Firestorm is GOOD for the meta

Firestorm is good for the meta.

Before everyone assumes that I'm trolling -- I'm not. fwiw Flaxative agreed with at least the title of this post when we were talking in the MP lobby today. And Flax is no dummy.

The points:

1. Firestorm is about the only thing in the meta that actually encourages armor. The rest of the attacks are of high enough damage that they largely bypass armor. 5 or 6 Firestorms add up when a character is not wearing armor, but armored characters will be relatively unhurt.

2. Firestorm/Volcano decks strongly encourage more movement in the meta, not less. I'm running 3DW with 27 Firestorm and 12 Volcano. Who do I lose to? Armor, step attacks, and team movement. And Nimbus. And team heals. Which leads us to:

3. Priests work great against Firestorm. Especially human priests due to the team movement. Plus they've got the heals and Cleansing Burst. Priests can largely negate a Firestorm/Volcano build. Firestorm encourages healing priests in the meta.

4. A 3DW Firestorm deck largely ignores Whirlwind/Whirlwind Enemy. Against WW/WWE I don't care much where my characters wind up, unless maybe it's next to a warrior, but then I've got Short Perplexing Rays and Toughness to deal with that.

5. Adding Volcano to the mix encourages players to think about when they're going to use their movement, rather than just rushing ahead willy-nilly. Volcano is one of the few cards that force players to ration out their movement and *really* think about if they want to move right now. It encourages tactical thinking.

I'm going to stop here, as it's already getting TL;DR. But look: Firestorm encourages armor, movement and healing. It largely ignores WW/WWE.

It encourages balance in the meta. It's good for the game.

 

Of course. I think most agree with you, why post it?

 

I don't much mind Firestorm, because it dies easily to warrior rush. However, the easiest defense against Firestorm/Volcano combo is WW/WWE, which shouldn't be encouraged any more than it already is. Why bother thinking about moves when you can whirl the wizard out of healing range and into attack range?

(Also, I wish the RNG loved me enough to give jackpot draws like multiple first-turn Volcanoes, as seems to always happen when I play against FS/V builds. >_<)

 

I've been saying the same thing for a while, actually—notably, had this argument with @Magus the other day in lobby chat. I basically said what you said here, though I was focused primarily on armor. 3DC players complain about Firestorm the most, I think, because they tend not to run armor—and I think encouraging them to run a little bit of armor is probably good for the environment. Makes them slightly less dominant (due to decreased consistency). Anyway, I agree with your list.

Most wouldn't agree due to kneejerk hatred of Firestorm, actually. At least... I've seen more people complaining about it than explaining their appreciation of it.

WW/WWE doesn't feel that bad when it happens to my hybrid FS-control build (the one you said felt like a 1200 build). Nimble Strike is the single card that hurts me the most, followed probably by Martyr's Blessing.

 

My comment was specifically about FS+V. The whole thing about Firestorm forcing you to move quickly, with Volcano forcing you to ration moves at the same time, then induces one to run whirls in order to move the opponent instead.

(I will shamefully admit that I've been testing a whirl build in the last few days which I can only partially claim as ironic... it's just so easy to get lazy and stop calculating your own moves by forcing the opponent to move instead.)

 

Oh, yeah, WW affects Volcano quite a bit. Word.

 

3DC players also complain more about firestorm because they're running negative traits like Combustible to improve their consistency. I've had a couple of discussions in the chat with 3DC players who seem to feel that it's unfair that firestorm punishes their use of negative traits, where I would argue that's precisely the point of those cards in the meta.

3DC is a good deck, but it was a better deck before the meta reacted to it. With more players now able to run firestorm, as well as other answers to 3DC, it's going to be more difficult to climb the MP ladder with the deck. That's just a classic shift in the meta, but in internet terms that translates to "OMG FIRESTORM NEEDS TO BE BANNED".

Because Cardhunter makes you collect enough items to build a good/competitive deck, it makes sense to me that firestorm would trail 3DC in the meta. 3DC is a relatively easy team to put together in terms of item rarity, so players can build it relatively quickly/early. In terms of netdecking it makes sense that a lot of new players are going to build 3DC first. Firestorm builds have more reliance on epics and legendaries, so putting together the items for a good firestorm deck takes your average player more time to acquire the items. The longer the game goes, the more players (who keep playing) will be able to react to changes in the metagame.

