Turin's list of worthwile balance changes

Re: Nimble Strike.
From another thread:

 

*Thus, nimble strike was nerfed, and vibrant pain became a fancy looking segway that folks would ride around on.
The age of the "weapon mount" had dawned*

 

Personally, I think step attacks, team pushes, and their interactions with Encumber effects should be overhauled. Something along these lines:

-All step attacks are rebalanced to all move you either 1 or at most 2 steps
-Optional: step attacks additionally ignore encumber effects
-Optional: Encumber works as it does now, but can never reduce a movement below 1.
-Optional: Friendly team movement is treated under the same rules as if that person was moving (affected by encumber)

The reasoning for such a change would be to clean up the potential zones of threat for the various classes, as well as allowing a bit of counterplay versus encumber effects without making them either too strong or too weak.

Bear with me here.

For wizards:
As it currently stands, if you are in line of sight to a wizard and within 6 squares, you are in a "high threat" area. You could be hit by anything from Winds of War to an Obliterating Spark.

If you are at 8 squares, you are in "medium threat" range. You could be hit by the longer range frost spells, which do comparatively little damage but are very detrimental to you. You could be hit by wall of fire, perplexing ray, and a few other sundry effects.

At 10 squares, you are at extreme range and are in "very low threat". Dissolve armor, long spark, and a sizzling bolt are the only effective spells at this range that I can think of.

Now compare this to Warriors (currently):
Adjacent (1 square) range: dead in 1 hit threat. Warriors can do potentially 17 or 20 damage in a single hit at this range, more if AoA is involved.

2 squares range: medium/high threat. You can be hit by a variety of stab attacks with 2 range, or any of the step attacks, which universally do less damage than the best stabs or adjacent attacks. Additionally, you may not attack the warrior directly as he might have a Hard to Pin, which will allow him to close to adjacent range as a reaction to your attack.

3 to 5 squares: still medium/high threat. You can be hit by one or more of the longer range step attacks. Oddly, the higher range step attacks also do the most damage. Additionally, at 3 or 4 range, you still have to worry about Hard to Pin.

6+ squares: barring a combination of Hard to Pin + a step attack, you are safe. You still may not attack the warrior without fear of retaliation from Hard to Pin + Nimble Strike until you are 9 squares away!

Note: All this is ignoring the relatively expensive cantrip moves, which can add quite a bit of variability to the scenarios.

The general idea of class balance between strong ranged attackers and strong melee attackers is that melee should do more damage as it has a more stringent constraint: you must close to adjacent or extreme close range before you can dish out your damage. In our current system, long range step attacks (plus damage buffs) subverts this.

I think that the longest range step attacks 100% should be nerfed (to a maximum of 1 or 2 squares), but that in compensation for their reduced zones of threat warriors should get a bonus versus card effects which can 100% shut them down if they get hit by them (encumber effects). Other effects which shut down warriors (entangling roots and nimbus) only last a single round, but most encumbers last multiple turns so this seems like the main thing to work on.

TLDR: It's pretty s***** that dwarves who don't stack high movement cards can be completely shut down for 2 turns by an encumber 2 effect. It's also s***** that dwarves who stack high movement cards fly around the map like f****** ninja monkeys. Why not fix both?

 

If Encumber does not affect step attacks, those encumber effect cards lose their purpose. No way!

Team moves not affected by encumber sounds like a bug to me.

Another idea for Resistant Hide: remove lightning immunity. It doesn't make much sense anyway (not that physics matter really). It would give Wizards with a broader spell selection a chance.
Right now, it's only overcome by arcane damage and stone spikes.

I don't think it would overpower lightning, as there are still Grounding Plates.

I'd also like to see alternative armors or shields with resistance to one or two elements.

Dragonbreath Shield: Block 4+, always trigger on and prevent fire damage.

Holy Vestments: Armor 1, 1+, Keep, Immune to unholy damage.

Yeti Hide: Armor 2, 4+, Keep, Immune to cold damage.

