Helmets do some genuinely interesting things. Team movement, Block Negation, Bonus cards when facing ranged opponents, and at higher levels some crazy stuff like Flight Aura. But all of that is situational. And all of those things cost a power token. If you don't have a power token to spare, you're lucky to get two rusty armors and a demonic pain. I don't know what the equations being used are, but it seems pretty obvious that you're getting a lot less for your helmet slot than you are for your heavy armor slot. And considering that your heavy armor slot comes in several levels early, that seems really weird. I notice going back through the logs, that helmet specific abilities such as War Cry have already had to be boosted because they weren't good enough. This needs to be done some more. Most likely at the level of the helmets themselves, which are actually quite terrible at all levels. -Frank
I disagree, helmets are great options. They may not be very helpful in many builds, but I find it's absolutely worth putting in a token on helmets to get team moves on my warriors (in a warrior/warrior/priest build). Much more helpful than a token class skill, or even token armor. I think maybe there could be more helmet items, for teams that might not need the utility of the higher level helmets, but I definitely don't find them lacking.
Helmets don't have to be comparable to other items. They just have to be comparable to other helmets. Not to mention, as you've said, helmets are one of the few sources for team move. That by itself gives it huge amount of value.
You have to remember that you can't really compare different slots against each other. They fill different roles and are balanced differently. It may be true that you get less out of your helmet than from your armor, but since you can't just equip 2 sets of armor instead, it doesn't matter.
If you play an all dwarf team team moves are awesome. Or an all warrior team as many high ranked players do. My biggest problem so far with helmets is it can mess up deck composition because its often three very different cards but overall I think having a helmet is better then having nothing equipped in the slot.
While in abstract the helmet doesn't compete against the heavy armor for card slots, you have to remember that it does compete with the heavy armor for power tokens. Those actually are completely fungible, and you literally do directly have a choice between spending one to upgrade the three cards in your armor slot to being demonstrably superior cards, or to spend them on exchanging the rather poor cards in your helmet slot for the weirdly situational cards in a tokened helmet. Now, crazy awesome helmets do exist. Captain Cedric's Helm is pretty intense. But it's also Legendary. You could go through the whole game three times and never get one. Indeed, never get a helmet that wasn't basically a liability (either in terms of taking a power token while still not being very useful in most adventures, or by having negative traits that hurt). Basic utility helmets seem to be missing from the list. -Frank
That's true, but then you might as well say that your armor or shield sucks compared to your weapon - look - they have 3 fewer cards and it's nearly impossible to find a shield or armor with a decent attack on it! Different slots offer different advantages and disadvantages - deciding which ones get a token is the heart of the strategy involved in building an effective team. When i don't need the special benefits a helm can provide, i use Crusty Helm for adventures and Weakling's Helm for PvP. Tipping your hand in PvP is bad, bad, bad.
did you read my second sentence at all? the fact that it brings unique capabilities means your method of direct comparison makes no sense. do you want a team that has a mobility focus? If yes, you take head gear with team move because thats one of the few places they can be found. There is nothing wrong with helmets. Large number of players in the upper levels use tokens for them for the simple reason that they have team move cards. token in helmet gives unique utility skills, token in weapon gives more damage, token in armor gives more survivability. What do you want? Now spend the token there. comparing the items makes no sense. They are not comparable. This statement is actually wrong. It competes with extra damage from spending tokens on weapons (magnitude of that extra attack/damage = token weapon's advantage over non-token weapon), or extra defense (magnitude of that extra defense = token armor's advantage over non-token armor). The base items themselves are not part of the choice. They are constants. each token is essentially equal to X damage, or Y armor, or Z move. you choose between the 3. how the base token-less weapons compare to each other, i.e how a token-less weapon compares to a token-less shield to a token-less helmet, is irrelevant. this is the only thing being compared when you try evaluate items across slots.
Helmets do compete with heavy armor (and other item slots) for power tokens. Obviously there aren't enough power token for everything, and so part of the challenge of deck building is to work out where the power token as best spent. It's true that helmets provide different sorts of benefits than heavy armor, but that doesn't mean they aren't competing for the same tokens. If using a power token to upgrade one item only yields one marginally better card, whereas a power token on some other item gives 3 far superior cards - then it's pretty clear where the power token should be used. Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that using token on armor is more beneficial than using tokens on helms - or vice versa. I'm just saying that they definitely are competing for tokens.
http://wiki.cardhuntria.com/wiki/Items/Tough_Leather_Cap one of the best balanced item i have seen in game. armor,damage,movement =)
Having just reset, I'm finding that shields are a lot crappier than helmets in the early stages of the game. I'm only at level 6 and the strength of the opponents' attacks have already progressed beyond the usefulness of Weak Block and Flimsy Block, which nearly all of the shields contain. I almost feel like I should be going back to Unreliable Block. At least that actually has a chance of working! I can't remember at what level the shield selection starts getting good again. Probably in the early- or mid-teens. As for helmets, they're not too spectacular, but at least they offer cards that can still help at this stage of the game, unlike WB and FB. I'm using Helmet Of Thorns right now.
As for shields, I remember using Heavy Wooden Shield quite often, even in the later levels Sure, it has one Flimsy Block but it also has Parry and a Simple Bash and it's tokenless.
I remember using Heavy Wooden a lot in Beta, but this time around I had pizza at the beginning, so now I'm using the Spiked Buckler from Fierce Dwarves.
My favorite tokenless shield in beta was the Dueler's Buckler (Common) with Block, Parry, and Unreliable Block. The Heavy Wooden Shield as Zalminen mentioned, was the other one I used frenquently.
