Hi there. The current MP meta is dominated by step and pure damage warriors. Let's try to use this topic to think how to make other damage types more interesting and hopefully competitive, instead of trying to nerf the currently dominating combo. Besides making you more mobile and hit harder, the 'step and obliterate' combo is also more token-cost-efficient and consistent, since it's not dependent on equipping and drawing a trait at the right time. Rather than rebalancing every attack I would like to suggest looking at the damage-associated traits. They should in my opinion give a bit more kick, especially that their effectiveness is situational, based on drawing them at the right time. Traits should be balanced having in mind that most of the time they sit in your deck putting you at a disadvantage against step and pure damage attacks which are good and ready to go straight from the box. So, when you draw a a trait out, you should really feel the difference, which right now is not really the case. For example, bashing is not about killing things fast, but instead the idea is to manipulate and prevent damage by putting the approaching enemy out of range, out of Victory Square or pushing onto a tile you want that enemy to be for one reason or another. In line with this, it would be great if basher trait also added 'halt' to bash attacks or made the opponent discard a random movement card. In terms of chops, they are currently pointless as their strength lies in attacking multiple targets at once, which happens rarely in MP while being rather typical SP-scenario. So, what could be done without harming it's SP role? I propose slicer trait giving a 'double-edged slice' status to played chops, I.e. (assuming you choose to attack a single target only) deliver the attack in two swings/parts, with each dealing half the damage of the attack, but each individually triggering for blocks and armor etc. This would make chops with slicer attached the best choice vs blocks, but still remaining good vs multiple opponents. The question is weather boosts like frenzy should trigger twice or be added once at the beginning and then divided into two attacks (probably the latter to prevent abuse, although armor would trigger twice which kinda gives a chance to double the damage reduction, assuming people cared to bring armor along in the current meta.... who knows, maybe they would have an incentive to do so . When it comes to impaler it's not looking so bad, since ranged stabs see some use, but besides that they're also less popular. Thus I propose a bleeding effect to be added to all penetrating attacks while impaler is active, which would add a unpreventible Damage Over Time effect of a few damage for a few turns (2 for 2 turns for example?). This should be in line with game logic/lore, while should synergise with the most popular penetrating attacks, I.e. stabs. What do you think?
The bash adding halt is my favorite idea (that has the potential to get super annoying though considering that you can put a lot of bashes in the deck, so maybe it would create a monster). I don't like the slicer idea, since then armor makes chop attacks even more useless, and the more useful against blocks thing doesn't buff chops that much. What if the slicing traits made all chops like unstoppable chop? Then chops would certainly have a place in the meta. I like the impaler idea (although it was nerfed before from 2 to 1 bonus damage so I guess the devs thought impaling was already strong). I'd really like the traits to do cool things as you suggest over just "make a mediocre attack slightly less mediocre by adding 1 or 2 points of damage".
