Lightning Bolt

Many replies...Many complains....again.

But what does this card have that frights everyone?

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• It is Hard to Block or even Unblockable? No
• It's Linear, are we going to hit 2 slippery enemies at the first strike? Probably Not.
• Low damage, but a great range so enough to keep us safe. Remember: the effect only lasts one turn.
• Probababilities about drawing it at first round considering weapons like these:

Epic Staff Level 19



are short.

However when played and works the way we need is very effective. That's why it's a golden card.

• Is there a risk of breaking the game? Just imagine if this golden card is blocked.

Spoiler: Georgie Boy asks

-But I don't have a Missile Block or even a Catch Arrow.

-All you need is a simple Block.
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PD: Staffs like the one shown above are designed scrupulously with only one slot for Lightning Bolt. My hand trembles about putting 2 or 3 of them. I will explain why.
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Should it be released to in-game multiplayer? Listen. I'm strongly against about releasing new cards carelessly, something developers have been doing all this time. Turning ranked battles into a "difficult zone", reason why I hardly move around there. Those voices claiming Triple Duels was fun in early days and not anymore. You can still hear them. But if a new card or an item like this should be released or not, this is a matter of choice and it is not up to me. I believe there must be a way to solve an issue like this. I appeal to good sense and prudence over amusement. I like this game and I don't sincerely want to ruin it.

 

I'm not sure why this needs a separate threat.

Anyway, the game's been very deliberate at giving players highly limited access to stun, I believe this is BM correctly realizing that being stunned means being unable to play most of your cards, which is antithetical to Card Hunter's whole point, amassing and playing cards. Look at the only stunning card players can get right now, Anvil Strike. It's only on two items, both of which are of a high level and neither are optimized items, they have cumbersome cards like Raging Strike or Large Weapon. Anvil Strike is also an emerald quality card, which cranks up the item value of anything it is on, it doesn't do full damage unless a specific condition is met and it only has 1 range so you're limited in who you can stun.

Clearly Anvil Strike is a very unique card and one that requires a lot of conditions to make full use of, you need an adjacent target who preferably hasn't already used up all cards that stunning prevents them from playing and ideally is also standing next to blocking terrain. I don't think any other card's this complex in its usage, and that's fair since if you're going to stun someone then you'll need to work for it and accept that you'll pay the price by having a bad card in your deck too.

Lightning Bolt as well as your submission have none of these things. Every card on your item is worthwhile, it's quite optimized for its token cost and none of them are cards I find undesirable for a wizard. It has control, armor removal, strong damage and to top it off it has an 8-range linear stunning card. If Anvil Strike is an Emerald card then Lightning Bolt should be Amethyst. Its range makes it easy to stun targets from far away when they still have a hand full of cards they want to be playing while its linear status allows it to hit some tiles you have no line of sight to and possibly even stun multiple characters. That's an incredibly powerful effect! Where Anvil Strike is difficult to get the most use out of, Lightning Bolt makes it very easy to get a stun on someone and even makes it possible to stun multiple characters.

Lightning Bolt should never, ever rear its head in multiplayer, and as such it shouldn't ever appear on any items. If you want to deal with werewolves then just run Silver Bolts instead.

However, it should definitely be put in some CoC player decks, it'd be a great asset in there. Gary might not like it, but he's an AI anyway so we needn't consider his feelings.

 

You were being quite petulant in the other thread, and I echo Miniafig's comments about the need for another one here, but I'll humour you.

I think your arguments in favour of this card can be fairly summarised as below. My rebuttals are listed alongside.

• It's not Hard to Block or Unblockable - this is the default position and is not a reason why it shouldn't be excluded. Even if all of the targets had blocks, one card could force 3 targets to use up their blocks, giving huge card advantage or one or more stuns.
• It's hard to hit more than 1 enemy with it - this is simply not true. With a range of 8, an opponent would have to try very hard to avoid giving you a line on two+ targets.
• Stun only lasts one turn - stun is still very powerful - see Miniafig's post above
• You probably won't draw it first turn - irrelevant. You'll draw it eventually.
• It won't be put onto an overpowered item - well, sure, but it would have to be paired with some truly terrible cards to balance it (which your suggestion isn't - if you stun a target and it can't play its cards, it's then a very easy target for punishing bolts)
• It would be good against foes - this is precisely the problem.
• Other cards have previously been added to the game - other cards are considered carefully before being added. This is not of itself a reason.

It's worth pointing out also that Lightning Bolt is clearly undercosted. Strong Hack is Bronze - Anvil Strike is Emerald. Weak Strike is Paper - Brains is Silver. That means that adding a (situational) Stun to a (single-target) (melee) card increases its quality by 3 levels. Beam of Hate (which has the same damage as Lightning Bolt but a shorter range) is Bronze. Therefore, Lightning Bolt should be Emerald quality at least (and quite probably Amethyst given its additional range and the fact that Stun can hit more than one target at once). TL;DR - Lightning Bolt is just flat-out overpowered by the mechanics of the card creation rules.

