Balance Suggestions (Post Oversky)

Balance Discussion
#1

Hey guys, just wanted to share with you a couple of ideas I had when it comes to some balance changes and card reworks which would make the meta more interesting

So I’m a big fan of small tweaks to underused or overpowered cards, that’s why I will start with the following changes

- Triton Chef: 1 lake

probably still wouldn’t bring the card in the meta, so I don’t see a reason why this buff would hurt

- Rakoan Reveller: 1 mountain

when you have opening creatures like Outland Ranger or Axegrinder there is no good reason to put a 2 mountain Reveller in your deck - furthermore, Reveller being buffed could open up a new red archtype built arround attack buffs

- Tiki Chieftain: 1 forest

Same idea as with the Triton Chef , the card is so bad that this buff wouldn’t do any harm, and maybe allows you to splash the taunt utility into other colors

- Kheldran Soldier: Dash 1

fits the yellow theme and slighty buffs another underused card

- Mistral Guide: Dash 1

one of the coolest cards in the game when it comes to design. Often you play this card, but have to wait a turn to position it in the right spot to follow up with the creatures you want to buff with Mistral Guide. Giving it Dash1 makes it much easier to set him up

- Seed of Paradise: 3 Health

compared to a 0/5 aquatic creatures (sturdy shell) for the same cost, it makes no sense for seed to be at 2 health, especially since it dies to deepwoodstalker for free which emphasis draw RNG and having a lucky awnser at the start of the game

- Skyward Swordfish: +1 health or +1 life

5 landrequirement is a lot. You can get a 5/10 Thyrian golem for the same cost, whereas Skyward Swordfish is just a 4/7 - Also Souleater is only 1 more land and is much more powerful - I’m not sure which would be better, 1 health obviously makes it a better defensive card in combination with the taunt - however 5 attack would allow you to contest creatures like undergroundboss

Next on to some small nerfs , that would make the game more enjoyable

- Flashwind: 3 Desert

that card allows just too much early snowball potential, especially in combination with Khalims Training.
Most of the time you Gain additional Faeria, and big value trades + bring your creature in a better position while also having the benefits of event synergy

- Gift of Steel: +3/+2 for Combat Creatures

the problem with Combat red is that it’s too easy to keep your combat creatures alive thanks to the health buffs, so you have an easier time getting multiple attacks with them

- Flameburst: 3 Mountain

dying to Flameburst Face damage just isn’t fun most of the time… Even tho Seifers Wrath is probably the better card since 2 damage is more flexible to use - the fact that you can directly damage the enemy orb makes Firebomb obsolete. On 3 Mountain you have to reconsidder if you actually want to use it in your Hybrid deck for extra burn damage, or if you want to go for more control with Firebomb.

- Feed the Forest: 4 Forest , or doesn’t work on creatures played this turn

A card that feels needed when playing mono green, but also becomes an autoinculsion together with Willow for Hybrid decks. If you don’t want to ruin slow green decks, but at the same time nerf how easy you can get away with this card increasing the landrequirements by 1 would be a good idea. On the other hand you could also make it so that you can’t feed a creature played this turn. Gameplaywise this would be more intereactive since your opponent will be able to see it coming if you plan on using a feed and calculate if it’s worth to invest into damaging your feed target or removing it. However it would nerf combo decks even more.

- Manta Rider: 5/2 stats

Manta Rider is just incredibly cost efficient and resilient, also very game deciding in a mirror match since it can trade with Windstorm chargers and survive. Changing it’s health to 2 would only be good for meta since with the high mobility it’s a very snowbally card

- Frog Tosser: change stats to 2/6

Many people suggested 3/5 , however I would like to see 2/6 instead - this way Green Removal is much more predictable and less random (Deep Wood Stalker and Frog Tosser both dealing 2 Damage) The card is very restrictive to the meta. 4 Global Damage with huge upside potential of having 2 creatures on board is just too much and it would also fit thematically since you throw a 2/2 frog. Futhermore you still have the chance kill creatures like Windstorm Chargers, you just need 2 Tosser or a Tosser and a Stalker.

Finally some ideas for reworks

- Vulcanic Colossus: Reduce the cost by 1 if you damaged your opponent this turn

The idea behind this card is to enable another new archtype for red (Slow Burn) - Cards that synergyze well here would be Blood Singer, Bloodstone Sprite, but also combat or ranged creatures ofc. Ofc I would remove the ranged ability and adjust the Total Faeria Cost. It could start at 11 total Faeria and get reduced all the way to 5 Faeria 8/8 - Ofc the numbers need more calculation and testing . The wording “damaged this turn” instead of each time you deal damage is obviously a measurement to prevent effects like hellfire…

- Lord of Terror: Gain Attack Equal to Damage your Opponent but also you have taken

This could allow synergy with cards like Bloodsong, Soulpact, but also make the card interesting for racing scenarios or in combination with Shaytan Demon

- Tree of Everlife: at the end of your turn Gain 7 Life, Spread 7x +1/+1 buffs to creatures on your hand

I would have perferd this variation instead - +7/+7 makes the card more RNG, where it matters which creatures you actually hit

- Blazing Salamander: 2/4 Deal this creatures Attack Damage to Adjacent Enemy Creatures

would enable a new Attack Buff Damage Decktype like previously mentioned together with Rakoan Reveller - can combo it with Longhorn Yak, Kobold Barracks, Court Jester

