This is a quick one, but we want to jump on it. We've been working hard to make sure that there aren't any effective draw strategies that lead to dull, drawn out games where you watch your opponent draw through large numbers of cards. That's led to a number of card balance changes already. Now it's time for one more. Inspiring Presence is clearly a card that can net a very large (+2) card advantage and chain into more draws. That is somewhat negated by the fact that you have to be careful with positioning to take full advantage of it, but we think this isn't enough. Even though it's not much of a problem in the metagame yet, our testing tells us that you can make some powerful decks that abuse this card to chain card drawing. So we're rebalancing it as follows. This card will now cause each affected character to draw a card, but only retain that card if it is an Attack card. To offset this, its healing will go up from 3 to 5. The new card rules will therefore be: Every character within 3 squares of you, including yourself, draws a card and Heals 5. Discard each such card drawn unless it is an Attack card. Unblockable. What's the point of this? Attack cards, whilst useful, don't chain into more card draws without interacting with your opponent, so this should put a stop to boring chain drawing. Obviously, this reduces the net effective drawing of the card, but not by too much given that most decks run lots of Attack cards. You can also optimise it's result by building your decks with lots of Attacks, should you wish to. To compensate for the loss of estimated card draw, the healing properties of the card will go up from 3 to 5. We think it still remains a very viable card, albeit less abusable. Be sure to let us know what you think though! These changes will go live when we deploy a new build, likely next week. As always, we apologise for anyone negatively impacted by this rebalancing. We strive not to make changes to card rules except where we feel that we have to in order to keep the metagame from degenerating.
Seems to me that this is only needed because of the hypothetical deck with multiple Knife Of St. Blenko that could go infinite turn1. And even that deck gets countered hard by a first turn Whirlwind. Why not adjust the potentially problematic item instead of nerfing hard (most decks run less than 1/2 attacks, so you cut the card draw from this in half) one of the few reasons remaining to run clerics? The extra heal does not really compensate for losing 1.5 cards. Especially since you usually cannot use the presence optimally once you need the heals. EDIT: Why not post the potentially problematic deck, so people can make a more informed contribution.
This seems like a bad idea if you don't also fix the Pathfinding effect, where it exposes the entire deck as it looks for some type of card. It seems to have offensive potential, to find out what sort of deck your opponent has.
Discarding the card unless it's a Holy card makes more sense, or unless it's a card with "draw" in its rules text, because there're so many nonattack cards that you should be able to draw off Inspiring Presence. Like, armor, blocks, moves, etc., none of these create "boring chain drawing." My main problem with the card only drawing attacks is that it doesn't make much sense flavorwise... it feels like a random balance thing, and not like great design. My 2ยข.
Sorry to express hesitancy / concern... but are there still drawspam decks? I do love to make fun of those players who try (and I've tried myself), but I've only ever seen one go off since the card draw nerf - and I then proceeded to stomp them with my thoroughly-armored warriors. Most firespam-ish builds that I've encountered don't rely on draw chaining anymore (except traits), but rather encase the wizard behind stone walls and whirl away opponents when they get close.
It's a "draw and discard UNLESS you get Attack cards" effect, not "draw and discard UNTIL you get Attack cards"-- the latter is the Attack Skill (search for Attack cards) effect. But it does have the potential to become a drawback/negative effect if I just wanted to heal and NOT get/expose my attack cards.
Oh, that's not awful then. Flaxative's suggestion is better. Draw and discard if it's another card that draws more cards. Also, wouldn't that fix trait cycling entirely (draw another card, if it's a trait, discard it)?
It was my suggestion to fix other priest draw cards back in the day (unholy power, demonic feedback). The devs didn't like it then, I'm guessing, so maybe it won't be well received now either, but yeah it seems like it would solve a lot of problems without being particularly jank.
Such a great point, I mean do we really want to turn this into a bizzare, much less powerful variation of Attack Skill? Why limit it to attack cards only when all you want is to prevent draw chains? Also turning this into more of a roulette when you're surrounded, now you're afraid the opponent draws an attack card and you discard a card - a golden rare card that may actually backfire! where before this decision would be much simpler based solely on the amount of allies vs. opponents that will be affected. I love consistency, so I'll probably stop running this card now since it's too RNG and I didn't run it for the healing, it was always a bonus and not the main motivation behind running the card. As others suggested, it becomes a telling draw since you can only draw one type of card now, which also subtracts from the allure of drawing cards in general. I understand there might be potential for abuse here (though I feel the initial unblockable nerf did the job) but I wish an additional nerf would be more moderate and not luck based as I feel there is too much RNG already in the game.
IMO its a really really bad change...lately i been seeing firestorm 1 priest-2 wiz decks using inspiring presense to net absurd amount of cards and heal...so now they still can keep the firestorm and heal more??? bad bad idea. also a 1-1-1 deck with firestorm and a warrior..so now the warrior also heals 5 and keep the extra atacks?? Hope you guys change your mind about this change..if you want adress inspiring presence make it not targeting the caster for example
I'm also not a fan of the change. If FireStorm is the problem fix FireStorm. If Knife Of St. Blenko is the problem fix the Knife. I haven't seen problems with Inspiring Presence.
