Dwarven Racials in the Current PvP Meta

Yeah, imagine Ducking a Firestorm and then using it against your opponent, and then one of their characters Ducks it.... So much fun. XD
I don't think I would try Superb/Perfect Stoutness unless one dropped from the RNG. Still, Duck is one of those wild cards that can make a game crazy yet fun. I wasted at least 6 lunging hacks/bludgeons once trying to get rid of a warrior with Duck, 9 HP and Reliable Mail. I finally run out of options and try to Mighty Bludgeon him. And that was how I lost. -_-

 

Depends on the class! I go Perfect toughness on wizards and Solid rock on other 2 class! If you want to rely on parry to draw a card as a wizard you are doing something wrong

 

...Flaxative pointed me over to this thread from the deck building sub-forum.

I'm running Perfect Toughness on my all-dwarf firestorm team. I'm figuring that Rusty Armor will = -3 damage when I hit the roll, and that the two Toughness are a worst case -4 damage each (basically), and they replace themselves.

Would anyone run something else, if so, what?

 

i been using Apprentice Ferocity since i dont have a free gold token and the extra dmg output is nice

 

Apprentice Ferocity / Raging Rock / Solid Rock for my Dwarf Warriors. My best items period.
@Avarice, if I was running a Firestorm Deck with Priest Support (and resistant hide!), I would be using Untrained Stoutness. It's a +3 overall instead of a +2 from Perfect Toughness. And those Immovable will save your butt from winds. That being said, Perfect Toughness does negate damage (Twice!) plus that Rusty Armor, so it would probably be better for your 3 wizard build.

 

I would run Untrained Stoutness for you Avarice. If you want fast games above all else, right? So go for the increased consistency and draw to your firestorms faster.

 

In response to Avarice: for a FS build, Perfect Toughness is great, and even that rusty armor usually helps. But, if you see that you are losing games because your opponents use ww or wwe, then Untrained Stoutness is the way to go, because you would have 3 Inmovable, assuming you are using Goat Boots. And even if you can afford it you could use Sticky Slippers to have 4 Inmovable in your deck. That way you will be very unlucky if you don't draw one. You would lose those 2 Toughness though, so you need to be very consistent in the healing.

 

Let me try to analyze the situation a bit.
Blind Rage is a great card only if you really can play all your attacks each turn. If you cannot play them for whatever reason (encumbrance, Winds of War, lack of moves, whatever), you will be forced to discard all the attacks or take serious damage. Plus, this card works only on melee attacks, so the skills with it are very good only for the warriors (and aggressive priests maybe).
Toughness is a very very good card, but it doesn't actually save your Dwarves from their worst nightmares: encumber and movement effects. If your character catches Cone Of Cold, would you be happy for preventing 1 damage? Whirlwind Enemies deals no damage at all, so you keep your Toughness, which you'd gladly swapped for any move card... Even in melee a clever opponent will play his weakest attacks first, so the Toughness isn't going to change much. Plus, as you said, Perfect Toughness isn't brilliant, and other items have only one copy, which is far from being reliable.
Immovable is currently the best Dwarven card that I'd like to see in my Dwarven skills. My warrior currently has Stoutness and Sticky Slippers, so I have 4 copies in my deck. Unfortunately, this wonderful card is present only on boots and Dwarven Skills. Why it's the best? Because it blocks movement effects, and everyone playing them now playing the useless cards. Even if your opponent doesn't have the movement effects, Immovable is easily cycled.

My vote went to Perfect Stoutness, though. Duck is so close to being overpowered that even 3+ activation would broke it. Let's see why:

1. Block Any. This is very important, since the conditional blocks are good only in SP missions where you know they will trigger The damage is irrelevant, your life is irrelevant too, and triggers at least half the time. How many such blocks do you know? Absorbing Block, Block, Defender's Block, Hit The Deck, Icy Block, Jarring Block, Hard To Pin Down. All these cards are playable, even the most basic Block, since they aren't going to clog in your hand. And when such card works, it may completely disrupt the opponent's plans.
2. Card advantage. The opponent lost his card, you've gained his card.
3. Tempo advantage. The opponent wasted his turn, you wasted nothing.
4. Card quality. When you draw a card for Parry, you get a random card from your deck. It may be useful, unneeded or even harmful (like a negative trait). When your Duck triggers, you always get a card that you can play right now. It won't always turn the game to your side, but it will do that quite often. And the stronger cards your opponent plays, the more dangerous is your Duck.

