[Suggestion] Frost magic rework - what if frost spells forced discard of movement cards instead?

Something I've been thinking about was if encumber was changed to reduce movement down to 1 instead of 0. I like how this works on dwarfs - they're slow, but they're tough little buggers, and the elf speed is still an advantage. The step cards should be special cased so that encumber either counters them or doesn't according to the needs of balance.

I think this has a few pros:
nerfs encumber, but also creates room for stronger effects (e.g. duration 3, becomes less unreasonable).
dwarfs are still vulnerable, but not quite as hard-countered.
massively nerfs the synergy between lava and encumber without massively nerfing either element.
encumber in general is not as binary. You slow people down, which is great, but you don't stop them outright, and you need to include more displacement to get the current levels of CC.
Halt and Encumber become more distinct mechanics.

Is that worth a new suggestion thread?

 

Encumber reducing to a minimum of 1 movement seems reasonable, and actually sounds "right" for the mechanic. I'd be interested to see it in play. I don't think it addresses the suggested overall power of the cards though.

 

I like the sound of this as well, but as blindsight seems to imply reducing to a minimum of 1, rather than straight to 1. This means there is still a lot of variability in the effectiveness of encumber. It also might mean that Freeze is better represented by a shorter duration halt than an encumber.

 

Ah, yeah perhaps I did misread the post. I wouldn't encourage encumber to set the max movement to 1, but rather work as it does currently but only able to reduce the movement to 1 -- ie. encumbered, not stopped. That, to me would keep the Halt and Encumber distinct mechanics while taking away some of the encumber impact.

 

To clarify, I was suggesting that cold, specifically, reduces movement down towards a minimum of 1, so a cone of cold reduces both Walk and Run down to a minimum of 1, and Dash to two. I confess I had not considered interactions with other encumbering cards. As scared as I would be of a dwarf warrior in Plate Mail, I do think it's a little odd that pansy elven warriors can wear double Heavy Armor, where tough little dwarves can't.

What do you mean by "the suggested overall power of the cards"? Reducing speed down to one instead of zero is a big nerf, which I think is generally agreed to be the right place to go.

While I'm not a game developer, I think that you achieve balance faster if you take smaller steps, and assess the impact of each one carefully. I would advocate changing the way the chill works *or* nerfing range or damage, not both at once.

 

Unless they started giving out frost spells at a lower talent cost i don't see a problem here feel free to point out if they actually are as i haven't gained new frost items in forever.

 

I thought this was very odd too. I started with an elf warrior who was just getting insta-gibbed with his low health pool. Then I remade a human warrior and now my party is in the teens and platemail has started to appear, it's clear that the elf warrior would have ended up with better damage mitigation because of the way encumbrance works.

 

Going to repost the wall from my redundant thread:

Encumber is an incredibly powerful tool, especially with the wizard's easily accessible control spells and terrain attachments.

Chilling Rime? Not OP. Cold Snap? Not OP.
And yet, these cards are still quite strong. They offer an immense amount of utility while still putting out a respectable amount of damage.

Cone Of Cold?
Debatably OP. It offers the same utility as the cards above - except 2 for 2, instead of 1 for 2 or 2 for 1, and it does it in an area. This card is even more synergistic with damage boosting cards (Unholy Power, for example) due to the fact that it can hit multiple targets (which can be said for a lot of cards. Still, a factor worth considering.)

Frost Jolt
Doubtlessly OP. Compare this to a card like Mighty Spark. Frost Jolt just does almost as much damage, and Frost Jolt has more range. Yet it's considered a lower quality card than Mighty Spark.

Which is more significant.. "Hard to Block"... Or drastically reducing (and potentially eliminating) someone's movement for two full turns.

Hard to Block is situational. Its usefulness is based on whether or not your opponent has a card to block it with to begin with. Even then, this won't prevent that block from being used eventually, so long as your opponent survives long enough to be attacked again. Furthermore, all it does it make -Hard- to block, not impossible. If your opponent still manages to succeed with their block, then this effect did absolutely nothing. That being said, there is also every possibility that the card wouldn't have been lucky enough to block the card to begin with, even if your opponent has a card to block it with.

