mighty/obliterating/almighty etc. melee attacks

Hi there brave dungeon crawlers and dragon slayers.

First things first - I do not find mighty, obliterating, almighty etc. melee attacks overpowered.

Right. Now that we got that out of the way - what do you think about such attacks? Do they add depth to the game or the opposite? Most importantly, are they fun gameplay-wise?

I left MP until after I finished the campaign and to be honest I didn't know of these attacks existing (i.e. outside the hands of monsters, of course). The highest damage card I've used while playing the campaign was Violent Overswing and it felt right because it was up-close melee with a sort of a drawback (i.e. sacrifice a card or not be able to use it at all).

The campaign was a blast and I enjoyed the melee options that my dwarf warrior had. The synergy with martial skills and bash attacks, penetrating, chops or stabbing with movement options such flanking move etc. It felt that I'm really fighting to get every 1 point of damage in and trying to do it in the most efficient way possible using the traits and right combination/order of attacks.

When I jumped into MP few days ago someone knocked my socks off when they've used a Powerful Hack. You can imagine my surprise when after looking around the shop for the first time (I was kind hoarding gold through the campaign ) I found things like Mighty Hack, not to mention Almighty Hack which I only seen posted on the forum rather than in action.

I'm not sure what to think of these. It's been a while since I've seen anyone using things like bashes or chops after passing elo of 1.1-1.2k. Only ranged stabs and of course whole array of super massive hacks and bludgeons, even on priests!

So, feeling that I'm bringing toothpicks to a lightsabre fight, next thing I did was to invest in some common shop stuff like Warrior's Mace, Blocking Mace and Powerful Sword and exchanged my trusty campaign-earned epics and rares with these 5-gold-each beauties. Since then MP got much, much easier for my warrior. Sure, you can block and parry it, but that applies to all melee attacks. Why should I use Shredding Strike or Perforating Strike? Mighty Hack will do more damage anyway, even if opponent has a few armours. And is it really that more difficult to get close up to the enemy as it is in the case of chops and bashes? Not really. Also, since you don't have to worry about spending those power tokens on a martial skill to boost your chops by 1 for 3 rounds you just got an extra token to get a better armour/helm/shield/boots/whatever!

After my recent 'discovery' I kinda lost all interest in melee in CH. All other melee approaches are still viable, but more situational (chops against a single target, bashes not sliding because of blocked terrain, puncture attack which would go through anyway, because the target has no armour etc.).

What's others view of these attacks? Did they increase the tactical depth of the game or are they a must-have on high-elo MP? Most importantly - are they fun? From my perspective, they kinda narrowed my viable-build options, rather then increased them and from what I see in MP, it applies not only to me.

To wrap things up and provide some constructive critique I would like to come back to Violent Overswing. It's great because it delivers a lot of damage, assuming you pass a certain condition - have a extra card to sacrifice. I would love to see more things like that, or 'if blocked, self-harm for 5' or have cards like Almighty Hacks and similar became red/black cards, with a permanent Large Weapon being applied to it and so on. So keep the damage high, but at a condition.

Thoughts?

 

It's a necessity. Warriors don't have heals, or card draws, or encumbers or control or whirlwind or ranged damage. They have damage and step damage and mobility. High damage weapons are easy to obtain - one of the best is a common lvl 18 item, and good alternatives are regularly in the basic daily shops. I don't see a problem.

 

And they shouldn't if we want different classes have different strengths/weaknesses, although they still can take up stuff like: Absorbing Block, Icy Block and Quick Reactions for example.

I'm more interested in how it compares to other melee options and if you ask me they are just, simply put, better.

 

I voted yes just because last night it was fun to use Obliterating Bludgeon with All Out Attack coupled with a Mass Frenzy to one-shot the warrior in the first round of the second battle of Cardstock II. I understand the depth of discussion you want to have, but the enjoyment I got out of that was enough to make me glad they are in there.

 

In order to deal damage warrior has to be in melee range to use those attacks. They have much higher damage than range 2 attacks because of that fact. We should also mention that while in PvE you use those attacks defensively - as in you wait until opponent arrives onto your warrior (in most cases) -> it's already your turn and you're able to dish out the damage without risk. Those high-damage options mean that you either run step warrior and you're really mobile, but your damage is lower or you sacrifice mobility for damage output (or you can mix of course) -- but in both cases there are sacrifices made. Everything has it's strong and weak sides. Weapons with those high damage attacks mostly have no step attacks at all, they rely on heavy damage output in melee range, however... if you can't reach your target, you can't deal any damage. I honestly find them weak from my experience. ~1550 Rating.

