Stexe's Comprehensive Balance Analysis

If a single card can crush your deck, I think you have made a very poor meaningful choice.

 

Poor meaningful design choice. Things shouldn't be binary. And if there is a single counter to a "crusher" card then it is a non-choice using it.

 

Binary appears to be a basic premise of the game as it has been designed, as can readily be seen in the SP campaign. I, personally, like it - even if it's a pain sometimes. I suspect many of us find it fun, regardless of whether it follows some established game theory. To me it's part of the quirkiness of this game that sets it apart from the other "boring" card games I detest.

 

I can understand that, but from a multiplayer component (and single player to a lesser extent) most people find it extremely frustrating to be completely shut out with nothing to do. It is the same reason why control wizards were universally hated -- because they limited what choices you had. Not being able to move due to Encumber stacking and being pushed around on top of lava and having all your cards removed from SPR. That's basically what Resistant Hide does in that it can completely shut down things. Yes, there are ways to remove it -- but that involves building multiple cards all around a single counter and then hoping you get them.

 

I usually prefer beating them to death. It's why I hope Obliterating Bludgeon doesn't get nerfed. It has such wonderful synergy and symmetry with elf wizards.

 

I agree that having to use counters that are narrow isn't fun. However, every build has armor in it so armor removal is never dead. All my triple wizard builds pack some armor removal not because of Resistant Hide but because I know that getting damage through armor is one of the biggest difficulties of the build. When a card demands an answer and you need to use cards that are otherwise dead in other matchups then I fully support nerfs. Whirlwinds were a great example. You could certainly pack your build with Immovable and Stone Feet but you would lose more matches against other builds than you would win against Whirlwind. It wasn't fun to rely on useless cards that didn't even beat Whirlwind most of the time so a nerf was necessary.

 

Except Immovable is never a dead draw in any game. You are otherwise right to a degree, as one can never expect every card to be live at all times, see Parry versus a 3DC deck.

 

Immovable isn't technically a dead draw but it keeps you from running more useful things on your shoes which lowers your win percentage against other builds when you need to draw the card Immovable replaced.

 

A lot of the time in the old meta, Immovable on shoes was great, at it meant you weren't drawing useless moves. Sometimes, those tokenless shoes just need to help out by not getting in the way too much, though I wouldn't be too sure now with the whole new things happening.

 

While true, you can't look at it exactly like that, since immovable has essentially lowered your deck count by 1, and by its cycling it is digging you 1 card deeper to another possible solution contained in your deck. So essentially Immovable is a zero-sum card in all but some very extreme outlying situations.

I've always looked at it as a fetchland from Mt:G. While the card itself can't produce mana and can potentially never produce mana (if at 1 life, or all available targets are gone), the fact that it thins the deck (however slight an advantage that is, it is still an advantage) always prove to be useful.

 

Your point is valid except that even for cards that you can get from things other than shoes, by playing one less copy you are significantly lowering your chances of drawing it even when taking trait cycling into account. If you need to draw Team Run for example, you would much rather have a 1/18 chance of drawing it than 1/34.

 

I definitely agree with you. I guess what I forgot to mention, was that I wasn't explicitly talking about boots, and that is my fault. I blame it on my use of Solid Rock over Perfect Toughness, so I've been playing with other sources of the attachment.

Again though, you are 100% correct in saying that it isn't always a good draw, especially if it's competing for those valuable boot cards!

 

Yeah that helps, I think I understand a little better what you're saying now. The hard part with avoiding hard counters is that soft counters are more difficult to come up with and I think to some extent have to be more plentiful to be effective. I do agree that a good soft counter creates for more interesting game play (I'm thinking of something like sparkling cloth armor), but unfortunately in all the balance discussion I haven't seen anyone giving concrete ideas for soft counters (though it's possible I've missed them too - I easily get tired of balance complaining discussion, even though play tested well thought out feedback is clearly good.

 

+1 on the idea of nerfing mass frenzy down to duration 2, dmg 2, but I would like to see even more done to it.

There is no other card which comes close to its effect.

Comparing it to a powerful gold card like unholy wellspring:

-Same damage and duration bonus
-MF lasts a turn longer
-Unholy wellpring {UW} affects one character; MF affects three.
-UW has a range of 5, and deals 2 dmg to the target;MF has no range, you can cast it without even having be within seight of your teammates, and doesn't deal any dmg.
-On the flipside, UW affects all dmg whereas MF affects only melee, but when you compare all the other factors plus the fact that you can build enhtire party around MF, this is a negligible drawback.

So, correct me if wrong but this means MF is vastly, vastly superior to a card like UW.



