[BALANCE] Balance Suggestion List (January 2014)

I would be very happy if Elvish Insight became Unblockable.

 

SPRay, WoW, and WW(E) have red backgrounds and are attack cards. They are defensive only in the sense that the best defense is to kill your opponents. SPRay is a silver attack card, so it should be on par with Nimble Strike and Vicious Thrust. If a player uses it to strip your cards and kill your characters, that is the proper use for it - not abuse. It does suck to be on the recieving end. Nimbus can be annoying, but it's only 1 round per application, and a priest who loads up on nimbus isn't good for much else.
There is no realistic way to limit the iteration of cards in a deck without drastic modification of the engine. Everything is based upon power tokens and item construction.
The arguments I've heard for restriction or removal of these cards boil down to, "I don't want to have to deal with them, so they should be gone." I really can't consider that a valid argument for anything.
Toughness is considered armor, so to be consistent it should be bypassed by penetrating attacks, and should not prevent unpreventable damage.

 

It IS consistent right now—regarding penetrating—since it "prevents all damage."
I agree it should be nerfed in some way though.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "abuse." A good deck is focused around just one or two themes because the synergy will make it stronger. If you listed the top 15 cards in the game and then built a team that had an even number of all 15 cards, you'd probably have only a mediocre build, because there's no theme/strategy that you're building around. If what you mean by "abuse" is packing many similar/same cards onto a character to take advantage of a particular strategy, then almost all good builds are abuse builds (even if using weaker cards).

I also disagree about there being no good counters. Sometimes the best counter is no counter at all. You're right that if you built an all Purge priest, you'd probably have a weak deck, but the same thing goes for the all Nimbus priest - they have very limited attacks. I once played against a triple priest build that was Nimbused up to the max, my opponent at a minimum could cast two, usually three Nimbuses a turn. However, it meant he couldn't do much else because he had spent so many resources on Nimbus. I didn't even have a strong build at the time, but I won by occupying victory squares, passing early and taking the first swing each round before he could cast his Nimbus. Ended up killing one priest and getting the rest of the points by Victory Squares.

Don't feel that you always have to react to the builds that give you problems, sometimes you're better off just trying to improve the synergy of your build so then your opponent has to react to you. If you can knock someone off their strategy, then whatever they're "abusing" becomes their weakness, not yours.

 

So.. change the power token from minor to major for the most (ab)used mage items? Id be happy with that. Then they had to chose between freeze and WoW/WWe. Also maybe put a major on lochaber.

 

Edit: There are still items which are "on top of the food chain" that are being abused.

 

The problem with card limitations is multi-fold. You'd need to have specialized UI to indicate to players that a card has a limit, plus it would need to make sense to the player. Your limitation examples wouldn't work either, since some items already bypass your suggested limits (Bewlin's Baffling Bauble has 3 SPR so having a limit of 1 SPR would be violated just by that item alone).

No one is talking about "perfect balance" we're talking about improving balance to increase the number of viable builds. The cards listed together are overpowered -- looking at them in isolation they might not be, but if Nimble Strike was only a "move 3" then WoW and WWE would be as well. Right now there are really only 3 (maybe 4) competitive builds at the highest level of play. That's not fun and is boring -- you're basically boiling the game down to rock-paper-scissors at that point.

Uh, that's not the only reason they win. If EVERYONE has the same items at the top level then it comes down to luck and skill, not items. Trust me, I've seen tons of sub-1400 players with multiple Vibrant Pains and Lochaber Axes... they do poorly because of how they play, not because they don't have good gear.

Card limitation is not a good solution as it would be hard to convey to users what the limitations are and why they are there.

 

Cold Encumbrance lasting only one round would mean that you'd barely get any use out of them unless you went first, had line of sight at the start, and used it immediately. That's not really a good solution.

And Elvish Insight isn't problematic at all considering how weak Elves are currently. It might change with the upcoming content, but I doubt Elvish Insight will be problematic. As for it being Unblockable that might be possible, but sometimes you'd want the enemy to not know what you have and would want to spend the block... that is a tough call.

You assume that Nimble Strike and Vicious Thrust are balanced at Silver though...

And Toughness is considered an armor technically -- it is removed by armor removal cards and shreds. The difference you're thinking about is how "Penetration" works (if the armor ignores ALL damage then it doesn't penetrate).

