Wouldn't that just open the "what prevents Psychic Damage/Harm" can of wyrms? "Unpreventable" is clear and definitive.
Psychic Harm keyword would pretty much read "unpreventable on hover". But yes, you're correct - was just thinking since they already used Psychic damage on Blind Rage and that probably shouldn't (if it is?) be negated by Nimbus either - as it's sort of an internal damage source.
I know this isn't the original topic of this post, but I really like this idea. I assume the move cards being "changed" would only be the racial moves and not Walks, Dashes, and Runs found on items. I think it would have to be tweaked a bit (so that Dwarves can still move with 1-step attacks and Shuffle), but it's a very interesting idea that would add some more depth to the races.
Nice to see an attempt at tuning the meta. Can't judge yet how it will change the game (from MP perspective), as I didn't use these cards by default. However, when it comes to theorycrafting I don't really think it will stop the main offenders. What I didn't want to see is uber nimbus dwarf warrior moving/nimble striking through the entire map with several cards in hand and killing opponents character(s) on round 1. Right now it looks like it's still completely doable, but the warrior will more likely arrive at the destination with a card or two fewer and leaving his priest with several hp less than he would be before the nerf. A big shift we might observe is from dwarf to human for their leadership cards. Nerfing range? Well, nice to see it but it definitely doesn't matter in the scenario I've mentioned above, since all card-draw-heavy decks start off clustered one next to another to take advantage from cards like Inspiring Presence and, well, you tend to start close to one another (maybe if characters started far away from one another on new MP maps?). Targeting/range can be easily tackled by smoke bomb/wall building etc., but of course nobody who values winning in MP over interesting gameplay would take these cards over Whirlwind Enemies and Whirlwind (and occasional Winds Of War which sees some use due to being paired up with WWE on Greenstone Pendant) which have absolute monopoly in terms of formation disruptors (like, duh). Time will tell, but my educated guess is that card draw and nimbus for priest, firestorm and whirlwinds for wizard and step and pure damage attacks for dwarf/human warriors is still the easy way to go in MP. But as I said, happy to see the first round of changes being ironed out and I'll patiently await more attempts at making the MP meta interesting.
This is a very good point about brain burn. I actually currently use it on an elf wizard in multiplayer (yes, I know I'm the only one), but now it's probably no longer viable. This is since elf wizards have so little hp. I feel that ouch doing 3 damage is in a better place than brain burn doing 3 damage because warriors have bonus hp (I also currently use ouch on an elf warrior, yeah I'm crazy). I feel now that ouch and brain burn are much, much worse than blind rage now. You don't get the damage bonus and you don't get the chance to discard the offending cards, so it's almost strictly worse now that the damage is also 3 per card. One possible idea is to make brain burn and ouch attach to the player (like blind rage) for a single round and have it deal damage based on the attacks/spells and then discard itself (similar beginning of the round mechanic as blind rage). Then it can operate similar to blind rage in that you still have to play around it and it might make you discard important cards, but it's not a super punishing almost non-avoidable 6+ damage appearing out of nowhere.
I like all the changes except for: - Demonic Feedback. Quality wise it is true paper now, but it is now also really boring and rather bad. - Range nerf on Demonic Power and Demonic Feedback. I never understood the purpose of the range nerf on Inspiration and these go in the same direction. It is already clearly the best setup to have all your guys within movement range of each other and these changes strengthen this dominant tactic. - Additional damage to Brain Burn and Ouch! . I guess Ouch! is kind of irrelevant, since it appears only on rather bad items anyway (Helmet Of Thorns is decent), but Brain Burn makes two decently balanced items worse for no real reason (Staff Of Freezing Fire and Sorcery Staff). Those drawbacks were already a lot worse than demonic revenge, simply because you have a lot more spells/attack cards in the deck than unholy cards, so they were already hitting you for four+ damage consistently.
As a SP player, my first instinct is that it will make these cards pretty much unusable (except for Unholy Power). But I guess balancing MP is always going to have some effects. I doubt anyone would use crazy draw decks in SP simply because of the boredom factor.
Squeamish bites in SP, IMO, but mostly because you forget you have it until you have made all your moves and then you can't make the killing move!
I mean, what's the point of paper-value cards (Minor Heal, Squeamish, Weak Chop, etc...)? Demonic Feedback is now a much worse Inspiration, which makes sense given the fact that it's two quality levels below Inspiration. Before this nerf, it was clearly a gold or emerald card in disguise...
Very good changes. But I can't understand additional damage to Brain Burn and Ouch!. This changes have much more impact in SP campaign and quests than in MP.
I never used Ouch or Brain Burn before because I though they were harsh and I certainly won't be using them now. When I looked at my deck for my elf wizard and see mostly red, Brain Burn doesn't seem worth it. Especially on Arcane items where I only get two other cards for the chance of possibly severely damaging my wizard. No thanks. Ouch didn't feel as bad as Brain Burn, but I still didn't use it. Other than that, I don't mind the changes. I have to agree with whomever earlier who cautioned about going too far with drawbacks. It'll be less fun to win or lose due to these cards showing up and shifting the battle too much one way or the other. If the trend continues, the Drawback quests could end up being less fun and much more difficult to do.
