[Feedback] Comments on Balance Changes AFTER Playtesting

i see a downside to putting them in any slot other than heavy armor and if you only put them in that slot it doesn't matter if your opponent runs zero armor removal it won't break the game

 

Let me just copy what Jon wrote in the last balance thread, so that you understand that it's not a sure change at all like you are saying and that the devs are looking closely to this issue:

Harness Stacking
"There’s been some concern about the ability to accumulate large numbers of Harnesses in hand, given the change that allows them be kept in excess of your normal hand size. It’s very possible that we went too far here, but we want to get more data on these cards, so we’ll be keeping an eye on them as playtesting proceeds".

Only one extra harness armor could be a good solution, and as I also said before, I really hope that Officer's Harness keeps it's playability by not counting for the max hand as it happens in MP now. That way, stacking OH could still be a good strategy, even better than before because you could have an extra Harness that helps you to roll what you need to prevent damage. This way, devs would achieve what they want (giving more importance to armor) but it wouldn't be as bad as stacking armor being a winner combo unless your opponent is running armor removal or lots of penetrating attacks, and they wouldn't be hurting so much items that have OH in them.

 

Had a game with Neoncat today. By the second round his warrior was on the point with an enchanted harness and a thickened mail, and then he drew a second enchanted harness.

And that was GG.

No attacks traded, no jockeying for position, no baiting out blocks or over extensions, nothing. He just drew three cards and moved onto the point.

My two dwarf warriors just couldn't do enough damage to kill him before the control point gave him the win. Powerful Hack would do THREE damage. The Mass Frenzy I finally drew in the last round would get it to SIX. Add in the stone feet he cast, and there was no moving that elf either, with an additional 1 armor as well. Never mind the blocks that could be drawn, or any other support from priests such as Cause Fumble, or Impenetrable Nimbus, or healing.

And I'll note, from playing a couple other games with him, that his warrior included several Obliterating Bludgeons also. So it's not like sitting around attacking his impenetrable warrior for three damage was risk free. One of my warriors had to step back behind cover, or he would have died and the game would have been over even sooner.


That's broken. He just drew three cards, and moved onto the point. And that was it. I've been on the fence about the harness change, but I've been messing around with chain harnesses mostly. Those generally take time to build up, and while they are strong and can get to a broken state, there can be time to counter it with something other than straight armor removal. As a player, I like the idea of armor in general, armor buff cards, and accumulating power over time. So I was unsure of how broken they were.

This clears it up nicely, for me. As a whole, the harness change is overpowered and broken. Cleanly, no way around it. It cannot go live as it is.



P.S. On the idea of keeping only one extra harness, the above incident was done with three cards. One thickened mail, one enchanted harness is the normal two cards, plus one extra enchanted harness. So this problem would still happen, and so I'm convinced that would not work.

 

there are armor removal cards, use them

i wish they would just throw this change into live then people would see nothing like what happened to Zacharianthi would happen at 1200+ rating and would only happen under that rating if someone tanked their rating and took some legendary harness build to 1k rate.

plox Jon throw into live there is no season ongoing to disrupt and people are hungry for humble pie.
i hope you don't get pressured into a nerf by the loud minority, would hate to see one of the best meta changes in a game i have ever seen not make it to live. whats worse is the people opposed to this change would pat eachother on the back like they have saved the world but what they really would have done is make the most perfect career defining balance change ever known to man (whoever thought of it is a god among men) just a fond memory of what could of been. :'(

 

I agree about most of you said, but did you play a rematch? As you're describing it, it could have been insane luck that Neoncat drew that combo on turn 1 and 2. But on the other hand, if a deck is built for that purpose, it's true that it could be very likely to draw at least one EH and one Thickened Mail by turn 2.

The EH+Thickened Mail combo I suggested could have up to 4 EH (2 on the helmet and 2 on the boots) and 3 Thickened Mail (Heavy Armor). If you add enough trait cycling (1 or 2 Crazy Sal's Halberd + 2 traits on the elf skill + 2 or 3 on the martial skill would be enough), then that combo is a true possibility. I wonder if Neoncat used something like that on his elf warrior in that match.

And I also understand why you said that with only 1 EH the problem would still happen. 1 extra EH and 1 EH in hand with another 4 armor is still a problem.

 

Exactly what I've been saying. It creates a very binary state of "I draw the armor cards I need and the enemy doesn't have armor removal so I win."

 

Yes, we played 3 matches. I drew into at least one enchanted harness and at least one heavy armor (armor 3 or 4) each time. I was testing a drawbot + harness stacking, so it wasn't just insane luck. ^_^

(I did lose the first match to Z because I was far too aggressive with the support priests.)

 

Enchanted Harness was already a totally playable card, albeit slightly niche. Not sure it needed the boost. Harnesses are definitely in our sights; you guys have been heard!

 

I just played Qivril a couple of times. Although I lost (due to testing penetrating attacks, which turn out to be useless for actually killing anything), my warrior ended up holding 4x Enchanted Harness, Thickened Mail, Officer's Harness, and Grounding Plates by the last round. Qivril hit me twice with Punishing Bolt, for a total of 1 damage point (while I was holding a couple extraneous cards). ^_^

 

What about removing the "not count against your hand limit" part of Enchanted Harness and removing "whenever you roll a die for armor, add 1 to it" of Chain Harness?

