Before I go any further, I'd like to put a disclaimer here, sort of. I don't consider myself adept at game balance, I'm not trying to make absolute statements. I haven't even played ranked games in a long, long time (due to a combination of several reasons), but I've played leagues, and I've had a quick look at quite a few matches. At times I just see things that just don't feel right. All I'm trying to do here is to list a few of these and maybe spark a discussion by throwing in some random bad ideas I had. Most of this is strictly subjective, too - I can imagine that many people would not agree with some of these things being a problem. Basically I think that there are a few cards that are very powerful individually, and also have excellent itemisation that allows players to put a lot of them in their decks without much of the compromise that makes this game stand out from other card games (see Unholy Wellspring - it's really good for its quality, but the game makes you pay for it by forcing you to fill your deck with rather unimpressive cards if you want more Wellsprings, which is the reason why we don't see it very often, I think). Greater Heal: I don't think that too many people would dispute this one. Just compare it to Mighty Spark or any ranged damage card of similar caliber (and healing doesn't get affected by the opponent's defenses the same way ranged attacks do). It's very easily available, and the items with it give almost exclusively good cards on the side. A few ideas: - Changing Evensong to have only one Greater Heal. - Greater Heal still seems too potent compared to damaging ranged cards, so reducing its healing also seems appropriate. Illusory Barrier: The ability to shut down any wizard who doesn't have his own Illusory Barriers is rather prohibitive if you ask me. Illusion and Phantom Pain allow players to have a lot of these without using up many tokens or item slots, and they have a very convenient card each that usually turns out useful and reduces the token cost. - Increasing Illusory Barrier's quality to gold- would increase the token cost of Illusion to two majors and Phantom Pain to one major, while leaving all other items with it intact (a small change in item level notwithstanding). Besides, as Everlasting Ground has demonstrated, a gold title bar on a purple utility card is really pretty, don't you think? - Duration could also be reduced to two rounds. Parry: I know it's a game-defining card as far as melee combat goes. Which is fine, but then I honestly don't see why Blocking Mace can exist. Warriors can have ten Parries (eleven if they're dwarves), but worse is when they decide to have slightly fewer (seven Parries are still a lot) and can add ample mobility and damage (considering that Blocking Mace itself has fantastic damage), effectively rounding up any weakness that should result from exploiting a (more or less) intentionally broken card. - Changing (at least) one Parry to Block would leave the level and rarity of Blocking Mace intact. It's called Blocking Mace, after all, not Parrying Mace. - I'd personally find it funny to lower the item's cost to two minor tokens by replacing Unreliable Block with Dropped Guard. I'm not sure many would agree, though. Impenetrable Nimbus: Fortunately it's not as ubiquitious as it used to be, but I still think that practically unconditional invulnerability is a bit too much, especially for a silver-quality card. Then consider that a single priest can have ten of it, but more harmful is that instead of cramming all that into a priest's deck you can just easily get six by using three Shielding Tokens, without expending a single major token in the process, which you can then spend on everything else, similarly to Parry, to round up any weaknesses (and, depending on the divine weapons, you can even get more Impenetrable Nimbus if that's the most suitable). Shielding Token and Nimbus Blade generally both have great cards that often have excellent synergy with Impenetrable Nimbus, too. All things combined, the presence of this card can be extremely prohibitive, shutting down decks with practically no effort, bringing entire games to a grinding halt, generally removing a lot of tactical depth from the game (in my opinion). - I think someone (probably @Stexe, if I remember right) suggested that it could block damage only from the front or from the back. I liked the ideas, both seem consistent with the holy theme. - An unholy alternative (Demonic Gambit or something, it would work the same as Impenetrable Nimbus but would deal unpreventable unholy damage to the target when it expired, or maybe even if it was removed prematurely). - I think that changing Shielding Token either to cost a major token or to have only one Impenetrable Nimbus would make the card much less exploitable in general. Force Field: Similar to Impenetrable Nimbus. Much fewer of it can be crammed into a deck, but in turn