Hello everyone. Just yesterday, a Chinese player made a post directed at MetallicDanny. And I, MetallicDanny, am writing this post specifically for Reddit.
I'd like to respond to all the lies and nonsense written in that post. The text hasn't been edited, and my English isn't very good. I hope the arguments are clear.
The Chinese players used emotion, lies, and provocation. I won't emulate them; I use facts and arguments.
Let's start with the fact that most of the post was dedicated to the Cultist archetype, and for some reason, MetallicDanny was seen as an antagonist for all of China. Although, if we look at the situation objectively, MetallicDanny's community merely rolled back Deacon (an unjustified buff to an abusive archetype), while another community—Lerio and Shinmiri—nerfed Scenario. They never mentioned Lerio and Shinmiri, despite their good reputation on Reddit. So, they once again blamed MetallicDanny for everything. It seemed like a cheap attempt to drum up positive reactions on Reddit, and surprisingly, many fell for it. The Chinese are literally lying and blaming others for their problems. Scenario nerfed LERIO and SHINMIRI, Nauzicaa Brigade nerfed OFIR and Qcento. They know this, but they're deliberately lying. So what does MetallicDanny have to do with it?
Next, the 2600+ MMR situation from a Chinese player. Let's recall the post in which a Chinese player wanted to buff the Eternal Eclipse Initiate, and instead of arguing for the change, he showed his profile—over 2600 MMR—and the explanation, "I got 2600 MMR playing only Cultists, let's buff them."
Reddit immediately noticed the contradiction and ridiculed it:
I'll just remind you what the BC of the person who wrote the post (and who was so strongly supported by Reddit) looked like:
In my video, I merely recounted this story and its absurdity. Chinese bloggers once again fail to provide arguments for their changes to the BC.
Then the guy in that post started making personal attacks and, for some reason, discussing my "poor" performance on Cultists.
Will there be proof?
- What matchup was that? Maybe it was a counter-matchup?
- Was it the end of the season? Maybe I was just having fun and didn't want to win?
Last season, I remained in the top 37 in the world, and Nilfgaard wasn't in my top 4 best factions. So what's the argument?
Speaking of my position on the Pro Ladder, who's more suited to the role of someone who's been involved in Gwent? Someone with that profile?
Or someone like that?
And you trust this player to conduct BC?
He's completely biased. How can he push for changes on the BC if he literally only plays one faction (and one deck – Cultists)? It's insane.
...
Moreover, Reddit users may not know this or may deliberately ignore it, but MD's BCs are made by regular players, not Metallic Danny himself.
A huge number of players from Russia and the CIS participate in the survey and cards selection process.
- Anyone can suggest their own change in the open Russian-language Telegram channel. The cards with the most votes are included in the survey.
- The survey includes 10-12 cards in each category. About 300 Russian-speaking people participate in the surveys (for comparison, this is twice as many as the Lerio and Shinmiri surveys).
- The top 5 cards are discussed and slightly adjusted with other coalitions in the general chat (which includes Lerio, Shinmiri, Ofir, and Chinese players).
In December, instead of making interesting changes, the Chinese killed Firesworn Scribe, and then gave an unjustified buff to Svalblod, Deranged Corsair, and The Heist. Has everyone forgotten that? But Reddit hasn't forgotten the "terrible" change to Ivar (which was made by the Independent Coalition, not MetallicDanny).
Then it took us a whole month to revert the Chinese changes.
Our community has made over 350 cards changes in 27 months. You might not even know that your favorite change was made by the MD community. To confirm, I'll send you a Google spreadsheet in the comments.
So what have the Chinese done in two years? Nothing. Literally. All their changes are powercreep, which is immediately reverted by Ofir x Qcento, Lerio x Shinmiri, MetallicDanny, and regular players. And instead of drawing conclusions and making proper changes, they complain about Metallic Danny (who has nothing to do with it). And they continue to ruin the game by making powerful cards even more powerful or buffing leader abilities.
