Yet Another Balance Thread (June 2014)

Well, I wholeheartedly disagree. The problem with Wall of Stone is the lack of counter play or interesting decision making behind it. You plop it down and the enemy has to either go around it or wait it out. That's boring and can be EXTREMELY strong on some maps (single VP ones or ones with narrow corridors). The only counter to it is to use Whirlwind -- which is problematic in its own right. Changing Whirlwind without changing Wall of Stone will make it an extremely powerful and game breaking card for certain maps -- I'd say it already is extremely powerful it is just risky with the prevalence of WW builds.

I don't think like a Smoke Bomb should remove the entirety of Wall of Stone (although maybe it should, but that would require testing), but you should definitely be able to remove it somehow.

 

So you're inferring that raging, cursing, and waiting it out don't constitute counterplay.

 

By that logic Firestorm builds have the ultimate counters of everything!

 

They do, but have an unfortunate tendancy to lose to anyone with a decent build who knows how to use it.

 

Rightfully so. The idea of totally blocking anything sounds fun. But it might be either too strong (3 wall with duration 2) or can be stacked too much.

Without Wall of Stone though, no one can actually beat all the 1 HP quest in the campaign.

 

Since when does the enemy AI play terrain removal cards? They might play a few terrain attachment cards, but even then it seems pretty rare.

 

The fact that the only direct counter play to Wall of Stone is Teleport Self, which is much more limited in its availablity to me is poor game design. If there were maps with no Victory Squares in MP, Wall of Stone would be fine as-is, but the fact that you can alter the board in a manner that can win the game by the power of WoS only is by definition out of balance.
Balance comes from having counters, attacks can be blocked, attachments can be purged, and every other terrain attachment can be cleansed or built over... even toughness is subject to armor destruction (still not sure why penetration doesn't work since it IS an armor right?). But literally nothing can be done to block or alter WoS.
When I played MtG there was always the difficult decision between having specific counters (e.g. artifact destruction) over keeping a deck as focused as possible on the strategy. But there was never a card where you said there is literally nothing I could do about it. With all of aggravation of certain cards, WoS remains the only card with nothing you can do about it. Yes Teleport self allows you to go through it and WW possibly over it, but neither actually effects the wall.
Granted I am taking the MP view first and foremost, but in reality balance is not a concern for SP.

Finally I see altering cards and not items is the proper route to rebalance, even though the item design is typically the bigger offender. If no one could have more than 3 or 4 NS, WoS, WW/WWE, SPR or Winds of War (to a lesser extent Imp. Nimbus) and only 1 or at most 2 of cards like Dodge (which you keep) per character, balance would be much less of an issue. Powerful cards are good, but if they are not equally rare (in total possible multiples) like we see with Resistant Hide, Toughness (which is still OP on Wiz IMHO) etc. that is where the complaining comes from.

I have already gave my opinion on how I would balance cards that I think are out of wack, (although I am sure there are some I did not address) soI wont repeat myself.

 

My main concern in balancing is WW/WWE. The first time i saw the card was in Cardstock II. I was like wth, that's so powerful. Mobs start to really have good cards. Then I did all the no death quests. Then I started playing MP. That's where I realised we could use that too, but had 0 copy in my collection. And the more I climbed in the ranks, the more I saw that playing. Now I rarely play MP. To do so, I need to be drunk, in a good mood and looking for some fun. I should have something between a total of 50 and 100 games played. Last three I played were a few after AotA, all opponants played an average of one ww/wwe every two turns.
And why I stopped playing MP is just because of ww. Yes it's strong but mostly it's UNFUN. It's a card for luck boxes. I always picture a slot machine when wwe is played. Enemy Dwarf warrior in top left corner, enemy priest in top right corner, enemy mage between your three guys: ding ding ding! Cherry Cherry Cherry, you won the jackpot.

And please stop making me laugh with your counters to the wws. To be immuned to it, you have to play 3 Stone Feet every 3 turns, means one card lost every turn. And this is only if you can still have LoS with the priest on your other fellows after the first turn if the enemy hasn't kindly allready whirlwinded. And if you can draw enough stone feet.

And I don't count league games as MP. An Epic chest for 50 gold is motivating enough to suffer all that ww crap. Even on a map with 17! open squares (Deathraw for my opponants, Death March for me ) it's a must play. It's a must play if the map is big, it's a must play if the map is small because of wall of stones. Actually it's a must play on any map, just because opponant uses it. And trust me, I would stop playing constructed leagues too if the fees/prizes ratio wasn't so high.

So for the game sake, please, just make parties uncertified for MP usage if any character uses at least one wwe or ww. Get ride of that luck crap and you'll see me plenty in MP., trying many different builds.

That being said, I also come with a balance suggestion. Not that I care or anything, but to be fair with Surging Block, Hard To Pin Down should let you move 3 when you successfully block but shouldn't be usable as a move card (unlike surging block).