 

I think you are wrong about a couple of things. First off, Duck. I agree about the whole "get a card you can play" thing except when it comes to Whirlwind/Whirlwind Enemies, since you don't necessarily want to play that. I think I would rather have Toughness, unused sitting in my hand than being left where I was with my opponent's Whirl, or being somewhere random with a visible Duck. Freaking whirls though. I'm not going to go there....
It's true that Toughness can fall prey to low damage spells like Frost Jolt, Cone Of Cold, or even Firestorm or Winds Of War. That being said, the advantage of Toughness comes when your opponent is using a card like Nimble Strike to get behind your character and nail them for 6+ damage (add on Mass Frenzy and/or Blind Rage!). Duck can't help you there.

I think that Duck would be worse if it was 3+ than it currently is at 4+. Why? Like you said about Toughness, given the choice between leading with Bludgeon or using Mighty Bludgeon on a character who might have blocks, people will use the Bludgeon first in most situations.
So if Duck had a 2/3 chance of stealing the Bludgeon, and only a 1/3chance of taking the hit and showing my Duck to my opponent.
That would not be as useful as having a 1/2 chance of Ducking and a 1/2 of absorbing the Bludgeon and then further forcing your opponent to spend several turns wasting their Bludgeons and Ember Sprays and such trying to remove your Duck. If you could choose when to use a block this would be a whole different story.
I think that Duck's best use is when it fails, as a mind game, to take the tempo from your opponent and force them to rethink their next attack. I mean, you have a 50% chance of killing that dwarf with your Mighty Bludgeon, but also a 50% chance of them taking the Mighty Bludgeon and smacking you with it.

I have Perfect Stoutness. I do like it when 50% of the time, I Duck a Frost Jolt and sling it back at the wizard who cast it, or use an attack or something. The other 50% of the time when it fails is the problem- I would rather have a 100% chance of drawing some card (any card!) and then using a Move, Team! or Winds of War from my wizard to sling the dwarf warrior towards that enemy wizard.

Blind Rage is an instant +1 and it self-buffs your warrior's (priests??) damage output. It works best with Step attacks, since short of being hit with Halt, you should be able to use all of those attacks, hit your enemies, and avoid the damage. If you play well, very seldom will you actually have to waste 1-3 turns using Vicious Thrusts or whatever while being totally encumbered.
In most cases it is actually worthwhile to keep that Nimble Strike/Mighty Bludgeon/ etc and take that 3-6 damage rather than discard it. (you have lots of HP!) It can be intimidating (or damming, if your opponent knows your hand!) but your warrior needs to deal damage more than tank if you are using Blind Rage anyways.
Blind Rage is not the end-all dwarf skill, certainly it works better on aggressive builds and best for step builds, but the fact is that you can sit with Hard to pin down and Reliable Mail, invisible in your hand, whilst Blind Rage deals you 0 damage. Now, your opponent knows that they aren't attacks, but in most cases you can draw some attacks and start aggressing your opponent as the situation requires. Certainly Raging Battler/Apprentice Ferocity/Raging Rock are very potent skills.

Immovable is an amazing card, I have no doubts about that. It's an instant +1, it prevents your opponent from screwing around with you using Winds of War or less common Maze/Force Bolt/Telekinesis, but it really doesn't help against WWE sometimes. Sometimes you wish that it would have flung you somewhere else to support your allies, or even land closer to the enemy wizard so you can Rage all over them. I am a big fan of Sticky Slippers, and Untrained Stoutness/Stoutness as well but not necessarily on a Warrior.

 

Immovable is a card that can easily easily backfire and cost you a game. If I see an enemy team with 1-2 chars with immovable, and I'm running wwe, GG.

Also, Ector is wrong just overall. Duck is fun, but not good. Its inconsistent and very very easily manipulated against the user. Duck may win you 1 game. But if you play against the same opponents (like at upper ranges), your gimmick deck will not be a surprise and you will get thrashed.

 

Guys, you are talking about Duck as though you always know whether your opponent has it or no. How can you know that? You may occasionally get that information if it won't trigger, but sometimes (50% chance) it will trigger without a warning. And it can be mixed with the other blocks too!

I've never had your rating, so I shouldn't argue here, but please tell me, if you would know that I have Duck in my deck - would that change your tactics, despite the fact that I cannot have more than 2 copies? If the answer is "yes", then my Duck is already worth its slot, even if I have only one copy of it You will refuse to play strong attacks on me, if you won't be able to test my blocks first, and if I add some other card-drawing blocks (like Parry), you aren't likely to get the information about Duck at all!

