I've been playing a bit now and I have to say: Hot Spot and Wall of Fire seem really, really good. Many monsters aren't resistant, its a solid 10 points of damage at the end of the turn that can't be blocked and if you can ensure you bleed out their movement cards there's not much they can do about it. Wall of fire even has utility to keep melee attackers away from your squishy squishy mages. My question to you, is it too strong? Does the fact that it can burn you as well and tends to be cast late mitigate some of it's utility? If there is a balance issue (not sure there is) does it lie with the power of these cards or a dearth of cards that move your characters into their own fire tiles, or allow your opponents extra movement options? Caveat: Yes, I know about War Monkeys, I'm just choosing to ignore them so I don't explode in a fit of apoplectic rage. I know one thing, my mage is carrying as many of these as she can. I can't quit you, flame tile. My love for you will burn long after your heat has faded
No doubt it's a strong card and it has received fire for being too strong (see what I did there?). The arguement is that it is based on the enemy standing in it. In PvE it can be brutal against unsuspecting monsters, but only after they have completed movement and cannot move. After that it is harder to keep them in place. PvP balance comes in as it's easier for a PC to move out of them having more options for movement and easy access to ground dispelling cards. Some priest cards even give you a free draw doing such. I think I recommended a while back that the damage being lowered to 9 or 8 wouldn't hurt the cards. Though at the moment they are very strong for wizards and a great way to put the heat on the enemy (I did it again)
I also suggested putting it at 8 which i think would be a better number for it in pvp. But in pve you lose out so many times because enemies just draw so many more move cards as a group that it might not even be worth it at 8.
Hot Spot's and Wall Of Fire's strength is also caused by the fact that they're so freely available on many arcane items and so you can easily have four arcane items with two Wall Of Fire cards each. All the big electricity based attacks are only available on staffs and skills. (Deadly Spark, Mighty Spark...) All the bigger arcane based attacks likewise. (Sorcerous Blast, Surging Blast...) Many of the fire based spells as well (Sizzling Bolt, Fireball...) Sure, some of those are quite comparable in effectiveness to Hot Spot / Wall Of Fire but it's a lot harder to find a good staff. I think I had something like 5x Amulet Of The Burning Barrier and 4x Blister Stone already in my inventory and they're both common and require only a single clear talent to use. In comparison I do have some good staffs but often only one of each and the good ones are either rare/epic/legendary or require clear+bronze talent to use. There's of course some battles where lava doesn't work quite that well (enemies have Resistant Hide, Hover, Team Shift, Raise The Alarm etc. cards) but they're not that common. Besides, what else are you going to spend all your arcane item slots on? Sure, utility spells are useful and even crucial in some fights. But even then you wouldn't fill all four item slots with just utility spells. And comparing the lava spells against all the other damage spells available in arcane items - yeah, I think I'll pick lava. So are lava cards too strong? Maybe. But I'd also like a little more varied options on arcane items in general. I'd love to build a real lightning mage but currently Sparky the Stormbringer would still be forced to pick way too many arcane, fire or utility spells to fit the theme...
Well to be honest it is probably easiest to make wizard cards. If they wanted they could probably make a ton of arcane items for wizards going with the themes they already have in place (cold slowing, acid removing armor, fire placing DoTs, etc). The issue with this is the random loot aspect. The market would be flooded with wizard items and the chances of getting those items would be far higher. If I was a dev I would be making 1 of each class specific item at a time in a rotation to keep all classes on par with how many items are available to them as to not set priority over another class or to give one class more options than another. This is better for balance. Now would I like to see more elemental type specific arcane items? Yes, because my wizard Green needs more acid attacks, Blue needs more cold attacks and Red needs more fire. I wouldn't sacrifice the variety of other classes to get them though and hope all 3 classes get enough love equally.
That's a different issue. NONE of the terrain modifiers are suppose to apply more than once to a 2x2 monster: I don't know why they haven't altered it in the months since this mention, but they really should.
Or more likely he flies away and you do 0. If you look at wizard spells and then look at warrior attacks the difference in damage is huge. The fact that the only way a wizard does more damage than 10 without buffs is by putting multiple lavas on one target and then prays that it doesn't move makes it fair in my opinion. Considering lava damage can't be buffed either i really think it works fairly as it works currently possibly lowering the damage to 8 as stated earlier.
