I like the discard on a 1. Getting to draw to compensate for losing the trait would mean more chance of drawing another altruism; this means more potential chaining, which in my opinion is undesirable. Not to mention that 1 is more intuitive, and makes it feel kind of like "failing a skill check", which is neat. And even if you roll a 1 right off the bat, altruism already drew you a card just for being a trait, so it's not like it was completely useless.
I think it's good to stick to the convention of high is good, low is bad. Having a situation where rolling a 1-3 is fine, 5-6 is great and 4 is bad just doesn't make too much sense when combined with other cards. Sticking to a convention lends a lot to the feeling of consistency and polish of a game.
Oh, I should also mention that Inspiration's range is dropping from 6 to 3. This obviously doesn't destroy any Altruism/Inspiration combinations, although it does make it more difficult for multiple priests to keep inspiring each other.
Discard on a 1 or discard on a 4 makes no difference to the expected cards drawn. However, putting it on a 1 increases the variance in possible results (i.e. you can now discard and draw nothing and you have more chances to draw without discarding). I kind of prefer reducing the variance, but I can certainly see the argument for a 1 being the "worst possible result". It also would make Bad Luck a better Altruism counter.
This is really not a good change. It does not affect the combo deck much, because you huddle your priests together until you go off into infinity anyway. But it makes the card much less useable for the intended function of giving aid to allies that are closer to the frontline. Basically you are turning a nice general purpose card into a boring combo only/selfcycle card.
If this is the actual wording I suggest changing the templating a bit. Re-attach doesn't mean anything in terms of your game (at least I'm not familiar with it), so this is confusing. Instead I'd word it as: When you play a Holy card targeting an ally other than yourself, draw a card. Discard this trait when it triggers and you roll a 4. Does the same thing, but in my opinion is more clear.
It's intended to force priests closer to the front line if they want to use that card. I probably should have posted it separately, since it not directly related to the Altruism issue.
So, it's actually implemented with a keyword which is "Keep Unless <x>" - in this case, Keep Unless 4. The current Keep keyword reads: "Return this card to hand or re-attach after it triggers" so I wrote Keep Unless as a variant of that. You could be right that both should change though.
Ha, look at that. Ok, I can see the thought process here, but it does seem confusing to me. I don't know that you need to say "re-attach after it triggers" on the keep keyword. Is there currently a situation where an attached card wouldn't stay attached after it triggers? For example, martyr's blessing functions very similar to a card drawing trait. It can trigger multiple times but doesn't use the keep keyword to stay attached, this hasn't seemed to lead to any confusion from players. The "return to hand" is more clear for armor cards, I think that's helpful. But I digress....
I will also argue for discarding altruism when rolling a 1. It makes bad luck a much more satisfying counter to it (it would be disappointing if bad luck actually changes altruism from a roll of 4 to 2) and the notion of a "critical failure" is very understandable to people (such as what happens with parry). Also bad luck would cause a discard to altruism on a 1,2, or 3 rather than just a roll of 6. The wording could theoretically then be changed to just have the Keep keyword on the bottom of the card with the 2+ die symbol (although that might actually be more confusing). Even if altruism immediately discards itself because you get a 1 on the first holy card played, you don't even lose out since altruism cycles itself anyway as a trait. As turinturamba said though, the potential large card advantage is still troubling. I will remake the dedicated draw priests when the change goes through and gather some data on how effective card draw with altruism is. The inspiration range change won't affect "infinite draw" much, since the priests get in range three of each other to use inspiring presence anyway. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind the inspiration change is - were priests really using inspiration that much outside of gaining card advantage with altruism?
Yeah unless you are actually returning it to hand and making the player play it again (not sure why you would) it's just going to be confusing. Should just be removed from the character when the 'bad roll' happens.
When I said "would mean more chance of drawing another altruism", I didn't mean that your odds of drawing it were any higher compared to other cards. I just meant that drawing it on a 4 could lead to chaining. Sorry, should have been more clear. Example: Discard on 4: Priest has 3 holy cards in hand, and altruism attached. Priest heals an ally, altruism triggers. Rolls a 4. Altruism detaches, but priest draws another altruism from rolling a 4, and thus can potentially continue the chain with his other cards. Discard on 1: Priest has 3 holy cards in hand, and altruism attached. Priest heals an ally, altruism triggers. Rolls a 1. Altruism detaches, and priest now has to rely on other sources of drawing if he wants to chain altruism. tl;dr: What I'm trying to say is that discard on 1 makes it harder to chain altruism, where as 4 makes it easier (even if it's only a little bit).
