[Suggestion] Stopping Draw and Trait Chains

I talked about this over in the Inspiring Presence announcement thread, but I thought I'd repeat it here so people can discuss it.

We've had problems with people abusing card draws, leading to many nerfs of draw cards (Talented Healer, Martyr Blessing, Leadership, Talented Healer (again), Altruism, Demonic Feedback, and now Inspiring Presence). And you know what? It's not working. Most of these cards are now useless unless you're abusing them. The problem is not the cards used by themselves, the problem is chains (using card draw effects to draw more cards). And none of these nerfs have any affect on trait abuse (which makes Trembling Staff the most powerful staff in the game).

So, the suggestion I made:

This would kill draw chains and trait chains dead, without making the cards useless in isolation. In fact, I'd suggest reversing some of those nerfs if my idea is implemented (Inspiring Presence, Altruism, let Demonic Feedback draw 2 again).

EDIT: I forgot to mention: this "Draw" keyword would be added to every card that causes you to draw cards, including Parry and all Traits.

 

Yes, +1

Though I might prefer it if instead of just discarding the "Draw" cards, you discard them and draw again until you draw a card that isn't a "Draw" card. It's easier to balance for card advantage when the card advantage is consistent, and this suggestion decreases variance. This way you could still run a lot of "Draw" effects, but wouldn't be able to chain them.

 

You've just described trait cycling, I think we'll need a better idea.

 

Or rather, shuffle them back into your deck.
Also, if the only cards you're cycling are ones that cycle anyway...

 

I think that adding "draw" keyword will only add another variable to the mix and make things even more complicated. Instead of adding new things, we should go to the root of the problem and fix that. For example trait cycling as a concept is not evil. It's only a problem because some drawback traits are almost meaningless and there are many great items like Runestone that have these meaningless traits. With Priests I think that all you need to do is nerf individual cards or items and card draw exploiting becomes much more difficult.

 

I think they did a good job of fixing the 2nd Circle Charm by adding Demonic Miasma and making the Demonic Feedback/Power damage unpreventable (which ignores Nimbus!). At this point I would like to see Demonic Feedback increases up to 2 cards; yes it is a +1 but it has to target an ally within 3 squares, the damage is quite a nasty price, and it won't trigger Altruism. At the moment Feedback is just a really bad Inspiration.
I would like to see Runestone, Blood Locket, Trembling Staff, Electroporter Novice and *possibly* Robe of Lightness being adjusted in a similar way.

I have a suggestion for fixing trait cycling. Change the keytext for Trait as follows:
"You must play this card before playing any non Trait card. Playing this card does not end your turn. Draw a card." (Current)
"You must play this card before playing any non Trait card. Playing this card does not end your turn. Draw a card. If that card is a Trait, play it immediately but do not draw a card to replace it." (New)

So that means if you draw a Trait with a Trait then you don't draw any more cards. However if you drew 2 traits in a row at the start of your turn you could play either one BUT if it draws another (3rd) Trait, that Trait would be played immediately and would end the cycle. After that you can play the other Trait left in your hand.
If for some reason you had 4 Traits stacked on the top of a character's deck you would end up drawing 0 cards.
Now, if your deck has 12 traits out of 36 cards, the odds of this happening are ~0.8%. If you have 6 or less it's closer to one in a million.

Your chances of drawing 2 traits back to back from a full deck (with 12/36 traits) is about 10.5%. Compare that to a normal deck with 4 traits (0.9%) or 6 traits (2.4%).This isn't actually the most helpful information...

Now, if you draw 2 random cards from a full deck, and one or both is a trait, what are the chances that the next card drawn will be a trait (and you will minus a card)? So this is for any 3 cards drawn in a row like Trait-Card-Trait, Card-Trait-Trait or Trait-Trait-Trait.

12 traits: 14.8% (+3.1%) = 17.9%
6 traits: 4.2% (+0.3%) = 4.5%
4 traits: 2.0% (+0%) = 2.0%

The reason I pick 4/6 traits for a 'normal' deck is because each character gets 2-3 traits from skills, plus 1-2 traits from racials, and another 1-2 traits from Boots or Other sources.

As you can see, with a healthy number of Trait cards in your deck, you will only run into turns where you are losing a card draw about 5% of the time or less. For a deck like Dwarven Control Wizards with 12 traits, this number is closer to 18%. Now multiply that by 3. (Well not really 3...)
If nothing else, this fix will reduce the amount of time spent each turn playing traits, since the max you could play on the first turn would be 3-6, and the max on any other turn (per character) would be 2-4.

 

Actually, if you have to discard 'draw' cards if you draw them with other 'draw' cards, a player would be forced to balance his deck with respect to 'draw' cards, as too much of them would render your 'draw' cards ineffective (because of the chances that you wouldn't draw anything at all.) I think that is what we want to achieve, so just discarding seems like the better option to me.

Since traits have to count as 'draw' cards (Otherwise, you could simply draw a trait with a 'draw' card and then draw another 'draw' card with the cycled trait), this balancing issue also counts for traits. If you have a deck with 12 traits, it will occur pretty often that you have to discard a trait that you drew with a previously cycled trait.
Considering the chances of drawing beneficial traits in succession are rather low or any type of deck, it is mostly a nerf to the black quality traits. It might even ensure that their quality is indeed 'black', even for squeemish.

I'm not entirely convinced yet, as I don't think all issues with this idea are apparent until properly tested, but I think it is worth considering.

