[Suggestion] Control Wizards are a problem

The meta in Cardhunter has seen a few changes recently, specifically, the nerf to draw decks. This was good move on the the devs part, as I'm sure we all agree. But the meta has shaken out since that change, and the great hydra of game balance has grown a new head: control wizards.

To start off I would like to highlight a few of the design decisions highlighted by the devs when they nerfed card draw.

This is from the thread upcoming balance changes 8 Nov 2013.

So lets go down this list. Are successful builds being dominated by a single type of party? Yes. Control wizards are the linchpin to all high level play currently. You may see some variation of course, tossing in a warrior or priest for example. But it's all about the control wizards, I even had one person tell me they played control wizards because everyone plays them above 1400.

Are control wizards dull to play against? Yes, not as dull as card draw was, but still very, very dull. They're entire strategy is to lock you in place with encumbrance, and then, and this is the key part, once you are incapable of responding they create lava beneath your characters. The entire win condition of control wizards is predicated on their opponent being unable to interact with the game. Further, the long range of ice based effects compounded by their keep away abilities, like WoW, means that control wizards are under little to no pressure to play the game by taking control points. In fact many control players go out of their way to ignore the objectives, they would much rather have their opponent sitting in the open on a objective, rather than trying to engage with their wizards.

So we have a single type of list that is dominating the higher meta, wins by making their opponent unable to interact with the game, and further has strong incentives for turtling and ignoring the objectives. This is a serious balance problem, and further, has no easy solutions.

But before we delve into how we might deal with this problem in Cardhunter, I think it would be useful to see how other tactical games handle the problem of control. Specifically, the miniatures game Warmachine. I'm not sure how familiar you all are with the rules of this game, so I'll keep it to generalities where I can. Warmachine has a lot of different ways for control players to strut their stuff. You can knockdown your opponent, who then has to choose between attacking and moving on his next turn. You can make him stationary, which is just as bad as it sounds, no moving or attacking for one turn. You move your opponent around with telekenesis, which allows you to put him within your charge range and with his back to you. There's push affects, throw effects, slam effects. Warmachine has a whole host of control abilities, many more than Cardhunter, how did they prevent them from dominating the game? and also, how did they create one of the most well balanced miniature games, as is widely acknowledged in the mini community?

Well for one thing, pay attention to the duration of their control effects, in Cardhunter, most encumbrance spells have a duration of two, whereas in Warmachine, one turn is generally all you get. this is complicated by the fact that Cardhunter and Warmachine have very difference turn structures, but the point stands. You get one turn to freeze your opponent and then bash on him, you might be able to try again next turn, but a lot of the control abilities, and especially the powerful ones, are limited to once per game usage.

Further, removal of control effects is a lot easier in Warmachine. Warcasters (in chess terms a warcaster is a king and queen combined, super powerful, if he or she dies you lose) and Warjacks/Warbeasts (Steam-Robots and big furry death machines) have the ability to shake certain control effects. By spending resources from a limited pool, a player can cause effects like stationary and knockdown to simply go away.

And yes I realize the significant differences between the two games, but lets boil this down to few game design points.

1. Lots and lots of ways for you to control your opponent.
2. Control is of extremely limited duration, you can use it to set something up, a massive charge, an assassination run, but trying to do it the whole game requires a very specific list that isn't much good for anything else, and further, countering those lists often doesn't require list tailoring.
3. removal effects are very common, while there are and should be exceptions, in many cases getting rid of an opponents control will require a modest expenditure of resources, and further, will not prevent you from making actions or otherwise interacting with the game.

This runs counter to where control is currently at in Cardhunter. Control is not that common outside of wizards, and further requires a specific list that depends on certain idiosyncrasies of the game (trait cycling). Many Warmachine lists will have some control elements, after all getting your opponent on his back foot is a good thing. But it doesn't dominate the game, and is a supplement to a much wider combined arms tactical game. Right now we don't have a combined arms, we have one arm.

