Big Balance Bonanza

MooNFisH Wrote:Well, obviously Holy Peacemancer is underpowered as well. I thought he was getting a boost too?
Like, 35 life. That and the fact it costs less to activate and is a Cleric, makes me think it should be a-ok then.

Funny, I don\'t see anything on the list that refers to Holy Peacemancer...

Aldgar Omk Wrote:If you play an earth elemental, however...you pay 4G for a 20/45 non-unique creature who can dizzy for 2G at B speed...and serves the following functions:
1.It can dizzy creatures at B speed, being able to stop even other dizziers like kelar sage/sparks/dirlend, or snipers like warlock.
2.It can die. Very fast, and very easily. 20 attack is nothing, and the life isn\'t really great either...most 3mana-ers can take the elemental out, and 2G per turn is a HEAVY upkeep. You could easily play 5 peacemancers and
dizzy your opponent\'s creatures ad infinitum, provided you have at least 4 shrines out. But even IF you manage to play five earth elementals, you will hardly be able to get 10G a turn, will you?

3-mana creatures killing the elemental? Let\'s look at some basic 3-mana creatures, shall we?
Kelar Fencer - 30/30. Dies to and kills Elemental on second attack.
Goblin - 30/20 with ability to hit for 40. Dies to elemental on first attack, will kill itself with ability and the elemental will survive with 5 life.
Karn - unique 30/33. Like a Fencer, dies to Elemental and kills it on second attack.
Cody, Tom - unique 30/30\'s with no or a weak ability. Again like a fencer.
Drecker - unique 20/30. Dies to elemental on second attack, but doesn\'t kill it. Does, however, draw cards and allow for other solutions.
Rio - unique 25/20. Dies to Elemental on first attack.

As you can see, you normally result in a one-for-one trade over two turns with the Elemental if the ability is not used. For some black 3-mana monsters, you end up needing a second card to finish it off. 4-mana creatures like Jeff and Phantom Galgy die to it and kill it, making the mana investments break even. I\'m not saying the Elemental\'s a perfectly balanced card, but I think the ability gaining life will make it too powerful.

While it is easy to play 5 peacemancers and keep them going, any attack or a laser will kill them. Meaning you\'ll be forced to spend all your mana keeping them alive, whereas you can take a hit with the Elemental and maybe live to sac it.

I was going to argue about commons, uncommons, and rares supposedly having differences in power level, but then again, rarity is pretty much useless in the CmC economy.

I suppose I\'m making a better argument to boost Peacemancers than keep the elemental the same, so boost the Peacemancer\'s stats!

azulknight Wrote:Funny, I don\'t see anything on the list that refers to Holy Peacemancer...

...hence the suggestion I made.
The part that was confusing to me was that it wasn\'t on the list (see: \"I thought he was getting a boost too?\"). Then I suggested a change, in the way I thought it was going to be changed already.

Yes, it is possible to play five peacemancers, locking down your opponant indefinately. This comes at the cost of five mana a turn and all five of your creature slots. Unless you\'re using columns, that means that you are getting next to nothing each turn - 1D, 1G, and maybe a few L - while your opponant continues to generate at the normal rate. Meanwhile, a five-card 20-mana five-mana-per-turn soft lock is not really an epic deal. The simple fact is that unless you already have decent board control or you orb one out on turn two, a peacemancer has a not-good chance of surviving his first turn. (If you did orb one out on turn two, I doubt you\'d want to make much use of his ability anyway, sice you\'d be putting youself in a fair sized mana hole.)

Being a cleric is of rather limited value; probably not worth considering much at all during balance, although it\'s worth noting that he does largely ignore the downside of Lucinda\'s ability.

Eye vant zee changes!

Is there any word on implementation yet?

Like MooNFisH, I\'m really disappointed that the balance changes haven\'t been implemented yet. How about this... if they\'re implemented in good faith (i.e., not just for 24 hours or something similarly evil) by the end of Saturday May 7, I buy 10 donations. Minus one per day afterwards. Anyone else want to offer a similar \'bribe\' to webby?

(P.S. - Not opposed to boosting Peacemancer, like +0/+10 or somesuch)

If I had the money, I would\'ve ^^.

And I\'ll send the \"boys\" round to make sure that Tamdrik does indeed cough up the cash.

I\'m probably going to merge this with my local files.

By the way, why does the list still say:

Quote:Fairy Dragon = gains \'dragon\' type

Also, I\'m sorry I didn\'t get this done earlier, but I\'ve barely time for anything nowadays, despite not doing anything to waste the time.

