[Suggestion] Cold Damage Arcane Skill

In-game chat regarding cold damage came up as someone thought that current cold attacks should be able to hit harder. Just adding base damage runs the risk of making other cards, such as Sorcerous Blast, completely inferior.

As a means to address this isssue, I'd suggest adding some Arcane Skill cards that boost cold damage. I would suggest creating items with the following new cards:

Add 1 Damage to Cold Attacks.

Add 2 Damage to Cold Attacks.

Add Penetrating to Cold Attacks.

Add Burst 1 to Cold Attacks. (Yes, this is a pipe dream!)

 

I second this notion,

ice attacks damage must be increased.

There is nothing worse than strategies becoming redundant.

Items such as frosty staff, staff of winter, and various epic and legendary arcane items,
are significantly geared towards ice being a competitive strategy, which at the moment it is not.
These items are therefore useless.

After my suggestion, Flaxative rightly pointed out that by increasing the damage on some of these
cards, the arcane ones such as sorcerous blast and surging blast, will be more redundant/weaker.

Although these cards have a higher rating than they deserve, (particularly surging blast should not be gold quality)
this is a valid point, thus the traits are a good idea.

For those worried about electricity not being as good therefore, consider:

Electricity attacks already have a higher damage,
Electricity attacks are hard to block,
Electricity attacks already have traits that add to the damage,
Electricity attacks such as Deadly and Potent spark are linear, potentially hitting more than one target.

 

I disagree, cold attacks are perceived as weak now so they aren't played much, but I've gone up against a few decks that have used them quite efficiently and effectively. They further get less play because of how strong burst wizards are, but this again doesn't mean that cold attacks need a buff.

 

Good points. I'll add that a lot of folks are really worried that wizards are too strong right now. Maybe if one wizard strategy is better than another by too wide a margin, we just need more answers to the former, as opposed to needing to buff the latter. Either way it's highly unlikely that we will add new class traits to the game anytime soon.

 

Attacks spells do NOT need a damage buff, just getting to use more frenzy is enough as it is.
Lightning also has the rare but very usable Grounding Plates as a counter, which no other magic type has a similar counter (Resistant counters all but arcane).
The nerf to encumbrance is really the issue, but used strategically it is still a useful tool.
Now if someone wants to extent the range of Punishing Bolt up to 5 or 6 or reduce the duration of Savage Curse to 2 I'd be inclined to agree.

 

The gist of cold attacks was encumbrance, and the encumbrance nerf was a huge hit. I don't say they're unusable, but small damage buffs probably wouldn't hurt. Probably not through skills, though.

Arcane and cold. Acid destroys the armor, but it may prevent damage as it goes away.

+1. 8 was too far for Punishing Bolt, and 4 is ridiculously short.

 

I like Punishing Bolt at range 4 since it can dish out too much damage without any buffs.

 

Duh of course, but I never think of cold as a damage type just an attachment. Acid is so tricky, I wish Acid Jet was on an Arcane Item, a couple of the staves are okay, but 2Y for a Whiterune is tough with almost no damage and the Sour Staff is pretty cool having 2 jets and 2 potent spark (6d, 6r, linear), but having 2 acid blast in addition to acid jet is redundant, although I would love to test.
Honestly I've now gotten to the point in my collection that I could create an interesting build every day for next 5 weeks, but new builds are usually bad as you always find that oh right that's why I want tho have this or dont want to have this... remind me why vulnerable was nerfed to 2 damage? it really makes 0 token human skills hard to use.

 

OH but getting back to the OP I think an interesting twist for cold damage would be painful armor. Instead of negating damage, all metal armor increases the damage by 1 per armor. I know this would be a difficult thing to develop, but a mild risk for tanked up warriors would be interesting from a game play perspective.

 

I somewhat agree with Scarponi, cold spells aren't that irremediably useless as some might think. But still, there are several issues with the current assortment of cold cards, all of which got further amplified by the changes to how encumber works.

First and foremost, they the available cold spells are few and they tend to appear on high level items. Generally, that means lvl 15+ staves. Cone Of Cold is the only one to appear on Arcane Items starting from lvl 12. Cold spells are also relegated to rare+ items, for the most part, the only notable exceptions being two uncommon staves: Whiterune Staff and the less focused Chillwood Staff.

