After playing a good number of games after the lava terrain nerf, I feel like the new 8 damage lava terrain might be a bit underwhelming, given how easy it is to avoid and comparing it to the general warrior damage output. Yes, warriors need to get within 1 square to deal damage, but keeping lava terrain under your opponents is in my mind almost equally difficult with all the bonus moves and team moves out there. I appreciate that lava is now closer to the other damaging terrain, which is great, but I feel that mage damage options are generally weak right now. One possible change that could make damaging terrain more interesting without reverting to its old power level is to add attachments associated with it. Lava terrain could add a burning attachment (lava) that deals 2 fire damage, duration 1. Spiked terrain could add an encumber 1 attachment (crippled) for duration 1. Acid terrain could add a 2 acid damage attachment (dissolving), duration 1. That would raise the power level of damaging terrain slightly while still making armor counter it. It could also help firestarter synergize with lava (firestarter took a huge hit in effectiveness with the fireball nerf and I haven't really seen it recover in the meta). Or do you guys think I'm wrong about this and 8 damage lava/6 damage spikes/3 damage acid terrain are strong enough?
I'm in favor of at least the Lava and Spiked terrain attachments, it's always felt weird that Lava didn't add burning especially. I think Wizards are losing their damage options with some of the recent changes to Fireball, Frost Jolt, Lava and Unholy Wellspring. On the other hand, I think these proposed changes may even further push Wizards to using terrain attachments and going a more control route (which many people already have been) versus giving some more direct attack options.
The direct attack options, particularly with electric forms of attack, have a wide amount of buffs available. Whilst I quite like the idea of terrain attachment effects, I do feel like you start to pigeon-hole wizards into, a 'Why wouldn't you do this instead?' ethos. 8 damage for lava terrain isn't a huge leap from 10 damage, and look at the drastic effect that occurred afterwards. Less firewall in opposing decks I've seen, sure, but it still remains a viable option for those who want to use it. I think this may be a mute point on trying to up a card that is already quite well balanced anyway.
Underwhelming? Perhaps, but I think it's pretty decently balanced. Harder to get off on someone, but with combos can do decent damage. The card efficiency coupled with encumber is quite high.
Is it really? 12 damage with a good frost spell and a lava and its still far from locked in as someone might have armor team moves slides pushes. That seems like pretty ****ty value for a whole turn worth of cards. Don't get me wrong as i pushed for the 8 on lava since far back in the more closed beta. I just think it was gimped for pve with removal of multi triggers and lowering of damage and lets be honest how much would it adding a ignite trait to someone that ticks for minimal damage really do.
Thus the "harder to get off" aspect of my comment. It persists for multiple turns so you have additional chances to push people back on them or, if they don't escape the space, keep them there.
Overall, I feel that lava is where it needs to be, but I would love to see a slight buff to spikes. Just making it penetrating would be good enough.
Eh, I'd definitely be in favor of giving it an ignition effect, always found it weird that they didn't.
I was thinking that would be be the best of both worlds, but again mute point. I suppose you could make the duration last one extra turn, since having two draws would most likely give you some sort of counter to the attached card.
Would it be worth having Spikes that make it harder to move past/from or through, say 1 point of encumbrance?
They already create difficult terrain, but unlike acid there is no other utility that comes along with it. I really don't like adding more encumber options for wizards considering that they already have the market on lockdown there. Since they are a lot harder to come by than acid or lava terrain and used almost exclusively for damage (I have maybe played 1 person that used them to block a potential attack path) then I feel that there damage should be guaranteed. Right now, the only reason you see spikes in PvP is because they come on some decent (albeit, not necessarily fantastic) low level arcane items.
Lower spike damage to 4 or 5 and have it be penetrating, so it gets some reason to exist apart from just being "damage" - which is the role lava has already. Also, lava at 8 is probably fine - doubt 2 points of damage negates it's usefulness.
Spikes would be better if they actually came in an area of effect. Currently they can only effectively block off hallways that are only 1 tile of open terrain wide. Same with Acid, but at least they have a couple options already. I'd love to see Cave-In or even a lesser version of it enter the game. Even if it changed and did no actual damage.
When the lava change was first announced, I was a bit worried about wizards losing yet another major damage source - but having played with it for awhile now I think it's fine. Lava now does a bit less damage (obviously), but it is still high enough damage that players must take precautions against it such as saving movement cards before the lava is cast, and stepping off the lava after it is cast. The damage is still significant, and so the control that comes from it is still significant. It often isn't easy to pin enemies to plot so that they take damage from lava, but that isn't lava's only use. Lava can be useful for fishing out the enemy's movement cards, and for preventing them from standing on the victory square, and stuff like that. And it also has the utility value of removing difficult terrain... So I still think lava is pretty good.