it forces enemies to waste their attacks on it to reduce its duration. That alone makes it a nasty card, but when warriors can get up to four of it in their decks, that becomes much worse. You either remove it by attacking, in which case you used up more than a round's worth of one character's draws to neutralise just one card of your opponent, or you wait for it to go away, in which case it's likely they're going to have the next one ready by the time it falls off (not to mention that Force Field is most often used by three practically identical warriors, all of whom are going to have three or four in their decks). Still, there's one upside, since it's not possible to accumulate insane amounts of Force Field as Impenetrable Nimbus, it remains weaker to purging. - Bubble Helmet seems the main culprit in this, I'd consider reducing the amount of its Force Fields to one. - Even a decreased duration for the card would feel fair. Impaling Stab: I think it obviously has a much better power-to-quality ratio than any other penetrating attack. It's also very easily accessible, too, and with Double-Edged Sword you can get excellent damage and mobility in a cheap package. - Switching that Backbiting Strike to something like Able Stab would increase the Double-Edged Sword's cost to two major tokens. - I'd consider merging Penetrating Stab and Impaling Stab to a single card with a damage value inbetween, though I don't think that's very plausible. - I think that many penetrating attacks (Puncturing Stab, Perforating Strike) wouldn't become overwhelmingly popular if they got a slight buff to their damage, but they'd become much more viable. Lycanthropic Form: Easily the most frequent form around. The built-in armour from the Form itself is good enough already, but I believe that the ability to generate basically any amount of Monstrous Hides (given enough time and luck) is what makes werewolves sometimes practically impossible to combat effectively. A few other things (All-out Attack, Mighty Charge) can also be problematic. Their attacks and moves are also generally very good and even the Mad Dog they have for a handicap makes them more difficult to deal with. - How about removing All-out Attack, making Mighty Charge gold and giving them Bite or something similar? - I don't know how Monstrous Hide could be limited, but I think it'd be a good thing in general. Medium's Garb: Ethereal Form has as few cards it could be worth playing for... Except why would you do that when you could get the same cards from Medium's Garb while still drawing two cards from your deck each round? Ironically, the worst thing Medium's Garb can do is putting an Ethereal Form card in your hand. Arguably it provides at least as much benefit as Frenzy Aura but is much harder to remove. As things stand right now, I think this makes Ethereal Form an entirely unviable option. (That said, I think that ghosts could get a somewhat better and more consistent card pool, too.) - I'd consider keeping the card as it is except removing the Keep keyword from its armour component. Vampiric Form: One for the other side. Vampiric Form simply doesn't feel worth playing because it can't compete with the good old-fashioned vampire priests with Talented Healer. I thought of a few ideas to rework the attachment bonus entirely, feel free to combine them at will (I'm going to use Drain as a keyword here for simplicity's sake): - You may not be healed by cards that are not Unholy. - Cards you play with Drain gain Frenzy 2. - If you play a card with Drain that deals damage to its target, it gains Cantrip (not if it's blocked or if its damage is entirely prevented by armour; vampires are all about preying on those who can't defend themselves, no?). Vampire's Kiss: I really like the flavour of this card, but it's not very impressive compared to Invigorating Touch, and of course it comes with the risk of giving your target Swarm of Bats, which can then single-handedly mess up your entire game. The only problem with giving your enemies vampire cards is that it's only a good deal if Vampiric Form is decidedly bad. - Maybe (even worse idea than most of the others) it could attach to target with a duration of one round (maybe two) and attach Vampiric Form when it expires. I'm not sure how balanced that would be, but I think it'd fit thematically. Creature of the Night: While it doesn't really feel unbalanced right now, thematically it feels odd to me. I think that characters with Creature of the Night attached could take penetrating Holy damage each time they're targeted by a Holy card, making healing them (and, in cases, buffing them) less effective. That'd hurt all forms, though, while it's probably only werewolves who need to be made a little less effective. Even a little vulnerability to fire would make sense to me, personally, as such creatures are very often battled against using fire, but we already have Combustible.