So, the selection of cold spells is limited (in number and variety) and they come on a limited selection of rare and expensive (gold-wise and tokens-wise) items. That might have been justified, prior to the encumber nerf, by how powerful cold spells were in a game heavily focused on positioning.

Moreover, encumber effects tend to have a short duration, Chilling Rime lasting one turn only, the others twice as much. Again, this might have been acceptable before the change to encumber, as it helped with avoiding being perma-locked turn after turn after turn.

Lastly, cold spells lack diversity. With all other schools of specialization, you always have a wide array of diverse and varied tools to work with:

Arcane Spells are the most varied (I won't even try listing all the available cards). You get all sort of possibilities: penetrating attacks, step attacks, AoE spells, pushback effects, discards, control effects, etc etc etc. Furthermore, Spark Generator/Spark Inductor potentially make Arcane spells very hard to block.
Electrical Spells are kind of straightforward: high-dmg, hard to block attacks (further enhanced by Spark Generator/Spark Inductor). And still you get some variety in the form of single-target/higher-dmg attacks (Mighty Spark, Obliterating Spark) and lower-dmg AoE options (Jumpspark, Arcing Spark, Potent Spark, Deadly Spark).
Fire Spells all play on the exact same mechanic, but still you get to pick an choose your preferred flavor of a burning wizard among a considerably assorted set of cards. You get higher dmg output over longer periods of time (Glob Of Flame, Flame Jet, Flame Spit) vs. less overall dmg but which happens almost instantaneously (Firestorm, Sizzling Bolt, Ember Burst, Fireball). Single target vs. AoE, Firestarter vs. Hot Flames. Whether or not you go for Instant Burn kind of makes for an interesting deck-building decision in and of its own.
Acid Spells while sharing most of the same problems affecting cold spells, still feature some room for variety in the form of instantaneous effects (Boiling Armor, Dissolve Armor, Melt Armor) vs terrain attachments (Acid Blast, Acid Jet, Acid Spray). Acid terrain also doubles as an effective way to restrict enemy movement. Not optimal, but still workable.

Cold Spells, on the other hand? You get a cone attack, and then you're pretty much stuck with single-target spells, each and everyone applying the same effect with little or no variation. Some damage + slowing down your enemies for a turn or two. Even before the encumber change, the main attractive of having different cards in this category was the ability of stacking different cards in order to accomplish a full halt. After the encumber nerf, the actual differences between Frost Jolt, Chilling Rime and Cold Snap are so marginal, you might as well exchange one for the other and not much would change from a gameplay perspective. Let me put this more clearly: aside from Cone of Cold (AoE) and Freeze (highest damage), the remain 4 cards can be used almost interchangeably.

To sum it up:

• Cold spells are scarcely available and generally expensive on the tokens side (mainly because they only come on high lvl equipment).
• Cold spells are limited in number and offer little variety and very limited strategic options.
  
• Lack of traits boosting cold spells or otherwise putting a different spin on them.
• Cold spells have become considerably less effective due to the encumber changes.
• Also due to the encumber changes, previously viable strategies (i.e. magma attachments + cold) are not as effective anymore.

While (to reiterate) I don't think cold spells need a huge boost, I still feel they might help some tweaking (be it a slight dmg buff or longer duration for encumber). Similarly, I don't think much can be done without tackling the current issues from multiple angles.

Ideally, some care should be put into bringing cold spells back to the drawing board as part of the design work for the next expansion. That might be a golden chance for introducing some new cold-related cards/items and revisiting the cold school of magic as a whole.

 

I don't agree with this sentiment. The current 'issues' are just that cold spells aren't common and are few in number (any perceived issues of sameness are just a function of the low number of them). There're also few pulverizing attacks. It's hard to produce a variety of pulverizing-themed builds. That's not inherently an issue!

To me all the things aired in this thread add up to a suggestion that we make more cold content in the future. Suggestions for added content shouldn't, I think, be classified as issues—just as it's not a problem that we don't have a rogue yet

(That said, Bandreus, your analysis is good.)

 

I maintain that cold spells legitimately needed to be reigned in and don't need a boost, those who choose to play them still get plenty of value out of them - they just now have a balanced strategy rather than a dominating one (this is similar to those who abandoned NS/VP after the nerf, but how those who have chosen to play them have figured out both still have plenty of value). I do think Bandreus brings up a point worth considering in making cold attacks more interesting (though I agree with Flaxative that this is something to consider for interest sake and not issue sake).

