If you run 2xWizards/1xPriest or just 3xWizards it's easy to have one Fireball wizard and one frost wizard. I think the rarity of Staff Of A Million Fireballs is the only thing preventing the build from being common. Celedorn might be on to something when he says the problem lies in the item instead of the card. Warriors have a similar thing going with Vibrant Pain. Rarity is the only reason we're not facing an army of angry dwarven warriors running 2 or 3 of these.
True, but in most other comps, there's one wizard and he's packing frost. You see very few 2x or 3x wizards above 1300. Maybe that's because of the rarity of fireball items and that will eventually change, but i doubt it. A balanced team that manages to get a warrior in shreds them too fast.
Staff Of Burning Ice? I think the get a warrior in strat doesn't work on the big open maps without considerable luck in the movement card and smoke bomb drawing.
After running into a bunch of fireball wizards in today's PvP sessions, I say both the range and burst should be reduced. The range should be 6 and the burst should be 1, not 2. Right now it's overkill. On top of that the Staff of a Million Fireballs is OP, but it's high orb cost and legendary status sort of balance that out.
Honestly, i´d rather use Staff of Burning Ice over that of a Million Fireballs, mainly because i have the former and not the latter. Fireball is just a card that will NEVER be idle in your hand, even in closed maps like Temple. In Streams of Blood its just the best first turn you can have and can hit two people depending on starting position. In Bridge it literally hits everyone turn 1 everytime. It makes elf wizards cry and reveals all the armor in the opponent´s hand while still dealing sizable damage, so not only does it have high raw power, it is staggeringly versatile. Warriors shreding wizards quickly is also completelly arbitrary. Step attacks are usually just a warning shot until Wizards pop slides or slide backs since they don´t do that much damage, Frost shuts them down from a distance, and then there´s the offchance they are running Voltstaff or have Toughness to go if you plan to Quick Run-Obliterate them. There are so many ways to stop a Warrior, but no certain ways to stop a Fireball. Its reach is huge, not even LoS can save you from its burst, and it can go through Smoke and illusion with some positioning I mean, even Staff of Burning Ice shows you something is wrong when Sizzling Bolt is Fireball without the burst 2, and they have the same power (silver). So yes, i believe Fireball should be handled more scarcily in items. It might not be a game ender like an O.Bludgeon or a charged O.Spark, but it sure can start a game´s end. It is worth noting than Fire is the one magic school without a Powerful(Green titled) card, even Arcane has Rockfall (no longer available in any item, though). Fireball, as it is, could be moved up to that rarity, heck, even given a slight boost, on the possibility that it is used scarcilly on items, because as of right now, a Wizard can have up to 13 Fireballs in their deck, and even on how scarce the possibility of that number being a reality might be, i´ll just remind people that you only need 5 or 6 to outright kill your average party on open maps before armor
Resistant Hide Other useful cards: Reliable Mail (turns the Fireball into a Long Spark with Burst) Shimmering Aura Absorbing Block Martyr Blessing
You have to consider that a Fireball will be hitting more than 1 individual in most occasions, and not everyone is armed with armor them. Fire magic is well known to be hosed by Armor, but the reason its so annoying is its obnoxious range. Unless your mage has drawn his Hide or whatever Armor his boots grants him, he'll always be a fresh Fireball target from almost anywhere in the map. P.S. I'd use a Long Spark with burst ;P
So here is another one showing how fireball is op: Had the pleasure to play vs blodorn on the forest map. Turn 1 he starts buffing his wizard, So I spread out and make sure he does not have line of sight. He proceeds to launch three unholy wellspring buffed fireballs at my mage killing him turn 1 from across the map. Note that he made no use of the fireball burst at all, hitting only one guy with it, but it was enough to effectively win him the game. Part of the problem obviously was priest card draw, leadership and that he has two of the staffs that give you 5 fireballs, but still it should not be possible to kill a character from across the map on turn1 without line of sight and without making major sacrifices.
That sounds more like a problem with Unholy Wellspring and excessive card draw, and not a problem with fireball. He could have been shooting long sparks and the same thing would have happened. Although I understand the area of effect is compounding the problem.
Nah long spark is only damage 2 and he needs line of sight, so I can outmaneuver and outlast him. With fireball there is nothing you can do except drawing the hide. Anyway I just wanted to illustrate that fireball can be gamebreakingly powerful even if you hit only one character.
Got my ass kicked by that Blodorn deck last night too. He had just the one wizard but when i died fireball was the only damage i took. Fireball and unholy wellspring isnt a hard combo to draw in to, and once theyve drawn a second fireball youre pretty much screwed. You cant run away from fireball even if theres terrain to hide behind.
