Vibrant Pain.. and how to fix it

Let me preface this with the fact that I am new to Cardhunter. As such, I will not be commenting on the balance of Vibrant Pain or Nimble Strike. However I believe I see a solution to the problem of card level/power tokens formulas and to the issue of changes to Nimble Strike affecting other cards. Sorry if this has already been thought of or has some obvious problem that I don't know about yet.

If you want to avoid changing the items value or level or whatever, and you also want to avoid rebalancing items other than Vibrant Pain, then couldn't you just create a new card, give it the same level/rarity as Nimble Strike, give it the adjusted damage/distance values, then only swap it out for the Nimble Strikes on Vibrant Pain? That way it doesn't affect other cards that use Nimble Strike, and it avoids the issue of changing the level of Vibrant Pain.

 

I would really like to see nimble strike left alone, or if any nerf were to occur just reduce the damage by one. I would however like to see vicious thrust penetrate which would make it a little more useful and if dancing cut would give u free move to step around ur opponent that would make it more useful. I mean that is what it appears to be doing in the picture anyway and vicious thrust already looks like it would pierce so why not make it that way?

 

Vicious Thrust use to be penetrating, but it was changed during the beta. Here's the post announcing the nerf.

 

And I thought Freeze would be useful. Let's scrap the wizard again.

 

I played during the beta and could have sworn it penetrated, i really think it should still, but maybe u could lower the damage to 5 or 6 and decrease the step on it to 1.

 

Imo the prevalence of nimble strike is also fueled by draws. Lets be honest here, without draws for card advantage and priest's damage buffs nimble strike's 6 damage per hit is manageable. I think drawing cards are bad for the game and should be entirely redesigned. Why? Cause a mighty hack is a mighty hack, regardless of who plays it. Draws defeat the purpose of building a party. One guy with 6 cards is better than three guys with 2 cards each. I think if people have a choice to allocate the amount of cards each character draws per turn, the vast majority would rather have 6 cards on 1 guy and zero on the other two.

 

A little more useful? Vicious Thrust is one of the best warrior skills out there! There's a reason it was nerfed during beta. Personally I think it would be more balanced if it did only 6 damage. It's not as bad as Nimble Strike, but based on my extensive personal experiences playing a deck (warrior, warrior, prist) full of Vicious Thrusts, I think that card too is slightly too powerful.

I've seen a lot of comments about how Nimble Strike is only good because of card draws. It's actually the other way around. Nimble Strike is not good because of card draw, card draw is good because of Nimble Strike. Nimble Strike gives that card draw dwarf warrior the insane mobility that he might not otherwise have. Even if you had 100 cards, it makes no difference if you cannot get close enough to hit.

And one guy with 6 cards is not always better than three guys with 2 cards each. It's very situational. Just fight my control wizards and you'll see why Having zero cards, and having no way to move or defend yourself, can be really really bad. If the opponent has a way to shut down that guy with 6 cards (uncumber, halt, WoW, etc.) your whole team is sitting ducks (maybe sitting in lava).

 

I want a Nimble Barge.

 

I think the problem is that draws are a nice option to have in any CCG, but it's too easy to exploit them to make them go exponential. The devs are looking for that sweet spot where they are good without being exploitable.

 

Yes, my SP warrior is basically a Vicious Thrust warrior (he carries two of those daggers with 4 x Vicious Thrust and a Blind Rage). I don't have any Nimble strikes, so Vicious Thrust is the next best thing.

 

First, I agree that Nimble Strike is too good. However, by itself, its not that terribly overpowered. Its the compounding effect of a few factors together that pushes Nimble Strike to god like status. These include: blind rage, mass frenzy, dwarf 4 hp bonus, card advantage via draws. Imagine if there is a card with 6 vicious thrust or a 2 blue token (?) weapon with 6 dancing cut. It can perform almost as well as vibrant pain. That being said, I entirely agree with you that vibrant pain is obviously too good.

Second, I think you are underestimating the advantage of having one guy with 6 draws rather than three guy with 2 draws. Yes, your deck can counter the 6 card warrior well. But, what if that 6 draw guy is a wizard loaded with counter spell, and say, firestorm? He has a much better chance of drawing his resistant hide and then unleash his pain.

 

A little late reply but it was time to bump this topic anyways.

Here's how I see it. It's impossible to have a bunch of balanced cards that become unstoppable when combined. If they become unstoppable, one or more cards in that group has to be completely broken, no matter how balanced it looks. In this particular case that card is Nimble Strike.

I won't start repeating what was said in this topic, but I will say that Nimble Strike is much better than it might look to someone who has very little experience of it. This topic already mentions all the main arguments for that. I will also mention that 6 Dancing Cuts does not perform nearly as well as 6 Nimble Strikes. They are so far apart they might as well be from different planets.

Like I said earlier, this is very situational. For every scenario that you can come up with where having all cards on one character is better, I can come up with three scenarios where the exact opposite happens. It's a pointless discussion imo.

 

Nimble Strike seems to be fairly key to making Warriors at all relevant in the face of the control wizards dominating high level play at the moment. I agree that Vibrant Pain stands out as far better than many other Warrior choices, but on the other hand there are a lot of warrior choices that are just downright bad (like, say, the Oversized Pick), and they don't have a huge choice of good options for maintaining a mobile offense. Meanwhile wizards still have top tier weapons that don't even cost a token, let alone two yellow ones, and can maintain their offense, defense, and control from across the map (and a dwarf wizard is just as durable as an elven warrior).

