Balancing elves by changing hp differences

In high tier multiplayer, all you can see are dwarfs (and sometimes human) because of the apparent hp greater than movement mechanic of the game.
This makes the game not very fun to play at high level because all you can see are dwarfs.

My suggestion is instead of the current 4 Hp differences between races, change them to 3.
This means all humans get +1 hp and all elves get +2.

This probably won't balance everything. There are still problems of step move and whirlwind making movements useless, but at least the game may be a little more balanced.

 

If the devs balanced nimble strike they wouldn't have to balance any of the races in terms of hp/movement. The great distortion right now is due to dwarves being ridiculously OP with decks full of nimble strike (the most broken unbalanced card in the game).

 

Dwarves do also have the best racials for most character roles. A couple Elf and Human skills are good, don't get me wrong, but Dwarves have the best tokenless racial in the game by faaaaar (granted it's legendary). And let's be real: 3DC would be 3HC if Toughness were on Human skills instead of Dwarf skills*—the racials make a bigger difference for most builds than the hitpoints. That said, your point is very valid in that Nimble Strike is a big contributor to dwarven dominance. I just think that the racials are a bigger factor than hp in race imbalance.

*Note that I am not suggesting we move Toughness to another race. While it would be an interesting balance exercise (the outcome of which I won't try to predict), it would be weird flavorwise. Moving on.

 

Its hard to balance the races in a vacuum without seeing how nimble strike removal would work. I believe dwarves would be hurt pretty bad by this, and elves would really improve overall. Its pretty clear an NS nerf would elevate humans/elves, while reducing the efficacy of dwarves. Not sure where each race lands on the scale after this, but it could only help.

 

What if it was moved to Divine Skills? Might need a name change, but the effect fits martyr type chars.

 

Valid points. game mechanics make toughness and blocks way better than movements. Dwarf skills are filled with toughness and blocks while elf skills are filled with movements

 

Well yes; Elves do get sweet cards like Slippery and Dodge, but it often isn't worth going non-dwarf for it, as these sweet cards are accompanied by things like Superstitious or Walk or Cowardly.

Kalin—could be sweet! But I wouldn't straight up suggest it. I think there's a place for Toughness on dwarves. It just so happens that priests and elves are way weaker than dwarves. It's a complicated situation and I'm not going to pretend I know what the best steps forward are.

Pilgrim... like I said, I wasn't suggesting it.

 

Elf skills just give movement, but the problem is that they don't directly benefit from the extra movement. It's not that they don't need more movement (they don't) but they don't gain anything from moving far outside of Escaping Run or Slippery (I'm ignoring Insight ftm). Dwarves benefit greatly from the +1's- traits, blocks, and armor (toughness). Elf skills let elves move farther... but that's about it. We would need much bigger maps before elves had a chance of being dominant.

SUGGESTION: Add larger maps to the rotation.
It seems that we are stuck on the same 13-15 square maps all the time. Sure if you have an elf you can Dash to the victory location in one turn or two. But it's pretty clear on these maps that dwarves just don't give a crap and either use Winds or Nimble Strike to fly around. It would be nice to know whether a larger map would be enough to give elves a chance.

 

Teams would just wwe/ww you if maps were bigger, and it would amplify those effects due to making it nearly impossible to reach a teammate in time to survive.

 

Instead of auto-pessimist, consider that it would make Dwarves trickier to play and make Elves more viable. Also, this suggestion would change nothing about HP, racial skills, rules, etc. It is just a simple experiment that would be easy to test.

 

Its not pessimism, the point was that most of the problems in the MP overlap and require fixing simultaneously or in rapid succession to avoid scenarios like the ones we talked about above. If the devs fix nimble strike and wwe/ww, big maps would be awesome. Taken alone, big maps would be problematic due to the abilities that can be abused right now.

 

I feel like even considering the racial, elf mages still have too low hp to be even playable.
Even if there is a toughness for elf mages, if you get unlucky and not draw that card, people can still 1 shot you with an oblit.
I tried making an elf mage with a ton of blocks before (dodge on elf skill, hard to pin on boot, dodge on robe, and parry on staff). The result is whenever my blocks fail, the mage dies in 1 or 2 hits. The initial hp really is a huge bonus. Even if humans or elves have toughness, I doubt they will be as good as the current dwarfs

 

You are right about that. I still think it would be great if Nimble Strike only moved you as far as the basic racial move card.

 

Same here!

 

Racial factoring for step cards could be very nice.

 

Definitely support HP differences being 3 instead of 4. The game often plays out too fast for Elves/Elf teams to make it past the first few turns and I think this would be a great start towards helping them in that regard.

 

Honestly I don't think that 1HP would be enough to change anything.
Heck, if there was no HP difference, I would still run dwarves because their racial skills are so good.

 

There are some really OP human and elf skills too: inspirational thinking, command teams, elfish insight, slippery, etc...
It's true that I do feel like dwarf have the best no token skill though: blind rage *2 + reliable armor is just too good!

 

Whilst both Elves and Humans have some excellent cards, it's generally due to a lackluster of trait cycling ability.

Raging Battler is a prime example, as it trait cycles two cards with a minimal drawback, (if you could even consider it a drawback if using step moves on hp heavy warriors). It gives cards like elvish insight or lateral thinking a huge disadvantage, as you must use a turn to gain a card, whereas blind rage does that without even asking! Inspite of all that, I would say that dwarves are faster then Elves, as faster draw mechanics reap better cards in the long run, so better movement. Team moves on Humans are good too, but it often has cards like slow, or weak parry or battlefield pass.

HP problems can be solved if you're willing to sacrifice attack for the needed cards. (I'm looking at you elf mages!)

 

When I said that dwarves have good racial skills I meant the actual racial skills, not the best racial cards, or any cards that show up on racial skills. On their own, Inspirational Thinking, Move, Team!s (command teams), elvish insight, and slippery are great cards. But they are often just one or two cards on a racial skill. On the other hand, dwarf skills not only plus (+) like mad, but many have 2-3 good or even great cards on them.
I have been working on an article, "An in-depth analysis of Racial Skills", that I will be posting once I have finished with the elf skills. Once you see the numbers some people may be surprised.