Prediction! How Vera Selacia and Wave Runner will be fixed
Vera Selacia and Wave Runner are really useless
Anyone reading this post has probably already guessed Vera Selacia is the most useless summoner of them all, ever, in the history of the Splinterlands crypto game. Her summoner ability is giving the Snare ability to all of your monsters. This is pretty much useless in nearly every battle in Ranked play, including when the current battle has the Earthquake rule, because your opponent is unlikely to use a lot of flying monsters, unless the match is at a very high competitive level.
Meanwhile, Wave Runner is not too far from being utterly useless. Although it has high damage for 5 mana, Thorn tanks have been a staple in the Splinterlands meta since Lord Arianthus first showed up. Everyone uses Thorns and Shield tanks left and right. There is almost nothing Wave Runner can do. That's the classic example of wasted mana. Knockdown is one of his other abilities, but stuns pretty much don't exist in the Water Splinter.
Medusa is a downright horrible choice as a team member for Wave Runner, because she stuns much later on in the round. Wave Runner's first attack will never trigger Knockdown. The same thing happens even if you try pairing them for the Ice Golem, which does have stun, but only at level 4. Even if we consider the rule set where attack orders are reversed, we'd only end up seeing Wave Runner miss all attempts at attacking.
How we can see them being useful
Vera is much easier to turn into a mighty force. A rule set where all monsters get flying is the easiest and most obvious scenario. I expect we start seeing this as a new rule set sooner rather than later. But what else could possibly happen to make her any good? Because that's still too specific. An entire summoner good only in a single situation. No, there's more to it. And I think it has to do with the next expansion, Chaos Legion.
I am assuming one of the summoners from the new set, probably water, is going to have "all your monsters get flying" as their main ability. There is no reason to believe there won't be. Back in Beta Edition, Life Splinter's rare summoner Tyrus Paladium had +1 armor to all monsters, which we also see in the rare Dragon Splinter rare summoner Drake of Arnak. We can also find similar cases, so it wouldn't be so surprising if Brighton Bloom's effect was present among the upcoming edition's summoners.
We can think of DICE being stronger than usual and directly connected to cards in the near future, like ORBs have been in the past. It is something like a PROMO edition, after all. Holding Vera and Wave Runner from a promo edition checks out as "early adopter advantage" over new players who could focus on the easily accessible Chaos Legion's cheaper summoners when it is released, which therefore presumably has summoners countereable by what were previously thought of as weak cards.
Last but not least, items and spells from the Land expansion might do something like adding an ability specifically to the first monster in your team. Somewhat like the Chanseus summoner does with Cleanse. I would assume items affect your team as if you had an extra summoner effect, while spells affect the entire battle, or rather, all monsters from both teams. Spells are where something like an "all monsters get flying" can easily fit. A player who does this is technically buffing the opposing team, but because only one team's commander knows for sure of this effect, secretly choosing a summoner to go along with this is a perfect strategy.
Moreover, if items buff a single monster the way I'm assuming they will, then something like a "first monster has stun" piece of equipment is going to fit like a glove when Wave Runner is in your team, backing up your main, even more agile defender. There you have it. Both cards not only get fixed, but become very strong in the hands of any player holding this tool set they can apply in every battle.
Why you should believe this logic
Except for Undead Minotaur and Rusty Android, which were designed really early in the game, we have seen everything become usable over time, even though we initially thought they sucked. Delwyn Dragonscale became useful as a better variety of magic monsters showed up across all splinters, Minotaur Warlord is now king in the Enrage rule set, and Molten Ogre works wonders in high mana, opportunity battles.
Everything is being done with both short and long terms in mind. Lead gameplay developer yabapmatt knows what he's doing. He has proven it to us time and time again. There's no reason to believe otherwise just because of a little FUD about these currently weird-looking cards. This is why I will HOLD my maxed Vera for, at the very least, the next few months.
