Mind burrower discussion

Of all the latter suggestions, I still like the larval/gain ability change the best. Simplest and effective. You lose the ability to undizzy them with creatures, yes, but that doesn't seem like too big of a deal. OTOH, you can use other spells to keep them alife (equip armor and so on), unlike straigh inmunity.

Changing costs has been tried, and it just makes the combo more or less common. Some adaptive costs might work (take damage equal to the target's attack, pay half the target's cost, etc), or some sort of compensation (oponent gains mana equal to the target's sac). But it seems that a turn delay ought to be acceptable, given the fact that it was like that before.

I would add the the burrower should dizzy whatever creature it steals.

Too often do you get this weird 3:1 swap ratio where he burrows one of your attackers, then blocks the attacker attacking the burrower with the creature he stole. Then next turn, he can either attack to get rid of a third creature or sac it for mana.

Or... actually...

Perhaps make burrower undizzy the creature it steals.. and give that creature fleeting.

I note that the larval change will only make people combo the burrower with dizziers, instead of undizziers. Which basically amounts to the same thing in the end.

Xypherous-Oxide Wrote:I would add the the burrower should dizzy whatever creature it steals.

Too often do you get this weird 3:1 swap ratio where he burrows one of your attackers, then blocks the attacker attacking the burrower with the creature he stole. Then next turn, he can either attack to get rid of a third creature or sac it for mana.

Or... actually...

That's fine, in fact, if we want to do step by step balance changes to cards, we should add this first before any other changes.

Xypherous-Oxide Wrote:Perhaps make burrower undizzy the creature it steals.. and give that creature fleeting.

Yikes, I'm all for balance, but I think this changes the burrower's mechanic too much. I think we just want to slow down the mechanic, not change it. Maybe this as a different card.

Xypherous-Oxide Wrote:I note that the larval change will only make people combo the burrower with dizziers, instead of undizziers. Which basically amounts to the same thing in the end.

Not neccessarily, it will at least let the opponent use that creature one more time or sac it. Let's say I have a dark meilar and a rio, and you put out a mind burrower.

Normally, you would undizzy the burrower, use him on dark meilar, then next turn use dark meilar against me.

In this case, assuming you only have one dizzier I could do the following:

-Attempt to use ability or attack, target burrower with rio during attack. Thus, you will either take damage by meilar, or lose your burrower, at least.
-Avoid the risk by saccing him

Zaen Wrote:You lose the ability to undizzy them with creatures, yes, but that doesn't seem like too big of a deal

Zaen Wrote:But it seems that a turn delay ought to be acceptable, given the fact that it was like that before.

I am not trying to argue with you just to get my ideas through or anything, I agree, your way would help balance burrower, but the main reason I have with reverting him to old school burrower without allowing creatures to undizzy him is because of creature sacrificing.

If we don't allow players to use burrowers before the opponent has a chance to sacrifice their creature, it'll pretty much just turn him into a counterable spell that forces opponents to sac their biggest creature and he will never actually be used for his main purpose.

Do you have any ideas that would prevent mind burrower from changing in this way?

Forcing people to sacrifice their biggest creature is already a very big attack on the burrower's part. And then you still get to take a creature and kill another.

On a personal note, I dislike the burrower. I think it should be nerfed so hard as to make the oponent not resent when people play it. It should cost as much as a cannabalize. But I don't think anyone would agree to this. I think adding a larval stage is not enough of a nerf, but I'll accept it since the current main problem is the insta-steal, and it puts it close to the original version.

After this change is implemented, there will probably be more burrower decks. I'll probably make one. If people still think it's overpowered, we can talk about steal-and-dizzy and so on (which I like, BTW, because of the reason XO mentioned)

Here\'s my thoughts on the Burrower:

1) You get to remove an opponent\'s creature AND gain an identical one for yourself. This is obviously extremely powerful for big creatures and only mildly exciting for small ones, so let\'s look at a reasonable middle case to get a baseline idea. Stealing a 5-mana beatstick removes its attack on you and gives you a speed-summon 5-mana beatstick. This is well worth 9 mana and 2 cards, methinks. And for bigger creatures this is an EXTREMELY good deal, which forces your opponent to sacrifice it. Thus gaining you a small creature or partial board lock in addition to forcing a big creature sacrifice...or you can just use the undizzy on your turn and grab a dizzy big thing.

