Elana's deck player is the worst

[Divron™]

Hope one day it get nerfed :c

[Mr. Hugh Mannity]

Like they say, if you want to win the fight, you need to fight fire with fire or in this case, fight Elana with Elana.

[Xuande]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Yuri fan:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Alx:

seriosly, people at low rank complain about elana so much! elana not op. elana win rate at master not even 50%.
its not even t1 deck. im really surprise people complain about elana. while elf got all op card and get away with this. lol

What's your sollution to Elena? PTP and D-shifts? Because those decks are less forgiving.

Play almost any deck that isn't Midrange. Elana has a very weak early game and they lack sustain in the late game due to lack of cards/dead draw topdecks. Their midgame is usually strong (with some bricks depending on number of Elana drawn), but you can outrace the deck's healing early on, and you can also out-card them.

The main problem is that Elana is generally ran as a budget deck that beats most other budget decks, including the most popular budget deck. So you get a lot of A0 and lower players complaining about the deck.

[Sir Fluffykins]

Elana is very weak early? Haven is never weak early.

You know how many matches start with Haven banishing anything you put down while the 1 cost Eagle or Prayer amulet is in play? You've evolving to take out the eagle or Tiger, great, here comes the Priest of Cudgel

You managed to survive and get followers on the field? Great, it's turn 6, say goodbye to all your followers.

Then we have turn 8, where you're either hit with the high health healers, with Elana, that damn Eagle that does 3 direct damage while bringing other amulets in, or the Seraph appear.

So you only have Turn 3, 5 nd 7 to do something. So what do I play besides equally annoying Storm decks to beat this early?

...............

Whine Aside, I did have a Haven player mess up today which was hilarious. They were Eagle and I was fuming, but I was holding on, keeping the HP even (we were both 15). They used cooldown cards to bring a bunch of followers in and I got hit in the face by the Eagles.

I'm Shadow, use a few spells, the aoe takes out two 2/1 eagles, the 4 dmg spell takes out one tiger and I use the Soul Conversion to kill my little 1/2 to get more card.

So I have nothing, they still have one tiger and an 3/5 and their last amulet comes into play.

Artemis -their whole board dies and soon they rage quit XD

I sat the whole "waiting for response" wondering what the hell just happened XD

[Crescence Toran]

Suppose you guys get the choice of how to nerf Elana. What change would you guys make?

[Sir Fluffykins]

Either 4 cost, or have it boost +Health only.

But that aisde, the problem isn't Elana, it's not being able to slow down or stop ALL the amulets coming in at once.

If you play Rune and you send a Haven's amulet back to their hand as the timer hits 1, some rage quit. You can only banish with Odin or Pretrification. I'm not saying we need 30 amulet banish cards, but just 1 cheap option for the other classes (because Haven has most of them) would help.

This also won't ruin Elana, it'll just mean they have to be wary of just throwing it down early like most do, because what's their opponent going to do. Instead they'd need to play other amulets and followers until the moment they can throw down Elana and a heal together.

[Xuande]

Turn 1: Nothing, Sacred Plea, or a delayed 2/1 Storm.
Turn 2: Aria (their only early game class card that is above curve), or a 2/2 like Mainyu or Unica. If desperate, Scripture.
Turn 3: Most commonly do nothing (Elana). Delayed 3/4 Storm, or possibly a 2/2 or 2/3 with no board-altering effect are other options. If topdecked, Aria. If desperate, Scripture. Aria->Hallowed is rare.

This is not a very impactful curve to the typical Aggro deck. The Elana player may even be stuck playing cards like Monastic/Rabbit Healer just to play anything. Outside of Unica, the Aggro player has no incentive to trade and isn't forced into it via Ward either.

Turn 4: Cudgel or lose when going second. When going first, stuck playing off-curve with a similar play as Turn 3.
Turn 5+: Start getting an Elana engine going by playing vanilla cards with heal effects and either a body or draw (with Radiant, you get both). If the Aggro deck isn't close by this point (though an average Aggro hand should be), they're screwed.

Turn 6: Typically not Themis on curve. Aggro has already won or lost by this point, while Control/Combo decks are still happily sitting near 20 HP and either preparing to OTK or outlast your vanilla minions. Midrange starts getting outvalued if the Elana player didn't open with a brick hand.

Late game: Elana runs out of cards and has no win condition besides grinding or hoping like hell that Seraph sticks and that Turn 9 isn't too slow, but their deck isn't very good at grinding decks that run late game and/or good board clears.