I had to think about this a while. So in addition to the original issues posted by the developers, I would add the following points to an analysis of Altruism. - -As a bronze quality card it easily draws more cards than much higher quality card drawing. - -This also makes Altruism far and away the best Priest trait, which reduces usage of other traits. As a trait Altruism already draws one card to replace itself, so over the 3 turn duration every additional card you can draw makes it more and more powerful. Since you can easily make a deck that contains upwards of 18 holy cards, you can get another 3+ (at least one per turn) chances at drawing more cards just from your new cards. Over the course of the 3 turn duration it can easily draw you 2 additional cards, and that alone makes Altruism one of the most powerful card drawing abilities in the game (equal to or better than Inspirational Thinking at a far lower quality). The heart of the problem is that it’s relatively easy to draw even more cards from a single Altruism. If other characters use card drawing abilities to have the Altruism character draw even more cards (beyond their normal card drawing) each additional card provides more chances for Altruism to trigger. This enables you to draw additional cards over the one the character already gets from their own draws. Doing this makes Altruism the best card drawing ability in the game, which is where things start to get more problematic. Using multiple priests is the best example, but there are plenty of other abilities like Battlecry and Leadership that improve altruism to dangerous levels. The proposed fix is a good attempt to limit how many cards you can draw from Altruism, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Altruism would still draw around at least 2 additional cards (1 for being a trait and one when you roll a 4), and will normally draw at least 1 more. This still leaves it very powerful card drawing, gold quality or better, and the best priest trait. Considering that Altruism is a bronze card, and needs to be brought in line with other traits I propose the following. Proposed text: When you play a holy card targeting another character: On 1-3 discard the trait On 4-6 draw a card. Altruism always replaces itself (drawing 1 card), and half the time it draws at least 1 more card. Sometimes it will draw you even more cards and it will feel awesome. -This seems far more appropriate for a bronze-silver quality card drawing spell. -As a trait this is more in line with the power level of other priest traits. -This card is a lot more clear and easy to understand. -It would be improved, but not broken by a luck ability.
I like Oberon's solution. definitely wanna reiterate how important it is that it will be" keep" and not "reattach" since that actually helps the priest because it moves the attachment to the beginning of the queue which is very powerful since one of the ways to get rid of attachments is ofcourse covering the enemy priest with your own attachments (the different "frosts" pop immediately to mind) and reattaching would actually be beneficial and make altruism even better. maybe you need to take a different direction alltogether since the entire issue is caused obviously by the mere essence of the trait - drawing a card. the problem was addressed nicely with talented healer in my opinion (which I still think is a very good card) and I can't see why altruism has to draw a card and not do something else. I'm sure the brilliant minds in here can figure something else out. the root of the problem is that it is the only class skill that relies on dice rolling which only makes things more complicated for you guys, the devs. since tweaking it involves these somewhat "unnatural" solutions (a roll of 4 of all things now becomes the altruistic priest greatest nightmare). either way I haven't found altruism to destroy any of my games. rarely is there a game breaking chain and there are ways to counter such a priest (purge, targeting him first to kill, covering him with negative attachments etc.) but maybe I was just lucky
One other small point. Look at the value provided by the other traits. Warrior traits add 1-2 damage but only to very specific types of attacks. They allow you to draw another card, which is great, but the abilities alone are more conditional than a card like Unholy Frenzy . Wizard traits can be a bit better, adding similar damage but also being able to alter block rolls at times. Wizards also get some utility traits like Hover and Dimensional Traveler . Much like the warrior these are still relatively minor abilities. It's the card draw effect from the trait that makes them good. Priests follow this mold with some of their traits. Holy Presence and Healing Spirit are both relatively minor effects. Altruism and the old Talented Healer were always in a class all their own. Card drawing is a much more powerful ability than any other traits offer, and it's been added to the innate value provided by a trait card. My suggested nerf to Altruism may seem extreme, but in relation to what other traits get to do I think it would still be a comparable card.
Altruism is extremely powerful. Even under the current revamp, you'll draw 3 cards (including the one gained when playing a trait) on average. That's incredible. On a warrior, I rarely care about gaining +1 damage to a type of attack I probably don't have many of in my deck. The discrepancy is staggering. As Bearson Onyx has mentioned, I'd like it to be clear that this is a Keep, and not a Re-attach, since the 3 round limit and being able to knock off someone's attached cards is incredibly important. Oberon's suggestion seems to be a solid middle-ground.
I believe the Cycler, the Purger and the Healer were the initially designed builds for priests. They are largely utilitarian but the problem of traits and additional cycling cards compounded itself. There were other cards (Holy Insight, G. Holy Insight, Contagion etc) in early closed beta that showed to be equally game-breaking in some way or another and KIVed for now. Its a question of how OP the Cycler is and what to do with it, rather than going back to the drawing board so close to release.
I think that discarding Altruism on a 1 would feel more intuitive than discarding it on a 4, but if you do decide to keep it as a 4 (or even change it to a 1) I think the Keep Unless keyword is a nice way of implementing it. I also really like Oberon's suggestion if you wish to further weaken the card, and I believe he has made some good points as to why you may wish to do so.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just put a cap on the number of turns you can take before the round ends? The massive draw engine has to take a lot of turns drawing up cards before it can play them down again. If the round ends after 20 turns by each side (regardless of whether people are passing or not), then the draw engine can't take over the world.
I like your solution in terms of balance, but I feel like it's not a very fun card any more if it can just replace itself and immediately get discarded. Whenever that happens I bet it's going to feel super disappointing to have brought it with you at all. I suggest actually changing the function of Altruism in that the Priest stops getting benefited for helping others, defeating the theme of the card. I think we could keep Altruism's basic idea but make it so the draw goes to your allies instead of yourself. Borrowing your format, Proposed text: Whenever you play a holy card targeting a single character, take 1 Psychic damage and: On 1-4 nothing happens On 5-6 the targeted character draws a card. I feel something like this would greatly improve the card's effect matching its theme, would make it tougher to chain, but would potentially allow chained draws if you're really lucky. Also it doesn't let the guy who already has Altruism continue to draw through his deck to the next copy of Altruism. You would have to consider the safety of the character using it as it would actually create some tactical risk by lowering the Priest's health. You could also get the Vulnerable trait, or Raging Strike, making this a pretty painful effect if you aren't planning for it.
