Turin's list of worthwile balance changes

The damage bonus from All Out Attack is exponentially (w.r.t. the number of All Out Attack cards in the character's hand); but I don't think that has much to do with Nimble Strike.

As a side note, I'm not sure using a bunch of All Out Attack cards with Nimble Strike would be that great anyway. I mean, there's definitely the potential for a massive 24 damage hit, but that requires that you have those three particular cards in your hand at a particular time when you can make use of them; and if you're looking for a powerful three-card combo, then I reckon Quick Run + All Out Attack + Obliterating Bludgeon is probably better...

By the way, I don't really think it's 'abuse' to use these cards to make powerful combinations. That's just how they're meant to work, isn't it?

 

Yeah even if this is done it would still be the clear choice. This just isn't enough of a nerf at all... and surging block still wouldn't be used (at least deliberately as a card choice).

 

I really don't know how Slippery Shield made it through beta, I imagine the nerf it needs may never come though to make all the other token shields I have that just never get used worth it.

As for the OP, I think there are some really good ideas there but I believe that card draw will still be pretty dominant because the nerfs proposed are just not nearly enough. For example draw decks can often win with just a few draws with nimbus etc, they don't need to be able to go crazy and have 10 cards per character they will still be strong just being able to put a few more heavy hitter cards in a warriors hand, very real drawbacks need to be included in cards that create card advantage in my opinion.

 

Let's get back to topic, shall we? As others have pointed out before, first card drawing machines have to be brought under control. Card drawing tactics allow you to either get too far ahead in the first round, or at least cherry pick your two keeps for the second. Once this is cut back to normal, you can reassess which of the other "broken" cards are still "broken" now that you have a lower chance of getting the right draw immediately.

To keep drawing cards, you need cards that allow you to draw at least two more cards. Note that it doesn't matter if the target is another PC, as you can use two PCs to play card draw ping pong.

The major offenders are:

Demonic Feedback: The most obvious offender. Pay one card and 5 hp, get two cards. Different fixes have been suggested, but how about making it a time delay and moving the damage to the target? If it is a supercharged Accelerated Thought, at least you can't use it to create a draw machine in the first round.

Fix: "Attach to target. At the its next round, target draws two cards and takes five unholy damage. This damage cannot be prevented by armor."

This fix has several other benefits:
- The number of traits you can attach is limited to three. If you want to stack three demonic feedbacks, you can, but no Unholy Frenzy etc. on top.
- It creates a tactical challenge. The opponent knows that the PC will take 5 hp damage at the start of its next turn, so he can rush to reduce it below that.

Inspiring Presence: The usefulness of this card is somewhat limited by the fact that opponents can benefit too. Also, it's listed as gold, not paper quality, making it more costly to stack. I'd fix Demonic Feedback and Altruism first and then see if this one is still a problem.

Altruism: This one is a bit stealthy. However, it is part of the problem: It allows you to draw a card when you get it (since it's a trait) and another card when it triggers (which is a 50/50 chance, but you get to keep it if it fails). My fix would be to remove the draw from this one altogether. Make it a healing effect instead of a card draw.

Fix: When you play a Holy card targeting an ally other than yourself, Heal one hit point. Keep.

Later, there could be a silver version that heals 2 hp.

Accelerated Thought: This one is balanced by the fact that 1) it's gold quality and 2) it's time-delayed.

Inspiration: Honorable mention. By itself, this card allows you to draw one for one. However, it still supports draw decks, because it 1) can trigger Altruism and 2) it allows you to cycle through your deck to get the powerful card you want. Effectively, this card reduces your deck size by one.

Fix: Remove "May Self Target".

With this fix, you can still use it for drawing ping pong, but at least now you do need two clerics for it, making it harder to pull off.

 

I intentionally left Hard To Pin Down out of the list. Mostly because it appears on a lot of boots (even tokenless), but which do not see much usage in MP. So clearly the card is not so broken that you want to get it wherever possible, no matter the cost. Now you can argue that slippery shield is problematic, but this list is not about items and furthermore I do not see it as totally dominating. For one it costs a gold token and you may want to spend that token elsewhere. Secondly it gets amplified by the current dwarven draw meta, where bonus movement is hugely important to get to use your cards. Thirdly there are lots of very good alternatives like: Azan's Icy Bulwark, Parrying Buckler,Rusty Buckler,Shield Of Ultimate Dodging.

Surging Shield Block does not make the list, because it appears on a few quite useable legendary nontoken shields: Granwick's Shield and Eeygonnic's Shield. Buffing the surging shield block runs the risk of making these items dominant for the slot, which is especially bad for items of legendary quality.

