If you're looking for more cards to add cantrip to, I nominate Shrug It Off. I don't think I've ever seen Shrug It Off in a MP game, and adding cantrip makes sense thematically.
Agreed on all points. I feel Altruism would be a lot cleaner if it simply read: "When you play a Holy card targeting an ally other than yourself, draw a card. You may not draw more than one card per turn this way. ...with no dice roll. This removes players feeling like they've been cheated when hit with a bout of bad luck, while also bringing Altruism's power level more in line with the other Priest Traits.
The only large balance change that I'm hoping is still coming is a slight nerf on encumbrance. It's not supremely overpowered, but it can make a game particularly un-fun because your characters can't do anything. I even played a frost wiz backed party but freezing people always felt pretty cheap. So I'm voting for a nerf based on un-fun-ness more than raw power (ala Talented Healer).
I hope that BM won't be at all reluctant to fix obviously imbalanced (or seriously un-fun) cards just because the beta ends.
i don't think your understanding what im saying here. im not talking about Talented Healer alone, I am saying having both Talented Healer and Altriusm on a priest will get you massive heals and negate any damage you have done. Talented healer alone will be some great heals in and of it self but add Altriusm along with it for drawing out more heal cards and you'll see all your attk cards wasted if you don't get any one turn kills. not to say that it wont be a pain in the ass or it's not overpowering but i think with armor and blocks we can compete with the lifedrain combos more so than with the healing combos, just for the fact that as of now i don't know of any way you can effectively block a priest from healing their allys other then maybe the smoke bomb and thats only on mages i do believe. However i think only time and testing will tell the true tail here.
Altruism is still potentially a problematic card, I agree. We considered pre-nerfing it but we much prefer to respond to playtest data.
I feel that the biggest problem with Encumbrance is the lack of good counters. We'll be much more likely to address that with new cards/items or boosts to existing cards (like we already tried with Elf move cards) than by nerfing Encumber based cards directly.
Sounds good to me! Something for Dwarves and Warriors would be great. Adding Cantrip to Shrug It Off, as suggested above would be a small help. More Arrogant Armor options would be great too because I've had trouble finding Heavy Amor for Warriors with Arrogant Armor. Purge is a good utility card but it's hard to have more than 1 or 2 in your Priest deck and still have a Priest that's good in other situations. It's also not great against Freeze effects because you're using 1 card to counter their card, but you're still taking Freeze damage. (<sarcasm>like MtG's Force of Will which everyone knows is bad!</sarcasm>).
I like the proposed changes, it adds some interesting options at the very least. Should allow the occasional priest to do something surprising. I tend to agree that people will probably simply switch to using altruism, but they won't use it with dedicated heal, it'll go back to altruism/nimbus builds. While altruism will trigger on more cards, it doesn't really change the number of triggering cards you can fit into a deck. You could fit upwards of 17 heals into a deck with 3 talented healer traits which guaranteed a large number of card drawing triggers. 17 seems to be the cap with holy spells as well (assuming you dedicate your priest skill to 3 altruism as well), but with altruism you should see about half as many triggers. I also think that altruism and talented healer are probably now reversed in value.
I agree, I think Shrug It Off should get cantrip for sure. Maybe the battlefield training series of cards as well.
To be fair, I've had purge wreck me by removing multiple positive effects, and in other situations it can remove multiple negatives like burning and encumber all in one shot. So it's not always a one for one counter... although it does end up doing that usually.
How was this card broken? It would be nice to have some information other than just saying "Obviously it's broken."
If we're talking about Talented Healer: I've seen people play/draw 6+ cards in one turn off it and healing half their team's hit points. It's broken.
But Purge and some of the related cards can dead cards with no (good) targets a lot of the time too. IMHO, they're a mid-low quality card most of the time while occasionally being very good.
Here's something you could tweak to help encumbrance: make Free Moves like Scamper work though it. For some reason I thought it did and got screwed in a match, but it seems like it should. There's the elf card Elvish Mobility that works like that, I know but if you're trying to buff counters to encumber that would be one.
The situation you describe above is not "broken." It makes it a very good card in certain circumstances. Yes, if you built a healer, you can have max 2x Talented Healer in your deck. So maybe once or twice a match, you could do this. You also have to be within range and line of sight to your party members, and this comes at the expense of loading your deck with buffs, debuffs, etc. A card is broken only if you essentially have to use it to win. This card does not meet that criteria. Nor do most of the other nerfs that have been handed down recently.
Wrong: Focused Healer Sure you don't have to use it to win. So how about if we say it's very unbalanced rather than broken? I, for one, welcome our new balanced (hopefully) life-draining priest overlords. Sorry, to hear that you don't, but that's what beta balancing is about.
Okay, 3. Still! Changing the rhetoric around these cards is helpful. It would be more helpful if we had examples of how the use of this card disproportionately allowed people to win. Would also have rather seen the die roll added than an outright nerf.
I'm confidant that they look at the raw data of win rates when making these changes; they just don't post it all for us to see. I think the biggest issue with having a die roll is that it becomes very similar to Altruism. There's 4 pages of discussion on this topic here.
