Upcoming Balance Changes (8 Nov 2013)

I also agree that Fright, Superstitious, and even Trip are appropriately balanced for being trait-cyclers. These are nasty drawbacks at the wrong time. I feel Ouch, Brain Burn! are worse than these three, and should definitely be cycled.

 

The main reason I personally avoid using Ouch! and Brain Burn is that they reveal cards to the enemy. Taking a few points of damage usually isn't a big deal, but revealing cards can be a big deal if it tells the enemy whether or not you have attack cards, and reveals which cards those are. (That's also why I prefer Weakling's Helm over Crusty Helm.)

 

As for negative traits I think they are pretty much right where they need to be. Currently it makes for interesting deck building choices when for example you can make a fire wizard that does very little actual targeting so you can use squeamish where a a heavy hitting warrior would never want a squeamish. Making negative traits any more detrimental then they are now is just going to make for more RNG heavy swingy games and really turn neg traits into something that's just unfun. And worst case scenario just nobody plays any neg trait cards and a huge chunk of the item pool becomes unplayable.

 

So you want them to see play, but you made them HARSHER?

 

sat goodbye to the 2-3 priest composition

 

Also just realized Unholy Power is no longer an attack. That's pretty huge. You don't mention it at all. You do realize the 1 damage to target was not purely just used to damage allies it was used as an attack and made for interesting advanced plays as it were. Now the card is not just nerfed but a lot less interesting design wise and that's a lose lose on all fronts.

 

Here's the best part, everyone - if things don't work out quite right, they can be modified. When the changes hit, play with them and log lots of hours into and post your thoughts. It's the only way we'll move forward

 

I think I have to agree with the possibility of an overnerf to demonic revenge, though I can't stand draw decks personally, so it doesn't bother me much.
It just seems weird to me that inspiration is better in every conceivable way when it isn't very hard to get. I suspect people who run draw will just switch to altruism/inspiration, but we'll see. I do kind of like the idea that actionjack presented of making it a 3/3 split between source and target. Makes things more interesting and gives it a bit of utility.

I like the changes to dwarven battle cry and inspiring presence, definitely prevents it from being a positive thing even if you hit enemies. Because of the draw decks I run 2 dwarves just to try to limit the card advantage they get, but it sucks when I block it anyway. Even worse when I duck it.
Personally I never thought inspiring presence was really OP just because of the limited items that it was found on. Looks great to me now.

I'm not sure I understand why the change to demonic pain is being made though. The old card was a self-damage cycling card that took an action to get rid of. But now its being replaced in all instances by a self damage card that causes someone else to draw? It kind of changes up the role of some of the items that had it, so I don't know if I agree with that decision, but I guess it's not a huge impact anyway.

My biggest issue with this patch is that it doesn't address the nimble strike situation. Draw decks are only one reason dwarves are dominant at the moment, the other is nimble strike. Everyone knows it's too good, you don't run a warrior without it and expect to win. Anyone running warrior with a vibrant pain has a significant advantage over anyone without one. I don't think this is the weapon's fault though, the card is just undervalued and could use some balancing. With the draw changes added, I suspect a minor adjustment of the card could easily even out the racial profile we see currently. It is possible that nerfing draw was sufficient for this purpose, but that remains to be seen.

 

Well, so far, I haven't depended on card draw in my strategy, so I'm probably no good at predicting whether these changes will solve the problem. I have too much fun with all the nasty Priest cards that ALSO keep the fight advancing. I hope the changes work.

One thing:

You already have the phrase "This damage cannot be prevented by Armor" on Loner and Blind Rage. Why did you choose to bypass Impenetrable Nimbus as well? And now that you've done this, do you intend to enforce uniformity in card rules, making Loner and Blind Rage even worse?

 

Interesting changes, and I can see your attempts to cover all the bases. A couple of points.

Demonic Feedback seems more or less unplayable with these changes, very rarely is the effect going to be worth that steep of cost. I figure that an Inspiration that doesn't trigger Altruism would still be bronze quality, very similar to the minor warrior traits where the main value is in the card draw. So this does need more downside as a paper quality card, but 5 unpreventable damage is a whole lot of downside (requiring a silver quality heal spell to undo). I wonder if 3 points of unpreventable damage is more appropriate. This would make it more symmetrical with the new Demonic Power card, and keep it from making most of the demonic charms not worth using.

One thing about the changes to the negative traits I want to mention. Ouch! and Brainburn increase to 3 damage per card, but both still allow armor to block them. Ouch! being mainly a warrior effect, is more easy to bypass due to warriors having access to more armor on more types of items. Mages have much less access to armor and also start with a lot less hitpoints. So while the card effects appear symmetrical in theory, in practice Brainburn is substantially worse.

