History GameBreaker / TheWitcher

---> '''Geralt:''' [Axii] tempts you to overuse it. Force a merchant to reduce his price. Make an arrogant noble drink from a gutter. Teach someone to show you respect. [[PowerCorrupts That can become hard to resist]].

* The Whirl skill is reasonably powerful on its own, albeit limited by the defensive capabilities of enemies, humans in particular. However, upgrading a sword with the Severance word of power in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion not only extends its range, but also negates blocking to a ridiculous extent (at lower than Death March difficulty). This allows Geralt to carve up groups of enemies with ease, turning most encounters with bandits into a complete joke. It's essentially Geralt's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Omnislash]]. The developers must have realized it too, because one of the main reasons that Alps and Bruxae in ''Blood And Wine'' are so difficult to fight is because they don't stay still long enough for this trick to work. Even in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion that makes it even stronger makes efforts to combat against it, as [[BonusBoss Olgierd]] straight up [[NoSell No Sells]] the move by deflecting every single hit, and [[MightyGlacier The Caretaker's]] lack of hitstun means that [[SchmuckBait making the mistake of trying it on him]] will typically ''immediately'' end in you taking a big hit for your trouble, and him likely [[LifeDrain regaining all the health you took from him with that hit alone.]]

* The Whirl skill is reasonably powerful on its own, albeit limited by the defensive capabilities of enemies, humans in particular. However, upgrading a sword with the Severance word of power in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion not only extends its range, but also negates blocking to a ridiculous extent (at lower than Death March difficulty). This allows Geralt to carve up groups of enemies with ease, turning most encounters with bandits into a complete joke. It's essentially Geralt's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Omnislash]]. The developers must have realized it too, because one of the main reasons that Alps and Bruxae in ''Blood And Wine'' are so difficult to fight is because they don't stay still long enough for this trick to work.

** If Spy Spam is bad, combining them with medic and scorch is the end-all-be-all at the highest difficulty. At that level, all decks have multiple Scorchs and Decoys and Villentretenmerth to recycle your spies and burn off your powerful Tight Bond units. The solution? Multiple medics and Scorchs. Powerful cards are scorched off the table? Revive them with medics. Your spies are decoyed away? Revive them with medics the next turn. Better yet, scorch them off your table and revive them that turn. The worst part is that there's an NPC-Sasha who uses the exact same strategy but better [[note]]She also has Emhyr var Emreis: The Relentless Leader card which allow resurrection of a card in your opponent's discard pile[[/note]] and she was ThatOneBoss of base game's Gwent.

** [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Scorch_(gwent_card) Scorch]] is basically the [[VideoGame/MarioKart Blue Shell]] of Gwent. It nukes the strongest card on the field when played, including any cards that are '''tied''' for strongest. This allows the player who played it to gain a sizable advantage at worst and outright cripple their opponent at best. Not only does the victim lose their strongest card they might have just lost half their entire units if they weren't careful about maintaining a diverse set of power levels. This is especially deadly against Monster decks since many swarm cards have similar levels of strength. Nothing worse than bringing out your army and seeing it become barbecue in the span of a single turn.

** Spy Spam, full stop. Gwent is a game of limited resources and careful planning so what better way to break it than through sheer brute force tactics and resource denial? Spies are supposedly balanced by trading one strong card to the opponent in exchange for drawing two fresh ones, only theres a massive power discrepancy between the Spies power and the usefulness of their effect. Trading one card for two is already a pretty good deal on its own but with multiple Spies the ability becomes completely broken beyond all repair. Because players must play a card each turn or pass it becomes easy to force an opponent to throw away half their hand while the player increases theirs with each Spy played. The end result? By round two one player has over a dozen cards in hand while their opponent is lucky to have half that. Needless to say, a CurbstompBattle usually follows right after.
** If Spy spam are bad, combining them with medic and scorch is the be-all-end-all at the highest difficulty. At that level, all decks has multiple Scorchs and Decoys and Villentretenmerth to recycle your spies and burn off your powerful Tight Bond units. The solution? Multiple medics and Scorchs. Powerful cards are scorched off the table? Revive them with medics. Your spies are decoyed away? Revive them with medics the next turn. Better yet, scorch them off your all table and revive them that turn. The worst part is that there's an NPC-Sasha who used the exact same strategy but better [[note]]She also has Emhyr var Emreis: The Relentless Leader card which allow resurrection of a card in your opponent's discard pile[[/note]] and she was ThatOneBoss of base game's Gwent.