 

If you leave your elf wizard sitting next to a enemy warrior you are just asking for pain.

It's all they have so it's fine.

 

High dmg attack is an interesting mechanics. They are as situational as any other cards (bash or penetrating). They are useful and equally useless depends on your choice and decision. Just a note first, items with high dmg attack trade it off for some negative trait or low dmg attack (<4). With that out of the way, let's talk about situation in which one might favor big attack.

- You rarely have a chance to attack, when you have you want to make the most of your cards.. This make having extremely low dmg and high dmg viable, since you can opt to filter out bad cards. Most of the time you cannot attack you would rather have defensive card on hands. When you are able to attack multiple times, by having wizard/support getting you into position, having good medium dmg attack is preferred, for the sake of reliability.

- When you have a way to deal with block. If you can sure to get rid of their defense, 17 dmg will surely stick. War Cry is a good combination with this strategy. Otherwise Parry is the counter to high dmg attack, very effective counter at that. Fishing for block with low dmg attack is acceptable, but not as good. Otherwise, stack dmg as high as possible is a sure way to fail when you gamble with the enemy's parry.

- When you want to go big. Typically, this is the type of players who stack obliterating cards with All out attack and go around 1 shotting everyone. Most of the time it doesn't work or he never got the chance to do so until he died, but when it does, it does big, and it is satisfying. The philosophy is simple: Go big or go home.

- Bluff. Combined with Obvious Maneuver. This create the illusion of a threat for whomever is gearing to be your distraction. You opponents will be forced to deal with that character, stay out of his way, or intentionally bring Parry in front of him. The idea is to force the enemy to expend card resources to deal with a false threat, while the rest of your party mobs up when they are out of options.

I could make up some more scenarios, but that's should be enough. Personally speaking, I have no problems with such big dmg attack in the game. However, the existence of such cards/item turns the warrior into a high threat bhwam in your face target in the current meta game, which makes building warrior a little 1 dimensional and binary at the moment. There are much more guesswork when dealing with enemy wizard than warrior.

 

You all seem to be addressing a point that piotras didn't make - that warriors are too powerful / more powerful than other classes. The point he was making, from my reading, is that at high levels puncturing attacks and cards like Shredding Strike are out damaged by straight damage hacks and bludgeons even if your opponent is wearing armor.

All right, shredding strike has an additional effect so it doesn't have to do quite as much damage, but I've still found no reason to have those in my deck. Likewise you could say that high level puncturing attacks are all range 2, so they can't be directly compared. That's fine, there's an argument to be made there, but my experience with high level warriors has mostly been the same as piotras': I've experimented with other builds, but none are nearly as effective as a high damage build with step attacks.

I mentioned in another thread how happy I was when I got my second Bec De Corbin and how I thought I was going to have a great dancing / dodging warrior. Didn't happen, just couldn't do enough damage to be effective. Part of the problem is a lack of ranged melee weapons that are anywhere near as good as a Bejeweled Shortsword or the like, and part of the problem is that Bec de Corbins aren't as good as I thought they were, but the fact remains that, right now at least, a build like that is a step down.

Admittedly, I've never tried a bashing build. Something like that is more about control than damage and that could potentially work out well. I just... dislike that style. Waiting them to come to you, then pushing them away, then waiting again... I might use it in certain single player campaigns, if there was cause, but my go-to warrior is still the same.

 

I'm okay with that. In spite of my earlier example, I usually have a hard time getting into position to use them against the AI and I should have a really hard time against a human. (Still haven't jumped into MP.) If I don't, and my opponent lets me, he deserves to get hit really hard.

Still, I understand what you and he are saying, but the next inevitable step is the discussion to either nerf the high damage attacks or improve the others. It's usually easier to nerf so that's what happens. I think it usually takes a minor nerf to one and a minor buff to the other to bring things properly in line. How that effects the warrior and overall balance is beyond my ability to discern at this point. I think we should be careful to not eliminate variety for the illusion of fairness. A warrior brandishing Obliterating Bludgeon should only be able to get that off once on an opponent. More than once it becomes a fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, because you should be able to effectively avoid him from then on. And then it becomes 3 vs 2... assuming he didn't 1 shot someone in your party, then it should becomes 2v2.

Edit: And I'm not saying you or the OP are trying to get anything nerfed. But I'm trying to look where this discussion could go and give a friendly warning.