And instead of facts, they lie and incite hatred to appear better in the eyes of Reddit.
I'm accused of being a "dictator," although they themselves are dictators living in their own "closed world." The MetallicDanny community is a huge association of people from different countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and so on. We have surveys and statistics. The Chinese, however, only use slogans, while they themselves are dictators with childish demands.
People, open your eyes! They're literally acting like children
Idk what crazy drama is happening, all I know is anyone suggesting Cultists buffs should not be listened to
From that post I can say current BC is indeed about politics which is cringe, yeah
Like I said, Lerio sorted this whole thing out
gwent drama in big 2026
I don't understand how one plays the same deck day in and day out and not get completely bored.
KOLGRIM KOLGRIM KOLGRIM
this tbh. i have a deck that i have literally never lost with, but i can't be bothered to play it for more than 2-3 times a day.
Never ever have reasonable posts been made after starting with what equates to 'the other side is lying and emotional while I use facts and arguments'.
But is he not right?
CN coalitions have done immeasurable damage to the game and continue to do so, every council, 100% agreed. There's nothing worse than their votes; it's not even close. Their attack of you is pretty hilarious hypocrisy, as their takes on balance cannot be worse.
That said, MD's and CIS/Independent/Seagull/whatever they want to call themselves have added a lot of powercreep as well and do not nerf the best cards usually, which is a real problem.
Shin/lerio haven't added as much powercreep and tend to work around the other coalition results, but they are far too okay with nerf-avoidance votes and killing supposedly "unplayable" cards, because they forgot many casual players play the game and don't care about the top meta. This is also unacceptable. Killing cards when 95% of players literally do not give a shit about the top of the meta will never be okay. They also conveniently don't suggest nerfs to strong cards in the top decks far too often.
Ofir has actually made real effort to buff bad cards, which is commendable. Buffing semi-playable cards just adds powercreep. Their nerfs sometimes aren't as ideal but at least the spirit of what they're trying to do actually makes sense for longterm game health, whereas i can point to destructive, imbalanced ideas from EVERY SINGLE OTHER GROUP.
To be fair to the Chinese player, he did not even mention EE and Brigade nerf in his Reddit post, which make sense because all of those nerf means little compare to Deacon’s. I kind of understand why he is going after MD: because it’s a really a big nerf for cultist. You really want those Deacon to stay up and use their order and/or be an engine once they got EE infusion. Frustration is understandable.
I feel like it comes down to the reason why cultist needs a nerf in the first place. Were they being nerfed because they are OP/insanely strong/very competitive, or was it because they are toxic/binary/boring to play against. I played around 80 games last month and I was matched against cultist only once. Cultist is a legit archtype that, against decks with zero control, will be very overwhelming to play against but with Deacon at 4 and Initiate at 3 they are much easier to control than when they came put at 5 and 4 respectively. Do cultist really deserve Deacon at 3? I don’t think they do. Should EE be at 16 prov? Why not when it’s the most impactful card in the entire game for its archtype? They can still be competitive (though hardly in the end since barely anyone play it) with EE at 16, but Deacon at 3 is a significant nerf.
i faced this cancer plenty last month on ladder; this archetype being anywhere close to strong polarizes ladder
We need a lerio/shinmiri post now to keep this drama going.
I'm all for sound analysis in balance council discourse. But the moment you [Infuse] emotion by going, 'Go, cry" while accusing the opposing party as "children" in a supposed response from a criticism?
Your post claims that the Chinese player used emotion and lies, promising you won't emulate them yet here you are. Said post from the Chinese player was mature and civil, unlike yours capitalizing on small insults.
I was expecting a civil, mature explanation. Not a post to self validate one's small, fragile ego.
Don't be a child. Take a criticism like a man.
EDIT: OP edited his original post and removed his childish insults. I have screenshots of your original post. You want me to post it here? Revert your original post otherwise suffer the consequences of being a man-child. You'll lose everyone's respect. Act like a child, get treated like a child.
