[suggestion] step attacks and races

Hi,

there's a lot of discussion lately about the dwarven step warrior popularity over other races, balancing of vibrant blade and nimble strike in general and some silly things connected to it, like dwarfs being able to step double their racial movement limit AND perform an attack with the use of a single card (which kinda makes elfish dash and general mobility redundant, their biggest selling point).

Instead of rebalancing cards/items and looking how to 'improve' other races from a warrior perspective how about trying to tackle all of these at once by putting racial movement restrictions on both movement AND step attacks (i.e. turning 'step' into 'racial step')?

So for example, assuming un-nerfed nimble strike would deal their usual 6 damage but move different set of tiles for dwarf, human and elf - 2, 3 and 4, respectively? So step attacks would have to be rebalanced to be 1-2-3 and 2-3-4 (3-4-5 a bit too much?) or something along these lines, but would still keep their damage / rarity and some of the item power/rarity-balancing issues wouldn't be affected.

Elfs would be clearly the best step warriors (and they could use a bit more love in my opinion at least), which kinda goes along with their superior movement options and would offset a bit more the human overall balance and dwarfs superior hit-points (and what comes with that, superior card-drawing and trait self-harming options).

It shouldn't be difficult to visualise on the card, it could say/adjust/highlight text depending on which race is holding it (there aren't cards like that in play, but that's a virtual CCG, shouldn't be impossible, right?)

 

Neat idea.

Yep! Honestly, since you NEVER look at a card in-game without a character context (either you've got one of your characters selected in a shop/keep screen, or the card is in a character's hand, or it's been played by a character), the card could always just show the step # appropriate for that context.

 

Seems a good idea. Charge and non-standard moves could be left as they are, and dwarves would have an incentive to pack them.

 

Yea, it would be still possible to have a dash on a dwarf etc., as long as someone brings the right boots.

 

I came here to crush this idea because I dislike the idea that cards look different to each race. However you made a good case and I especially like the idea of combining racial basic movement to step range.

I like it simply because it makes sense. It's clearly how the game should have been. Dwarves being naturally slow-moving but suddenly jumping 4 squares just doesn't make sense.

I have an issue with card looking different for each race though. It's confusing and weird. A better system would be to use some kind of term like: "STEP: RACIAL MOVEMENT". This "Racial Movement" thing (or whatever it would be) would tell the player it's the basic movement range. This way we would avoid the whole "Why can I step only 2 squares when yesterday I could move 3?" that would unavoidably happen with new players.

Or how about this.

We divine STEP into two different concepts:

1. STEP
2. LEAP

STEP would always have a range of 1. This makes sense. You do not "step" 4 squares. STEP would always have a range of 1. It would basically be a lesser version of WALK.

LEAP on the other hand would use the the racial basic movement: 2 for dwarves, 3 for humans and 4 for elves. So when you use a card like Nimble Strike, you move based on your race, like suggested there in the first post.

Obvious problem with this kind of system is of course that it limits the number of different step ranges. For example dwarves would always move either 1 or 2 before hitting the target, elves would always move 1 or 4 etc. So cards like Dancing Cut would pretty much seize to exist.

So yea.. not gonna happen unfortunately.

 

You could set it up so that the distance your character can move from a step attack(after encumbrance calculations) is capped by your racial move distance. So for Nimble Strike a Dwarf can step 2, Human 3, Elf 4. Dancing Cut: Dwarf 2, Human and Elf:3. But a Dwarf with Encumber 2 trying to Nimble Strike could still move 2.

This would be fairly intuitive and flavourful, and should be fairly easy to write into the {Step} keyword. Hopefully it would encourage people to try different races for their warriors.

 

Elegant solution. Racial movement matters, yet Nimble Strike is still useful for dwarves and humans to counter encumbrance. I like it.

 

Problem is that it doesn't really make any logical sense.

