[Suggestion] Bruiser is useless - the Martial Skill problem

Here is where I am coming from:

I just started a new party to play the SP campaign, three elven warriors. (Just for fun)
After a bit of play they have now hit level 4, which is where the warrior gets the martial skill item slot.
To have a bit of variety, I wanted to focus one each on Bruiser, Impaler and Slicer.

For the Impaler I got a Stiletto and a Flimsy Rapier, for the Chopper Cleaver, Old Adze and Jumpdragger Boots.

But for the Bruiser, there was only the Heavy Wooden Shield and Novice Bashing which had any sort of Bash card available at that level. Maybe there are items, but I have none in my inventory and the shops didn't sell any either. What's the point of a boost card if I can't find a weapon for it?

I really don't see why those basic boost cards don't work with the more general damage categories.
Bruiser - Crushing Attacks
Impaler - Piercing Attacks
Slicer - Slashing Attacks

Maybe this was changed some time during the beta, because some of the Bruiser skill items still have general crushing attacks on them that Bruiser doesn't boost.

Again, this one of those newbie traps in Card Hunter that I would like to get rid of. It's even more puzzling since the Wizard and Priest skill boost cards are much more useful in comparison.

Suggestion 1: Change Bruiser / Impaler / Slicer to boost general damage categories.

Suggestion 2: Add higher quality Boost cards that work with the current narrower categories. I don't mind if there is a boost card for Bash / Penetrating / Chop, but cover the basics first.

New Cards:
* Painful Stabber. Gold. "Trait. Attach this card to yourself. If you deal damage with a Penetrating Attack, the target discards its oldest card. Duration 3"

* Powerful Basher. Silver. "Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Your Bash attacks deal 2 additional damage. Substract 2 from Block Rolls against Bash Attacks you play. Duration 3."

* Axedancer. Gold. "Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Add Step 1 to each Chop you play. Duration 3."

 

The problem with making martial skills boost general damage categories is the fact warriors deal enough damage with their generic attacks already. Other than that yeah, I agree they are fairly boring and often useless - most of the time the traits are just deck cycling fodder and the only truly useful cards on that slots are the likes of Parry or All Out Attack. Maybe warriors could get defensive traits like +1 to block rolls or +1 to armor rolls instead.

 

If anything they put an annoying constraint on weapon choice. If you have 2xBruiser, it feels like your piercing or slashing weapon is costing you.

Are there any like the Wizard one that has a Spark enhancer combined with two powerful sparks? At least with something like that you feel you're getting a real bonus even if some of your weapons are of the wrong type?

But I agree, a bit more variety would be good. I think the base issue is that the enhancement traits do work, but the effect is spread over so many individual blows that it has to be so small as to be hardly noticeable on any given one (in the beta, Impaler gave +2 to penetrating attacks, but that was nerfed to 1 - and Vicious Thrust became non-penetrating which is also kind of a nerf to Impaler).

Maybe some more varied weapon-related traits could be invented - e.g. one that makes Bashes slide an enemy back two squares, or causes piercing attacks to add a small encumbrance etc.

 

When I first started playing I fell into that trap. I could not figure out why Bruiser wasn't activating. I thought it was a bug at first.

 

You'll soon find weapons with more stuff available that does activate those traits (especially Penetrating attacks for Impaler) but you happen to have hit very early on a known issue with the warrior traits being pretty poor. Still, especially in single player where Chops can be very handy for dealing with the masses of enemies in some levels, the traits can be quite handy. Less so in multiplayer.

 

@BaldwinP: I've been playing for a while, this is not my first party. The point here is that you get the skill item slot when your warrior is level 4. At that time, you have three weapon slots but no token. And it's only until level 9 that you have the tokens that you could equip a one-token weapon on each slot (but you may still want a no-token weapon at lvl 18).

So really, the situation does not improve. It rather gets worse. Since hp and damage scale with level, +1 damage gets less and less impressive the higher you go.

The point here is that Bruiser sucks because you'll have a hard time equipping enough bashes. By the way I found a no-token bash weapon today, Fool's Maul, but it's so bad it brings tears to my eyes. (2xSimple Bash, 2x Simple Strike, Dropped Guard, Fright *ugh*). To add insult to injury, divine weapons and even staffs seem to feature Bash much more frequently than martial weapons. (The only non-token weapon to feature a Bash right now is Jade Battlestaff. Go figure.)

There are useful weapons like the Dull Shortsword where none of the 6 cards synergize with any of the three Bruiser/Impaler/Slicer.

Which brings me back to my original suggestions:
(1) Expand the range of cards covered by Bruiser/Impaler/Slicer that each of them covers 1/3 of melee attack cards and together they cover all cards.

(2) Add higher quality boost cards (silver/gold) that give a more powerful, specific advantage to Bashes/Penetrating Attacks/Chops.

 

Rotting Club was the one that cracked me up a little. We'll let you have some bashes, but only if you let wimpy counterbalance that bruiser of yours.
I wonder if equipping 3 of these would give crazy deck reduction and that's part of its value.

 

Or (3) diversify Bruiser/Impaler/Slicer so they are more like the cleric set (or at least like the wizard set) where there's always something at least a little useful on one apart from the card draw from them being a trait.

Definitely agreed that it is something (albeit a low priority) which would improve the game a little.