** The [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Decoy_(gwent_card) Decoy]] card can be a bit tricky to time right, but has unparalleled effectiveness in the hands of a master. It's effect is simple but powerful, returning a card on the player's field to their hand. Normally, this is merely used to trick an opponent into dropping their best cards before reclaiming a powerful unit, but it has more versatile uses as well. Because it captures '''any''' card on the players side of the field it can be used to snatch up enemy spies to use against the opponent or reuse extremely powerful unit abilities such as Medic to return multiple units into play. This one single card can set up some pretty insane combos in skillful hands and completely break the game when played at the right moment.
** [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Scorch_(gwent_card) Scortch]] is basically the [[VideoGame/MarioKart Blue Shell]] of Gwent. It nukes the strongest card on the field when played, including any cards that are '''tied''' for strongest. This allows the player who played it to gain a sizable advantage at worst and outright cripple their opponent at best. Not only does the victim lose their strongest card they might have just lost half their entire units if they weren't careful about maintaining a diverse set of power levels. This is especially deadly against Monster decks since many swarm cards have similar levels of strength. Nothing worse than bringing out your army and seeing it become barbecue in the span of a single turn.

* The Whirl skill on its own is reasonably powerful on its own, albeit limited by the defensive capabilities of enemies, humans in particular. However, upgrading a sword with the Severence word of power in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion not only extends its range, but also negates blocking to a ridiculous extent (at lower than Death March difficulty). This allows Geralt to carve up groups of enemies with ease, turning most encounters with bandits into a complete joke. It's essentially Geralt's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Omnislash]]. The developers must have realised it too, because one of the main reasons that Alps and Bruxae in ''Blood And Wine'' are so difficult to fight is because they don't stay still long enough for this trick to work.

** Spy Spam, full stop. Gwent is a game of limited resources and careful planning so what better way to break it than through sheer brute force tactics and resource denial? Spies are supposedly balanced by trading one strong card to the opponent in exchange for drawing two fresh ones, only theres a massive power discrepancy between the Spies power and the usefulness of their effect. Trading one card for two is already a pretty good deal on its own but with multiple Spies the ability becomes completely broken beyond all repair. Because players must play a card each turn or pass it becomes easy to force an opponent to throw away half their hand while the player increases theirs with each Spy played. The end result? By round two one player has over a dozen cards in hand while their opponent is lucky to have half that. Needless to say, a CurbstompBattle usually follows right after. This method of play is already unfair when using Nilfgaard decks but becomes borderline cheating when used by the Northern Kingdoms, who have the best Spy cards in the game with extremely low power scores. So now the opponent doesn't even get a useful unit out of the deal as their hand is slowly whittled away turn by turn. But hey, all's fair in war, right?
* Factions:
** Northern Kingdoms is by far the best deck in the game for two main reasons: versatility and Spies. Not only does the Northern Kingdoms have the best Spy cards in the game (see above) it also has the most balanced units as well with several solid mid to high level cards with useful abilities. In particular, their siegecraft units make for a formidable force with proper support, especially with a mid tier Medic card to bolster their ranks. Throw in a few powerful neutral cards and you'll have a deck that is completely unstoppable 90% of the time.

** The [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Decoy_(gwent_card) Decoy]] card can be a bit tricky to time right, but has unparalleled effectiveness in the hands of a master. It's effect is simple but powerful, returning a card on the player's field to their hand. Normally, this is merely used to trick an opponent into dropping their best cards before reclaiming a powerful unit, but it has more versatile uses as well. Because it captures any card on the players side of the field it can be used to snatch up enemy spies to use against the opponent or reuse extremely powerful unit abilities such as Medic to return multiple units into play. This one single card can set up some pretty insane combos in skillful hands and completely break the game when played at the right moment.