Compare that to the impact of having ALL of your movement reduced by TWO for two full turns. Last I checked, having your movement reduced isn't very situational at all. It certainly isn't negligble either, considering it cuts an elf's movement in half, shortens a human's movement by 2/3, and completely eliminates dwarf movement.

Now, please don't confuse overpowered with game-breaking. If you compare these cards to their peers, they are simply far more powerful. By definition, they are overpowered.

The utility of encumber alone is enough for these cards to earn their place in a wizard's deck. When you add damage, range, and AoE, it starts to spin out of control. Especially when you consider the powerful items that these cards come with don't have any bad cards to pay for their value. Frost Staff / Staff Of Winter / Staff Of The Arctic

No one that plays this game regularly can fail to notice that all of the high ranking players (the ones that use wizards) use frost spells, and for good reason.

To sum it all up.
- Immense utility and synergy
- Still offers a respectable amount of damage and range
- Encumber is incredibly powerful, all by itself.



I really like the idea of making encumber reduce movement to a minimum of 1. As Blindsight said, it will create a significant distinction between halt and encumber. Besides that, encumber is just too powerful right now, and if these frost spells don't get a direct nerf, then they definitely need some limitations.





Having them discard movement cards is a good idea too, although it might be a bit underwhelming when your opponent has already used his movement cards, or doesn't have more than one in hand. If you include step cards, then it just becomes overpowered because now you're discarding half the warrior's arsenal.

I think it would be better if it discarded the default movement cards for X turns.
I.E - Frost Jolt: Your opponent discards their next two default movement cards.
If they have two default movements in hand, then they get discarded immediately. If they have one, then that will get discarded and the movement that they would draw next turn would also get discarded.
It's worth considering that this idea discriminates against elves, considering their movement is their biggest advantage. Dwarves lose much less from a movement discard than an Elf does (generally speaking).
Overall, I think I'd prefer Rorre's idea.

 

Ok, so I definitely think encumber is very good. But how much of "I lose to encumber" comes down to not being willing (or possibly not yet having the items needed) to alter your warrior builds? Most warrior MP builds want to "keep" 6 tokens for weapons, leaving only a couple spare for items. There are tons of ways to combat encumbrance, but it completely depends on your choice of race and items and your willingness to spend power tokens on other items.

A good pair of boots like; Boots Of The Cheetah or Grey Leather Boots give warriors a lot more maneuverability. If you have Sprint or Wild Run a bit of encumber means very little. Those are both excellent common item examples, but there's even more impressive options at higher rarities; like Leomunk's Kickin' Boots . Put those on a dwarf, and suddenly his walk cards aren't so bad.

Or, if mobility is an issue try switch to elves for Dash and Elvish Mobility . Or switch to humans for Leadership to dig up your better move cards or to utilize team move cards.

Better helms offer a lot of team move spells too, but you need to alter your build to use multiple warriors to really take advantage of this, I see almost no-one taking advantage of this yet. But I expect we'll see more of this as people get large collections and can build multiple "good" warriors (sort of like Mom). This also forces your opponent to have try to encumber multiple threats, which is very hard to do.

For armor options you can pick up Arrogant Armor .

And let's not forget that warrior's have massive access to step/attack cards like Nimble Strike . Which add a ton of movement to any warrior (dwarves included).

So warriors have access to attack cards, boots, armor and helm abilities that all can help deal with encumbrance. A player can easily have 6+ cards allowing a warrior to fight encumbrance. Priests can of course remove encumbrance if you have the right spells, or simply add enough enchantments that the encumbrance falls off (warriors can load up on unique traits to help with this as well). And mages can use Telekinesis or Winds Of War on their own team to move them. As a collectible card game, you have to be willing to alter your strategies and cards in order to beat other strategies. If, on the other hand, you simply think that nothing should be able to beat your dwarves, than good luck to you. Remember that they get all those extra hitpoints at the cost of mobility, encumber is the one thing that should be hardest on dwarves.

I run an mp party with two mages, so I have plenty of experience where encumbrance does and doesn't beat warriors. Clearly some teams are building their party to be able to beat encumbrance, and others are simply hoping to avoid it. There are so many cards in the set that allow you beat encumber spells, you should try using more of them.

 

Every other Step card that warriors have, with the exception of Dancing Cut, has its mobility aspect completely negated by encumbrance, so using them is more of a hindrance than a help against frost mages.