Dwarven Battlecry is really, really good, and I think it's better than you're giving it credit for. Yeah each character can only have 1, but you need to assume it's going in a party of 3 dwarves, since that's what it's designed to encourage. It only has downside if your opponent is using dwarves and you let him draw cards too, but in the reality of MP that probably means your opponent also has 3 dwarves with some copies of battlecry of their own. So what happens is that the potential downside often get's offset by your opponents use of the same card. The rest of your games it's the best draw card in the game. Again, in theory this may seem balanced, but in actual MP I think it has a lot less downside than it appears.

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. It doesn't really matter what type of card it is, you should still be able to hit opponents with it in its new form. (Although Auto Targetting might throw a hissy fit now, but IMO nobody should be playing with auto targetting on)

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Looking forward to how the game shifts with these changes. I personally have to wonder if that's enough to make people unequip it though; We might just see more Human builds instead of Dwarf parties as a response to it, but the gear goes relatively unchanged.

 

Actually draw deck can also be played well by human priests because of Inspirational Thinking and Forward Thinking. In my opinion, dwarves dominate the higher ranked level because they have clear advantages in toughness but their disadvantage in mobility can be easily overcome by putting good move cards in their deck, using push moves, and of course the OP Nimble Strike.

I am not sure if the balance between races is an important issue to BM, but I think one solution is to make all Walks and Dashes Run, and make dwarves -1 in all moves (including pushes, perhaps excluding step moves) while elves gain +1 movement in all moves and pushes. Otherwise there is really not much reason to play elves aside from love lol.

 

My thoughts would be to make small incremental changes until you get the result you want in practice. If you go too far you may be making items and cards not a very good option for competitive play - giving players fewer options. But I've been really impressed with the game, and I'll trust that the developers will do right in the end.

 

Mostly good changes, but can't really see any point in ever playing Demonic Feedback now. 0 card advantage, 5 damage, short range - what's the point of the card?

Also bit sad about Ouch! and Brain Burn since neither was that great to begin with. An elf wizard can easily one-shot herself with the new Brain Burn from full hp at lower levels. These changes mean all those items can be tossed into the trash bin.

 

Very interested to see CH a few weeks from now and how this all affects the meta.
Also, I don't think you should see players having to make build changes as a bad thing or an inconvenience. I obviously can't speak for other players but changing your deck due to new maps\items\game builds is actually a great part of the fun in this game - to a point I'm almost sorry these changes have no effect on me whatsoever as I use none of the cards in question (though I was toying with the idea of putting in a Demon's Golden Blade which would now be very much inferior to my other priest weapons).
Are the changes too harsh? maybe, though it's very hard to say right now but I wouldn't worry too much about it. because like hair on someone under 40 - it can grow back!
We were patient to see some change, we should be patient with testing it out.

 

Ah, just yesterday I was in a desperate fight against Burning Skeletons... My basher warrior just fell over dead, all I had was a priest and a warrior with only slashes and pierces... The skelly had 8 hp left and Vulnerable. It Fireballs my priest, but the priest survives and the skelly got caught in the radius. Skelly down to 2 hp.

My priest still has an Unholy Power left. No use to play it on the warrior, as he has no attacks effective against Only Bones.

So I use the Unholy Power to attack the skelly. 1 hp damage, another from Vulnerable and BANG...

VICTORY!!

... that said, this was probably the only time ever using that card as an attack made a difference. Now I can tell my grandchildren about that one time before the November update...

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I think all the proposed changes are logical and fine. No opposition from me.

 

I'm very concerned about the enemies who also have these two cards in their decks. Depending on the size of the minion group and their luck with drawing, a gnome or a imp will completely wreck themselves on turn one with this big of a change. This could have a pretty big effect on the difficulty of certain SP maps. Would you consider leaving the cards as-is for the enemies? Perhaps simply change the title of their version and leave the damage levels alone?


Also, does it concern you at all that this demon charm appears to be getting tailored to be a tokenless item that's really only useful to much higher level characters, now? I'm trying to imagine any player who'd bother to equip such an item at the actual level range where this item drops in SP, and I'm guessing that 8 unpreventable damage and a miasma preventing you from reaching anyone in your party with reduced spell range will pretty much shut this item down... until you're building yourself a MP deck and everyone's max level with a lot of HP. This item seems to be getting treated as if it's sole purpose is to be used in the near endgame, and not at level 6 when you start seeing it. Level 6 priests have what, about 16 HP, give or take?
basically, I'm saying that especially for new players who only play singleplayer, this item really aughtta come with a warning label on it now.