Discussion Corner: Overpowered...?

Well, to start things off, I'd say runes that fundamentally change how the game is played should be allowed to exist. With that said, runes that fundamentally change how the game is played and can sit far from battle behind the shrine may need to be looked at. Of course, there are exceptions to every generality.

 

Runes that have too much of an impact for their nora cost like martyr and bouncer have been alot in the past. Or runes that have ridiculously strong abilities or broken rune combinations like geomancers shockwave with strip armor and gravity flux or how the angels used to be.

These are some examples of what overpowered is.

voil storm flyer, firk mind shredder, and icesnap all seem like good examples of balanced runes. These runes are strong and effective but not ridiculous for their nora cost.

 

The problem with bouncer in the past was that it soaked up and dealt as much damage, and caused as much disruption(bounce, massive leap) as champions that costed much nora more than it. Similiar problem with martyr. Martyr had high damage and hp and only cost like 20-30 nora after it dies, it was too efficient for what it did.(I think it is too weak now though)

With champions you want them to be powerful and effective but you want their power to be relative to their cost and similar to other champions with the same cost.

The new defiler knight looks really good, obsidian venger still seems too weak(but much improved), fire phoenix is too strong(op but not far from being balanced).

I don't think most hunter abilities are balanced. Instead of removing them completely they could just have their % lowered though, just because they are interesting and maybe would add to the strategy of the game if they weren't so powerful against what they hunted.(declare hunted too) Whenever abilities are made weaker though, often times they need their nora cost adjusted as well.

When I say impact I am mainly refering to what that particular rune brings to the table against most bgs. Groble rock eater for example has a high impact for its cost against most bg because of physical damage being so common, groble piledriver similar in cost but on average no where near as effective. Groble rock eater might be fine in another faction but its tool set and cost combined with IS support runes makes it extremely tough to kill for many bgs.

 

I don't see why pacified isn't cleansable.

 

Hunter: X is a good example of abilities that are terrible and sandbaggy when made narrow and oppressively strong when they apply to 'everything'.

I personally think power turn combos are what make the game bad. The game almost totally revolves around champ speed, and any ability that breaks AP curves break balance.

The hate against KF has been evident for a lomg time because of +1 spd. It is a constant advantage, but it also is only better than the AP your opponent generates the turn after you. But an 8 damage archer with 38 hp and 7 speed is utterly outclassed by a Martyr with 60 hp, 7 starting AP, 15+ damage and automatic inclusion of Mobi. Mobi makes your creatures speeds effectively all +4. 7 spd that can't attack or that does low damage is significantly worse than 6 spd that gets +4 ap on demand.

Horn of order costs 50 nora and takes 2 AP an equip slot and another champ within 2 to give 4 ap to 1 champ. Mobi...+4 to all your champs, no strings. One is strong, the other is OP.

Damage scaling on activated abilities could stand to be much more evened out. Rain of arrows 3 costs a lot of nora but on a 8 damage champ is only 6 damage. significantly worse than frost cone on a mob that is doing 20+ damage. More -balanced- would be a more standardized damage formula.

Rain of arrows, frost cone, disease breath, flame xx, etc should all have the same nora-damage ratio.

I think offensive abilities should be roughly 1/3 more expensive than defensive abilities, since offense kills your opponent faster and essentially IS defensive.

If we pretend base damage is 10, then going down to 8 damage is a bigger debuff than the other champ that goes to 12 damage is getting buffed. Do the current damage-nora costs reflect this?

 

Nefari Guardian, Split Personality, Initiator, Skywing Rumbler, UT, martyr, Deathguard, Collosal Boa, Frost amp, swallow whole, Moga Lord Guard, Moga Assault Team, Grintmaw Bouncer, Groble Rock Eater, Boghopper Glutton, The stats on leoss, Moga cheapies, ...

I could go on, but these were the first that came to mind before I didn't feel like writing more. Stupidly efficient, game changing abilities/interactions, stupidly good tanks.

 

On your premise of power, should psychic blast be considered balanced? (i consider it balanced feel free to call me a psychic zealot)

 

Some problems that occur are because of the following.
X bestows 100 powerlevels
Y bestows 100 powerlevels
Target has X and Y. Powerlevel of target is valued as X + Y
Target actually has a powerlevel of X*Y. Target is undervalued and OP.