 

I actually think this card is really bad and over valued. The time delay on it *really* sucks and ruins it. Ends up being:

Round 1: Down 1 card
Round 2: Break even
Round 3: Up one card
Round 4: Up 2 cards

Problem of course being that game is usually mostly decided in those first couple rounds. And so if you draw it round 2 or 3 especially then it is very often like drawing a brick.

Not only that but it can be pushed off from too many buffs/debuffs or also purged away sometimes. Compare this to Unholy Power:

Round 1: Up one card

Yet they are both gold cards.

Unholy power, demonic feedback and altruism are really the main culprits for why draw stacks are so broken. The fact that a token free item contains two of these cards as well as a "negative" that cycles a card compounds the problem further.

 

I think changing those three cards - and that one item - alone is probably enough to fix the draw nonsense. Devs should just change them in some way and see what happens. You probably don't even need further nerfs for other draws cards like inspiring presence or dwarven battle cry. I mean these only start getting really silly when they cycle into even more draw.

 

Since I didn't provide a fix for Unholy Power above, here it is. Like with the others, the idea of the fix is to keep the spirit of what the card does, but limit it in a way that reduces abuse. My suggestion for Unholy Power is modeled after Pathfinding.

Fix: Replace Play Effect with "Discard all Holy cards attached to you then draw a card. Discard that card unless it is an Unholy card. Repeat until you have drawn two Unholy cards or your deck is empty."

It's still very good at what it does, but the selection of cards it synergizes with is much smaller. Especially, it no longer draws Inspiration, Altruism or Inspiring Presence.

 

It also no longer draws any cards for warriors or wizards, effectively making it useless for anything other than casting it on a Vampire-build priest. How is that keeping the spirit of what it does?

 

Fine, point taken. Let me put it in a different way: The current version is a bland "+1 card balance". My version is a card you really want in an Unholy Priest build, which is what you expect from a card called "Unholy Power"

That said, here is a more generic (but also more problematic) version:
"The target discards all holy cards attached to it and draws a card. Discard that card if it is a holy card. Repeat until you have drawn two cards or your deck is empty. May cast on self."

 

One more point I'd like to contribute about Inspiring Presence is that even if you expand the range, with draw decks the way they are, +1 card to each of my characters is worth more than +1 cards to my opponents on average (since I can then proc my draw engine again). I think addressing the +2 cards for is the best way to achieve the balance needed to balance inspiring presence because I'm not sure how that card will look if Unholy Power / Demonic Feedback are nerfed first. Those are both (gold) quality cards that are undervalued. Inspiring is appropriately valued imo.

 

Well inspiring presence is actually the best of all of these cards. It is an immediate +2 cards with no draw back which is just crazy good. The thing is that items which have it don't have any other draw cards - perhaps the only broken one really is that weapon with 2 inspiring presence. It also procs altruism...

Problem really gets huge when a person can run draw skills as effectively half their deck and each one draws 2 more. If you limit the amount of draw cards to just a few well then they are just very powerful. Perhaps still too powerful? Maybe but devs should start with the blatant problem first.

 

The problem with surging shield block is that you lose the ability to move if it block. Turn it down to a roll of 3 pretty much mean you never expected to move with it. It will be a great block nevertheless due to the fact that it is quite cheap and available on plenty of items. The only problems if this change happen is that the card will be viewed as a block card more than a move card.

 

Do you think making it into a block then move 2 in a frontal (ie you can move up to 2 forward facing, or 2 left or right diagonally forward - not backward or side facing) cone would make it make sense? Mechanically and RP-wise that would make sense to me. Your fierce warrior moves forward to block an attack either straight-forward or at an angle.

 

Here is my personal list of "overvalued" and "undervalued" (i.e.: taking up too much budget on an item, or not taking up enough budget...). This is 100% from a Multiplayer perspective only, no consideration is given to an item's relative value in SP campaign here.

Overvalued / Underpowered:
Violent Spin (Gold): this is a great card, but too expensive for what it does.

Barge (Silver): another pretty good utility card, but weapons which have budgeted to have barge on them do (almost) no damage.

Soothing Darkness (Gold): a total heaing of 12 over 3 turns, while causing encumber 1 for the same 3 turns. Compare to Greater Heal, instant 8 hp with no drawbacks.

Stuck Arrow (Bronze): blocking magic or projectile on 2+, with the malus of encumber 1 for 2 turns. Totally not worth it, I would avoid using this block even if it was paper :\

Scuttle (Silver): free move 2. Items with this give up things like team run, cantrip moves, or even teleport. If free move ignored encumber effects, it would be much better. Higher amounts of movement on a free move are also pretty good, but only free move 2 gains you at most a single square.