Minor Heal heals a bit or can be used to check for magic blocks, Weak Chop can do a lot of damage when buffed or make the enemy waste two blocks on one card, Squeamish is a trait so it instantly replaces itself. Whereas if I draw Demonic Feedback because I'm using Malign Maces for my low level farming I'll just leave it in my hand, almost never playing it. I know it had to be nerfed, I just feel the changes make the card's existence entirely pointless. They might as well replace it with Wavering Faith on every item, at least I could use that to remove annoying armor.
I didn't give too much thought to Ouch! and Brain Burn in my comments, but yeah, I have to agree that Brain Burn is now nearly unplayable. I didn't play it at all either for the same reasons as everybody else. Maybe I would have used it on a dwarf wizard if I ran one, but probably not anymore. Ouch! is also an issue since it's usually on sub-par items and is a pretty big handicap, albeit not as big as Brain Burn. As Turin said, I run Helmet Of Thorns, and that's it. You might be able to pull it off with humans, but Inspirational Thinking and Forward Thinking just aren't as powerful as the dwarven equivalent. One card advantage and zero card advantage with a bit more deck cycling, and nothing that helps your team. This compared with 2 card advantage spread out, and you can still only get one human card on a racial just like the dwarves. I agree that one of the primary reasons dwarves dominate is the easy access to mobility, but their clearly superior racial when combined with the draw meta certainly didn't reduce the number of dwarves played. That's why I feel like a nerf to Nimble Strike would be needed to keep the dwarf population in check. I think BM would be interested in racial balance, just because race selection is just one component of strategy, and when one option is clearly superior due to meta or what have you, it limits strategic choices. Not to mention their own hard work on the other races and making them balanced goes to waste if they aren't used. I have to say that I really like your idea for balancing them, though it's difficult to say if that would have the intended effect. It might even be too far in the other direction, but I'd love to see something like that tried out.
It's a racial profiling thing, is it? I don't agree that 'everyone knows' Nimble Strike is too good. I've heard a few people complaining loudly, but they hardly constitute a majority. I have it on two Nifty Halberds, and it's great for chasing down Imps and Trog Wizards. All my warriors use it for this, even elves. Most of the time, however, I leave them in storage and take other tokenless weapons with better damage. If they were really OP I'd always bring them along. Vibrant Pain is a legendary 18th level weapon that requires two clear (orange) tokens. What do you think an appropriate valuation would be? (And is anybody actually running one?) I certainly hope this change clears up the Draw Deck problems.
The point was before, you could finish off enemies with Unholy Power. Many a game I won with a 4 or 5 dmg Unholy Power charged up by Unholly Wellspring or Savage Curse. It feels good when people pull off these kinds of advanced plays and makes for interesting cards design wise. The proposed change would get rid of this without any kind of acknowledgment from the devs leading me to wonder if they knew it was used like this or care. The way they talk about it they only thought of the 1 damage on it as a punishment for your own characters when you use it on them. I'm not saying the devs are dumb or anything just maybe that it was an oversight that needs to be addressed.
Jon I like your changes with exception of Demonic Feedback, you guys went too far too fast on that one. All that was needed was to make the damage up preventable and instead it got a triple nerf. I don't play the infinite draw myself so I'm not personally too concerned but the over nerf will make it necessary to look at every item containing demonic feedback as they are now likely all unplayable. This is disappointing as I think there are some fun low level rare and epic priest weapons with a copy of that card, previously usable when you didn't want a token weapon, now likely not.
I think maybe instead of making all these changes to a bunch of cards, making them more confusing to allow them get around nimbus, maybe you should just look at nimbus itself. Nimbus's effect is very powerful. I would think something with that kind of effect would have like kills the priest who cast it as part of the effect. I would also at that point have it be unpurgable or something but I digress. All I'm saying is an effect that powerful in it's current state should have a severe tradeoff. My actual proposed change would be to have nimbus instead last for 3 turns. But each time you take damage it reduces the turns by 1. Leading to an effect that's actually more interesting design wise. Now you have to make a decision do I want to cast this early to get it out of my hand but now it might not reduce as much damage or do I want to hang onto it for 1 big turn where there person will be getting into a lot of trouble. Also then any kind of buffs you apply to them that deal damage would use up charges making it not a very good tradeoff.
All the changes are good, but other than that, there's 1 thing that worries me: Too much self-damage, make traits even more punishing and does not scale at all at low level. Imagine an elf wizard at lvl 1 drawing a Brain Burn ?? This does not promote drawback traits at all since the majority of people prefer consistency over power. This cause RNG to be an even larger factor of deciding outcome of a matches (the 2 Whirlwind is a similar issues). HP difference is carefully balanced for the sake of racial difference. Making self-damage static (unpreventable) and high is precisely ignoring racial difference, and is going to cause problems for elfs and favor dwarf even more than it is currently.
Why don't you just change dwarven cry and inspiring presence to only affect your other teammates (and not the caster)? They'd still be extremely powerful and usable, flavorful, and generate card advantage but not as ridiculously powerful as they are now (they are basically double unholy power's... power. And unholy power even with the short range is one of the best cards in the game). Of course, I've never agreed with the sentiment that you only have one in your deck so it's OK if it's crazy overpowered (which is the current thinking for dwarven cry).
