Discourse and feedback - Let’s talk about Dragon Nest

[UncleOwnage]

Hello everyone,

In the last month there’s been a massive amount of feedback both on Expeditions and lately on balance changes.

To us, this has highlighted a challenge in separating good feedback from exaggerated feedback.

We want to emphasize that we’re always listening to you guys.
We are actively discussing upcoming changes with dedicated players, but there’s room for improvement and we’re looking into a better system.
You, the community, are an invaluable source of feedback for our game, and we’re making the game for you to enjoy.
You’re also the ones who play the game the most, so we are open to the fact that we can make mistakes which you can help us correct.

The issue appears when we receive a large amount of feedback and very strong knee-jerk reactions, which can sometimes be difficult to navigate, thus making it hard to identify the actual problem and find a constructive way to move forward.
We’ve seen a shift in the feedback from initial reactions to the last 24 hours - discussions went from being heated and confrontational to calm and constructive. This made it a lot easier for us to work with.

Specifically, we’re aware that there is quite likely a problem with the recent Dragon Nest change, and we want your help in investigating this.
If there’s a mistake, we want to be open to fixing it.

Therefore we’re asking you openly to give us more focused feedback on the Dragon Nest.

First off we should mention something important;
Spirit Infusion was one of the cards we wanted to look at after Volco and Dragon Nest, so changes are already coming on that.
While it’s not completely final, here’s the planned change;

• Spirit infusion; Mana cost from 2 to 4, number of spirits from 2 to 3.

Now you’re aware of that planned change, give us your feedback in the following format;

• Tell us what you think is good and bad about the changed Dragon Nest
  
• If you have suggestions, feel free to post them as well

Thank you for being so passionate about Minion Masters
-BetaDwarf

[StevenEven]

Originally posted by hackaphreaka:

The fact you have to make changes to cards multiple times in a few months means changing cards isn't really fixing anything, or at least achieving the results you want.

I don't think you should have to make powerful things less powerful, that really isn't fun.

I should be able to figure out my own way to deal with peoples strategies, that's more fun.

Changeing something its never a gurantee its fixed or its a good change, teh changes are ususaly never tofix things, but to adjust, test and slowly perfectionate teh game. You cant know a thing is bad/good until people try it, so makeing chages to be tested is the whole reason of changeing. A of not changeing cards to be less powerfull, they are not usually nerfing cards, mjost of the times they are "reworking them" to make fighint AGAINST them more fun and most importantly some changes are made because certain cards might be just impossible to beat, while being extremely frustateing to play against, which is indeed a GOOD reason to make a "nerf" .

[Kankuro]

I like to think in alternative solutions rather than reverting back to what we did previousely. As such, my suggestion is to add a 'tax' to the dragon nest. While it is out, all of your spells cost 1 more mana. This would prevent low cost spell spam, as well as balance how many whelps you could possibly get. In essence you are getting your spell, then paying an additional 1 mana to get 1 dragon whelp. If you want to have 2 nests out, then you will be paying 2 extra mana per spell for 2 whelps...which is not a terrible trade in terms of value.

[RushSecond]

Originally posted by Kankuro:

I like to think in alternative solutions rather than reverting back to what we did previousely. As such, my suggestion is to add a 'tax' to the dragon nest. While it is out, all of your spells cost 1 more mana. This would prevent low cost spell spam, as well as balance how many whelps you could possibly get. In essence you are getting your spell, then paying an additional 1 mana to get 1 dragon whelp. If you want to have 2 nests out, then you will be paying 2 extra mana per spell for 2 whelps...which is not a terrible trade in terms of value.

Woah. That's actually a really good suggestion. Like you said, it would curb the effectiveness of building a deck with tons of low mana cost spells, but your suggestion would achieve that in a very flexible way that still allows multiple kinds of decks to utilize dragon nest.

[elpebron]

As a newcomer i thought complains in chat about Dnest quite exagerated:
Just because on my first games i defeated several decks using this card.
So the point was which other cards was the deck built with?

I won't be long cause unexperienced but Kankuro's proposal sounds quite sexy, as the main "problem" seems to be the interaction with other cards.
I thought about an increasing mana cost on game duration +1+2+3.. (as i found myself overflowed by dragons!)

About infusion i wait this card so much that i regret you'll change it, but maybe:
adjustement on overhealing amount according to target's max health ?
decreasing overhealing on game duration ? (like tea, infusion loses it benefits on time..)
creating a "damage-fusion" counter spell?

Ok enough. Thanks for great ideas pros. Thanks Devs, keep it up!

[Eazotop]

That's a cool Idea, I dig it too. It makes me think about how to effectively build a dnest deck instead of just aiming for lowest mana spells.

Going back to earlier in the discussion, on Rush's comment, I disagree on one thing, making them flightless changes a lot. It makes a bunch of anti ground more viable, ghost turret, colossus, golems and whirly mostly.