Black Dragon Scales, Armor 3, 3+, Keep, Immune to Acid damage.

Poison Resistance, Attach to target, Duration 3, reduce poison damage by 3.

 

I made a rather extensive edit to my post 2 posts up, explaining the reasoning behind what I proposed.

Keep in mind, step attacks would be reduced to 1 or at most 2 movement, which maybe possibly could always be reduced to a minimum of 1 by encumber effects.

In my mind this makes the most sense. Encumbers are slow effects, meant to reduce movement but not stop it entirely. That is implemented in the game as a separate effect - Halt. In other games, slow effects which do not stop movement entirely work best based on percentages: -50% movement speed or whatever. In Card Hunter, this does not seem like it would work...

All team movement cards are Push effects instead of movement effects, an implementation which makes no sense thematically (you shout at your teammates and the soundwaves push them aside in the direction you want??), but is very good mechanically specifically because push effects ignore encumber. If this wasn't the case encumber would be a bit too strong, as there would be almost no tools available to counter it.

On the other hand, if encumber reduced movement to a minimum higher than 0, this would not be needed and the thematic aberration of team moves being pushes could be corrected as well.

 

Well said.

 

The problem with VP is that it is a 4 MOVE attack that does 6 UNBUFFED DAMAGE. Think of that.

The only disadvantages dwarves and warriors have in general is a lack of mobility. Nimble strikes paired with invulnerability, unstoppable push (team move cards) plus absurd damage and 10-15 cards means that Dwarf warrior cannot be stopped by anything. There should not be a 4 step card in the game right now, it ruins any possible counter you could think of. As it stands, you have to have war cry / purges / nimbuses of your own on one turn to "counter" it.

Nimble strike should be 1 2 or 3 damage if its going to be 4 move. Even if that were the case, it would STILL be overpowered. It could do 0 damage and be overpowered because you can buff that warrior.

 

I don't play MP but I've sometimes wondered if some of these balance problems (Nimbus, buffed up warriors) could be mitigated by having more and better items with Purge - right now looking at the list of items it is on, most of those aren't very good. And since it is only quality 2/7 card, you could easily make a divine item or weapon with 2-3 of them without it requiring a major power token. That would reduce the power of the frost as well.

 

On the topic of purges, you could also have:
• a card that purges a target + deals some damage at lower range (silver)
• a card that purges all figures on the board (gold)

 

My ideas:

• Encumber cannot reduce a non-Step move below 1. (So Shuffle is immune to encumber.)
• All Cantrip moves (including Flanking Move) are made Step.
• Encumber affects all movement, not just Move cards. (To shut down Team Moves.)
• You can use Step-attacks to attack when Halted.
• You can use Step-attacks to move when Stunned.

 

I have to say I disagree with much of this.

I love to watch my dwarf warrior with two nifty halberds and an infused greatclub zip around like a destroyer monkey. Everybody should have one! If everybody did, they'd realize that most of the time you will draw poor chops and mediocre bludgeons. It's good to bust a surprise move and shake things up now and then, and I really don't want any of the step moves nerfed.

I usually run dwarves (I got some elves to level 10, but they're awfully squishy), and I've often been held motionless by encumbrance, but I wouldn't want that to change to a "minimum of 1" either. It's just another hazard to prepare for, and it's worth keeping.

I do agree that encumbrance should affect team moves.

I don't understand the significance of making all cantrip moves 'step'. Could you explain?

I don't think step attacks should allow movement when stunned or halted.

I've only played PVE so far, so I don't know how this is shaking out in PVP. I've never seen a character with 10-15 cards in hand either. Is this busting up the firestorm teams I read so much about?

This is just one old grognard's opinion, of course.

 

Most of the posters (I think all, actually) are complaining about the state of PVP balance. PVE wise, I absolutely agree with your points. I think the campaign is hard enough, especially for non-grognards, without changing the delicate balance between step/encumber cards. In PVP, though, Sprint, Team! Impenetrable Nimbus Nimble Strike-warriors are a fearsome sight because as someone rightly pointed out, they become Ninja Dwarves that zip around and chop squishies up without fear of retribution. My opinion is that this wouldn't be a big problem if draw engines are fixed, but I think many other posters feel that step cards are overpowered inherently.