 

Just noting: the items required for Firestorm + Volcano make pure firestorm look like a peasant build. There are only 2 viable staves, both legendary (Mordecai's Staff Of Magma or Wym's Lavastaff) and only 1 epic arcane item (Magma Scepter).

 

That's for a top-tier FS/V deck. If you don't insist on having both cards on each item, you can use some epics and rares (like the new Xipil Ring).

 

Oh definitely, it also draws into perspective the impact of the rarity system on your capability to build some of the top decks. I have neither of those staffs, haven't seen them since release, and that's for a player with 165+ legendary items. But, I think you have to be careful about getting too hung-up on a theoretical "optimal" build. Given the odds involved, they're never going to exist in any real numbers.

It doesn't just take players running these optimal builds to impact the meta. In any environment where more players are running firestorm cards in their decks, 3DC players will have more difficult matchups (for the reasons already discussed). Making it harder for them to earn and maintain their ratings. Conversely, so long as enough players continue to use 3DC builds in MP, it gives other players the incentive to run more firestorm.

I'd describe the process as something like this (this is more or less the same flow that occurs in real world tournament formats to some degree):
1) A player created 3DC, and in a field not expecting it or used to combating it, the deck did incredibly well.
2) Other players began to copy the deck and also did well.
3) The field adapted, running more answers to 3DC. This take considerable time in Cardhunter if players need to collect higher rarity items. So in many ways this has been a gradual shift.
4) Now there's simply an expectation gap for new players trying to do well with the same deck. They've seen others do well, and expect the same results based on what they read on the forums, but don't understand the shift that's occurred in the format. Those expectation gaps lead to complaints about other cards or the format.

The difficulty with the Cardhunter MP format is that adapting to changes can be incredible time consuming or frankly nearly impossible if it involves collecting specific legendaries. When players are unable to adapt, they either have to learn to accept their place in the new format (unlikely), drop out, or wait for it to change. I've said it since Beta, access to competitive items defines an MP environment.

 

I'm just whining about Firestorm + Volcano because it encourages playing Whirls. I don't mind regular Firestorm at all, since it's not really viable except against 3DC.

 

Good for the meta doesn't mean good for the game. It's quite possible FS encourages a more balanced meta, but it doesn't do it in a fun or interesting way. If you give Paladin a standard 3DC list and a random 1100 player a standard 2w/1p firestorm decklist (ignoring item availability, since that would obviously affect this), I'd strongly suggest Paladin will lose. Of course, Paladin plays step warriors, not 3dc, but... My biggest point against firestorm is I've had SEVERAL games where the only card I could legally play (not counting things like Mighty Spark targeting my own guy) was racial moves, and then the game just ended on turn 2. I've even had a game end during the upkeep phase before turn 2 started. This isn't something that belongs in this game.

Imagine that in the queue as a normal player (not an AI - you can't just disable FS players) there was a script that conceded on turn 1 if you had no nimble strikes in your deck and otherwise played an infinite number of "Trait. Do 999 damage to each enemy character, and discard all of their attachments." (until you died.) Would it be good for the meta? Maybe - it'd certainly make nimble strike much less dominant, which a lot of people do think is a problem. (I won't waste space here with my opinion). Would it be good for the game? Absolutely not.

But for a 3dc player, Firestorm decks are exactly that - you just randomly occasionally lose some rating points, and there's never any "if I'd done this, maybe I could have won".

Unfortunately, there's just no other reasonable options sometimes - there's no Trembling Staff with a third Vulnerable instead of the Combustible, to prevent the random blowouts at the cost of a trait that might actually do something against not-FS. Admittedly, people who run multiple Combustibles are being a bit greedy, but this isn't the way to punish it. A few more cards like Fiery Stab is - Fiery Stab makes interesting gameplay (gives you a very good reason to have to keep people at range 3 from combustible dwarves instead of range 2).

But to clarify, I don't think the relevant question is "is FS good for the meta?" Maybe it is. I don't think it's good for the game, though. A loss to anything that isn't Firestorm is a learning experience. In a loss to FS, all you learn is "3dc is, in fact, bad against firestorm".

Further disclaimer: If there were a _consistent_ answer to FS, I'd be more okay with it. If I had the _option_ of sacrificing a gold token for a 3x Resistant Hide robe, maybe it'd be worth it. The changes others have suggested in the past, though, are removing some of the best items in the deck (heavily-traited tokenless items in slots that normally have bad cards) for a SINGLE card that is good in the firestorm matchup (and bad in all others) and two cards that are bad draws even against firestorm.
--
Magus

 

I strongly disagree.