I have noticed wnen I play mp quick draw, MF is the ONLY card I will not hesitate to take, unless of course I have no warriors imn party. Its almost an insta-click.
Is this the same for you, Stexe and others?

Finally, by warping teams MF makes the game boring. As Stexe said at the start, 1 priest, 2 warrior parties are doing well at high levels. I have not doubt that the main reason for this is a card like MF? Like Stexe, I get excited by variety, and different builds. Whereas MF builds with Team Run / Dash Team just make me "sigh" and ready to resign the game immediately.

please nerf this MF immediately!!

If it helps,My suggestion is the following cards as replacement/.

Twin Frenzy.

{Range 5}
Two targetr characters gain +2 Damage to all Melee Attacks
Duration 2

Considering how overpowered MF currently is, i'd say this is still a strong card. It also means the caster has to have line of sigh to his teammaters


Thanks
Christoff

 

I'll just quote this diamond-grade post.

Games are designed to be fun (at least i like to think so). Designers should keep in mind when designing ANY card, choices are all that is fun in games, and not REMOVING choices..

Congrats Stexe for your comprehensive balance analysis, i hope DEV's look deeply into it!

 

I've been meaning to respond and update this, but I wrote a huge response that then got deleted when my browser crashed. I figured I might as well get more experience with the changes before updating it again, but hopefully I will be in the next few days.

 

Well, I figure now is a good time to update this. Here are my thoughts BEFORE the new wave of balance changes. These will most likely change once I get around to testing the new stuff -- although some of them definitely won't.

Essentially, all my concerns from "Part 3 of 4: Other balance suggestions" pretty much held true after a month plus of testing.

The overpowered cards (Mass Frenzy, Resistant Hide, Dodge, Toughness, Martyr's Blessing, Elven Maneuvers, Impenetrable Nimbus, and Team Run) are still extremely strong and are dominantly so. I'd also add Defender's Block to that list, as it is essentially the best card in the game due to card advantage, ranged block, decent success rate, inability to remove on primary target, and the ability to bluff facing (due to having the block on another person).

Binary hard counter cards (such as Smoke Bomb and Illusory Barrier) are still problematic and can completely shut down some teams. Ultimately, the game is much more Rock/Paper/Scissors than it was before the first balance changes. There are a few extremely dominant builds, but even they have trouble if someone designs a build to counter it. The game has devolved more into making strong builds and getting the right match up than actually playing well in-game.

I'll give my feedback on the upcoming changes in a bit, but my initial impressions are "what?" Most of the changes address very minor things (targeted at single player, which makes sense a bit), but at the same time don't address the biggest offenders (binary cards).

Also, I still wish the negative cards were better balanced among themselves and that Nimble Strike got a bit more love back ... maybe making it more of a niche backstab item by giving it "Stealthy."

 

The ability to boost spell damage is vastly more significant than melee damage. Consider an Oblit Bludgeon vs. Oblit Spark... it is 17 to 9, granted this is the high end example, but when you consider the numerous multi-target spells (winds, cones, bursts, linear, Flash of Pain and good ol' Firestorm) the impact is much more significant especially since only Arcane Shell, Arcane Aura and Savage Curse and of course the class skills can boost spell damage outside of Unholy Wellspring. Why UW is not the powerhouse MF is, is partially due the difficulty to equip it; specificaly the only item with more than 1 copy is the Axe Of The Dark Soul which has 3 bad cards on it (along with the excellent Demonic Power) or you get 1 per item all using a token.

BUT that doesn't take away from the fact that MF is an OP card for it's power rating. If there were less items with 2+ copies and if they were harder to equip (most of the weapons with it are good and the items with it are typically good, even after the nerf to vulnerable) it would be less of an issue. This is similar to the NS issue, yes NS was OP, but it was the VP that made it a problem and forced such a harsh nerf to the point where the VP is now a curiosity.
I think Twin Frenzy would be too much of a nerf since it is a triple nerf package, you are lowering damage by 1, targets by 1 and requiring LoS. I think requiring LoS (with a short range like 4 or less) would be the best nerf since it forces more planning to use and would not target the caster, but still have it be +3 damage, or the more popular duration 2 (or 3) damage 2 nerf suggestion is viable.

 

Defender's block is game-breakingly good, and it has no counter. War cry needs to no longer be unblockable in order to counter it.

 

Agreed. That and/or requires both targets to be facing and/or not draw a card.

With the upcoming changes it will be one of the best things to take outside of Parry (when dealing with all melee teams). Right now Dodge on a shield makes it slightly better than Aegis of the Defender overall, but I suspect that will change once Dodge is nerfed.