For the obvious reason that if there is some really lame and overpowered build that the devs came up with, it would be a bad idea to let everyone know about it. Worst case scenario, everyone would start playing it, and the meta would be ruined for the whole week. I'm guessing the build in question is a Firestorm spam (either 2 priest and a wizard, vice versa). I've seen a couple of those in top-20 and they are indeed really lame. I am very happy to see those kind of mindless camping builds removed from the game. Firestorm should be more than just balling up in the corner and praying. If that is indeed the only viable use for the card, then it should be removed from MP altogether because it adds nothing fun to MP. It's definitely cool in SP though. Yes, it's definitely a kind of weird balance fix theme wise. When people get "inspired", I see it as getting more energy or something. I don't see how "inspiring presence" would always make you more aggressive and give attack skills only. It would make more sense to me if it was actually the other way around and you would discard attack cards and keep everything else, but that's not great either. Yep, this is what I'm worried about as well. But since the wizards use a lot of traits, and getting a trait instead of a Firestorm is pretty likely, this could have a big nerfing effect, and it's probably something the devs have tested. Then again there is the extra heal which is not good..
So security through obscurity? I fail to see how a firestorm/inspiring presence build can be overpowered as long as whirlwind and high end movement cards are in the game. I could see it as a good counter vs 3 control wizards without whirlwind though.
It has probably more to do with the fact that balling up in the corner and spamming Firestorms is not how Blue Manchu envisioned their endgame MP. If we had a sudden increase in Firestorm builds, I personally would quit MP immediately until it was fixed, and I think many others would do the same. Not because the build is OP but because it's boring to play against since things like victory squares suddenly cease to matter and it becomes a simple race of who dies first. Firestorm spam build is the only build that a ******ed monkey could play successfully as long as he has the right items. All other builds that I know of require much more strategic thinking. With Firestorm spam all you need to do is ball up and click cards, hoping for a good draw. Of course there are some tricks you need to learn to be able to play it more efficiently, but it's still probably the most simple gimmick build out there that can still be very effective. And I don't see WW/WWE as a fix to this problem because those cards are even worse. They are gimmicky, luck based, SP cards, that somehow found their way in MP . If we had a meta game of half the people playing Firestorm builds and the other half WW/WWE builds, then I might as well delete my game account because MP would be boring beyond belief. I don't mind people using Firestorm builds, but it should be a lower rating gimmick build that has zero chance against any "real" build. If you can get to 1500+ with it, then I think something is really wrong. The good news is that BM seems to take a hard stance with any kind of balling up strategy. We saw it with card spam, and now we are seeing it again with Inspiring Presence.
We don't even know that the hypothetical build is a firestorm build. I think if the devs want our opinions, and want those opinions to be useful, we need more information on the alleged problem. Right now, this just looks like a 1) flavorless, 2) wonky, 3) over-loquacious, 4) unnecessary nerf. :\
That's precisely why I like firestorm in pvp -- the vps don't matter so much. That, and the games go fast. I'm fine with that too. I'm not playing pvp for the *rating*. (Though honestly, I think I've played one MP game in the last month anyway.) Given that CH started out as SP, I wonder how the devs visualize their ideal MP endgame. It may take more classes and items before the number of viable builds opens up much...
I have actually been able to successfully draw quite a number of cards after previous nerf, so it is possible still. And I do not have the best cards for that yet. So I can see that the change is required as loosing two or three characters in turn one even without eye contact with enemy can be frustrating and you could feel helpless. Whirlwinds don't help because the part of firestorm build I did were at least two Immovable cards on each dwarf. And it could go up to 4 in need. On larger maps this build is quite powerful. So Inspiring Presence did need a minor tweak, but above change is a bit too much I think. I was often using the card as a defense possibility, to heal and draw either Toughness, Parry or Weak Parry on a wizard or other character. Now people would lose this opportunity. On the other hand the change is good for balanced or two warriors party. If you plan your build well and you are Parry heavy and in tight grip with an enemy, healing him and your warriors can be good. Because enemy cannot draw parry or block with Insp. Presence, then it would be a chance to finish him off with one more attack you might get. I see 2 warriors, 1 priest as one of the strongest combos, so I fear that this change will buff such party too much. Discarding only Holy & Unholy cards would probably be the simplest and minor tweak needed and not affecting current balance too much.
Of course, but it's very likely that Firestorm is the reason, at least one of the reasons. Lately I haven't seen Inspiring Presence used in any other build outside of Firestorm spam. The whole nature of the card is to ball up in a corner away from your opponent, so it's perfect for a Firestorm build. I don't think it could be used effectively in an aggressive and offensive team because you need that distance from your enemies. I can understand that. Finishing matches quickly is definitely useful, especially when you are a new player and need items. But my problem is that when victory squares and chess-like positioning becomes pointless and is replaced by who-dies-first-across-the-map-run, Card Hunter loses a lot of what makes it unique and fun. I'm interested in how Inspiring Presence performs on the field so I looked at your stats which show that your win-ratio is currently 48%. Are you using this Inspiring Presence build now, and is that the one that is giving you the 48% win-ratio? If so, it doesn't seem very powerful no matter how many cards you draw. I'd like to see some hard data that suggest a certain build actually works, before we start nerfing it. Best-case-scenario anecdotal evidence is not as useful as stats and player rating. I have yet to see an effective Inspiring Presence build that is not based on Firestorms. I don't think it even exists. But if anyone has one, feel free to post it here.
That's it? I know Inspiring Presence is a huge card advantage and in theory could result to an instant win deck... but there are so many other dominating strategies. It is good that it is being nerfed, but it seems like a weird way to do it. Also, what about the other changes proposed here: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/balance-balance-suggestion-list-january-2014.4967/ Any official feedback on it? Inspiring Presence was a card I was going to put on the list, but decided not to because of the extreme edge case. It would require having basically every Legendary item to be abusable -- glad you're fixing it though.
