Extremely short answer (or TL;DR): most plain Move cards have been made obsolete, and Elves are not only required to run more of them in their decks than the other races but have the best inherent Move card in the first place as well. Longer answer: I've been playing with 2-elf and all-elf teams in ranked Multiplayer very often over the past month and a half and have spectated many games both before and after the latest patch. At first I played with elves out of preference; I was able to do well enough in multiplayer at first because of my previous experience with card games and the simple fact that this game has my undivided attention while I'm playing. But as of late it's been out of curiosity. Why does it seem like it's so hard to win with my elves? Why do I see so few high-rated players run them? Where do their strengths lie? What am I missing? After many hours of losing streaks, spectating and deck-fiddling, the answer to all of these questions became clear to me: while cards on shields and helmets are rarely seen on other items, they are seen on Dwarf and Human feats. But many cards do what many pure Move cards are supposed to do in the first place, and more - this includes Step attacks (Vicious Thrust and Nimble Strike being the harshest offenders) and the Team movement cards, both of which blatantly do more than any one Move card does, especially considering Difficult Terrain in Step moves' cases. I'm not going off on a tangent about these cards and deliberately accusing them of being OP; I'm merely stating the fact that they make the current plain Move cards on items obsolete. And the race that is required to include the most plain Move cards in their decks is the race with the least amount of health and the best inherent Move card anyway. Thanks for reading! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've thrown in a few suggestions outside of the obvious Health one, but don't take this as primarily a suggestion thread because many of these came from the top of my head Suggestion #1: Give Elves extra Minor Power Tokens by level 18 Upsides for Elves: more card consistency due to better cards Downsides in general: plain Move cards would still be made obsolete by other cards; players could put all of their Power Tokens in things outside of their boots and Elf skills and hope not to draw the type of card that is supposed to define the race as a whole... Suggestion #2: remove the requirement of Boots on Elves Upsides for Elves: more deck consistency through less cards in their deck while still having some Move cards through their racial skill item; Elves would draw their unique Elf skill cards more often, making the race's defining features stand out more Upsides for the dev team: simplest change! Downsides in general: Elves could be obnoxiously more consistent than the other races; plain Move cards would still be made obsolete by other cards Suggestion #3: Buff all Move cards on Boots in ways outside of more distance (more Cantrip and 'draw a card' cards, for example); buff all Elf skills in the same way Upsides for Elves: more deck consistency due to better cards Upsides for me: this would be my favorite thing to see happen as of posting. Downsides in general: Could be a lot of work; Dwarves and Humans can use boots too which must be considered; buffing lower leveled Boots could result in cards completely disappearing from the Multiplayer game such as Shuffle Suggestion #4: Nerf all Step and Assist movement cards. Perhaps Difficult Terrain squares can't be entered using Step or Assist moves, or higher ranking Step and Team cards could be more difficut to find on items. Maybe both? Upsides for Elves: it's a nerf to everyone else! Upsides for the game's health: smaller stages with a lot of Difficult Terrain (like the ones currently live on Multiplayer as of posting) would be more in Elves' favor than they currently are Downsides in general: I can't think of any, but that's not to say that there aren't any. Again, Thanks for reading!
I think just a change to Elf skills would be fine. Adding/removing equipment slots or power tokens could break the core mechanics of the game. I'd like to see possibly a trait or aura/shell style card that just says "All Move cards that attached character uses have Free Move", or possibly cycling moves (That let you draw a card after they're used), or maybe some unique blocks (Hard To Pin Down is completely in flavour for an elf, I'd think).
Suggestion #5: Split certain item slots to give more racial distinctiveness and allow a larger design space with better control over the variables. Eg: Replace Heavy armor slot with heavy armor for dwarves, medium armor for humans and light armor for elves. Rarely used heavy armors get a facelift/conversion to medium and light armors (worth for worth). This frees up 3 cards for design (more evasion for elves, more tactics for humans etc). Ditto for wizards (arcane item) and priests (divine item) . Impact: Existing players who've sold heavy armors alr get the same gold worth, so no issue (alto I'd still expect whines). Existing players who keep heavy armors now get a mixture of armors. Suggestion #6: Tweak hp upwards for elves and humans using dwarves as ceiling. No brainer unless elves were intended to be super late game (lvl 40+) strong.
Also, maybe reconsider the hp difference between the races? I personally think 3 is enough. Having an all dwarven team being 24 hp in total over a similarly composed elven team is just ridiculous even if the default movement had more of an impact (which as stated above isn't that important because of team moves).
Yep. This is how I would do it. Extra HP that dwarves get is definitely worth losing in basic movement. Elven wizards having 17 HP means they can be one-shotted by almost anyone, which makes them pretty useless in PvP. And they are just as bad in SP as well. So yeah.. HP fix is the most simple fix.
Elf Wizards are indeed pretty terrible. Mostly because wizards don't need a lot of movement. However with the nerfs to draw I find warriors and priests viable, because games take more turns and the higher base movement has more of an effect. I am currently running an elf warrior and two dwarves (warrior + wizard). The main reason to run elves is Insight, which is probably the best PVP Item.
