Should forms be reformed?

No. Here is the way I see it:
[VERBOSE] "And" = unimportant to context, "you" = the character using the object, "get" = gains, "an" = designates a single object, "armor" = armor generally reduces damage but in context means either a card with the type "Armor" or has the keyword "Armor", "that" = reference to the armor in line which is "Lycanthropic Form", "is" = has the attribute or value of, "super" = multiples the strength of attribute or value attached, "good" = positive or strong, "all-around." = applies to all uses.
Result = The character using the object gains one armor component from Lycanthropic Form which is very strong in all scenarios. [/VERBOSE]

 

Although I expect Lucky Dice meant Howl can create a Monstrous Hide in your hand, (where "all around" wouldn't be absolute in this case because, obviously, Silver damage,) that shows just how much staying power wolves have: built-in Armor 2, can get more Armor 3, Howl heals 2 while we're at it (and can and does draw itself -- and stacking a warrior's deck with 13 Howls generally doesn't harm the build at all), etc.

I likewise didn't see any oxymoron -- nor have I heard anyone (else) talk about Werewolves needing a buff (after the non-test release of course). Quite the contrary, Hello World, you're the first person I recall saying Werewolves needed anything but a nerf, at the very least relative to the other forms.

 

Here are my current thoughts on reforming Forms. Changes consist of replacing X with Y, with reasons given in italics.

Lycanthropic Form:
Armor 2 except against Silver. -> At start of each round, Heal 3.
Werewolves usually don't have tough skin, it's just that they heal so fast that any non-Silver, non-fatal wound will quickly heal. Boosted Heal's effect would be more accurate, but too powerful.

Howl:
You Heal 2. -> You take 2 Psychic damage.
While werewolves heal fast, we're often told that shapechanging is extremely painful, and often so is not changing during the full moon. I chose Psychic damage because it avoids armor (do I have to add that text?).

Vampiric Form:
At start of each round, Heal 3. -> Frenzy 2.
I want some incentive to choose this over Talented Healer. Sometimes vampires are stronger and faster than even werewolves, and some vampires are incapable of healing except when drinking blood. Concerning @PULSEFIRE 's objection to frenzy + Sneaky Bloodsuck, I'd like to remind people that SB is gold while Mighty Bludgeon is silver for priests.

Werewolf card pool:
Mighty Charge -> Brutal Charge or Bull Rush
Monstrous Hide -> Thick Hide Armor
Mad Dog -> Combustible

Spirit card pool:
Fly -> Planar Travel or Reflexive Teleport
Who ever heard of a ghost being blocked by walls?
Memory Loss -> Barrier Of Hate or No Vital Organs
Acid Jet -> Flash Of Agony

 

Wow you really are trying to kill lycanthropic form if you wanted all of these changes. Damage types do not have inherit properties, so you do need to specify penetrating. With those changes people would avoid howl like the plague.

 

Still have to play with vampires, but right now I think the other two forms are okay,still a couple of suggestions would be:
Howl: Heal 2 and draw a random werewolf card other than howl.
Ancient grudge: I think it would make more sense if you made the base damage 1 and increase the damage starting from the fifth card in a graveyard instead of the fourth, currently you might get a very early spirit form and ancient grudge is super antisynergistic with your pool of cards, if it dealt one you might use to scout with hex of dissolution and memory loss, plus you could actually deal some acceptable incidental damage by combining it with curse of frailty or the silver curse debuff instead of a flat zero. Right now it does nothing for spirit form users and can help vasyl users and that seems a bit backward.

@ kalin spirits don't need a buff to fly, it's already one of their stronger cards, and anything but fly->planar travel looks like a nerf to me, and spirit aren't that strong to begin with.

 

Read the card.

 

No, he's saying "anything else", meaning my Reflexive Teleport suggestion. And I do think the end of his sentence refutes the beginning: saying Fly is their best card is just more evidence they need all the buffs they can get. How many of you use Flying Carpet on your wizards?

 

I believe this statement is saying planar travel is worst then fly.

 

Heal 1 instead of 2?

 

Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker, I meant that the changed he proposed might nerf the form with the exclusion of fly to planar travel.
Revealing your move to upgrade fly to teleport isn't that good when you aren't drawing any other move on the pool, and these blocks can be baited/never trigger and are passive, plus with the limited movement creating blocking terrain can be quite good and you can use acid jet to double dip the bonus from the curses.

Spirit form has a defined identity as a support character (armor card removal, debuffs, boo, creating blocking squares, a good way to escape melee and reposition themselves, and travelling curse) , werewolf form is an aggressive character and I'm not really sure of what vampire form is trying to accomplish other than dying to armor.
Or why vampiric form is the one with the least appealing epic tokenless(seriously, warrior get brutal charge, a nice dual purpose move, mages get telekinesis, that I don't think needs explanations, and priests, the ones with more movement issues, get a move 2 on an item for close combat?)