He did make major sacrifices - that wizard has no frost and warriors with a little armor will eat him up. That aside, even warriors with a little armor would have been hurting after that. Expect to see more of that sort of thing as more people get the fireball cards. I'd probably run 2 wizards, full frost on one, full fire on the other. Possibly two priests, both with wellspring, but one with a little melee focus. Would it be worse for my opponents than the 2 frost wizards i'm running now? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I suspect it would come out slightly ahead in the long run. I recommend changing it to 8 range, 1 burst with further nerfs if needed.
I don't actually think Fireball by its self is all that powerful of a card: it's large burst can be just as devastating as friendly fire in close range situations meaning after turn 1 it starts to become less useful. From the above example priest card draw/leadership/unholy wellspring is an extremely powerful combination when in conjunction with any wizard deck except pure utility. And I would actually prefer direct damage sparks/single damage armor removal over fireball for the hard to block/armor discard while having the same range and less token cost. Although I do think Fireball can be changed for the better and to reflect more closely to the games which initially defined it. To me its greatest strength is being able to hit targets out of LOS for max damage and that seems cheap. I would like to see damage drop off on a burst spell like that. ie: Before armor is applied center target takes max damage(4), burst one takes half damag (2) and burst 2 takes quarter damage(1). Burning would remain unchanged. This would nerf it's aoe effect while mainting its line of sight single target damage and buff it for close range by making it less of a liability when considering friendly fire scenarios. It would also seem more "real"(not that is of the most importance in balance), targets closest to the explosion take the most damage but everything still catches on fire. Which I think fits perfect with fire mage flavor since those traits focus on the burning not on direct damage.
It is very powerful yes. 10 range, can hit behind walls and does up to 12 damage per hit with the right cards and buffs. I use Barnum's Staaff and Staff of Fireballs and i mostly never lose. I would like to see Bluemanchu give everyone all items to actually test items and builds on an even playing field. Right now there is no competition.
Back in the early test days we had a way of getting free pizza, so it was possible to spam the chests to get a very large amount of items. As I've said before, having everything available to you will not guarantee you a win in all circumstances. Fireball is one tactic, Frost is another, Direct Damage works, so does the current return to Cleric "millstone / 1st Round Kill" decks. You can have a three wizard combo with each slot filled with fireballs, but if you never get to use them, they're useless.
This has been done in closed beta 1. PvP is always a balance dilema though so balance will never be perfect in any game
I think you're missing the point of his request. Right now we can't really know if fireball is too powerful because all the focused Fireball staves are legendary and very few people have enough to actually test them in a focused way. We have one point of concrete data, blodorn, but if other players could get their hands on the items we could get more. No deck will win every encounter, but that doesn't mean it's balanced. As i said in the Frost Jolt thread, If there were one legendary item in the game that had one copy of that card, people would be saying, it was OP, but it wouldn't be a major problem and most people wouldn't be rolling with elf priests. The one or two players who had that item wouldn't win every game, but as more and more people got the item and got more copies of it, the effect would become more pronounced. Rarity hides balance problems - it delays their impact. Right now, i think Fireball is a problem, but rarity is hiding it. Closed beta had an even smaller pool of players. That really cannot be considered comprehensive testing, especially considering how much has changed since then. Balance is a tricky problem and will always be imperfect, but it's not a completely hopeless goal. A game might never be perfectly balanced, but every step in that direction is an improvement. Here we have both theory and data pointing to a problem. Not addressing it or at least testing it more thoroughly is silly.
fireball 4 damage to up to 3 targets with no armor = 12 damage highest damage warrior attack 21 damage Fireball with unholy wellspring 8 damage to up to 3 targes with no armor = 24 damage highest warrior attack with all out attack 42 damage Tell me again how fireball is a terrible balance problem because it synergizes with a second class making the damage op while a self contained warrior can deal twice the damage? Yes you can have more fireballs than the warrior attack but they are also much more vulnerable to armor and there is always resistant hide to just kill the damage outright. I'm not saying maybe a nudge on the range to make it slightly less the whole map is out of the question just that people make it sound like the card is just insanely busted when its not.
Wozarg you probably know better than I do but I thought fireball also did 2 damage burning? If so that would make it 18 vs. 21? Besides the much longer range than the warrior attack, it can also hit people hiding behind terrain. I don't have the cards to play a fireball deck but I would love to have enough of the staves to equip and play 3 dwarf wizard wearing resistant hide and using all fireball, magma and firestorm.
