[Feedback] Upcoming Balance Change MEGATHREAD

I have two thoughts on the matter. One, is that a player shouldn't be penalized for playing a normal amount of traits (5 or less, I reckon). Two, a player SHOULD be penalized if they are drawing more than 5 or 6 cards that turn for whatever reason (Martyr's Blessing, Elven Maneuvers, draw deck) And, last, a player should be penalized for playing too many traits in one turn but separate from the draw limit.

That way cards like Inspirational Thinking or Martyr's Blessing won't take a direct hit, just because you drew 5 traits already.

 

Screw the draw limit for a second though, I am still concerned about Randimar...

There seems to be two viewpools. One is, I don't want everyone to have access to the same items because everyone else will get X and start playing X and I don't like that. Two is, everyone should be able to buy the same items (if they have the gold) so that the game is "fair".

The reason I like the randomness is because it forces you to make some interesting gameplay choices. Why did I use Reaper's Scythe for a month? Because I had no Bejewelled Shortsword. Why did my Dwiz use Raging Rock for most of campaign? Because I didn't have anything better for him to use.
It might seem a bit silly, but I would rather have struggled and used the best items I had access to rather than bought items that everyone else was using because they are screaming that they landed in their shop.

 

Please pardon me for the aggro, but he really did say some very silly things, and I'm too depressed for losing Firestorm to ignore it.

If you agree that FS won't be playable, the other words aren't necessary. Maybe the devs will eventually return it to the playable state, maybe not. But these two statements are still valid:

1). The game becomes better with each radically new playable strategy, and it becomes worse when such a strategy dies. Firestorm could become such strategy, but got completely destroyed instead. And this is obviously bad for the game.
2). Firestorm never was a problem in MP; NS and WW/WWE were the problems. And what do we see in this change? WW/WWE got destroyed, but they were usually played from the relatively cheap items. NS is still playable, and the VP buyers aren't going to thrash it. The Firestorm destruction will nullify 28 items in the game, some of which are legendary and were considered a "no-brainer purchase" at Randimar's store. Why on earth should the devs destroy all these items just in fear of Firestorm dominance? This is simply unfair.

 

@Ector, @piotras, etc.—please keep it civil. I appreciate your efforts thus far in doing so. We're listening to your comments on Firestorm, but, in the meantime, you can actually earn pizza while proving to us that a given card is or isn't viable. Check it out: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/testing-prizes-playtest-balance-changes-win-pizza.6211/

 

Exactly, Jade, that's what I meant by the samey builds. I have no problem with everyone having access to the best items. I would even be fine with having the "give all items" cheat be operational on the live server. The game would still be a good one, although exponentially less sticky. Having the access be near instantaneous and the same for everyone just drastically reduces the variety we'll see and reduces the interesting choices you have to make due to lack of "the best" items.

Granted, not having that has the downside of leaving people wanting for items but that is the whole point of loot chase games. You always badly want something and keep playing in the hope of getting it. Getting everything on a silver platter is not what Card Hunter has been. It's OK if that's how Blue Manchu want to change the game but it will be a huge, huge change.

 

Sorry Flaxative, but how I can win pizza by proving that Firestorm in NOT viable? How can I prove it at all? If I lose, that may be my own fault.

 

You might accidentally discover that it is viable... you never know until you go for the pizza Good luck!

 

Yeah, if we can draw only 5, martyr's blessing is severely nerfed and much less useful if used on more than 1 charachter.

 

@Ector: imo you should try a FS elf that you Impenetrable Nimbus (and savage curse) before sending him to the enemy side.

 

About FS: I feel the need to remind those who complain about the FS nerf that it wasn't changed because it's broken, it was changed because it didn't care about positioning, according to what Jon said. It's a design choice about where they want this game to go (even though this is inconsistent with the Cause Fumble and Def. Block buff, as I have said in a previous post).

About Cause Famble, the only reason why I don't think it will be OP is because wizards will dominate, so everyone will have to prioritize all around blocks.