I don't think they're going to do any rebalancing around the fact that you get the skill slot at levels before you can really take advantage of the traits. Put it down to them being a hint to new players of stuff to come which they can look out for.

 

Dealing damage is what the warrior does - priests have buffs, wizards have range and control effects. Warriors get in your face and take your health away. It's what they're good at because that's in the job description. They don't have much else.

So the warrior skill cards should reflect that. Right now we're in a bit of a sad state where anything with Frenzy gives double or triple the bonus without any attack type restrictions compared to anything that you can equip in your skill slot. That's a bit sad.

No wonder we have 3 threads about it now. The one here, this one and another one. It would be great if this could be a review topic for the next rebalancing and new cards round, after draw decks have been rebalanced.

 

Maybe that's the only useful mid-level basher build.

I present "The Wimpy Rotting Clubber"

3x Rotting Club
1x Wimp's Helm (if you expect mostly magic or missile attacks, otherwise use Weakling's Helm)
This will poison your deck with 7 Wimpy cards. However, since you can only attach each card once, drawing a Wimpy will just replace the one you already have in your deck and you draw another card. Really, the main issue with this deck is that there aren't any wimpy items for other slots...
With 9 Bashes, you're likely to have enough of them on hand to counter Wimpy. Of course, you'll have a hard time attacking enemies twice a around because each time you hit one, you need to take a step.

Add Heavy Wooden Shield (or Iron Shield / Heavy Dueler's Shield if you have the tokens) plus Novice Bashing (or for a token, Trained Bruising)

That leaves armor, boots and racial skill. Corian's Boots add a Quick Step to follow a bashed enemy and Officer's Harness for armor you don't have to discard. Not bad.

 

Or how about Cheap Fencer's Boots for some move/attacks?

 

I tried that build once against Burning Skeletons and it really didn't work very well, because even with a couple Bashes in hand it's still pathetic damage. It's much easier to use your biggest attack cards and have a wizard full of armor destruction. I only use Bash in MP where it's useful for knocking enemies off the victory squares.

 

Bruiser - Bash attacks usually have low damage, which is one of the reasons I rarely use them. If Bruiser buffed the damage by 2 (or 3) for bash and by 1 for bludgeon it would be much more useful.

Impaler - Add +2 (or +3) damage to penetrating attacks, and either +1 damage for stab or reduce the armor roll vs stab attacks if Impaler is active.

Slicer - As stated, apply it to slashes as well as chops.

 

@Sir Veza: Increasing the damage bonus doesn't address the basic problem with these cards, which is that the bonus is so limited that you can fully equip a warrior and not get the bonus even once. And there are no alternatives.

That said, it would still help if there were Silver versions of these cards with higher damage bonuses. Note that the damage of the current ones was already nerfed during beta. (Although I'd argue this made them much worse than all Frenzy)

Just for comparison: I've just made a new all-Wizard party today. One has the following at level 3 (Wizards get the skill one level earlier)

Sorcery Staff, Fogging Ring, Malachite Orb, Marmot Boots, Electroporter Novice

Compared to what you get for Warriors, the synergy is AMAZING. I have 11 spell attack cards (2x Sorcerous Blast, Sorcerous Bolt, 2x Unstable Bolt, Memory Loss, Maze, Force Bolt, Force Blast, 2x Big Zap). My 2 traits work with all of them and STACK. If I manage to draw both, I get +3 damage on all electrical attacks and my arcane attacks get -5 to block rolls, which is the same as unblockable. And I get a great mobility card on top.

Why can't Warrior Traits be just as great?

 

Generally, the Martial Art slot is the most useless slot due to the very limited selections: the attack styles only have Bash, Chop, and Penetrating.

 

I know you've been at this longer than I have, and Electroporter Novice is my standard unless I'm using a fire build. It works with many things.

This is what I was agreeing with, and expressed some ideas on how to do it. Probably different than your ideas. For example, I think Bruiser should cover both Bash and Bludgeon, but the same card might have different effects for each attack type. In other cases they'd be the same.

 

I think the traits are actually quite good enough as-is. The cycling of a card is a huge benefit, and something that I use regardless of whether or not the trait is actually useful. This goes especially for my warrior, because a 1/36 chance of seeing an Obliterating Whatever is not as good as a 1/35 chance.

 

That's like saying a golf club is good enough as is because you can bash people's heads with it. Sure, these traits cycle the deck, which is nice, but so does Wimpy and a bunch of other drawback cards. These traits are supposed to help create thematic decks, and right now, that doesn't really work because they cover too few attack cards and the effect is weak. Right now, the only reason to have them in the deck is because any item for that slot contains one.

 

Well, my point is rather that they're not going to remove the cycling from traits, and as a result, considering their power level currently, I'd imagine they took that power level into account when determining what functionality they'd serve. From that, we can glean that the likelihood of them making them better is "no." Analogy or not, that's their function, but keep in mind that we have at least 30 more levels worth of items and cards to see. Perhaps they've slotted those things for higher-level and higher-usage cards.

 

I'd like to see either tutors (Attack Skill, Armor Practice, Defense Skill) on warriors skills, or some utility based cards/traits instead.

Examples:
Trait which adds 1 to armor rolls
Trait which subtracts 2 from enemy block rolls
A poisoned weapon card that triggers like all out attack, attaching itself to target as poison 3, duration 3.
Trait which gives you +1 hand size (allowing you to hold on to more armor cards)