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Post by radicalted on Jan 12, 2015 18:08:42 GMT -8
I was just thinking that earlier today. It can't handle being attacked by multiple cards without Spell Fork, but it's a 2 cost card that can beat almost everything 1v1. Maybe change his magic to need 7mp instead of 6 so it doesn't have such ridiculous uptime.
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Post by xuande on Jan 13, 2015 5:58:11 GMT -8
I suspect Lich is probably too good, and that's exacerbated by Fork. He does good consistent damage and is a super tank - with Fork his low defense doesn't really matter at all. Yeah, pretty much. The only weakness that can be seized is his slow speed. Its possible to set up a turn where he just flat-out dies before his first move, and the current lazy team I'm using (Fork - Darius : Water Wall : Lich : Adept : Initiate) pulls this off if the Lich is lined up with the Initiate, and 50% of the time if lined up with my Lich. |
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fitch
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Post by fitch on Jan 14, 2015 14:37:51 GMT -8
I suspect Lich is probably too good, and that's exacerbated by Fork. He does good consistent damage and is a super tank - with Fork his low defense doesn't really matter at all. Yeah, pretty much. The only weakness that can be seized is his slow speed. Its possible to set up a turn where he just flat-out dies before his first move, and the current lazy team I'm using (Fork - Darius : Water Wall : Lich : Adept : Initiate) pulls this off if the Lich is lined up with the Initiate, and 50% of the time if lined up with my Lich. Honestly I don't really consider his speed a weakness. Perhaps it does allow for some explosive damage in the right spot to kill him round 1, but more often it ensures that he has something to heal. To compare, the Dhampir could attack first round 1 and heal nothing due to full health - then round 2 his opponent went first so he gets hit again before he has a chance to heal and it could kill him if he takes any extra damage (lets say a ballista or adept is a neighboring enemy). Whereas Lich always gets hit first then heals the damage he took (short of facing off against another slow guy). Perhaps reducing his healing to a 2/1 or 1.5/1 ration would help balance him out, or reducing his HP to like 16 or his mpower to 4 or something. Making him cost 3 would be too far IMHO. |
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Post by Zscout on Jan 15, 2015 6:45:41 GMT -8
Going back to Lich, I would like to revise my position. I think Fitch's proposed solution is probably more appropriate. The problem with the card isn't damage, it is survivability.
Simply increasing the cost of the card doesn't address its overall power at all. If there was a way to keep his damage steady, but reduce the heal portion to 1/2, he could still be vulnerable to attrition. Messing directly with the MPower level would probably be too heavy handed due to weakening both damage and survivability.
The problem is that solution probably takes coding to fix. What Radicalted suggested - increasing the amount of mp required to trigger the lifetap to where it triggers every other round could also work. His regular damage would probably have to be adjusted upward though to compensate.
I don't envy you guys on the balance game, but I will say I have been happy with the adjustments you have made elsewhere (Mountain Troll, Shieldbearer, etc.) - Keep up the good work!
Thanks
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fitch
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Post by fitch on Jan 16, 2015 5:02:58 GMT -8
I don't think that 4 Mpower would be too weak. It's obviously up to debate because if he is nerfed too hard nobody will use him and then what's the point of having the card at all. How I see it is this: with a power that costs only 6MP, he doesn't attack round 1 then attacks 5 turns in a row. If he has water wall, he attacks more than 10 turns in a row starting on the first round - pretty much a guarantee he will attack every round during a fight. Now if we pick a comparable melee creature, let's take the Dhampir Scrapper, he has the same base defense of 2, same base health of 20 and will attack with an 8 every round. I haven't done calculations but I think that 3 or 4 is pretty typical for an opponent's defense, so the Dhampir typically hits for 4 or 5 damage and heals at a 1:2 ratio. If the Lich does 4 every round (instead of the current 6 unmitigated), sometimes he'll do less than the Dhampir (say, vs a wolf rider) and sometimes more (say, vs a snapping turtle) and still be healing at a 1:1 ratio. I'd still consider that Lich a tiny bit better than the Dhampir, but then he Dhampir is common whereas Lich is uncommon so perhaps that's appropriate. I think that'd be reasonably applicable in practice, not just in theory.
