[SUGGESTION] Nerf Skywalker

Okay, so this is my first balance suggestion thread, and as such, it deserves a few lines of introduction. Back in the day, i swore a silent oath not to use certain ridiculously overpowered builds, items and cards, only to find my joy in beating metahussars fair and square with obscure and overlooked decks, including but not limited to Perfect Flexibility shenaniganism, triple battlepriests, and an elvish sniper sqaud. I chose this way to embrace the current state of balance. I wanted to prove to the world that there are alternatives. This is why i joined The Cult Of Ironwood. However when i realised that even my immaculate discard control benefits more from Cautious Mobility than the one providing discarding trickeries, i really got tired by getting served on a silver plate.

This is how Telekinesis got into the picture. That card was not included in my list of taboos, because at that point there was at least one person who considered it underused (well, compared to the winds), and later, as a consolation price, someone smacked a Teleport on it, for fun's sake. Fun however is relative when a 3DC negates your 3 devastating melee attacks in hand by a single, very controllable bronze sheet. That raised my eyebrows many times in its original state already, but now it also flings you over their freshly sprayed acid (or Flash Flood, if they are misanthrope). Yet the masses weren't really vocal about the buff, because they were busy complaining about the nimbus. The passenger boarded the Nostromo.

Then mapmaking contest happened. I love all the results, and for me, they are absolutely the best in rotation since Celestial boards. But something fishy wrecked the enjoyment; this single aforementioned card renders them unplayable by moving opponents so far out of the field that it is not even funny. And it is definitely not the flaw of the maps. Let us face it, ladies and gentlemen, TK here is beyond measure OP, comparable only to the unholy triumvirate of the dark ages: Firestorm, Whirlwind, Nimble Strike.

Nimbus? This baby counters it better than any Purging Burst; enjoy your invincible status outside. Maneuvers? Ditto, without triggering it. Lolcano? Telekinesis got you covered here too. Bejeweled brainparker want to unload her three Powerful Hack on your character? See you two step attacks later, i have another one anyway. Defender's Block? Electroporter Novice. Fireball burp? Not a big deal on these maps, but i'm dead certain this somehow counters that one too, because it also cures cancer.

Now that i spent 2500 gold well, i have to face the moral dilemma: whether i should stay the silent type, or fight fire with fire and impersonate every existing moron by spamming "I HAS LUKES HAND IM SKILD" after every victory. Well i gave the former option too much time already, time for some visibility. Due to my previous attempts, i'm still in the range of 1200, let's see how high i can skyrocket and how my opponents feel about it.


tl;dr: make TK fly instead of teleport

 

Shoot for 1800! Good luck!

 

Oh come on, this was an obvious one.

 

While I support your suggestion to make Telekinesis fly instead of teleport, it wouldn't actually address any of the concerns you raised; flight is still able to vault people over acid and flooded terrain. However, it would make the card more thematically appropriate and disallow shoving people through walls.

 

How about instead of making Telekinesis worse we make its hard counter, Stone Feet, better? Right now it's too narrow but buff the armor a bit or add some other effect and it might see more play.

 

There's also immovable. The real problem is Telekinesis is a bronze versus winds which is a gold a rating difference of 6 even though the winds are only are slightly better.

 

I agree it should probably be fly instead, but not until I get to troll people for a while with my dream set up of Yoloxl's Staff, Whiterune Staff, 3x Luke's Iron Hand, Asmod's Telekinetic Chain, and Pergop's Slippers.

 

I suspect this is largely because Winds of War remained a gold card after it was nerfed. It should probably have been downgraded to silver.
Before Telekinesis got buffed to teleport it was a really lame card. Fly might work too, but I hate to see anything nerfed unless it's actually proving to be a real problem for a large number of players.

 

Or just don't use maps with such ridiculously large walled-off regions.

 

Or take (the fictitious) Hoot Gibson's advice and stay away from the walls.
(Blackhawk Down reference.)

 

What i tried to state here is that this card is capable to fight back the major league stuff even without teleportation. My suggestion is humble because i think it is universally acceptable that we don't want to face the shoving through walls part on the top of it.

It shouldn't be the mapmakers' task to balance around what is broken. Just like Fireball. It is not their responsibility to build maps that are fun DESPITE the Fireball.

Out of my 9 victories so far, 4 opponents ragequitted after a move with a TK. Should the rate be above 50% to acknowledge it? I'm working on it.

 

Actually it IS a mapmakers responsibility to balance around what could be broken. Some things like TK shoving people through walls is obviously so wrong I cannot even understand just how high the game makers were when they implemented that.

Some of the maps have problems. Forgotten Temple and Maztec Melee. These are horrible maps and have no place in ranked PvP rotation.

 

If you further nerf whatever little tools wizards have vs aggro warrior teams, you might as well remove the class entirely from the game.

Things are pretty much ludicrous already, with all the dancing cutting/nimble striking/sprint teamming/team moving/wild running going around, especially when you factor elven maneuvers into the equation.

Vs. an aggro team, control spells are largely ineffective already, as smartly built warrior teams can usually rely on enough mobility to largely ignore how many times you can push them around.

Furthermore, always consider the fact devoting a wiz deck to TKs is going to significantly hinder their damage output. Each TK you add to your deck means one less damaging spell.

