[Feedback] Demon charm of the second circle needs a nerf

Maybe instead of changing the card mechanics, we change the game mechanics. In SP the groups have action points for each monster. Making each play have say, 5 action points for each turn could prevent the drawing decks.

 

Any estimates for when something will be changed?

 

Its really sad to me that multiplayer is essentially broken because of this card, card drawing and nimble strike. It's forcing me to play singleplayer mostly and burn out recently.

 

You can always play PVP for fun in casual matches with people who aren't abusing drawspam. I know it doesn't give loot rewards, but if it's just about playing a great game, the option is there

 

I have a somewhat different idea on how to fix draw decks. The reason draw decks are so powerful is that they combine the draw-2 unholy cards with powerful holy cards like Impenetrable Nimbus and Inspiring Presence, with nimbus in particular allowing them to avoid the drawback on their draw cards. So what if, instead of nerfing draw cards across the board, we simply enforced a much stricter holy/unholy split, making it impractical to take the best of both?

For instance, imagine if Demonic Revenge (the unholy drawback of choice), which is on the majority of the good card draw items (notably Demon Charm Of The 2nd Circle) said this:

Trait. Discard all holy cards in your hand and attached to your character, and take 5 points of unholy damage for each card discarded this way. Then reveal all Unholy cards in your hand and take 2 points of unholy damage for each card revealed this way.

This would make it impossible to take both holy and unholy cards in a draw deck (as drawing this card would pretty much kill you instantly), making it impossible to prevent drawbacks with impenetrable nimbus, and reducing the maximum efficiency of draw decks, as they'd no longer be able to take cards like Impenetrable Nimbus, Inspiration, and Inspiring Presence.

 

I honestly think the biggest problem is that Demon Charm of the 2nd Circle doesn't cost any power tokens. I'm not saying the cards it contains aren't problematic, but because of the tokenless cost you see priests being able to put tokens into weapons like Duality Mace and Whiteglow Flail and carry a heap of Impenetrable Nimbus, Lifesaving Block and Nimble Strikes along with all of their draw spam. It's not just the weapons either, they're able to have perfect gear all around because they aren't using their tokens on the slots priests typically need to spend them on the most.

Without this, draw priest combos would still be fairly strong but at least it won't be the perfect juggernaut that it currently is.

 

@Unlucky Scarecrow:
Token cost is a function of item level
=> Item level is a function of the quality of the included cards
==> If an item is broken at its current token cost, then the included cards are more effective in play than the other cards of the same listed quality
===> A) Increase their quality rating
===> B) Decrease their effect

However, A) is not possible because of bug risks
=> B
==> Nerf Unholy Power and Demonic Feedback


@Neofalcon: The core problem is that there simply shouldn't be any cards that immediately draw two cards of any type that lead to further card drawing. If you split holy and unholy cards now that one type cannot draw the other, you create a stopgap measure that will remain in effect until there are enough new cards and items that you can create a draw machine with just holy or unholy. It's a good idea, but you also need to rebalance Unholy Power, Demonic Feedback and Altruism in a way that they don't grant more than one card draw.

Luckily, that's not the dev team's attitude. They'd rather fix the problem.

 

Bug risks? Like what? They already have a system in place to deal with characters trying to enter campeign modules or multiplayer battles with too many tokens being used on their items. It happens every time the game has to scale a character's level down.

 

Well, duh.
I never said they shouldn't...

 

What makes you think this would happen though? Presumably, after making this change, the devs would keep in mind what they've learned about card draws going forwards and wouldn't create new cards/items that break card drawing again. I mean, you could really say this about any change "Oh, that change will only work until the devs release game-breaking new cards/items, so it won't really work long-term". As long as they keep in mind they can't make a divine item that has like 2 inspirations and an inspiring presence at no talent cost, things should be fine.

If this were a normal TCG, with no restrictions on deckbuilding, this would be a major concern as you could use the maximum number of the old holy cards and the new cards. However, since it's based on item slots in CH, this isn't really a concern - as long as they don't introduce new items that are straight-up better card-drawing-wise it wouldn't break balance, since you'd still have to choose to take either the old item OR the new one.

I agree with the problem specifically being draws leading to more draws, but that can be fixed with sufficiently powerful drawbacks - I don't see the mere existence of draw-2 cards as game-breaking. You can only chain draws together if the person drawing the extra cards is also someone with a draw deck. In which case, that character drawing more cards means also drawing more drawback cards (as the best draw decks require the use of a lot of drawback cards). This means that a potential solution is simply to make sure those drawback cards are strong enough - the change I outlined makes that possibly by taking impenetrable nimbus out of the equation, and if that's not enough you only have to change a few more drawbacks. For instance, have Demonic Feedback/Unholy Power simply do more damage (and/or buff the damage on Demonic Revenge even further).

Yes, this would still allow players with draw-deck teams to draw a ton of cards in one turn. But it would come at the cost of HUGE amounts of health, to the point where when they got into melee range they'd die almost instantly before getting a chance to use them.

Certainly, you could fix the draw deck problems in other ways, but if you do that by just making the cards straight-up-bad, while yes it will fix the game-breaking problems, it'll destroy the viability of draw-based characters, which leads to less build variety, which hurts the game.

EDIT: Also, with the proposed changes to Demonic Revenge, Altruism would be re-classified as a "Holy" card (I didn't realize it wasn't one already!), so that if you tried to use both holy and unholy cards, it would get removed and you'd take damage for it.