A heads-up on some more balance changes that are coming. These are likely to be the last changes before we open the game (and reset accounts). After that, we'll try to slow down these changes a lot. Here they are, along with reasoning: Impaler Impaler is far and away the most popular martial skill card and it's popularity is causing Bruiser and Slicer to be neglected. We think it's also causing Armor cards to be devalued as Penetrating melee attacks dominate the scene. So, we're dropping the damage bonus from Impaler from +2 to +1. This brings it into line with Slicer. Admittedly, Slicer can net you +2 damage if you can hit two targets with one Chop, but that is rare in the multi-player environment. We think Impaler will still be a great Trait even with a +1 bonus. Vicious Thrust This is the clear #1 most played card in the game right now and it's easy to see why. It's simply over-powered for it's grade. Rather than change the grade, we're going to drop the Penetrating keyword from it, so it is still a great card at 7 damage and Step 2, but it no longer gets to ignore Armor or be boosted by Impaler. Frost Jolt Encumber strategies are very strong at the moment and that's probably OK. However, Frost Jolt is simply too good at 5 damage, 8 range and Encumber 2. We're dropping the damage to 4. It's a small change, but should move it towards being more balanced. Hot Spot, Volcano, Wall Of Fire, Lava Pool Lava terrain is dominant over all other types of terrain at the moment due to it's huge damage potential. We're dropping this from 10 to 8. War Cry This card is seeing very little play and we think part of the reason is that the target can move away after dropping its Blocks. So, we're adding the Cantrip keyword to it to allow you to immediately follow it up with an Attack. Battlefield Training, Advanced Battlefield Training Almost no one is using these cards, which is a pity because we think they could form the basis of an interesting strategy. We're increasing their ranges by one to try to make them more useful.
I think you over nerfed vt. A slight increase on damage would be good. Good news on all the other cards.
I don't think lava terrain is common because of the damage; I think it's just because of how many items it appears on. I know I would be playing acid more often if it was more versatile. Acid Spray is too short range to be useful as a way to spew difficult terrain anywhere, and Acid Jet appears on a very limited number of items, none of them in the arcane item slot. (Only 18th level items contain more than 1, too). Meanwhile, you can't walk into any store in the game without spotting lava terrain on at least half the wizard items in there. Including robes.
No changes for Focused Healer/Talented Healer? Do we really need to play tons of long boring matches until it shows up in the stats as broken? And I doubt increasing the range of Advanced Battlefield Training /Battlefield Training will change anything. How about adding a card draw or cantrip to them?
I think the proposed changes to Impaler, War Cry, Battlefield Training, and Advanced Battlefield Training are all very good changes. (Although I suspect people still won't use the battlefield training cards much.) And I think the change to Vicious Thrust is fair enough; I was imagining maybe reducing it to step 1 and keeping the penetrating effect, but the removal of the penetrating effect is probably another good step towards making armour more relevant. I'm not sure whether or not the lava change is a good idea. On the one hand, I agree that lava is generally more powerful than acid or spikes because of the much higher damage - but on the other hand, damage from lava is a key tool in a wizard's arsenal. And Unlucky Scarecrow has a point in that lava is more common on items than the spikes and acid - especially spikes! The thing about spikes vs lava is that even if lava only does a little bit more damage - it is still going to be preferable in most cases because damage is the primary reason for using those terrain modifiers in the first place. ie. it's very rare for anyone to use spikes for the difficult-terrain part of its effect. The way I see it, the only important advantage that spikes has over lava is that spikes aren't negated by Resistant Hide. As for Frost Jolt, I think the proposed change is not good. Reducing the damage from 5 to 4 has an almost negligible impact on the card's killing power, but it does put it on the other side of the 5-damage threshold for Desperate Block. Because of that, the reduction in damage could even be seen as a buff! In my view, a much better nerf for Frost Jolt would be to reduce its range to 7. [edit] It's only just dawned on me how much the Vicious Thrust nerf is going to ruin my warrior. My favourite warrior build currently has 7 Vicious Thrust cards, and those are the only penetrating cards in the deck other than 1 Penetrating Cut from Novice Impaling. That build is going to be very weak after the nerf, and no martial skill will suit the build anymore. Ouch.
I think Lava terrain is used heavily in single player. Wouldn't this nerf make some maps harder? There various enemies with 10hp and lava terrain no longer can one-shot them.
Yeah, I'm still not going to give up lava. Acid terrain does too little damage to be a real option. Spikes would be a possible alternative, except that they're so damn hard to get. Let's make a little comparison: Stone Spikes: available on 18 arcane items 7 legendary items 9 epic items 2 rare items either tokenless (9 items) or requires (9 items) 6 damage, range 6, duration 2, stop effect Hot Spot: available on 13 arcane items 2 epic items 1 rare item 2 uncommon items 7 common items either tokenless (4 items), one (8 items) or one (1 item) 8 damage, range 6, duration 2 Wall of Fire: available on 14 items 3 epic items 2 rare items 1 uncommon item 8 common items either one (6 items) or one (8 items) 8 damage, 3 squares, range 8, duration 3 As you can see, Hot Spot and even Wall Of Fire are a loteasier to get than Stone Spikes. And since the stop effect on a terrain card isn't that important in MP, there's little point in selecting spikes instead of lava there anyway. And Stone Spikes just affects one square which is weak compared to Wall Of Fire. There's Caltrops but I'm not sure if it's even on any existing item yet... (And I don't have time to do a full check with the item search) If there's another spike card than those, I've yet to see it.