Also there should be an answer to enemy move cards others then SPR.
Trickery for melee attacks.
Counterspell/forgetfulness for spells.
Boiling armor for armors.
War cry for blocks.
Move cards (steps, trickeries, dodges...): nothing. Well halt can but it's not discard like for all other type of cards. Mobs have something like that with Paralyzing Bolt but ya that one is too strong. Something that can discards all non base move cards in targret's hand would be welcome imo.

 

Waugapapa? Is that you?

 

Encumbrance doesn't force discard, but makes movement (excepting team moves) useless.

 

Yeah, there's already a lot of answers for movement in the form of Encumbrance. I do wish that Warriors and Priests had their own versions of it -- a net for a Warrior and something other than Soothing Darkness for Priests, but whatever.

Really, there are only a few major problem cards in the game (WW/WWE, NS, WoW, MF) and nerfing those while buffing some never used cards (Surging Shield Block, Advanced Battle Tactics, Lateral Thinking) would be the easiest and healthiest changes to the game before we re-evaluate other things. Iteration is the key and small steps and testing along the way is the best to not destabilize the entire game.

 

Entangling Roots.

 

And Icy Block

 

I had to search the forum for Waugapapa, result was one user who posted 5 times in a single thread. You've got quite a memory 0_o But not me nope.

Otherwise yes encumber can punish movement cards but it's not the ultimate solution, only halt is at the moment. A guy allready in melee can still use Trickery or NS.

--- talking about that, makes me think that priests could really benefit from Redistribute. With enough redistributes possible in a deck, you can try some fun things like using unplayed items with drawbacks like Trip, Large Weapon or Mind Leak. ---

Also I tried the Barrels map today for the first time. Both of my Dwarf Warriors were using Necalli Cap. It was the first time I equip this item for a try and I really liked it. And two Quickness Aura in your hand makes you ignore encumber 4 (unless you are an evil step attacker).

 

I expected to see WoS in your list. Making it vulnerable to terrain cleansing, but not other terrain effects, would make the most sense. Giving wizards a card to clear a block (passwall, maybe?) would help, especially if it could open a hole in default terrain for 2 or 3 rounds. (I'm reaching a bit here, but it has been done in games.)

 

I didn't list every problem card. You can check my balance thread for that. :-P http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/balance-balance-suggestion-list-january-2014.4967/

 

Been there, read that. I noticed your short list included WW/WWE, and nerfing it could increase the problems people have with WoS. I see those two as kind of paired in that respect. Of course any WW/WWE nerf might be done in a way the keep it effective against WoS, so it really shouldn't have struck me as odd. It's probably because I was thinking about the available counters for WoS at the time.

 

I think Jon has publicly stated that he doesn't like the unanswerability of WoS. I'm sure he'll address it when he reveals his balancing plans.

 

I think this pretty much sums up the game's current most OP cards and the reason for it. I think balancing should also be done in terms of underpowered cards, but I recognize that the OP cards definately is the most crucial for the game. Buffing some UP cards would however diversify gameplay, much in the same way as nerfing OP cards.

As before I think the best solution would be to change the card valuation, making NS gold etc. That would also mean changing quite a few items - it would rebalance a large part of the game and I still belive it would improve the game in a major way, almost a year after this thread. It would make so many more items viable in MP and we would see a plethora of alternative builds, so different from the current meta, where everyone plays the same items, cards and combos.

 

While I agree with basically everything in this thread, I'd like to say I really think BM did a pretty great work with CH's balance, despite the known issues. When you put things in perspective and realize how complex the game is (hundreds of cards + 1.5K+ items + 3 unique classes), I think it can't be denied the situation could have been easily much, much worse.

That being said, I strongly believe BM shouldn't be afraid about changing around cards and items, even at the risk of irking a few players. After all, the game is still relatively small and young. This is exactly the perfect time for Jon to fix stuff, as making significant changes to the overall balance/meta will only get harder and harder as the game grows.

I mean, it's pretty apparent most of the issues being discussed in this thread (and countless others) are not really due to the fact any given card is OP in an absolute sense, but rather a consequence of how easily you can stack some of the cards which would otherwise just be considered good cards like many other in the game.

In fact, I'm more on line with those who think balance should not be exclusively achieved by plain out nerfing cards, but rather by ruling abuse-able builds out of the game. I.e. I have no issue whatsoever with NS, WW and WWE the way they are. The risk I see with simply nerfing any of those is that of making the game more boring, if more balanced. Ofc I'm in no way saying the current state of things is fine, but rather agreeing with those who think those cards should be "fixed" via correcting itemization issues (card values, availability of multiple copies of a card on a single item, etc.)

Anyway, I really want to stress the fact Jon (or any of the guys from BM) shouldn't be afraid of changing items and cards around: if those changes are being made for the sake of making CH a better game, the community will understand and back the devs actions. You'll also get some rants and a few angry players, sure, but I think that's a reasonable collateral when what you would get in return is a better, more enjoyable game. The effort would easily pay for itself (in the form of more and happier players/potential-paying-customers) in the long run.