And it isn't "I don't want to have to deal with them, so they should be gone," it is more like -- do I have to specially customize my deck and drastically change the way I play just to deal with a few overpowered cards? Is that healthy for the game that people need to run so much movement because WoW, WW/WWE, and Encumbrance is so widely available? I'd prefer to balance the game in a way that opens as many viable decks as possible that are still interesting and unique.

 

I don't agree. You can just jam as much of the OP stuff in your deck as possible and do well. They don't really overlap much. Just because you have a lot of Nimble Strike doesn't mean you can't have a lot of Hard to Pin Down. Just because you have a lot of Mass Frenzy doesn't mean you can't also have a lot of Martyr's Blessing -- they are found on different item slots.

 

Sheesh, it would have been nice if Purge appeared more often, and on better items. At least now there is Purging Burst right?
Also, Stexe, Mass Frenzy and Martyr's Blessing DO overlap- they can both take up divine item slots although I imagine people take advantage of Mail of the Martyr instead.

I would agree that certain cards and items are getting stale. If a wizard isn't running Staff of Winter and Trembling Staff then they are doing something crazy like Volcano/Firestorm. I don't mind playing the positioning game to tango with wizards with Frost Jolt; on the other hand when they start playing WWE and screwing my whole team... The chances of landing in a favorable position are so, so little, and the odds of me having a Team Run to recover or drawing some Immovable to begin with are again, very little, and require me to change my decks quite a bit.
I don't mind how card hunter is about movement, that's fine; what I don't like is how people can spam whirls and call that a strategy. You have to realize that Whirlwind Enemies is basically Winds of War, except Bronze, no LoS required and it hits 3 enemy targets. Yes I am simplifying things but on a mathematical basis it hits 3 opponents and moves them all somewhere bad more than 50-70% of the time. Even if you block it you still used up a card.
Having to use 2-3 move/block cards to compensate for 1 enemy card- if that isn't OP then I don't know what is.

On the other hand, Winds of War is a Gold quality card that can be used to push 2 allies or enemies with precision. It's a powerful card but at least you pay for it. You can have what, 1 maybe 2 if you're crazy in a slot? Whirls are Bronze and you can fit 2-3 in a slot, easily.

 

Mail Of The Martyr is what I was referring to, yes. That and Whiteglow Flail. You can easily stack a lot of MF in the form of St. Olf's Fiery Pike and Shuddering Relic for little token cost. Plus, since MF is global and lasts 2 turns you don't need to spam your deck with it, meaning you don't need to fill EVERY slot with it. But whatever.

And yes, I do find WW/WWE problematic (heck, I've been asking for it to be changed since beta / early release). WoW too but generally only because of Runestone and a few other items that make it really easy to get. Compare WoW to other multi-square movement cards (Improved Telekinesis and Barge) and you'll see how overpowered it is in comparison.

 

I WANT 3X PURGE TO TROLL THE NIMBUS SPAMMERS. PLZZZZZZZZZ.

oops, caplock. sry... maybe... >_>

 

lol. The problem with Purge is that it is a 1:1 card trade and you have to draw it when the enemy has it. Holding onto it means you're weakening your position significantly. I'm curious to see how the new Purging Burst and Purging Strike work out though. Seems like it would be a much better way to deal with the issue.

 

3x purge... the divine equivalent of Copper Amulet?

 

3x Purging Burst on Spellstripper Relic could be worth a slot.

 

What if nimble strike turns into a slowed card* after use?? In the context, it would weaken perplexing rays (maybe buffing the ones that makes you have control over the discard: the ones which discards the oldest, so your opp has the risk of retaining it) and strenghten punishing attacks, while negating the move of the dwarf class, and would make NS much less versatile, cuz you would have to build to minimize the pain of retaining 2 other cards a turn so you can discard slowed. And also it would be theme-wise, cuz NS would be optimally used as a finishing move, what is very ninja-like

*that would be destroyed on discard instead of reshuffled

Whirlwind could be a trait, it would maintain the huge effect but would be something situational.

 

Whirlwind trait? That's something new

 

I could see a variety of ways to take the 'encumbrance' idea for attacks that need an external drawback.

A long the lines of Arcane Feedback or Slowed:
"Overexertion"
While this card is in your hand, encumber 1 (duration 1) for each additional attack you play.
OR
While this card is in your hand, discard a card randomly from your hand each time you play an attack.

 

Adding randomness to combat randomness. What a zen concept!

 

It would be a lot harder to take advantage of the chaos than it is now, but yeah, the increased variance wouldn't be fixed.