Here is a thread to consolidate cards we think are the wrong color (and why): I'll start it off -- Either Enervating Touch or Invigorating Touch should probably be silver. It's bizarre that these 2 cards are exactly the same, except one's 5 damage and bronze, and one's 6 damage and gold.
There are so many of these that I'm not even sure this topic is needed. I mean it's not a matter of one or two cards being the wrong color by mistake. The developers have chosen to assign tons of cards the "wrong" color for one reason or another, so it's not like they don't know the situation. Maybe it's related to their item level and rarity system, which apparently doesn't allow certain color combinations for certain item levels, I don't know... I personally would like to see HUGE changes in card color and rarity. Changes that would make more sense than the current situation. Items should be changed as well, starting from all those legendaries that are currently either useless or really average. Good thing Card Hunter is still a new game. Hopefully we'll see some changes soon. And maybe listing all the problematic cards here would be useful in reminding the developers about what the main issues are. I'll add one card: Nimble Strike. It should be gold or emerald when looking at its relative power in mp, especially when compared to cards like Dancing Cut.
The range 2 penetrating cards are badly graded too : Puncturing Stab : Strength 4, range 2, penetrating, silver Penetrating Stab : Strength 6, range 2, penetrating, gold Impaling Stab : Strength 9, range 2, penetrating, gold On the other hand, concerning raw melee damage attack cards, we have : Strong Hack at bronze for 8 attack range 1 Powerful Hack and similar cards at silver for 11 attack range 1 Mighty Hack and similar cards at gold for 14 attack range 1 Obliterating Bludgeon emerald for 17 attack range 1 Almighty Hack purple (amethyst?) for 20attack range 1 So each grade is +3 for attack card. There is no penetrating range 2 bronze card. At the silver level, we trade 7(!) strength for penetrating 2 range 2 At the gold level we trade either 8 strength of penetrating 2 range 2 (Mighty Hack vs Penetrating Stab, or 5 for exactly the same effect(Mighty Hack vs Impaling Stab). It is completely non sensical that attack get +3 damage for each color increase, while penetating range 2 attack can get +2 for 1 increase, or +3 for the same level. That and there is a stronger increment between Penetrating Stab and Impaling Stab that are both gold, then between Puncturing Stab and Penetrating Stab when one is silver and the other gold. It would be much more consistent if each of these attacks had a different color level, with each card 3 strength apart from each other. I know that Penetrating Stab and Puncturing Stab are both common while Impaling Stab is uncommon, but as there are 3 penetrating range 2 attacks, the system would work better with some consistency. Currently, it results in some poor itemization results (with cards like the Bohemian Ear Spoon being a complete joke), and very few weapons being even considered for equipping. I would rather have : Puncturing Stab : Strength 3, range 2, penetrating, bronze Penetrating Stab : Strength 6, range 2, penetrating, silver Impaling Stab : Strength 9, range 2, penetrating, gold It would be much more consistent, and would make the lesser stab cards not be an automatic trip to the eternal storeroom of unused items for the weapons using them. The non penetrating range 2 attacks are even worse in the improperly graded department : Potent Stab is silver strength 8, range 2, common Strong Stab is silver strength 6, range 2, common So these cards are exactly the same, except one is strength 6 and the other strength 8. We could as well remove every item with Strong Stab as it will never see any use either. The other cards in this branch being : Stab paper strength 3, range 2, uncommon and Able Stab bronze, strength 4, range 2, common So we have to go from paper to bronze for 1 extra strength, then from bronze to silver for 2, but then, we can get 2 more strength for no change in rarity or color... The cards should be reworked as follow : Potent Stab gold strength 11, range 2 Strong Stab is silver strength 8, range 2 Able Stab bronze, strength 5, range 2 Stab paper strength 2 (or remain at 3?), range 2 to have some consistency with penetrating attack cards (once they are made consistent!) and regular melee damage attack cards (which increments are fine as is right now). Once again, that would make weapon choice a bit less one dimensionnal than equipping bejeweled short sword or vibrant pain. Which leads us to another big category of offenders : the step attack cards : We have : Lunging Hack : paper, common, attack 2, step 1 Lunging Thrust : bronze, common, attack 3, step 1 Lunging Strike : bronze, common, attack 4, step 1 Dancing Cut : silver, uncommon, attack 4 step 3 Vicious Thrust : silver, uncommon, attack 7 step 2 Nimble Strike : silver, rare, attack 6 step 4 Lunging Thrust is an absolutely worse version of Lunging Strikefor the same rarity level and color. It needs to go. Dancing Cut and Vicious Thrust are of same rarity and color, and one is trading 3 attack for 1 more step (which is too steep, dancing cut should probably be attack 5). On the other hand, Nimble Strike trades 1 attack for step 2 compared to vicious thrust, which makes absolutely zero sense. The fact that the card is rarer should not come into play, unless the game is really meant to be some kind of lottery, as 6 silver cards = 2 gold power tokens on any weapon anyway. Currently, the weaker step attacks are too weak, and the stronger one (nimble strike) is too good. Vicious thrust seems well balanced to me (compared to Powerful Hack), but if it is considered too good, then just remove 1 attack for each of the proposed step attack (except the paper one). Proposed changes (damage/step exchange rate would be 2*step) : Lunging Hack : paper, attack 2, step 1 Lunging Thrust : -> replaced with lunging strike, or bronze, attack 4, step 2 ? (but do we want step 2 attacks at bronze level?) Lunging Strike : bronze, common, attack 6, step 1 Dancing Cut : silver, attack 5, step 3 Vicious Thrust : silver, attack 7 step 2 Nimble Strike : gold, attack 6 step 4
I made an extensive list in beta, which is still mostly accurate. Funny how I had to defend upgrading demonic feedback back then. https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/feedback-cards-with-an-over-underrated-card-quality.2892/ The problem according to the devs is that the way the item system is set up, changing card quality would automatically change levels/powertoken requirements, which could lead to gaps in the item distribution and could remove some items entirely from the drop tables by raising their level above 18. Not terribly convincing if you ask me, but there you go. I also do not think it is a problem if there are slightly worse cards (Lunging Thrust/Strike) in a given rarity level. It gives the devs some design space for finetuning items.