2) The Burrower is, however, vulnerable to creature D--lawyers, t-mancy...with Tmancy/laser the Burrower even takes a significant loss. Lawyers/ED2 is about a break even really. Still, this makes it more vulnerable than a spell, which is a key point since it\'s much more powerful than a 9D spell should be even with the 2 cards required thing. Compare to Canny.

3) But wait. There\'s a very important way in which the Burrower is LESS vulnerable than a spell. If I remove my creature before your Canny hits (with a Lucky Save or whatever), it fizzles, you lose mana, and you don\'t gain life. If I remove it before your Burrower can steal it...your Burrower lives.

4) I think the Burrower is too powerful. I think if it cost 10D and fizzled like a spell, that\'d probably be okay. 12D for a creature steal means it\'s only an okay deal when stealing a beatstick, and while it\'s still an excellent use against big creatures, there\'s the mancy/Laser/Lucky Save threat to counterbalance it.

How about something like \"Has a XY% chance of being destroyed when targetted by a spell\"? It would become harder to undizzy, as only ability creatures could pull it off (more easily countered here), and could also allow desperation counters by unloading whatever spells you had onto it (be it your regular laser, or just Foom, Firebolt, even Equip Weapon). Even with a small chance of selfdestructing (=< 20%) it\'d still be a huge gamble to use in any situation except where the opponent has no mana/cards in hand.

Although this would need new coding by Webrunner.

Other things to consider are combinations of the following: Ability dizzies, Ability prevents Burrower from naturally undizzying next turn, % chance of destroying itself on dizzying, % chance fleeting, reduced life (either 20 or 25), increased mana cost.

I vote for increased mana cost.

So, of the people who have spoken up in this thread:
-Think mind-burrower is too powerful/should be changed: Kaddar, Tamdrik (?) , Zaen, Moonfish, Xypherous-Oxide, Dav1000, masamunemaniac (?), \'Joyd(?), nifboy(??),
-Don\'t change: Alphamai1300, azulknight, Amped08

So it seems more people favor changing it. As to the way, there have been multiple suggestions:

-Larval stage/Wait one turn before being able to use ability. Me, MoonFish, kaddar (with spell inmunity instead of adding ability),
-No undizzying by spells/spell inmunity (kaddar). Maybe combined with above. Basically tries to achieve the same effect, but allow for creatures/effects to undizzy. Optionally lose effect inmunity after a turn.
-Increased mana cost. azulknight
-More radical suggestions (\"If Mind Burrower is targeted by a spell, destroy it.\" ... Alternatively, we could just give it 10 life) tamdrik, (add the the burrower should dizzy whatever creature it steals. Perhaps give that creature fleeting. ) Xypherous-Oxide, (\"Has a XY% chance of being destroyed when targetted by a spell\"), masamunemaniac

So, basically people have suggested multiple solutions, but only the larval stage has been seconded. kaddar has suggested allowing creatures/effects to help insta-steal, which is interesting, but nobody has agreed with.

My personal feeling is to go with the larval stage (begin turn: gains \"D>blah blah blah\"), playtest it and then see whether people think it was to harsh to disallow ability-undizzying, or if it should instead be nerfed more. I have a feeling it\'ll be the latter.

BTW, what\'s the progress on whether these can be implemented in the csc?

Update:
Additionally, masamunemaniac suggests that the burrower should die if the target creature is somehow destroyed before resolve. (I wouldn\'t mind this in addition to the larval change)

Zaen Wrote:BTW, what\'s the progress on whether these can be implemented in the csc?

Not to disappoint you or anything, but this might not make it to the csc at all. Even though many people think the card needs some sort of change (including myself), I don\'t really think it\'s that much of an important change to make. I would not oppose said change if it would happen anyhow, but wouldn\'t try to enforce it.

I would be in favor of the burrower\'s ability destroying itself reguardless of whether or not it suceeds and the captured creature becoming dizzy. I think part of the problem with MB\'s power level is actually the stigma attached to it. Because it doesn\'t see as much play as it should given it\'s power level, people never think to include counters to it, such as lucky save.

Lucky Save isn\'t a counter to burrower. If you Lucky Save the creature targeted by Burrower right now, the Burrower wouldn\'t even be dizzied. It could just use its ability on another creature you control.

