cane thoughts

If the cane\'s damage is reduced I\'d rather it be less than 30 actualy. 30 would be an improvement though. You have to realise it\'s not only 35 damage. It\'s 70 damage and a prevented attack if used on the attack resolution and again next turn. Dark decks are hurt the most by this usualy.

30. I want it to snipe Mind burrower for good.

Less than 30 would be too drastic of a change to do all at once.

I can see 30, I\'d prefer 33, puting it above most of the non breakpoint cards in that area but below the 70 life double kill. Hmm, looking at the card list, there is a hell of a lot of 35 life cards. So dropping cane below 35 would seriously lower its usefulness

I REALLY dont want to see cane lowered below 30 as then it becomes more useful as a draw card then as a sniper.

This is a problematic issue for me. I mean, I agree with pretty much everything you say, save the fact that it\'s overpowered and that it needs a change. Practically every bit of analasys is correct, but you conclude the wrong things from them.

You\'re almost disregarding the 0 sac aspect while, to me, this wages off against the versatility. And its cost to damage ratio matches with what we see with both the Yaiba.

But if I\'m now the only one opposing, I\'ll go with 33 damage if needed.

This is completely contradictory with

sqweek Wrote:I don\'t see Oxide as burnt on changing Cane so much as burnt on bringing an issue to the table.

Even though there was no need to point this out, I guess I\'m just about as stubborn as the other balancers here and want to be right ^^

Lowering it\'s ability to snipe 35 creatures also increases the other person\'s ability to use it own their own 35 life creatures in the advent of a suicide run.

Thus, it\'s not that big of a change to make, as I said before, more suicide options for less definite death.

...I\'d agree with 33. But if 33 is accepted, I demand crossroads be buffed.

Here\'s the list of creature\'s who can\'t be one shot sniped anymore if the cane is lowered to 33. Black and 5 mana abitiers mainly.

Whelp. Paladin Trainee. Fallen Paladin. Winged Demon. Doom Coffin. Shadow Stalker. (whoo. Ablity users aren\'t useless!) Skeletal Warlock. Kelar Engineering. Melrak Cultist. Melrak Soldier. Dream Invader. Holy Banisher. Holy Conjurer. Dr. N, Pirate Captain. Chimaera. Dark Wasp (whee. Go ability immuners!) Kelar Rider.

Shadehawk gets out of double snipe. Lumi Prime does too. Goldenwing, Prince Valian, Slime Dragon and Prince Glomp also survive the barrage.

33 -> 66, which has to be there to kill Angelic Warrior. Otherwise I\'d propose 30. But 33 seems like a good place to start (and hopefully finish.)

moonfish: I dont particularly want to have cane changed. But like you said, the majority seem to think it is too strong so I\'d accept 33 as a compromise. I agree that sac has been dismissed, I\'d like to see what XO thinks about the sac being an issue as far as versatility.

Xypherous-Oxide: yes, lowering cane\'s damage allows using it to draw off all those monsters, this is a bad thing, probably not from a balance viewpoint but definitely from a flavour viewpoint IMO. I see cane as being a sniper that also helps your opponent rather then a draw card that also hurts yourself. Yeah ,crossroad does need a boost but I still think double caning crossroad should kill her so I\'m fine with her in relation to cane atm.

Well, it\'s not completely one-sided, since I count myself in the MooNFisH-bane2571 party; I think the nerf-camp might just be more vocal. I\'m not surprised that Amped is the extremist, since he tends to favor rush+burrower, which is arguably the type of deck that would benefit most from a castrated Cane.

Whoa there. You just crossed a dangerous line there Tamdrik. Accusing people of wanting imbalance simply because it would help them more?

Man. If we started that, there\'d be a whole plethora of:

\"You beatsticker! You don\'t know what the cane really does to most decks with your damn birds!\" \"Shut up rusher! You just can\'t handle it. Go back to your burrowers!\" whine.

*shudder*

On Vocality, if you want to argue that point then I\'m going to insist that you give me an adequate suggestion why Cane should have variability on top of being equal to the other effect-damage liners, Tamdrik.

