Should forms be reformed?

Maybe Acid Pool? I still like my Volcano of Acid card idea, haha.

 

What about adding either of these to the ethereal form Card pool?

The question then becomes what to take out? Ancient Grudge and Unholy Curse?
I like taking out Ancient Grudge and replacing with Blob of Slime. Werewolf form has a very powerful bronze card.

Here's the card pool I'm proposing: (get rid of priest cards like doom and fragility, try to generally keep the same quality level on cards whilst getting good use out of undercosted monster only cards)
Ethereal Form Creature Of The Night Traveling Curse Planar Travel Flash Of Agony Unholy Curse (Dastardly Curse OR Barrier Of Hate) Memory Loss Boo! Beam Of Hate Acid Jet Blob Of Slime Hex Of Dissolution

 

I quite like giving Vampire Form Melee Frenzy X.

***
Before changing / balancing card pools and what not, I think we should first properly evaluate current form card pools. Lycanthropic Form has some undercosted cards (Mighty Charge, Mad Dog and even Vicious Bite to some extent).

From purely number crunching view, here are the current card pool average (arithmetic mean) quality values:

Card Pool, AVG, STDEV
Ethereal (Spirit) Card Pool, 4.38 (~Bronze+), 3.83
Lycanthropic (Werewolf) Card Pool, 4.15 (~Bronze), 3.21
Vampiric Card Pool, 3.92 (~Bronze), 3.50

If we update the quality of some cards:

• Mighty Charge Bronze (3) -> Gold- (8): Brutal Charge might be a bit undercosted (or Charge overcosted) and Rocket Charge a bit overcosted, but I think Mighty Charge is somewhere around the Silver/Gold threshold.
• Mad Dog: Paper (0) -> Silver- (5): IMHO Mad Dog's effect is more positive than negative for the owner. Some general talk about trait qualities for reference.
• Vicious Bite: Bronze (3) -> Bronze+ (4): Perforating Strike might be a bit overcosted, but I think Vicious Bite should be at least the same quality as its weaker counterpart.

With those three adjustments, the above numbers for Lycanthropic Card Pool are AVG 4.92 (~Silver-) & STDEV 3.22.

One option, and step to the right direction IMHO, would be to not care about the exact quality of Mighty Charge, but just replace it with Brutal Charge.

***
The most interesting thing for me is the perceived vs. pure number crunching power level of Ethereal (Spirit) card pool & Vampiric card pool. Spirit card pool has the highest quality variance but at least on paper, should have the most powerful cards.

So why does the Ethereal (Spirit) Form feel the weakest? Is the overall meta anti-wizard currently? Are some of the spirit cards overcosted compared to other card pools? I don't really have answers, just a bunch of questions.

 

Some spirit cards have very different values in SP than in MP, particularly Doom.

 

Fwiw, if you're going to upgrade Mad Dog, Traveling Curse should probably also be upgraded from it's original quality in Spirit decks too.

Because it's card pool is a support character. Wizards are not usually considered support characters and so the Spirit pool doesn't synergize with existing wizard builds. If built for, it might be more effective. But it's hard to build for when it's only active some of the time. And... support characters are usually weaker.

 

@Scarponi re: @Pawndawan

When Festering Guts left the realm of GMs handling mindless undead (and even pre-Blight completely random Radiation effects) and entered the realm of Infected player decks, it rightfully got upgraded from paper quality to purple. Handicap|Boost or not, it deals 18 damage (as a non-blocked reaction) to everyone within two squares; this has raw power.

Mad Dog has now left the realm of GMs handling aggro beasts (and pre-Blight completely random Radiation effects) and entered the realm of Lycanthropic Form pool pseudo-player-decks. Likewise, it makes sense to be upgraded from paper to .. sure, silver sounds fine. After all, it deals 10 damage (as a non-blocked reaction) to everyone adjacent; this has situationally solid power.

Traveling Curse, on the other hand, is only "safe" when some other card alleviates its 5 damage to self -- whether its in-hand Armor, an Impenetrable Nimbus, a Heal after the fact, an Ethereal Form attachment, or what-have-you. Despite players building to offset such a handicap (and despite Spirits having natural offset for it coming from the card pool), it's consistent for it to stay black quality like other cards that are intended to harm self, like Loner, Demonic Revenge, Ouch!, and Brain Burn -- not to mention Friendly Fire. After all, create a Traveling Curse from Medium's Garb, and it's still more likely to hit you for 5 than for 3. Then, Spirit or not, when your random enemy, and then your random ally, draws it again, back and forth, it's a natural 5 damage consistent-at-black-quality handicap.

 

+1 with Pawndawan about changing Mighty Charge to Brutal Charge.

Overall I'd also like to see Werewolves downgraded. and I understand that Zombies are meant to be the weaker of the four possible forms, but in playing at least 20 games with walpurgis night where I had a zombie form, I have not once seen a zombie form card pool that I liked. Conversely, I have not once been disappointed with the cards I drew EVERY ROUND as a werewolf. Whether Howl, All out Attack, mihgty charge, Sundering strike, its just solid, consistent damage with possible insane armor draw too.

