Well its been nearly a month since Jon said he'd be addressing balance changes soon. I still think NS needs to be looked at but in my mind the true culprit for an overwhelmingly stale meta is WW/WWE. Imagine a chess game where at any point you could rearrange the pieces randomly if you're losing, think how popular it would be then. Here we have a 2 cards that throw any semblance of strategy and positioning out the window. Just a rant : I'm not here to play lucky slots, I imagine many players who leave mp/the game probably feel the same.
Jon took a one-week vacation and a one(+?) week cold, so I'd like to cut him a bit of slack. At the very least it hasn't been a month of him working at full capacity with no balance updates. As you know, I agree with your complaint. We'll see what's in the pipeline soon.
I agree with PaladinGP regarding this manner. Playing against WW/WWE may seem random to you, but to the caster, it doesn't matter where the pieces end up, as long as they are within 1-4 squares of you warrior(s), and at least 1 square away from your wizard. Annoying to play against, sure. Needing a ban or reworking, doubtful. I like to make analogous references to MTG when I play this game to help me understand the meta. To me WW/WWE just seems to be a pillar of competitive deck building, similar to how in Vintage MTG, Workshops or Mana Drain/Force of Will are pillars of their format. While they may seem unfair to the casual player, or those unfamiliar to the format, or to those who just don't like Vintage, the cards are balanced in their respective environments given the power level of the other cards that work with and against those pillars. If you remove a pillar, it may lead to an even more unfriendly environment, as what happened when you could only play one Workshop in Vintage, the format was dominated by Dredge (I may be getting whatever top tier deck dominated, but the point remains that the format stagnated when one of the four pillars was restricted).
I think those references are of limited use because fewer and fewer serious MtG players play formats that are so dependent on cards like Force of Will (Modern and Standard are far larger and growing). It's possible to have a format with whirlwinds, of course, it just might not be—much like MtG formats with FoW—the best format.
I strongly disagree. If one card is strong enough to create a meta where only two or three builds dominate, then its a problem and must be adressed. Even in MTG, some cards are restricted or banned for this very reason. And we are talking about a game where you have a maximun odd of getting those card 4/60, as where WW, you can stack them so that half your deck is WW. Another problem is that WW is not a pillar of competitive deck-building, its a mega-combo with Nimble Strike. Wich brings us again to the limited amount of decks possible if you want to be competitive. Wich make for a stale game: a deck-building game where one deck is dominating...
I'm well aware of the advantage it gives to the caster. Also that the top elo decks are comprised of 2 dwarf war and 1 WW wizard. Perhaps you're misunderstanding me, its precisely that advantage that I'm opposed to, not just ZOMG THE RANDOMNESS
Whirlwind is top tier precisely because there is no good way to counter it without warping your builds. In my mind, it is the dredge deck of Cardhunters. For those that don't play Magic, dredge is a strategy that basically attacked the opponent using a resource that normal decks usually can't interact with. Whirlwind is similar in that there is no good way to interact with it currently. To combat Whirlwind, you need a ton of team move or command cards (which may or may not bring you in/out of range of your opponent's characters) or a lot of Immovable. While Immovable is a cycling trait, it is nearly useless against other builds and the most you can have of it is 4 if you play a dwarf. The bottom line is that Whirlwind builds are hard to interact with and people that care about ratings will inevitably gravitate towards it.
Fewer top tier players are playing formats lacking FoW because both Legacy and Vintage receive no official support in the forms of tournaments from WotC. Both formats are also setup to eventually collapse under their own weight because of the Restricted List, which thankfully Card Hunter does not have. Modern was created as a push from WotC in response (in part to sky rocketing prices for Legacy and Vintage staples) to create an eternal format they could control more readily without being restricted by their Reserved List Except if you really look at the banned/restricted lists for both of the most powerful formats (Vintage and Legacy) in MTG, as well as looking at the sheer amount of cards available in that game, very few cards that aren't tied to ante are banned/restricted, and the ones that are on those lists are either on there due to their being on a whole power level above the other cards in that format (ie. Yawgmoth's Will in Legacy), or are there because they were overpowered when they were first released and haven't been given a chance in several years (ie. Earthcraft). For every example like Survival of the Fittest, which dominated several tournaments, there is a Land Tax, an old card deemed too powerful for the longest time, that has done almost nothing now that it has been unbanned. due to Currently Card Hunter is similar to MTG Standard. Both have limited amounts of cards available to pick from, one due to restrictions (MTG), one due to only having two sets of cards ever made for it (CH). And in MTG there has always been a deck to beat in Standard, and there always will be, because top players and teams want to win tournaments, so they naturally find and use the best cards available to them. In this current CH "standard" we just happen to have what seem like a few 12/10 and too many 1/10 cards compared to MTG's standard pool which has had 20 years to be balanced around having more 6-8/10s at the top tier (with the occasional slip up, seeing as how Standard didn't see a banning for around 10 years). For every Nimble Strike and WW, there are many more cards like Weak Chop and Unreliable Block. This is neither a good or bad thing, it just means there is a small pool of cards to pick from, thus making the most powerful cards seem that much more powerful. Just because the current top tier uses NS and WW doesn't mean they will remain top tier forever, in fact I've heard people were afraid to try cards from AotA in the last season because they were unfamiliar with the cards, and thus never showed up in the top tier. I do agree that the synergy with another "problem" card is very strong, but is that actually a problem with the game, or with the players. However, that being said, we do only have so many cards available to us at this time. I cannot speak for anyone at Blue Manchu, but I want to believe that they tested all of these interactions and decided not only were they fair, but most likely intended them to be as powerful as they are. It was similar to how in the early days of MTG Richard Garfield knew exactly how powerful the Power 9 were. What he didn't know (or rather expect), was how popular his game would become. He made those cards thinking that his game would be played with a starter pack and maybe a few boosters on the kitchen table. He didn't expect his game to become one of the most popular card games of all time. Card Hunter is showing similar signs to this progression. Clearly Vibrant Pain is one of, if not the most, powerful items in the game, but I don't think Jon or anyone at Blue Manchu thought people were going to accumulate 4 of them. Unlike MTG, one cannot simply go and buy the best deck available, one has to spend the time grinding/farming/what have you to build their card database. As an aside I would recommend anyone serious about competitive gaming to read http://www.sirlin.net/ptw. If you are truly serious about winning and playing well, you will realise why everyone at the top is playing these cards, and why that might not be such a bad thing.
The last time a card was banned in Standard in magic was Jace, the Mindsculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. Were those cards unbeatable? No. Were they basically a prerequisite in building the best deck available? Yes. When those two cards were recognized as being powerful enough to stagnate the format they were banned. I don't even think this is the most apt comparison though. The previous time cards were banned in standard was during the original Mirrodin block. The Affinity deck was so powerful that the second most popular deck was created to beat it and it still wasn't good enough. Right now you can build a team that is specifically targeted at Whirlwind builds and you still won't win against it. The Affinity deck's dominance lead to the largest exodus of players the game had ever seen and I'm sure that is the last thing the developers of Card Hunter want.
My only opinion about this is that we don't need yet another thread about this. Brace yourself, balance changes are coming.