Reflexive Teleport (Gold): an awesome, upgraded version of Dodge. But wait, it has gold quality and only triggers on 5+! So you end up with a super expensive card which does not reliably trigger to prevent damage. Basically this card is a gold card for teleport 2, which is too short to be really signifigant.

Battlefield Training (?)/ Advanced Battlefield Training (Gold): giving a card from one hero to another, within either short range or medium range. You lose: 1) the training card itself, 2) your turn which you spent passing the card, 3) the secrecy of the card which was passed. I understand that there is potential for abuse in stacking good cards on a particular hero, but Leadership, or the various card draw cards does this much better than the training line. Maybe make the training cards also have cantrip and they might be useful?

Undervalued / Overpowered:
Hard To Pin: move 3 AFTER doing a full block of the triggering attack. This card is doing too much with a single effect, and has the additional problem of being stacked 3x on a fairly common rare shield.

Slippery (Gold): This is the best trait in the game hands down. It is super strong, and super abusable. It's one good point is it is very hard to get, with very few cards bestowing only 1 copy (only for elves as well, I think?). If ever an item bestows this 2x or god forbid, 3x, it would be OP as hell.

Blind Rage (Paper? Handicap??): A very very good trait, which strongly contributes to the step damage warrior nonsense which dominates the current warrior meta. The malus is negligable, equivalent cards exist which also give frenzy so this is not TOO strong, but it is basically the only card used in MP which allows a warrior to buff his own damage, AND it is common/cheap in the dwarven racial slot.

Step attacks (Nimble Strike, etc) also deserve a mention...

 

I agree with almost everything on Yth's list. Stuck arrow ought to only last for 1 turn (even then it is a poor block). Or if stuck arrow did something like duck where you got to get a copy of the projectile after it expired that could be pretty cool (then the epic shields which are for some reason full of stuck arrows MIGHT be viable). I've long wanted free move and teleport to ignore encumber to compensate for the high cost of moves with those aspects and to make other mage staff options more viable. Battlefield training should certainly have either cantrip or draw a card (and given the problems with deck cycling already cantrip is probably safer). Hard to pin should really only be move 1 if the block actually triggers. Enough to get out of a corner if a warrior has trapped you but not enough for warriors to just gimp mages with it. Slippery is fantastic, but you can only get one of them, it actually gives a reason to play elf (of which there are few), it competes with pathfinding (which is also fantastic), and you need to have passed first to "abuse" it with melee attacks and avoid a block. Given all those, I'd be sad to see it nerfed. I'd love to see blind rage deal 1 non-preventable self damage every time you play a melee attack in addition to its other drawback so people think twice before using it.

Edit: Stuck arrow drawing a card would make it viable too and wouldn't be unreasonable since parry already does that with no drawbacks.
Note that soothing darkness is the longest lasting encumber in the game, so it's very useful to stick on enemy dwarf warriors that you plan on not attacking anyway. Also useful to stick on your mage that doesn't need to move around that much but does need healing.

 

Or every time you discard? Vent your rage and feel ok, but end the round with a hand full of pent up attacks and no amount of last minute discarding will save you.

 

That single square may some time save your live, especially if you use it to actually cross difficult terrain, so the card is not that bad. And if you look at the list of items that have Scuttle you can see that most of them actually involve escaping anyway.

The Teleport 2 not only increases the chance of you completely avoid an attack significantly but also grant you a huge position advantage compare to Move 1.

Well, there are cards that exclusive to certain class/race that you can't get on a character normally. While Battlefield Training is really bad, it only comes from 4 common items and an epic item (Major's Helmet, which Battlefield Training acts more like a filler) so that's not a surprise. Advanced Battlefield Training, in the other hand, may becomes very handy if you use it to pass a card strategically since revealing ONE card to your opponent can bring you advantage if you use it wisely.

 

VSN - Reflexive requires a roll of 5+. That's very very inconsistent for a gold level card. It's useful at times, but is overvalued/underpowered for its reliability as a gold card.
Scuttle - may save your life. A lot of cards can attest to the same thing, but its not consistently useful enough (on the items it comes on) to be used by people at top ratings in MP.

 

I know 5+ is a bit unreliable, but if it triggers then the effect is much better than Dodge, especially on maps with high rate of blocking terrain since it will increase the chance of you to move and hide from an attack.
And about Scuttle, it can improve your mobility greatly in close combat like reaching the spot between enemy characters which you can't reach if using other movement cards or saving you from a wall-sandwich position. So it maybe not that good comparing to other cards, it's quite good comparing to other movement cards.