It was probably me who suggested that Imp Nimbus be only from the front. I've always been about removing pure binary gameplay and allowing for clever tactics to shine. I haven't really played the game in a year. So most of the new card comments are lost on me as I haven't put down the money for the expansions. From what I've read here your views seem similar to mine. Carry on the torch! =)
@Stexe, fwiw, the Castle Mitternacht expansion (so far) is only in the cards and items. No money needed for it (yet). Also, ironically, there's Flaring Torch. $;^ J Nevertheless, yeah, I've heard a lot of feedback (including whole threads) skewering Impaling Stab, hailing lesser Greater Heals, and re: Form reform.
Yeah, I know I don't need the expansion for the new items/cards. But just feels weird to me to go for it without the expansion. Maybe I'll come back someday, but I'm still working on portfolio stuff and job hunting like usual. Same ol', same ol'.
I always like to equip items people are saying are broken...just to playtest. So: bubble helmet, blocking mace, double edged sword, parrying buckler, with lycanthropic form. Double Evensong, shielding token, parrying buckler priest. And a wizard with medium's garb, illusion, and parry. I liked your cantrip suggestion for drain attacks, I've gone back to triple talented healer for the cantrip for my vamps. I like vampire kiss's armor removal capability to want to change it in the waY you suggest. Regarding creature of the night, i love the idea that somehow holy cards hurting you. It couldn't be worded that heals hurt you or else howls would damage werewolves frequently.
I'm not sure any of the above cards are exactly broken, per se. I've found that using Vampire's Kiss at the end of the round is some safe heals, as it creates the card then discards it, and it functions as armor removal. More than once I've looked at the battle log, and seen that I just discarded a Mighty Bludgeon. *phew!* Medium's Garb: isn't that overpowered. However, I feel that it should definitely lose it's keep keyword on it's armor. Vampiric Form is actually quite useful camping on the point. However, otherwise it has noticeably weaker attack cards, and is focused more on flavor. Force Field: I always carry Jim's Magic Missile, so my wizard can instantly get rid of Force Field. Hasn't been a problem for me, but I see why some would complain. Impenetrable Nimbus: I see where this is going. A nerf might be good, though the best counter is simply having a few purges. Even if spammed, most of the time I can still force them to choose one target and kill another. Lycanthropic Form: Again, hasn't been a problem personally. Silver Bolt rules! Oh, and purges. Creature of the Night: I don't trust having it personally, and I never know when someone might have Silver damage, so I like @Stexe's idea. Impaling Stab: No problems personally, again. (Jeez. Maybe I'm not playing enough MP.) Anyways, I usually outpace those who have Impaling Stab in terms of damage quickly. Greater Heal: Yep, there are some problems with this card. It gets annoying. Maybe nerf healing or add more counters to healing.
IF eversong is the issue, and they really want to hate on support priests, changing mass frenzy to unholy could make a double eversong set up more awkward and be a decent nerf to altruism. Regarding spirit form-medium garb,I'd suggest to downgrade boo! to bronze(I think that the items that get a reduced cost as a result still are fine, notably pranking feystaff would still be double major) and upgrade beam of hate to silver with extra text that makes it deal 6 damage if used by spirits(did I suggest that already?).
