[Feedback] Comments on Balance Changes AFTER Playtesting

There are already drawbacks to drawing more cards. The first is that you have to discard down to 2 in hand at the end of the round, so cards left in your hand at the end of the round are wasted. Then there's Punishing Bolt, and its almost-never-used-in-MP cousins Punishing Strike and Touch Of Death - and related cards such as Devastating Blow. Just like there's Path Of Knives that makes movement into a drawback.

Jon's explanation on the blog was that the draw cap was supposed to limit trait cycling, but the fact that there is now a proposal to make it so that traits don't count towards the draw cap goes directly against that line of reasoning. Exempting traits from the draw cap would help 3DC more than anything, and it would put the cross-hairs of the proposed change squarely on Priests, who are already considered by many to be the weakest class in the game. To me, it makes no sense. It's solving a problem that doesn't exist - or potentially creating more problems.

My test server name is New Frontiers, in case you are implying that I haven't tested this new build at all.

 

Some of the negative traits are appreciably more dangerous, particularly at low levels. Slowed needs some attention because it can actually be used as a move card if you have a movement buff, and if used to set a facing is discarded without affecting any actual move cards.
It's come in handy for me, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what was intended.

 

I'm not implying anything; I was just curious.

And I was just curious what it would be like to see what would happen if Traits didn't contribute to it. Not saying one thing or another -- that's an important part of testing is to see what happens. Also, I'm not saying 3DC isn't a problem (it is), but making traits not count against the draw limit doesn't exclude nerfing 3DC as well.

From what Farbs and Jon said on the test server the idea that you can use it to turn around was intended. They wanted it to be a very minor negative card because the loss of a card draw was bad enough. Although I do agree it probably wasn't designed with the idea of movement buff cards in mind. They should probably just change it to "Change your facing" like Spin Around to avoid the ability to use it for actual movement (unless that was intended too, but that seems a bit weird to me).

 

Ok. So I ended up playing 6 (I think) MP matches in which only one was against an actual person. I started with a 1 warrior/2 priest team that beat Gary, lost to Mom and beat Mom, and lost to a spark/path of knives version of 3DC against a person. It was interesting, but not necessarily fun. I over extended with my warrior and she got sparked to death. My priests tried, but really couldn't get near the dwarves.

Then I made a 3 Human Wizard team based around Sparks/Path of Knives/Force Movement cards. It was tons of fun. I handily beat Mom each time I played her. The difference was so stark that I would only play wizards to start out if I were to start playing MP. In fact, the composition I used I could almost remake easily with my actual collection.

 

What if draw limits only count cards drawn during your turn? That would exempt Martyr Blessing, Elven Maneuvers, and opponent's Dwarven Battle Cry / Inspiring Presence.

 

A few balance updates just hit the test server. Check them out and please continue giving us feedback
http://www.cardhunter.com/2014/08/balance-changes-round-two/

 

I also wanted to step in and thank everyone who's sharing deck lists. I think it's easier for more people to test more things when you see the same build in multiple people's hands. I'd love it if people shared deck lists for as many archetypes as possible. Now that draw limits have increased, I'm also interested in how trait-jamming vampires and Blesscano will fare.

 

Huzzah for the card cap being raised.

Initial thoughts:
Cleansing Ray was fine as it was already: a niche card that was very powerful in the right build (i.e. Volcano). I don't think adding heals will make for increased play, as it essentially becomes a Minor Heal.

On the other hand, it creates some synergy with Talented Healer now, so I'm a bit intrigued.

The changes to Deadly Spark and Potent Spark weren't undone, so that issue still remains. Instead of wizard control being dominant, I think it will just morph into raw damage builds using those cards and Punishing Bolt. The latter still has Range 8... which is pretty crazy for a card that often hits for 8 damage (often more) and becomes Hard to Block with the Spark traits.

Electroporter Novice and Robes Of Lightness remain intact. Even with the nerfs to Encumber and WoW/GoW, I have to wonder if that's enough. Now you can still Encumber down to 1 and push opponents away. No more being stuck in lava, but now being held at bay while getting Sparked to death.

Cause Fumble was fine at Range 6; just make it so that it takes facing into account. I never believed this was a card that needed a buff or a nerf.

What is all of this emphasis on Fly? Wings Of Faith is not an easy card to just tack onto a build. There is only one item with the card that isn't Epic or Legendary.

Nimble Strike is going to be problematic. The problem with the card was never its damage, it was its ability to simply ignore facing. Step 2 Fly is almost as bad as Step 4 in that when one Warrior is engaged with another Warrior, NS can simply be used to jump over and attack from behind. And the fact that Vibrant Pain is STILL 6x NS with no drawback means you can still stack 15 of them on one Warrior with barely any repercussions.

Cards that are still problematic, in my estimation: Resistant Hide, Toughness, Punishing Bolt

Jon always talks about what's "fun" and "exciting" in this game. I don't see how loading up on armor is fun or exciting for anybody. It reduces damage... and that's it. If there were more effects like Inspiring Armor or Barbed Platemail that happened when armor triggers, then maybe it would justify some of those buffing harnesses not to count towards hand limit. I think they should do something other than make other armor more likely to reduce damage.

