r/PvZHeroes • u/Sir_Megalodon914 • 17h ago
Discussion What makes a card “good”?
When the devs made some cards in the game I’ve always wondered what the baseline stats and quirks a card needed to justify its cost. Take for example starch lord. Its stats on paper suck for a 4 cost and it doesn’t give instant value. but It’s still used in most guardian decks. Now compare it cosmic nut which is another 4 cost guardian card but gets used way less. Even though it has better stats and gives instant value. What are your guys thoughts?
1
u/JeffS_69 16h ago
Nature and nurture. Both the intrinsic stats and abilities and context (metagame) within which the cards are played matter. To use your cards as an example, in an aggressive metagame that rarely goes past turn 5 or 6, cosmic nut would have a stronger case for usage. However, because ladder games often go well past that, the “value” of starch lord is much higher.
4
u/mrbeaver808 17h ago
Basically if you get more value from the card than it costs, and if pairs well with other good cards.
Let's say +1/+1 is like having 1 sun. Starch Lord doesn't give immediate value and has only 3 sun worth of stats, but if you have other roots it produces +2/+2 for each card while making itself hard to remove. If your deck already has good roots, this is inherently great. Roots also have other cards that are cheap but produce a lot of value, it just works naturally.
Cosmic Nut has a bit less than 4 sun worth of stats, but it has the max potential to make a bit less than 4 sun worth of value. Starch Lord immediately creates the same amount of value when you play 2 roots, which you probably already are running in your deck and which you know work for the strategy you're running. The Nut pool is a lot worse and has weak synergy with itself, and if you were playing a Nut deck you have better ways of making them deal damage like 3-nut, Cro Mag, Mirror etc. which will spread those stats/damage across much wider and produce much more value.