I'd like to see there be a greater variety of comparably viable choices for Warrior weapons, but I also want Warriors to remain viable in the face of 1500+ rank fights where people are spamming dozens of Whirlwinds and Winds of Wars, stacking cold spells, spewing lava and walls over the whole terrain, and zapping you with hard to block lightning, all while having solid draw rates due to good trait / drawback cards. Heck, even with nimble strike a lucky whirlwind can put an elven warrior out of the game for 4 full rounds (such as on the new map where there are two rivers on the north and south side, with the only way out being multiple squares of difficult terrain, and the only way that anyone ever gets in is by whirlwind).

 

The devs are looking into this issue. And the trait cycling issue.

As always they will look at all the available stats and make a measured and thoughtful change.

 

Sure, but keeping some card or item overpowered just because it's a counter to something else, does not make much sense. Best way to achieve balance is to nerf all op cards, and Nimble Strike is a great place to start.

But yes, I agree that warriors need more variety. Currently they are just dumb brutes bashing away. I'd like to see more finesse, tricks and some other tricks up their sleeves. But I guess the plan is to give that role to Rogues.

The way I see it, "looking into" is a valid excuse only when the issue is new, unconfirmed or complex. This is none of those. The op nature of Vibrant Pain and Nimble Strike has been known forever, and balancing it would be really simple. We have an op card, and an item full of those op cards. I mean how much more clear could it be? Simple way to fix it would be to just nerf Nimble Strike. A damage decrease from 6 to 5 would be a first step in the right direction (no pun), but it's not happening. The question is, why is it not happening?

I have two theories:

1. BM wants to have one awesome item that everyone tries to get. That item is Vibrant Pain. The idea is that people are willing to do whatever it takes to get that item, even buy club membership if it happens to drop in the club slot. The fear is that without this "Holy Grail" of items, people would stop grinding and quit.
2. BM is scared to make any changes to Nimble Strike / Vibrant Pain because they are afraid of the potential backlash from players who use and own that item. They are now kind of stalling and hoping for the issue to go away on its own. No real statements or promises have been made, and we only get the "we're looking into it" standard reply.

It has to be one of those two because they are professional game designers and know when an item is as broken as Vibrant Pain. The fact that this item survived beta, kind of suggests it's option number 1. But it's also possible that it somehow survived beta by being under the radar (maybe nobody had it or even knew about it?), so it could be option 2 as well.

Yes, but lets not forget that they are not omnipotent, only human. "Measured and thoughtful change" almost happened with Brain Burn as well, when they were planning on nerfing it to extinction, until it was luckily stopped at the last minute. My point is that players should always always post feedback as much as possible and not simply wait and see what the devs come up with.

I am hoping that in the next card balance patch we will see a nerf of Nimble Strike and certain wizards cards like WoW and SPR. Trait cycling issue should be fixed too because it's clearly too powerful, although that will be much more difficult to fix, unless you simply nerf a couple of key traits somehow. With aggressive nerfs, we would be one step closer to a fun and balanced game where players don't have to take the law into their own hands and avoid op cards by having peasant tournaments (check it out if you already haven't).

 

Unfortunately, I have to agree. I would even settle for some kind of official word from any of the devs even if it's just a plain "no intention to nerf now or in the future". Just to know.
Not knowing if these issues are even meant to be dealt with sometime in the future after all this time is somewhat disappointing. I mean with all due respect to the newest holiday items/figurines the itemization issues are the biggest issue for people who really love the game right now.

 

As SLG just stated, and as I've stated over and over and over and over for months, I believe the devs allow this item to continue to remain in the game due to the premise of a 'pay to win' type scenario. There is no other reason I can conceive of for VP and Nimble Strike to remain in game, other than incompetence. I don't believe the devs are incompetent at all, and I believe this is a business decision. VP / Nimble Strike has been the best item in the game, and widely noted as such, for the entire 4 months I have played this game. I do think that in a game like this, ultimately it would be the multiplayer that could drive the game to a new echelon, and allow a pay to win structure to remain in-game may move some money, but will ultimately be too heavy a barrier if the goal is to grow the multiplayer player base to a level like other "F2P" games are currently doing.

This game is in dire need of balancing for:

1) Vibrant Pain
2) Nimble Strike
3) Card Cycling
4) WoW
5) Priest class balance compared to warriors/wizards and itemization.
6) Drawbacks in general (some are not actually 'drawbacks' at all)
7) Valuation of items with 1-2 traits (Robes of lightness is a prime example) and valuation of items based on token cost to more appropriately reflect their real value, rather than their on-paper numerical value as suggested by the Blue Manchu system.
8) WW/WWE (negates some of the tactical and strategic decisions made by players and injects too much randomness [imo] into a multiplayer that conceivably is supposed to reflect skill; thus the elo rating system)
9) Racial balance; particularly dwarves, then humans, then elves. (Dwarves are too strong generally, humans can be abusive with some of the card cycling abilities / team sprint, and elves just really can't compare overall).

 

Er, I haven't played in a couple weeks, but I saw priest draw engines vanish completely after the nerf... or are you just referring to a combination of trait cycling plus human racials?

 

Trait cycling results in card cycling, but yeah if you prefer to call it trait cycling that's fine too. Toughness isn't a trait and it cycles cards and grants you invul, so I include it in that as well.

 

I have over 2500 pizza in the bank, enough to buy 5 Vibrant Pains. Problem is, it's not in the shops, and it hasn't been since I started playing. If the devs were out to create a pay to win scenario, they sure do a bad job to get my money...

This sort of paranoia just poisons the community. Sure, the devs are out to get your money, but that's because they need to pay rent, food, servers... There are games out there that are just money-printing machines but Card Hunter is not one of them. Unless you're being sarcastic, I really don't see where you are coming from and I call BS.