Dwarf can move 2 - Frozen dwarf can move 0.
Dwarf can Nimble Strike 2 - Frozen dwarf can Nimble Strike 2.

So being frozen, which usually means you cannot move, now suddenly has zero effect on movement?

Also I don't think Nimble Strike should be seen as a counter to encumber (which is the usual argument for step 4). I think it should be the opposite: encumber should be a counter to Nimble Strike and other step cards. Wizards need a way to stop or slow down those advancing warriors.

 

A -2 encumbered dwarf would function almost exactly the same way as they do now. Extra Step movement beyond your racial movement would effectively be a buffer against encumbrance.

I kinda liked your STEP/LEAP idea too, but it makes Nimble Strike a difficult choice for dwarves since it is in every way inferior to Vicious Strike.

The only real difference for dwarves using Minmaxer's idea would be how quickly they advance across the battlefield with Nimble Strike. So if your wizard moves within 6 of a dwarf, you don't have to worry about Walk + Nimble being on top of you. Or using Winds of War and they're back on top of you. It would be enough, I think, while gently buffing the other races as warriors.

It may make elves too strong though. That's just how good Step 4 with 6 damage is.

 

If something like what I talked about was implemented, Nimble Strike and Vicious Strike would basically be that same card so naturally other changes would be have to made as well. For example something like this:

Nimble Strike -> LEAP (racial movement 2,3 or 4) + 6 damage
Vicious Thrust -> LEAP (racial movement 2,3 or 4) + 4 damage, penetrating

So they could change Vicious Thrust so that it has some additional effect like penetrating, hard to block etc. Just an example.

What Minmaxer suggested might make sense gameplay-wise but it doesn't make sense when you think about it logically. I do understand this is a game and not reality but it should still follow the rules of physics and common sense as often as possible. Anything else is just bad game design imo. Card Hunter already has weird cards like Team Run that for some reason ignore encumber. Yeah, I know it's a PUSH but why does is say RUN in the title then?!

 

Vicious Thrust *had* penetrating during beta and got hit by the nerf bat. I used to love that card. It was cheap, too.

 

I agree Team Run and Run Team like cards are odd in that way (although Violent Spin makes sense), but on the other hand there need to be attractive ways to counter encumber and lava that are still useful in other scenarios.

In fact I'm also perplexed how you can encumber an enemy who's also on fire and/or sitting under lava. I think all encumber cards should be discarded if they take fire damage, which I think would make things more interesting and would make low-range fire attacks like fire-spray more tactical.

 

Coming back to the presentation of a redefined 'step'.

Example:
- while outside of fights, like in shops or within the keep, a step card could say (for example):

- during a fight the card could say only (for Elf):

Noting the race, to remind people that it's based on race, although not really that important at the time of playing. If the card is passed on to a dwarf by the battlefield training or ducks etc., we would see:

If you hover over 'step' for info it could still say the current step definition, which is:

If you hover over "Short" it could say

No room for misinterpretation really. Wiki or a more elaborate explanation elsewhere in the game (tutorial?) could go on to say:

 

Actually the problem in race balancing is not restricted to warriors. Dwarf priests and dwarf mages also dominate the high rank matches.
Therefore I am sure that changing step attacks only will not be sufficient for the balancing, because if affects only warriors (perhaps a bit of priests).
However, I do like very much the OP's idea on race steps, and I think it should be extended to race pushes as well.
It would be even better that Sprint and Wild Run also become "moving the character by 2x its racial move".
In this way it will affect not only warriors but also priests and mages, and I hope will result in a more balanced race choice among high ranked players.

Besides this movement issue, there was also a post about the importance of re-balancing racial skills here, which I think is an excellent post but unfortunately did not receive much attention.

If BM is interested in the proper balancing of races, I do think they should take all these issues together into consideration.

 

Hopefully that will change after nerfs to card-drawing cards. Need to wait and see how the meta adjusts to those (but I wouldn't expect to see more elves, however).

