[Suggestion] Frost magic rework - what if frost spells forced discard of movement cards instead?

I'm curious. In most of my games, I see very little damage against warriors from the frost attacks. Unless I've been able to attack their hand, their armor tends to negate it.

I personally think encumber shows up as much as it does because Chillwood Staff ends up being the best available (common or uncommon) staff in the current beta set. If it and the Mighty Sparkping Staff switched levels (thus improving the Sparkpings cards and reducing the Chillwoods cards a bit) I think it would have been more popular due to synergy with the electricity skills. Obviously there's some good staffs at the higher rarities, but good luck getting them. Otherwise it's items like the Overloaded Staff 3 good attack cards, but balanced by 2 very poor cards.

I'm not aware of a staff that loads 6 encumber cards, but I do have the Sub-zero Staff which is a far better encumber staff than the Chillwood Staff , but I don't use it. I much
prefer the extra damage from the Mighty Spark cards.

If encumber didn't slow down warriors, I think they'd be the only character to use (and probably a dwarf to boot). They have cards that do upwards of 17 damage in the current set and that's before an All Out Attack doubles it. Then they get more hit points, plus armor and shields making them harder to kill. Priests and Mages get utility spells, but lack the pure damage ( Wall Of Fire of course has the potential for a lot of damage bu realistically it usually hits one character in MP unless you're using other spells). The only thing holding back warriors, in my opinion, is mobility. They have to get close to hurt you, but as the All Out Attack builds show, sometimes it only takes one hit.

I really want to try a build of three warriors focusing on mobility and damage, but I'm not sure I can put together enough items to equip all 3 the way I'd want/need to. For example I really like Bejeweled Shortsword , it's only common but level 18 so I can't pull it from the campaign levels. Mom's team is good example and would probably be a lot better played by a human. We can't get the exact same cards, but I think other improvements could balance that out.

 

I'm going to respond to both of you (Oberon, Blindsight)

Before I do that though, since it's going to be a ridiculously long post that I'm really not excited about typing..

What are your ratings?

It seems to me like you're both speaking from the perspective of people that haven't played a significant amount of high rated games, (I.E 1300-1700).

I'll still type my response regardless, I'm just curious as to whether or not I'm speaking to players that are actually competing at a high level.

 

I've been up to 1300, but that was pretty early. I've since dropped to what I'll say is low 1000s because of the deck I'm trying to build -- and having to start to phase out frost stuff because it's just not cutting the mustard for what I need, but some of it may still stick. 3 elf wizards without the right cards trying to build a mostly damageless deck.

 

Sub-zero Staff , Frosty Staff , Staff Of Winter are the main culprits. Just wait until you get any combination of those staffs and replace them in whatever build you are currently using. You'll notice a huge difference once you have two of them.

All Out Attack is too situational. You need too many cards in tandem and a cantrip on top of it. Otherwise you're not going to land it on a wizard. Not to mention you can't use step cards either. You'll want to pull your hairs out on maps like Forest and Bridge with 2+ warriors. Oh and watch out for Toughness . I know Iomi is running 3 warriors right now, and so is Platouf. Both are doing great in the 1300-1400 range. I'd be interested to hear what they have to say about the matter.

 

Well hard to tell maybe this is really an issue of higher level PvP.

But if you really want to nerv it why not change freeze into halt for one turn e.g. and reduce encumber on other spells to 1 or reduce their duration and/or damage.

 

Looking at the rank board, I'm at 1444. Be realistic, there's all of 2 players over 1500, and you aren't Lance or Penda. At your artificial limit of 1300+, there's currently 28 players above that mark. I reject the notion that only those 28 players could possibly have a valid opinion to disagree with you.

You've posted in other threads (the Mom discussion) that you don't think you should have to play specific counters, I simply don't agree with you. I get what you're saying about Frost Jolt , but as the discussion has gone with other cards, quality seems a bit fuzzy. This may just be one of the cards, like Vicious Thrust , that's at the upper bounds of a silver quality card.

Man, I have some serious holes in my staff collection. I could easily see using Staff Of Winter , but have never seen it.

