[Feedback] Comments on Balance Changes AFTER Playtesting

People don't want to hit them, they simply don't run Bless or Inspirational Thinking or...
With 7 traits on every character, it's 5.01% to fail to draw due to draw limit on the 1st turn with traits, tells my small simulation (50 000 tries).
With 8 traits each it would be 9.76% already.

 

And losing even a single card to the draw cap makes for terrible, terrible game play.

I still don't think it's needed. A "precautionary" measure against cards that might exist in the future harms the format that exists right now.

 

Let me run a couple hypotheticals by you guys and see what you say.
• What if the draw limit were 10?
• What if the draw limit were 15?
• What if the draw limit didn't count traits?

 

All of these 3 would kill the deck Squidy demonstrated - the infinite draw.

 

15 would be reasonable. 5 is just absurdly low - I tested two matches today and in both matches I hit the draw limit. Three hits in four games. I'm not even running "card draw" cards like Altruism or Demonic Power - and yet I seem to hit it at least once per match.

 

I've managed to hit it a couple of times during quick draw testing.

So just thinking out load here. I'd like to give priests a little room to do something powerful. Is 15 abusable? I could actually see hitting it with the right type of builds, that is more or less half a one characters deck, which is good, but I can't think of a draw strategy I've seen that would be able to consistently abuse that.

For what it's worth, if we have a draw limit in place, would something like the original Inspiring Presence still be an issue? I'd really like to see that come back.... And as I recall the main concern was if a deck got a critical mass of them, which a draw limit would prevent from happening... A lot of priest items got hit by that change and I'd like to bring 'em back if possible.

 

What were you running/what was causing you to hit the limit?

 

How about the other way around and it would only count traits?
That way heavy trait cycle decks would be not so powerful and the priest toolkit would not be touched.
Because drawdecks are possible but not really that great anymore and to further hamper priests or parrywarriors would be just silly.

 

Heavy trait cycling can be curtailed by itemization fixes, and it's a good deckbuilding strategy anyway. The realest problem is probably infinite draw builds (or just decks that get insane card advantage without going infinite but still make you sit there while they do way more things than you do). Still interested in responses to my three hypotheticals

 

So Jacques and I did a match - it was lots of fun, at least in the sense that Jacques is a fun opponent and the decks were an interesting match. His deck did give me the most trouble I've had with non-wizard teams. There were actually a couple swing points in the game where it was unclear who was going to win. But ultimately my 3DC build still triumphed.

Now the thing is, anyone who builds a team specifically with the intention of countering another build in the meta will 1) usually struggle against builds other than what they are designed to counter, and 2) should win the vast majority of the time against the team they're targeting, otherwise it's not a very good counter build. The fact that Jacques didn't beat me even when built to counter 3DC is even more troubling. Granted we only got one game in (we hope to rematch soon) which isn't much of a sample size - but I would have to say from my end I didn't gain any traction through lucky draws/rolls in general - Jacques would have to speak for his end.

If we rematch I'll post more thoughts.

 

There's a much easier way to kill off that kind of infinite draw - inspiration shouldn't be self-targetable. (Alternatively: 3x inspiration divine items shouldn't exist.)

I shared that and other suggestions with Jon a while ago, but he opted for draw limits. The draw limits are *supposed* make trait-cycling much less attractive, from what I understand.

 

Yeah as I understand it the draw limit is a solution for any card draw issues going forward. That could include trait heavy decks, as well as better card drawing spells. The draw limit more or less functions as a hard cap on how much card draw is worth fitting into a deck.

Which is why I asked if a card like Inspiring Presence could come back. It was good, but probably not broken for it's power level. The concern was around hypothetical decks all running the max number of Inspiring Presences that items would allow. The draw limit fixes that problem via a different mechanism. If it also allowed cards like Inspiring Presence back into the game it may be seen in a more positive light....

 

I think negative traits should definitely be counted, particularly because a player pays no card price for them. If any traits don't count, I think it should be those rated silver or higher.
As a semi-educated guess, I like a limit of 8 with everything counting, so I'll opt for 10 to match your query.
And a +1 to bringing back the original Inspiring Presence.