About Randimar's: Those who say that having everything available would open a lot of possibilities and would add variance to the game is just a fallacy. It would happen pretty much the opposite: in one month or two, everyone will know which are the OP items (like Heartripper) and which are the best builds (because of a post at the forums or just by spectating player's matches) and then the majority of the players will be copying those builds (I said the majority, which means not everybody). And they won't even have the need to adapt them to the items they own, because they will be able to get exactly the same items. It's true that last PvP season we had mostly two kind of builds at the top, which isn't much variance either, but AT LEAST we all had to adjust our builds to what we had available, so despite the fact that there were mainly only two types of builds, we had an interesting item variance, especially with warriors. With the Randis change, even that would be gone, we would mainly see the same exact builds over and over (until a counter is found and then that counter build will be copied again exactly, and so on). I say no to the daily restock and also no to the same items in Randimar's for everyone because of the same reason.

About the limit draw: the main deck that abuses trait cycling a lot, which is the main reason of the new limit draw, is 3DC. So, instead of adding this and killing priests they should have done the same that they did with Trembling Staff with other abusable items like Electroporter Novice. That has already been mentioned.
What I want to point out is that trait cycling is an interesting way of having a shot of getting what you want without the best items. For instance, if you weren't lucky enough to own a VP but you had a Lochaber, with 5 or 6 traits in your deck you had a good chance of getting at least one NS every 2 turns. Another example would be Staff of Chasks and Heartripper. With the draw limit, we would have to cut that 5 or 6 number of traits per character to much less so that we don't risk drawing a lot of them in one round, which would make those builds very inconsistent. So, as a result, the only consistent builds would be the ones that have many copies of the best cards (which are usually legendaries), like VP now and Heartripper in the new meta. That's why I think that this limit draw is a very bad idea, added to the priest's murder of course. Trait cycling is good for the game, the thing that isn't good is its abuse.

 

From blog post: "it’s possible to build decks that rely on a lot of card cycling via Traits and other draw engines. These decks are dull to play against as your opponent must wait while you cycle through your cards."
Really? Playing traits goes very fast. Everyone has got a timer and can think that much, traits won't make games last longer. I understand that limit would kill infinitive draw but I don't see anything wrong in traits, only in really trait-heavy items.

 

This exactly. I have my timer, you have yours. Why is it unacceptable for me to use my entire timer?

 

You basically can in Hearthstone by using real money to buy packs, then using the crafting system to disenchant what you got in the pack and craft the card you want.

$2.99 = 2x Common
$8.97 = 1x Rare + 1x Common
$15.97 = 1x Epic + 1x Common
$49.99 = 1x Legendary

(prices based on getting the worst possible rarities in the pack)

 

You really live up to your title Veza

Maybe the effect of balancing firestorm has had unintentional consequences for SP farming. I like to think its intentional though. The old firestorm provided players a way to grind items/gold at a rate that completely undermined the rewards you got for participating in other activities (like actually playing MP itself).

Even with the changes its still likely to be much more efficient to farm SP, just not unequivocally so.

It might be possible that it is better leaving it at 5. I noticed that advanced battlefield training has a range of 6 and that is really cool in terms of card synergy imo. Now that it transfers 2 cards instead of 1 I hope they think about increasing the range on the standard version to 6 as well.

 

Concerning "draw decks": I still haven't seen one in ranked play that I would consider even remotely problematic. There are counters to draw decks now in the form of Punishing Bolt (and its usefulness-challenged cousins, Punishing Strike and Touch Of Death).

Seriously, though. Priests are already considered the weakest of the three classes by a fairly wide margin. The only thing they would be good for in this new metagame is spamming Mass Frenzy.

 

I guess your not impressed with the buffs to heals and cleric damage? Maybe they can be buffed further but as long as BM stays dedicated to balancing I'm confident their usefulness will expand beyond the ability to draw extra cards and spamming mass frenzy.

 

The only deck in the metagame that ran any significant amount of healing was Firestorm, and that deck essentially dies with the update.

The buff to Vamp attacks gets offset by the nerfs to everything else Priests do. As someone who has run Vamps in ranked for the past three months, I can tell you with relative certainty that the deck needs card draw or it sputters out fairly easily with a couple of bad draws (that's where Martyr's Blessing comes in).

I can also say that in my experience Martyr's Blessing was never really a problem, despite what some others would tell you. At the high end of the rankings, I rarely ever ran into someone who played it. Martyr's Blessing requires the recipient to be hit twice to reap any sort of card advantage. It does make the opposing player consider carefully whether the damage dealt would be worth the difference in card advantage - which I think adds a certain aspect to the game - but I digress.

