[Suggestion] Please do something about Encumber.

Anyway, I want to say thanks to everyone who offered up advice and ideas in this thread. It's all very much appreciated.

With the announcement of the end of the beta and upcoming reset I'm going to take a break from Card Hunter for a while. I'll grind up a new warrior party to try to slay some wizards after things get reset next month. I might take some of you up on your offers for advice post-reset if I still find high end encumber decks to be a problem at the high tiers.

 

As somebody uses 2 warrior/1 cleric (and my cleric is basically a third warrior with support) and is also 1500+, I don't have too much problem with encumber. I recommend:

-sticking to cover. I know this is obvious, but I check LOS every turn, and often count to see if an enemy wizard will -be able- to get in range, even if the square I'm going to is currently safe.
-play revealed moves/personal moves/single steps before team moves. Not only does this give your opponent less of an idea of your hand composition (as opposed to knowing you still have a move left because it's revealed), but it means if you get frozen half way up the field you can still team move your way to victory!
-absorbing block/missile block. You already mentioned doing this, but I'll mention it again anyway. It helps, but it's not an end all.
-team moves. Another thing you've already mentioned, but I wanted to add that it's totally worth giving up having a double token weapon to get a helmet and boots with team moves on them for melee focused builds. Both of my helmets have team moves, all of my boots have team moves, and 1 of my skills has a team move.

I actually have more trouble with winds of war; I use up all of my moves to get in range, and then I'll get shuffled around and not have any thing left to get in range...

 

All good suggestions. Thanks.

Exactly: in the game that I was playing that I pictured at the top post I got moved around by winds (or shuffled up randomly) consistently every time I got close. It's not that I couldn't close the range, it's that when I did it got reversed. This is the second aspect of why it feels like a griefer strategy: it's just denying you the ability to play your cards.

 

I am guilty of his and have had top players complain about how they had to discard 50+ damage because they couldn't do anything. I still think that this is a valid strategy but it would be nice if there were more counters.

 

Encumber is fine only because warrior damage, especially from step attacks, is too high. Two unbalanced things cancelling each other out.

This issue kind of got lost when Talented Healer and Fireball started dominating.

 

I'm not quite sure this is true. Certainly step moves are great, but are they great because the damage is so high or because movement is so important? Probably a combination of both… However, I'm guessing the movement is more important: I played plenty of step hacks with only 2 or 3 damage mostly for the move aspect.

Even if they're both unbalanced, warrior damage ends games quickly while encumber makes them drag on & prevents the loosing player from even playing cards. I think the game should be (and usually is) fun even if I end up loosing a match, however encumber is the huge exception.

 

You're right the - movement is the biggest issue. It's the step attacks that let the warriors get in and deliver the big hits, but just doing 4-7 at a time wears wizards down pretty fast too, without even accounting for frenzy effects.

Unless you take away some of the mobility, you can't mess with encumber's control. Unfortunately, that means teams that don't have a lot of mobility get completely shut down by encumber.

 

I don't think there is anything to complain about here. A balanced team that has a response to all enemy strategies is also lacking in focus of its own (and will need to be wiz/priest/warrior and probably elf/dwarf/human mix). A triple warrior team is obviously focused down a rather narrow strategy. Run to enemy, pound enemy into dust, win. To complain that there are counters to this strategy that aren't easy to overcome is kind of complaining about game balance rather than imbalance.

Also, is this not entirely consistent with the 'reality' of the combat? Tricky wizards try to stay out of range while annoying warriors with spells, and getting oblit'ed the moment they get too close?

Perhaps the problem lies in the choice of tactics? I've played triple wizard teams, and the warriors that do best usually spend the first few rounds discarding damage cards and building up a hand full of big moves plus an oblit. Then simply send in one warrior at a time. The wizards will (grudgingly) have to use up winds of war/whirlwind enemies on one target, and leave themselves open for the next guy to spank. Doesn't always work, but that's why this game IS fun. =P

 

Just like some people like to play all mage nuke teams and warrior all out oneshot teams its important to understand that some people want to play control teams and besides some peoples enjoyment it also widens the meta significantly. This is something that many people disagree with me on but i feel that its a important part of a good game to have diversity even if that means some decks drag on a bit.

 

Ironically, this may be one of the few things you and i agree on.

A game with multiple paths and to victory and a good diversity of competitve strategies (ie more than 2 basic decks that counter each other) will have a longer lifespan and be more successful.

 

So after writing how encumber didn't bother me much, I'm now writing to say the opposite. But it's not encumber's fault, it's the current map set.

With the new arena rotation, my warriors have a very limited ability to use cover and still kill things. And that's just fine, because warriors ruled on the crypt rotation, but even when I get lucky now the best I can hope for is to maybe take out one wizard... at the cost of one or two of my own team. You just can't charge the enemy -and- stay hidden at the same time on the arena maps, and the difficult terrain around the objectives makes it even worse, because I can't focus on melee -and- take the objectives.

Once beta's done it'd be nice to have a large set of varied maps like we did before the crypt maps, maybe with new maps being thrown into the rotation regularly, instead of completely replacing it.

 

I'd love it if all maps seen so far were always available. And I would suspect that will be the case, especially since some maps favor some classes/strategies. Not knowing what you will land in will help keep people looking for balanced decks instead of hyper focused ones.

In Beta it makes sense to restrict us to only the most recently developed maps to get solid testing and feedback on those specific maps.