I'm sorry for being a necromancer again, but I remembered this thread and I had a few more thoughts, ideas, or anything you might want to call them. Again, feel free to consider anything written here as strictly personal and subjective. I'm in no way an expert, rather the opposite. Also, there are a few replies here to other posts, and I'll try to tag accordingly, but I might miss one or two, sorry for that in advance. Also, thanks everyone for the answers! Greater Heal: I personally think that Evensong is the issue. The main issue, at least. I still have quick peeks at matches sometimes, and I'd say the vast majority of Greater Heals is coming from an Evensong (Advanced Piety, Medical Kit and Silver Healing Ring are the runner-ups, but the margin seems to be wide). In fact, I think I hardly ever see a priest without at least one Evensong, and that's a different beast. Having better and worse items is one thing and is perfectly fine; having one item that's so much better than practically all its peers that everyone uses it, then well, that is a problem, if you ask me. You yourself said so, @hello world, maybe less directly, in your evaluation of divine weapons. The problem with changing the Mass Frenzies to Unholy Frenzies is that you're changing the token cost to major/minor. And if double Greater Heal for two major tokens is a problem, imagine how much worse it would be to have a divine weapon with two Greater Heals for a major and a minor token! It'd be a good nerf to Altruism, but I don't think it's Altruism that needs the nerf, personally. On the other hand: Changing one of the Greater Heals to an ordinary Heal would drop the item level but would not change the token cost or rarity. Changing both of them would result in a drop to major/minor, but I think even that'd be fair (contrast Blazing Flail); either of those changes would keep the holy flavour of the item while making it arguably much less painfully overpowered. Consecrate Ground could replace Greater Heal, regarding flavour, quality, and rarity, but that'd probably be taking it too far, and so would be changing one of the Greater Heals to something like Healing Blessing, possibly. On another note, it's just a random idea, but a Greater Heal on Medical Kit could be replaced with a Healing Beacon for no change in token cost or the medical-kitty flavour (it would increase the rarity to Rare, though; sad). Impaling Stab: I had the weirdest thought. What if Impaling Stab was renamed to Impaling Thrust and reduced to Range 1? If so, all melee attacks with the Penetrating keyword (except for, once again, Penetrating Cut) could get an all-around damage buff. I can only support this with the fact that all Stab attacks have a spear on their art, except for Impaling Stab, which, inexplicably, has a sword. This oddity will not do! Impenetrable Nimbus: I keep going on about this card. I'm obviously biased, but how about a slight change? Simply add the keyword Stun (optionally, add a section that you may only target allies), or if you want it to be better, simply make it so that it's removed if the target uses a card that affects enemies (or just an Attack card). If we want to go full DnD, we could even rename it to Sanctuary, as it's a stock spell there that makes someone impossible/much harder to hurt (depending on edition) on the condition that they themselves don't hurt anyone else. I personally still think that giving a target total invulnerability and the freedom to do as they please is too much for a silver-quality card. Parry: We've just endured a rotation with Triple Duel recently, so I thought I'd bring this one up, too. I don't think I can add much on this one; we know Parry should not (and will not) be changed, so then I think it's Blocking Mace that could see a little revision. Vampire's Kiss: Fair point, @tolkien. My problem with Vampire's Kiss is simply the same that @Christofff had (I had to look up the spelling); giving your opponent a Swarm of Bats can potentially throw such a wrench into your plans that it alone makes the use of this card questionable to me. Adding an arbitrary restriction to prevent that feels too, well, arbitrary to me, so I was trying to find another solution. (Similar problem with werewolves' ability to generate a potentially unlimited amount of Monstrous Hides, while even much worse armour cards are more limited in accessibility.) I'd like to add a few general thoughts to finish. Sometimes, when it's pointed out, rightfully or not, that something is overpowered, I tend to see people defending it by saying that it has counters. I'd point it out that I don't think that's enough. Greater Heal has a counter, Open Wound. Greater Heal is everywhere right now; do you see a lot of Open Wound going around? Or, if we want to cross into the absurd, Flatten would have counters. Parry, Pushback Parry, Lifesaving Block, Cushioning Armour, Impenetrable Nimbus, Force Field - actually, even more counters than a lot of things we have in the game right now. Do you think that Flatten would be a good addition to the game (to multiplayer), that it would be balanced? I think that just as important are the dynamics between the card and the counter, the consequences of not having said counter, and in some cases, the availability of the card and its counter. I'm completely with @Stexe on this one; a few things I tend to dislike, including some I did not mention here (for example, double or triple control wizards) I dislike because the interaction is binary. Let's say you're up against three control wizards. You pray that you get that Immovable; if you get it, you'll likely succeed, if not, all you can do is to weep as you see your characters being tossed around as volleyballs at your opponent's mercy. I personally don't find that very interesting. The interaction is entirely binary and the consequences can be severe. Of course, we have Stone Feet, but... Let me change examples in the middle of the train of thought. Impenetrable Nimbus. I see people argue that it's fine because there's always Purge. Yes, there is. And no, I don't think that makes it fine. Because Impenetrable Nimbus can be crammed into a deck in such quantities that if you take enough Purges to counter it even half-reliably, you're going to suffer against anything else that doesn't rely so heavily on attachments. I feel that a lot of these decks, which personally feel unfair to me (remember, personally) thrive on the fact that attempting to counter them either narrows down the player's options immensely or just makes any party entirely unviable altogether. (On a sidenote, it turns Singleplayer into a complete joke, too, especially that enemies, with a few exceptions, have absolutely nothing to react to it with.) If you're still awake and you got here, thanks for reading! Spoiler If you just scrolled down without reading, you cheated.
