Can we report players for exploiting a bugged card?

ZW2007-

I'm getting really sick of running into decks that are exploiting the **** out of Zendikar's Roil just because it is bugged and producing way more tokens than it should. It is a known bug. Isn't abusing known bugs considered cheating? There is no excuse for these players to be using this card other than to exploit the bug to their advantage. Will something ever be done about it?

Brakkis

Even without the bug, the Zendikar's Roil/Path to Discovery deck on Kiora is crazy.

Sure, I wouldn't be swinging with a 400+ Elemental if not for the bug, but I'd still be swinging with a 200+ one.

ElfNeedsFood

I get that this one is getting a tad old but this is nothing compared to the original Baral decks and he was working as designed. 

ZW2007-

Yea, and they fixed Baral. Zendikar's Roil was reported as bugged long before Path of Discovery was even added to the game and they still have done nothing. https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/70685/zendicars-roil-double-creatures

ard021

Brakkis said:

Even without the bug, the Zendikar's Roil/Path to Discovery deck on Kiora is crazy.

Sure, I wouldn't be swinging with a 400+ Elemental if not for the bug, but I'd still be swinging with a 200+ one.

It's a lot less likely to continuously trigger landfalls with only two PtD activations, though.  It's the four conversions in a row that really causes things to snowball. I think the card is largely manageable at 2.

Mburn7

You think this is bad, you should have seen Prized Amalgam back when it first came out.
People only ran it because it would crash the game whenever the AI played it.

But its not cheating, if its just how the game works.  If the devs didn't want us to do it, they would have programmed it better

TheF3C3SK1ng

Am I missing something? I use that card with green gem conversion, and looking at what appears on the board I have yet to get any extra tokens. It's 2 x 2/2 for any time you hit 4xgreen gems. Is there a broken combo i'm missing out on?

Froggy

How is this cheating? Because one player figured out a viscous combo and others then use it, isn’t cheating. I played against a mean Bolas deck once and was pummeled into oblivion by a loop with completely broken cards in combination. While taking my beating, I took note of the cards and saw it was a brilliant deck. So I reconstructed it.

In this case, who is the “cheater”?
Is it me because I learned?
Or is it the original creator for allegedly “exploiting” it?
Or is it the devs for making cards that could be exploited?

Cheating has heavy consequences in this game and I would not use that allegation lightly.

Am I cheating if I use my Kiora Part the Waterveil deck in Trial of the Planes for a 25 minute loop? Nope.

You can’t be called a cheat if the devs are aware of the problem, it’s been reported numerous times and they haven’t fixed it. This is God’s Will and we are just his humble servants.

tfg76

There's a bug where it creates 4 tokens instead of the stated 2.

I have not seen it be "broken" - it's basically a 3-situation combo. You need those two cards in play, then you need to actually match 4, then you need something to give haste or take another turn.

FindingHeart8

I'll come out here and admit upfront that I have used this (admittedly bugged) combo in my decks and have 0 problem with it.

Yes it's powerful, yes I've ramped combos and (occasionally) made ~100/100 elementals.  I usually take a screen shot of it when I do, because it's not too common

Is it cheating? Indisputably no.  Is it overpowered?  Well maybe.  But no worse of a combo than cycling or HuF/Deploy or Omniscience or Whir/Swarm or ANY well-constructed green gem conversion deck.

Fact is:

1) The creatures don't have haste so ANY removal spell can deal with it with ease (creature removal is abundant, easy to obtain via packs, and cheap to cast.

2) Frequently the combo shuts itself down early.  Too many times I've had gem conversions destroy path to discovery before the elementals get to a sizable portion.

3) In the hundreds of games I've played since this became a thing, I'm yet to see the AI abuse it.  Maybe that doesn't matter to some players, but as an advocate for the player base (instead of the AI) I have no problem with this.

4) The glitch made a practically useless card useful.  I'm not excited for its return to "meh."

5) Players using cards as they were given is not cheating.  I'm not even sure if you can cheat in this game (unless you found a way to hack it and change your game score or become invincible or something).

Note:  I've taken the combo out of almost all of my decks.  Not because I have a moralistic problem with it, but because strategically I've found faster, quicker, and more reliable ways in standard to defeat my opponents that require less setup.

IM_CARLOS

I am in the same corner tested with roil and got a huge amount of token a lot of time but this combo takes to long to just finish one turn sometimes and there are safer and faster decks out there wich exploid the path. Is it cheating? No. You not even play against a player. You are just play against a deck and Greg. 
Need it a fix? Probably. But the problem here is not roil. It's the path that produces enormous amounts of mana/loyalty if a creature enter battlefield. Need this fix? Probably. But I think it is just another combo card and not meta defining. There are cards that need to be fixed first. Cards like omni or new perspective. They are meta defining. At least omni is a MP so not everyone has it. 

