Gwent drifted into a dilemma and I am afraid we can’t get out of it soon.

So, I haven't really played last season and I guess I won't play that often this season. The reason is quite simple. The decks played look the same. GN decks play the same 10 cards. Swords look a bit overturned. In my opinion, the game lost its character with the last few patches.

Well, there were some complaints in the past saying that neutral cards need a buff, they are nerfed to oblivion. Well, to some degree this idea would have been great. But CDPR was exaggerating now. All the recent buffs and recreation of neutral cards has completely changed deck building.

The result is, that the faction identities are completely lost. Deck building nowadays means, just put in the best neutral cards and fill the gaps with random faction cards. And now every match looks the same.

This needs to be changed. I mean, that's not a state you want to see for a long time.

I think there is only one way out. Devotion needs to be a main keyword with lots of payoff. ST symbiosis is a nice example. This deck was always kind of viable in its devotion form with Eithne and freixenet. At least I felt this way. But now, devotion is literally wiped out of the game. Why would you choose devotion to get 2 extra points, when there are neutral cards which play for 5 points more?

But since devotion wasn't addressed for a long time, I think CDPR won't make changes related to this keyword in the near future. But I really hope they will.

Of course, another way to fix the neutral deck building era would be by nerfing the buffed bronzes. But this can't be the right way. Buffing and nerfing the same cards all the time seems odd. We need a bigger change. And in my opinion, it's buffing devotion pay off to get back some faction identities.