And what about changing Short Perplexing Ray to "Target discards 2 cards at random. If no armor card has been discarded this way, target draws a card at the beginning of the next round." to make it playable again?

Otherwise if Cause Fumble is such an issue, why not changing Unnerving Strike to "Discard all failed blocks against this attack"?

Just asking, I haven't played with armor stacking or with Cause Fumble.

 

What do you think about the change I proposed to SPR in this thread? http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/suggestion-creative-balance-suggestions.6239/

The target discards all of their cards at the end of the round; setting them up to be beaten down, but also giving them an opportunity to use their cards, purge the attachment, or escape.

 

Another option if it's decided harnesses need a reduction, give enchanted harness and chain harness a new keyword, something along the lines of:

Unique - "If a card of the same name is in your hand when this card is drawn, discard this card and draw a new card."

This would allow harnesses to not count against the hand limit, but prevent more than 1 copy of the most powerful harnesses from being in play at any time. If someone wants to stack harnesses they would then have to stack different types which is more difficult. I also see the unique keyword potentially having uses elsewhere too.

 

While a clean idea, this increases potential for cycling by quite a bit, which is something we're not currently interested in doing.

 

Mmmmm, that is true. Just trying to think of ways to dial back without rescinding the "not counting against hand limit" idea entirely as I personally think it strengthens what were weaker areas of the game. It would be cool if it could stick around in some form. If I think of anything more I'll throw it out there to see if it sticks .

 

I know that right now the main concern is around armor stacking, but I'd like to put Twin Heals change back in the table. It's not as important as the big changes obviously, but I don't really get how a bronze quality card can heal 4 to 2 allies, have "may self target" and also a very good 6 range, while a silver card like Heal heals 4 to only one target (also has "may self target") with the hardly noticeable advantage of having range 8.
We all agreed that Twin Heals needed some love, but the buf is too much (that or Heal needs a buff too). I also get the new BM policy of buffing some rare cards and making them strictly better than commons and uncommons. We may agree or not on that, but a bronze quality card has to be inferior to a silver quality card no matter which is the rarity. I'm aware that it's not the case with all cards, and the best example here is Barge, but that doesn't mean we should add one more card to that list.

I have 2 suggestions:
1) Twin Heals: Heal 3 to 2 targets, range 6 (can't self target)
2) Twin Heals: Heal 3 to 2 targets, may self target, range 3

That would make the card very playable, even better than Heal in a lot of situations, but not always better as it happens after the buff.

 

It may be too strong coupled with Roots but would obviously nerf armor stacking and dodges. Talking about Dodge, what if SPR says: "Target discards all boost cards in hand"?
Notable boost cards it could discard:
-All harness but Officer's Harness
-Dodge, Jump Back
-Quickness Aura, Energizing Move
-Frenzy Aura, Arcane Aura
-Traits if you start the round and SPR is your first action.

I always wanted a way to deal surely with Dodge the same way Boiling Armor deals with armors, War Cry deals with blocks, Purge with the Attachments or Trickery/Counterspell for the attacks.

I would prefer a buff of the other heals. I remember the first time I beat the campaign, I was crazy about Silver Healing Ring. But later when you encounter only enemies that deal 10+ damages with each attack (high levels in SP or MP) you see that healing isn't the way to go. Unless the healed is packed with armors, healing can't compete with damage dealing.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why priests are unloved and used mostly for Mass Frenzy (aggro) or with vamp attacks (aggressive way too).

 

Personally don't really see twin heals as needing a debuff, I mean it's been widely considered as competitively unplayable for awhile, with the change, ppl might actually consider running it as opposed to the general "oh great another epic with twin heals? Well that kills it for me just throw on the trash pile" Maybe change heal to make it interesting, like an opposite punishing, say heal 4 + 1 for every card in targets hand .. I dunno, don't really pay attn to card rarity comparisons much. Can't say aside from the odd deck here or there I've seen pure healing strategies dominating the game in any form or another (th0ugh certain firestorm teams could be considered an offshoot) , damage output is still generally more efficient, so my impression isn't going to hurt things too much if they leave it where it is. Maybe there's some critical mass to be reached if a number of heals get upgraded to a certain level they become a dominant strategy, have you seen any evidence of the change to twin heals causing such an effect on test server?

 

Not at all, I'm not talking about healing becoming dominant or anything like it. I'm just arguing that there's no reason to make a bronze card strictly better than a Silver one. This is replacing one unplayable card for another. No one would think about using Heal now, making all items with Heal very bad because of the existence of the much better and cheaper Twin Heals.

 

Yeah, Twin Heals biggest problem was not being able to self target which has been changed now. But until Barge is around, it's not the weirdest card considering its rarity

 

I agree, I thought it was a weird over buff in comparison to other changes.

Ugh, don't get me started on Barge and other weird non-changes... I'm going to see what I can do on fixing the biggest problem areas and lack of changes to others.