate of “This troop is not exactly what I need in this moment, change it ASAP” threads.
Dudes.