Straight up
The post was edited because some people only paid attention to the last part (the second of emotion), which is why they ignored all the facts that were written above. And this was done so that people could assess the situation more objectively. And the author apologizes for the momentary outburst of emotion.
I mean, "facts" from MD i'd have some doubt on. You remember how he used to ignore the results of his card voting polls and put his own suggestions in the final recommendations, right?
I do, because i used to be able to vote in those polls, and the final suggestions sure AF didn't match the voting results.
MD is correct that the guys votes and bias are hilariously bad, but following the voting from that region, no one is more responsible for powercreep than MD himself...😆
Let's keep the drama coming though, it's great!
Pretty racist. One Chinese player called out your childish behavior on the stream with evidence. Now you are here bashing the entire Chinese community. You are not here arguing in good faith, it’s classic ad hominem.
We have two+ years of horrendous balance council voting from them. The fact is, their voting is absurdly destructive to overall game balance. I don't understand why that mindset is seemingly so prevalent from their region, but it is.
What is considered good is entirely subjective. Many of the vote from Shinmiri, MD, etc isn’t voted on based on balance, but what they perceive to be fun. Shinmiri even admitted himself in the other post that he’s voting to over nerf the cultist archetype and killing it completely because he think it’s unhealthy for the ladder. He also recognizes the deck has less than 10% win rate if the scenario is heatwaved.
I would argue popular western streamers like life coach, swim, etc were the real downfall of Gwent. They were the biggest advocates for some of the worst changes in the gwent, because those changes allowed them to create content.
I'm wondering why the Chinese BC philosophy is so different from ours: pro Cultist and powercreep, among other things. Maybe there is a cultural component?
Anyhow, would you be interested in further communication between your coalition and us to prevent any misunderstandings in the future?
If we had that, than the whole triple nerf to cultist wouldn't have happened, and you wouldn't have to deal with drama with the Chinese.
Every major coalition increases power creep rn, but only CN coalition buffs high ceil cards, that's pretty much all the difference. To find a balance between CN and any other coalition, you can use CDPR's way to balance the game.
I feel like there has to be a level of cultural perception or something. Like, why are most EU/NA players completely fine with cards like Heatwave, Royal Decree, Oneiromancy, etc, being almost must-haves?
Heatwave is a requirement due to the second set of Scenarios which can play for a ridiculous number of points.
most EU/NA players ? i don't understand that statement, majority of players is ok with overbuffed state of tutors and thinners, even tho it completly ruined the game balance and we can see how cards like temple suffers cuz of that. Heatwave is just a necessary evil yeah
Wasn't it the Russians who provision buffed oneiromancy? No streamer, redditor here was behind it.
Royal decree hasn't changed since forever, I don't think that's a particularly western way of thinking.
Heatwave though, that I can agree on, a lot of redditors/streamers say that it's a necessary evil against decks that rely too much on 1 card.
I tend to not run it because it's boring, but I can get their logic.
It took me 2 minutes to find that oneiro was in Chinese(3 star) and Kerpeten (1 star) BC the season it was buffed, and that Lerio thought of that change as ++(liked it very much), so there is a very high change their coalition would suggest such buff themselfs if noone else would pushed it.
2 MINUTES. Like how can you not spend 2 freaking minutes on a factchecking before posting such crap.
i think onneiro is in a good place, i usually prefer decree honestly and feels like a good option at 12. I think all of these are just good cards for the game that are in a good place, not every deck plays em or anything they are just common options, what is most "must-have" is to run either decree or oneiro depending on deck if you are non devo and dont have good consistency.
I think, that is at least 2 variants. Or they have their own philosophy like (we all will use some overpowered decks to speed up and get more infuence to the ladder with gwentfinity). Or they use bots for same reasons.
So, they want for their decks the best winrate. And if, for some reasons, they chose raid deck, for example. So they will buff cards from raid deck for 6 seasons straight to get high winrate and more infuence on the game.