You can't build a consistent firestorm deck without a pile of specific epics and legendaries. Thus even assuming that firestorm is "good" for the metagame, only a small fraction of the playerbase can build a strong firestorm deck. Firestorm decks make up a small enough percentage of the decks you'll play that you aren't rewarded for building to counter it because you'll weaken your deck against your most frequent matchups. Encouraging the use of armor against one specific deck doesn't help if the armor is bad against almost every other deck. The best 3dc decks will still largely ignore armor and perform very well against most decks, but just lose to the occasional firestorm blowout. This creates a rock paper scissors kind of scenario that is just plain unhealthy.

The other problem is that you can't really build to counter a firestorm deck without a pile of rares/epics/legendaries. Think about it. What are the best anti-firestorm cards that aren't dead in other matchups? Nimble Strike,
Team Heal, Reliable Mail, and Team Run. Notice anything? These cards are all rare. They don't appear on any common or uncommon items. A lot of players simply don't have access to these cards on items that work with their build.

Even without the presence of firestorm, it's extremely difficult for players with small item collections to compete at high levels of play. It's tough to build a strong priest or warrior without using rares and up. One of the few decks that be built with a tiny collection is 3DC. You don't need rare cards or items. Losing the Short Perplexing Ray hurts, but not nearly as much as losing Nimble Strike and Mass Frenzy on a warriors and priests. I think it's unfortunate that the only budget build that works well in high level play is punished so severely by a pile of epics and legendaries.

Assuming that the game had zero grinding and everyone had free access to every single item, I still don't think firestorm would be healthy. It's incredibly luck based, especially when it comes to mirror matches. Each wizard can only have a single copy of Resistant Hide and the difference between drawing it and not drawing it is massive. Also, the fact that firestorm ignores line of sight makes positioning less relevant and makes the strategies of both players very predictable. The non firestorm player will always need to charge in and attack without even considering cover, and the firestorm player only needs to maintain distance and stay out of line of sight of enemy wizards.

Most importantly though, firestorm is very frustrating to play against. Some of you may disagree but my impression is that most players hate playing against firestorm. I personally can't recall playing even a single game vs firestorm that I found fun. I guarantee you there are players who have stopped playing multiplayer solely because of firestorm.

 

Magus, I think you're missing the point. Firestorm, the CARD, encourages people to run armor. 3dc is cheesy and dumb, except against the one build that punishes it (all else equal-obviously bad players can do poorly with 3dc). If firestorm were more prevalent, 3dc players might finally adjust their builds to be less rock paper scissorsy. That, I think, would be good for the environment... And people running ridiculous and inconsistent firestorm builds helps increase that prevalence. The Hope is that in the long run, players will adjust their decks to maximize win rates against as many builds as possible-so we would hopefully see more 3dc builds that can fight firestorm, and more firestorm builds that can fight the things firestorm is weak against.

 

Are you talking about yourself, here, Doorman? >_>

 

So, basically what you are saying here is that you don't like that rare/epic/legendary items can beat common items? Don't you think it's more logical that rarest items have advantage over the common ones? Don't you think it's very odd that almost any player can build a competitive deck using only common and uncommon items (3DC)?

 

I personally don't think it's good that rarity translates into power.

The devs intended—and it's good design—for rare cards to be interesting and allow different, not necessarily better strategies. Things did not really pan out as planned, as evidenced by cards like NS, SPR, and MF just being a cut above everything you can find in peasant except Winds of War.

 

I think that if a player spent months grinding for items should be rewarded with better gear than someone who is new, for instance. What's the point of farming if common items are the same of the rarest ones? You could argue that a new player or someone who doesn't care for sp should have the possibility to have a good build, and I agree. But it should be competitive at the low and mid-rank, not at the high rank as it happens now. If you can build a very good deck just buying items from the shops, then the "Card Hunter" name makes no sense.

 

Didn't say they should be the same. I said the rares shouldn't be strictly better.

 

3DC and FS are both very nice builds if you don´t want to compete for the high ranks, you all know what dominates the top.
People with time and a small collection who play 3DC and the others who like to win or lose fast with a FS deck should be kept im peace.
Both are viable, both are not a sign of the Antichrist as some put it.

Of course when a rating 800 gets burned up by a 1300 fs deck, the annoyance is great but if the 1300 fs faces a 1700 2War with Cle/Wiz he feels the same.