Fireball's ability to target a tile instead of a character gives it increased synergy with Squeamish allowing you to pretty much ignore the handicap. Which is kind of odd because a character who is uncomfortable killing an enemy can be perfectly fine with throwing a fireball and potentially killing a room full of enemies.
So if fire and frost are both op why don't we see a myriad of fire frost wizard only teams dominating top play? I'm so completely tired of everyone calling op on everything all the time without even considering what a ****ing meta is. This is why i left the forums in the first place because all the new people scream too hard or op until their lungs give out without taking 10 seconds to think about awnsers and get the game watered down.... even if only a little that is still a great shame.
Using the (then) broken leadership deck I put in some MP time the past few days and wound up around 1550 rating or so. The big change I noticed going from the 1300's bracket to higher 1400's, is fireballs everywhere. Many times boosted with unholy wellspring. So many games now I have lost a team member on the first turn and been left with two other team members half dead already. Can be frustrating, but it is pretty cool too. I wish I had the cards to play it myself but I haven't had any luck getting items with Fireball on them.
Because it's beta. Because pure frost is much easier to come by - the rarity of the fireball staves is hiding the problem. Because people aren't just playing for rank - they're testing new things all the time. Because there are even more broken combos out there - infinite draw first turn win priests. Take your pick. Aside from all that, i think we are starting to see this trend - i've been moving up steadily since i started using wiz wiz priest and started doing even better when i switched to a less-than-optimized fireball loadout on one of them. Blodorn is ranked #2. I've run into at least 2 other wizard-focused teams around 1400. High-ranked players, both the ones using Fireball and the ones facing it, are in this thread, telling you it's a problem - what more do you want? Blodorn: 1600+ Attog: 1550+ Turinturamba: 1450+ Mutak: 1450+
So why is it more of a problem now than it was in closed beta when everyone had staff of fireball if they wanted it? Frost is much stronger and i agree that maybe there should be something more to counteract it not sure exactly what but its a minor thing. Fireball on the other hand as i have said before is not as big a deal as people want to make it out to be. Basically fire without fireball might as well be removed from the game and replaced with bunny magic.
Because a small population of players cannot thoroughly test everything. I agree that Fire could use some other tweaks. Increase the damage or range on the short range cones, reduce Fireball to 8 range and 1 burst and then see where it stands. Maybe give some burn effects an armor reduction element too - like not only do they bypass a certain amount of armor, but while they're attached they reduce it for all other effects. I think almost all the wizard types of magic need a rework.
I have really mixed feelings: I recently switched in the 1500's from 2 frost/elec wiz to using one fireball heavy wizard, but honestly haven't noticed a big difference in win ratio. As people have said, any armour really destroys the usefulness of it, and any maps with split spawns stop the turn 1 ganking. At that point, the only advantage over frost or elec is dodging cover. I did get destroyed by Blodorn's deck - but that was a solid combination of card draw, wellspring, and grouping which would have had a very good chance without the fireballs.
Ummm you do? Also can you name a top wizard without fireball or frost? I'm not saying these cards should be nerfed... I'm saying they should be BALANCED. This doesn't mean just nerfs, it also means buffs. For sure, the arcane spells need BUFFs. The Electric spells are good but it's probably the items that carry them which need slight buffs. Frost spells are powerful but it might be item that needs NERFS i.e. frosty staff. Fireball is good, and it outclasses most fire spells so it needs to be balanced.
Pretty sure that this is by design. I wouldn't be super sad to see Fireball get a nerf but I stand by my position that Unholy Wellspring is the real culprit.
I have to agree with Forlorn that most of the "nerfing" and "OP" problems I hear would be cured with a little more balance, mostly by increasing options available to different classes. (Some cards might need a little tweeking, but probably not much.) If warriors and wizards had some purge-like and cleanse-like cards, you would see fewer people playing the encumber/lava decks. If the wizards had more damage options, then you wouldn't see so many encumber/lava decks. The only problem with fireball might be its huge burst, but I'd hate to see it lose too much of its power. Every other fire spell I know of is cannot match the massive damage output (even over time) as the warrior and since damage is the dominant way to score victory points, wizards will need to match a warriors damage output (either by increasing their own or by debuffing the warrior's damage) if they want to compete. If we nerf every "OP" wizard spell, then the wizard as a class will become useless in MP.
100% agree with the last part of this statement if anything its unholy wellspring making fireball a problem. Possibly making unholy wellspring only work on single targets or the first target? I wonder if that would make the card too bad tho... i don't think so but its a thought for sure. Also as i have said before while warriors don't have purging they do have access to arrogant armor which makes them immune to encumber as long as they can hold on to it.
It'd still be better than Savage Curse. What about having it only affect attacks that target chars? That would exclude all aoe (burst, cone, linear).
It's just anecdotal evidence, but I've gone 27-9 and from ~1200 to ~1400 after switching from melee decks to a buffed fireball deck. Not to taunt those of you who haven't lucked into fireball items yet
I posted this in the "which cards are breaking the bank" topic, but this is probably a better topic for the suggestion - I know this is off the wall, but what if taking Fire damage removed the oldest attached Frost card? It does a couple things, which defeats some of the synergy of Fire/Frost, but not totally (Walls of Lava on frozen characters would still hit, but then they lose an encumber effect) , allows players to reliably counter Encumber, but only if they are packing Fire and willing to sacrifice the health AND the fire spell (which could have been used on an enemy instead. This would also increase the utility of Fire magic and greatly add to the potential usage of the tiny fire cone spells Ember Spray and Fire Spray, which are IMO pretty bad right now because you have to get into Potent/Fiery/Impaling Stab range to even cast them on enemies right now. So it's basically a light nerf to the ever powerful Fire/Frost combo only without even weakening Frost otherwise, buffing Fire's utility in general without increasing its damage, and basically just adding way more options to the game. It would make using Frost much more tactical as you know the enemy would have to counter your encumber attachments in order to get to you, only, now you would have to expect that they actually could.
I wasn't sure about Unholy Wellspring, but it also pushed firestorm from being merely a nuisance to being a top tier strategy. IMO, melee doesn't get as warped by damage boosts because there are already so many answers to melee attacks. However, wizard spells don't have the same restrictions as melee attacks. Firestorm doesn't require LOS and hits everyone, Fireball doesn't require LOS and hits multiple targets at range, Cone of Frost hits multiple targets at range, Flash of Pain hits multiple target at range, etc... These spells aren't an issue until you add unholy wellspring, and than they are much easier to abuse for a lot of damage than melee attacks. I'd probably just drop unholy wellspring to adding 2 damage. Savage curse may need to be dropped, but is still costly to use in terms of cards so I would wait and see.
Could also make Wellspring give a percentage boost instead of a flat damage boost. Then it is better for melee and worse for magic at the same time.