 

balance is quite relative. what's more important is "OPness", since that has to have a reference point. Most often to ability to kill or not to be killed is what has the most game changing effect, with how direct it is and how much it costs being the determining factors of how powerful it is. The hard part of pleasing the playerbase is that everyone has a different reference point. A non-biased player who wants to see DB or Mobi as too powerful has obviously set their reference point lower than someone who thinks they're ok. There is also the separation of apples and oranges into their respective reference points for comparison with each other, and what is even an apple and an orange.

 

Then there are mechanics that individually aren't overpowered, but then when you have a BG that is focused around the mechanic, becomes overpowered. Take Stealth BGs for example. Individually stealth champs aren't overpowered. People typically have enough detection to find a couple stealth champs, whether that is in the form of AoE spells, detection ability, champs with a greeting ability, or something else. The complaint I see about stealth being overpowered is when a BG focuses on stealth, where the counters an average deck has are exhausted long before the stealth player runs out of champs.

 

I think alot of these issues could be solved with an earlier approach to the problem: Form and balance all champions depending on what role they are supposed to fill.

I know alot of people who play this game just want a super efficient rune to win them games, but please dont listen to them because this is what is causing the meta to become stale and uninteresting.

From what ive viewed over the last two months an old playstyle seem to be reemerging to pox. The cheapmeat spam, instead of having a few strong champions that does everything. We now see that the top meta has shifted to cheap spam instead. In short I think this is a move in the right direction. But what would help even more is to change furthermore in that direction. Im not saying everything should cost 60 nora and be streamlined into its most efficient point but I do think the relics of the past, namely the swiss army knife champs could be toned down or reworked so that they fill more clear roles.

Examples of this being asked for are ashe the bandit prince losing marauder, an iconic ability that makes him unique. But it costs too much for him to be playable, or so they say. So how could he retain marauder without staying expensive? Well I think he is a prime example of old design not fitting in the present of the game, namely a champion that is supposed to do everything reasonably well. He enters with 2 summons, these can each deploy relics, fight in melee and have good hp pools. 43+45x2= 133 hp. Thats alot. What if the summons were lower hp pool. Would it make marauder cheaper? Would it shift his role to something else? What if you knocked off his range. To maybe 3-5, take down his damage or change him from a heavy range option, into a high range harasser? There are a number of routes to take but I think the sum of it all is still he does too much and ends up costing too much.


Other examples of champions with high hp pool and stats are Zeventrech, also known as one of the most dreaded champions in its prime. Now he never sees play, having strong abilities, good range and stats does not help. He is simply too expensive. Why is this? Well to find out we need to look at his stats:

DMG: 16
SPD: 6
RNG: 5-7
DEF: 1
HP: 54

The two things that stand out to me is the above average damage combined with his range. His ability set: magic immune and aegis, says 2 things. 1: hes supposed to be tanky and when you factor in his upgrades, hes supposed to be a split race deck enabler. Problem is, hes enabling a deck or theme that doesnt exist, and maybe never did. The other issue is that he tries, like mentioned before with Ashe, hes doing too much and ends up costing too much.

Does he need all that damage? Aegis and immunity magic are cool, wich makes him a tank that will be hard to take out. Then lets look at upgrades, would he need to enable a theme when he cant even be played in full faction? I think if you removed some of his damage and changes his second upgrade line (remove 3 ranks of frost cone) into something like: Regenerate, Frost Barrier, Antagonize. Just spitballing here, im sure there is better alternatives.

The overall idea is that if something ends up having too many options it ends up being redundant because they will be too expensive to be playable.

PS: Reason why I chose split heros as example is not necessarily because I want them buffed, but because the issue is most apparent with them from what I see.

PPS: Its in cases where the champion ends up having a large toolkit and still not costing accordingly that it becomes OP. That said I do think that OP and too strong are words that explain the issue poorly as opposed to where you can pinpoint where exactly the issue lies.

ty for read.

Hope this answers some of your questions @Sokolov I may be wrong but I think this is the general consensus on the topic.

 

I think all damaging attacks should cap at +100% of base damage. all defenses should cap at 75% resistance. I can see resilience being an exception. But that should make it an uncommon ability.

I don't really get Boa being OP...its hardly used even in beasts. And it is on a short list of runes nerfed MORE than 4 times since revamp.

It had damage reduced, had tough removed, had colossal nerfed, had its TFB taken away, lost hitpoints 2 or 3 times, had defense lowered, now it lost consume. How many more nerfs will make it not OP? Lol. It only has 3 abilities plus lethargic. Does it need Race:none, pariah, and healing deficiency?

