[Balance] Card Discussion

For as much as I complain about the nimbus, I think immunities are okay. I just think there should be some sort of cost for the immunity. Be it Halt, Stun, or a noticeable Encumber (maybe like encumber 2 on Grounding Plates, I assume that has to be heavy heavy armor. Or give them a Savage Curse-type effect where they provide the immunity for the cost of a card. Not each of these costs works perfectly for each type of immunity, but you could mix them up as necessary.

Maybe Resistant Hide should just provide the immunity but no damage prevention? Wizards may still want to carry it, especially if they are using a lot of Volcano or Firestorm, but it doesn't inherently 'shut down' the game plan of an opponent. They still have to work around it, but it's much more manageable.

If the Impenetrable Nimbus costs a card to prevent all damage, it's still effective, but makes it a much more strategic play, and it becomes more of a 'this card needs to save my life' play than a 'my dwarf wizard can't take 1 point of damage, I better throw a nimbus on them before I move them for the first time' play. Or use it as the latter, but realize that wizard isn't going to have anything to work with the next round.

Those are just a couple of ideas.

Immunities could also be modified by making them much more rare. However, I don't know what that would do to item cost or viability.

 

Hot Flames is fine. It's only not good enough in the context of most of our traits being broken. As a bronze card that cycles with no drawback, it's amazing. And its value relative other burn-boosting traits can only go up as we introduce higher armor values in the future.

To be clear, much like Healing Spirit, it's a card we'd be loathe to buff. Yall can discuss it all you want, I guess.

We basically already did this. It has .5 ADR now instead of the previous 1.33.

 

Hot Flames, like most traits, wasn't actually on my original list. I suppose it was Fiery Stab that brought it up.

As far as Hot Flames goes, it makes sense to leave the ability alone for now. I never suggested that we buff it. I can only think of Cliffs of the Wyverns where it could actually be useful though- sadly, making the 1-3 burning damage Penetrating still isn't as good as buffing the burning to 3-5 and taking your chances with Crude/Grounding Plates when it does come up. Armor removal is cheap too.

Maybe if some new armor cards are introduced that prevent extra magic/fire damage or roll higher against fire/magic damage, Hot Flames may become useful.

 

I agree with Flax here - traits are simply overpowered, even if it simply gave you next card from your deck for the low cost of -1 draw limit that turn it would be worth a silver status.

And this logic is one I've heard many times before and is just dumb. Just because something is limited to 1 per deck doesn't mean it could be too powerful (though I haven't said it is).
Currently +2 dmg is better than penetrating. If that's how it is, I'm fine with that.

 

GROW UP. You trying calling me out like that in real life and see how it goes.

 

I'm confused as to how Jade intended to enforce 'banning' people from a thread.
I'm also confused as to why doog37 has decided to take Jade's pipedream so seriously, so personally.

Let's just put this aside and get back to the topic at hand.

If anyone has a problem with another member, work it out in private with the mods. End of discussion.

 

Aye Jade, you can't really ban someone from a thread.

 

Oh, and I was going to suggest they fight in Triple Duel, each with three dwarf warriors with nothing equipped. Best 16 out of 30 is declared the champion of this thread.

Can't think of a better way to solve this controversy.

 

Make it so!

 

...what? I did not even talk about resistant hide being powerful or not.
I am saying that giving unpreventable instead of penetrating to hot flames is not OP because the only case where it help is rare and +2 damage is still better is most cases.
Also, I agree that most traits are underpriced due to cycling but it seems to be the norm rather than the exception so I was talking about hot flames in comparison to similar traits, not whether the card in itself is good enough(in which case,it would need a nerf rather than a buff).

 

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Card of the Day: Resistant Hide
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So here we are... Resistant Hide. Some players swear by it, some players swear at it, in any case it is an extremely strong card.
Never mind the fact that this card is broken in how much damage it prevents. I'm not asking why they would make a card this powerful. All I want to ask is:

-Why do wizards have to wear smelly zombie skin for robes?

Either give them an equivalent new card (Enchanted Hide/Resistant Robes) with the same effect,

Or split all existing cards into: Electric OR Fireproof. Make two new armor cards and split the items with Resistant hide into two groups, replace and you are done.