If there's one thing I would agree with here, it is that Hot Spot and Wall Of Fire are perhaps a bit too common. I don't consider them too strong at all, I actually find them very well balanced as a card. It's just too easy to amass multiple copies of excellent items that contain them. I could run a wizard right now with 10 Hot Spots in his deck without using a single Talent point. Actually, I could run two of those wizards at the same time. Alternately, I could run 8 Wall Of Fire cards on each of three wizards - 24 Wall of Fires total on a party. Every one of those items is of Common rarity. Wall of Fire in particular could use a boost in value to increase the rarity of the items it is on. A small boost in rarity. These items should be Uncommon. A couple could probably be Rare, but most of them Uncommon. Not Epic. Not Legendary. Uncommon. *ahem* The damage output though is easily balanced by the delayed nature of the spell. Other than terrain attachments, wizard spells do damage instantly and sometimes (instantly) attach to the target to do more damage. (Most) Terrain attachments, such as lava, sit there on the ground doing nothing unless someone is standing on top of them at the beginning of the next turn. It's a big risk using those instead of an instant damage spell, and takes much more planning and strategy. Further: Stone Spikes - Stop and Piercing Damage, Acid whatever - Stop and Damage and Armor Destruction, Cave-in and Rockfall - Stop and *Instant* Damage. Lava? Just damage. Eventually. Sure. Lava does a lot of damage. But considering the utility of other terrain attachments and the delayed damage step of the card, it's pretty well balanced as is.
I'll admit that on large characters lava tiles really do a lot of damage. To defeat the yellow dragon I loaded a wizard up with as many wall of fire cards as possible and equipped as many root or stop cards I could find on my other characters. It took a while for the cards to cycle right, but when they did the battle was over in about 2/3 turns.
Wall of Fire, Volcano, and Hot Spot are all overpowered. They are the same spell as the Floor Spikes but one does 10 Damage and the other 6. In addition, Wall of Fire affects 3 squares of your choice. Volcano is a global spell. At turn one, these cards give a huge advantage. Freeze the enemy for Encumber 3 and just Hot Spot them. You pretty much already won. Acid does 3 Spike does 6 Fire does 10
For having less HP, no shields, and poor armor wizards need to be able to do a lot of damage. Wizards should be able to do similar damage than warriors, keeping in mind they also get the main ranged attacks too. Fire mages seem the only way that's remotely possible to me. The biggest spark cards do some decent damage, but it's hard to get many of those in your deck. Especially when a Mage can only carry 2 staffs compared to 3 weapons for a warrior. While it is very easy for wizards to load up on firewalls and hotspots, there are a lot of cleric spells that can help with this. If people insist on playing dwarfs, encumbering spells are going to hurt them. Maybe their clerics should start taking the terrain and effect clearing spells (you know, those spells everyone ignores for damage buffs). Elves don't seem to struggle as much against fire (though I haven't seen anything over encumber 2). One other thing. The effectiveness of firewall is very dependent on the map. The more open pvp maps are easier on the wizards.
I play with an elfish team and I am going through campaign quite swimmingly, the last time someone tried to use fire wall in multiplayer on me, I just used my half armor/movement card to get out of the way. Another option is to cast purification spell or shuffle team or even bash an ally to get him out of the hot place. Really, there is a lot of things one can do to avoid the fire pit as of now and I find myself using the fire wall to deny an enemy access and "hoping" that they will not get away.
If a warrior is able to put out 30+ damage to a single target in a single turn, I don't see the issue with wizards getting 10 damage terrain. Don't forget that drawing multipe Wall of Fire or Hotspot per turn is essentially useless because they can't stack on the same tile. Not only that but a lot of deck space has to be used making sure people stay on the tile; Unless the wizard wants his lava tile to be ruined by a simple walk card, he has to put in a bunch of telekinesis, Winds of War or encumbering spells.
I wouldn't say drawing multiple is useless. It allows you to recast if they move. It does seem pretty easy to load up on firewalls. You can get 8 from arcane items, and another 1 from your skill. There may be more as well but this is all just with uncommons. That allows fully 1/4 of your deck to be fire wall cards, plus more hotspots or volcano cards. Since those are all uncommons it's easy to run multiple wizards with those load outs. That lets it get very lavarific in a hurry (though I'm still not convinced its OP, there are many ways to deal with this and some people just seem resistant to alter their decks to deal with lava). Just a thought. Since wizards can equip 4 arcane items, perhaps arcane items should be limited to no more than 1 of any particular card? That would still allow firewall and telekinesis, or firewall and spikes on the same items, but it would avoid the board becoming a lake of fire.
Well, I don't know about you, but I find it REALLY hard to get by any fire-wall hot spot cards and never before have I seen the volcano card you speak of. Specialized builds are going to be powerful, sure, but getting all necessary components is extremely tricky.
I knocked off the dragon first turn. It was just luck of the draw, but I don't think the lava terrain cards are too powerful. It obvious - given they are fairly common and do a good bit of damage, just be wary of where you step when playing against wizards. I have seen volcano - its pretty hilarious and can backfire in spectacular manner.