I do think giving Dwarves -1 HP and Elves +1 HP a good change. Humans seem fine, Dwarves a little powerful and Elves a bit weak. Perhaps the biggest downside of Elves is that there is simply so much movement available on other cards, and how Elves speed don't scale with anything other than their basic movement cards. To me this is a big over haul and I can see that the devs would want prefer to not do that if possible. I also think their skills, while powerful, somehow end up being not as useful. Certain skills like Slippery and Elvish Insight can be really powerful though.
I agree that elves are underpowered. I would like to a small change in HP gaps (+1/-1 HP for Elves and Dwarves), and an overhaul of Elf Skills. They need more traits instead of more movement cards, because as of now the elf slot is basically just an extra boots slot. Also, Dwarf and Human skills bring new and interesting cards to the table, while elves mostly just get things the other races could get anyway.
I dont think a 1 HP change is good enough. The problem with elves is their racial skills are terrible. They have the worst selection of 0 token racial with terrible drawbacks. Their only good racial is probably elvish insight, but beside that, really nothing. Elvish mobility is most of time inferior or at par to human's move teams. Slippery and path finding are good, but do them beat inspiration thinking or dwarven war cry? I think not. The pure movement skills are rarely worth it to spent a token on. Elvish traits should have more dodge on it. Cause why not? It totally makes sense with their theme and fits the art style.
Indeed, Elves already have better base movement. What they don't need are extra movement cards as their racial skills. Pathfinding and Slippery are both very good (slippery cycles and is worth several move cards, pathfinding is +1 card advantage), but the other cards that come with these don't help them much.
It would be interesting to see some statistics. The fact that there are a lot of dwarf teams doesn't say much - if players like dwarves and 80% of PVP teams are dwarves, they are balanced if 80% of top teams are dwarves. The more interesting question is what the win:loss ratio for different team compositions is. If any of these has a ratio that is significantly higher or lower than 50:50, the game needs rebalancing. Everything else is anecdotal. Note: There are 3 classes and 3 races. Each party consists of 3 PCs. In combinatorics, that's 3 out of 9 with repetion. (Writing the binomial coefficient horizontally...) ((9 3)) = (11 3) = 165 Right now, you can create 165 different parties in the game.
People tend to like winning, be it SP or MP - if 80% of played characters are dwarves, the reason is most likely because they are better than other races and not that everybody loves to play shorties with beards and Scottish accents.
@Mirkel: Sure, we're on the same page there. If "playing dwarves" is a winning factor, then parties with 2 or 3 dwarves should have a high win ratio against teams with one or no dwarf. An even stronger indicator would be if the dwarf team wins even though the other player has a higher rank. If we get that actual number we have proof and don't need to speculate on anecdotal evidence.
It won't work that way : It won't prove anything if the elven player is a much better player (and has the same elo rating than the weaker dwarven player because elves are weaker). Elo agregates all factors, including race, tactical skill, deckbuilding skill, and deck strength into a single value, so that a 1500 elf player will win roughly 50% of the time against a 1500 dwarf player. Thus the population at higher elo does matter, as no one there picks race for RP reason. On a side note, if you don't have lots of nimble strikes or team moves in your deck, elven warriors are a viable pick, but elven wizards remain terribly weak.
Yeah, when I started a SP Elf team, I couldn't believe the racial abilities. I just left the slot empty. Elf mobility is great. I agree, give elves something other than yet more mobility in their racial option. Something like Hard To Pin x 2 and something else nice at high levels. Or some Barge-type attacks. Note: I don't speak with any real knowledge of multiplayer, which is where this stuff really matters.
And sometimes the 'Walk's came in handy. From my SP viewpoint: - Dwarves have several useful tokenless skills. - Humans have a couple of somewhat useful tokenless skills. - Elf tokenless skills rarely seem to be worth the drawbacks. The best thing about dwarves is the hp advantage which allows for a little slop. This can cover poor/inexperienced playing, or just surviving a round or two of bad cards. Elves could use an upgrade from tissue paper to something a bit stouter, and I don't think their skills help much at low levels.
Yeah my SP elves all keep their racial blank until they have a token to spare. Loner hurts when your max health is like twelve, and the other two cards aren't worth the risk. For competitive play: Slippery and Pathfinding are nice. An elf skill with Hard To Pin Down would be pretty cool I think; flavorful, helps protect their low HP a bit, countered by somehow maneuvering behind the speedy buggers... I'd certainly look at skills first, health second; then the extra power tokens/noboots etc a distant third.
I think elves could use a 'Good Luck' card as a skill. Add 2 to all dice for 2 rounds, or some such. Not really predictable or reliable, but it could help them die more slowly.
I completely agree with you on this! After looking at my own suggestions again, I've come to realize that the first two you'd consider are the two that I think would be the healthiest for their current state. If Elves had Jump Backs, Dodges or even Hard to Pins replace their plain Move cards in their skills and a sliver of extra health across the board (especially Elf mages) I think they'd be in a very good spot right now. by the way, I've edited the TL;DR so that deciphering it doesn't cause your eyes to bleed. Thanks for yall's feedback!