Not trying to be argumentative, but you also need a number of specific cards in tandem for wizards to encumber and lava someone, and the damage gets spread out over multiple turns giving your opponent time to draw a response. Granted against a dwarf it's a bit easier, but a couple encumbers plus a lava card is usually needed. It seems to me that we've simply gotten more accustomed to building Wizards to maximize those cards (such as loading upwards of 8 Wall Of Fire cards plus a couple cold staffs on a character). The players trying to use All Out Attack are taking a similar approach with warriors, simply trying to get as many of the card as they can into a deck. Blocks or Toughness aside, it's an all-in strategy, you only need to connect a couple times with it. Even without it, they're still capable of hitting for 17, which can one shot an elf wizard (why I switched to human wizards).

So, essentially I still think people struggle to get over the movement issue with Warriors, where the target can just keep moving away from the warrior. This seems the most basic issue for warriors in MP, the warrior player has to find a way to get more movement. The various strategies for Warriors are all solving this in different ways. Step attack strategies rely on their (weaker) attack cards to add more movement. Combining a warrior with a priest's card draw gives warriors a better chance to draw more move cards than the opponent had. Encumber makes this all more difficult, by cancelling out or weakening movement cards.

Multiple warriors is just another mechanism to overwhelm your opponents encumber resources. They need to have enough to stop all of your threats, which is going to be difficult for them. Open maps are always an issue, but that's being discussed separately. Much like I learned in the campaign, you need to overwhelm (or corner) a wizard, but when you do they drop quickly. In a one on one fight they can simply kite you like they would a zombie. That didn't seem to be working until encumber worked on step attack cards, and now the meta is shifting in response. I'm just not up in arms about that.

I can't also help but wonder if this is where we are finally supposed to learn that maybe Elves should get more use. Dwarves hit points (and toughness) are only better if they can move, and encumbering an elf is harder work (requires more cards at least) for your opponent. Encumber is clearly intended to make us alter our valuation of movement.

 

From my purely melee point of view, encumberance is annoyance, nothing more, nothing less. Keep in mind than in and of itself, encumberance doesn't have to stopped or played around. Surely it can be integral part on locking down my team, never a sole reason. And it's pretty straightforward to play around. Team Shift and Team Run are best example, but Shuffle, Team! is completely sufficient and has bigger versions.

Reason why wizards run so many encumberance cards is that they are so incredibly weak. Once warrior or even priest in some cases get's near, they either have to run or pushback.

 

No problems here. You're one of the few posters I enjoy reading even though I disagree with you on this issue.

The difference between the two here is encumber is good without lava. It has synergy with lava not dependency on it. If you have lava in your hand it becomes amazing enough to single-handedly win you games. You have much better target selection and options for being at range.

You've hit the nail on the head multiple times here. Step is amazing mobility/versatility and card advantage too! It's just encumber counters step (and it should otherwise step would be too strong). One strategy is to force wizards to use all their resources before you move your warrior to make the kill.

You're right that map plays a huge difference here. I'd re-evaluate the MP maps before I'd consider making changes to encumber.

This needs another separate re-quote because this is gold. There's a lot subtle things going on here. I'd rather not write a long post to explain why this condensed paragraph should be re-read twice by everyone!

If anyone happens to catch Masayuki when he's playing, watch him. His deck is beautifully constructed. I don't like his race choices, but he has the best deck in the game by a long mile right now. There's only one or two decks I think are better but I doubt anyone has the cards for that yet. Watch him and see how just how strong two wizards with encumbrance can be.

 

Thanks, Penda. Yes, encumbrance is powerful, no doubt. And no surprise almost all wizards have those cards. In my opinion in the multiplayer mode all 3 classes use the same set of cards. Have you really encountered with a lot of warriors with all chops or bashes and no step moves (Vicious Thrust, in particular)? Or priests who're not fanatics of unholy magic such as: Unholy Wellspring, Unholy Power, Demonic Feedback? Almost everybody plays the same cards and the same items. I'd like to look at a vampire priest, who drains HP, but I won't, inasmuch as it's weaker than a warrior with 36+ damaging move cards.

So, after eliminating encumbrance (and perhaps wizards in concert), the next most powerful set of cards in the game will be step cards, especcially the Vicious Thrust (in fact it'll be even more powerful).