 

I mean, I made it through the campaign without even seeing a Nimble Strike, so nerfing the card probably wouldn't hurt PvE balance

 

My opinion is, reducing the damage by 1 for Nimble Strike is not enough at all. I somehow agree with what Pilgrim said, it would be a 0 damage card and still be viable. Step 4 not only makes Nimble Strike excel in chasing down your opponent, but also makes it basically a non-blockable attack card, so even 5 damage with step 4 is waaaaaay better than 7 damage with step 2. The more reasonable nerf I believe is to reduce its damage by at least 3 or step movement by 1. If this card is going to stay in its current form or just reduce its damage by 1, AT LEAST I would like to see changes in the card composition of Vibrant Pain so that no weapon has more than 2 Nimble Strikes. 6 Nimble Strikes in a weapon is crazy and makes it a totally game changing equipment in my opinion.

As for the discussions on Slippery, this is like my last fun with my elf warrior lol. Please don't take it away from the already very poor elves. >_<

 

You didn't fight any dogs on your way up?

 

Good point I guess I saw it once or twice. But I never used it, and nerfing it wouldn't have hurt my chances nor really helped me that much.

 

The fix is not nerfing Nimble Strike, it's wearing armor. Real armor is even available to mages. You should be able to reliably reduce the damage to 2 or 4. You won't be able to carry some of the nifties you want, but if it worries you enough the trade-off should be worth it.

Six Nimble Strikes on a weapon makes me *REALLY* want one. What I have now gets me into trouble, but doesn't get me out. (Who knew that bastard had parry? Here comes another Rook Blast.)

If you had one I bet you'd have used it. It all depends on what you find. My cleric never got a neat vampiric blade, but she's getting by with Dark Drewg's Mace, 4x Virgun's Blessed Blades (the last 3 of these dropped in about an hour of grinding one day), and 2x Heavy Maces.

I'm doing okay without much vampiric stuff, so deleting most of it shouldn't hurt PVE balance either.

 

No. That's not a fix. Not only is an armor build awful against the majority of builds in the game, and would result in you tanking your rating, but it doesn't even matter. Even if you use a hilarious armor build, you still won't be able to amass enough armor to mitigate this Dwarf Warrior.

Try this math out:

6 + buffs (2 + 3 or 3+3). You are looking at 11-12 damage. That's excluding an all out attack or two (which is entirely possible), but for the sake of making the argument even more favorable to you, let's just ignore it.

Let's say someone has 4-6 armor on a turn (which is about what you would probably average in an armor build).

You will still be taking anywhere in the range of 5 at the low-end and 8 at the higher end most likely of damage per nimble strike. This warrior is going to have at least 2-3 of those and any other attacks they have available. The math should start to show you why things get ugly.

Now, most people don't reliably have armor in multiplayer because its bad for rating. But even if they somehow can magically keep up their ratings to the levels where they would play these nimble strike warriors, they will still lose.

I'm not at all trying to be mean. I wish your solution worked. If it were as simple as "use armor" people would already have figured it out. Realistically, its not a viable means of countering these uber-warriors.

 

Another reason armor doesn't work; It doesn't matter if your warrior is wearing 2 Reliable Mails and 4 Officer's Harness, because the opponents with Nimble Strike are easily able to just ignore him completely, dance behind and start hitting the cleric or wizard instead. It's a simple matter to pick and choose the easiest targets.

 

Also, I understand how a player who plays dwarf warrior like Nimble Strike, because this is THE CARD that really made me think playing an elf warrior is like an idiot.

Pushes are still OK, even Sprint, Team doesn't make me think an elf warrior is all-round worse than a dwarf warrior because I still feel to have an advantage compared to dwarf warriors when it comes to chase-and-run fights of my opponents. But Nimble Strike has really crossed the line... at least for me.