Duration is also an issue, pretty much all frost spells are duration 2, and further due to the ways effects are attached to characters it's often possible to freeze someone in 3 different ways. In Warmachine, as they're our foil, you won't be held super stationary by hitting someone with a stationary spell over and over. There's just on effect, and while there maybe different ways of delivering that effect, those different methods do not stack with one another. In Cardhunter control is of an extended duration, and further, it stacks with itself.

Removal effects while common, purge is after all a paper card, are not nearly as prevalent in decks as control cards are. I haven't crunched the numbers myself, but it's safe to say that you can't fit as many removal effects on a character as you can control effects. And further, while control is still useful against everyone, you removal character will have sacrificed a lot of his effectiveness to only be able to prevent control some of the time. In essence you will have spent at least a third of resources, only to still be largely ineffective.

Solutions, I have few ideas and I encourage you all to share current anti-control strategies as the game currently is, and further to propose solutions. First of all, I would say that standard duration for encumbrance should be one. In return for this nerf, other wizard builds should probably get a boost. Electricity could deal more direct damage, fire wizards could have the duration extended for their spells, or even frost spells themselves could do a point or two more of damage, in exchange for this.

Priests need a buff, ever since card draw was hit with a nerf bat, priest's have lost their dominance. This is good thing, but we want all three classes to be vying with one another for the top position, there should be no clear winners and losers here. I would suggest adding the purge effect to other cards, maybe twin heals should purge as well as heal a small amount. In addition maybe healing in general should get a boost, it always been one of the weakest builds for a priest to go full out healz, maybe that should change as well.

And finally, warriors. Currently the only thing that allows a warrior to close the distance and deal damage before they get frosted, WoW, telekenesis, WWE, WW, bashed, mazed or a few others I'm forgetting is step attacks, most famously nimble strike. Currently many people complain about them, because after all it allows a warrior to occasionally damage a wizard before they get frozen on top of lava, and control players just hate it when their opponent interacts with them. A slight slight debuff might be necessary in a general re balancing scheme, but as the players in the top level of the meta don't all play three warrior exclusively, It's safe to say that warriors probably need the least amount of re balancing. So let's dig in people, post your thoughts!

 

I think WoW should be nerfed to one target

 

I think the dev have something up their sleeves and I am hopeful a new set is gonna be released in new years.

 

I agree that a group of control mages is both boring and frustrating to play against and wish something was done about it.

Right now though, unless BM shift their mindset to balancing in general, I don't foresee this problem ever being 'fixed'. Fixed in terms of making the game at higher levels more fun and not less restrictive.

Warrior weapons at the higher levels do too much damage. Cards like obliterating strike/all out attack can kill an elf mage in one hit and leave the others races devastated... that's absurd imo. As long as the damage potential from warriors is so big there needs to be a way to combat it - enter encumber effects. However, if the damage was lowered on a number of warrior skills then you could definitely look into reducing encumber effects (and imo if they did so the game could revert back to it's back and forth nature again and would be a lot more fun).

We could talk all day though but here is the problem with all of these balance discussions. Frankly, I don't think BM is listening. Bear with me, I mean, they obviously read most of, if not all of the content in their forum but the mindset for balancing is so fundamentally different from what you would expect from a competitive game like this that it almost ensures that very little (if not nothing at all) will be done about fine tuning cards for the sake of improving the MP experience.

BM wants to follow the MtG style of balancing, that is, they want to give players access to a massive pool of cards and then let players to adapt to strategies using the available pool. If something is game breaking (card draw for example) they will step in but other than that they seem to be leaving it alone from what I can tell. I'm not saying this is always a bad way but I will say that MtG can get away with this based on the budget they work with. I think it's very unrealistic for an indie company to use this model and expect any kind of reasonable balance.

Unless we can convince the devs to adopt a more modern approach (i.e applying minor needed changes every patch), we may as well be beating a dead horse. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong but this is the conclusion I have come to. When a problem runs deep, meaning you cannot change X without also changing Y and Z - if you have the approach of carefully considering everything without wanting to make any change, it simply becomes an impossible task and therefore nothing is done.

