Hi Card Hunters, Good news - here is the long-awaited plan to rein in rampant card drawing builds in multiplayer. Sorry for the delay, but it’s a complex topic and we approach nerfing cards very cautiously. Let's take a step back and recap what our goals are. Firstly, we want to make sure that the multiplayer game isn't dominated by a single type of party. It's dull when you must play the same build to be successful. Secondly, we want to make sure that builds which are successfully aren't dull to play against. Card drawing "engines" can cause problems on both these fronts, but particularly the second. Even if they aren't entirely dominant as a strategy, they are dull to play against since they don't involve interaction between the players. In Beta, we had to do some significant rebalancing to squash out of control card drawing as a strategy and we made extensive changes to Inspiration, Altruism and Martyr Blessing, amongst other cards. We hoped we'd found all the issues before we launched, but, unfortunately, some remained. Clearly, we have to watch carefully over any cards that allow you to draw more cards without some sort of limitation as to what those cards are (more on that later). In addition, triggered card drawing that operates from something that you control yourself (like Martyr Blessing used to be) is highly problematic. Two cards in particular that we believe have been causing problems since launch are Unholy Power and Demonic Feedback. They both allow arbitrary card drawing, at very little cost. Let's look at these cards in a little more detail. Unholy Power is a card that allows you to draw two cards for the cost of one damage to the target. It has a long range of 8 which allows you to not only get two more cards, but ensure that they get to the character in your party who needs those cards most. It's a very powerful card, but what really causes the problems is when it is used to draw cards for a character who has the potential to draw another Unholy Power or another card drawing card (like Demonic Feedback, for example). Demonic Feedback is basically Unholy Power with a drawback - that it does 5 damage to the caster. That's a nasty downside but it really isn't sufficient to compensate for the great primary effect. It's a paper titled card, which means that it should be pretty bad, but it's nowhere near that grade in reality. As is, it's probably a silver or gold card and kind of a no-brainer to include in a priest build. Finally, the kicker is that you can get these two great cards with one minor drawback for no power token cost using the Demon Charm Of The 2nd Circle. Demonic Revenge is supposed to really hurt you for using too many Unholy cards but the reality is that most of the time it is going to only do 2 points of damage to you - and that damage is going to be easily prevented by armor or by some other form of damage prevention. In addition, being a Trait, the card replaces itself, which makes it useful in its own right. The simplest solution would be to just nerf this one item by adding a power token requirement to it. While this might solve the immediate problem, we feel that it wouldn't be a long term fix. Instead, we're planning to roll out a suite of changes to various cards to address this. I'll itemise the changes below and provide a justification for each. Demonic Feedback This is the worst offender. It has two major problems: it draws too many cards, and for too little cost. So, the changes are on both these fronts: Change to only draw one card instead of two. Change 5 self-damage to 5 unpreventable self-damage. Unpreventable means no armor, no nimbus, no way to stop the damage. Change range from 8 to 3. You'll notice that with the range change, this is essentially now a version of Inspiration, only with self-damage. We feel that 5 points of unpreventable damage (and the fact that it doesn't trigger Altruism) makes this card much more balanced. Unholy Power This card is much less of a problem, but we still feel that it's a bit too good for its grade. In particular, the one damage to the target is not much of a drawback given armor and other damage prevention effects. So, it's getting some minor changes to increase its drawbacks: Change from 1 damage to target to 3 points of unpreventable self-damage. Change range from 8 to 3. You'll notice that this card is now much more like a better version of Demonic Feedback. Because we switched to self-damage, we've decided to rename this card to Demonic Power. Demonic cards hurt the user, not the target. Demonic Revenge The chance of having an Unholy card in hand when you draw this is dependent on your deck, of course. But taking two extra damage for that card is a pretty minor penalty. The intention of this card was to punish you heavily for using too many Unholy cards. Ultimately, though, we think we may have set an impossible goal. It's very hard to build a card that punishes using a lot of Unholy cards without going too easy on builds that only use a few. So, we're going to revise this card to just do straight up Unholy damage - and 5 points of unpreventable damage at that. What are the net effects of these changes on the Demon Charm Of The 2nd Circle? It's going to draw you one less card and do a lot more damage to you. But, we're not going to stop there. We still think this item draws too many cards for you with the Trait effect on Demonic Revenge. Therefore, we're also going to replace this drawback with one that I'm pretty sure most of you would consider to be worse: Demonic Miasma. Yes, this is one unpleasant drawback that only redeems itself in that you can sometimes play it out for one damage or to trigger a block from an opponent. Does all this make the charm unplayable? We don't think