That\'s what I get for updating the CSC and changelist seperately. Dammit. I totally saw that coming aswell, but I thought I had managed to keep things consistent.
I\'ll do a proper check on it later to make sure all the changes are accurately reported, but I don\'t have the time today.

However, I do have time to update the CSCs to be \'current\' with the public CSCs (v5 is in first post).

Times of change are ahead. I\'m am so very, very happy!

I\'l get the champagne for when the changes come!

Orright so here\'s the lowdown.
Mind Burrower - attempted fix did sweet f--- all.
Exodragon - gets +6/+6 with both Tonya and Hawk in play, but nothing if only one of them is out
Messengite Church - hahahahahaha oops.

The attached CSCs make the following changes (based on the currently available CSCs):
-Messengite Church fix - counter starts at and is reset to 3
-Exodragon fix - changed second CMP to CMS so it shouldn\'t cancel the ability when only one other dragobo-nabber is out
-Another shot at the Mind Burrower change - I added a CMS command to check if the target has >=1 life. I\'m banking on it failing and stopping the ability (leaving Burrower dizzy) if the target isn\'t there any more before the POSSE command can fail and cancel the ability.

If you want it to dizzy when it fails change DEND to END

CMP and CMS just determine whether it should dizzy when the ability fails or simply not do the ability.

But then if the ability is successful the stolen creature will be dizzied, right?
Comparing with Mind Control Ray it looks like CMS will do what I want it to (assuming it fails the same way if its target is not there).

All right, I\'ll give it a try.

I really disagree with the change to Dragon Whelp. It was tough enough already, and now you put it over the 35 health breakpoint. It\'s now on par with Detestai, has (admittably weak) racial bonuses, and is not unique.

~> Leander.

You\'re complaining about the Whelp? Let\'s compare to the Kelar Warrior.

3 less attack
3 more life
MMW immunity
No Saurizal Synergy
Synergy with Kelar General, Meilar1, Kelar Manamancer, Elven City Kel\'Sor, Kelar Sentry, Regent Faritin

Plus disagreements should have been made in the balance thread itself.
Join me and complain about Twisted Paladin, a worthy cause!

Mind Burrower still didn\'t dizzy on failure I\'m afraid, so I\'m not sure if the suggestion is workable at this point (without also dizzying stolen monsters, anyway).
And I messed up that Messengite Church fix, the counter starts at 3 but still gets reset to 1. *bonk self*
At least Exodragon works now =D

Before I issue another fix, the issue of Log Dice has been raised. Now, previously the grey-mana part of the ability was:
MANAG^ownr^rnd:2:8:^
This had the effect of not quite matching the card text as it would grant 2,3,4,5,6,7 or 8 G mana instead of either 2,4,6 or 8. So, when I changed the range to 2,4,6,8,10 I also changed the ability to:
MANAG^ownr^rnd:1:5:2^
Which according to ability.txt distributed with the old card editor should get a random number between 1-5 [inclusive] then multiply it by 2. So there\'s two things I can think of:

• rnd doesn\'t actually work like that
• I missed a : after the 2

Depending on which it is, it probably needs to be changed to either rnd:2:10: or rnd:1:5:2:, but I want to wait for webrunner\'s word on this one.
Just in case you\'d prefer to do the changes yourself, webrunner (instead of fiddling about importing another set of CSCs from me) it\'s probably a good idea to get rid of the DIZZY/CMS>= junk from Mind Burrower - I think I may have inadvertently altered its behaviour causing it to dizzy any creatures it steals. But I didn\'t think to test it earlier and now there\'s no one around and the second account I just tried to create won\'t login.

Considering the rising political and criminal powers of Cult Of Nerfing All Mind Burrowers Instantly (CONAMBI for short), would it really be such a bad idea for the creature to be dizzied on takeover. I\'m not going to provide a pro/con argument because it\'s been done to death, but it is something to consider. It wouldn\'t be the greatest of nerfs, but it could satisfy the masses.

You could also only permit targetting of a dizzy creature - I\'m sure you can think of how it might work thematically. This way the entire dizzy thing isn\'t an issue - only problem is that it\'d be a serious nerf to the burrower.

Notice that dizzying the stolen creature isn\'t that big a nerf. You still get the creature as you normally would, but it stops the double-block (or triple-kill) that is one of the most annoying things about burrower. By itself it certainly doesn\'t make the burrower underpowered.

It at least seems on the path to a reasonable balance on burrower. We\'ll discuss aditional changes later.

You do need the : after the 2.