November Balance Changes: Priests, Racial Skills, and more!

I think there's actually auto-target functionality associated with the card types. If it's a pure assist, it'll auto-target yourself if there're no other allies in line of sight, even if there's an enemy in your LoS whom you want to purge.

 

Very interesting blog post, but there is a lot that can be criticized since it is based on opinion data over time without confirmation if there is a good sample size or if it contains the same people over the very long time line. There is the degree of difference concept. Is the difference between the best and the worst that significant? Does playing the best vs. the worst give a 1% edge a 10% edge a 95% edge? Same thought with #1 vs. #2 etc.

Also there is a big difference between a lack of balance and styles that cater to a particular players preferences, which in fighting games matters. I always lean towards the faster lower damage characters because I tend to win by being a touch quicker and using spacing to my advantage, my rival back in the day would use the more complex characters that had a lower hit rate but could do big damage though complex combos and this is less relevant for a strategy game.

BUT there is the lesson that "balance" is a bit overrated. If one character or style etc. could have more than a slight edge over the long run than it is going to be an issue. The issue is never finding balance but preventing significant built in advantages. I am a believer that it is better to buff than nerf since being powerful is always an appeal of playing any competitive game.

 

I think Purge is clearly a utility over assist. You would rarely want to heal or give frenzy to an opponent. Purge is a 50-50 in terms of utility being used to help self or hurt opponents.

 

*ahem*

AUTOTARGETS 4 N00BS

that is all

 

You said it yourself. Guess for whom I don't want to cripple the card? Noobs.

 

Would have liked neoncat's post had it not had the cat picture in it
But turning these utility cards into assist cards doesn't sound bad at all. Who cares about the color of the background

 

ooo ooo me me. I like my Purges purple and my buffs and heals white and never the twain shall meet.

 

Here I am getting ready to talk the wife about having a sensible X-mas budget and I see this and I immediately think ooooh let's see if it is on Amazon. Very hard to preach fiscal responsibility if and buy and inflatable unicorn horn in the same day.

 

The good thing with mages becoming more powerful is that there are already good counters. Its just that the counters are not currently used because you really have to worry about mages right now. If 2 mage teams become popular, then 2 warriors plus one smoke bomb wizard teams will come along to counter them. Then pure melee teams will make a comeback to beat the smoke bomb teams. We are then in a rock paper scissor scenario where people are tweaking builds to do better in bad matchups and overall we have a lot more variety in the decks that are being played.

 

I just wanted to mention that changing the Battlefield training effects will affect Oozeball.

 

Which would make the game even more Rock/Paper/Scissors and less strategic outside of match ups... something I *really* hope they don't go for.

Yeah, I think they should just remove BT / ABT from Oozeball. It would make the league a ton better.

 

By definition, if one build wins at least 50% of the time against any other build, then it is "optimal" and there is not a reason to play any other build. If no build wins at least 50% of the time against any other build, then by definition we have some degree of rock paper scissors. Having counter builds promotes build diversity, as people attempt to tweak their builds to have a better chance in unfavorable matchups while still doing well against the other popular builds.

 

^ That is why you see so much Dual Warrior + Priest builds. It is and still will be the most flexible and reliable after the changes. Can go toe to toe with another melee team, it can handle wizards depending on the map and the draw you get. Main trouble is well played vampire team but even those can fail spectacularly if they get a middling hand and you play smart against them. Purging burst is your friend against all these teams.

The rock/paper/scissors effect you see is more to do with RNG. Sometimes you get a great hand and sometimes the other guy does. Sometimes your parry fails at exactly the wrong moment and sometimes you dodge every single attack your opponent throws at you. If you've got a build that is giving you a >75% win rate then you have a dominant deck. I've seen very few of those ATM but nimble buffed dwarves are good on the current maps but it is a legendary heavy build needed to make it work.

Dodge heavy builds have some decent consistency too and are easier to obtain with only a couple legendaries. Mine had a >60% win rate. Could have been higher but I couldn't be bothered playing out matches that are likely a lost cause. Easier for all to just concede and get on with the next match to get more sweet sweet chests.

 

Oozeball is lame IMHO

 

My humble opinion about the changes:

Team Run, Mass Frenzy, Obliterating Bludgeon and Almighty Hack seems not overpowered anymore but still good, unique in there effects and propably playable in competitive MP - good work with that and also with changing the assist rules for priests and most of other minor changes.