That is my thoughts, what do you think?
What a childish response. "Go, cry" indeed.
If i had a nickel for every time MD used my(and im his biggest hater mind you, or at least thats what he believes) comment in his BC debates, id have two nickels. Which isnt a lot, but its weird it happened twice.
just read this about scribe, oh i very much disagree with your scribe change to 5-6 btw(at least it was in your bc list) i think it in a better state at 4-5, and a waste of votes.
That being said this cn bc lists were really bad too and worse than yours imo, scribe tho was not one of the things i would much less highlight. I think both of you are pretty biased, both this scribe comment on your part: "instead of making interesting changes, the Chinese killed Firesworn Scribe" and cultists from cn are some examples of it.
I would advice these coalitions to be faithful to their polls(in the case they make them which is nice) and the more there are the better so their bias have less influence, its a shame there is no ingame poll to have better councils but at least this would help.
what a shitshow
It's frustrating to see this kind of political BS because it causes so much churn in the game. If only we didn't waste so much energy fighting bad changes, and instead focused on what changes we can agree on.
Buff Seagull again and tell us it's our favourite buff <3
Unless I miss some joke, Danny had nothing to do with Seagull buff.
Was it not his community "joking" about the buff the reason it actually went through?
No, it was Dauren
I liked it too.
Here are my 2 cents about this thing.
Chinese cultist buffs are just at odds with majority of gwent comunity for good reason, they make the experience of the game worse unless you enjoy playing them yourself. BUT Few players let alone a single player mmr should not be used as an argument for nerfting anything, its such an invalid and flawed argument even more considering the state of pro rank nowadays, the pilot and the number of games you grind is what carries far more than the deck(which is a +).
So there was no need to use invalid arguments to not buff cultists, people just dont want to face unenjoyable matchups, but one could argue not to nerf them to the ground or use them like a placeholder like if it was living armor or something, there is no need.
All your suggestions for the last Balance Council were reasonable.
The Chinese guy is overreacting after his only toy got broken, but IMO Eclipse nerf was undeserved. But it wasn't MD community's idea, but Lerio+Shinmiri's who want do protect actually powerful cards from nerfs - particularly Yago, who got leader-buffed, which should be followed by a provision nerf but instead Shin+Lerio suggested only -1 power to a card playing for 30 points in 1 turn. Cultists were barely playable so reverting deacon was enough. But many players just have no idea how cultist work, for them its some sort of black magic so it's better to nerf it just in case (here's an example). So Eclipse can serve as a nerf sink to avoid nerfs to actually powerful cards used in Tier 1 to Tier 2 archetypes.
Have your read recommendations or review text on Eternal Eclipse?
I agree that too little nerfs to main ladder decks happened in the last patch though and we probably should have at least supported Filavandrel which didn't get through at three-stars from Ofiri.
Nothing is making me want to play less Gwent these days than the lack of real, impactful, significant nerfs. Lack of nerfs = boring AF game and meta. It was this was way with CDPR, and last month's BC was example of how to drive me away from the game.
I'm sorry, but you and shin have suggested placeholder and killing card nerf votes for so long now, and it's never been okay. Nerfing is such a critical part of overall, proper game balancing, and the fact that every single coalition aside from maybe Ofir is trying to avoid real, proper nerfing is killing the game.
I get that the stupid masses and certain delusional regions will revert a lot of valid nerfs, but that's not a reason to give up on them. We need coalitions like you and shin's to be a voice of reason in a sea of powercreep, and nerfs are the biggest part of it. They literally are.
Just stop with those stupid "placeholder nerfs" when so many cards actually deserve nerfs. Instead of making Caravan Guard playable, you nerfed him and now even at 4 provision he would still require a power buff or even 2, so you broke him beyond repair - why did you pick this particular card? And Eclipse is some kind of a placeholder nerf too.