Null Sac being affect by Holy beacon? ...Yes, Holy beacon does that. The One Effect D. If it had a Sac cost, how many times would it get sacrificed? It\'d come out, kill a dozen creatures, and get sacrificed to finish the game. As it stands, I think the no sacrifice comes because of the power you get when you something multicolor that\'s on the curve. Swimsuit. Crossover. The null sacrifice is designed to keep the tricolors from being put in every singledeck to improve it, as they can (Crossover especially, being a mana gen).

No Tamdrik is right actualy. I do have a deck with rush elements and burrower, and I love to use it (though lately i\'ve been in an \"experementing with lockdowns\" phase). So it\'s no surprise that I\'d hate the cane more than others =p. I really just have an issue of how common it is to see a cane just thrown into any deck and single handedly making that deck twice as effective on it\'s own. 30 damage woulden\'t really be bad... I mostly think that such a good card should be a little more rare.

Heh. I\'m probably the biggest oponent of burrower and even I wouldn\'t mind seeing cane reduced to 20 damage.

That said, I don\'t see why cane\'s camage should be 33 and not 30. There aren\'t that many creatures with 31, 32 or 33 life. Likewise, the only creature with 61-66 life that comes to mind is the K. dragoon (another hated card) but then again a dragoon deck is more likely to have canes than the oponent, and they are unique.

On selfcaning, 30 damage for a card doesn\'t seem too bad. This only changes if you\'re using healers or creature generators, which aren\'t affected (much) by lowering damage by 5.

Angels. Angel Cheatery.

No, it\'s logical, X-O. If I played a particular kind of deck that gets throttled by a certain card, it would be very easy for me to get frustrated playing against it, and thus lead me to vocally advocate nerfing it. Fortunately, I\'m a bit of an eclectic deckbuilder, though that also leads me to being relatively ineffective in a highly competitive environment.

Another example was that Atlim hated... HATED Miasma Factory. I mean, I know there was quite a bit of opposition to it, but he was used to his bird decks winning, and Miasma regularly beat him. Heck, my mediocre, half-@$$ed Miasma deck beat him once, and he was livid about it in the forums shortly thereafter. Personally, I never saw the big deal with Miasma, since I was able to beat it more often than not with goofball decks, and my aforementioned Miasma deck overall had a losing record.

So I\'m not implying that anyone is consciously supporting nerfing something because it would give them a personal edge in CMC; I\'m just saying that it\'s natural that if you see a card \"at its worst\" regularly due to the style of deck you play, you\'ll be more apt to think it\'s overpowered.

Xypherous-Oxide Wrote:On Vocality, if you want to argue that point then I\'m going to insist that you give me an adequate suggestion why Cane should have variability on top of being equal to the other effect-damage liners, Tamdrik.

Null Sac being affect by Holy beacon? ...Yes, Holy beacon does that. The One Effect D. If it had a Sac cost, how many times would it get sacrificed? It\'d come out, kill a dozen creatures, and get sacrificed to finish the game. As it stands, I think the no sacrifice comes because of the power you get when you something multicolor that\'s on the curve. Swimsuit. Crossover. The null sacrifice is designed to keep the tricolors from being put in every singledeck to improve it, as they can (Crossover especially, being a mana gen).

You\'re suggesting that null sac is \'par for the course\' instead of a drawback. And it\'s not like Cane isn\'t vulnerable to other effect D-- Holy Beacon is just exceptionally painful for it. Null sac reduces Cane\'s versatility (I think that\'s the word you mean when you say variability-- variability describes Lab Experiment). It prevents you from being able to get some emergency mana to respond to an in-game crisis, and having a decent sac value is standard-issue. Not having it is a drawback that is applied as a balancing factor.

I\'ve played Cane here and there, and I\'ve played against it quite a few times, and it\'s a strong, useful card, but I\'ve had more problems with the Swords (either Sword) than the Cane. With the Swords, you can kill off every opposing creature, sac it, and play a bunch of your own. Or just lock them down and beat them to death a bit more gradually. And you haven\'t even filled up their hand with cards to play once you sac it. But I\'m not really advocating nerfing the Swords, either; they\'re strong, expensive effects, like the Cane. Wow, I started three consecutive sentences with different conjunctions. :)

Anyway, it\'s harder to be more vocal about \"Let\'s leave things the way they are\" than \"Burn the witch!\", but I see no reason to change the Cane as it stands. Heck, we\'re (in theory) improving half the cards in CMC that don\'t have the word \"Cane\" in its name, so maybe if that ever happens, the Cane won\'t seem as overpowered to the nerfstick-wielding mob.