Though to be fair, this rant may be biased since I am writing just after losing to a fork + Lich in draft. Simple bad luck, not a damn thing I could've done. But I'm trying to be objective lol
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Post by Admin on Jan 16, 2015 18:51:31 GMT -8
I think it's fair to compare Scrapper and Lich and Lich may be better - he also doesn't give enemies TP when attacking, which is a small but real benefit. But Scrapper works better with Gladius Knight than Lich does with Magic Knight, and Coven Familiar also works better with Scrapper....so it's close, ignoring Spell Fork.
Lich may be very good, but given the number of different Fork-based teams that work well I don't think Lich is THE problem.
I also worry about changing cards just to make them not too strong in narrow cases. If we make Lich weak enough to not be abusive with Fork it may be too weak in other cases.
In the end we are probably going to raise the cost of Fork. It's true that some counter-teams may exist, but we don't want leagues to be about either running Fork or running counters. Doing this also wouldn't mess with the balance of the campaign at all.
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Post by radicalted on Jan 16, 2015 21:51:39 GMT -8
In the end we are probably going to raise the cost of Fork. Just thinking, that might not be enough, unless you're planning to make it 5 or something. My league team right now would only lose its ability to start casting first turn from Water Wall, with an equally effective blocker in its place, likely blue turtle. |
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Post by xuande on Jan 17, 2015 6:23:44 GMT -8
Lich isn't what is making Spell Fork teams dominate, that's true. But even if you take all the synergy away, Lich still has the ability to tank quite a lot of characters in 1v1 situations, which is more than Scrapper can claim since his healing is moderated by the defense of the enemy he's hitting (and by being 1:1.5 instead of 1:1). My vote would be to change Lich to healing at a 1:2 ratio, but keep the cost/MPower/etc the same.
radicalted: Losing Water Wall is an enormous change to the effectiveness of a Spell Fork team (a free turn is all several other team types need to break through), its far more likely that those of us running them will cut a point from a caster or non-Water Wall blocker instead. In my current team, I'd probably cut Darius and add Bat Swarm, making it significantly weaker vs Mountain Troll but fine in most other match-ups. Other teams might consider subbing in Burning Adept for Fire Sage, or Burning Initiate for a two-cost caster.
I still think its difficult to make the case for Magic Boost against the likes of Spell Fork/Mana Convert. I'd like to see Magic Boost become a viable alternative, something along the lines of making it cost two while making the effect happen to both teams. That way, it remains blatantly weak vs Spell Fork (there's no way to change that, that I have thought of so far) but gains utility in other match-ups.
Spell Fork to four-cost is a fine change and worth testing.
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fitch
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Post by fitch on Jan 17, 2015 14:37:56 GMT -8
Increasing the cost to fork would make it harder to build a solid fork team but I'm not sure it would stop me. I currently run (undefeated for like 50+ league matches) Fork: Troll/Vislav/Initiate/Bat/Wall. Depending on the way the meta changes in response to the fork increase I'd likely either swap vislav for adept, vislav for lich, or risk the loss of the troll for a decent blocker. Obviously with time that may prove to be an ineffectual team, but off the top of my head - assuming there is a considerable drop in fork use to mitigate the loss of the troll - I don't think it would hinder me way too much. Not sure an increase to fork will shake its dominance as long as you can field vislav and water wall on the same team, as long as that's an option I'd try to make it work. It's hard to beat 14 damage to 3 targets round 1, then again round 2 and 3 at a minimum.
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Post by xuande on Jan 17, 2015 16:18:33 GMT -8
Have you went up against any counter-teams, though? It can be tanked, if your opponent tries to.
I'm testing a Red Dragon team now, though its still far from complete (using a Lv1 card and a Lv2 card). I'm hoping that a Lv4 Mountain Troll shuts down most of the Fork lineups.