You're speaking from the perspective of someone that uses encumber, and your logic is that since you can't beat every single strategy, it can't possibly be OP. That logic is horribly flawed. What you're failing to acknowledge is that despite the fact there are indeed ways to approach encumber to make it less effective, that can be said for ANY card/strategy.

No one is accusing encumber of being game-breaking or impossible to beat.

With cards like Frost Jolt, there is NO denying that encumber is simply too powerful when compared to other cards of the similar quality. That makes it overpowered.

Every single party I put together has plenty of movement (I don't use dwarves at all, and I always have at least two team movement cards, if not more). I've beaten players with frost spells plenty of times. I've also lost while using frost spells plenty of times. None of that makes encumber any less powerful.

 

Currently running 3 wizards focusing on walls, pushbacks and encumbers to keep my attackers at bay. One thing I have learned is that encumber FEELS bad, but unless you are really focused on (and the opponent is lucky enough to have a lot of damage draws) you can wait them out. I've switched to walls and pushbacks from actual damage because I just couldn't keep the warriors locked down long enough, nor well enough even with multiple encumbers. Encumber the dwarf and he plays sprint, gah hope I have movement left or my wizard dies.

I think it's a very different feel when you play with them vs against them. Best case, I can shut down the dwarf warrior for 2 turns -- if he does't get help from pushes etc... After those two turns, I better have drawn a ton of knockback cards because I know he'll be after me, with strong armor, lots of movement and/or attacks that will one-shot me.

Additionally, prior to switching to 3 wizards, encumber was used on me a lot. It's annoying, but, again unless I could be really focused on, it didn't mean the death of my character. Certainly everything is situational, but I've never felt as though I was lokced down and had no chance against encumbrance.

Frost Jolt (which I don't use -- or have any of) does seem numerically a bit too strong for the number you get on a single item though.

 

Blindsight, it sounds like you aren't using encumber for what it's best at.

Try using 2x Staff Of Winter, 2x Wand Of Seared Air, 2x Runestone.

When you combine encumber with terrain attachments and movement control, there is very little your opponent can do to stop you, assuming you're playing well. That's just a rough build I threw together based on a few items I'm familiar with. I'm sure there are players with better setups than the one I just listed.

Again, I feel the need to point out that just about every single player with over 1200 rating that uses wizards is also using frost spells with those wizards.

It's not a coincidence.

 

Again, I don't have any Staff of Winter, I'm using Sub zero staff and plenty of terrain and pushing cards. I have to question though, is it the frost cards that you have the issue with or the fact that you can set people on the terrain cards that is the issue? Seems like the encumber is just a way to try to keep them on the terrain to you when you say "what it's best at".

And every single warrior is using step cards, and priests using healing cards... Frost is obviously only one of the things they are using based on your rational above, no?

How would you feel about an interplay between frost and fire spells where one would cancel the other's attachments?

 

Lava is just a bonus to encumbrance. Even without lava, encumbrance is too good.

Drawing encumbrance cards is never a dead card. Even against arrogance armor, it's still damage from range. At worst it's 4/5 damage, at best... it makes every card a warrior has a dead card for two turns. If you have lava, that's another 10 to 20 damage on top.

There's actually a lot more going on behind the scene on why encumbrance is so good. Class synergy with other spells, natural range advantage, abundance of dwarfs, card advantage, battle system designs, and the ability to saturate the deck with them. Wizards can load up to 33% of their deck with encumbrance with just their two weapon slots. No matter how many ways you can counter it, you will never have enough answers to offset it. Against one wizard maybe, two...well, lets just say fight frost with frost.

 

Or 2 damage, or 1 damage... Saying that drawing encumbrance is never a dead draw is like saying that drawing any ranged attack for a wizard is never a dead draw. On an open field, sure, excluding all of the LOS blocking spells, and blocks...Overall though I'd disagree with you there. I remove LoS and all of your ranged spells are dead draws. I don't care if you have 4 frost bolts or mighty sparks, you aren't hitting me with them.

then is it really encumbrance or the situation that encumbrance is used?

Sure, against other non wizards.

Um, not only is this a choice on the players part, but certainly at my ranking I don't see what I would consider and abundance. 1/6 perhaps.