I don\'t think trying to advocate changing is caused by looking at general statistics. I always look at my own experiences when considering a balance suggestion.
I also make sure that my own experiences have a wide spread over the CMC card selection available, for the purpose of getting better at balancing. That\'s why I have and maintain around 10 decks constantly, one being better than others, and have used pretty much every card (save some of the prince cards, I got lazy there).

I mean, even cards that seem rather useless (Dream Invader seemed useless to me, and I used to think of Cane as an underpowered card) can seem a lot better when you actually try to play with them.

Xypherous-Oxide Wrote:Angels. Angel Cheatery.

Ah, good point. It still feels like leaving it be too powerful just to deal with this one card.

Then again, the 30-34 damage range means that cane won\'t completely obliterate dark beatdown (unless they have a gloop valley), so I guess I\'d have to playtest it to see if it\'s enough of a change. Manaless would still be in trouble though.

Maybe I\'ll just start running 1/3rd effect destruction on my decks and see how it feels.

If people feel the Cane needs to be 33 damage I guess that\'s okay. Paying 12 mana for a card (even spread across colors) ought to give you a fair amount of power though--I\'d be strongly opposed to any further nerf.

Saying that you pay 12 mana for cane is like saying you pay 6 mana for crossover.

You do pay it, but there\'s no way in hell anyone in their right mind would say that the total converted cost should be anywhere near the power level of the card, even without a sacrifice value on the card.

You preety much should be more screwed when a sword comes out, it\'s a significantly bigger cost on their part. being monocolor and costing more. (If you accept the 2:3 conversion ratio) If there was the same level of \"screwedness\" between cane and sword, that would mean that cane would need a significant cost increase. It also costs their deck a lot, forcing them to be dual or monocolor.

\"Harder to be more vocal about keeping it the same than changing it?\" Just one page of posts ago, MooNFisH was saying that I seemed to be the only one in favor of changing it. And now? So before, when I was \"alone\" I had no point because I was alone. And now, when other people agree with me, I have no point because it\'s all because other people agree with me. I can\'t win. ><\"\"

On Null sacrifice then, If you suggest that Cane\'s null sacrifice balances it for versatility, then I have a hard time justifying why crossover or swimsuit shouldn\'t have positive sacrifices. They\'re preety powerful cards, (nowhere near cane, but they cost less as well.) If Cane\'s null sacrifice does cost it *that much* to make up for it\'s increased versatility, then I\'m going to have to say that crossover and swimsuit be buffed if Cane doesn\'t get nerfed.

And of course, I\'m going to have a hard time justifying swimsuit be buffed, seeing as how it was nerfed to uniqueness when it first came out. Though I suppose I could, using the cane as a guide.

Personal gameplay experiences vary far too much to be reliable. Especially since you deal with quite a huge spectrum of skill levels and deck levels. Something Goods would have no trouble with simply by his virtue of skill would probably be hard to counter for someone new or even someone who\'s been around for a while. I mean, yes, I have decks that have no problem with Winged Golems or Burrowers... Doesn\'t mean that just because I can deal with them, it means that they\'re balanced. That\'s why I\'ll always look at numbers and card potentials and draw potentials and potential game scenarios rather than personal experiences. Personal experiences are biased too much too often to draw anything useful.

Nerfstick happy.. Nerfstick happy.. what was the last nerf... Miasma 1D? or was it.. Grah. I can\'t remember. Help me out here.

Of course not. You pay extra mana for speed--that\'s generally accepted fact. Would it make you happier if I said \"If people feel the Cane needs to be 33 damage I guess that\'s okay. Paying 4/4/4 for a card ought to give you a fair amount of power though--I\'d be strongly opposed to any further nerf.\"?

Dav1000: Then I demand that Keeps on Giving be buffed to 50 life per use.

Sorry if I sounded edgy. I hadn\'t gotten the time to edit my post yet.