I have yet to see this supposed Garuda/Elana hybrid being described two posts above this.

Aria is the one tool keeping Haven in the early game, and anyone who played a significant amount of any Havencraft deck before Darkness Evolved knows it. Decks were weaker back then and yet Haven still had trouble making it out of the early game, even with Cudgel/Scripture.

[nn]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Sir Fluffykins:

Elana is very weak early? Haven is never weak early.

You know how many matches start with Haven banishing anything you put down while the 1 cost Eagle or Prayer amulet is in play? You've evolving to take out the eagle or Tiger, great, here comes the Priest of Cudgel

You managed to survive and get followers on the field? Great, it's turn 6, say goodbye to all your followers.

Then we have turn 8, where you're either hit with the high health healers, with Elana, that damn Eagle that does 3 direct damage while bringing other amulets in, or the Seraph appear.

So you only have Turn 3, 5 nd 7 to do something. So what do I play besides equally annoying Storm decks to beat this early?

1 cost bird? pinion prayer? no elana deck dont run pinion.
3 face damage pop amulet? garuda? no elana deck dont run garuda. are you complain about garuda haven? also garuda haven dont run themis.
every class have their "op" card. like sword turn 4 floral fencer turn 5 aurelia turn 6 otohime turn 7 sage commander. you should be dead by now. you describe a perfect scenario. while all deck have their best perfect scenario to win.
and elana so weak early, if they play on their perfect curve. plea > aria > elana. against aggro deck like banner sword or agro loli bat this is a suicide move. trust me
i my self glad this game isnt all about p2w ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. we can make cheap meta deck. not just spamming legend/gold like elf and be op. elana storm haven banner aggro loli bat. is a cheap deck we can use to climbing.
also haven in general so weak to rune. minus storm haven. just like shadow weak to haven.
just a tip from me, if you hate elana so much, try put execution on your deck. hate seraph? put odin! pray you have odin or draw odin in time. lol

[ばるるん]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Alx:

1 cost bird? pinion prayer? no elana deck dont run pinion.
3 face damage pop amulet? garuda? no elana deck dont run garuda. are you complain about garuda haven? also garuda haven dont run themis.

There is a deck called Storm-Elana, though it's rare. They use combine storm and Elana together. The recipe is also floating in the deep web, net-deckers can easily find them.

[Aquarius]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Alx:

just a tip from me, if you hate elana so much, try put execution on your deck.

i used execution instead of other 5-point removal because of elana. unfortunately, i have played few games last two days where i execute two elana (sometime all three of them) but still lose the game.

the problem is when they played elana at round 5, they usually play 2-point healing at the same round, to make it worse, sometime beastcall aria summoned the falcon and tiger at the same round. after spending 5 point executing the elana, i lose much of my tempo... well, my sword craft can build up the board pressure again in signle round, but then they will just slap my face with themis, multiple themis infact...

i dont think aggro bat n sword banner will do any good against elana, at least at my current rank (B3), they just heal up or slap ur face with angelic barrage or forbidden ritual. probably only runecraft can score an easy win against elana seraph

[Xuande]

I farm Elana/Seraph/Hybrid Haven, love queuing into that matchup at AA1. Just keep an Odin in the mulligan since their best hope is getting off Seraph, and autopilot to victory. Something about triple Tsubaki and triple Alexander makes it very hard for Elana to ever snowball out of control, and inevitably I gain card advantage vs Elana amulets and vanilla minions/heal effects.

You're at B3. Anything can appear strong because players are still in a meta of "which budget decks are strongest" and sure, maybe Elana is on that list. The moment you enter a meta where budget isn't driving deck choices, you'll see a lot less Haven in general.

[Bishop]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=817350202

prayer- aria- double elana on turn 3-4. Turn 5 aria procs - radiant angel + evolve = 40 raw stats on table. Full clear is already impossible. Then double heal on turn 6. At this points these degenerates don't even bother to trade, the game is over. How to hell can you farm something like this with anything non hyper aggro? This ♥♥♥♥ must be nerfed and it wil be nerfed. It should not exist in the game.
Yeah i know they dont draw like this every single game and i have positive winrate against elana with ptp, but when they play aria into double elana into heals its gg.

