3-29 Balance Patch Developer Commentary

Announcements
#1

##Lord of Terror
Changed to the following design:
Lord of Terror - 6 Faeria, 3 Mountains
Creature
Whenever your opponent is dealt damage, gain that much Attack.
0/6

Lord of Terror was designed to create a deckbuilding archetype that encouraged players to deal small amounts of damage to their own creature. We had a lot of fun in the office building decks around Lord of Terror, Possessed Ursus or both. Unfortunately the reward Lord of Terror gave you was not much fun for the opponent to deal with. Combat burn is one thing, but self-inflicted burn going right to your opponent’s face is another. Combine that with a giant taunt wall and you’ve got a recipe for frustration. We plan to revisit Lord of Terror’s trigger in the future, but to provide a less frustrating payoff along with it. The new Lord of Terror also synergizes with red many damaging options in an interesting way.

However, Lord of Terror burn decks were an important predator in the competitive metagame. Several decks based around blue’s economic engine proved to be meta-crushing with no Lord of Terror to prey on them. This is why we also adjusted blue’s economic engine.

##Failed Experiment
Cost increased from 0 faeria to 1 faeria. Now reduces the cost of your next creature by 4 faeria.

Blue’s economic engine was a bit out of control. It was reducing our design space for future cards and putting huge burdens on the metagame by enabling non-interactive combos. Our biggest concern was that it made Lore Thief completely free. This drastically increased the consistency of non-interactive combo decks.

We like how Failed Experiment combines with Stormspawn, and don’t view a 2 card combination to generate +3 faeria as inherently broken. In fact, green gets a similar option with more cardflow and less card disadvantage via Feed the Forest. Raising Failed Experiment to a 4 cost reduction maintains its role as a powerhouse with more expensive Gift and Last Words targets, while making it a weaker option for creatures that cost 3 faeria or less. This preserves what we like about the card while also opening up more design space for cheaper creatures.

##Stormspawn
Reduced to 3/3.

Stormspawn is an unusual card. Once you have 10 faeria, it’s effectively free. A free 4/5 is absolutely insane. The only reason Stormspawn went unplayed for so long was that it can instantly lose you the game against blue decks due to the lost value when your opponent transforms your Stormspawn instead of killing it. Against other decks the card was a nightmare. Failed Experiment’s powerful combo with Stormspawn suddenly meant that you could afford to run the creature without risking much against blue decks, since you could save it for the combo. This gave blue decks a huge and annoying edge, and made the non-interactive combo decks running it a lot more resilient. Reducing it to 3/3 will reduce the swingy nature of color-based matchups involving Stormspawn.

##Windfall
Now gives +12 faeria instead of +13 faeria.

When it comes to economic balance, Faeria generally follows a simple system. You can get a +2 faeria gain for a minor drawback, or a +3 faeria gain for a major drawback. Soul Pact gives you a +2 faeria gain for the minor cost of 2 life. Feed the Forest gives you a +3 faeria gain if you assemble a combo with Living Willow or a similar combo piece. Windfall was balanced at a time when saving up 10 faeria was a significant drawback. We’ve since boosted the economy available to every color. Getting to 10 faeria is a lot easier now, so a +3 faeria gain is no longer appropriate. We’ve reduced Windfall’s faeria gain accordingly.

##Doomsday
Cost increased from 4 faeria to 9 faeria.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead. Doomsday was created as a daring comeback option you could hit to reset the game for a heavy cost. We’ve seen some wonderful moments where a Doomsday shook the world. Unfortunately, due to its low faeria cost, skilled players felt the obligation to play around the card at all times. This drastically slowed their games and created poor play experiences. Meanwhile its low cost also enabled many absurd combo decks that used the card to wipe away all resistance before a kill. Increasing Doomsday to 9 faeria means players can still theoretically use it fairly for a comeback. However, it will be much less prevalent in top tier decks and will slow down the combos seeking to abuse it.

14 Likes
[PSA] The rebalanced cards can be disenchanted for their max value
Patch notes: March 29, 2017
#2

RIP Lord of Terror Burn decks. Sad!
I think this is a huge nerf to red. One method less to handle big green creatures. Overall I think green would in most times win against red.

And with 0/6 it can’t even trigger it’s own passive. Kinda ridiculous in my opinion.
Also LoT was a good way to handle big creatures and with it’s ridiculous high costs I don’t even think it will be worth playing. Possessed Ursus is 5 Faeria, 2 Forrest - it has lower costs and imho a better passive (better, not saying stronger).

Huge nerf for burn decks. Burn decks were fun because they would provide a alternative method to deal damage to the opponent - without creature damage to the orb. I don’t think they will be viable without LoT.

And a big issue for newer players were the prevalent rush decks. No nerf to them it seems.
Well.

1 Like
#3

Red burn was good before Lord Of Terror was changed into a burn card.

3 Likes
#4

good job on the balancing, keep it up

3 Likes
#5

Blue got nerfed hard. No nerf for green at all.

Good changes. No change for Aurora’s disciple yet?

1 Like
#6

Lot WAS the red burn deck. There are no other viable choices for a burn deck imho.

1 Like
#7

And no nerf for yellow rush which confuses me the most. So many threads where (new) players complained. And most decks I play against are rush decks. This seems kinda weird to me.