Turtleoleo

I just endured a 20 minute cascade with the roil/path combo.  I still won the came thanks to Undying Fury/Second Sun but waiting for the AI to finish its turn was painful.  If I hadn't been sitting at my desk waiting for a phonecall I probably would have quit the match.

FindingHeart8

Turtleoleo said:

I just endured a 20 minute cascade with the roil/path combo.  I still won the came thanks to Undying Fury/Second Sun but waiting for the AI to finish its turn was painful.  If I hadn't been sitting at my desk waiting for a phonecall I probably would have quit the match.

A 20 minute cascade?  Are you being literal with those numbers or did you mean that metaphorically?

I'd be incredibly skeptical of a 20 minute cascade with this combo being possible.  Omniscience/Whir/Baral had a lot more stability in continuing a combo-steak, and the most I ever saw that combo run for was approximately 13-15 minutes.

Froggy

I’ve had my deck cascade for 25 minutes once. It’s a legacy build with Vraska. Completely OP and totally broken. The loops routinely go from 5-15 minutes. 25 minutes was a record and I hated myself for it - I could not quit as it to was in TotP.

I used a Vraska build. I’ll share it here. It’s not an exploit as I doubt many people will be able to build it:

Creatures:
Rashmi
Wildgrowth Walker

Spells:
Rishkar’s Expertise
Harvest Season
Seasons Past
Nissa’s Renewal
Hour of Promise
Behold The Beyond

Supports:
Path of Discovery
Zendikar’s Roil

Laeuftbeidir

I found out the variation with forerunner of the légion, légion "fetch-himself" -dude and path is way worse - since the gems turn to white, it won't destroy the path. Once set up, it can go on and on until the loyalty gems make any matches impossible, ten minutes is quite realistic. I managed to get a board with two colored activation gems, path and the rest was loyalty + white

andrewvanmarle

Brakkis said:

Even without the bug, the Zendikar's Roil/Path to Discovery deck on Kiora is crazy.

Sure, I wouldn't be swinging with a 400+ Elemental if not for the bug, but I'd still be swinging with a 200+ one.

This is actually an untested and unproven hypothesis. the loop is likely to stop much quicker when only 4 gems are changed. Every extra gem changed per occurence increases the likelyhood of a landfall. 

FindingHeart8

Laeuftbeidir said:

I found out the variation with forerunner of the légion, légion "fetch-himself" -dude and path is way worse - since the gems turn to white, it won't destroy the path. Once set up, it can go on and on until the loyalty gems make any matches impossible, ten minutes is quite realistic. I managed to get a board with two colored activation gems, path and the rest was loyalty + white

Interesting, I had not considered the legion combo.  I could see (with a guaranteed creature fetched for every creature dropped) how with the right cards this could go on *theoretically* almost indefinitely.

FindingHeart8

Froggy said:

I’ve had my deck cascade for 25 minutes once. It’s a legacy build with Vraska. Completely OP and totally broken. The loops routinely go from 5-15 minutes. 25 minutes was a record and I hated myself for it - I could not quit as it to was in TotP.

I used a Vraska build. I’ll share it here. It’s not an exploit as I doubt many people will be able to build it:

Creatures:
Rashmi
Wildgrowth Walker

Spells:
Rishkar’s Expertise
Harvest Season
Seasons Past
Nissa’s Renewal
Hour of Promise
Behold The Beyond

Supports:
Path of Discovery
Zendikar’s Roil

to be fair, you could easily make an incredibly lengthy cascade without path/zendikar's roil in the deck, so I wouldn't say those 2 cards are specifically to blame here.

I've used many of those specific cards you listed (without path and zendikar's roil) with Baral and I quit my match after an hour of cascading.

Turtleoleo

20 minutes just letting it run on its own and not constantly tapping on it to speed it up, I just kind of threw the phone on my desk so I could do other things, only tapping occasionally to keep the screen alive.  The animations were slowing everything down, her 3rd and 1st ability were out so there was the extended "flow" of loyalty.  She was getting 2 creatures per roil, exploring each time.  I think the thing ended up being close to 280 hp when all was said and done.

I do have an older phone that the game drags a little on, especially with heavy animation. I'm sure that contributed to the length of the turn as well.

DumasAG

tfg76 said:

...then you need something to give haste or take another turn.

And that's why you jam Samut or, preferably, Decimator

FindingHeart8

Turtleoleo said:

20 minutes just letting it run on its own and not constantly tapping on it to speed it up, I just kind of threw the phone on my desk so I could do other things, only tapping occasionally to keep the screen alive.  The animations were slowing everything down, her 3rd and 1st ability were out so there was the extended "flow" of loyalty.  She was getting 2 creatures per roil, discovering each time.  I think the thing ended up being close to 280 hp when all was said and done.

I do have an older phone that the game drags a little on, especially with heavy animation. I'm sure that contributed to the length of the turn as well.

I see what you're saying.  The animation probably had a significant effect.  The times I got my elementals to over 100 it took me less than 5 minutes (and that's including gem-swap/draw spells).  Still sucks you had to wait that long tho.