 

Lol, linear stun in MP?

 

Maybe worth noting here. Cards which have never been available to players have a card quality by default (in that they have to have some quality), but the devs don't spend as much time thinking about a balanced quality level because it's not going on an item and therefore balance is irrelevant. There have been cards previously only available to monsters which have made it into the game, but only after having their quality changed to a balanced level.

Based on my years of play, I can say without hesitation Lightning Bolt is not a gold quality card.

Second thing of note: Game play design has to take in both sides of the game. So while Lightning Bolt might be fun to play, one also has to ask, how fun is it to be on the other side, to be unable to play cards for an entire turn? Due to this, I believe the devs explicitly said a long time ago that Stun cards are generally avoided for player cards (it's in the forums somewhere if anyone feels like hunting for the actual quote).

That said, everyone is free to dream up whatever concoctions of items they want, just don't expect it to land in PvP anytime soon.

 

And when they do think about monster card balance, they're using different rules. Instead of looking at how powerful the card is compared to similar cards, they use quality to control whether the card gets discarded or not. Edible is a notable example.

 

If Anvil Strike were truly powerful why would we want rare cards?

 

Anvil Strike is powerful; it's just on a badly-optimised item.

 

That's not my point.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you are driving at but rarity has nothing to do with the power level of a card.

 

Care to elaborate then?

 

Of course, that is out of discussion. I mean the power itself on a card. For example: Trained bludgeon and Strong bludgeon both are attacking cards, same range and same quality, but one of them is "special", more powerful. Why? Because it's a rare card. And items with those are more expensive and rare...etc. We can see rarity certainly affects balance and power.

 

I still have no idea what you're talking about.

First off, Trained Bludgeon and Strong Bludgeon aren't as similar as you think. Although they are both the same quality (bronze), they have different card points which does affect the power level of items they are on (Strong Bludgeon has card points of 3, while the weaker Trained Bludgeon has card points of 2).

Second, card rarity is only vaguely linked to the situational usefulness (or 'power', if you like) of cards. In reality, most really good items aren't rare because they contain rare cards; they're rare because they contain duplicates of cards, which increases the rarity of the item they are on. And quite a lot of rare items are really bad.

 

Wrong. You can check the wiki. Both are Average (3/7).

Trained Bludgeon
Strong Bludgeon

Situational usefulness is related to the concept itself of a card. Power is different, or it can be involved sometimes.

I didn't say rarity is related to the "goodness" of an item. Read again. Conclussion: Legendaries or Epics have less probabilities of being dropped and they cost much more gold than other ones. But, of course, we might always demand ('situationally' speaking) items from other rarities without it implies necessarily ones are better than others.

 

There is a hidden +/- modifier not shown in the wiki; Trained Bludgeon is Bronze- so only adds 2 to the item's level.

 

A mistake? Since when it is not fixed? Where can I see that modifier then? An how did you know that?

I don't understand. Strong Bludgeon is not Silver, is Bronze too.

Help me with a link to see those modifiers. Thank you.

 

I have no idea what any of that means.

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/vakazs-item-creator.7770/ is an easy way of checking a card's values.

 

No. You are talking about crafting items and the points cards have about it. Forget about that, we can talk about that later. I'm talking about cards and value they have by themselves. I talk about Quality.

According to wiki we see:

Black : Bad (1/7)
Paper: Weak (2/7)
Bronze: Average (3/7)
Silver: Good (4/7)
Gold: Great (5/7)
Emerald: Powerful (6/7)
Amethyst: Fantastic (7/7)

The first impression is that it doesn't matter rarity. Two Emerald cards are similar. Two Bronze cards are similar. If there is a sort of "hidden modifier +/-" there... is because it implies Rarity.

I can not do this easier. I hope you understand it now.

 

A card's quality (e.g. paper, bronze, emerald) is an indication of its points value. If you're talking about quality, you're talking about points value.

Except that card quality and card rarity aren't linked.

You might want to have a look at this: http://www.cardhunter.com/2012/10/card-rarities-2/

 

Save the file at this link:
Cards.csv
If you're using the Steam client, it can also be found here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\CardHunter\data\gameplay\Cards\Cards.csv

Open the file in your normal spreadsheet program. If prompted for how to parse the file, make sure the only separator checked is "comma" (semicolon or space will totally screw things up). Way, way over to the right you'll see these columns:
Plus Minus: the +/- I mentioned
Quality: the value used to draw the title bar on the card, used if the other values are blank
Quality Warrior: quality used for warrior items
Quality Priest
Quality Wizard
Quality Dwarf
Quality Elf
Quality Human

Values:
AAA = Amethyst = 15
AA = Emerald = 12
A = Gold = 9
B = Silver = 6
C = Bronze = 3
D = Paper = 0
E = Tar = -3

Boots are weird... I can't remember if it uses the lowest or highest class quality.