savage curse is broken beyond broken, its far too strong for paper quality and arcane burst is too good for a burst spell. My ideas? Change savage curse to affect melee only and give melee attacks the chop effect Arcane burst should have unbuffable.
I've already identified my opinion of what would smoothly bring Savage Curse into balance. As far as burst goes... I don't think it needs a hard nerf especially if Savage Curse is reigned in. The fact is in combination the two are dominating on certain map rotations, while on other map rotations they get very little play. Let's look at what gives burst an advantage over other wizard attacks (at times). It can hit multiple targets It can potentially hit around line of sight It has greater effective range - that is a range 6, burst 1, has an effective range of 7; range 6 burst 2 has an effective range of 8. Now the first two are just the nature of a burst attack and cannot be modified without ceasing to be burst. However the third, the effective range, could easily be reigned in. For example, if Arcane Burst had a range of 5 (bringing it's effective range down to the normal 6) you'd be surprised how much of a balance difference it made. (This is similar to the difference of traits being duration 2 or 3, it may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but it makes a significant difference). Reducing all burst cards' range by 1 (in conjunction with a change to savage curse) I suspect would be all that is needed to bring burst down to the level of balanced, without pushing the strategy to completely sub-par.
That would make Rad-Bomb virtualy unplayable imo seeing as how its a gold attack with only 2 damage. Some added thoughts to why I think reducing range is sufficient. In general it draws wizards further into the fray, but it also means they have to work harder at positioning to hit around line of sight, and just generally reduces their scope of effect: On an open map, currently a wizard with a direct target, range 6, spell can target and hit any of 168 squares. On the same map a wizard with burst 2, range 6, can target only 144 squares without hitting itself, but they can effectively hit 264 map squares (almost 100 squares more). If the wiz has burst 2, range 5, it could only target 96 squares without endangering itself, and could effectively hit 200 map squares. If you really wanted to push it, reducing burst 2 to range 4, gives Fireball and Radbomb an effective range of 6 and makes it so that if the caster doesn't want to hit itself it can only target squares that are precisely 3-4 squares away. This would result in only 56 targetable squares! With an ability to effectively hit only 144 squares. Personally I'm not sure it needs this much nerf, but it's an option. It would mean that a target being hit by burst 2 outside of line of sight could usually reach the caster with a single Move 4 card.
I always love numbers But they don't matter much atm since on an open map burst is not needed to be able to hit behind cover, right? Having long range on attacks is of great value and burst 2 means having no way to escape from these attacks. Fireball is definitely playable without any buff cards. Haven't played Rad-Bomb so idk but if it's too weak without buff cards, it could get 1 added damage maybe? It would still be very unique for priest to deal damage from afar (and from behind cover, and potentially to multiple characters).
I think these numbers matter very much on both open maps and maps with cover. Ask anyone who's played against Burst on Showroom Showdown this month how much that extra range matters with no cover. As far as maps with cover, the fact is that when you start to reduce the number of targetable squares with reduced range, and then you reduce them even more by constricting line of sight with blocked terrain, a good opponent can really begin to force a burst wizard to sacrifice positioning in order to have LoS to the right square to hit "around a corner." And because this is with reduced range, the nature of the sacrificed positioning pulls the wizard toward the opponent where they have to put themselves at further risk. I offered numbers from an open map because they lay out base information, not because the effective result doesn't also apply once blocked terrain is added to the equation.