 

Great idea!

I think additional trait adjustments might still be needed. I believe negative traits should be addressed before positive traits, primarily because we pay a card-value price for positive traits.

A negative trait should be attuned to the other cards on the item. This is often the case, but items such as Runestone are notorious exceptions. This item would be less desirable if Squeamish was replaced with Cowardly or even Fright. If the replacement needs to be of paper quality (as Squeamish is), a low value attack card such as Little Zap should work well. Trembling Staff is another that needs a card or two swapped. I believe adjusting items rather than cards will be necessary in a few cases.

I don't think Fumble should allow a card draw due to its nature. It is often possible to prepare for it, and as things now stand it is a better card than the (IMO overvalued) silver Lateral Thinking.

 

Neither is remotely playable. Why even mention them? If Fumble didn't cycle, it'd be TWO negative cards. The fact that Lateral Thinking is valued equal to Nimble Strike and Short Perplexing Ray is a disgrace. The only thing redeeming about it is how smug the idiot in the card art is.

 

Good point on Fumble. I obviously wasn't thinking clearly when I wrote that.

 

I agree that trait cycling needs to be limited somehow.

My own thoughts were to limit card replacement to two traits per character, per turn.
In other words, if a character draws more than 2 traits in a single turn, then the additional traits are no longer replaced with a card.

By doing this, trait cycling and card draw is still an important aspect of deck building, but if you abuse them, then you risk not being able to replace your traits.
Existing play-styles are left intact. Existing decks would only need small tweaks.
No cards need to be modified.
And as an added bonus, Wizards (who are able to abuse trait cycling with ease) would be nerfed just enough by this change, that we can stop worrying about SPP, WWE, WW, and WoW.

 

Or we could go the extreme route. All black trait cards don't have a draw effect anymore. This would leave most traits just fine, but have the upside of making people who spam the negative ones really feel the pain for having almost a third of their deck be dross. This would also mean that you wouldn't have to mess with other card effects, like somehow making squeamish worse in a way that doesn't impinge on fright.

 

Robe of Lightness (Hover, Hover)
Electroporter Novice (3 positive Traits!)
Goat Boots (1 Immovable) or Sticky Slippers (2 Immovable)
Trained/Untrained Stoutness (2 Immovable)
We have a problem here.

See what I am getting at? Runestone is nasty but I can see people swapping to Wand of Seared Air or more Farzil's Horn pretty easily. Trembling Staff would suck immensely and you can't replace that easily, but still. I don't like this plan because many low level/tokenless item would really suck to use, and this wouldn't deal with our control wizard problem.
Also, the "black trait cards" would need a new keyword so that they can self attach but not draw. They would be sort of like Slowed/Arcane Feedback. But I digress...

I need to note here that Squeamish IS very in tune with Winds of War and Wall of Fire on Runestone or even Blood Locket with Path of Knives. It's not supposed to be a drawback for the item; it is supposed to discourage you from using high damage killing attacks on your other items. That being said, there is a suite of cards (Lava, Encumber, Winds, Path of Knives which allow you deal a lot of damage and even kill someone indirectly without Squeamish getting in the way. The fact is that Squeamish is undervalued AND it has little negative impact on the wizard using it. Add to the fact that traits are like auto+1 cards and you have a spammable card engine.

I'd like to take a page from Yugioh. There is a card called Jar of Greed which allows you to draw 1 card. However, you can't play it on the turn that you draw it. You must wait until your opponent's turn (by then your opponent may have removed it or prevented you from playing it somehow) and so it makes for a decent cycling card but it doesn't provide the madness that Traits provide in this game.
How about you don't draw cards for negative/drawback traits until your next turn?
Also, what do we do for Blind Rage? Draw half a card? XD

 

How about this one?
"Every trait can only appear on ONE item for a character."
That is, one can have triple Talented Healer from Focused Healer but never Squeamish from all four Arcane slots.

A trait is not a trait if it is here and there, from Runestone to Greenguard Boots imo.

 

I think that's pretty much the opposite of attuned. Large Weapon appears on large weapons. Trip appears on Crazy Fast Boots and the like. An attuned trait will be a detriment to using the item. Example: Brain Burn could not be an attuned trait on a Martial Skill item.

 

Why make it so complicated? My suggestion lets Draw and Trait cards act exactly the way they do now, unless the card drawn is also a Draw (or Trait) card, in which case it's discarded unplayed. Period. Draw and Trait chains become impossible. A deck full of Traits would only play at most two per round, with about half of them discarded unplayed.

 

OK but now you have just killed Altruism, Inspiration and Demonic Power. As if Priest really needs that! What's the point of trying to draw a card if there is %chance that the card will be instantly discarded?
I would be agreeable to having Traits be discarded if they were drawn by another Trait. Period. It hurts trait abuse but not 99% of other builds.

 

What is so unappetizing about simply making sure that all the traits in the game are properly valued by the game? The mechanics WORK, some of the cards are just undervalued. None of these sweeping rules change suggestions make any sense to me...

 

I'd like to see that too (and I have suggestions on simplifying the item formulas). But this thread is intended to be a simple solution to draw and trait abuse that doesn't require the convoluted card changes we've been seeing in the last several re-balancings.

 

Fair enough, I just don't think any of these changes are ... Simple. They have pretty far reaching ramifications. Anyway, I don't want to derail anything so if I'm just being a grouchy detractor I'll peace out of this thread