Mass Frenzy and Impenetrable Nimbus would really be the only "game changing" cards that Priests would have access to in a format that punishes players for creating card advantage. Well, that and possibly Unholy Energy, Inspiring Presence and Accelerated Thought being used in an offensive capacity to force players to the draw limit while maximizing the damage dealt by Punishing Bolt.

 

Having played around a bit with the changes on mp test server. I think its pretty clear wizards are now king of the hill. I'm guessing their data findings will prob show that as well. Flash flood is a cool idea but at least wall of stone provided cover to melee, now they can't even reach and still get blasted. Well you could say its counterable with wings or that flight armor, but most priest items with wings are not very good, the flight armor doesn't keep, so what does that leave? Teleport or telekinesis? Well if you're using telekinesis to get a melee guy over, you're already down a mage and cam almost guarantee flash flood mages will have enough to send you right back and how common is teleport on good warrior or priest items? Too many counters required for a specific card.

Next up, Punishing Bolt, we already knew this card was awesome, nothing's changed here. Really I think they need to consider lowering the range to 6 or less. Having a couple harnesses in your hand while the enemy has priority can lead pretty easily to getting hit with 14 dmg from 8 square away? Its tough to have to waste a move at beginning of round just to get into cover so you don't die or pray your opponent only had 1 in their hand (hint:they almost always have more than 1, run while you can !)

Which leads to next observation, since hard to pin down was hit with the nerf bat, our new alternative is surging shield block, HtPD was 50% change but surging is 33%, and the move is less. Well hard to pin imo was one of the best ways with a melee team to get close enough to troll builds like winds of war spamming 3DC to actually do some dmg, now thats gone and in its place we have a worse version, further helping wizardly dominance.

Another strengthening factor for control wizards, they basically have access to tokenless winds of war now, since improved tele is the new winds (sensate's ring for example), effectively giving these types of wizard another blue token, which will probably be spent on better staffs.

So what did melee based teams get in exchange? Huge nerfs to step moves, nimble was over the top I agree but as many have noted if your encumbered 2 your step moves are pretty much dead cards now. Some minor increase to dmg on bashes ? Ok... Some outdated cards like shredding strike being replaced by the AotA versions, pretty nice. Oh yes, quick scuttle, now thats a fun card. But I realized an important thing when testing it out if you really want decent access to this card you must sacrifice one of the best ways to get team run on your warriors, boots. Team movement is very important in mp, and I would argue melee need it moreso than wizards due to their proximity requirements. Another interesting thing I've found I thought quick scuttle would work the same way as moving through your allies, that is, you can step on an occupied square to move past. However, with free move, you cannot move behind someone if they have blocking terrain on both sides, or their allies on both sides etc. Many of you probably already knew this however I learned the hard way when I tried to use it on the bridge to get behind someone :/ I guess you could say well its free move, not teleport, but to me free move implies how you can say, walk past your allies in a 1 square wide corridor, even though technically you would be taking a step on an occupied square to get there.

Like others have said, the draw limits hurt priests the most, followed by warriors (elven manvr, martyrs bless, parry etc.) and wizards prob have the least to fear from a limited draw per round other then possibly a trait not getting replaced or something.

I could be completely wrong of course, maybe I'm just overlooking some combinations and when the "meta" settles post balance it will be a healthy mix of decks. Just not seeing anything but wizards ruling the roost at this point however.

 

I really like Martyrs blessing, I can see how scary it would be though in the right situation.

You may be right Hock, either way I cant wait to experiment.

 

I wouldn't really call Martyr's Blessing "scary". It's basically a less effective version of Elven Maneuvers, because you might always draw into something useless. You also have to spend a turn casting it on a non-self target.

As for wizards dominating, I'm just going to go ahead and call this test build "Wizard 102". Frost Jolt and Punishing Bolt still have a range of 8 and you can easily put ridiculous numbers of them on a character. Electroporter Novice, Robe Of Lightness and Sticky Slippers still allow 3DC to cycle traits to their heart's content - draw limit be damned. And everything else that would allow aggro to get "in" on them has been nerfed badly.