Honest to god, I think she might be the number one WORST card in the game in terms of her utility and payoff compared to actual provision rating in the entire history of Gwent’s releases.
The first 3 shuffles yield nothing except a random 4 provision card that may be rowlocked (spawns on a random row) and also may rely on its deploy ability, e.g. Redanian Elite, Field Medic, or Ban Ard Tutor, to get any kind of decent value. Trying to get more than 3-4 points of average value out of this effect is asking three 50/50 chances to line up perfectly – is it rowlocked, will it spawn on the right row, does it get most of its value out of its deploy ability, does it even match the scenario it’s being dropped into.
Fourth shuffle yields mild swarm payoff in a deck that has absolutely zero capacity to swarm. +1 to all units is middle-of-the-road even for actual swarm decks, but a deck centered entirely around shuffling and redrawing Melitele by its very nature cannot swarm in the slightest. You’re lucky to have 4-6 units on the board when this effect procs, and that’s assuming your opponent isn’t running any kind of control or removal – god help you if they’re playing Reavers or Highland.
Fifth shuffle yields 6 points on average (again, same problem, random unit, random row, no deploy) and sixth shuffle again doesn’t do anything. 7+ isn’t worth discussing as the deck can’t realistically shuffle that many times consistently, but even if you do reach that checkpoint, you’re again getting swarm payoff in a deck that doesn’t swarm – and this is ignoring the fact that all these shuffles need to be completed in a single round before all your progress is reset back to “first 3 shuffles do nothing” tier, and then you’re useless in a short round 3.
1st shuffle 0 points, 2nd shuffle ~4 points, 3rd shuffle 0 points, 4th shuffle 4-6 points, 5th shuffle ~6 points, 6th shuffle 0 points… After 6 shuffles in a single round, you get a grand total of around 15 points. Traveling Priestess + Tridam gives 25 points in the same amount of time and effort for VASTLY less provisions, and that’s not even counting their physical bodies (which I haven’t done for Melitele either).
I just don’t get it. In a release that’s so obviously powercrept and full of blatantly binary game design, in which every other faction got a horribly overtuned/outright broken boss card, and basically every single other unit in the drop is a “lock me/answer me or lose“ card, NR just gets absolutely nothing? Both cards NR received are completely worthless and not only vastly inferior when compared to existing options, but SPECIFICALLY vastly inferior to existing options that already weren’t viable to begin with. This card ranks two or three notches below cards that themselves rank three or four notches below things that actually start to become meta-viable. All this shiny-looking absolute nothing for the low, low price of 14 provisions when 4-provision cards from the base set shit all over it in terms of not just relative value, but even absolute value, where a high-provision card would be expected to dominate.
In essence, every other faction got cool new toys, relevant support, and boss cards to play with, while NR was the only faction to get absolutely nothing. What the fuck? Even MO got love this patch… MO never gets love. Are we the new red-headed forgotten stepchild?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/zgen56/is_it_just_me_or_is_melitele_an_unbelievably_shit/
