What makes a clan strong?

Updated.
For Bleed and Politics, Tier 1 requires good Actions and/or Modifiers. Tier 2 requires at least a Modifier. Tier 3 requires some form of action with a bonus or reaction.

BLEED (Tactic #1):
Tier 1: Dementation, Dominate, Presence
Tier 2: Chimerstry, Daimoinon, Serpentis, Vicissitude
Tier 3: Abombwe, Animalism, Auspex, Obfuscate, Quietus

POLITICS (Tactic #2):
Tier 1: Melpominee, Presence
Tier 2: Auspex, Obfuscate
Tier 3: Chimerstry, Dementation, Dominate, Protean

DELIVERY (Tactic #3):
Tier 1: Chimerstry, Dementation, Mytherceria, Obeah, Obfuscate, Obtenebration, Protean
Tier 2: Daimoinon, Necromancy, Vicissitude
Tier 3: Dominate, Quietus, Serpentis

RESTRAINT (Tactic #4):
Tier 1: Auspex, Spiritus
Tier 2: Abombwe, Animalism
Tier 3: Obtenebration, Protean, Quietus

MULTI-ACT/REACT (Tactic #5):
Tier 1: Fortitude, Temporis
Tier 2: Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Presence, Protean, Serpentis
Tier 3: Abombwe, Celerity, Presence, Quietus, Sanguinus
[Presence and Protean only got Tier 2 because of Mind Numb and Dual Form, respectively. Combat cards are not enough.]

COMBAT (Tactic #6):
Tier 1: Animalism, Celerity, Daimonion, Fortitude, Necromancy, Obeah, Potence, Presence, Protean, Thaumaturgy,
Vicissitude
Tier 2: Abombwe, Chimerstry, Obtenebration, Quietus, Thanatosis, Valeren, Visceratika
Tier 3: Auspex, Dementation, Dominate, Melpominee, Mytherceria, Obfuscate, Sanguinus, Serpentis, Spiritus


Having fun tweaking these. I think that's all the disciplines in combat tiers. Not gonna try to shoehorn the others into tiers for the other tactics.

echiang wrote:

I disagree on the Assamites. Loss and Death Star are their strongest options, but not their only ones. You also have Khabar: Glory which is quite a good card. You have weenie swarm with Web of Knives (and ridiculous bloat with Heartblood of the Clan). Even without Death Star, you can make strong political decks. The Black Throne, Old Friends, Amaravai, and stacking counters on Alamut lets you pass PA's like Reckless Agitation. Or go play Camarilla Parity Shift with Tegyrius and his Advanced vote push.

Actually this is kind of the idea...
Assamites are supposed to be hired killers, their strengths are 'supposed' to be in the destruction of others. Combat should be their embrace-right nearly. Instead, most winning Assamite decks are:

S&B using Loss and/or Khabar: Glory
Death-Star Vote
Assamite Vote Decks (with Tegyrius as a variation)

None of these seem to play to the alleged strengths of the Assamites; swift, silent final-death and probably being eaten in the process. No fear preceeds VTES Assamites, but VtM Assamites are generally given a nice polite hello from a long distance and avoided carefully.

Assamites have terrible pool defence too. Black Sunrise, while golden (hello full untap for free!!), generally doesn't do much.

Jeff wrote:

BLEED (Tactic #1):
Tier 1: Dementation, Dominate, Presence
Tier 2: Chimerstry, Daimoinon, Serpentis, Vicissitude
Tier 3: Abombwe, Animalism, Auspex, Obfuscate, Quietus

Why are Chimerstry (Fata Morgana) and Vicissitude (Changeling) Tier 2 while Abombwe (Predator's Mastery) and Obfuscate (Old Friends) are Tier 3?

POLITICS (Tactic #2):
Tier 1: Melpominee, Presence
Tier 2: Auspex, Obfuscate
Tier 3: Chimerstry, Dementation, Dominate, Protean

I'd bump Chimerstry up to Tier 2 on the basis of the potent Shared Nightmare. I'd also put Daimoinon in Tier 2 due to Condemnation: Mute.

DELIVERY (Tactic #3):
Tier 1: Chimerstry, Dementation, Mytherceria, Obeah, Obfuscate, Obtenebration, Protean
Tier 2: Daimoinon, Necromancy, Vicissitude
Tier 3: Dominate, Quietus, Serpentis

Still don't see a major difference between Tier 2 and Tier 3, but okay.

COMBAT (Tactic #6):
Tier 1: Animalism, Celerity, Daimonion, Fortitude, Necromancy, Obeah, Potence, Presence, Protean, Thaumaturgy,
Vicissitude
Tier 2: Abombwe, Chimerstry, Obtenebration, Quietus, Thanatosis, Valeren, Visceratika
Tier 3: Auspex, Dementation, Dominate, Melpominee, Mytherceria, Obfuscate, Sanguinus, Serpentis, Spiritus

You should probably separate Offense and Defense, and possibly a Support category as well.

