No more tank meta
Higher mana battles in Splinterlands blockchain game had been increasingly dominated by Sustain strategies ever since Untamed cards were released. A plethora of monsters with Heal Tank had come available. We are talking about Albatross, Kron the Undying, Khmer Princess, Herbalist and, most importantly, Cornealus.
To make matters worse, there was the arrival of high health passive monsters like Gelatinous Cube and high health Taunt monsters like Shieldbearer and Dark Ha'on. This means battles weren't about killing the enemy anymore. Slowly but surely, you had to focus on out-surviving instead. Since players often couldn't kill each other anymore, whoever wasn't killed by first by the Fatigue mechanic would win.
Oppress and Cripple fix this. You only need one monster with Cripple in your team! But you do need it every game, because that is the most decisive skill in the game right now. Every hit permanently removes 1 HP from the targeted's monster total health. They will perish even if they are constantly healed. You can see this as true, unrecoverable damaged.
Thanks to cripple, you can easily kill Arianthus in just two rounds. Reducing a monster's max health also reduces the amount it is healed for. Focusing all your fire at their front line will pay off. But only if you are using Fire, Life or Death splinters, because this ability is not available in other colors for now. Double down if battling under the Slow rule set.