Race balance discussion.. Again

Without a serious fix for the "step bug" right now there's a very little difference between a "slow" dwarf and a "swift" elf.
The HP , with the absence of multiplayer maps with victory locations far away from each others too, makes the real difference.

 

Its closer now than it was before but the class ranking is still Dwarf>human>elf if you ask me just like it was before. If encumber starts working on step attacks and encumber becomes more common place in pvp(which it will only if working against step). Then humans and elfs will rise in favor and the races will be close to balanced.

 

Still an interesting discussion, and I still have this to say:

(Obviously, since the wipe, I mean the idea moreso than the specifics.) Being literally unable to engage the enemy for two turns, sometimes three? That means I lose. And yes, I've taken advantage of enemies who were stuck in that situation, too.

Accommodating the slowness of my Dwarf becomes a consuming part of strategy, whereas the Elf comes ready for all circumstances. At multiplayer level, of course, the Elf has enough hit points to survive some actual combat. Add a little Impenetrable Nimbus and the Elf is completely superior to the Dwarf.

Which is not to say I'm ignoring the rest of the above discussion to argue "Elves are better than Dwarves, end of story"; I'm just providing one batch of counterargument.

 

I'd say a Dwarf taking advantage of the Step card issue (or just accommodating slowness in general) is, by definition, "limited in card selection" as well. In the low-level situation, I'd still expect to run into problems with the Dwarf: if I "lack the gear" to make my two-legged snail-with-a-beard into a mobile killing machine, then my snail is just a slowpoke snail.

Again, there are many strategies and counters. Like my main party from before the wipe, where the only Dwarf was a Wizard: slowness isn't as big a deal when you have ranged abilities.

But then, what of an Elf with the very common and very low-level Block cards? Low-level Blocks stop most low-level magic.

And so on and so on through yet further counters. As I see it, once you've corrected programming problems (the Step card issue), any other racial distinctions are minor. I'm sure aggregate statistics from across builds and battles would be more revealing of how "awesome" each race can be.

 

As the number of elfs rise so shall my dwarf fry cook trio

 

I'm gearing up a Frost Dwarf Party in preparation for a Step stomping good time!

PS: They like their enemies how I like their ale, frosty!

 

i find that in pvp Elvish Insight is so freaking good that worth that low health,

 

I don't want to start a new thread for that, so...
Not exactly a pvp issue, but I have troubles progressing through the campaing now when my party hit level 12+.
I'm playing all-elf party and I find it incredibly irritating that some enemies can basically one-shot my characters with something like Mighty Hack or Mighty Bludgeon.
And it is really hard to use an elf mobility on many maps since it is either really narrow, or there is alot or hard terrain... Or I just find myself surrounded by MANY foes all the time, so there is a little chance really to avoid being locked in some corner.
And another irritating thing: oh, how often my characters pull a hand full of move cards, without any armors or attacks. I'm trying to compensate this by adding to my deck as little move cards as possible, but really, I often get like 5 move cards on the character... I don't need that many! In most situations I can't get past the crowd of monsters without taking damage, and I can't beat the crap out of them either since I got a bunch of move cards :\

Well, that's just my opinion... Maybe I just can't play elfs properly. But honestly, when enemy can hit 14 with one attack , it can kill my elf-wizzard in one shot (not that I actually let someone get close to him, but still...)! And for the elf priest or warrior it is a HUGE damage.

 

Interesting, I actually hadn't considered that the community would think elves a lesser race currently. I switched to using an all elf party in Multiplayer (and two elves and a human once I got stuck with Dwarves in the campaign. ). The mobility just works with my gameplay style I guess and my dwarves always had issues in both multiplayer and campaign (to the point I couldn't continue in the campaign). Aside from a few games where I was totally outmatched and out gunned, I've rarely had an issue beating a team with a dwarf.

Certainly having a larger card pool will help, since I've only been playing for a short while, but I don't see me moving away from elves, except to a sprinkle of humans perhaps.

 

I started out with Dwarves, but as soon as I got to the garnet demon portal I didn't have the cards to be able to get through it with them. They'd get locked down and killed before I could do anything.

 

Encumbrance has seemed to hurt dwarves, but only if you build heavily around it. You have to have at least one wizard, and they have to be focused on encumbrance. Whirlwind Enemy is also really nice to use on dwarves, but again requires a wizard. I guess I'd like to see some encumbering weapons that warriors or priests could use, something like those nets you see in the campaign.

1) I've not been horribly impressed by the elven racial skills. Elvish Insight is good in certain situations (often but not always), by comparison human card drawing is always good. This is the biggest problem to me.
2) Elves only get better mobility if the map allows for it. Just like you can experience in the campaign, a number of PVP maps hamper the ability for the elves to utilize their movement. Humans are mobile enough to avoid lava, that's all I care about.
3) Than there's the whole HP thing.

I started with 2 elven wizards, now I'm finding Humans are a bit more resilient and the card drawing spells are really helping, but it could just be my play style.

 

Oh, so you'd say that Human Racial Skills are decent in recent beta builds? That's been a point of frustration in the past.

By the way: Pinning Spear Toss is in, as is Tripping Sweep, which both do full Halt. I may be missing some, but these two imply that there will be more later, and hopefully that includes Encumber.

 

And for my all-elf party that one was a piece of cake. But I cant past through The Jewel of Alet Zhav. There is no room for maneuver because of all that hard terrain, and my party is always being surrounded by a large group of enemies from the begining of every battle.