Almost all of the 1500+ pvp meta is Evensong builds. There shouldn't be one item that carries wins and destroys other builds as prolifically as this one does. The only counter is All out Attack, it ruins the game when someone can load up 8+ Greater Heals on throwaway priests to tank all the damage that someone can throw at you, healing even more than 3+ turns of warrior draws if there's two priests with this weapon. You nerfed skull of savage iljin but I don't know why you're resistant to nerfing this plague that's dominating every PvP season.
I'd like to second this. I haven't played much recently, but seriously all you need to do is to have a look at ranked matches (or constructed leagues, for that matter). Everything's teeming with priests stocked up with Evensongs and Greater Heals. Just have a look: they're everywhere. I stand by my opinion I've expressed before: people can argue that this or that thing has counters, but that's not as important as the fact that if nearly everyone is playing a certain thing, then we're having a balance problem. Ultimately, it greatly reduces variety experienced in the game. I don't think it needs a lot of explaining. It might not be as noticeable as burfft used to be, due to the fact that while burfft required the player to build the entire party about it, it's enough to focus on Greater Heal with just singular characters - but at the same time, it also makes it just as bad, as pretty much any party can have an Evensong priest inserted into it. When was the last time you saw a support priest without Evensong/Greater Heals?
Actually quite frequently. Much less frequently, but still do. But I also always see them with Bless, so shouldn't that be nerfed? And when was the last time you saw a wizard without Telekinesis, so by this line of thinking that needs a nerf... etc.
I fail to see the problem. I thought it was widely accepted and agreed that Bless is definitely doing too much for what it costs; normally I'm okay with that. I believe it's one of the things where Card Hunter gets to be more unique than other card games; you can have cards that are too good for their quality, because you can offset that with their itemization. However, while Bless is only found on two other items, those only have other good cards, so I'd personally tweak those two items to make them a little less good; I think that could be enough. (I'd be curious what happened if that Martyr Blessing on St. Ulrich's Bones was changed to let's say Cleansing Burst or Wings of Faith, for example). I also think that Bless is not nearly as oppressive as Greater Heal, due to the much more limited quantity it is available in. Four is the maximum, and while you're getting good cards on the side, you're using up all your yellow tokens, divine item slots and divine armor slot; while the end result is likely spectacular, it's quite the sacrifice to deckbuilding flexibility. On the other hand, you can get four Greater Heals using only one blue token, but if you invest more tokens, you can very easily crank up either the quantity of Greater Heals or the quality of cards you're getting on the side. Looking at another perspective (and, again, I think this is the more problematic issue), it's very easy to spend only a few tokens and item slots and still get absurd amounts of Greater Heals and other cards you'll likely want to use (mix and match Evensong, Medical Kit, Advanced Piety, Fingerbone of St. Ob - do I need to go on?), which means that priests can get high densities of Greater Heals plus a lot of other cards they want to use, which likely results in the oversaturation in Greater Heal these days. Telekinesis is a bit different, I believe. While it's definitely very good, probably too good (just compare it to Winds of War), I think that it's ubiquitous simply because wizards don't have a lot of worthwhile options to do with their arcane items. If you're into fire, you can stuff fire onto it, otherwise you can get some anti-armor cards, but you don't want to have too many of those - and that's about it. There's Phantom Pain for Illusory Barriers, I suppose, but these days that could be a bit tricky due to the abundance of warrior teams. So in the end, you're just not left with a lot of choices. I feel that this is a problem on its own, too, but pretty much the opposite of the issue with Greater Heal - instead of one option displacing the majority of the others, there just weren't a lot of options to begin with. (Not that that's a good thing, but I believe it's another discussion.) Long story short, Greater Heal is pretty much everywhere, and I don't think I'd be easily convinced that such a sharp decline in priest diversity is good, or even normal or something that should just be accepted. So there you have it. Short summary: Yes, Bless and Telekinesis are also problematic, but the thread was about Greater Heal, so I talked about Greater Heal.
There's something to the fact that when you see the same card over and over again, it may be pushing outside of the realm of balance, but your general premise seemed to be if a card is run a lot, it needs a nerf. I disagree with this. As you yourself identify in your response there can be many reasons why a card is run a lot which may or may not be that it's overpowered. Therefore, I'm certainly all for you making the argument that Greater Heal is too strong if that's your opinion, but the view that doesn't seem to hold water for me, and I'd need further convincing than this that Greater Heal is problematic. EDIT: Fwiw, there are actually heal cards I'd rather have than Greater Heal, but they don't have good enough itemization.
