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

So does anyone else anticipate the meta becoming burst/buff wizard free-for-all with the upcoming changes? We're already seeing tons more wizard/priest teams just from the change in map rotation...

While team run is really powerful, it's one of the only things that lets warriors potentially keep up with wizards without ruining your chances against other builds. At move 2 it's going to be much less effective for closing in on low-movement teams...

 

I think the biggest problem post-balance will be the maps. The Tezkal set contains three (out of four) maps with burst-1 coverage of all victory squares from a single hard-to-attack position, as well as one or two movement choke points. These two factors favor burst wizards tremendously.

Most other rotations only have one map (the Streams variant) which is so heavily unbalanced in favor of wizards.

 

I was anticipating it just from the changes alone, but these maps are amplifying the effect hugely. The real problem I'm seeing is that not only will gigaburst builds be extraordinarily hard to counter without large amounts of movement and defense, but the items with the required bursts in large quantities (Namely pointing the finger at Staff Of Embers, Staff Of A Million Embers, Blue Destruction, and Searing Pain) are as @neoncat said when they posted their build: "Well out of reach for most players." Though this deck is influenced by terrain and can be beaten by moving very quickly and killing the wizard, once the updates go live warriors will lose a lot of power and mobility due to the changes to Obliterating Bludgeon and Team Run, leading to people either hoping to draw a lucky Sprint, Team or more than likely starting to use gigaburst wizards themselves. I don't use this comparision lightly, but Buff/Burst may turn into what Nimble Strike/Whirlwind was.

On the lighter side of things, yay! Bad Luck is staying a ranged attack! Dodge isn't totally worthless! Shuffle, Team isn't overpriced! It's good to see that you're starting to use the potential of adjusting card quality sparingly for good purposes. Can't wait to not get obudgeoned except by the A.I. anymore!

 

Yes. That's what I ran on the test server and did very well with. Granted, that was before the Suretsrike (or whatever it was called) was changed to melee only.

 

This is my personal worry, but honestly it may be that / have become that even without these changes (as neoncat mentions, the issue may be real on the current map rotation even without the balance changes). I believe that not enough pressure was put on burfft wizards in the past due to lack of availability of legendaries, and that they're basically incredibly strong. Nerfing Dodge doesn't affect this; nerfing Team Run may affect it a bit (though that change evens the playing field for the rest of the environment). Right now I'm interested to see how the metagame develops after the changes. There are answers to burfft (Smoke Bomb comes to mind) and I'm interested to see if the meta can sort of 'right itself' to prevent burfft from becoming dominant. Also, wondering if prevalence of burfft might diversify shields a bit. Not optimistic, but curious. This is just my interest as a player, to be clear. I'm not making predictions.

As a member of the dev team, my plan is to watch the environment. If a serious problem becomes identifiable we will work to deal with it.

 

Smoke Bomb is ok, but the current rotation has so much water (which smoke doesn't cover) that it isn't as hard a counter as it would be. (I say this having destroyed a couple of smoke bomb teams that couldn't actually manage to block my LOS+1.)

I've had the most trouble against is rushing elves, when they hold back for the first round, and then press the wizard with two dashes + mass frenzy + nimble strike.

 

Yes, the problem with Wizards is that they are very binary. Smoke Bomb, Illusory Barrier, and Res Hide can all shut them down if they don't build to counter it. I suspect the top builds will probably be Wizards + Priest teams who don't run that many counters and just eat a loss when someone has lots of counters but stomps on everything else.

That's why I've been pushing for removing the binary counters and balancing the game more around that.

 

I can say the thing I am most sick of seeing now are buffed burst wizards... I think and I know I will probably be in the minority (as usual) that burst spells need to be changed. I think the 2 burst 1 spells should have lessened damage for the burst area as opposed to the target space. Fireball is a gold and should be mean.
I would recommend -1 for people in the blast radius of Arcane burst and no attachment for those in the blast radius of ember burst... unless I get a blue destruction and staff of million embers in which case everything I just said is stupid and isn't fair.
But i think with the map changes a double Whorl wiz might be might next project... but i wonder does impetuous blast trigger savage curse? That could be dangerous! Maybe my wiz can be Carlos Danger.... DANGER! Danger!

 

I think it is time to make ALL terrain attachments that are more than a single square duration 1... DANGER!

 

Maybe not duration 1, but definitely not duration 3.

I have some proposed changes that would probably help bring the game balance back in, although considering my last proposals have been basically ignored not sure what the point is... :-P

 

I was thinking about this and I suggest Team March...

 

Yeah, and change the base movement to 3. It seems weird it goes from 4 + team 3 to 2 + team 2...?

 

The marches I remember went further. Team Stroll would also go further, but probably take more than one round. Team Amble? Team Saunter?
Why joke about this? To match the card, of course.

 

Isn't it obvious? Maybe there aren't any line-dancers or Texans in the CH community. It should be Team-Two-Step!

 

Good call! I'm a Texan, but I don't dance. (I play in the band.)

 

The rebalance is pretty interesting. Frenzy especially make 1/1/1 teams way more viable. Surestrike is cheap, potentially making even level 1 commons useable in MP. Team Walk feels too weak imo, perhaps 3/2/2 would be better. Dodge doesn't feel too strong, which is good, because even though I used lots of them it was clearly OP in a non-fun way (Team Run was OP, but in a fun way, with plenty of positioning decisions). One issue, aside from balance, is the increasing rarity and specificity of good equipment. There is a big gap between Aegis of the Defender and any other shield (where there used to be similar good options of multiple rarities) and playing burst wizard requires a couple specific legendaries. What I mean by "specificity" is, there are multiple shields with 2+ dodges, multiple shields with 2+ parry, but only 1 shield in the game with 2+ Defender's Block. Maybe create some more if DB is to stay this way?

Something I hope can be rolled back though is Bungled Heal. Bungled Heal can be the gateway card to understanding how to play. At first you think it is terrible. Then you realize it has a chance of healing you and triggering an enemy block. Then you realize you could cast it directly on full life enemies to either trigger a block or get a heal only for your team. I always considered it one of the "classic" Card Hunter cards. The replacement is super boring.

 

I agree about Bungled Heal... There are other blocks that are good besides Defender's and really the Aegis is a stiff price as it is a yellow token and a weak chop.
Now with the addition of surestrike defender's might lose a bit of it's appeal since there is always a tradeoff that needs to be made to have it in your deck.
The lack of Burst items is a problem/mixed blessing. In some ways it is great as I think Burst overcomes one of the fundamental principles of using LoS to protect from wizards and the less burst the better. The bad side is with 2 mono-burst items and one 5/6 burst item when you get one you get a lot OF BURST (not to mention the Whorl with 3 and Red Flame with 3 and 3 Instant Burn). I swear if BM creates another mono weapon (6 card item) with a powerful or unique card I am going to start a petition. Mono items take away from the need to have balance by being able to have only what you want and not take on cards you want avoid... like Weap Chop on Aegis of the Defender.

 

I want us to not.

 

So it finally happened to me... I had a Pulverizing + AoA combo blocked ... and only did a lousy 6 points of damage and lost my AoA.
I know this is how it is supposed to work, but a man can dream of clobbering brave opponents to death despite blocking my best shot.
But now that Sure Strike is EVERYWHERE, I will need to add a few more to the Pulverizing Thundercats build. I swear this will work and once I get back to 1500 I will publish (although really nothing intricate and only marginally original).