I’ve played over 100 games on Talishar with Fai over the past few weeks of testing for the upcoming Flesh and Blood ProQuest season. Talishar has been essential for my testing approach (see my previous post describing my testing process), but I think I’m reaching the point of diminishing returns playing on public queues because the Talishar meta skew is making my practice time inefficient. As of this morning, Kano is my most played matchup. I don’t expect to play against Kano at all in my local tournaments, and even if I did, I don’t need to practice that matchup any more than I already have. I also play against a lot of Bravo. He seems unusually popular on-line, maybe because people are trying to beat up on the Fais running around out there. Again, I don’t expect to see many Bravos in our local scene, so a lot of additional reps aren’t highly valuable for me at this point.

Reaching diminishing returns is natural as I put more time into practicing a particular deck. I’ve learned the easy lessons already, and have worked out the rough macro gameplans. To really refine takes a lot more time, focus, and probably some outside perspectives.

So what do I do about it? I’m not going to start dropping from lobbies just because I don’t like a matchup. I hate when people do that to me. Ideally I would love to have a testing partner or small group to share ideas and run more focused testing games with. Maybe I can find someone on one of the Discords that I’m on or on Twitter to test with?

Otherwise, here are some other things I am going to try over the next week:

  • I want to write up my own Deck Guide including MUs. That will help make sure I’ve actually got a sound gameplan that I can articulate, or highlight where I might have key questions to try to answer.
  • I can start requesting specific MUs in my Talishar game names, e.g. “Fai, looking for Oldhims”. I don’t know how well this will work, and it will likely lead to fewer games played overall, but ideally more of the games I need to play.
  • If I have specific questions I need to answer, or MUs to shore up, I should look for outside input either by posting questions on social media, or searching for content people have shared online that might provide some clues.
  • If I have time, I may want to play some games with other heroes to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. That might help me strengthen my own plans.