And yes, there are a lot of interesting contrcards to encumbrance, look at Trained Cleansing for instance (requires no tokens, 3 powerful cards), the card is splendid. But not many are ready to sucrifice the space reserved for Talented Healer or Altruism (because these are the most powerful).

So, I see the problem in the following: if you want to play a mage there is only one magic you should use (freeze spells), if you're playing a warrior you're supposed to fill your deck with step cards, priests are a little bit more versatile, but not much. A possible solution: other attacks and spells should be more attractive, or worsen these powerful in order to align them with the rest.

 

Thanks for adding in, they're very good points.

Just as you said, builds are all incredibly similar simply because a lot of the other options aren't that great in MP. MP does tend to stress optimal strategies. For example, I have all the cards you'd want to make a great bash warrior, but they simply don't work that well outside of the Campaign. Chop warriors are also problematic as they rely on your opponents mistakes to get the most out of your attacks. Wizards are pretty locked in to the fire/ice builds, it's the most useful and the most damaging. And priests seem to be designated as in their roles as well (they certainly don't have the pure damage potential of the other classes).

One thing I'd add. Prior to joining the beta, I'd always sort of assumed with 3 classes it would work like paper/rock/scissors. So, maybe the warrior would beat priests, priests would beat wizards, and wizard would beat warriors. Or some other combination. But it doesn't really work this way at all.

Priests suffer from the same movement concerns as warriors, but have significantly weaker attacks. Their best damage cards are focused around 9-10 damage. This makes them a weak choice as a "threat". Luckily they have a lot of great cards that enhance your other threats, so we still see unholy or buff/enchantment builds with priests.

So that leaves warriors and wizards fighting it out as the main damage dealers (threats). It's actually very hard for them to remain in perfect balance given their vastly different abilities, so I expect one or the other to be slightly better at any specific time. Prior to encumber working on step attack cards, it seemed to me that warriors had the edge. Meaning you had to be prepared to deal with dwarven warriors using these cards in order to compete in the meta. Now with encumber fully working, wizards appear to have gained the edge. Since I expect one or the other to have an advantage, I'm not (yet) bothered by this shift in the metagame balance.

Though, and this part is critical, I think players are still reacting to this with their builds. When warriors were the best, players became very accustomed to designating 6 power tokens to their weapons (there's a separate thread discussing this). In order to fight encumber, I think it'll take a change in build strategies (and maybe some elves too). There are certainly a lot of different options to fight encumber, but it will take a willingness (and a need) to dedicate alot of cards to doing so. As encumber takes over the metagame there will be a good incentive for players to make these shifts.

I am more than willing to admit I could be wrong about encumber. But I'm still waiting to see if shifts in warrior builds will be enough to contain it. I'm not swayed when I hear that "my old warrior build is losing to encumber", as I think that's what encumber was designed to do. I'm waiting to hear if parties designed to fight encumber are able to do so.

I also wasn't aware of things like Staff Of Winter , but I can definitely see it's power. I've written at length about how I think we'll find more powerful strategies as we get multiples of certain rare/epic/legendary items, this seems like a very good example of that. I also hope this may open up a couple of alternate strategies in the current meta. Due to how we have to obtain items it simply takes time for people to grow their collections to the point where these builds can occur. I sort of have a patient approach to this at the moment.

 

Well what i have experienced so far, not that many games but some. You can make a good build to counter a specific build and it will work most of the time. But when i got matched up against any other team e.g. a heavy meele based team i suddenly get in real trouble. But for people that are using lots of encumber cards it doesn't matter that much, because their build is almost good against everything, maybe thats the point. You don't have to sacrifice anything, neither range, nor damage compared to other spells and still get the crowd control bonus. Can't tell if it is overpowerd but it seems like.

 

Another thing that makes encumber and ice magic so good, is the existence of resistant hide card that negates most damaging cards from wizards, with a few exception, the biggest of them being ice mage.
maybe make a solution along the lines of a armor the is resistant to ice?

 

If you're relying on multiple wizards with encumber, then you are giving up the ability to have a priest healing/cleansing/purging/card draw and/or the very high warrior damage. The trade off here isn't in the specific cards so much as the tactics you are selecting between.

 

Just a clarification...

Obviously that would be even worse, which is why I never suggested such a thing. Here's what I wrote in the OP:

I'm suggesting replacing the lingering encumber effect with a one-time only forced discard of movement cards, a bit like the card War Cry which forces all blocks to be discarded.