EG:
Firehide Robes: Fire/Poison resistant card.
Rockshard Robes: Electric/Acid resistant card.

If nothing else:
Resistant Hide: Armor 1, 4+ Keep
Always prevents 2 points of damage from electrical, fire or acid damage. Keep.

(Note: The damage reduction for electric/fire/acid type attacks will be 2-3 points)

Thoughts? Threats? Jokes?

 

Resistant Hide is neither broken nor smelly. At least no more pungent than the wizard would account for.
Keep as-is.

 

I quite like Jade's suggestion; I don't mind it the way it is atm, but it could look better and have less immunities. (how does a hide protect from poison?)

How about this: Insulated Armor (immunity to fire and electricity) and make it look like a suit of folio or honeycombed, like in spacecrafts

 

Resistant Hide is perfectly fine by my (admittedly low) standards.

It's the kind of card which, in MP, helps preventing impossibly narrow builds from dominating the meta. Wizards are extremely frail already, and Resistant Hide can be removed by a gazillion spells already. In short, this is the kind of item which make new players go nuts, when in reality dealing and/or accounting for it is relatively simple.

I think both proposed suggestions would make for incredibly sub-par items too, in all honesty.

Anyway, as far as SP goes, Res Hide is hardly a problem in game balance terms. Yeah, some modules get very trivial if you can draw it early on, and it helps with FS speed-farming, but it's far from beaing a deal breaker.

I think this is extremely low on the list of "things which are too good and need to be nerfed", tbh. Unless the whole point of this thread is suggesting nerfs for all remotely interesting cards.

 

I don't see resistant hide as any sort of problem. It's strong, yes, but it's definitely not outside the power curve.

 

Agreed. Also, with the nerf (from 3+ to 4+ on the die, from Armor 2 to Armor 1), it's much less useful than it previously was, which is definitely encouraging usage of robes with Reliable Mail, Hardy Mail, or Arcane Aura.

 

You can take that hide and... well I agree it is too good for a single card. The fact that it was wisely limited to one per customer makes it workable, but I think it would have been better split into 2 different cards so that there is not 1 odd super armor that makes all elemental damage meaningless. Resistant Hide has made the Blue Destruction so valuable since it is outside the Hide's immunity. Personally I don't like any immunity. I would have designed it as it reduces all elemental damage to 1 which would not do as much for the 1/2/3 points of burn attachments, but would make Obliterating Sparks still a non-issue. I think anyone who has played a lot of Quick Draw would agree it is more powerful than most Silver cards, even if it is limited in item dependant game play.
I don't see resistant hide changing again and while I like the split idea how do you decide which items get the Fire immunity and which the Electricity, because let's face it poison is not subject to armor in most cases, and acid is low damage the armor removal is the most important factor.

Of course this is 1 of the three headed all damage prevented cards that annoy everyone at some point. Impen. Nimbus and Toughness are the others.

 

I can agree on a number of factors on this page. From what I have seen, wizards have shifted towards Arcane Bursts and run little or no armor removal (gazillion spells? try two) to max out damage/control since only Defender's Block and Toughness will actually stop the damage (along with Nimbus for 1 turn, once cast). 1-off cards, even if they are very strong (I'm looking at Grounding Plates and Resistant Hide), are as many people have said, rare enough that people will just ignore them.

So there isn't really an issue where there are too many of x armor card is being run in the meta and EVERYONE is trying to counter; it's more like there are so few armor cards you actually want to put in your deck, that armor removal is too narrow unless you hit with Perplexing Ray/Memory loss. The more armor removal you put into your deck, the more effective you are against armor, but you become weaker vs everything else.
Even further, some people are switching back to Ember Burst because they can do more damage against characters with no reliable mail, etc.

What would be really cool, is a new Fire/Electrical attack that discards one armor card. It would have to be balanced somewhat compared to straight damage, but a ST armor removal card would allow people to integrate armor removal without throwing away Boiling armor/Dissolve armor as little more than block fodder.