Cultists got nerfed when they briefly become playable - but still weak. I played a few games and I won most of them but only because opponents didn't know how to play around them. It's rather SK Witchers, Dwarves, Devotion Schirru or Symbiosis who deserved a nerf.
This post goes a bit too far off topic. The most important part of the post from the chinese streamer that most people here didn't know about is that this guy isn't simply some casual who got to 2600, but a dedicated Cultist player who has played it for 3 years and actively analyses every loss to improve, and that's why he has such a peak above most normal and great players.
Before that post I didn't know that, and would assume 2600 means Cultists is a very capable deck, but knowing his dedication, it makes very much sense. None of this is addressed in your post, but it does go on to complain about him not playing the other factions and suggests that means he can't have an opinion about the rest of the balance in the game. Obviously he has to have some idea of the rest of the meta to have his understanding of how to play against them. Not everyone plays the game the same, people can still have valid opinions even if they don't play exactly like you.
Then your post goes on to just complain that many people don't like many of your BC suggestions and go onto blaming your own audience for this. You as the streamers publishing these suggestions lead to the public support, and you are able to pick from different suggestions. I don't know if you do direct-democracy only picking the top 5, or if you do some personal input to remove the worst options voted for. Either way, you are responsible for what you publish.
The Chinese cultist streamer is one guy, but you collectively blame all Chinese streamers here, even though in last BC there were a couple of streamers, not just one. Many people here have had a lot of criticism for Chinese streamers, and at some point been very generalizing to the point of being a bit racist, which I've been against. But to say that people here just support that is simply wrong. There have been lots of criticism. As there have been against you.
Multiple coalitions have done this, including you with multiple votes for Iris -power as well as Tainted Ale (serves some purpose against armor exploit, but for meta serves as just avoiding a nerf). If you genuinely want to not have powercreep, remove yours, even if popular in your community, and then add a few reversals, like leaders in -prov. Otherwise this criticism seems empty.
It also shows that player's incredible bias, which is so deeply rooted that they cannot possibly provide proper perspective on game balance.
MD has all kinds of terrible ideas in his BCs; i've criticized them countless times as he's done a lot of damage to the game, but at least he actually plays all the factions and all kinds of archetypes.
I would love to see a voice of reason for voting coming from the CN region, but i have literally never seen it. For some reason, every single influencer and even seemingly the majority of their players (if you remember when we got to see their voting polls in the past), seems to absolutely love powercreep and archetypes that are well, boring AF or "toxic".
I realize this is just opinion, but the overall opinion in Gwent about what's "toxic" and generic boring (like Renfri Soldiers as example) is actually pretty uniform overall...until you get to CN region (again, don't know why), where somehow it's like they're playing a different game.
I am not trying to be racist at all, but it's hard to not notice the correlation. It's not about race, it's about region and somehow, a seemingly entirely different mindset.
Agreed. Due to how successful his votes tend to be, after CN, there's no one else more responsible for game powercreep than MD himself.
No way im seeing China vs Russia in Gwent, before 2026.
Actually Chinese community has its own tournaments every season, and the annual tournament is coming. A Ukraine player DOKER.VT was the champion of autumn tournament if I remember correctly. Lerio participanted once too.
Nilfgaardian here. Fuck Cultists! And fuck Jan Calveit, too!
You can actually feel the sexual frustration seeping out of every attack and response in this entire saga.
My Balance Council solution is to get some of these dorks laid so that the rest of us can play the game in peace.
I am glad cultists got nerfed there just as annoying as reaver hunters
The Chinese players used emotion, lies, and provocation. I won't emulate them; I use facts and arguments.
Sorry for laughing when I first reading this, but it's the funniest joke I see in 2026 lol
Man, these BC politics are getting crazy. Let's wait until Lerio wakes up. I bet he'll sort this whole thing out.
China will cut your rare earth mineral supply, if you don't buff cultists.
6a3a
Bunch of absolute dorks in this game’s community lol just shut up and play the game