Everyone playing Zephrys decks right now have a small reason to celebrate – the card got hotfixed to be even smarter! While most of the time Zephrys offered you most useful cards for your situation, there were certain situations in which the option were sub-optimal.
Three bugs were fixed, bumping up Zephrys IQ even further. However, probably the most notable change is the final one. Normally Zephrys does not recognize minion effects, but after the hotfix, he will know that Doomsayer is on the board and try to answer it. That’s important, given that the card is pretty common on the ladder right now.
We’ve recently applied a hotfix in all regions to implement the following bug fixes and adjustments:
- Fixed a bug where Zephrys sometimes didn’t handle enemy Divine Shields properly.
- Fixed a bug where Zephrys sometimes didn’t handle Poisonous properly.
- Fixed a bug where Zephrys didn’t consider that buffing a 0-Attack minion would let it attack that turn.
- Taught Zephrys how Doomsayers work.
- As a rule, we don’t plan to teach Zephrys about individual card mechanics and interactions. However, we’ve made a one-time exception in this case since having less-than-perfect offerings from Zephrys when trying to find an answer to a Doomsayer could cause you to lose your board or end up with no good plays for the turn.
Thanks!
I think Zephyr doesn’t look at your hand which is the main issue in my opinion. I had a lot of situations where there was lethal with combination of my hand + one card from zephyr (blood lust for example) and he just didn’t see it. It’s hardly the perfect card if it doesn’t see lethal.
They said in advance that Zephrys doesn’t see your hand. So if you have lethal with a charge minion that is in your hand and Bloodlust from Zephrys, he won’t give you that Bloodlust, because he only sees minions on the field. So if you first play the charger and after it Zephrys, then and only then will he offer you Bloodlust
The thing is that all of the current interactions had to be programmed manually. If you add hand recognition to that, it would get way too complicated.
They would need to use some sort of neural network / machine learning so it could learn the cards itself, but that’s not an easy task either.
As for the hand issue, most of the time it can be easily resolved. Just play the card from your hand first. If Zephrys sees lethal, he will give it to you 100% of time. For example, if opponent is at 16 health and you have a 4/4 on board and Blessing of Kings + Zephrys in hand, play BoK first so you buff it to 8/8 and then Zephrys will give you Windfury 100% of time (assuming no Taunts). If you play Zephrys first, he probably will give you other stuff, because he doesn’t see lethal.
I also experienced a “bug” playing Wild against Cubelocks und DarkestHourLock. I played Renolock. The oponent several times had Skull of Manaari and Zephrys failed to recognize on turn 5 or 6 that i needed weapon removal.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bug. It probably did recognize that opponent has a weapon, but it was a 0/3 weapon – so basically useless. But since it doesn’t see card effects, it didn’t know that it isn’t played to attack with.
They just added Doomsayer as the only exception, but it didn’t recognize ANY card effect until now.
Thanks for the reply. That really enlightened me, i understand now. Thanks for the explanation. You are doing a fantastic job btw.
The devs have said in general that Zephrys doesn’t “know” anything beyond the cards on-board. For instance, he won’t know that against Rez/Big Priest you really don’t want to kill some threats to deny their rez pool, or why you might want to silence a seemingly harmless 2/2 Possessed Lackey, or how against burn decks you should assume they’re holding Kill Command/Leeroy/etc in-hand.
Well, thanks again for all the explanations. 🙂 I just presumed Zephrys would recognize the weapon of the opponent, regardless being a 0-attack one.
In that regard I was thinking about his priorities and weighing of situations. In my example of the opponent having a 0-attack weapon like Skull of Manaari or Aluneth, i thought he would just weigh having a weapon heavier than having a 0-attack one.
Zehprys seems to underestimate 0-attack stuff; regarding minions he has been hotfixed. I wish Blizz would apply the same principles to 0-attack weapons.
I would say its more like he doesn’t understand that your opponent is running this weapon because of how it indirectly synergies with his deck rather than its direct effect on the board.
You can think of Zephrys kinda like the world’s greatest Arena player who’s also never played a game of Standard/Constructed in his life.