TK only teleports people 2 tiles away, meaning using it on a close-by warrior doesn't prevent them from simply step-attacking into melee range again. I.e. remove the teleport property and you would make it largely useless. Truth be told, TK alone isn't even sufficient to remove an enemy from the battle entirely (you can just get him back where he was in a turn or two).

Oh and of course it only applies to maps where there's a wall to TK people behind. TK alone still is almost useless vs mobile teams on open ground. I sincerely do not agree with the sentiment about maps being bad because of walls people can be TKed behind. Not when this is often times one of very few ways you can reasonably keep a wizard from being obliterated in a couple hits.

TKing people behind walls can be a powerful and frustration-inducing technique, sure, but it's not like you can't work around it? Immovable and Stone Feet shut it down completely, for starters. Or you could bring more magic blocks (these unknowns). Maybe wait until you draw a Defender's/Missile Block/Disorienting Block/Hard to Pindown in your hand before going in for the kill? Or you could just not let the opponent catch you off-guard again (i.e. do not stand directly next to a wall if you sense TKs are incoming).

In my (not so limited) TK experience, only players who blindly charge onto the enemy wizard let themselves be caught completely off guard in such an embarrassing way. I've often fought people who would let me TK them behind walls multiple times in a row (before ragequitting out of frustration, of course). This has very little to do with how powerful TK is, but rather with the simple fact you have to adapt to whatever the opponent is throwing at you. You don't just keep hitting an enemy warrior if you know he has a hand full of parries, just like you don't try to kill a vampire with weak melee attacks, right? Competent players, on the other hand, will counter my TKs very effectively by simple picking their positioning more carefully.

I can't avoid to note how most suggestions seem to go in the direction of people wanting to have PvP games which mainly revolve around rushing into each other and/or blasting enemies from afar and letting the luck of the draws determine the final winner, while cards which make the game more interesting by requiring the opponent to rethinking his strategies are almost always whined about. This would include TK and Nimbus, but many more examples could certainly be brought on the table.

TK certainly isn't unbeatable or all-too-powerful. I would point my attention toward cards which truly make the game into a "wait until you draw it and profit" slot-machine (AoA, Sprint, Team!, Wild Run, Elven Maneuvers to a lesser extent, and many others).

 

But Bandreus, thinking is hard! [/whining]

 

So really? Once TK is changed to fly instead of teleport, all wizards are suddenly going to die even faster to rushing warriors because that's all they had? It's just stupid, that's why it should be changed back to fly. It's Telekinesis, not Teleport Other.

I'd argue about how warriors are actually the weakest class but I don't know enough about high level play so I'll shut up about that until I'm dominating the meta with a bunch of wizards . But the farming involved is ludicrous . Warriors are just really easy to get up to a competitive level. A few select rares and even then they can be replaced with slightly worse but still functional uncommons. If I would make a wizard with uncommons...well he would be able to spark your ass from the other end of the map for an overpowered 2 damage. And he would be able to do that twice a round! That's going to leave you with a sore ass, true. But I doubt it'll win games.

 

Clarification: It was never fly.

You guys are talking about way too many different things in this thread. First a reasonable suggestion to nerf TK's most outrageous ability, next we're discussing nimbus and all out attack and trashing on the (totally awesome!) player-created ranked maps in the current rotation. Yeesh XD

TK being Fly makes sense. I think Jon doesn't like nerfing rares, even when the nerf is just to undo an unnecessary buff (see: Spear of Darkness & Consuming Spear).

Someday, when I am the supreme leader of Blue Manchu, I will nerf TK to Fly. And it will still be really good. And warriors will still be better than wizards...

 

Hey, I have all that stuff. BRB making unholy Telekinesis deck.

 

I personally think that Winds of War is several magnitudes more powerful than Telekinesis, so TK definitely doesn't need a nerf.

On some maps it can do some nice things but that is generally outweighed by how ineffective it really is as a warrior-mover.

 

There's no arcane items with 3x winds of war. This is specifically about luke's hand. You can load up on lukes hands and just spam it like crazy. Lower ratings = tons of wow. Higher ratings: TK. I can't even park a priest next to a wall with LOS to a wizard without getting shoved through it. For a spell that is so easy to get large amounts of that just takes the cake.

Sprint Team...I think you can get like 2-3 in 1 deck? And it comes with a bunch of horrid cards too.
AoA. Again same thing, only 3 max per deck and it ruins your deck with too much tokens used and horrid cards that come with it. And then you finally get to use it, yay! 7 damage +4 UW, +2 MF. +2 Rage x2 = OHKO YAAA....oh Cause Fumble. Oops.
Wild run. In my deck. I think it's been a game winner...uhm...once? Kinda? I never want to get rid of 2 cards in exchange for moving across the whole map so it usually just sits there as a panic button all match or until discard.

And yes some maps in this rotation suck. Not all of them are bad, but there are some that are causing kittens to get strangled.

 

You not Being able to deal with it doesn't make the card OP.

There's a number of strats and cards TK is very weak against, just like there's a number of strats and cards TK is very strong against.

Additionally, you do need to pay attention to how you play. If all you do is keep standing right next to walls, then it's not really TK's fault if you keep losing. I.e. try to adapt your strategy and you'll just be fine.

Lastly, I think wizards and, to a lesser extent, priests have been getting their fair share of nerfs already. Maybe it's time we seriously start looking into what's broken on the warriors side of things again.