But I think that proposed change to Dodge is way to severe and will make it disapear (along with a lot of great items that were "diamonds" in many players collections) from competetive play. Items that people "hunted" for long months spending their time and often money.
Of course current card is to powerfull for bronze quality, but have some weaknesses- due to the low realiability (4+) you could easily get killed before benefit from potential card advantage, it is not good against popular R2 melee attacks and magic (especialy AoE).
Many players proposed nerfing by adding "Keep unless 4" which works fine in limiting card advantage from alltruism, which is also a 50% chance bronze card (and trait which make gaining card advantage form it much easier). This could solve the card advantage problem.
Another thing why this card is problematic in my opinion is stacking more than one in your hand which make you very hard to hit. This could be solved by making multiple copies of Dodge trigger for only one effect - (so if having 2 dodge you roll only one time- 1,2,3 no effect, 4 - you dodge + discard both copies, 5,6 dodge & keep both copies) so drawing the second dodge would be drawing an extra walk instead of becoming almost invenurable. I think this 2 changes alltogether would make it reasonable good bronze rare and items with it maybe not the best in the game but still desirable.
You want your blocks doing something extra (like parry, Defenders block or surging shield block) or being reliable at least (bloodied block) to consider them playable. Dodge after proposed changes won't fit in none of these category. It's only slightly better then new paper common "skip". It will often be a -1 card trade (it triggers and you cant move out of range or you dodged out of range but you increased distance from the character you've trying to kill. Dodging out of range of other melee with no move but a lot of attacks while having no attacks on your character looks like the only often situation when dodge is better than some paper quality block. You could use free move (as someone suggested) to jump behind the target and hit him but you take the hit yourself so if your not going to kill him its propably not the best trade either.

So to summerize downgrading a card from one of the best defensive cards to weak block seems as too much influence. Nimble strike which was treated with similar severness almost dissapeared from MP while still beeing one of the best step attacks - others were nerfed too. If Dodge will be crippled as only "block" in this balance changing I fear all items with it automaticly become useless, and warriors have already very few rare+ weapons to be excited about. Stacking with bejeweled sword as the best warrior weapon with no perspectives to get something better dont seems like fun. What would you hunt for then?

Also some people pointed that nerfing vamp attacks looks unnecessary combined with already nerfed MF. It could be true, with Team run also nerfed (Team run was in my opinion also a big incentive to run vampire over warrior = he could easily spare extra golden token on boots). Warrior and wizards have paper/bronze cards that are IMHO at least the same power level as current draining spears (eg. able bludgeon, flash of agony, strong hack/ bludgeon , force cannon, path of knives).
draining attack are really weak when not buffed and you are very often forced to use them when you are not injured so the don't give you healing bonus. And most of all its making another rares weak and anothe epic and legendary items uninteresting.

Changing Bungled heal, which was very interesting card for very weak and straightforward armor and removing both Healing Benediction and Healing Presence also don't look like a step forward.

I hope you will take this to consideration.
Regards & keep on the good work!

 

I just noticed that healing pulse was lowered from heal 3 to heal 2. This change was not documented in the blog post (only the fact that it does not heal enemies).

 

Ah that would explain why so many folks suggested lowering it to 2 despite it already being lowered to 2. Sorry for not publicizing this—but yes, the heal amount was lowered.

 

Just noticed a bunch of changes on the test server, and I am going to spoil the impending blog post

Dodge is keep again, but 5+ rolls.
Martyr's bless cannot target self.
Bad luck is reverted back to the original.

That is all I noticed so far.

 

Hey everyone! We've got some updates to the changes on the test server. Read about them here: http://www.cardhunter.com/2014/11/november-balance-changes-round-2/

The guidelines for playtest reports have also changed, to make sure we focus on the remaining issues. Check it out here: http://forums.cardhunter.com/thread...aytest-report-bounties.6638/page-2#post-76368

We're really grateful for all the feedback so far, and are looking forward to finishing up these changes.

Thanks!

 

Thoughts:
- I could see a burst-1 bad luck getting use. It would be great against goblins and monkeys.
- Dodge is now a reduced form of Reflexive Teleport, which already sees zero play in its gold form
- looking forward to those elf skill tweaks BUT... why does "Untrained Insight" have triple evasion / no insightfulness (maybe drop in a scouting run?)? and isn't "Apprentice Evasion" more like "Violent Evasion" or "Forcible Evasion"? ^_^