so, but I think it puts it back into the realm of where it should be, given that it requires no power tokens. What about other components of card drawing builds? We don't think these are as problematic, but we do want to tinker around the edges. Here are some other changes in the pipeline: Dwarven Battle Cry This is a great card if you are playing all dwarves and your opponent isn't. It's downside is supposed to be that it's basically a wash if your opponent is also all dwarves. However, right now it triggers blocks from your opponent, which kind of negates this downside. So, we're adding the new unblockable keyword to this card. As you might expect, this means the card can't be blocked and, therefore, won't trigger blocks from your enemies. I should note that the net effect of this card is inherently limited by its availability. You can't pack more than one in any dwarf deck. Inspiring Presence This card can net a lot of cards in the early game. In the mid to late game, it's limited in its power since it also causes enemies to draw if they are close. However, as with Battle Cry, this drawback is limited by the fact that it also triggers blocks. Hence, it is also going to get the unblockable keyword. Some of you have suggested also increasing the range of Inspiring Presence, to make it harder to play without washing over onto your enemies as well. That’s something we’ll keep in reserve if it looks like this card is still encouraging turtling / drawing strategies too much. Finally, here are some additional changes to some of the game’s drawback cards. You might note now that Demonic Revenge is probably much worse than the other drawbacks that inflict self-damage, notably, Ouch!, Brain Burn and Demonic Pain. These are not cards that are commonly played right now, so you might wonder why they also need adjustment. Essentially, we feel that any drawback card that is also a Trait, i.e. replaces itself, has to incur a very significant cost. After all, you’re probably going to draw a much better card than the drawback you started with. What we've been seeing with the Demon Charm discussed above is that self-damage has to be very significant to make up for this replacement ability. Since we needed to adjust Demonic Feedback, we also need to adjust these drawbacks. Here's what we're proposing: Ouch! Increase self damage from 2 per Attack card to 3 per Attack card. Brain Burn Increase self damage from 2 per Magic card to 3 per Magic card. Demonic Pain This card, which used to just do 3 damage is being cut and replaced by the new, harsher, Demonic Revenge. Any items that used Demonic Pain will now use Demonic Revenge. Now, one last change. Again, this isn't a card that is being abused at the moment, but we want to take this opportunity to build in a safety check. Inspiring Armor This is a card that draws when it prevents damage. Although inherently limited, because it doesn't have the Keep keyword, we want to make sure it isn't used as part of draw builds by changing it to only draw on enemy sourced damage. So it's rule text now specifies that the draw is only triggered by damage from an enemy controlled card. No more inspiring your team by beating up your allies! We know these changes may cause a deal of pain to those of you who have built decks around these cards and, for that, we apologize. Our goal is to minimise the number of these changes we have to make now that the game has been released. In this case, we feel that they are necessary for the long term health of the game. The changes will be previewed on the test server shortly (I'll post when a build containing them is up there). If you are at all interested in these changes, whether you agree with them or not, we would highly encourage you to check them out on the test server and let us know what you find. We'd love to know your thoughts before we finalise these changes, so please let us know what you think!
thanks for making these changes. they seem good to me. they are going to make the challenges in SP harder, too, however. No problem; we can take it. Is there a planned release date for these on the ranking servers?
I don't think so. I just finished all the drawbacks and I didn't use Demon Charm of the 2nd circle or many of the drawbacks that are being "nerfed". The "good" drawbacks for these quests are : 1) Squeamish -- not much of a drawback for runestones, cycles 2) Combustible on staff of inferno -- not a drawback once you get resistant hide, cycles 3) Vulnerable on shuddering relic -- not too harsh a drawback and it cycles 4) Arcane feedback -- easy card to discard before it hurts you, and the sting is minor 5) Blind Rage -- the best drawback for warriors, often helps you rather than hurts you 6) Slowed -- Non-cyclic and annoying, but I find I can't live without the Human skill that has two Leadership cards to discard non-cycling drawbacks 7) Wimpy -- annoying but cyclic. 8) Obv Manuever -- its biggest problem is that it doesn't cycle, but it also doesn't provide a card for leadership to turn into gold. I never used Ouch! or Brain Burn and barely tolerated Loner (only for Vamp Blade) because those cards can deal a very large amount of damage at unexpected times. That's why I am a little surprised they are increasing the penalty of those drawbacks more than the penalties for the drawbacks I mentioned above.
Quick idea... what about changing Demonic Feedback to something like this Change to only draw one card instead of two. Change 5 self-damage to 3 unpreventable self-damage and damage to the target. Damages are lowered, but spread cross (6 damages total), so can still be useful as a alternative form of inspiration. However, it also would add some more usability, since can then use this card as a attacking spell too.
