"When you take damage from an enemy card, draw a card and reduce this card's duration by 1. Discard that card unless it is a Move card. Repeat until you have drawn a Move card or drawn six cards." An easy way to balance Elven Maneuvers is to reduce the duration a la Force Field. Edit: added complete card text
That's an interesting suggestion of how to nerf it. $:^ ] I'd love for this to be tested (alongside the simpler nerfs of "give it Duration 2 instead of 3" / "raise its value a whole 3-level notch"). EDIT: Well, to toss in some more to the idea, perhaps it could instead say to reduce the duration by 1 when the Move card actually gets drawn instead of just when you take damage period. After all, it'd be a shame for the card to become just outright unusable (i.e. "Didn't draw a card this time? Tough cookies. Duration -1").
@PKB Interesting suggestion to only reduce if successful. But consider the success rate is directly related to the number of movement cards in the deck. Builds with nothing but a few gold movement cards (Violent Spin, Quick Run) are less likely to be successful than those with a plethora of silver/bronze movement cards (Nimble Strike, Lunging Bash). Decrementing only on success is more beneficial to the former than the latter. I believe those gold card builds are the primary reason that Elven Maneuvers is overpowered. There is of course, no right answer.
@rinco: I've seen very, very few decks where EM consistently fails to draw because of very few high-value Moves and nothing else. Of course, I'm not in the 1800s, either. $:^ P Still, I haven't seen it when spectating nor leaguing, either -- and when I've built such decks, I've hated repeatedly not drawing. The OP-ness I've generally seen is a warrior drawing a combination of Vicious Thrust, Lunging Bash, Nimble Strike, Laser Thrust, Violent Spin, etc. A whole bunch of "lower" quality Moves (b/c drawing Vicious Thrusts with each bit of damage is lower quality? ha ha ha ha anyway lol) with some golds sprinkled in. (A wizard drawing Surging arcanes is wonderful but for obvious reasons doesn't retain much viability after about 1199 Elo...) I didn't think of it when I wrote it, but reduce-duration-on-draw would actually liken it to Force Field that much more. Agreed on "no right answer." As it is, reduce-duration-on-draw might make it underpowered and once again make elves low-tier instead of on-par / equally viable like all races and classes really should be. $:^ ]
If perceived as underpowered it could always be buffed a bit by either 1) increasing duration to 4, and/or 2) dont bother limiting the number of cards drawn ala pathfinding.
I've seen a lot of fails because of very few low-value moves and nothing else. But that's newbies in co-op who put it on low level elf wizards.
I really like this nerf! If another elf card needs some love I hope it'll be considered, if Blue Manchu does this that is.
