many in the community are voicing opinions about the role arcane damage plays in fab, especially in the wake of verdance winning a high profile tournament and being the most winningest deck in local proquests at the moment
in the past its been runeblades getting criticism for high amounts of damage, although it could be countered with a single piece of arcane barrier equipment
kano has been a perineal target of loathing, and although his viability and popularity have been waning and waxing based on whatever degenerate combo pieces he has access to at any given time, people generally dont like getting turn 0 comboed at their local armory
so what is it about verdance that makes people dislike her so strongly? what has caused her to become a lightning rod of controversy in the meta right now?
interesting in our analysis of the situation is that she possesses a clear and proximal comparison hero in the form of florian, with many of the same power cards and presenting a similar mix of life gain, defense, and mixed damage
what were peoples complaints about florian, back when he was the boogieman of the meta? unsure what equipment to present in the face of channel millenium tree and scepter, dealing with spikes of 4 arcane from CMT regardless, if you give him a full hand he germinates for 20 runechants, and also if you get to lategame he has a 1 card 5 until the end of time (and its split damage)
verdance has some striking similarities - big arcane damage spikes, powerful and efficient earth cards with basically unconditional disruption, punishing combo turns if left with a full hand and appropriate setup, and efficient lategame plays that can loop indefinitely
florian got scepter banned and everyone forgot about him... so whats verdances scepter? what would the community want to see banned from verdance that would keep her from tormenting them?
the difference between florian and verdance is subtle but profound - bringing AB4 into florian was annoying and compromised your gameplan if he was on reaping blade instead; in fact, the scepter + CMT setup is totally exclusive with getting the 1-for-5 lategame swings with reaping, he can only pick one
but verdance is basically always the same, she sends either burn bare for 6 arcane or autumns touch for 7 physical at you
she whittles you down until youre in striders range
if you survive somehow she grinds you out with evergreen looping, or infinite everbloom//life + 1 arcane + 1 life + 1 arcane shenanigans
she has a lot going for her, but do we consider this unfair? is this warping the meta? is there no counterplay?
at the risk of being pedantic, lets examine how you counter burn bare for 6: you run as much arcane barrier on equipment, and you run as many blues as you can, and you pitch as much to it as possible
this also puts the blues back in your deck, while burn bare goes to the graveyard, almost certainly never to be cast again
AB6 is a tall order, but many classes have access to a piece of AB2 equipment, and everyone has access to AB1 in up to 5 slots
2 blues per hand can seem prohibitive for many decks, but on average that requires half a deck be blues, or 30; for consistency many decks are at about 18, so this just means that including sideboard a deck would need to add a few more playsets of blues to be able to block out most of verdances damage
when aggro is strong and we have to care about onhits, people side in more defense reactions
when bloodrush bellows and oscilio are strong, people side in balance of justice
this does affect some decks more than others, notably cindra, but this has always been one of the drawbacks of redline decks
being able to navigate entire turn cycles swinging weapons without needing to pitch a card gives you inherent card advantage, and mask of momentum often represents an entire extra point of intellect on the hero
a natural strategy to counter this is to exploit the decks lack of spare energy to counter your effects, the way that iyslander frequently did (people hated her because she was a wizard, not because of frostbite, look how few people mind jarl)
if cindra gets hosed because she cant block out a command and conquer, because her hand is full of 2 blocks, we point to it and say thats a consequence of deckbuilding - why wouldnt we say the same for a deck lacking sufficient blues to navigate other challenges?
much could be said about the nature of deckbuilding and its challenges, but for now i just want to keep things focused on wizard specifically
some of this applies to runeblade as well, and the ability of decks to pitch to a big pile of runechants to prevent damage, but it requires less from a decks construction to do so
it is frustrating to commit so much of a sideboard to one deck, but when people dont have enough go-wide cards in their deck and get hosed by gravy bones we tell them "what did you expect?"
i think its time we hold ourselves to a higher standard than "verdance is unfair because i dont feel like putting 3-4 more cards in my sideboard"
-dbk