Meanwhile my zombie draws shuffle and bludgeon or even just the (forgot the name) card which does one damage but adds 3 for each character you have within two squares and I have one character so it deals four damage. Hooray.

 

Pre-amble: My thoughts don't really take into account Medium's Garb since the point of quality comparisons was to look at form card pools for form cards. Besides, I think the general consensus is Spirit is weak, but Medium Garb is not.

Re: The reason I think traveling curse should be upgraded* is simple. Traveling curse as originally designed alternates which team it damages. But it always dealt 5 damage to the person who brought it first. When drawn from the Spirit form it only deals 1 damage first. That makes it better (or if you prefer, not as bad). (Yes we can talk about how other strategies can mitigate the damage, but Spirit is the only thing that by design puts it in your deck with a guarantee reduced damage.)

Don't get me wrong. Spirit is the weakest form, and if one wants it more playable it needs an upgrade. But if in saying that we over-emphasize how bad it is, it could be changed so much that it becomes OP. That's no good either. I actually think it's much closer to playable than most people think. Sometimes just a small but significant change can take a mediocre deck to top flight. I think FoA was a great suggestion (+++ @Kalin) and with all the damage increasing cards already in the Spirit deck, it's actually likely 80-90% of the improvement needed.

*I wouldn't actually change the card quality of Traveling Curse since its on other items. But when doing form pool comparison calculations with modified card values, I think TC gets a value boost too.

 

This was the only part I was really wanting to be careful about. Carry on then. Lol. $E^ b

 

I think ethereal form is the slow power creep that we were forewarned about. First of all, the reason we're not seeing much play is due in part to the rarity of Medium's Garb items and the rarity of Ethereal form itself. This is not to mention some poor card distribution on some ethereal form items. Compare that with the abundance and ubiquity of howl items and to a lesser extent lycanthropic form items. I like the card options on those as well. Combine that with the higher level strategy required to run wizards let alone ethereals. Werewolves are low end game content. But that still doesn't account for the relatively few ethereals we see. Many of you probably have the necessary items and skill yet still don't run ethereal. This may be because of ghosts playstyle or card weakness. I think it is something else:
Lack of synergy within the ethereal form cards themselves. The curses synergize well with repetitive damage yet there's no missile or burn cards in ethereals deck. Grudge doesn't synergize well with form cards in general but especially not with attachments since they aren't discarded but rather stay in play. Hex of dissolution synergizes well with acid jet but the form card pool includes no acid spray or blast. Acid blast would of course not synergize well with the curses. Doom also could have some synergy with counterspell or forgetfulness (in order to cause the enemy to discard doom answers) but it abides alone. Furthermore it doesn't do damage like memory loss or the curses. In order to synergize with the curses I looked at monster cards that do a little bit of damage: dazing bolt, or entangle but those cards are too powerful. That's why I recommend blob of slime inclusion (furthermore it fits the theme of some of the mediums garb robes, ectoplasmic, and emberplasm.) But the best way to slightly synergize with the curses is to include flash of agony as kalin has suggested.
Finally, if boo! And grudge get buffed this discussion may soon become moot and move on to vampiric form giving heal 2 whenever you play a melee attack.

 

Ye, just a small thing. Medium Garb is rare, Vampire's Kiss is rare, Howl is... uncommon? Really?

 

What about giving Vampires Melee Frenzy 3 if attacking without the chanche to trigger rolls (from behind and with Surestrike)?
Sneaky vampires...

 

Nah. Melee Frenzy doesn't really make sense.. and with a Sneaky Bloodsuck could decimate someone, with the same amount of damage as Mighty Bludgeon.

I would rather have an increase in the heal.

 

Spirit Form would be so cool with Teleport Other in the card pool...

 

THIS requires good positioning. Remind me again how much damage Mighty Charge can do with proper position?

 

+ 1

 

I had a small idea how to make werewolves actually less powerful and yet still not trash.

A good starter would be Mad Dog -> Combustible. Combustible makes sense, because you're now a furry creature, ain't ya? And you don't want to lose that?

Either that or changing Monstery Hide to not protect the wearer from Fire damage.

That, along with the Mighty Charge change sounds like a good way to start balancing.

 

Can we leave wolves alone, I get they need a buff to make their form cards other that reckless lycantropy playable, but not every silver trait needs to be amazing.

 

the problem with Werewolf form is that it's actually way too easy to get and gives you way too much. Between Reckless Lycanthropy, Frenzied Lycanthropy and Howling Lycanthropy and ALL the items with Howl you are near-guaranteed a card that's silver. You can get two for 0 tokens. You can make your deck almost entirely full of silver cards. And you get an armor that's super good all-around.

 

Isn't this an oximoron?