Hahah wow, Demonic Feedback suuuucks now. Which I guess is appropriate for a "weak" card It'll be interesting to see if draw strategies can overcome these nerfs. I imagine a well-built party could still "go off" occasionally, but it'll be much less consistent. Thanks for the updates, Jon!
Looks good all around. I probably would have been slightly less heavy handed at first to see how unpreventable self damage plays out first though. That alone could end the draw engine. The nimbus was key, and is itself prone to abuse. I think 5 unpreventable self damage is definitely worse than Miasma, but keeping it on the 2nd circle charm would have meant 13 unpreventable selfing which is a bit much for a single card. I'm not sure how usable the charm will be overall though with unholy power taking a hit as well. It is a very powerful card, perhaps more so than intended, but I liked that the 2nd circle charm had one self damage and one target damage draw mechanism, it felt a bit more balanced and kept the over selfing for non nimbus abusers under control.
Sure, these draw strategies are being tackled, but the thing is Priest cards are VERY hit and miss (like if you don't draw the cards like impenetrable nimbus you may as well not have a priest), the only reliable way to play a priest was as a draw build or a heal build(which imo is pretty weak), and now that's been nerfed there's even less reason to play priests.
Can you let us sell demon charms of the 2nd circle for 25 gold after the change since they are being made completely useless? Also, priests need some buffs since draw decks are really the only good thing about them right now. Healing is not very good since many decks focus on killing in a single turn, and if you want to do damage you might as well run warriors.
We really feel that Trait drawbacks are undervalued at the moment and are nervous about that. We could be wrong though.
I think an appropriate buff to priests would be spells that reduce incoming damage to allies, like an armour effect, or a block effect.
Good idea. I'll see if I can think of a way of doing that or some other way of compensation for the nerf.
I think the nerf to demonic feedback is a bit much. Just making it one card instead of two would have fixed it (making it still a worse inspiration because you can't self target or trigger altruism, and you take a good amount of damage). Making the self damage unpreventable and making the range to only 3 makes it seem like total overkill though. It's basically just a dead card in it's current form, hardly usable at all. At 8 range it might have some very niche use over inspiration at least. I liked that demonic revenge punished for unholy cards. Maybe make it 3 damage plus 3 per unholy card? I don't know, 5 damage regardless of unholy cards just seems less... fun. And it was always nice to see draw decks punished for drawing a revenge when they were hanging on to a bunch of unholy cards and drew more. But despite these, at least 2nd demonic charm is no longer crazy OP, which is the most important thing! We'll see if people manage to adapt the draw decks to use inspiration/altruism/presence instead of feedbacks or not .
I feel that people stack squeamish and to some extent vulnerable without much fear of drawback from them. I wouldn't be opposed to making every negative cycle trait have some sort of sting to it (I think fright and superstitious and perfectly done at the moment - you can play around them but they can be huge game changers if they show up at the exact right time). Vulnerable could be plus 2 damage, but I don't know of a way to make squeamish more interesting.
I think you guys are going about this the complete wrong way. Yes nerfs are easy short term fixes but the easiest solution is not always the best. This is a card game at its core. Card advantage is always going to be the best kind of cards. The problem is not that priests card drawing is too good. It's that the other classes have too little card advantage. Instead of limiting one classes options you should be opening up other classes. Warriors should get the attacks that discard attacks maybe give wizard some attacks that also have card draw on them. You say draw decks are boring for opponents because other teams have no way to interact, then add ways for them to interact. I'm just spit balling ideas I'm sure the devs can come up with better ones. What I'm trying to get to is more is better than less. As for these changes in particular they are super heavy handed. The nerfed priest cards are nigh unplayable. I don't know what priests are going to do for no token divine items now. There is literally nothing good to use now. Anyway just my 2 cents I'm not going anywhere, it's still a great game just hope to see less of this in the future.
Yes, definitely. Of course, some are appropriately harsh right now (Frightened). But Trip, Squeamish, Vulnerable, Wimpy, and a few other drawbacks are basically just good in a lot of builds for deck-thinning purposes. This might not be the topic for this suggestion, but it's on-topic for the tangent: maybe Combustible should negate all armor when being damaged by fire
Or maybe for the trait situation, negative traits don't get replaced? Maybe not for the really harsh ones though.
Trait cycling is a very fun and cool part of deckbuilding I feel. You just gotta make sure the price is right.
While I think Combustible needs a little nerfing, the suggestion to negate all armor feels a little harsh. Maybe the 3 extra fire damage should not be blocked by armor, in that if armor or nimbus reduces the fire damage to 0, you still take 3 damage.
I like these nerfs, appropriately harsh in my opinion, It will be interesting to see what comes out of this, I still think a type of draw deck will be playable but just not ridiculous mode that we currently see. Lets get this onto the live server asap.