 

Credentials: I play in the 1300+ plus range (1353 as of this post), and often run 2 Elf Wizards and an Elf Priest utilizing encumbrance and control abilities.

That exists already, it's called Arrogant Armor.

That will be stronger in many circumstances, if you consider step-attacks, step-blocks, and step-armor as "movement" cards. In those circumstances you would be combining perplexing discard effects with a movement reduction. At least in the current iteration they can chose to save those cards during the encumbrance portion of the spell.

Perhaps the frost mechanic would reduce damage for turns rather than mobility effectively slowing the limbs of the target for weaker blows?

Here's an extremely simplified problem with encumbrance as it stands from my perspective:

• Warriors have the highest damage potential for all classes
• Mages have the lowest life total for all classes
• Warriors have to be able to get to an effective range to do damage (usually 1-4 depending on step cards)
• Step cards exist to allow warriors to do 2 important functions at once (Move + Damage).
• Frost Spells remove the option of movement, and a downstream effect of that is removing the option of damage
• People dislike having their options limited (especially damage), and feel frustrated.
• Mages who cannot encumber warriors often die before the next draw phase, leaving the player feeling frustrated with picking a control class who cannot control.

Reliance on frost spells is a house of cards:

in 1100+ PvP, if one of my frost spells is blocked/purged by/off a warrior within a reasonable effective range (1 move and 1 step card), the Mage has a very real possibility of a 1 round KO, especially with the availability of Step Attacks on cards (especially the ease and draw-streamlining effects of Blind Rage and Impaler). 1 Vicious thrust often spells the end of a Mage, especially one that does 12 Damage, penetrating.

 

Well, many players I've played with expressed their unsatisfation with such a deck as 3 ice wizards, they say it ruins fun and annoys, inasmuch as it seems that only one player is playing. I partly agree. And again, rejecting stubbornly to use encumbrance when you have all the neccessary cards is just what a player shouldn't do (I mean he shouldn't be strongly bothered by the fun vs. effectivness dilema). On my scale of 1 to 10, I give sparks 5, fire - 6 or 7, ice - 10. The scatter shouldn't be so significant IMHO.

The another thing why encumbrance is so good is, of course, the combination with lava terrains. It works impeccably well. Lava would still work powerfully even without encumbrance. And encumbrance would still be a very good card's effect even without lava. But together they are just a bomb .

[suggestion]:
Lava and frost are ideologically opposite substances. They can't coexist. It would be right, I think, if lava melted all the ice on a character.
So, if lava is put under somebody's feet or a character ends his turn on a lava terrain, all encumbrance effects should be discarded. That way it won't destroy both ice magic and lava terrain ideas, but will separate them significantly.

P.S. Frost magic should remain its main goal - to hold back the other very powerfull card - the Vicious Thrust (alike with other step cards).

 

Just to reiterate and bring this back to attention: I got Vibrant Pain (6x Nimble Strike) the other day and my first thought was, "Sweet - i can use a dwarf again!"

Frost is too powerful but it's the only thing keeping step cards from being too powerful.

 

Wow, that's an item that's so powerful, it would literally force me out of FrostFire builds, there's no way my Elf wizards could survive a Nimble strike onslaught without some serious frost stacking or some significant reworking of my concept of Wizards vs Warriors Metastrategy.

I think this suggestion has merit; It allows for Wizards to have the ability to halt a character on lava to get some damage output, but it prevents them from locking them on lava for a significantly stronger result.

What about Acid, and Spikes? Would those interact with Frost in anyway?

I have another [suggestion] - Move abilities when activated on a character who is frozen will reduce one of the freezing effects by 1 round. This way, for example, a dwarf who struggles to step/walk will break the ice earlier than one who just stands there frozen; giving a use to movement cards while encumbered.

any thoughts on that?

 

I had an idea that would produce a similar effect last night - frost spells would create a terrain attachment in the target square (along with the damage to the target - a bit like how Acid Jet works). So it would only affect the first movement card that would take you out of the square. A frost jolt would still be a problem for a dwarf who only has a walk card and some vicious thrusts - but it would be much easier for an ally to cure him of his predicament.