I have no problem with added items, but changing their cost would change the balance.

Cold spells do damage and cause encumber, there's not much you can do in variety of effect other than change damage or duration, but maybe variety in application. There is currently single target and cone cold attacks, potentially one could add linear or burst attacks?

These are an effect of bringing encumberance into balance and don't need a change.

 

Well, it does look like we got a damage boost to cold spells, which I felt was nice, but I'm wondering why encumbrance does not affect team moves. If someone is encased in snow, I don't know if someone else yelling at them is going to get them to move any faster. It's sort of a nerf on the nerf made to encumbrance. I understand that it's not the encumbered character actually playing the move card, but they are still moving.

Also, if an encumbered character uses Retreat, their own retreat is encumbered, which makes sense. If one of their teammates uses it, the retreat of the encumbered is not encumbered. Seems there should be some consistency here; I know which way I would lean, but it was an interesting quirk I have noticed.

 

Not really, it's how the cards have always worked.

Changing "[move], Team!" cards to actually Move allies rather than Push them could be good, though. Something to consider for future changes.

 

As I see it it has to do with the concept of Move vs. Push. But I do get that it doesn't make sense from a realism point of view. But neither does being able to wear multiple sets of armor.

 

Please do this. These cards are used frequently enough that halting/encumbering strategies generally aren't worth considering. Purges and wizard control spells are already able to work around them (which is fine), but when even teams of 3 warriors are often able to dash up to you while frozen, you have to stop and ask what builds this is even meant to be effective against.

 

True, that's how they have always worked, but I think the change might add some more strategy into the game, and less 'me get card, me rush and smash' that happens all the time. Should that happen once in a while? Yes, it should. Should it be the dominant strategy for a build? That Im not so sure on; it's like me running with 6 Searing Pains, 3 White Wylla, 3 Quellic's, 3 Focused Pyromancy, and as many tokenless firestorm items I can throw in there. And then not moving, or only to within 5 spaces. (still won't consistently win against Bejeweled, but I digress)

It somewhat devolves the game into one where you only need to/want to find 4 cards, and then use them over and over and over. Is it fun for the person using them? I imagine so, and more power to them. But what is the value of a system like that to the game as a whole? If everyone feels like they need to slot into one three or four possible builds, because anything else seems entirely unviable, what's the point of card hunting once you've got the select items? This is just one example; if that card is only going to move them 6 or 4 or 2 instead of a guaranteed 8 (save some extreme water/difficult terrain build that would be unviable as there's no ranged damage), it might make people think twice about when and how to use it.

Again, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it's good to ramp up the strategy a little bit, but that's just me. I also think linear spells should decrease in damage depending on what order someone is hit with one (deadly spark hits 3 enemies, first gets 6, second gets 4, third gets 2), and bursts should should be -1 if you are hit with the outer ring than the middle blast. So don't just take this as me trying to get CH to be, 'new and improved, now with 1000% more WZRD!!!!' I'm just thinking about how it would make the game more one of thinking, planning, and execution, than one of click/attack, click/attack, without any regard to what your opponent is doing.

(please feel free to move this to another thread/new thread/whatever if it's getting too off point from the main topic)

 

Adding burst and penetrating [through traits] are good ideas. Adding more damage to encumber cards would potentially cause cold to become dominant over other paths, especially in positioning-heavy pvp.
After all, if you can do good damage AND encumber, everything else seems a bit less potent by comparison

Lowering the potency of anti-encumbrance counters, as suggested, is also a good way to improve cold- though it wouldn't help the PvE angle as much as adding traits.

Could also add some legitimately offensive cold spells, like 'Hailstorm' as well, to make the new cold ray+2 damage effects more valuable.
And since electric traits already add penetrating, no point in really rehashing that approach.

So yeah, lower anti-encumberance counters and add some damage-based spells, and you probably could bring cold up to par without adding traits at all.

 

i made a similar request to buff ice and acid spells back in feb http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/damage-buffs-for-cold-arcane-and-acid.6959/
there was mention that there were plans to buff them in other, unique ways. I'm not sure what, if anything, happened with that.

 

Hasn't happened yet, clearly.