** Spy Spam, full stop. Gwent is a game of limited resources and careful planning so what better way to break it than through sheer brute force tactics and resource denial? Spies are supposedly balanced by trading one strong card to the opponent in exchange for drawing two fresh ones, only theres a massive power discrepancy between the Spies power and the usefulness of their effect. Trading one card for two is already a pretty good deal on its own but with multiple Spies the ability becomes completely broken beyond all repair. Because players must play a card each turn or pass it becomes easy to force an opponent to throw away half their hand while the player increases theirs with each Spy played. The end result? By round two one player has over a dozen cards in hand while their opponent is lucky to have half that. Needless to say, a curbstomp battle usually follows right after. This method of play is already unfair when using Nilfgaard decks but becomes borderline cheating when used by the Northern Kingdoms, who have the best Spy cards in the game with extremely low power scores. So now the opponent doesn't even get a useful unit out of the deal as their hand is slowly whittled away turn by turn. But hey, all's fair in war, right?

** Spy Spam, full stop. Gwent is a game of limited resources and careful planning so what better way to break it than through sheer brute force tactics and resource denial? Spies are supposedly balanced by trading one card to the opponent in exchange for drawing two fresh ones, only theres a massive power discrepancy between the Spies power and the usefulness of their effect. Trading one card for two is already a pretty good deal on its own but with multiple Spies the ability becomes completely broken beyond all repair. Because players must play a card each turn or pass it becomes easy to force an opponent to throw away half their hand while the player increases theirs with each Spy played. The end result?

* The Whirl skill on its own is reasonably powerful on its own, albeit limited by the defensive capabilities of enemies, humans in particular. However, upgrading a sword with the Severence word of power in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion not only extends its range, but also negates blocking to a ridiculous extent. This allows Geralt to carve up groups of enemies with ease, turning most encounters with bandits into a complete joke. It's essentially Geralt's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Omnislash]]. The developers must have realised it too, because one of the main reasons that Alps and Bruxae in ''Blood And Wine'' are so difficult to fight is because they don't stay still long enough for this trick to work.

* The Whirl skill on its own is reasonably powerful on its own, albeit limited by the defensive capabilities of enemies, humans in particular. However, upgrading a sword with the Severence word of power in the ''Hearts Of Stone'' expansion not extends its range, but also negates blocking to a ridiculous extent. This turns Geralt into a whirling dervish of death, allowing him to carve up groups of enemies with ease, turning most encounters with bandits into a complete joke. It's essentially Geralt's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Omnislash]]. The developers must have realised it too, because one of the main reasons that Alps and Bruxae in ''Blood And Wine'' are so difficult to fight is because they don't stay still long enough for this trick to work.

* The decoctions, special potions with long lasting effects, can result in extremely overpowered gameplay. Most notable is probably the Ekhidna Decoction, which gives you health every time you expend your stamina. In result, spamming the Quen sign allows you to regain any health the sign didn't absorb, making healing potions superfluous and providing means to heal yourself infinitely through combat with minimal risk.

* Quen can make you functionally invulnerable even on the highest difficulty. Its normal effect is a resistance% based shield that makes you ImmuneToFlinching and grants ContractualBossImmunity to most status effects as well as ''removing'' those status effects when cast. The alternate is a completely impenetrable bubble shield ''that heals you'' when it gets hit and (if fully upgraded) returns some of that damage to the enemy. Quen essentially turns you into TheJuggernaut.

* Quen can make you functionally invulnerable even on the highest difficulty. Its normal effect is a HP% based shield that makes you ImmuneToFlinching and grants ContractualBossImmunity to most status effects as well as ''removing'' those status effects when cast. The alternate is a completely impenetrable bubble shield ''that heals you'' when it gets hit and (if fully upgraded) returns some of that damage to the enemy. Quen essentially turns you into TheJuggernaut.

* The Igni Sign starts off as relatively subpar (very high endurance cost, very low damage). However, if leveled properly, it can become so ludicrously powerful that even bosses become ridiculously easy. Combined with the Tiny Owl potion's ridiculous speed of endurance regeneration, near the end of the game you can simply use just that.

** Interestingly, the overpowered nature of the sign is ''defied'' with the use of [[JediMindTrick Axii]] in a story context. Geralt can, at one point, explain to Lambert why the sign can only be used at certain spots outside of combat: it's a temptation that needs to be avoided. That's right - the character you follow decided it's morally wrong for you to have the game too easy.

---> '''Geralt:''' [Axii] tempts you to overuse it. Force a merchant to reduce his price. Make an arrogant noble drink from a gutter. Teach someone to show you respect. That can become hard to resist.