 

Shredding Strike is utility card, and it isn't all that fruitfull to compare it on pure damage basis. Armor reduction can really add up, especially if your trying to use mage as damage dealer.

I think high damage attacks offer interesting tradeoff for Step attacks. Both are viable, and require quite different playstyle/setup. And mixing them up can get interesting results.

Stabs also work reasonably well. Chops aren't all that good in PvP, same with bashes.

Although my support warrior with 3xLunging Bash and 3xBarge has worked surprisingly well. Admittedly he also has 2xObliterating Bludgeon. But mostly intended for keeping enemy away either via bashes or team moves.

 

Shredding strike will also remove resistant hide, toughness, etc, and allow your other non-warrior characters to do full damage.

 

Just because some stuff is not good in multiplayer doesn't mean it's not useful in the campaign and you have to take both in consideration.

Shredding strike gives something for warriors to do to remove armor and that is usually only the wizards job for the most part and great against some characters who are able to ignore certain weapon types.

 

My first MP build (which turned into a run for the epic chest) had a dwarf basher with Basher's Delight, Hammer Of Bashing and a Silver Rapier. Lunging Bash (step + bash) was very good since it didn't work on the basis of 'lets wait till they come over' and the few ranged stabs from the token-cheap stabbing rapier helped to maximise damage on bashed opponents or ones which thought that can outrange me. But it was much harder to pull of than just simply Mass Frenzy, Winds of War an enemy to your warrior and hack the living sh*t out of him/her.

But back to the topic. Indeed the point was not about nerfing warriors or removing high-damage attacks. But given time everyone will sooner or later get their 2x Bejeweled Shortswords as drops and the game will be very, very boring.

 

They are common items, everyone is supposed to have at least 2x of that. It's a standard dmg items for your characters. Choosing not to use it is to specialize in any other things rather than pure dmg.

 

I think it's more an itemisation thing. Bejeweled shortswords are just way better then so many other weapons. It isn't the only on weapons though, I find Slippery Shield and Parrying Buckler to also be so much better then other options that I wouldn't consider another shield unless I was going tokenless. As a warrior it is just better to go with massive damage and/or good step cards bash/2 range attacks are generally inferior in most cases due to the complete card set of the weapons that they are on.

 

Likewise.
Coming from a purely SP experience, there comes a point where it's extremely helpful to occasionally pull a big 18 damage attack, because that's still sometimes only a third or a fourth of your target's total hitpoints. I figured out how to get 3 AoA into my warrior's deck the other day, and finding out how the effects can be cumulative when used all at once was a really funny way of practically one-shotting that tree at the end of Black Oaken Heart. To be honest, I really can't see myself trying to meet him on normal terms with just the normal stuff.
I'll get way more uncomfortable with the big hits when we start seeing 4 or 5 of them all on the same weapon. That would make it feel like a completely different game, and I'd worry for PvP a little bit, I think.

 

High-damage attacks are a necessity for certain builds and to kill certain comps, I do not think they should be removed. Its sad that the best overall item for a warrior is a common, but that's the breaks I guess. But getting hit with a huge attack that's mixed with AOA is great for chuckles

 

For some reason I cannot manage to get a second bejeweled shortsword for the life of me. I have copies of a couple legendaries! But no second of those

 

The balance to high damage cards is the requirement to stand right next to the target. All of the 10-17 damage cards require getting in close and unless they played a cantrip card like Quick Step to reach the target, the enemy gets a chance to respond by moving away, playing control cards like Telekinesis/Winds Of War, or even a Simple Bash.

Running the 14 and 17 damage cards is like gambling. Drawing one while in a heated battle is always an "Aw yeah!" moment.

 

Yes, they can also be blocked, parried etc. I see these arguments popping up throughout this topic, but - ALL of these counters mentioned apply to bash, chop and many of the penetrating/armor destroying attacks.

To reiterate an important point here - these counters are NOT-specific to obliterating etc. attacks, they thus can't be considered as balancing them out, while these attacks do 2-3 times bigger damage. I also understand that weak attacks are good for checking blocks etc., but to be honest I would rather have a whole deck of 11+ dmg attacks than mix of weak and strong, because you just might end up against defenceless opponent.

Sorry that the original post was a wall of text, in short - from the PvP perspective massive-damage attacks dominate the battlefield in high-elo fights, making the melee portion of the game very boring and predictable. Nobody bothers with chop, bash and a few use ranged stabs and impaling and it is because they are not as effective as raw damage coupled with a few step attacks / wizard mobility support.

From the perspective of build viability in PvP the game is loosing in build variety.