Your thoughts on the Races

That's not true at all. They can't identify the most powerful strategy by doing that. Collecting data on what is popular is in an attempt to elevate the less popular strategies to become more popular. This is because Developers like to see full range of ideas become popular in their game, rather than just a few. However, most developers don't just change things because something is unpopular.

Competitive players play a certain "popular" strategy because they're fun to them. A part of how players perform is related to how comfortable a player is with a strategy. I would say it is usually 60% comfort, and 40% power level of the deck.

Being comfortable with a certain strategy will always make a player play better, mostly because they believe in what they are doing. The flaws in your logic IMO is as follows:

1. popularity is often determined by the "lemmings" mentality. If a player gets beat by a deck, he/she will say that's too powerful, and thus follow that strategy instead of improving their own strategy. This would make said data a poor predictability for "power level". Instead of inventing new technology, they rather buy the latest technology, leading to a "lost technology" phenomenon.

2. Players are often too "lazy" (may not be the correct word) to find their comfort level, and love to just copy and paste what's-popular-today. This leads to a highly skewed data in the fact that other strategies don't have enough numbers to make them statistically significant.

P.S. your quote is not true
"Your competitive players show you what's powerful with their actions. Which is why developers track this data. Cards are banned, or champions are nerfed, based on the actual play data not impassioned forum posts."

You have to realize that ultimately, the game is about the players, and not the other way around (players are about the game). This means that balance of certain things have to be in line with the demands of the player (which is completely logical).

Power isn't what determines how the game is balanced, popularity does. This is true across the board. The developers will always do this because at the end of the day, they're selling a product, and it has to be as popular as possible. This is especially true in LoL. The only reason Korean players stay ahead of the curve is because they always try to find their own comfort zone, and discover new technology, rather than following the latest news (one reason Moscow 5 became amazing).

 

You are both right to an extent, and the whole premise hinges on Metagaming. If anyone doesn't know what metagaming is and doesn't want to read about it, basically it is using your knowledge about the current trends of the game itself, outside of the basic mechanics, to affect your playstyle. For example, bringing lots of purge cards because you know you are likely to run into a lot of debuff decks.

This is relevant because of the way the metagame evolves. People play a few deck types because those types tend to win. While it is true that this doesn't necessarily make them more powerful overall, it is certainly true that if another deck type loses to these standard deck types, that it is less powerful in that specific situation. If most elf decks lose to most power attack decks most of the time, and you are very likely to run into these elf-killer decks, then elves are inferior in this meta. Now if someone crafts a deck that beats these other popular decks most of the time, people will start using that deck, and if this deck includes elves, or is weak to elves, then elves will become more powerful in the meta.

As it stands, if most people do not use elves in high ranked mp then it is fair to say that elves are less powerful in mp at this time. The meta does evolve though, so who knows what will happen later, there really hasn't been enough time for people to concoct new powerful strategies and for them to disseminate.

 

Celedorn you are completely free to your opinions, but I can't agree with most of what you add. I'd pick at you for being so vehement in your opinions, but that feels like the pot calling the kettle black. People have better things to do than read us arguing, so I'll just quit responding to you.

I get your point on the metagame DragnHntr, but I would point out that there is no guarantee of a balanced metagame. Meaning that counters don't always exist for the best strategy. Since Cardhunter is in testing there's even less reason to expect it. Metagames don't always continue to shift or evolve, they can settle on a dominant strategy (or two or three...) You'll hear this being referred to as the metagame being "solved" or "stagnant". It's happened at various time in Magic's history, and even to some degree in games like LoL. At that point it takes something more severe to shift the metagame, something like removing cards or other alterations to the game (like how League makes major changes to items between seasons).

You see it very clearly in games with longer lifespans. Fighting games are a good example, many tend to still be played competitively 10+ years after there release. At tournaments only certain characters are considered good enough to use, the others are virtually ignored. The metagames have settled on those characters and their counterplay, without changes to the game itself there won't be any further changes to the existing "solved" metagame.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Cardhunter's metagame has been solved. But internet games do find powerful strategies very quickly.

*** Back to elves ***

It's been fun to track the meta with Cardhunter so far. Dwarven warriors were a top choice when encumber didn't work on step/attack cards. Warriors were getting most of their move from their attack cards, so there wasn't much penalty associated with dwarves lack of movement. With little penalty, the extra HP were all upside. This resulted in lots of dwarves. Then encumber was fixed and players have shifted to using more mages with encumber spells. A lot more encumber spells in fact, after all, they do work well against all those dwarves. It's also shifted the perceived power balance between warriors and mages (I have no idea if that's correct or not, but more mages abound).

Interesting side note, forum threads complaining about OP cards seem to track to dominant strategies. Prior to encumber being fixed, there were lots of discussions on step/attack cards being OP (I was guilty on this). Now there are similar threads on Frost Jolt .

I simply remain curious that elves, who in my opinion have the best mobility, have not increased in usage at a time when mobility is attacked with lots of encumber. Of course, there are lots of other options to fight encumber; purge, arrogant armor, dash, push move cards, etc... People seem to be settling on those strategies instead.