So for SP, Resistant Hide is not really a balance concern. If it isn't broken, it's just boring. For MP, you could argue it wouldn't be a balance concern even if you could run 2-3 copies since there are some fashionably strong arcane attacks and buffs, not to mention rampant armor-less warriors. I'd just like to make the meta a little more interesting instead of shoehorning at least one character per party into a mundane non-electric/fire character and/or armor removal so that you have a chance of beating those Immunity armors.

I just think it's ridiculous that a spark wizard can do absolutely no damage with a handful of attacks against a single card. Not even penetrating, nor Obliterating will harm a 1hp wizard with the right card. It turns half of your spells or more into nothing. Where is the fun or strategy there?

Put only bones onto warrior armor next, and tell me that allows for interesting gameplay. Only bones is totally fair, the meta just has to shift away from the Cults and join the Lungination.

 

It isn't that ridiculous. Grounding Plates can also 100% shut a fully committed spark wizard down if you don't have a way of getting rid of it.

Unless you play a 3x Spark Wizards team, chances are you can use your sparks against non-sparks-invulnerable enemies, while your other guys take care of the sparks-invulnerable dude. Or, if you are wise enough and recognize your strategy could be weak against a few cards your enemies might be using, you acknowledge that fact and plan for it (i.e. you bring a few armor-removal cards of your own).

Putting armor removal in your deck is going to make your overall strategy less focused/effective, that's true. But it's not like armor-removal cards are 100% dead cards whenever Resistant Hide or Grounding Place are not involved. I.e. basically every character has some armor in his deck, and some teams heavily rely on armor in order to achieve better survivability. Is removing Thoughness useless? Is removing Barbed Mail useless? Hell, even getting rid of Reliable Mail (prob among the most popular and readily available armors in the game) would be a great use for your armor removal spells. Worst case scenario: you can use armor removal for baiting Defender's Block and other any/projectile blocks.

So yeah, putting tons of armor removal in your deck probably isn't a great idea. But, if you're playing a strategy which is very effectively countered by armor? Of course I would include at least some armor removal in my deck. You don't need "a ton", if all you care is having some way of removing Resistant Hide, because your opponent using it would mean you automatically lose.

And I don't even know why I'm supposed to explain this, but this is exactly why the meta can be interesting, and mutate over time as different people try out different builds in order to respond to other people using other builds. It's called meta exactly because of the very nature of a system where the players select their respective strategies with little or no in-game knowledge of what the other players might be doing.

If there was a build capable of dominating any other build with ease, now that would indeed be a big balance concern. As a corollary of this simple fact, it's only natural that every build will (should?) have some other build which is relatively capable of responding to it.

You can ignore that fact, and go for a super-focused, ultra-optimized build, and accept the fact every once in a while you're going to meet the hard-counter to your build. Or, you can exchange some consistency for more flexibility, meaning you will at least have some chance of overcoming otherwise impossible odds.

Leaving aside the fact Arcane Bust/Control wizards have very little to fear from Resistant Hide. "two"? Really? Let's list all the possible responses to Resistant Hide, shall we?

Via magic attacks of various kinds: Boiling Armor, Dissolve Armor, Melt Armor
Via terrain attachments: Acid Blast, Acid Jet, Acid Spray
Via physical attacks: Sundering Strike
Via discard effects: Memory Loss, Perplexing Ray, Short Perplexing Ray

TL;DR; The quick catch is that if:

• You run a 3x Wizards party and
• with all 3 of them only focusing on Fire/Electric spells and
• none of them bringing armor removal and
• your opponent has Resistant Hide and
• he draws it early on in the game

then yeah, pretty much you're likely going to have a reeeeal hard time dealing with that.

But even then, I wouldn't really call Resistant Hide OP (and it needing a nerf) because of that. Rather, that would be a consequence of you building a far too narrowly focused deck, so it's only natural encountering the natural hard-counter to whatever you're doing is going to be a big problem.

As usual, just my 2c

 

Agreed with this analysis.
In fact, this analysis makes me wonder if we maybe need to buff Resistant Hide, since it only really punishes singleminded parties when they're at about 90-100% commitment to a single strategy.