Title says it all. I would compare Vicious Thrust to Fireball in terms of power and effectiveness. It's a card I see almost every warrior team have, since it has a big step range plus a penetrating effect. Even if this was a step 1 card the penetrating effect means it's one of the best step-move cards in the game, because there aren't any other step-move cards with penetration. Furthermore, I think one of the main reasons people don't use elves much in MP is because of the prevalence of this card. The only counter to penetration is high hitpoints, which makes dwarfs the obvious winner. Elf warriors must rely on their armor to stay competitive, which means elf warriors get destroyed by other well-built warrior decks. Even with the elf buffs incoming for next patch, unless Vicious Thrust is balanced then people aren't going to be using elf warriors if they want to be in the Top 50 elo. This card should be labeled as a gold.
I don't know. There are other cards that are quite usefull for a warrior build eg. Impaling Stab or Potent Stab because they have range 2 which sometimes is underestimated. And you can always counter this kind of attacks with Parry. So maybe as Impaling Stab is a gold card this should be a gold card too. But i wouldn't compare it directly with fireball, its totally different as you can't hit 3 characters at once.
I'm inclined to agree if fireball is too good for silver so is vicious thrust. I personally still don't think fireball is but grading on the curve where fireball is gold so should vicious thrust.
Vicious Thrust is much better than Impaling Stab, and yet Impaling Stab is listed as gold. That is a great example of what I'm talking about. And I'm not comparing it directly with fireball, it's more of an analogy.
I disagree that Vicious Thrust is strictly better than Impaling Stab, let alone much better. The stab does more damage, doesn't place you adjacent to the enemy and vulnerable to counterattack, and isn't neutered by encumber. The stab could attack over impassable but non sight-blocking terrain, doesn't trigger cards that proc on movement, nor is affected by cards that target movement cards. Yes Vicious Thrust has potentially 1 more range, and allows for flanking possibilities but that doesn't automatically make it better considering the benefits of the stab, IMO. They are pretty comparable though, I could see Vicious Thrust being gold.
All of the benefits you describe are countered by the fact that all of the major damage warrior cards have a range of 1, which makes any card that places your warrior next to someone superior. Impaling Stab still is able to out reach, but if it comes down to two warriors, one with vicious thrust + a bunch of 11+ dmg cards, and the other warrior with impaling stab and a bunch of 11+ dmg cards, the warrior with the vicious thrust is still more deadly because of mobility and the power to chase down priests and wizards.
You are assuming both warriors would be built the same with the only exception being that one card. If a warrior built a deck around Polearm attacks it would contain more step attacks and movement cards to keep at range. Like I mentioned, the benefit of the stab is that I do NOT have to be right next to you to do consistant damage. By extension, I would move away before your 11+damage attacks connected, not stand there and use a ranged stab point blank. Polearm decks also tend to contain many step attacks and have the added benefit of fooling people into thinking they are out of range of powerful attacks when they are not, or forcing them to assume 2 range isn't far enough which further limits their ability to outmaneuver you. I would say a polearm build has plenty of mobility and ability to chase down priests and wizards. I mentioned a deck built around impaling stab would have many step attacks, vicious thrust being a prime candidate of course. In my experience a combination of step attacks and polearm stabs have more consistent damage output than one based solely on powerful step attacks and as strong attacks as you can manage.
This is likely the case, but in MP it's often not about consistency, it's about burst. Burst one character down then move on to the next. That's why you don't see a lot of armor. Armor would help much more against consistency then the current high damage burst trends in mp. I believe the trend is because you may only get one shot at killing the wizard or priest so you'd better be able to do it.
True, but if you Vicious Thrust and they step away, all those 11+ attacks in your hand are useless, whereas more step attacks and possibly polearm attacks could still connect, and its not like you can fill your deck with only Vicious thrusts heheh. For a completely random example, lets compare two made up weapons One has: 2xPenetrating Stab and 4xShifty Stab The other has: 2xVicious Thrust and 4x Mighty Hack If one warrior had three of the first weapon and the second warrior had three of the second, I imagine the first warrior would win a duel more often than not, and would be able to output more damage to a team in most situations. Yeah the second warrior could theoretically do more damage faster, but how often would he actually be able to utilize that potential. Once you factor in a variety of weapons and intervention from the rest of the party it is not so easy to judge, I just disagree with the blanket statement that Vicious Thrust is straight up superior to Penetrating Stab. edit: changed the first weapon
The problem is warrior's are usually running teams with post pen stab AND vicious thrust. They stack the best move-attack cards in the game en-masse with a few huge 11+ dmg cards. Besides, the power of 2 range stabs may be useful against warriors, but when it comes down to bursting the squishes I'd take might hack any day of the week.
You generally only need one thrust. If I have two in hand the second is often used for movement to move toward another character or to swing when I'm already adjacent to the enemy anyway. I'm currently running two warriors, one runs two Bejeweled Shortswords and an Excellent Rapier while the other runs a Bejeweled Shortsword, a Sharp Spetum and a Blazing Shortsword. The first is by FAR the more effective aggressor as the second can rarely kill a character in one round.
Please excuse my ignorance here, but what happens if the card goes from silver to gold? Other than the bar changing color of course.
Items would be changed accordingly. It could be that item rarity changes, power token cost of an item changes or, more likely, items with the current card get replacement silver cards and the new gold card is inserted into the gold card slot on new or existing items.