 

I agree with everything Scarponi just said, (although I could say that the map and its lack of cover helped his build) but I have to make two clarifications:
1) While it's true that anyone who builds a counter to a specific deck should win most of the times against that deck at least, mine had one imposition I made myself that was not using any wizard, because I wanted to see if a pure melee team could still compete against 3 wizards. But I'm aware that 3DC could still be countered with a 2 war 1 wiz team with the wizard carrying smoke bombs. I don't know If Scarponi played against one of these, but I think it could be effective. Although it would be sad if that's the only possible counter (other than playing with 3 wizards), because that would mean that you need at least one wizard in your team to have a chance to win, meaning that your build choices are scattered.
2) Again, it's true that any counter build should work well against that build, but this is a special case we are talking about. A 3 wizard team has such an amazing range of choices that you can't counter them all with one (melee) build. Punishing Bolts, penetrating hard to block sparks, encumbrance, WoW and GoW, Flash Flood, armor removal and now, something I learned from this match and that I didn't believe it would be a wizard thing, armor stacking. I was so not prepared for armor stacking, as I had no big attacks (no more than 8 samage) and no Sundering Strikes. Penetrating sparks, as I presumed, were impossible to counter, and I insist that those have to be revised.

I tried to focus on some of the main things, which were encumbrance, WoW and GoW and Punishing Bolts, but I couldn't cover the rest. If I include something else, I lose one important part for countering the things this build actually counters well. I traded Bolg's Big Iron Plate for an Infused Greatclub and the OBs really helped in some matches I played after this one, but I'm aware that I'm losing 2 valuable blocks at the same time.

One thing we need to remember: we're in the icy map rotation, which we already know that are completely pro-wizards. This, together with the balance changes that made wizards op has been something very difficult to digest. Maybe if we were in other map rotation we will be singing another song.

One last thing: I'm very positive that some of the balance changes won't be staying, wizards are clearly op and BM guys aren't blind. Testing has proven that, fortunately. Jon was on the test server the other day and I suggested that if melee doesn't have step 3 attacks anymore, then slide 3 shouldn't exist either to make things more even, and he considered that idea. If there was only slide 2 max, no penetrating hard to block sparks and Flash Flood had more counterplay, then we would have a nice meta coming. Other thing he said is that Free Move could ignore encumber instead of cantrip, which would also work I think.

 

(Emphasis mine)
Yes, hence playtesting!

 

I did play a Cause Fumble deck with a smoke bomb wiz, but with so many dead cards against 3DC I actually dispatched it w/o too much trouble. Another team was 2 wiz one warrior, I don't remember the match very well, but I did win.

 

My suggestion from January: block all draw chains and only the chains.

 

I remember that suggestion. It's very similar to some ideas of my own. I'm aiming to get some feedback on specific hypothetical alterations to draw limits, though:

What if draw limits are here to stay? In what form would players be okay with them?

Thanks!

 

Eh, I'm only happy with Draw Limit 15, because that's enough for just about any kind of drawing aside from infinite cycling. (Basically, a lot of non-standard decks depend on improved card draw to function, which means a low draw limit give me even less reason to ever go back to standard MP.)

Also, I should say that I don't have a problem with trait-cycling, and the tweak to Trembling Staff fixed the primary way that wizards were abusing it, though more could be done to bring warriors and priests in line with wizard's trait stacking (e.g., no-token 3x class trait).

 

The thing with nerfing trait cycling is that it makes much more difficult to have a solid strategy without the best items, those that give you 6 of the best cards like VP or Heartripper. Now, if you don't have VP but own a Lochaber, you can put many traits in your deck so that you can still have a good chance of drawing your NS. That won't happen with the limit draw. Less traits is imo more harmful for those without the best items. Also Electroporter Novice defeinitely needs a nerf, as many have mentioned. One non trait card instead of Spark Generator imo.