I really believe there should be a change to talented healer, even if it is only to have only a single copy on items, to prevent the level of consistency combo needs. About lava, it is so dominant because it is the ONLY way to do good damage with a wizard. I have run a triple wizard deck for months and i would love to be able to not use lava, but there is no other good way to deal damage, especially w/o fireball. Also i totally agree with Karadoc on Frost jolt, 4 damage from 5 isnt a real nerf, no one runs it for that purpose anyway.
1/ Impaler, fair enough, but maybe you should also look at buffing the others, for example vash should cause more damage if the player can't be pushed back 2/ Vicous thrust : Might encourage more armour which is good, don't forget this has a double whammy though, sonce it now also doesn't stack with impaler (and then the reduction from wild frenzy (?) in the previous update). Looks like warriors are going one way...down 3/ Frost Bolt : Not sure what you are trying to achieve here. Reducing them damage will not change anything, reducing the range as suggested above seems a better solution IMHO 4/ Lava etc : Fair enough, although i worry that you are nerfing wizards hard without giving them any buffs to replace stuff 5/ War Cry : Good Plan! 6/ Tactics : This should also let the player draw another card. As it is now the user will basically lose two cards in one move, meaning that it will hardly ever be a good option. My main concern is that priests still seem to be excluded from nerfs despite them being part of any 'broken' strategies i see. Also everything seems to be taken down in damage, rather than a few things increasing. I run 3 warriors at level 1500+ which probably explains why i am biased Overall though I still feel you are moving in the right direction
I think War Cry with Cantrip deserves a Silver rating...this is really good as an initiator plus you play 2 cards in 1 turn with no counter! We'll see... Using cards/turns to cycle deck > Using cards/turns to move cards around... Suggestion: card transfer + draw 1 card by instigator ?
War Cry: excellent idea that makes it better, anyway I want to use them even as they are now, but they are SO RARE! I have perhaps seen it on a helmet. so that's why it's not used. Battlefield Training: come on, the caster needs to play this card and discard another, so that makes him 2 cards down. In the rare case that he has something worthy to transfer for someone else who can use it better. which is rare! It really needs adding "draw 1 card" for the caster, and even then, the caster is still 1 card down, for a trade that comes useful once in a blue moon.
8 damage on lava i wonder who suggested that ages ago All in all very good changes the only one that won't change my opinion at all is both the battlefield trainings as they are just too cumbersom and situational in my opinion.
Yeah, one of the reasons we seldom see War cry has to be the card occurence on items (unless this change in the most recent build). Agree the change is great, but maybe not what caused the situation to begin with.
I agree but also want to point out how very strong that card is for dissarming a defencive warrior completely so at its new power level its probably shouldn't be too easy to get.
Yep, might make the card too powerful for it's current quality level. But it's only like 4-5 items atm, and only helmets.
A few thoughts about the changes: 1. Normal battlefield training seems extremely situational to me with a range of one (increasing range to 2 doesn't help that much) and advanced battlefield training competes with card drawing from the "thinking" and team moves, so it needs something special. My favorite idea is adding cantrip to both battlefield trainings for some really fun melee attack passing combos. 2. A drop of frost jolt to range 6 would be my preference. Wizards are going to seem awfully short on decent damage options with nerfed fireball, frost jolt, and lava terrain compared to the easily accessible 11 damage options available to warriors. Although I wouldn't mind seeing more wizard options by increasing power and availability of high end arcane, lightning, and acid attacks. 3. I would like to join in and plead for a change to talented healer before release. It's really putting pure healing builds over the line and dragging games on for a long time, putting too much emphasis on warrior burst damage rather than making sustained damage viable.
I'm somewhat concerned that the VT nerf is going to make the only viable warrior build an extremely bursty hack build (using all-out attack to try to one-shot people), which I find somewhat sad as I never really found playing with or against that build to be very much fun. Of course, it's hard to tell exactly how the meta will shift - perhaps now that penetrating attacks aren't as strong people will load up on armor cards, leading to that particular build being significantly less effective. Having said that, the idea that open beta is almost upon us makes me giddy with excitement. Bring it on!
Remember that you can still give attacks penetrating with certain buffs. Besides the training that i still don't think will be enough these are all things i have either requested or wanted so I'm very happy. Now the bloodrage dagger in the starters is balanced just fine since both interesting cards on it have been nerfed.
I don't have much to add that hasn't been said by someone previously, but here are my thoughts anyway: Impaler/Vicious Thrust/Frost Jolt: Fair enough, no complaints. Lava terrain: As Zalminen pointed out, the prevalence of lava creating cards may be simply due to the fact that it's easier to get. War Cry: I like it. (Advanced) Battlefield Training: Should also allow the user to draw a card or be a cantrip (or both). The card that seems to be most vociferously complained about on the forums is Talented Healer. Might be worth considering nerfing it before release.
