What to do ?

I'd agree with turinturamba on this one. It'd be great if the different weapons were equally good in different ways, certainly it would be nice if that were the case, but that doesn't seem to be how it's worked out. There's another thread discussing this here:

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/mighty-obliterating-almighty-etc-melee-attacks.4140/

 

I am not comparing apples to oranges. I am comparing the effects of the cards. One gives me 20 more damage and two 2move step attacks, the other gives me two times conditional melee armor, three 2 range attacks and 2 penetrating attacks. The number of situations where the second set of attributes is better than the first set is extremely small, and therefore the first item is better than the second.

Now if the earspoon had ten more damage or useful blocks instead of the two weak range 1 attacks then it would be an interesting item that could be considered when deckbuilding.

 

The issue is not that some of the legendaries are not more powerful than the commons, the issue is that there are no situation in which those legendaries are more useful than those commons. The perfect example would be something like Luke's Iron Hand. There is no situation in which it is more useful than something like Locket Of The Gale, just because a single winds of war is more useful than 2 telekinesis. This makes the legendary a very disappointing drop. Boosting those legendaries (for example by going with 3 times improved telekinesis) would make the item worthwile for consideration, while not necessarily better than the uncommon item with two winds of war.

 

Luke's Iron Hand is more useful than Locket Of The Gale if your build contains a Fright * or three. This could very well be the case when e.g. doing the "drawback items only" quests.

* For those who are not already familiar with these cards: Winds Of War is an attack card. Telekinesis is not. Fright prevents playing attack cards.

 

This is an example I can definitely agree upon. In fact it's no wander Winds Of War is one of those very powerful cards people will be more than glad to use a lot (the card is both better and you can stuff more of those in a given deck).

I guess designing 1000+ items and assuring each and everyone of them is somewhat balanced is no easy task.

For instance, it would seem you didn't want people to be able to stock too many Improved Telekinesis in a deck, since the only item in the game granting two copies of that would be the Whiterune Staff. The max number of Advanced Telekinesis you can have in a deck is 8, and that would require, as a minimum, spending 4 major and 2 minor tokens on a total of 8 items.

Winds of War? You can hit a whooping 13, though spending all 3 major and 4 minor tokens. Contrary to what happens with Advanced Telekinesis, you do get an both a Staff and an Arcane Item coming with 2 copies of WoW on it: Pearwood Staff and the already mentioned Locket Of The Gale

Interestingly, only common/uncommon gear is required to reach the cap for any of those cards. No rare+ required in the slightest.

EDIT: this edit is no longer relevant =P

 

Heh, I just realized you couldn't use Luke's Iron Hand on a drawback item quest . There are other reasons your build might contain Fright, though. My current MP build does.

 

Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. (Insert d&d joke here).

 

Any legendary item that is different (even though it is pretty much worse) get a pass. Prime example mentioned above is Locket of the Gale vs Luke's Iron Hand Any item that is universally inferior all the time definitely needs some looking into. Since we're talking about Luke's Iron Hand, let's compare these 2 items

Ring Of Appropriation > Luke's Iron Hand

Not only does both the epic and legendary version are very similar (which seems like lazy design) but also the fact that an epic version of an item is universally superior than its legendary equivalent. Again, anyone can just take this and argue that the legendary one should be better. But that's not my point. The point is that these 2 items shouldn't exist together in the first place. For more discussion of these universally superior item, feel free to read my Item Vendor List

 

There are more factors to balancing items in the game than which are (in the very rare case) strictly more useful. The Ring of Appropriation is six levels higher than Luke's Iron Hand, and would therefore not be available to a campaign player until they had progressed further through the game or were replaying more difficult adventures.

Also, there are plenty of scenarios where Telekinesis would be preferable to Winds Of War. You might need to move your own wounded figures without the risking of damaging them. You might want to shove aside an enemy without triggering their Martyr Blessing. As has already been mentioned, TK isn't an attack card and therefore isn't blocked or won't harm you in combination with at least three different drawback cards I can think of off the top of my head.

 

Not disputing the design philosophy and approach which I agree is a good thing. Its just that by calling it legendary and epic, you do raise expectations of normal gamers who have come to associate these items as being something sought after whereas now its completely hit and miss as to whether these items are even useful at all. The solution may be to call it something else but this I suspect will be devastating to your revenue models. As it stands, I don't really see the need to extend my club membership because over the course of a month, I think I have obtained all that I could reasonably want and the hunt for legendaries and epics is just not that compelling.

 

Well show me a decklist where you would rather use luke's iron hand. Even with three or four frights (Why would you ever put three frights in your deck?) I'd much rather have the gale.