 

As an owner of a vibrant pain i can indeed say they dont really make or break the warrior, its a nice weapon to be sure but its only just better then a lochaber axe and my warrior still feels powerless against wizards unless he gets the jump. In which case im lucky to get 1-2 attacks in before he is whisked away.

I agree control is the dominate stratagy and every deck over 1300 has some variation of trait stacking control wizards in their party.

To think about what makes control effective is i guess what needs to be looked at for the nerf bat;

Short Perplexing Ray
Winds Of War
Trait Cycle's
Encumber
Toughness
Dwarven Hitpoints

This is the backbone of a control wizard. When they are all compiled into one deck they make for very strong results but when spread out or your deck only contains a few of that list the combination is not nearly as effective or powerful. So it seems to me its the ability to combine all these great things into one package which is the real issue and not the abilities themselves. So then where do you start to make a change ? I think the very first changes could look like this;

a) allowing only or upto 3 traits be played in one round.
b) winds of war should target one person, the distance can stay the same but single target is much better and this also stops the marginalization of telekinesis.
c) toughness should have the same rules as duck for blocking purposes
d) encumberance could remove 1 movement from itself as the effect defrosts eg: frost jolt first turn does 2 encumber, second turn does 1 encumber third turn it has defrosted.

Just a few of these changes would really bring things back into line.

 

You've gotta be kidding me: https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/improperly-graded-cards.4574/#post-46132

Also, the thread is about control wizards. Stay on topic pls ?

 

Well, that certainly is a good example of quoting someone out of context. The funny thing is you accuse me of not being on topic yet it seems you are more interested in taking a stab at me than contributing to the discussion yourself.

Let me summarise my post for you,

Control mages are a bit dull to play against and imo need some attention. The amount of damage warriors put out though warrants the length and strength of encumber moves. BM doesnt seem willing to do a lot of fine tuning which is a shame. They are using the MtG approach to balance of letting the game sort itself out which means it is very unlikely they will implement the changes needed because by changing the encumber skills you have to then change a lot of other things. We should encourage BM to adopt a faster approach.

Seems pretty on-topic to me.

About the link you posted, yes, changes have been made. But what you have posted actually supports my view more than yours. Lets look closely. In August some minor buffs and nerfs were applied, good to see. From the beginning of september through to today though there has been very little balancing taking place other than card draw being addressed. It is only logical to assume BM is fairly happy with the current state of play (as a whole).

For a man with Zero tolerance for cyber-bullying you should honestly be ashamed. Comon Phaselock, I dont want to be your enemy and I dont post here with malice intent. If the devs dont want me to voice my opinion they can let me know and I will do just that.

 

Maybe the ultimate solution is what we're starting to get with the peasant builds - different strata of PVP. For example two months from now, newbie player enters multiplayer and is granted with a variety of multiplayer "channels" to face off against folks. One is like it is now - no holds barred, nothing banned, etc. Cream rises to the top. One is the current "peasant" build where no rares, epics or legendary items are allowed. One could be simply 1/1/1 where your party must consist of warrior/wizard/priest. You can use the verification system like SP play does with drawback cards, levels, etc. to make sure whichever version of MP play you enter you're not breaking the rules. Keep the rewards the same. If you want to play peasant all the time, why not?

 

Yeah I've been primarily playing peasant the last week or so
I wish I could play it for rating.

 

ElShafto, it's a very nice idea but I'm very much afraid the active multiplayer community is currently too small for it to work. If the player base were split into several subgroups it would be harder to get games and you would get a lot more matches with a big ELO difference. Both would lead to a less fun experience. Having lots of people online all the time you can play with is the most important thing in an online MP game. Mess with that and you are in danger of starving the game out of existence.

 

I feel it might still be worth trying at some point. Who knows, maybe it would revitalize the game and lure lots of new and returning players in. Hard to say for sure.