I\'m for making the Mind Burrower easier to counter, but changes such as dizzying the stealee, giving the stealee fleeting and such change the card too much I think.

Perhaps we could see this:

Mind Burrower
7
6
Call Horror
Destroy Mind Burrower. Gain control of target creature. If target is an empty slot, destroy Mind Burrower.
0/24

But then again, if those changes were made, perhaps we wouldn\'t see it, except next to a x25 in the public shop. Who knows.

masamunemaniac Wrote:How about something like \"Has a XY% chance of being destroyed when targetted by a spell\"?
...
Although this would need new coding by Webrunner.

I\'m not sure it would. The underlying mechanic is very close to Dark Doomsceror and a similar trigger for spells might already exist...

As for the other suggestions in Zaen\'s summary, I don\'t envision any problem implementing the change CSCwise.

MooNFisH Wrote:

Zaen Wrote:BTW, what\'s the progress on whether these can be implemented in the csc?

Not to disappoint you or anything, but this might not make it to the csc at all. Even though many people think the card needs some sort of change (including myself), I don\'t really think it\'s that much of an important change to make. I would not oppose said change if it would happen anyhow, but wouldn\'t try to enforce it.

That\'s interesting. I think this change is more important than most of the changes currently scheduled to be made in the next balance.

Part of the reason I made the summary post above was to see if there was a consensus about the kind of change to make, in order to try to get it implemented before the csc went live. People seem to favor the larval idea slightly, but there\'s no consensus yet.

So, let\'s also open the question of whether Mind Burrower should be changed ASAP or wait until the next balance cycle. Just include your thoughts on your next post on this thread. Right now we have one for and one indifferent/against.

That is not to say that the balance changes will be held up by this. It\'s my understanding that webrunner might decide to take the csc live at any point with whatever changes are in there. That\'s why I want whatever change to be implemented ASAP.

(I\'ll update the summary to include the destroy-on-fail idea now)

I wouldn\'t mind seeing a larval Burrower implemented, as long as its cost and sac are dropped to 5. I mean, the fact that it can be undizzied is the reason it got nerfed way back. And there wasn\'t really much wrong with the card then (no, I don\'t mean when it was 0/56.. I mean after that).

masamunemaniac Wrote:I\'m for making the Mind Burrower easier to counter, but changes such as dizzying the stealee, giving the stealee fleeting and such change the card too much I think.

Yeah. I\'d vote for first doing the small changes and only doing these if MB is still too powerful.

Also, changes that include a chance of failure make it too similar to mind control ray, IMHO.

masamunemaniac Wrote: Destroy Mind Burrower. Gain control of target creature. If target is an empty slot, destroy Mind Burrower.

That\'s fine by me. I\'m not too crazy about it, but I wouldn\'t mind the change.

Zaen Wrote:-Increased mana cost. azulknight
Update:
Additionally, masamunemaniac suggests that the burrower should die if the target creature is somehow destroyed before resolve. (I wouldn\'t mind this in addition to the larval change)

My conclusion seems to have been lost in the shuffle...

Dav1000 Wrote:I think the Burrower is too powerful. I think if it cost 10D and fizzled like a spell, that\'d probably be okay. 12D for a creature steal means it\'s only an okay deal when stealing a beatstick, and while it\'s still an excellent use against big creatures, there\'s the mancy/Laser/Lucky Save threat to counterbalance it.

I\'m willing to listen to arguments on the exact mana cost, naturally. 10 is just off the top of my head. This just seems like the simplest way to balance the darn thing...why go around messing with Larval solutions and the like?

Cost increasing is not the way to balance the burrower. It has to be balanced without considering undizziers as well.
So any suggestion that prevents the burrower from being undizzied is sufficient, but also requires an additional cost decrease.

I\'ll second MooNFisH\'s notion.
If you make using the burrower difficult, that alone means it is less useful, and so would have a decreased in play value. To counteract that, a cost reduction is needed.

I guess we just disagree. I think of Burrowers much as I think of Cannibalize or Khrima. A big, scary, expensive card that can shift the entire game in your favor.

As a side note, arguing that we shouldn\'t balance cards based on combos just seems ridiculous frankly. I mean people are obviously going to try and engineer the most favorable conditions possible for use. They ARE trying to WIN after all.