Yeah, it's like they got it backwards. Instead of simply making cards with correct color, and build all items based on those colors, we now have a system where changes to cards cannot be done because they mess up the items. "No, we cannot change the color of this particular card because that would ruin the Staff of Pawnage." I personally find it very difficult to understand why item levels and token requirements have to be calculated automatically like that, but I'm not a programmer so maybe I'm missing something.
If the system is set up that way, that's fine. In that case you just keep the quality fixed and change the damage of the cards to create a consistent setup. All you really need is a basic guideline. Bronze basic attack: 8 damage. Below that: half damage each step - paper 4 damage, black 2 damage. Each quality step up: +3 damage. For reach 2: -3 damage ... and so on. Rarity should not play into this as it just creates balance problems. If you end up with two identical cards at the same quality level, merge them. There are 500 (?) cards and several thousand items in the system. If you don't have an automatic formula to determine item level etc. it becomes a huge PITA to manage this. It's perfectly OK to have such a system, the problem is that they've not been consistent in applying the system, which is why they have the current mess.
Yes, cards can still be balanced - or switched out for cards of equal value without changing the items. I believe the biggest balance issue is with changing the quality (i e colour of a card). I believe the reason we have similar cards of varying rarity is due to where on the power level they are introduced on items. This is very confusing to players, as we're not given any visual feedback on this. I usually bring up the Hardy Mail vs Mail for this discussion - where as mail appears earlier than the hardy version. Mail's rarity only seem to matter on it's introduction level.
We cannot have it both way : either the cards are automatically balanced by their color and rarity (resulting in a set item level, and item rarity), either they are left open for fine tuning. They cannot be imbalanced so that they can fine tune them, but given an arbitrary autmatic level value depending solely on their color and rarity level. If the fine tuning allowed makes things like the Bohemian Ear Spoon and Vibrant Pain coexist (but I could have mentionned the Copper Spear, the Spear Of Dancing, and many other that utterly fail to live up to their token cost because they are made of cards that are too weak for their cost), then it is just proof that this way of making items does not work : items should be good or bad depending on how the cards they are made of interact together, not depending on whether they are made of cards that are too good or too weak for their price. There can be cards of different strength among the same color, because there are more variations of strength than there are variations of color, but having cards that are one full color too strong or too weak can only mess the item balance up. Changing card color would not be a problem. For Vibrant pain for instance, we could swap all the Nimble Strike cards with Vicious Thrust (or a mix of Dancing Cut and Vicious Thrust). It is much more confusing and difficult to balance items if they are made of badly balanced cards in the first place.
The devs already have a wrench and they've been using it. There have been 5 balance announcements so far, 4 in beta and 1 post release. https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-7-august-2013.2984/#post-30650 Fireball: regraded to Gold, replacing all existing occurrences of it with a new card: Ember Burst. Unholy Wellspring: boost damage from +4 to any Attack +3. Slippery and Elvish Mobility: ignore Encumber effects. Pathfinding: shed any Encumber inflicting attachments Blind Rage: Frenzy from +3 to +2. https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-13-august-2013.3078/ Impaler: bonus from +2 to +1 Vicious Thrust: Removed penetrating Frost Jolt: Damage from 5 to 4 Hot Spot, Volcano, Wall Of Fire, Lava Pool: damage from 10 to 8. War Cry: Added Cantrip Battlefield Training, Advanced Battlefield Training: range increased by 1 https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-21-aug-2013.3162/ Talented Healer: rework to 'play a Heal card add Cantrip to that card and Heal 2 self'. https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-2-sep-2013-altruism.3286/ Altruism: rework 'When you play a Holy card targeting an ally other than yourself, draw a card. Re-attach this card after it triggers unless you roll a 4.'. http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-8-nov-2013.4438/ Demonic Feedback: rework to draw one card instead of two. 5 self-damage to 5 unpreventable self-damage. Range from 8 to 3. Unholy Power: from 1 damage to target to 3 points of unpreventable self-damage. Range from 8 to 3. Demonic Revenge: reworked to 5 points of unpreventable damage. Dwarven Battle Cry, Inspiring Presence, Elvish Mobility: Added Unblockable. Demonic Pain: removed from game. Inspiring Armor: Only triggered by damage from an enemy controlled card. There has only been 1 card quality regrading so far with clear preference for reworks. If you feel quality isn't quite right, make suggestions to rework card effects. Addressing the OP as an example, adding unblockable to Invigorating Touch would be a better balance suggestion. Alternatively, reducing Enervating Touch's damage also works.
It would be cool if Strong Stab was a sister card of Strong Chop with "Add 1 damage to any other Stab you play. Keep." This would add synergy turn it from a weak silver into a stabbing build base card. You could even make "Strong" into a kind of keyword for silver quality cards that add +1 damage to same name attacks while on your hand. You'd have to switch the names of Bash and Strong Bash. Strong Bludgeon and Strong Hack would need a renaming and replacement. Then you could even add cards like "Strong Zap", "Strong Spark", "Strong Lunge", "Strong Cut" etc.
