The emergence of vibrant pain in todays daily deal made we wanna puke, for it is sure to flood PvP with one certain build over and over. There are few things left one could consider unbalanced, by now its mostly combinations of cards that become OP when being accessible in sufficient amount. Vibrant Pain remains a key piece to cheese when paired with bloated dwarf hp and blind rage. I slapped a fast deck together to sort my thoughts on what can be done to counter the dwarf vibrant pain build that usually consists of 2 warriors and a buffing pupeteer priest cowering in some remote corner of the map. What do these players do? First, they rely on intimidation. They stack frenzies and move in decisively, using their obvious strategy as a mean to shield the victory squares from you. In the long run, they use their reach and sturdyness to seek out the weakest link in your party, focussing their barely stoppable advance on that character once they are set up. It is a safe bet that parries are on board. So what do against it? Maintaining range 2 or more by different means, constant purging, the right melee blocks and safe, hard to prevent damage. Once they close adjacent to your character, Defenders block and Cause Fumble are a big wrench in their play. This means you are really narrowing yourself to these decks though. What about roots? Definitely a strong counter, but then what? Same as nimbus, it just delays the retaliation if you fail to take advantage of it that round. So pair it with control or use it for a devestating attack. What else can do wonders? Elvish Insight. I don't like card peeking, i think its misplaced for PvP, but dwarves define the more worrisome portion of vibrant pain builds and i find those are harder to read then elves. Even the cheesiest setups can't deliver every round, you might discover a window allowing you to stick your neck out. So whats your play? - Undo Frenzies at some point in their advance. Not necessarily right away, but when they start approaching. Don't be too wasteful with purges, but better take care of immovable right away. - Maintain range 2 to avoid dwarves flying in your back. Sounds crazy? Because it is. At Range 2 pushback parry can turn a nimble strike into a safe counterattack opportunity. - Use team moves to retreat as a party when there is nothing to be gained in a confrontation and you still got the room. Never let both warriors corner one of your characters. - Blind rage can be your friend, it is pressuring them to act recklessly or throw away step moves. - Use high range control to improve positions, and hinder victory square occupation. It might provoke them to spend additional movement or even their nimble strikes. - Keep cause fumble/defenders block around for when things heaten up and you can't prevent them from flying into your back anymore. - Be patient, play at your own pace and only attack them when you are sure to deal solid damage. Spoiler: An anti vibrant pain build This is just a thinking aid of sorts. Priest 1 Level 13 Human Priest Deathtouch Maul True Strike Spear Battered Holy Mail Twisting Shield Sliding Boots Oquith's Choking Incense Spellstripper Relic Dworia's Soulstone Untrained Flexibility Advanced Piety Priest 2 Level 22 Elf Priest Ankle Grinder True Strike Spear Stargod's Raiments Twisting Shield Sliding Boots Crespin's Shroud Purging Charm Dworia's Soulstone Insight Advanced Piety Wizard Level 10 Human Wizard Pearwood Staff Staff Of Chask Blood Locket Armorbane Pendant Blood Locket Armorbane Pendant Explorer's Force Suit Captain Cedric's Boots Perfect Guidance Electroporter Novice
On wizard, I'd go for 2x Staff Of Chask and some accelerate time (to counter blind rage, revealing attacks and dealing unpreventable damage). that would, of course, leads to a very different team over all.
Maybe we should rather focus on highlighting useful cards and items, rather then brewing up a finished build.
As a vibrant pain user, I can tell you the nature counter is a solid wizard deck. It's not that difficult to beat the vp deck as it has very low tolerance for mistakes. So far I think the best deck in PvP is the wizard build with Searing pain. It has high damages and can hit multiple targets at the same time. Basically you can't hide from the fire ball and there are good arcane item to remove the armor as well. Recently there are new solid builds that focus on armor using the new cards like Adaptable and Cushioning Armor. Pretty strong against warriors but much less effective against wizards
Reliable Mail. Keep the VP dwarf from having Frenzy Aura by delivering damage as often as possible by whatever means you prefer. VP dwarves are actually pretty hard to use competitively. I always laugh when low-to-mid-tier players buy VP and then think they can cheese with it.
Interesting. If somewhat-faster moving dwarves is an issue... somebody's presumably tested an elf mage using force cannons, gusts of war, and telekinesis to fling fully-armed-and-armored dwarves at people, no? I don't know if it'd be terribly effective, but it sounds potentially hilarious.
I think the obvious answer is to just let the N00Bs mess around and wonder what the big deal is and all of the vets to go on doing what they are doing since most have 1 or 2 VPs already. But it is fun to Root a step warrior.
VP build is not as good as it was with the new Citadel armor cards. Probably still good for 1400 - high 1600 play. But will have serious problems against a good wizard deck.
I'll be honest, looking at the thread title three months after its creation, I was rather surprised by which pain exactly we were devising a counter to.