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Post by radicalted on Jan 17, 2015 18:25:51 GMT -8
radicalted: Losing Water Wall is an enormous change to the effectiveness of a Spell Fork team (a free turn is all several other team types need to break through), its far more likely that those of us running them will cut a point from a caster or non-Water Wall blocker instead. In my current team, I'd probably cut Darius and add Bat Swarm, making it significantly weaker vs Mountain Troll but fine in most other match-ups. Other teams might consider subbing in Burning Adept for Fire Sage, or Burning Initiate for a two-cost caster. Against another fork team its a huge loss but against almost anything else I think I'd still put it in the territory of "we don't want leagues to be about either running Fork or running counters" |
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Post by radicalted on Jan 20, 2015 18:33:24 GMT -8
Just throwing an idea I just had out there, haven't really given it too much thought yet. I've been seeing a lot of healing tokens in my current league which fork completely crushes and I thought like what if the second cast with Spell Fork added damage or healing tokens instead of directly applying the spells effect again?
Might not even be needed I haven't really seen how much 4 cost fork is going to change things, but maybe something to think about...
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Post by xuande on Jan 21, 2015 11:25:05 GMT -8
Well, four-cost Fork still crushes anything you can do with three-cost Boost, its still quite viable. In my current League, one of the things I miss is being able to outright crush the Beast Tamer teams that are seemingly everywhere vs intermediate players - many test lineups fail to stand up to it, and that's a problem I never had with Spell Fork in any form.
Currently, I'm running a pseudo-tank lineup with the revival spell. I've been trying different lineups, and at one point was running all five colors. I'm hoping Mountain Giant is a big enough concession to Fork lineups, but I haven't been in that match-up yet.
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Post by xuande on Jan 29, 2015 21:41:26 GMT -8
So I've been playing League differently for the last couple of weeks, refusing to use any MP-based team. I've used a variety of sets, from Uneasy Sleep to Coven to Frenzy to TP-based sets in general. And the general conclusion I'm getting from my W-L record doing this is:
* While any one mage by itself is fairly weak, the synergy that MP-based cards have together far outshines anything else. Post-nerf Spell Fork is still one of the best teams out there, and Mana Convert teams are the main thing giving them competition. Its funny, because generally these types of teams are weak in Campaign (Lv1 cards) and Draft (where you cannot guarantee enough synergy) - but put Lv4 cards in Draft, and they outshine everything else. There simply aren't enough viable cards that can mitigate magic-based damage, and the ones that are can't hit worth a damn. Unless you go all-in to tanking these kinds of teams (Corpse Eater/Tree of Life/Uneasy Sleep core, for example), or get ridiculously lucky with the formation+coinflips, you can't beat these teams.
I'm pretty convinced at this point that unless a major shake-up happens soon, you're going to see everyone running these teams soon. The majority of the roster simply cannot keep up with multiple twice-per-turn nukes that hit for over 10 HP each, or with Mana Convert's heal-all+burn-all Caller/Wyvern shenanigans. Physical walls are cheap (1 mana and do the job well, or the ridiculous 2 mana Water Wall that enables Spell Fork, or Ulthur as a fail-safe in Mana Convert), magic walls are expensive and generally ineffective (Trolls/Anti-Mage/Shieldbearer? All of which hit weakly and sometimes fail at even their one job of improving your anti-Fork/Convert match-up, because they can be easily tanked while the rest of your team melts).
All that said, yes, I am aware of a couple of rarely seen deck types that hold up to this meta. Unfortunately, they tend to require multiple rare Lv4 Black cards, which are the hardest to obtain by far thanks to Campaign giving next to none of them guaranteed, except for one copy of a common. And even then, its not as if any of them are a guaranteed shut-down to Fork/Convert decks - the 25 Round time limit sees to that.
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I understand that balance is a delicate thing, and I do have experience in game balancing. From the perspective of Campaign and even of Draft, this game is fairly well balanced. I'm not sure how to keep that intact while fixing League.
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Post by stillgrave on Jan 30, 2015 2:34:11 GMT -8
Here is a quick fix. Load all the coding involved with Spell Fork onto a 1.44 floppy and throw said floppy out the nearest window.
Every thread here and on Miiverse ends in how much we do not enjoy this card, your customers have spoken.
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