Hi, new player here so this may be a REALLY stupid question, but so far, level 6 in campaign, 4 pvp battles played, I'm struggling to see the point of blocks, other then the fact that characters with shields almost have to use them. I'm willing to bet there are shields that do other things besides block, for people who don't prefer them, but beyond preference, as a new player just trying to understand the game, why would you ever want a block? When I'm forced to include them in my deck (which I am at this point in my progression) I hate drawing them as its a dead card in my hand until it actually procs, and I don't control when that is, or if that ever is depending on the block and what my opponent chooses to do. As an attacker I don't care if my opponent has blocks because I've yet to run into one with keep, so in most cases even if they successfully block my attack I look at it as if I just successfully landed a Memory Loss on them, I gave up a card to make them give up a card. Granted it wasn't a card that was doing anything for them, but that brings us back to the fact that you don't want blocks because they don't do anything for you except, if your lucky enough that they attack you with something block-able and from the front and your lucky on your roll, force a 1 for 1 card exchange. And don't even get me started on all the cards that make the block rolls harder or still do some damage even if blocked, or your opponents ability to purposely attack with their weakest attack first to draw out your block, even if you KNOW they're doing it, since you don't control when blocks proc. Now I "think" I did see an ai opponent use a block that drew them a card on success. That would make blocks make more sense, and seems like it should have been an inherent quality to nearly all blocks, like keep is to most armor. Is that perhaps something that does become common at higher levels, all blocks start drawing you a card on successful block so you at least came away with card advantage and deck thinning? Or is there something else about blocks that I'm just not grasping do to being so new that makes them worth all the more obvious issues they seem to have? All thoughts and advice appreciated!
Many blocks,especially higher-quality ones give special effects when blocking such as moving,healing,drawing,etc And for those that don't, you likely traded a low quality card for a possibly very powerful card. A measly pushback parry will completely stop mighty hacks.
There's a lot of nuance to the answer to your question but it's best understood by realizing what types of balances exist in the game. 1. You may notice the little circular "holes" near your equipment slots. Those are for "power spheres." The more powerful items have power spheres attached to them and your character will only be able to equip so many power spheres at once (this depends on your character's level). 2. Character level does not actually affect any aspect of gameplay except your first time through the campaign map. Any time you play multiplayer, or any time you replay an earlier campaign map, your characters' levels will all be set to the same value, appropriate for that quest. Therefore in order to replay content (or to play content at all beyond the first week!) you need to own an array of items which are usable at low levels as well as high. Basically you collect for all occasions. 3. Combine the concepts of 1. and 2. above with the idea that items themselves will have fewer power spheres if they have lesser cards attached to them -- and you will see that sometimes it's a smart idea to have lesser cards built into your deck intentionally. Maybe you have a spear with 6 really awesome attacks, but it costs 2 yellow (major) power spheres. You could instead equip the weaker spear with only 3 awesome attacks and 3 blocks ... but which only costs 1 blue (minor) power sphere. You can save those extra power-sphere equips for your armor slot, or another weapon slot, this way. In a nutshell, your premise is 100% correct. There are cards in this game that are just straight up better than others. But there are myriad reasons why you can't just equip the cards you want. So, sometimes a block which is a trade of one of your "bad" cards for one of your opponent's "good" cards is a worthwhile trade.
Hmm, I suppose that makes sense. It still seems a little odd to me that an entire type of card would be made purposefully inferior to the rest, but I have definitely noticed that the game puts an emphasis on giving you the choice to either be pretty good at everything, or be really great at a few things in exchange for knowingly weakening yourself in other areas. The whole concept of black cards, cards you'd add to your deck that actually negatively effect you, because they come in a pack with other amazing cards you couldn't other wise normally get access to, is really fantastic and takes the game into a new realm of deck construction play space I haven't really seen explored in other TCGs, digital or other wise. Definitely good stuff.
If you take it one step further and consider that some players might choose a deck with fewer attack cards but stronger ones, obviously a block that erases one huge attack is actually a great trade. It's one argument for using a deck with tons of middle-strength and weak attacks which you won't be bothered to have blocked.
Ultimately, the purpose of blocks is to prevent large amounts of damage. Card advantage is great and all, but at 0 hp it becomes completely irrelevant. The best possible armour stops around 2-3 points of damage per attack on average... so if you're getting hit for 10+ (and it can go up a lot from there) on a single attack, you're much better off stopping that attack completely than reducing it to the point where your character dies by a little bit less of a margin. Granted, you won't see that much in the earlier levels of the campaign, but it does become more of an issue in later levels, and much more in multiplayer matches. Also, blocking an attack stops any extra effects that might be attached to it, while reducing the damage with armour does not.
The other point is that your shield is mostly going to be about blocks anyway, so you might as well have the best ones!
Let me add an example: Player 1 has All out attack and mighty hack. Player 2 has parry Player 2 walks to Player 1. Player 1 strikes at Player 1 who has a high change (5/6) to actually block with parry. Lets assume he succeeds. He then draws a card and. If Player 2 has no parry he might be dead from the 22 points of damage instead. So in this case parry is better than having a strong melee attack card instead.