Well Evensong is the ONLY weapon with 2 greater heals, so for a healer build it is top choice. I don't think that Heal 8 is unreasonable. If you made it Heal 7 it might never be used, but how is that fair to healers against Pulverizing Hacks and Obliterating Sparks? What if Greater heal was nerfed range to be 4? What about mass frenzy limiting range to 4, or 3, and/or line of sight? Nerfing the range of Greater Heal wouldn't change the power of the card. However, Mass frenzy is never a useless card, which is making Evensong very unique compared to other priest items. When two or three damage dealers go for one target, even three priests cannot sustain the damage output of items like Snitrick's Last Stand, The Hackmaster, The Strongarm etc
Pulverizing Hack is Amethyst and Obliterating Spark is Emerald. Compare these cards that are superior in quality to Greater Heal and obviously they would do more damage. A better comparison is Greater Heal and Mighty Spark, which both having the same quality of Gold and that is where you see Greater Heal's power. Greater Heal is Heal 8 with range 8, Mighty Spark is 7 Damage with range 6. That said, personally I have no problems with Greater Heal or Evensong, and no, it's not because I use them. Heals are definitely annoying to play against but alone, they are good but aren't super strong, it's only when used in conjunction with cards like Martyr Blessing, which I think is a bigger problem than Greater Heal, do they become very powerful.
I don't have nearly as much issue with bless spam as I do with greater heal, one has many counters, the other does not. The only way to currently counter heal spam is to either out damage it or break their line of sight, the latter is almost impossible to achieve on most of the maps in the majority of pvp rotations and the heal target will probably just move into line of sight anyway even if you do break it. Would be nice if there was a debuff card that reduces healing or nullifies it altogether for a few turns, that would be a nice counter instead of mindlessly trying to smack my warrior's face into a dooder to kill him while the priest spams the heals.
This took an embarrassingly long time to properly write. My first reaction was being a bit baffled that someone looks at the current state of the game and doesn't see that there's a problem with Greater Heal; it was the second and the third, too, for the record. But let me try to get to it. This was also part of my point. As I've mentioned, itemization is a huge balancing factor when it comes to Card Hunter. Only when a card's really good enough on its own and has supreme itemization as well, it tends to throw the balance off a little bit. You're slightly misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that simply being used a lot warrants a nerf, but there's some point when something is starting to displace a wide range of character builds, and then there's a problem. Of course, it's not simple, and it's always going to be a line in the sand, but once again I'm just inviting you to look at the game as it is now, and consider the variety of priests you saw before the invasion of Greater Heal and the variety (or rather, the lack of variety) we're experiencing now. Think about how many divine weapons are nowhere to be seen anymore because people will just stick an Evensong on their priest because whatever. Like I said, it's a huge loss of character diversity. I don't understand. Honestly, I just don't. That's the very definition of a balance problem; when an item or card or something takes over the game and replaces almost all the alternatives and practically murders diversity. Whether it's because there weren't a lot of alternatives to begin with (like in the case of Telekinesis) or whether there used to be but then something came along that just did way better than any of them (like Greater Heal/Evensong), it's never a good thing. I was actually going to draw the comparison between Greater Heal and Mighty Spark. Add to the equation that Greater Heal has a much better itemization than Mighty Spark, is much more easy to spam, and can draw more cards (more Greater Heals) with Altruism (which also comes in a convenient pre-packaged item with Greater Heal in Advanced Piety). Also consider that while the damage of Mighty Spark is reduced by armor (I'd bring up blocks but against Mighty Spark it's a bit moot, I guess), there's nothing the opponent can do against the healing (other than the single source of Open Wound mentioned above). Come to think of it - I'd actually rather say that they're aggravating each other. Martyr Blessing isn't that bad on its own, because even though they draw cards, the character who's getting hit repeatedly is going to die, possibly before using up all the cards they got. Greater Heal makes healing way more accessible and easy than it used to be (or than it should be). It's not hard for this combination to get out of hand. Interesting idea. It'd force the healers to stay closer to action at least, which would make them more exposed and vulnerable. I'm not sure it'd be enough, but it could help.