As for the boots, most good staves require 1 or two mayor tokens, you can get some pretty broken robes for a yellow and some really spicy cards from the race ability, plus there's probably some yellow token arcane item you might be interested into and some very good tokenless boots(as opposed to shields and helmets) Is it that absurd that nobody wants to pay a yellow token for cloth armor+ 2 good cards? Last I checked nobody ran Rapier Of Rage and that item is made for two thirds of very good cards for two yellows too.

The big issue with buffing spirit forms is medium garb however, can't really get more moves because 1/6 chances of drawing an extra move each turn is ridiculous, same with slide spells).

As for vampires, what about an extra frenzy bonus only if the opponent has armor in hand? I think they were supposed to use vampire kiss to deal with it, but...

 

Fly = Move 4 with Fly. Fly = Ignores difficult terrain and impassable terrain.
Planar Travel = Move 4 with Teleport. Teleport = Ignores difficult terrain and impassable terrain and blocked terrain.
Planar Travel is directly better then Fly, like mighty bludgeon is directly better to bludgeon.
Replacing a card with a directly better card is always an improvement.

 

How should I rewrite that to mean that changing fly to planar travel is a buff, but the rest of the changes are nerfs?
I just can't write that concept correctly, it seems.

 

I understand now what you meant. Which is that the changes he proposed would nerf the form with the exclusion of this change (fly to planar travel). Not that the change to exclude fly and include planar travel is a nerf. I wonder if placing a comma between: "might nerf the form" and " with the exlusion of fly to planar travel." would improve readability.

 

I have got an idea...
What about giving the heal 3 to the werewolf, and the 2 armor to the vampire?
In character and functional from a mechanics perspective.

 

I was playing ranked today and considered the fact that the three Boost Forms have in their card pools Nightling and one other Handicap Trait—except that Vampires get the black Loner, Spirits get the black Travelling Curse, and Werewolves get the "paper" Mad Dog (which I point at the "paper" Festering Guts getting upgraded to purple once it printed for players and state/agree that Mad Dog should surely be silver at least.) Wolves don't have a black quality card aside from Creature of the Night. That got me reviewing this thread and a similar thread, Balancing Form card pools.

Re-reading over this for the first time in a long while, (knowing that The Knights will have more reason and resources to change things at this point than BM did,) I'm really liking the Vampire Form suggestion of replacing Heal 3 at round starts with instead Melee Frenzy 2. (It'd be less common for a Vampire Form character to have a Magic or Projectile Attack, but it doesn't seem to be very flavorful for the Vamp to inherently Frenzy those. I see the wisdom of Melee only Frenzy.)

Wolves are Wolves, and Howl exists everywhere, but we otherwise all seem to prefer for the Forms' card pools to work better when coming from the Form itself. Spirits using Traveling Curse is great and better than merely pulling it from Garb, same with Flash of Agony if they had it—which I agree Agony would be excellent in the pool. Vampire's Kiss, however, is such a perfect Vamp card, except that when you use it, you give the attackee another Vamp Form card; there's less advantage, not to mention the kind of weak Heal 3 at round start thing; however, if the Vamp Form had Melee Frenzy (2 might be enough?) built in, it'd give an advantage to using the Form's card pool vs. the poor pleb who doesn't have the Form (until Kiss gives the Form, ha ha ha) and it'd be an interesting, usable alternative to Talented Healer. Plenty of Priests use a couple–few vampire cards mixed in with all the rest (Purging Charm is one good example of how and why) without relying on Cantrip. Vamp Form having built-in Frenzy sounds like actually giving the player a choice in Vampy deckbuilding options. (Then, too, I agree Vampiric Form on a Divine Armor probably wouldn't hurt, either.)

(This also makes me wonder, playing off Howl, if elves could get a skill or two with Kiss and dwarves could get a skill or two with .. um .. I don't know, something Ethereal-ish? yeah, that flavor doesn't match as much... Just thinking out loud.)

 

Form cards are bad because they defeat the idea of Constructed deck and cause you to draw from a preconstructed deck.
Obviously only the good ones (Werewolves) are a problem.

I'd say remove Werewolf from the game, EXCEPT, that a lot of players have learned to like them and we don't want
to annoy and possibly scare off those players so I suspect keeping them as-is is probably the lessor of two evils.

If the game ever got enough new blood that the game could afford to lose players, it would be a different story.

Actually, if the game had a lot more players, you add "Allow Werewolves" to the Options page, and only match
people who disable them to play against people who have them disabled or don't have any Werewolf cards
in their build. But we don't have that many players, so again, I think we should continue to tolerate them and
worry more about minimizing the number of "new mistakes" down the line.

Again, Form cards cause the player to draw from a fixed deck, so it's likely to be either better
or worse than the cards the player would draw otherwise, but regardless, it's reducing the
constructed-deck aspect of the game.

Another balencing problem with forms is that the fixed deck they drew from isn't dependant
on the your character level and the tokens on your gear. It makes the forms stronger at
low-levels than it does it higher levels. IN THEORY, they could be rebalenced; but in practice,
Blue Manchu obviously wasn't able to get the balence of the forms cards right, and I think
the lesson to learned is don't go making form cards that draw from fixed decks instead of
your constructed deck.