Serpentis should probably go into Tier 2 along with Mytherceria, Sanguinus, and maybe Obfuscate (lots of combat defense, a little offense with Disguised Weapon).

echiang wrote:

KevinM wrote:

Dorrinal wrote:

There's a bit of discussion going around about so-called "weak" clans. There's no consensus on what makes a clan strong or weak.

STRONG: as an in-clan discipline.

There is a correlation, but it's not a sufficient condition. The Nagaraja are a good example.

Nagaraja are good clan, but they are scarce hence they don't play well as a clan. Lack of good clan-related cards don't help them, too. But there are good nagaraja in TWDA, there is Anu, Asguresh, Veejay Vinod, Le Dinh Tho, Prejudice, Sennadurek and even Raful al-Zarqa and Kanimana Belghazi. Show me any other clan that have 80% of it's crypt choices in twda.

I play decks, and winning with them is not that hard.

echiang wrote:

WEAK: as an in-clan discipline

That might have been true once (when Quietus was really bad), but it has come a long way since. While the Assamites certainly aren't one of the top clans, I wouldn't really put them at the very bottom either.

I won't put them on the bottom, too. They are powerful enough to be competitive and while they aren't tier 1 clan, they are strong t2 choice (and have various archetypes that can actually win the tournament). Sure, sucks balls and is the worst discipline, where only knock from above, but it don't break the clan as a whole.

echiang wrote:

You should probably separate Offense and Defense, and possibly a Support category as well.

And the way discipline are given to vampire is important too. See the place of animalism while having no response at all against anything that is not equipment, and not doing godly amount of damage.

But Animalism is widely spread, most notably on two strong vampire (the one who does redirect for a master and the one that does the same thing as Anson and +1 hand size, but it's also on a wide variety of vampire), and its combat options are tacked on an intercept discipline

It Visceratika and Animalism would be inverted on the vampire they are on, they place would also be swapped.

And I approve Lech : if Nagaraja weren't scarce, they would be a strong clan. They have two extremely powerful discipline and pretty powerful vampire to boot ; but since they are often small and scarce ...

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

echiang wrote:

I disagree on the Assamites. Loss and Death Star are their strongest options, but not their only ones. You also have Khabar: Glory which is quite a good card. You have weenie swarm with Web of Knives (and ridiculous bloat with Heartblood of the Clan). Even without Death Star, you can make strong political decks. The Black Throne, Old Friends, Amaravai, and stacking counters on Alamut lets you pass PA's like Reckless Agitation. Or go play Camarilla Parity Shift with Tegyrius and his Advanced vote push.

Actually this is kind of the idea...
Assamites are supposed to be hired killers, their strengths are 'supposed' to be in the destruction of others. Combat should be their embrace-right nearly. Instead, most winning Assamite decks are:

S&B using Loss and/or Khabar: Glory
Death-Star Vote
Assamite Vote Decks (with Tegyrius as a variation)

None of these seem to play to the alleged strengths of the Assamites; swift, silent final-death and probably being eaten in the process. No fear preceeds VTES Assamites, but VtM Assamites are generally given a nice polite hello from a long distance and avoided carefully.

Assamites have terrible pool defence too. Black Sunrise, while golden (hello full untap for free!!), generally doesn't do much.

The thing is, the Assamites are blessed with more options than combat that are simply better suited for winning, which gives people the impression that their combat is terrible. If you can bleed rather well and make good voting, of course the combat decks are going to look subpar simply because combat is generally a less efficient way to win. The Blood Brothers and Samedi are in the exact same spot (lorewise too), the majority of their cards are for combat but why waste your time when you can play the non-combat ones that make you win.

A bit of sidetrack, hope it doesn't derail too much: The combat that actually is worthwhile appears to be ANI, allies and possibly guns. Most combat-disciplines are usually shock full of (combat) payload but few people consider the delivery. Good delivery makes you do much damage, preferably while taking little back and with FEW cards. Just look at the best combat combo thread www.vekn.net/index.php/forum/7-deck-clinic/18587-best-combat-combo and marvel at the amount of setup/drawing luck required for some. Granted they will obliterate your minions but at the expense of ousting power/actually getting in combat. Allies have built in rushes and usually requires few or none combat cards, deep song extra as a bleed and you just need two combat cards to work, guns more or less work with nothing more, you can focus on blocking or ousting instead. Getting you in combat and letting you do damage regardless of drawing luck is key, not overkilling. Maybe this is obvious to everyone but I still wanted to rant a bit. It's not about combat payload but rather combat delivery.