[Xuande]

What were you doing during Turn 3-Pass and Turn 4-Pass? From the looks of it, you're just playing into a bad matchup as PtP Forestcraft and not acting on that knowledge. Rather than going for a hail mary rush into PtP, maybe considering playing your hand out and aim for Rhinoceroach combo in the midgame?

Forestcraft doesn't have good tools for board controlling the opponent outside of Aggro matchups. That's a class weakness, but they get a lot of powerful tools that cover all matchups to some degree in return. Burst down vs Combo, PtP vs Control, out-value vs Midrange, easy board control vs Aggro. It just so happens that the Midrange deck that Elana Haven typically is out-values PtP Forestcraft, so you're going to have to play it like a race, just like you would in the D-Shift matchup. But don't expect to win >50% of the time, all else being equal.

(I find it funny that a Forestcraft player is calling anything Haven OP, and I would have the same reaction if any Swordcraft player said the same. Those are your real top two classes at the moment, while everyone else techs around them or finds a niche like D-Shift Rune or Aggro Bats.)

[Bishop]

What ptp supposed to do on turn 1-3 if you don't draw ancient elf? Generate 2 faires turn 1, play 2 fairies turn 2, generate more faires turn 3, play more fairies. On turn 4 i evolved epm for possible Will of the forest or rhino/tia combo (neither of which i did draw). My board already was full of fairies + epm, like it means something against 4/6 + 8/8 (he traded that tiger into epm) +4/3 on turn 5. If i'd draw Will of the forest on turn 5 i could full clear it with 3 fairy left on table (13 worth of hp into 8+5 worth of damage with evolve). But i didn't so i was forced to clear tiger with double sylvanas, evolve fairy to clear 4/3 and leave 4/6 on board.

"Forestcraft doesn't have good tools for board controlling the opponent outside of Aggro matchups. "
Thats not really true, will of the forest deals 8 damage from hand on turn 5 with some board state its enough to full clear pretty much anything, minus otohime and retarded double elana into multiple heals.And there's no really any better board clears at this point. Except thermis. Because haven is the only class that deserves good board reset aoe.

"so you're going to have to play it like a race"
You cannot outrace anything with pure ptp most of the time. its reactive combo deck, not proactive. Roaches requiring a lot of setup, without ancient on board theres almost zero pressure early game.

[Xuande]

You're complaining about a bad matchup that I've seen almost no PtP Forestcraft build tech for, they tend to prioritize card cycle over proactive early game. Accept the bad matchup, or play a different variant of Forestcraft.

Decks that match up vs Elana Haven:

Forestcraft: Standard Tempo Forestcraft does reasonable, so does Combo Forestcraft (Rose Queen/Silver Bolt/etc). PtP Forestcraft tends to lose more often.

Swordcraft: Banner Sword is very draw dependant and depends on how greedy the Elana build is. Midrange Sword has a strong matchup, and Control Sword has a very strong matchup.

Runecraft: D-Shift Rune feeds on Elana Haven. Kaleidoscopic ruins Aria, and recent D-Shift decks are trending towards running extra single-target hard removal, which slows down the Elana gameplan enough to win around Turn 8-9. Don't know about the Earth matchup, but its rare.

Dragoncraft: Not sure how Storm Spam and "Ambush" builds do against Elana, I don't play or run into many of these personally. I'd suspect Elana is favored, though.

Shadowcraft: Haven anything dumps on Shadowcraft, not their fault. Probably the current weakest class much like Bloodcraft, unless you like running pure Aggro.

Bloodcraft: The more "from hand" reach the Aggro Bats player is running, the better their chances. This match is probably close to a toss-up and dependent on who gets to go first.

Havencraft: Greedier deck wins the mirror unless one player bricks their opener, Seraph > Hybrid > Elana > Bird.

Will of the Forest is a decent board clear, but its fairly priced and has a ridiculous added cost (you have to keep your hand full, which limits it almost entirely to the PtP Forestcraft build). If you're actually getting 8 damage WotF off, its because you're clearing Aggro off the board - not because its a good idea to keep your hand full in the other matchups. Its not the sort of card that you're going to get to clear with multiple times like you would Themis/Alexander/Foul Tempest/Calamitous/etc, because you're not going to be able to keep your hand full all game unless you're successfully chaining Altered Fates and Fairy tokens in the early game.

[Bishop]

"or play a different variant of Forestcraft."

Emm like what? I play every forest deck that exist, including meme ones like rose queen. PtP is you best bet against elana, midrange is really bad against it most of the time.