1 Like
#8

The impression I got is that top players seem to feel yellow rush is not OP and may even be a bit limited. It’s just that new players can’t deal with it, or do not have the right cards in the deck to counter it.

I don’t know who is right, but I do get higher win rate with yellow rush. It puts pressure on opponent almost right from the start and one defensive mistake can cost the game.

I am glad lord of terror is nerfed. Actually I don’t really like Red’s abiltiy to deal so much direct damage to the orb. You can win a game without attacking orb through combat or ranged attack at all. That kind of defeats the purpose of the board for me.

2 Likes
#9

They seem like good changes to me and I think the reward changes were very astute too, though changing the Lengendary drop rate won’t be visible to anyone who didn’t read the patch notes.

Interesting to nerf Failed Experiment & Stormspawn, but leave the FE+Stormspawn combo itself untouched.

1 Like
#10

But that is kinda what red was about. Direct damage through events and/or through special passives. It was a fun and unique way to play and not just big creatures -> board control -> attack orb.
I understand that it felt frustrating because of it’s stats. I expected a nerf to the life of Lord of Terror but this removes whole deck ideas.
Now I feel like red is kinda like a bad version of green. Green has better upgrade events, bigger creatures and more combos.

1 Like
#11

I guess I am ok with direct damage on creatures/structure on the board but not really to the orb. Some is ok I guess.

Yeah, surprised Green wasn’t nerfed at all, their big creatures are so strong. I guess it’s beginner friendly, and the game is new…

Edit: How does the new Lord of Terror actually work? So you hit opponent’s orb for x damage and Lord of Terror gains x attack? That sounds very powerful. :fearful:

1 Like
#12

To to honest, I think the previous version was the best. In a card game, YOU CANT BALANCE! There will be always stronger cards/build against other builds. If you nerf colors, why did you left out green?
My personal opinion is that if you nerf/boost. You need to do it collectively, like do it on the whole game not just couple of cards. This ruins many people’s strategy and builds and needs.
People who cry about LoT was too strong there is at least 4-5 ways to counter it. If you have a build which can’t counter don’t ask for balance issues.
Also Doomsday became technically useless. High cost of faeria, high cost of game, makes really no sense under any circumstances to use it. At least you should add then enemy’s faeria will be reduced or removed, because currently it is just a too high cost to clear the board.

1 Like
#13

mm I think that addresses an issue with stormspawn --> doomsday …

now opponent must quickly kill stormspawn before he plays doomsday?

anyways, OMGGGG bababababaaaalance patch?!?! <3 <3 <3

so happy I found this game <3

thanks !

#14

Seriously. If you make this big changes to cards, you should refund them to the players (in crafting crystals). That way players can choose to keep the card or opt for another. That will keep your players happy (who, like me, plowed down hundreds of crafting crystals into LoT) and it will give you interesting feedback on how popular your new cards are.

I’m all for balancing, but please don’t treat your players like this.

IMHO

1 Like
#15

RIP Lord of Terror, you will be missed :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#16

They do. Go into your collection. You’ll see that all the cards they just nerfed can be disenchanted for full cost.

3 Likes
#17

Appreciate your hard work, guys. Keep the game fresh and exciting.

One thing I’m curious is why do the devs quite often to change a card wholly, rather than tweaking some numbers from the card when there’s a problem with it?

Lord of Terror is one, Failed experiment too. I’m interested to know the reason behind this.

#18

LoT is now entirely useless.
Seriously.

For 6f, to be of any worth, a creature should be the equivalent of a 6/6 - or have some feature to make up for it.
And that is for common cards.

Here, we now have a 6f rare (!!!) card that is a 0/6. And that’s it. Its ability is entirely worthless. If you are in a situation where you already had the resources to get the LoT out (which couldn’t have been high prio) and were able to deal 6+ damage, you have most likely already won the game or at the very least the upper hand.

This is now a card that would be a waste to play early (you can get something better than a 0/6 for 6f. Like a Farm Boy for gathering) and in late game will be useless if you are winning and even worse if you are under pressure.

Seriously, has nobody done a very basic balancing check here? It’s not that hard.
I get the reasoning behind wanting to change the card. But it would’ve been nice if it was still worthwhile, eh?
As it is now, I wouldn’t even consider this worthwhile for a common card.

Something has to be done with it. Reduce the cost to 3 or 4, make its ability trigger in hand, too, make it trigger for any enemy receiving damage, have it start at 3/6 and double attack when opponent receives damage, regenerate when opponent receives damage. Something.

1 Like
#19

I think the changes made are pretty interesting and should help the game overall going forward, but I do worry about seeing such major changes in a single patch, especially to a single fairly popular deck. I’m not saying changes to LoT, Stormspawn, and FE were unnecessary, just saying that it might be better to see smaller changes first.

Also, I think we really need some notification in the game client that cards you are using in a deck have changed. Maybe on the main screen or at least on the play screen somewhere? That way if people don’t catch the patch notes, they’re not jumping into a game with a completely changed and now defunct deck.

All in all, glad for the patch personally, I think it’s interesting and the gold gain changes are pretty great!

#20

BR burn, one of my favorite decks has died today…

Keep an eye on Earthcraft, Feed the Forest and Gabrian Enchantment.
Their utilities are too “handy” in my opinion.

1 Like