[Suggestion] About Harness

Could it be possible to make it so we can only keep 1 Harness on top of the two card each end of turn ?

 

I like this. Give Leather/Chain/Enchanted Harness a new keyword: Overlap.
Overlap: One card with Overlap doesn't count against your card limit at the end of each round.

*EDIT* To be clear, Officer's Harness would be left alone.

 

Well, I don't like this.
OH should be stackable in any amounts or it would be a quite pointless card. Other harnesses are (mostly) good on their own.

 

How are other harnesses good?

Look at any harness... and compare the armor value. (Armor X multiplied by (7-die roll) )

Leather Harness - 3 points VS Mail - 6 points
Chain Harness - 6 points VS Hardy Mail - 8 points
Enchanted Harness - 8 points VS Barbed Platemail 12 points VS Grounding Plates 16 points

Heck even if you take two Chain Harness, it's the same as having two Hardy Mail! Big wup!
Or two Enchanted Harness, which makes them both Armor 2 100% . Amazing! It's not like there is an armor card with Armor 2 100% anyways... and it's not like the cost would be lower than gold either.

 

The point of harnesses is to combine them with other armors.

 

Enchanted Harness + Barbed Platemail (which can be found on the same item) averages 4.67 damage reduction for 2 cards + penetrating damage potential.

Enchanted Harness + Grounding Plates averages 5.33 damage reduction for 2 cards plus immunity to electricity.

Chain Harness + Grounding Plates (bronze and gold, which can be found together on an item I wish I could find) averages 4.33 damage reduction plus immunity to electricity.

So even 2-card harness combos are competitive, but they get even better the more armors you have.

 

The Plate armors you suggest are great cards. But are you really getting good value by combining them with Harnesses instead of other armor? Are those Harnesses just tagging along, making it look like they have value when they are really riding off the value of another card?
It might be nice that Barbed Platemail inflicts damage VS melee more often thanks to EH, but that's the extent of EH's usefulness.

You have Barbed Platemail + Enchanted Harness. That's 8 points + (12 + 8) points for a total of 28 points of damage reduction. Again, VS two Reliable Mail which give 24 points 100% of the time. It's a bit cost-heavy, but in this case Enchanted is contributing significant armor value.

Enchanted + Grounding is good because it totals 32 points of damage reduction. (8 + 16 +8) Unfortunately, this requires you to spend tokens on minimum two legendary items.
Chain + Grounding is not so good, totalling 26 points (6 + 16 +4) which is hardly worth the effort.

Chain's value: 10 (Hardy Mail 8)
Enchanted's Value: 16 (Reliable Mail 12)

Harnesses are a trick, a waste of time and money. Stick to cheaper, better armor like Reliable Mail.

If you look at even the best case, the Harness is contributing more or less equal value than the Plate armor itself. If you could use two Grounding Plates you would be a fool not to use those instead of one plus a harness.

That's just the problem. Once you get 2 armor cards, they DON'T get better. For one turn, yeah, you have more armor, but it's dead weight and you have to discard them at the end of the turn.

 

Enchanted Harness + Barbed is very-very much better than 2 Reliables. Even a lot better than 3 Reliables.

 

I suggested this to Jon during the balance change phase (all Harnesses have "You may keep 1 Harness in addition to your normal hand size") with Officer's Harness being renamed so it can stack unlimited. However, he didn't go for it (I assume it would require a lot more coding to implement): http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/stexes-comprehensive-balance-analysis.6262/

 

I think EH is definitely strong enough as is, and I don't want to see OH get nerfed. CH&LH could benefit from a small boost, perhaps.

 

A masterful understatement. You are a very accomplished player. Would you ever actually use them?

 

I would never use an item for them, but they're both fine in my book as incidental cards. I wouldn't avoid them. Also I don't think every card needs to be usable (see: Lateral Thinking). We don't want too many duds, but it's a fool's errand to have a flat power level at every quality step.

 

I think it's true that some cards should be duds. I find it somewhat troubling that duds like Chain Harness and Lateral Thinking are the prime cards in legendary items. I guess they can be interesting, insofar as seeing whether anyone actually falls for the hyped legendary status.
(And, yes, some of my post-surgical meds are kicking pretty good right now. )

 

OK so can we leave Enchanted Harness alone, maybe rename it to Enchanted Straps, and give Leather Harness/Chain Harness the boost?

 

? Why would OH get nerfed...? The idea would be to rename them to keep their special property.

EH might be too strong if you could still stack it -- so would all the harnesses technically. If "one harness doesn't count towards hand size" it might be too strong (since you could also hold onto more with your normal 2 card hold limit).

Overall, I think there are much bigger problem areas in the current balance of the game to worry about harnesses, but that's just me.

 

Was harness stacking on the test server really that bad? Or was it that no one was using enough Penetrating attacks, Sundering Strike, Boiling Armor, etc to compensate?

 

It was really that bad. It basically forced you to run armor removal and enough of it to hope that you drew it. If the enemy didn't stack harnesses (by using other denial like Cause Fumble / Defender's Bock) then you'd basically have a wasted deck. That's just not healthy game design at all.

 

Priests basically didn't have answers, either. And yeah, Stexe has the right of it.

 

So for a little while chain and leather harnesses were actually quite useful, and some people miss that.

 

Seems like if you drew Harnesses during your turn, you didn't draw any attacks. This "infinite harness stacking thing" has been discussed before, I just missed out on testing due to super-strict internet.