In a game as rich as card hunter there are always scenarios where one card is better than another. But you do not see people advocating filling your deck with Weak Strike instead of Obliterating Bludgeon, just because the other guy could run a Duck or you have a Squeamish in your deck. The question is if there is a possible deck that does not intentionally cripple itself where you would rather have Luke's Iron Hand instead of a Locket Of The Gale. If there is not then the legendary should be boosted until such a deck exists.

I guess people here will defend any legendary no matter how crappy, so next challenge: Explain to me how Ring Of Bifurcated Healing can be better than Silver Healing Ring.

 

In a SP adventure where you most often take small amounts of damage to several characters at once? With a Firestorm build where you wish to keep several characters just about alive at the end of the barrage?

By the way, you moved the goalposts quite a bit there. We weren't originally responding to your new question.

 

Pfft, that one's easy. Give it to a priest providing tank support for two wizards, use it to disarm multiple Reflect Missiles from goblins per turn at a decent range while still moderately healing yourself, then let the wizards tear the goblins apart before you take enough damage to warrant any greater healing cards.

 

It was not my intention to move goalposts. My position is that there are lots of legendaries that are weakly dominated by common items and this is a shame. Because as Tryan said, it makes hunting for those items not compelling and reduces longterm motivation to play cardhunter.
But if you want to argue that it makes sense to put telekinesis into a deck instead of winds of war and you cannot even concede the uselessness of the ring of bifurcated healing then I guess there is no point in trying to convince you.

 

We weren't arguing it makes sense to put telekinesis into a deck instead of winds of war. That's your moved goalpost. Your original statement was "There is no situation in which it is more useful than something like Locket Of The Gale" and the replies were to show situations where it is more useful. You got some more replies about the usefulness of the bifurcated ring. I don't see anyone arguing that it makes more sense to put them in your deck. We just aren't conceding the complete uselessness of these items any more than you are conceding their usefulness in certain situations.

This is mostly just typical internet good-natured wrangling over semantics, but it does serve the purpose of pointing out that even a lousy-looking item might have some conceivable use, however far-fetched. It also might give some new insight into the creative use of items. You seem to advocate a very narrow view of the utility of items, as someone already mentioned. Maybe be a little more open-minded and I'd be ready to admit to preferring stacking more winds of war than telekineses with fright.

 

Well, there's plenty of Legendary items that will never see any use in PvP. That doesn't mean all or even most of them are completely useless. But cards like Ring Of Bifurcated Healing and Luke's Iron Hand have their place. 3 of same card is good thing to have, exactly something for Legendary item. Those 2 particular cards (I'm sure you can find more examples) just happen to be weak.

btw. comparing legendary with no attacks to common with only attacks might not be best example.

Edit: Level system greatly interferes with rarity and deckbuilding. From strictly RPG point of view, lvl 17 item should always be better than lvl 9 item regardless of rarity. It's like comparing lvl 40 item to lvl 75 item in WoW

So as level is clearly used as basis for card power, but completely ignored in deckbuilding, it leads to percieved "wrongness". There probably wouldn't be any problem if powertokens would be ditched and everyone would assume they just had to be using lvl 18 stuff.

 

I don't know why it needs to be argued if an item has niche uses. When I look at my set of legendaries I see maybe 10% that I would use in a multiplayer deck and in most cases even then there are probably better rare/epic options. In my opinion the vast majority of cases your better off getting a rare/epic as the legendary item pool is diluted so badly by sub standard items. There is a real problem if you have a feeling of fear when a legendary drops.

 

I wouldn't go so far personally. Legendaries are rarely totally useless. It's just that they are not legendary in the conventional sense of a "must have" or even "good to have". More of, if I have the right build, it may be a good to have. Hence my earlier suggestion to not refer to such items as Legendary or Epic but something else entirely.

 

The main point about rarer items is to allow you to put more varied builds together (in fact most epics and legendaries main selling point is to feature multiple copies of the same card, or coming with cards which are otherwise scarcely available, or otherwise unusual combinations of cards).

The fact some of those are widely regarded as better than others is of secondary importance, and honestly quite natural when you have a 1000+ items pool. I don't get all the fuz about this, nor I think the situation is as bad as some describe. But then maybe it's because I'm used to play games the like of Diablo, where the fact a very good rare item is probably going to be better than most unique/legendaries is a given.

That's the same with M:tG too, honestly. Legendary cards are, for the most part, just "different" instead of simply being awesome regardless of the way you use them.

I like the fact CH (and the other games I mentioned) are more about coming up with an optimal build using whatever is available to you, rather than just trying to put your hands on the rarest items you can.