@Frostguard thanks for the additional thoughts, I think I have a better idea where you're coming from. Maybe to clarify my comments/points... I think there are generally two ways that one can mean the phrase "balance problem:" A card or item is overpowered in a way that the use of it, or lack of use of it, has a strong correlation on whether or not a player can be a top performer in the game. A card or item is heavily used in the meta of the game in such a way that there is reduced diversity of strategy/play styles. Yet these are two very different claims. As you note, a card can be reasonably balanced powerwise such that you don't have to run it to win, but there can not be many alternatives, so if you're running something of that type, you're running it. (EX: if you want to run a warrior with penetrating attacks, you're running Impaling Stab - it is the entire list of good penetrating attacks!). Such a case would be a definition 2 "balance problem" not a def. 1 issue. You say that: My disagreement with this was under the assumption that you were meaning definition 1, and so I disagreed, because just because a card is commonly used does not mean that it is seriously outside of its power band, nor that using that card is required to be a top performer in a game. (When people claim "X needs a nerf!" I tend to presume they mean definition 1 and respond accordingly). However, after reading your further comments it seems to me that you probably mean definition 2, in which case I fully agree, that if everyone is using something it is the very definition of a (def 2) balance problem. A definition 2 balance problem though is about increasing diversity in the game and not fixing broken cards, so I still stand by my comment that it's not true that: (I will note here that I probably unfairly inferred into your comments that you were making the same "Nerf it!" claim as other posts.) I'd like to note right now, I'm all for increasing diversity to the game. The problem with definition 2 balance problems is that, as I suspect you recognize, they are way more nuanced than a definition 1 issue. And the best solutions typically are not going to be bringing out the nerf hammer. For example I love your Telekenesis thread you just created, as it attempts to address an issue without just asking for nerfs - it's getting at the heart of creating more game diversity, rather than subtracting from an over represented piece. Imo, the biggest problem with def 2 balance issues is player perception. Players are lazy and simply copy strong builds and think the best thing to run is whatever others are running. This obviously kills diversity and sometimes creates a perceived def 1 balance problem when one doesn't actually exist. Remember when Cult of the Bejeweled was posted on the forums. After that you saw it all the time, not because any cards had been changed, but because all of a sudden there was a perception that this was the build to run. Now it's rare, because people have forgotten about it despite it being a strong build even today. I remember when no one above 1300 ran healing, at all! Ever! Maybe that's why I look at Greater Heal differently, because Evensong actually made "healer" an archetype in the game that didn't exist before. I've taken builds with rare archetypes to 1700-1800s. If I was to post them to the forums, they wouldn't be rare anymore, they would flood the game (presuming people had the items). Remember when All Out Attack was a rare gimmicky thing? Then Werewolves came around and people started to figure out better ways to make use of it, resulting in it being intentionally put into builds. The card hadn't changed, perception of it had. You want people to start using priests without Greater Heal, just make a build that doesn't use it, run it to 1700s+ (I've definitely done it with more than one build) and post it. Unfortunately you won't really gain diversity though, you'll just make a new flood of "everyone's running it." When people just want to copy whatever they see is being run by others, rather than creating new builds themselves, there will always be a (def 2) balance problem.
I remember people that were 1500+ running Evensong healer builds before the burrrffft nerf and way before that, I remember people running elf vampires before that and achieving high ranks with healing run+talented healer and vampiric attack spam. Both are heal builds, even if they're different kinds.
Oh I remember that too, but I'm referencing further back. (And given the context of our discussion, I was referencing a support priest that has heals, not vamps, given that they aren't even part of this discussion... unless you're proposing that healing of any type just shouldn't be part of the game.)
@Scarponi - Back before the nerfs to encumbrance, Mass Frenzy, Trembling Staff, Winds Of War, and when Pulverizing was Obliterating, right? I remember the discussions of how healing and armor were useless at high elo, and blocks reigned supreme. I guess some things have changed since 2013. Armor has been seriously upgraded by cards such as Cushioning Armor, and Monster Hide (which can be spammed via lycan form). Healing Beacon may be more useful in the campaign than in PvP, but it was an upgrade as well. The only change to Greater Heal was it's itemization on Evensong. (I used Fingerbone Of St. Ob in the past. It's tokenless, but poorly itemized. I don't see it as much of a player, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) If Evensong is actually a problem (rather than just currently popular), the best course would probably be to replace one of the heals with another card of equal value and rarity.