This theme isn't as easy as you've described. Firstly, the first attacks against my chars are rarely the melee attacks - they are usually magical attacks from the long range. And the opponent rarely has an assortment of "weak ranged attacks" to probe my blocks. He might have just one Frost Jolt to pin down my warrior and one Winds Of War to secure the victory area. If both cards hit, I am going to lose, but if I steal his Jolt... Secondly, you rarely have the infinite time to remove my Duck. If you play a weak attack, you pass me the tempo, and I can kill your character now Short Perplexion Ray is just amazing with Duck: you play your weak attack, remove my Duck, yahoo... then you get SPR and have no strong attacks anymore. Thirdly, just imagine a combo with the other blocks. You hit me with a weak attack, and trigger Parry. Do I have Duck after that or not?

This is not a "backfire". Without Immovable, the result would be the same: I lose, just more slowly. When my char remains in the victory area without support, you kill him and win the game quickly; when all my chars are teleported, you hold the victory area and win slowly (in some situations you can kill my chars one by one too). I'd say it's better to have Immovable against you than not to have it: I can play my own WWE after all

 

I still don't like the whole 50% chance thing. Flip a coin, heads I win, tails you lose.
If we're talking about wizards then you should know that a wizard with Spark Generator is going to completely invalidate your Duck... and I can still see people pulling out War Cry, Bad Luck, Nimble Strike, lava, etc to circumvent the Duck. It's just not consistent.

I would say that Perfect Stoutness has a place on a Wizard; but seeing as most people expect Parry and/or Toughness these days, it really could go either way.
50% just isn't very good when your life is on the line.

 

50% to take a random skill that any good player will fish out through crap attacks, or through simply eliminating it with warcry. If there's anything that is the bane of upper-level play, its easily countered, unpredictable abilities. Duck is a fine card for the 1200 range, or for 1-2 games of random luck against a higher opponent. But it doesn't work well consistently over time at upper ratings. Its the clearly inferior choice.

 

I don't know man. Duck is not that bad. It makes people not want to hit you and change there plans. Like having an nimbus but for multiple rounds. Specially if they try to waste spells on it and not hit. To test this out I already started to change setup and run a priest with duck.

 

I'd just like to drop in here and let you all know that the OP, written when 3DC was a bigger part of the environment, is officially obsolete. That said, Rusty Armor still sucks and I love watching you guys argue about Duck. :3

 

I don't think they are obsolete so much as people expect it, and more importantly the maps have changed.
I think duck is hilarious and I hope that 50% of the people like it, and 50% of the people don't like it for a long time.

 

Nice discussion here. As I've picked up a lot of the legendaries and epics I've been surprised at the high quality options available to dwarves.

From a design perspective one aspect that really bugs me is that dwarves not only get the most HP, but than their racial cards tend to further protect or enhance their life total. They get additional blocks or armor that essentially just adds even more life to their already high values. I tend to figure it builds in card advantage when it takes an opponent an additional card or two to kill a dwarf, so this is a sizable benefit.

Elves get access to cards like dodge, which is not a bad card by any means, but it's much more luck dependent or variable. An interesting aspect of the dwarf racial abilities is that they tend to offer very consistent benefits, Duck being the best counter example. As MP builds seem to have stabilized towards more consistent decks (at least at higher levels), the dwarven racial cards are often a better fit as they have less variance when used (which is why I also think players tend to skip over items with Duck ).

Last, as if that wasn't enough, dwarves also seem to get some of the best card cycling. Toughness and Immovable both cycle on top of the upside they offer. In comparison to elf or human racial items, dwarves rarely have that bad of a drawback on their racial items. Oh no, I have to use Blind Rage , how horrible... Plus they also have access to Dwarven Battlecry . Again this just further adds to the consistent benefits offered by a lot of the dwarven options.

So to me it's not any one thing, but rather a combination of advantages that favor the dwarven racial selection. But in the end it still boils down to better deck consistency and card advantage, and that wins games.

 

Duck is the sex panther of abilities.

 

I love Duck, but Toughness is just better.

Let's say that 1/2 of the cards an opponent plays on you are cards that would actually help you if ducked. And on a 4+, you'll get that card half the time. So that means (hard to block magic aside), you get good card advantage from it 25% of the time. Because if an opponent can see it, chances are it will be drawn out with some less powerful cards. Although Toughness doesn't stop encumber and similar effects, you'll get a card every time it triggers. Hopefully your deck has at least 50-75% useful cards (if not more on 3DC and the like). That means it nets good card advantage based simply on how consistent your deck is, not 50% of whatever your opponent happens to be doing.

I will say that an awesome duck trigger (vs Obliterating Bludgeon or something) is -way- more satisfying than an awesome toughness trigger though.

(Edit: Toughness also protects from all angles, terrain, and traits. Getting hit from behind doesn't reveal duck though, so I'm not factoring that in to it's chance to net a good card)

 

I just wish Duck "blocked" Traveling Curse. Hilarity ensues.