 

Please just don't make the factions flavorless, balance doesn't means making everything the same.

 

I said it when you did your post-Corpse revamp and again when Gedden did his: Power is relative. It doesnt matter what things currently are, however they are, there will be some that are more powerful than others. If everything has 1 dmg and one champ has 2 dmg, it could be seen as twice as powerful as the others, yet no one would use a 2 dmg combat champ currently.

The only real problem I see is that we have fairly static HP levels and constant map grid sizes. Therefore, you have to keep dmging oportunities within range of acceptable outputs according to the HP levels and how many champs/attacks you want to be necessary to kill a champ. We are currently at about 4, we used to be at 5-6.

Map grid size is constant. So movement potential needs to be at an acceptable level to be able to participate on the maps and gain objectives competitively with other champ choices. We've found that a disparity of 3 speed is pretty much the max, 4 is a critical flaw. Therefore, anything that consistently moves 9 will have an unwarranted advantage over something that moves 5. They will also have an unwarranted advantage obtaining map objectives. The maps can handle average 6.5 speed, so if averages get up over 7 (thank you KF), again you reach critical mass.

The other general problematic trend I've noted is how Gedden ignorantly removed impenetrable almost completely from the game (he also did this with anti range abilities). The game is inundated with champ based abilities. Impenetrable needs to go back out to champions.

So, I don't really care about power as long as you keep it in check with HP averages and map grid sizes and its comparable to its peers.

 

I see overpowered as a relationship to the format. Hell, even if something is format defining or format warping it can stick around. In Modern and even Legacy MtG, Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay define early- and mid-game removal. I see something as overpowered if it warps or defines a format to the point of being a necessary include not just in any BG which might use it but any BG period, or which stands head and shoulders above all other options as a competitive option. Something defines the format. But that something is overpowered if it is unquestionably the best way to compete.

[EDIT 12/7/2016: Something important to note while reading back through this thread: I am using "overpowered" here in the casual sense; I think it's actually a terrible word for anything but the most specific situations.]

 

To me, Pox is so complex now that balance is almost impossible to achieve. Many years ago, I commented that Pox had moved from a 'Warhammer' feel, with low level units in a pitched tactical battle, to a 'Godzilla' feel; with super monsters bristling with multiple abilities, fighting it out.

20 rune decks and limited ability sets meant that there were blind spots in factions, and more so in individual BGs. It was often a case of playing to your strengths and not worrying about gaps. The bad thing was that games could be won at the BG design stage if a BG had a lack of counters.

The move towards Swiss Army knife runes with many abilities, and all effects being available to all factions means fewer BG design insta-wins, but can result in crazier combo's. Less a tactical game of manoeuvre, more a 'BANG BANG I win' scenario.

I would consider a rune OP if it NECESSITATES the inclusion of specific counters which have very little use outside their value in countering the OP rune.

One issue is that what can be a cool ability on a champ becomes a crazy theme when many runes have it. E.g. I would say that NKD as was was OP, but now is just challenging.

The dev's are doing a decent job of sorting stuff out, but part of the appeal of Pox is to figure out mad combos that are OP.

I quite like that!

 

So... It seems that people are agreeing that things are op if...

1] They necessitate their own inclusion or the inclusion of other runes (in your or other people's battle groups).
2] A certain rune or set of runes becomes unbeatable (reason doesn't really matter), requiring only noob level skill to utilize. (I don't think that something being powerful due to high skill is bad, but worth looking at if it persists for too long).
3] Crutches are bad. They don't necessarily need be removed, but things need to change regarding them.

3a] Thematic/flavorful/theme abilities shouldn't become crutches, but should still be enough to make them desirable to use in the intended way (read: X theme works best with more X's in your battle group).​

There are certain other things that are not inherently "op", but sometimes get lumped in with it due to other problems within them due to other problems with them. These include:
1] Varying play styles (Superchamps, cheap meat, debuff, etc.). It's not clear here, but really what it means is that people ave differing opinions on what the game should focus on, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH "OP".
2] Meta vs. non-Meta. Basically this has to do with what the target player base is going to be: People who enjoy winning, or people who enjoy playing, respectively. It sounds harsh, I know, but it's something to be considered at least. Again, NOTHING TO DO WITH "OP".

Did I hit everything?