 

Yeah Jarmo I think we need more players before we stratify. But that should be a goal BM is working toward regardless, and ElShafto's suggestion is pretty good.

 

The more I think about it, this problem just seems to be embedded too deep to really get hit with the nerf bat. A different approach is required. First trait cycling needs to go, I would suggest that drawback cards be actual drawbacks, for example, just straight up replace squeamish across the board with fright. Squeamish is probably the biggest offender trait-wise, and considering neither lava nor flame jet require you to target an enemy to begin with, it has basically zero effect. Squeamish needs to go.

However I do hear Genki's point about warriors, with a decent hand and a decent deck a warrior will kill anything he's base to base with in one turn, maybe two. Therefore, the existent warior/wizard balance shouldn't be messed with, instead priests need to be brought up to par. I would suggest that the priest class trait cards grant purge to all heal spells. Imagine a how cool a team heal would be if that was the case, we wouldn't need to nerf control wizards, you'd just need to bring a priest along. Holy presence should also purge the priest every turn, not just characters he's base to base with. I would also suggest that spells like entangling roots make you immune to place effects as well, whether or not it should be kept as an offensive option is up for debate. Also spells like cleansing ray and cleansing burst should heal friendly characters who are in their AoE's, currently no-one plays the cleansing spells except volcano decks, and one the best priest weapons against control should be made just generally and and not just specifically useful.

If the counter to a control deck was to simply take a priest along, who was also effective against any other type of deck, then lo and behold tri wizard format would just wither. Instead we might a see a return to a meta where balanced and diverse teams that don't spam chracter types across all three slots rose to the top. Blue Manchu, make priests awesome again, right now they're the stupid brother compared to wizard and warrior.

 

Yes! This is exactly what I've been saying since day one.

We could take the 100 smartest people on earth and have them think about Card Hunter balance 24/7 for a month, but we still wouldn't get a balanced game unless the changes are tested extensively by the players. And this means hundreds and hundreds of matches, something that the devs don't have resources for if they want to do some game developing as well.


Hands down the best way to balance a game like this to keep gradually tweaking and tweaking the cards (tiny changes) in every single patch until it's as close to a perfect that we can get. It's pointless to use the outdated offline ccg method of wasting weeks and weeks to try to find a "perfect" solution for a problem, because the chances are that solution turns out to be not that perfect. The advantage of online games is that they can tweak cards as many times as they like without any real disadvantages. Sure some people will moan and whine on the forums every time their favorite card gets a small nerf, but who cares? Only thing that matters is that the game gets better and better.

Hopefully the devs realize why the Peasant tournament organized by Flaxative, and Peasant decks in general, have been so popular here lately. It's a clear indication that many players (like myself) are not too excited about being forced to pick one of these:

1. Use certain cards/races that are overpowered and win
2. Use anything else and lose

Players want to try out different builds without being at a huge disadvantage, and Peasant decks give us this. If the game was balanced, there wouldn't be a big demand for things like Peasant.

Btw respect to devs for giving us pizza as prizes. It means that they are listening and they do care Maybe they will surprise us all and give us a balanced game as a Christmas present.

 

Maybe you know, just a maybe that SPR WoW and VP balanced themselves out.

 

I'd just like to say that I agree with constant iterative balance. Leverage the medium, etc. etc..

I wouldn't say that the big demand for peasant comes only from a lack of balance in the main game. It's probably just the newness of the format. We've all played Card Hunter PvP, and peasant is fun and different (yet simple in its difference, so easy to get into). A veneer of balance might drive some players toward peasant, but I think it's just a different game experience. Switching it up is fun—that's part of what made quests in singleplayer interesting.

That said, I think the game is fairly well-balanced for a CCG. It's easy to forget that when we see the glaring imbalances, but we should give the devs credit for the good work they have done. It's easy for our criticism to come off scathing, and I want to keep things real. Nimble Strike, Winds of War, and Short Perplexing Ray (perhaps among other cards) are undervalued by the system and thus too easy to stack in a party; this is basically common knowledge. I believe the devs understand this (there's a new topic every other day complaining about one or all three of them), and they must intend to deal with it in some way at some point. While I'd like to see quicker smaller balance changes, I also respect that their team is tiny and they're working on some pretty awesome things at the same time.