Just to throw out some of those defenses you mentioned... $;^ J Parry's pretty fine. It has multiple counters, and something you didn't mention is that when someone shows up with Parrying Buckler and/or especially Blocking Mace, opponents quickly figure out, "oh, this is a Parrybot, I need to work around that for the rest of the match to keep the character's main defensive + card advantage tactic null and void." Counters? It's 100% dead to Magic and Projectile, it's 100% dead to Unblockable (Surestrike Blessing for a moment, War Cry for a sobfest (enter Defender's Block...)), it's manipulated by the ever-so-popular Nimble Strike (which I noticed didn't make your list -- and while Vibrant Pain is still a popular legendary, Howling Pain is an astounding epic substitute, especially stacked), it's not as potent vs. luck-changing cards (Bad Luck, Hard to Block Melee, etc.), surrounding a character is Gary-tutorial-101, and so forth. Blocking Mace is incredibly popular in Triple Duel, yes, but winning opponents know this and take it into account; frankly, this past 3Duel rotation, I started with triple Parrybots with some extra card advantage tricks up their sleeves (beating the meta by being better at it), and just kept winning so much (for the most part -- I also lost to smart meta-breakers) that I changed up my party some to instead concentrate on making mockery of the opponent's Parrybots, rendering entire hands useless sometimes (beating the meta by utterly countering it). Well, that was a lot more text than originally intended... (And now a non-defense...) Vampire's Kiss -- and I might do better to post this in the more dedicated Form thread(s) -- I've been thinking about lately, actually. In testing, it healed double the damage and emptied a target's entire hand, replacing with the same number of Vampire cards, and this was found to be too devastating, hence the current version, which people often find niche and lackluster. 1. What would people think if it healed damage-and-a-half? Even rounding that down would still be something. Kiss unmodified would do 6 damage and 9 heal (ouch). Kiss + Frenzy Aura would do 9 Penetrating damage and (let's say rounding down) 13 heal (pretty potent, a viable contender for Invigorating Touch). 2. What would people think if it discarded the two oldest cards? The next bit up for discussion would then be how many Vampire cards it should grant first: one (utter card advantage) or two (symmetrical trade-off like originally intended and currently implemented)? Even something funky like "give one card, discard two, then give another card" so that an opponent with two cards in hand doesn't get totally wiped (like old Short Perplexing Ray), but three to eleven cards (you Delegaters, you,) would still get some punishment, and it'd probably feel more flavorfully vampiric. Note that this would mean a character with one card in hand would get a simple 1-to-1 replacement. Btw, on another note, an opponent recently Kissed an ally in order to try to relay a hit on me -- pretty funny. $E^ b I was sure I had another point to make, but I totally forget what it was. Agreement, disagreement, joke, ~shrug~ I'm at a loss, huh...
Thanks for the strategy tip: Vampire's Kiss congo line. I think the above suggestions are too powerful. Assuming vampiric form doesn't get changed to give cantrip, just give vampire's kiss cantrip.
