Could I do a better than Eth at balancing the game?

This is a really great post, but there's some small parts I'd want to flesh out more, because I question some points.

First let me address the darkness comment though; darkness requiring rune draw is a non issue if you have 2 harbs. Seriously, those things are so good with sacrifice that the drawbacks don't honestly matter. So the engine is 3 runes only (and I'd say stitched librarian is a somewhat easy include in UD decks honestly thanks to sac, so maybe 4 runes).

And when you do have harbs, the power of darkness shouldn't be underestimated; you can close out a game on rune draw, one of the most powerful methods of closing.

Going to comment on bonuses later.

 

Well said. We've always agreed on bonus strength order I think, except I have tended to rate ST over KF simply because of its overwhelming effect when applied to summons and cheap champs. Definitely not a universal view, because some ST decks don't utilize it perfectly and are still top tier (like frost). Just my general opinion.

 

Exponential value on bonus is not the same as utilization though, it's basically a different bonus when it's multiplied 2 or 3x per cost (sometimes more). In my mind utilizing the ST bonus well would involve casting non global spells, font control / contest, and proc based damage. The ST bonus allows you to have a unit on a specific square longer than any other faction. Coupled with global spells, and some of longest range units in game, as well as font ap reduction, you can determine that the ST bonus by design gives you the strongest square control per unit in the game.

Lol just typing that out was painful to my eyes. Honestly ST is the dumbest faction in the game, and takes 0 skill. You literally can't punish an ST player because of their stupid design. You'd think "HAHA, you may be controlling mid well with ur high hp, but I will rush your shrine and make you reposition! " until you Firking realize that he has awestruck and global Firking ap gen when he transfigures. Not to mention the plethora of defensive spell and relic options. What a joke of a faction... honestly i think psy takes more skill. And seriously I'm not saying fw is this elite skill (i think ff fw is gimmicky and utter trash agaisnt skilled opponents, but also really easy to play for the most part) but compared to ST it's rocket science. My God ST is stupid, and @calisk should be ashamed of himself.

As for KF, yes it is probably top bonus in game (sp might be better) but also worth mentioning is the font bonus; the lingering mobility is really a top 3 font bonus without a doubt in my mind, maybe top 2?

 

Mostly agreed, upon rereading I realize you guys were speaking strictly about the other bonuses in a vacuum for the most part whereas I was speaking about application.

 

Also, since im here, I subscribe to the idea that FW bonus works on deploy, not on death. There's no way you will benefit from death without deploying. And there is no benefit of deploying, if your units aren't useful. I think of FW bonus as a burst of potential AP on a specific rune at a potential future board state. So, it's almost 100% worse than KF on game theory, although eternal lich , xulous , and bile make a case otherwise (generally you want ap sooner than later, as that's the nature of AP).

where the FW bonus truly "just sucks" is the hard cap you have from rune draw. Rune draw makes 60% cd reduction less meaningful, because you will always be hard capped on your options. 30% is a much nicer curve, because it gives you more burst as you finish revealing your deck

Even more than that, it's also just the option alone of having burst state in the future; example: what's the point of killing broken bones if it can get to the same point in 5 turns, I might as well ignore it

 

so i don't know what st is now I wasn't on the council since shortly after the corpse era and the last thing I forced through was nerfing arctic. There's years of time since I had anything to do with st's balance.

Tbf me and soko rarely agreed on balance for st during any era of the game, nor did me and corpse. I had nothing to do with the creation of gale force or much else other than advice on the finished designs of runes that got shown to us after the fact.

I think my biggest contribution to st rune design other than getting arctic nerfed was probably my suggestion for blizzard elemental getting spell surge: snow storm but it didn't get the cost reduction to snowstorm spell to go with it....so was pointless. I tried to get them to make a jakei blade dancer since before corpse got in charge, as well as a focus on st terrain theme for as long as I was on the council...and they never gave me the time of day.

I did argue with the UD players on the council every day cause they had thee worst suggestions for st runes, but end of the day soko did what he wanted, corpse told us even less than soko did, we were glorified patch reviewers

anyway my general opinion having not played the current game isn't it better to have someone working and changing the game at all compared to the years of stagnation you had before, looking over the notes a lot of Bane Shift got nerfed hard but a lot of other runes got more interesting so imo it's not worse or better than when soko was doing it.

 

I agree that it isn't used, mainly because most UD decks win on heavy tempo. Also most ppl don't have harbs. I'm jsing it's top tier, if you build decks that benefit from setup.

 

No because the game is becoming worse.

 

Old pox was fun, you'd watch two top rank players fight, than go to the forums after to see the rage threads from the loser....was good times...

you'd get rage threads about the dumbest Bane Shift.

it was super weird what we were ok with back then, like nora beast was too much, but very few complained about a minotaur blowing up your shrine from across the map while invisible in 2 attacks.

slow was not allowed to stack but soko's favorite magnetism deck gave every champion in an aoe 1 ap a turn...

 

Well, just look at how stupid ash is, and then multiply that times the 8 ish months of patches that have gone through. Beth doesn't even play the game (less than sok did) but gets to be lead dev. Every person with common decency can see that the game is becoming more coin flip than it ever was in the history of pox. It's due to unintelligent design. Truthfully I don't understand why ppl are complaining about kento when now you have a range 5-7 st unit that can inherit silent contemplation. Aspect of divinity. The game is not competitive anymore, it's coin flip. Which is really a disservice to the "two pros battling out scenario" you are speaking on. It used to be you needed to respect mechanics, but honestly only the naive and ignorant do now. It's all about playing yahtzee simulator now to appease ppl that drool into cups. I have respect for the many players who are truly good at this game, and I feel bad that they had the game pissed on.

So ive been playing other games mostly. I do still enjoy the customs I have with @BrokenNeck tho, we have some pretty intense 1v1s using sub optimal decks

 

The game seems about as balanced as it's ever been to me.

Of course, that could be because nobody is trying too hard to break it anymore.

 

Its definitely a lack of trying / ability. Most good players dont even want to play anymore.

 

i think there was a bear that did something like that too, cant remember.

 

Why cant we go back to the Corpse days with some caution and reserve?..I liked the challenge of there was so many ways to win and you had to guard against a lot more as the champs had more options . You had way more players playing the game, cos crazy bane shift stuff was always going on all the time..main point it was fun

 

That type of balancing usually results in niche picks being more and more obscure, for the mean is heavily skewed. Also results in smaller deck pools generally, as one absurd strategy trumps all others (example stitched combo).

That being said, I do think we are heading in corpse-esque direction.

 

The Corpse days were just powercreep each new set. With no new sets, there's nothing to powercreep.

 

As opposed to the SOK days, where the invoke releases were pure and innocent

 

Honestly I'm not a fan of the attack type changes

Like it kinda screws up architypes that were fine

Example started playing jakei and now artic delegate has no attack frost

 

The damage type changes are bad