Unless you're sticking to the no dead draws, I'm not sure how wizards have card advantage. Priests are known to give card advantage. And a blessing on an encumbered warrior keeps them pretty safe.

How so?

Sure there are a fair amount of them, and yeah I think the staff of winter with all the frost jolts is a bit much -- as I've said the frost jolt I think is a bit much. I disagree with the "never have enough answers to offset it." It generally it only takes one answer, then the warrior gets in and hacks the wizard to bits.

 

You're incorrect. Encumber 2 is not the default. Some cards encumber less, such as Chilling Rime some encumber more, such as Freeze . It depends on how much you encumber a warrior, as well as what cards that warrior has at his disposal. But even than , that leaves a warrior 2 different attack cards that aren't shutdown by encumber 2. That's just for attacks, ignoring their many other options.

I'm not only speaking from the perspective of someone who only uses encumber. How could I be? You think I have never run into someone using encumber against me? I can't possibly be using a warrior along with those two mages? Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I couldn't possibly have experienced encumber used against me.

And no, the way there are many counters to encumber isn't true of ANY strategy (using underline and bold doesn't make it any more true). When we broke Martyr Blessing there was almost no counters to it, which was a large part of the problem. Some strategies have many counters, some have very few. Encumber, as I enumerated in my post, has many possible counters. The developers clearly were thinking about this, and gave warriors (not to mention other classes) a lot of options to deal with encumber. But only if you dedicate items, and power tokens, to deal with it. I don't think many players are using enough counters, and you make a good example.

You talk about having at "least two team movement cards if not more". Using the lower end of your example, I don't feel that having 2 cards across 3 decks of 36 cards (2 out of 106 cards essentially) is a very impressive counter strategy. That's a very small amount of cards for any effective strategy (notice in my post I was referring to getting 6+ cards in just the warriors deck). Considering that your opponent could easily be dedicating 6+ cards to encumber with only a single mage (and that's with only 2 Chillwood Staff ), having only a couple of cards isn't adequate. It doesn't matter if you have a couple possible counters in your deck, it only matters if you have them when you need them. So if you're seeing lots of encumber effects, but you don't have the cards in your hand, odds are you haven't dedicated enough cards to it.

You're arguing that encumber, as it works, is OP. I don't agree with that (yet). It's a good ability, with a lot of ways to deal with it. If I saw players with a more substantial amount of cards dedicated to mobility still being unable to deal with encumber, than I'd be concerned. Or if I saw 3 mages using encumber to easily win games, but that's not happening either.

Other cards have been questioned regarding their quality, but the developers get to make that final choice. You don't have to agree with it, but it doesn't mean your opinion carries more weight than the developers choice.

 

I don't think Fire attachments cancelling Frost attachments would solve very much at all. It would be as simple as making the decision not to use fire attachments, which isn't very much of a sacrifice and I've seen plenty of wizards that already have frost decks without any fire attachments. Also, it's not very much to fun to have your own cards heavily conflict with one another, especially if they share the same item like Staff Of Freezing Fire

Step cards and heal cards are EXTREMELY plentiful and easily accessible. Its a challenge to make a warrior build that doesn't use a step card, and priest heal cards are underwhelming without altruism or talented healer. Frost spells, on the other hand, are almost exclusive to the 2 weapon slots available to a mage, and there are few weapons that actually have frost on them to begin with (The strong frost spells, at least), but you'll still see it extremely often in high-ranked games because it's so powerful.

Setting people on the terrain cards isn't the issue. Those cards are no more dangerous than the terrain cards themselves (Why use winds of war to put someone on lava, when you can just make new lava? There isn’t very much of a difference.)

Let's list all the things that make encumber so incredibly powerful.

- Can potentially NEGATE movement and step cards entirely (Generates card advantage)
- Drastically increases the effectiveness of movement control cards
- Drastically reduces your opponent's ability to escape well-timed and well--placed terrain attachments.
- Lets you much more easily outmaneuver and "kite" your opponent with ranged attacks.
- Completely ignores armor and all other damage mitigation (excluding blocks)
-Not situational, Always valuable.
- At the very least, encumber will hinder 1/3 of a character’s draws (default movement) and quite possibly much more depending on whether or not their other cards have movement, or require movement in order to be used (Generates card advantage)
- Still puts out respectable base damage. Furthermore cards like Arcane Aura and Unholy Power do NOT discriminate against Frost spells. The already-negligible difference in damage between Frost and Fire/Electric spells can be completely trivialized while still retaining the immense utility of encumber.
- Has a lot of synergy with other wizard spells (Besides control and terrain), along with a plethora of cross-class synergies, due to the high value of movement and positioning in any strategy
- There is a lack of accessible attachment removal.