 

I'm coming to the point where I agree with that statement, though I would put step attacks in that sentence rather than VP, but it is the most famous example.

I disagree, the game is a very delicate ecosystem, and it speaks to the devs that they very carefully consider when and where to intervene, and as is the case of card draw only step in when there is an obvious problem that fits their criteria. However, it has become painfully and vibrantly obvious that control wizards are the new card draw. It's a spammy boring list that exploits trait cycling in order to effectively accomplish what people were trying to do with their old draw decks. And further, its pervasiveness really limits the meta from becoming diverse and interesting.

If the devs compensate Priests for their draw nerf by making them viable anti-control characters that aren't handicapped by being anti-control, then the tri-control wizard lists are done. Instead of just spamming wizards, players will be forced to create balanced lists that acknowledge the fact that their wizards are squishy and probably need a warrior to protect them and a priest to heal both.

The parallels between draw and control as balance problems are very obvious. As I highlighted above, squeamish has become the old demonic feedback, a drawback card that's not really a drawback and thins your deck. Another problem item is electroporter novice, this is the only class item with three traits that doesn't require a token, obviously it should.

Rather than nuking specific cards the devs should do two things, first make drawback traits hurt. Then make priests relevant again.

 

I have a proposal how to tweak three wizards build. Two options I see at this moment.

Solution 1: WoW should put 1 turn Immovable buff on the target.
Solution 2: WoW should put 1 turn Hover buff on target.

Explanation 1: Main issue is WoW in my eyes. As multiple wizards can cast it, they tend to ignore enemy movement cards at all. With such limitation, they would be forced to rethink repelling enemies strategy. Use Force cones, bolts, blasts too. And first, before WoW. This will help step attacks to be even more useful, unless you are encumbered of course. Lava would at this point lost a bit of meaning, as warriors would be able to step out of it much more often.

Explanation 2: While you could cast multiple WoWs in one turn still, it would prevent taking lava damage in that turn. So freezing warriors and moving them would be much more challenging.

In both scenarios cards discarding still works, so only one aspect is a bit nerfed. This could also be used to benefit wizards team, as it counts as one more buff, which means you could remove other benefiting buff this way. Especially with freezing effects you would usually cast in the same turn. So Imp. Nimbus or Frenzy could be cleared without huge effort really.

3 warriors build: Main threat are 2-3 warriors running at wizards. Maybe they should get small nerf as well? Or maybe not? Tests would tell.

Of course there is always solution 3 (probably simplest): change Runestone, either in cost or in drawback.

 

I was reading the entire thread from the OP's until I reached yours where it clearly went off-track and you went on to criticize the management of the game. To me, that was no longer on-topic. You want to critic the management, start your own thread on it...don't hijack threads.

That was not what you said in the first post. In fact, you said '...simply becomes an impossible task and therefore nothing is done...'

Your logic is flawed. If they were happy, there wouldn't be a need to make new cards and items. I'm guessing you are not monitoring development feed and therefore mis-informed.

Don't cry victim when you were the one bashing two full-time devs who've been working their backs off for 100,000+ fans for 4 yrs.

Do you know that the devs are deliberately allowing and supporting varied tournament formats so as to assess suitability for integration ? There have been tournaments during beta as well. And a whole API developed to facilitate multiple format tournaments which were recently announced. Allowing Peasant tournaments are not an indicator of the state of balance of the game. Try not to over-generalize and stereotype.


Bottomline: Everybody has their own opinion of how they think their game SHOULD be managed. It's perfectly fine to have an opinion but that does not mean one can go to threads and preach game management 101. Smells more like a rival attempting sabotage.

 

Phaselock, are you seriously worried about that...?
Please, as a valuable member of the community, don't get baited into making paranoid ad hominems against other valuable members of the community