- Emerald Salamander: 2/4, 5 Faeria cost

card was announced at 4 total cost which seemed broken, now it’s at 6 which is slightly underwhelming compared to Crackthorne , going for the middle ground while also reducing 1 health just to make sure seems like a good compromise to me

- Hateseed - Minimum Cost 1 Faeria , 4/5 stats

-Firebringer - start with 2/2 stats , Maximum 10/10

just some small adjustments to give Angry red a chance to come back - in general I’m a fan of cards with scaling since they add more depth to the meta, but the need to be capped at the right ammount of how much the can grow / get reduced so that they don’t feel broken (Soul Eater could also be capped at something like 14/14 for exampl (just a random number…))

- Khalims Prayer - Gain 1 Faeria + add the text below:

“Whenever you hit the enemy Orb, Draw 1 Copy of this card” However you shouldn’t get the “draw a card” effect if played this way, because you already got the draw from getting the card out of your deck

this makes the card much more consistent and less swingy. It becomes easier to play around yellow rush, since you will know it’s guranteed to be drawn from the enemy deck, but also less punishing , because your opponent only gets 1 Faeria. The only problems is that you need to find the proper wording to keep the text on this card short

Other cards that could get reworked, but I don’t have any ideas right now: Defender of the Homeland, Aarai, Orosei, Green Colossus

13 Likes
Patch notes: November 14th, 2017
#2

I don’t understand this one. Sounds like you can trigger this multiple times in one turn?

So if you played a prayer from hand, then you can’t draw prayer from deck, but you can if you draw first then play one from hand? The wording is confusing.

#3

yeah i edited the post now, it’s not needed to play the card right away - however there are 2 scenarios now with this version of prayer which would make the wording complicated

  1. you have it on your starting hand or regularly draw into it -> then ofc you should still get the draw after activating it

  2. you hit the enemy orb and draw it from the deck -> then you already have the draw by getting the card on your hand

regardlessly I feel like this change would help a lot to make prayer predictable and less of a swing card that can either be a super dead draw , or if you are lucky and get it for the first 3 face attacks give you 6 faeria advantage which should often win you the game

#4

Nice and acceptable ideas. How about adding suggestion for Ruunin the Relentless and ‘swallow’ cards?

#5

I really like these suggestions overall.

As a fan of the Angry Red archetype, I can see why you’d want to make some changes to hate seed and firebringer. For the firebringer’s cap, I don’t think it’s needed because of the removal available to every deck. If it is needed, I think the cap should be at 14/14 or so, because you don’t usually need to make them stronger than that to get maximum value.

As for hate seed, it’s quite underwhelming right now from my experience. In fact, I don’t use it in my angry red deck to minimize the amount of dead cards in my hand throughout the game. While I do agree with your proposed changes to hate seed, I have a minor problem with the “minimum cost” mechanic in general, though I don’t know if I should elaborate in this thread or not.

1 Like
#6

If Thyrian golem is better and has same cost just use it.

#7

Another important thing to also consider is that in the card art you can clearly see Flame Thrower using the Flameburst, hence to keep it consistent lore wise it would be relevant for it to cost 3 mountains.

1 Like
#8

I agree with most of the suggestions. Lord of Terror is especially interesting.

I don’t know if I’d like your Frog Tosser idea, but it’s better than it is now anyway.

I’m noticing no comments about Swallow. Any reasons?

#9

I think everyone is so angry about Swallow that they wish it would just go away. For its current cost flower should have a limited range, at the very least a 2 space radius around the spot of placement.
This would mean that using the flower effectively would require having the ability to protect it. If the Swallow concept is to temporarily remove a creature at the price of it potentially being released next turn then this flaw should be given the ability to exploit. As the game stands it isn’t allowed to be exploited unless you’re packing something that can reach the flower quickly like a haste creature, it basically asks the player to both have a response to a typical removal AND have an even more specif response to countering that removal, which is haste, charge or a firebomb. Frankly, you’ll rarely ever get that response option so in most cases it’s no different than getting last nightmare’d not to mention it’s just a goose chase of waste resources.
Having a limited range exposes the flower more easily and makes it so the user has to make proper board preparations to protect it rather than treat it as a cheap last nightmare. If this idea turns out to weaken it too much, then simply have the flower not decay and bring it down to 3 health.

Azure skywhale needs to be fundamentally changed, like lowering its attack and giving it a combat ability to swallow, possibly even multiple targets that would all be randomly flung across the board upon its death.

2 Likes
#10

thumbs up, good patch notes XD

#11

Releasing creatures in a haste state would go a long way imo. As it stands now, it’s most of the time better to not kill a 1hp flower in order to not let the opponent have initiative and killing a whale above sea will make your creature drown if you cannot build lands underneath immidiately or have a movement trick at hand. That feels highly counterintuitive, to say the least.

1 Like
#12

I guess while we’re on the topic of nerfing flameburst, we could also nerf wind soldier to charge 2. You can already use the card pretty cheaply by collecting from wells, so it’s power should be made more board dependent and its best case scenario of double collecting more situational.

Horsemaster should be nerfed too to charge 2 as it gives too much reach to green and red decks and lessens their color identity. Not to mention it gives you ON TOP OF THAT an almost stat efficient creature which can allow for massive tempo plays often enough.