 

Cause Fumble ignoring facing is weird, I agree with that.
But dont think that NS's damage doesn't matter - it does. Without buffs it's only 4 more damage than a Walk card that can fly which is not much. And running 15 of them is bad when opponent's warriors have some real attacks like ones from BSS. NS is more about utility now - and block removal. It even gives Weak Parry a draw now!
And I repeat than Punishing Bolt could be 2 damage + 1 damage for each card held

 

My gut says the new changes as a whole are great if only because if I wanted to run the "strongest build" on test at this point - I don't know what I'd run. Because this is the thread for posting thoughts after testing I'll refrain from adding any more at this point. I'll try to get some time on test and report back.

 

@Hock Faraday - these are not the only changes we intend to make! We didn't want to change a million things at once, so we responded to a few problems and want to see how things go. The changes we made do not indicate that we're ignoring things we didn't change.

Regarding Cause Fumble, a lot of people have been unclear on how it worked traditionally. There has always been confusion as to whether the priest needs to be facing the attacker, or is it that the figure being protected needs to face the attacker? Removing the facing requirement on Cause Fumble is basically all about making the card simpler and more intuitive. We want to make the card interesting and strong (silver!), while still making sure it cares about positioning to some extent. We went too far on buffs initially and we're reeling it back in a bit.

 

Funny, I just posted on the other feedback thread saying almost the exact same things regarding wizards, sparks, PB, Electroporter Novice and NS.

 

My deck I'm testing is posted here:
http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/test-server-deck-sharing-thread.6229/

So essentially I'm a little worried about a team using lots of cause fumble. I'm less concerned about defender's block, but they do get used together. They both should be good cards, one is a silver and the other is gold quality, so these have ample room to be quite good. Defender's block is harder to get, with only a single shield offering you multiple of them (and the 3rd card sucks).

My build isn't even trying to maximize the amount of these I'm running, with only 4 on each character, but since they block for the entire team I find that it's plays like I'm running plenty of them. On smaller maps, where my entire team can cover each other with the blocks, it's hard if not impossible to attack through 3 or 4 of these.

This build felt like it could really shutdown warriors. Between the blocks and elvish trickery opposing warriors struggled to land a single attack in an entire match. It just seems to overwhelm them.

Flax and I faced off, he had a similar priest build running a lot of these, and we had multiple turns where we simply couldn't hit each other. Considering that my build could run up to 7 more cause fumbles per priest, that could get out of hand.

it's obviously almost useless against wizards, so that should be considered.

 

I was running neoncat's build from the first page of this thread, for whatever it's worth.

 

Yeah my team goes wide with it rather than deep. Neoncat's suppressor build shows how oppressive a single priest can be when maxed out on these. I think my build shows that if you have enough of them across the team it's equally oppressive.

I tend to think that due to the way items are designed, various items have multiple cause fumble and divine items can be equipped in greater number, that it's cause fumble that should be examined.

Defender's block can probably exist just fine in the environment (though this may indicate not to create a shield with 3X of them), but not in conjunction with the current cause fumble.

spitballing a couple replacements for a silver quality block named cause fumble.

1) 4+ block melee. Any attack that is blocked deals damage to that attacker instead.
2) 3+ block melee. When this blocks an attack, the attacker must discard a random attack card from their hand.

 

A shield with 3x Defender's Block would be level 27, so that's not happening anytime soon. I agree with you though.

 

Cleansing Ray doesn't trigger Talented Healer. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional. If intentional, I'm wondering why that doesn't work but Healing Dash Does.

 

It's because Cleansing Ray's heal isn't keyworded. Will fix.

 

So, after testing melee yesterday I tried a 3 DW today. I won my 3 matches, 2 against melee teams, which means that wizards can still compete and do well. I will copy what I told Flax in the report:

- Wizards can still compete and do well against different kind of builds, but aren't op as before, which is good.
- Control is more difficult now. Encumbrance nerf means that lava is less of a threat. Sliding your enemies away is also harder. Elven warriors are a serious threat because they can close the gap very quickly.
- On the other hand, direct damage is great. I think it compensates well with the control nerf. I feel that the races are well balanced, at least dwarves and elves: elves close the gap quickly but you can kill them more easily, while dwarves are slower but can resist more damage. Humans... well, I'm not sure there are many reasons to run humans now, I hope I'm wrong.
- Deadly Spark in quantities is better than Punishing Bolt in quantites, at least for the damage. With Focused Electromancy on your build, Deadly Spark is usually a 7 penetrating attack damage with hard to block 2. Punishing Bolt diminishes its damage throughout the turn, armor also reduces the damage (especially with Enchanted Harness + a 4 Armor like Grounding Plates) and can be blocked more easily. The only better thing about Punishing Bolt is its 8 range and also the fact that it isn't affected by Squeamish, meaning that you can run PB with those great Sensate's Rings. That's why I don't think that PB's range should be nerfed, as some have said.
- Flash Flood seems more appropiate now with all the possible counters it has. And it's not a dead card against wizards, VP denial with water can be a great way to win some stars with little effort, which was what happened when I played against another 3DW team.
- Stacking armor... I have mixed feelings. I don't dislike the whole idea, but sometimes it feels that a match can be decided just because if you have the armor removal you need or not. Wizards have it easier, but for warriors and priests, getting Sundering Strikes in quantities is very hard.

 

After testing I really haven't had an issue with warriors stacking so much armor.

Acid is now useful again, since terrain control seems to be a focus here.

Also slipped in a few boiling armors.