The items that these cards come with rarely have negative cards to balance out the strength of the cards with encumber.


That's all I can think of, but there is probably a bit more to add to that list.


Let me reiterate; I'm not claiming that these cards break the game, or that they are impossible to beat. They're just too valuable.

 

In my opinion there are plenty of ways to counter this. I haven't met many encumber so i can't tell for sure but in my current build i'm using 2 warriors and one mage and i don't see it as such a big issue. I have plenty of cards or items to deal with this e.g. Boots Of The Cheetah 2 times, Energetic Helmet or Major's Helmet, Double-edged Sword, Smoke Bomb, Path Of Knives, Counterspell, Arrogant Armor, Steel Shield. You could also use Frozen Shield.

I mean you still have to draw the cards you need, but in your statement you forget two very important facts. First off all there are victory squares on the map, so you can't just kite players all the time, if a warrior gets on the square you need to get rid of him which can be a real problem. Secondly once i get into meele range with one if my warriors i have very often one ore two shooted a mage e.g. with All Out Attack or 2 Impaling Stab and Impaler.

And the idea to make encumber to remove your movement cards for a couple of turns makes it even worse in my opionen. Therefore you would encumber 2 on a dwarf for 2 turns, encumber 3 on a human and encumber 4 on an elf, or even encumber 8 if it would remove sprint. I really don't get the idea.

And what you also forget there is currently no trait in the game that buffs frost spells. Even if frost spells are more powerfull then same level fire or electric spells you can still buff them and turn a 3 damage card into 6 damage if you are lucky.

 

I agree that OP's suggestion actually makes encumber stronger.

 

Just like it's 'not fun' to have cards that heal you but also the opponent? It was an option to mitigate the encumber/lava problem that keeps rolling into the conversation.

So many opinions as facts. I have no problem making warriors with step cards nor priests that are not underwhelming without altruism and/or talented healer.

The fact that most (but not all) of the encumber stuff is on weapons is a good thing when it comes to your argument. It disallows wizards from taking too many of the same type of spell AND it disallows them from taking other options like walking around with 5 Obliterating Sparks for instance.

Little confused here. You said using "encumber for what it's best at" was to be sticking people to terrain, then say that's not an issue. So yeah, bit confused an am apparently looking at it differently than you intend.

Potentially counter (doesn't negate the card and you can always hold onto them) some (certainly not all) movement cards.

Assuming you mean by limiting the number of movement cards that can be used... That's not increasing the effectiveness of other movement control cards though. Difficult terrain still stops a sprint with or without encumber.

If they are well-placed and well-timed, why do you need to reduce your opponents ability to escape them? The key here I think is the duration of the encumber, not the encumber itself.

So long as your opponent doesn't also have ranged attacks.

The encumber effect attaches even if armor blocked the damage. I think that's what you're saying. Armor obviously still stops the damage.

Obviously we disagree on this.

Not really ready to buy this. That seems like saying standing behind a wall gives you card advantage because they can't hit you with ranged attacks.

You can't apply damage boosters to one type and not the other and then say it mitigates the difference. If they are using it with frost they would likely be using it with Obliterating Sparks. The damage difference is still a factor.

Not really sure what you mean with this beyond what you've already stated above.

Because all of the common, uncommon, rare and epic items in all different slots don't offer enough removal? And even some that don't have to be targeted...

I don't completely disagree with you and I'm nit picking (kind of) simply for discussion. I do think it needs looking at (and without using it I think Frost Bolt is slightly out of whack) and this is all just part of that. Having played with and against it I haven't found it to be a determining factor at all. In my experience it has failed me more times than it has worked the way I wanted/needed it to. Having it played against me hasn't ever been a primary, or even secondary element to winning or losing. I'm also not seeing the frequency of it in my multiplayer games that you are suggesting.

[Bleh enough of these long posts! heh]