 

Dwarf mages are preferred not only in card-drawing decks but also other play styles, such as control wizards posted by Sacred Little Girl and the counter-draw-deck build posted by Vakaz.

There ARE some serious issues in race balancing which is not only limited to draw decks and warriors.

As for priests... people have been saying there is no meaning in bringing them without using a draw deck or Mass Frenzy anyway... lol

 

There are some nice things out there for other races and priests, like elf cantrip vampire for example, the problem is that step dwarf warrior with a bit of card draw is just better than any of it. Toning these down a bit would make other things flourish.

If the step was modified as suggested that would see some mobility taken away from dwarfs which could be a 'step' in the right direction Also, the popularity of whirlwinds and whirlwind enemies make it pointless to bring elves - it doesn't matter if you can quickly get to that VS or flank a mage on round 1 if you'll be flung to the other part of the map anyway and rely on lucky placement and well timed step attack use before you're shoved again.

When it comes to control wizards... give the meta a bit of time, it looks like they are a counter for card draw exploit deck (and dwarf warrior in general) and they do well because the high ranks were filled with them. Freeze the dwarf, perplex ray the card advantage, place a volcano under his legs and shove him back with Winds of War if he tries to run away. The build uses dwarfs too because he has WoW to move himself if he needs that extra mobility and generally is defending rather then attacking so dwarven toughness is good for that. The problem is that they don't do much damage and rely on LoS. Haven't played Scared Little Girl yet but I did fight a lot of copycats of that build and a simple Smoke Bomb completely messes up things (and it also removes ground attachments). If more people had smoke bomb and wall building capacity then this build wouldn't really do so well as it did in the current iteration of meta, which was overrun by card draw exploiters. It's good that the 'control wizard' happened, especially around the time of the card draw nerf, hopefully it will deter copycats to other alternatives. It will take several rounds of rock/paper/scissors scenario before we end up with at least a handful of competitive builds, rather than 1 or 2 as it is currently.

I would be more worried about whirlwind spam like for example run by Vakaz. You can get a consistent stream of whirlwinds but you can't consistently defend against it, which is what worries me.

 

The problem with fighting control wizards is that there isn't really a good counter for them that would also work well against all other builds. Sure you could take a bunch of Smoke Bombs and Counterspells to counter control wizards but then you might face a warrior team and get crushed because many of your cards would be totally useless.

And Smoke Bomb is not as useful as you make it sound. It is powerful of course, and I have lost one match because of a single Smoke Bomb, but I have also beaten people with those. You would have to be able to keep them up pretty much 24/7 and with volcanoes and Toughness even that is not a guaranteed win. Walls are not that great either when you have teleport or can just wait for walls to go away. I haven't lost a single match to walls. But this is getting off-topic..

I personally don't see whirlwind spam as a big problem. The issue with that card is that the opponent always gets the first move after the whirlwind. It's not rare to see their wizard move next to your warrior. And with step warriors, you don't even have to be that close. It's a gimmick build that can be fun to play but is probably not that awesome. Having a card like WWE is great to have in your deck to make it more versatile, but I doubt a build completely based on WWE or WW would get you in top-10. It's too much luck based, and you will lose tons of matches because of bad luck.

Also these new, terrible maps we have are basically a nerf to both wizards and WWE/WW because they are much smaller and provide more cover. I predict this will be a month of free-moving mobile warriors.

 

What I have always been talking about was "high ranked players".
Sacred Litttle Girl's control wizard got to 2nd place in the ranking. Vakaz's counter-draw-deck build got to top 10.
I don't think there are any elf cantrip vampires in the top 50, even top 100 or so.
At least I haven't palyed against any when I was among the top 100.
Also, when I was playing against players above 1550, probably 9 games out of 10 there is at least 1 dwarf in my opponent's team. Probably 6 or 7 games out of 10 the other team is just 3 dwarves, no matter of his play style. This is my personal experience, and I do hope many other people have felt the same.