Ah, you must not be following the right threads. Here's a thread from months ago: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/talented-healer-produces-an-avalanche-of-cards.1371 And if you want more, search the forums for the word "infinite." I am serious. You'll see person after person talking about floods of cards, problems in countering these floods, "here's my infinite draw build," and so on.
Is this good enough? https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/what-cards-are-breaking-the-bank.2811/page-5#post-31237
I've started a new thread in the Beta Chat section for discussing possible changes to Altruism that may be both tactically interesting and thematically appropriate to Priests. https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/altruism-alternative-card-functions.3186/#post-32571 I agree that super card drawing traits may not be the best expression of the Priest class. I wanted to explore giving Altruism an ability that more closely matches the word Altruism, which I have always thought meant self-sacrifice. Regardless of the possible balance issues, it's always felt weird that it doesn't have some factor of self harm. XD
Altruism does not mean self-sacrifice. It means helping someone or something else when there is no benefit to yourself. Somewhat ironically the card rewards you for being altruistic (healing others rather than yourself), but the fact that it rewards you stops it from being altruistic! Anyway, I suspect the 4+ die roll on Altruism means that it's just fine as it is... for now. It's too unreliable to build an entire strategy around. If ever cards are introduced that boost this type of roll then the same problem that Talented Healer suffered from could return.
My problem with Altruism is that two clerics could just cast Inspiration on each other over and over; As long as Altruism procs at least once for every non-Inspiration in the deck, it's still pretty close to infinite card draw. I've considered trying to make this type of build but I just don't have the items for it (Although I have a good idea of what I need; There actually is a divine item with 3x Inspiration, and it's only Uncommon)
I won't lie - I'll miss the enormous power of the old version. But I agree that it needed to be fixed. I had three copies for each of my two priests in multiplayer, and it wasn't to fuel any particular combo, just for massive healing potential and the ability to have a hand full of attacks, moves, and armor after all the healing was done. It was crazy powerful. Turning attacks into cantrips is a little worrying, though. I'm not even sure how powerful it would be, since half the utility of attacking with multiple draining cards is that you're healing the damage you take from their return attacks. It would only be better to chain them together quickly and possibly waste some of that healing if you can actually kill your target with them, and of course that will be the situation that's frustrating for the player getting hit by them. The annoyance of sitting back while your opponent chains their turns and the potential to be killed by it before you can do anything...either of those could lead to some seriously unfun games. If we're fixing power level to make the game fun, then replacing the overpowered effect with a balanced effect that is not fun hasn't quite solved the problem.
This is now not even on the same scale of power but it is instead a much, much more interesting card. So while i think i will go back to altruism x3 i very much like how you fixed it good job guys.
I believe that the maximum possible inspiration is as follows: 3x Amulet of Inspiration (9 inspiration, 3 tokens) Inspirational Mail (2 inspiration, 1 token) 2x Aureate Mace/White Halberd (4 inspiration, 4 tokens) Which uses all 8 tokens and leaves shield, boots, racial skill, priest skill. Since there are no tokens left the best way to get infinite draw altruism is though untrained piety (2x altruism, defensiveness) I'm not sure if there is a tokenless shield with more than one cycle, but streaked shield has a trait on it. I don't know of any tokenless boots with cycles. Untrained evasion, unsubtle thinker, and apprentice ferocity will give 2 cycles for no tokens. So from armor there's 1 non-cycle, weapons 8 non cycle, shield 2 non-cycle, boots 3 non-cycle, racial skill 1 non-cycle. That gives 15 inspiration, 15 non-cycle cards, and 6 cycle cards. Since you can only expect 7.5 bonus cards from the inspirations, it doesn't quite add up to infinite draw. Testing this in the field though, it still makes for some very long waits for your opponents, so it has a good aggravation factor going for it.
I like this proposed version of Talented Healer much better than the card-drawing version. I think it will be interesting. Although, I think it's a bit weird that a 'talented healer' will get such an important bonus on life-draining attacks. Life-draining attacks don't seem like the kind of thing a healer would be interested in; and as far as I know, life-draining doesn't trigger the current version of Talented Healer (which refers to 'heal cards'). In any case, compared to the current version, I'm sure the new version will be much more fun to play with, and against. I'm interested to see how it works out. One idea I had for a new version of Talented Healer was that it could increase the range of healing cards, and/or allow healing cards to ignore line-of-sight requirements. But the version proposed in the OP is probably more interesting - so lets see how that goes!
I'm definitely interested in the new version, but I do think chained melee attacks will make battle priests a little bit crazy. I would consider splitting the cantrip part such that it only triggers when you target "allies other than yourself", while keeping the self heal for any heal effects. Also, something I just realized and posted in another thread about Twin Heals - - Also consider the new change to Talented Healer coming up... with Twin Heals, the Priest will now be able to self heal, draw out an enemy's block, and heal an ally all at once as well as cantrip into a teammate's Obliterating Bludgeon (etc) with no chance for the enemy to respond. By allowing you to target an ally and enemy simultaneously, you get a guaranteed cantrip while killing their blocks, and healing them for a measly 2 health for their trouble if they don't have any Actually this makes Twin Heals kind of terrifyingly powerful and an item with 3 of them totally worthy of Legendary status in my opinion.
Wow, I clearly hadn't considered things carefully enough. I withdraw my comment about Altruism being fine as it is; it looks like the Altruism-Inspiration combo may need breaking.
Been trying it a little. Think I just don't have the cards for it. Seems like it requires 3 priests as my 2 priest + warrior for protection doesn't seem to be working out all that well.
It's the same combo that demonstrably needed breaking back when Leadership allowed you to discard and re-draw as many as you want, it's been pretty dormant in MP since then. The danger now is that new cards or items might serve as a catalyst like Leadership to help it along enough to do more than just make your opponent wait while you fill up on drawback traits.
I'm not sure if it's possible to really deal with draw exploits without seriously glimpsing draw based cards (which is a pretty fun and tactical game play element that should be preserved). BM should just straight up set a cap on the max extra draws that's feasible per character per round. Something like 4 should allow for more than enough leeway for normal usage of draw mechanisms and deal with unintended exploits at the same time.
From checking the wiki, will any of these work for you? Awkward Spiked Boots lv5 Uncommon - Spike Mail/Cautious Sneak/Trip Buckled Boots lv3 Uncommon - Dash/Cautious Sneak/Arcane Feedback Glimmer Boots lv6 Common - Run/Hardy Mail/Squeamish Naugus Hide Boots lv3 Rare - Violent Spin/Weak Strike/Arcane Feedback Cold Shield lv6 Rare - Icy Block/Hit the Deck/Dropped Guard
Damn that's a nice pair of boots. I have a lot of boots but none with more than one of sprint/wild run, let alone one with a trait as the third card. Those are nice boots for any priest without a lot of attack cards.
FOR ITS GRADE the card was too good, even though I had a MP experience where I needed any attack card from my 3-health-left healer to get the W, and, with two heal cards in hand(after draws) I started a five-draw chain that got me ZERO attack cards and a Loss. I, however, do not regard this as a nerf, but rather a shift, in what this card does in the game. The ability to Cantrip-heal not only supports the posted strategy, but also aids some known (and yet-discovered) aggro strategies. Also, as noted, because of how it did work, Altruism was just so patently worse, I auto-sold any card sets that included it over TH. Now if there is on some way to get that Altruism to trigger on ⚂+ instead...