 

I fought a 1/1/1 party of elves today and yeah if you are going to throw your elves at people like battering rams than you WILL lose. but the thing is my elf usually backstabs people using quick run or I simply draw out any blocks with my Human. in a direct fight elves lose every time and that is why you don't fight with elves you simply wait for your chance to shine. whether you use elves or not is really a personal choice, personally I didn't use them much at all for quite a while but now that I am more experienced in the nuances of the game I see that elves have their place. in fact both my main and secondary parties have one elf in them and neither is a wizard.
Battle On
Loop Dragonblade

 

Wow, this kind of got away from me. Thanks for the feedback and input guys, I really appreciate it. With my characters cresting 13 for the PvE campaign I'm finally starting to see the elf skills that include Jump Back (twist the bones and bend the back), as well as some other elven abilities I simply hadn't seen before.

 

I feel elves really suffer in mp at the moment. Partly because all their racial items are no match for the equivalents that dwarves and humans get. The only worthwile one is the one that has 2* Insight on it.
But the main problem is that you cannot reliably outmaneuver Fireball/Firestorm with Unholy Wellspring/Savage Curse and the lack of hitpoints simply kills you. I'd love to try out an elven vampire cleric deck, but I feel it would just get melted before it got into melee range.

So as a start I'd replace the Cowardly cards with Fright, add some Hard To Pin Down into the mix instead of standard moves and buff Elvish Mobility. Maybe add draw a card to it.

 

I think we (well, some of us) can agree it's a meta thing. I found an elf warrior to be very effective in single player back when you could get 2x Heavy Armor without a power token. You wanted elf over human because your warrior needs to draw attention away from your unarmored teammates, and that extra step helps you play the decoy and still get out as long as you aren't surrounded.

In multiplayer, and I hate to bring this card into every discussion, but the current meta kind of rotates around early fireballs (fireball cards drawn before anybody has claimed a victory point). There's nothing you can do to avoid taking some damage before the fight has truly begun. This makes elf wizards really unpopular, since one fireball takes them down to 11 health and makes it dangerous for them to be in range or line of sight of the enemy wizard a second time.

 

I had started with what I assume many people start with: Dwarf Warrior, Human Cleric, Elf Wizard.

My warrior was USELESS because he was never in the right place at the right time. So I shifted to an elven warrior.

Being able to get my warrior up front first made a huge difference for me. Even though he still got beat down pretty fast. That simply taught me to back up and wait for an opportune moment (and draw) to strike.

I have moved to a pure elf party, 2 warrior and 1 mage (considering moving to 2 mage 1 warrior instead, but I don't have that much gear for mages so far). Elves blow up too fast to bother healing them. But being able to position yourself perfectly to unload 3 Chops on 2 targets, or slide past defenders to pick off the weak mage... very useful.

And disclaimer, I am just about 1,000 or so in PvP, and don't often wind up against human players, so yeah... there is that.

 

I'm currently all-dwarf, all the time. In the campaign, the AI isn't smart enough (or lacks the cards) to take advantage of the lack of mobility. In MP, I love the extra hit points, and while I sometimes end up frozen on top of lava (just hold that image in your mind for a sec), my deck has a fair number of ways to deal with encumber.

I think elves could possibly use a minor buff, but they're not horrible.

 

You could dual-card the default movement for elves to also provide them a +1 to armor roles. Would reflect the agile nature, and be lost if they have already moved (with that card anyway) for the turn. But a minor complication if the elf saves his move card to the next turn, getting a +2 to armor roles.

 

Should be a block rather than armor. Hard To Pin Down as racial move card?

 

Whoa there, cowboy! I'd favor a minor buff for elves, but that would be ridiculous, IMO. Possibly an unreliable Hard To Pin Down that only triggers on a 6.

 

According to Jon, Elves were the dominant race in early beta due to the fact that they had Scamper as their racial move. That was too OP and if you give them a block move then I think that would make them more OP than a free move.

 

Yeah, a 3 block all would be insane to always have available. Make it more like Crude Plates instead of a block. Armor 1: If this prevents damage, move 1 (You control the move though, so can choose to NOT move, and no keep, if it blocks you lose movement).

I prefer enhancing other defense to having flat out available always defense. Sure, not so great for the elven mages, but those are already fairly popular. It is the warriors/clerics who need to be more appealing (supposedly). And a mere +1 to armor rolls also makes KEEP on the defensive side of things less broken. Because having the enemy able to deny you movement by constantly attacking is not a good thing.

 

I think the biggest problem with elves are how bad their racials are.

Elvish mobility = 2 free move for every elf? Really? FOR A RACIAL? It's so weak!
Slippery is okay... but it's still lackluster compared to every dwarf/human racial.
Elvish insight is awesome. Only racial worth using.


Another idea is to allow elves to combine two dashes into a scamper (free move 3). That way if they store up two turns of dashes they can get a free move for future use.

 

Or give them the choice each round between a dash and a scuttle (free move 2)? Though thematically I'm not sure about elves scuttling....

 

And elven racials are the only ones that rely on enemy team composition.

Elvish Mobility: They get to move as well.
Elvish Insight: Can't see what their elf is holding.

Had someone use both of those against me, and I run 3 elves. I was more than happy to allow him to move his one elven wizard in exchange for my two elvish warriors being able to pile on his cleric.

 

The elf movement can be useful- try getting Dwarves to run Leaden Plate Mail without piling on Moves instead of other buffs.
And, Slippery means free escapes from Lava, Acid, or Charging Meat Shield Engagement. However, I do agree that Elvish Mobililty is underpowered considering your opponents move as much as you do. Maybe your opponents move 1, then you move 2? At any rate I'm not giving up my human buffs for more movement on cards that already have movement abilities. Run, Team! and similar cards can move your slower figures, rather than Elves who don't quite need movement as much.