However, on the defenso being too good against it, I agree. Sadly since DNest is just too good right now, I pretty much have to have one in all my decks. If it gets nerfed to a point where I can fight the nests fairly without the defenso, it should be reverted to 80 counter dmg.

[Memfisto]

I mostly agree with Eazo's initial response.

The good things about the change is that there are now more ways to pontentially clear the units coming out of the nest. This change also has somewhat of a drawback when combined with other changes.

The biggest thing for the last change is that the building has no effective counters. Other spawners' efficiency is spread over time period so putting a bigger push can greatly punish you for playing macro game.

For 3 mana, you are not investing a lot. As soon as you see enemy trying to answer your 3 mana investment, you use the rest of your 8 mana to weaken the push with spells and produce a solid wall of dragons to defend it. The amount of push needed to reach the nest in order to damage it in overwhelming majority exceeds the mana cost of the dnest player defending it. Spells are, of course, out of the question as the amount of mana spent vs the % of HP nest loses is laughable at this point after yet another HP buff.

With such a buff on duration, you can keep capping your mana, drop a nest and wait to cap until you put another nest. You are forcing the enemy into playing something first (unless they themselves have buildings or cards like future present to use), which will easily be answered along with producing a counterpush (answered as described above).

This leaves you with mostly having to defend against the everlasting push. We go back to the whole "if you have no counter, you lose" mentality. The reason for that is that to summon a significant threat in the form of dragon army you need only to spend few mana. In case of playing Milloween, you play arcane missiles and 1 or 2 cheap spells and you have only wasted 5-6 mana, leaving you with 5-6 more if you capped. With 2 nests likely on the field, that's likely 12 mana worth of dragons going your way. Your usual answers likely meet the end with either a daggerfall, fireball, stun blast or similar, while also further improving the push.

The essential problem, at least in my opinion, is that a dnest deck is a reactive deck that gets too much value out of it. You don't just get the value from using spells to clear minions worth more mana than the spell you used, but you also get high dps units from doing that. With no cooldown on the spawn and cheap cost of both the nest and the usual spells that synergize with it, that high dps turns into a lethal threat. The deck just has a potential to snowball too much if you are not prepared to face it. The further the game goes, the greater the lethality of the deck. On top of that, with Milloween's arcane golem, you also get a beefy high dps unit to clear the path for all the dragons as you can pump up its level very easily with cheap spells, and any early reactions from the enemy to get rid of that golem will meet the dragon wall to stop it or leave the played with bad mana trade.

The deck is by no means uncounterable, but it greatly contributes to the problem RushSecond explained in his post few weeks ago that the game is turning into "you don't have a counter to my deck, you lose".

[Mordtziel]

"you don't have a counter to my deck, you lose".

I don't find this to be innately a problem. The problem is more of the number of decks that require an answer paired with how many cards I have to dedicate to each deck. And in the case of dnest, that's a lot of cards.

[Khazlariko]

I agree with the bulk of Eazo & Memfisto. The duration, health buff with restriction removal was just too much. The health and duration buff combined make it incredibly difficult to counter the nests themselves. I don't think returning the restriction or increasing the mana cost alone would be enough given that nests lasts so long now.

My ideal situation for nest is similar one that Rush described in another thread.

What I'm envisioning is the end of double dragon nest. Instead, there will be a whole bunch of different decks with 5-7 spells that put in a single dragon nest as a way to generate bodies
...
knowing when and when not to play the nest would be part of the skill of piloting such a deck.

Or even with a deck that has 1-2 spells + master spells to get additional value from the spells at those times when you want to play them. Having a high nest cost just doesn't give enough value if you're only playing a few spells with a single nest in a balanced balanced (ones that aren't focused on making as many dragons as possible). The current nests aren't meeting that legendary feel of "niche use, having more than copy is usually a bad idea, shouldn't be included in most decks, requires skill to utilise and build around" - where the original single nest with pre-wild cards did have that feel (not that I'm against the overall wildcards idea). Currently the dragons aren't backup while giving minor additional value from the spells. The dragons are the army and the spells are backing them up.

I'm not sure of the solution. I like the idea of either reducing the nests health when spells are played (with number tweaks) or increasing the cost of spells. But I don't like the suggestions at the same time because I don't feel they create the situations above.


I don't like the planned spirit infusion nerf as it continues to limit the use of spirit infusion outside these two types of decks. I would prefer to see a 3 mana spirit infusion that gives 2x unstackable 150 hp buffs. an additional 150 hp can turn a swarm minion into a mini tank and could potentially be useful outside of "buff this one minion to godliness" (which would no longer be viable - but was never fun to play against anyway) and nests. However, I see a problem with the awkwardness of this and Spiritmancer (being similar but different and awkward to indicate which buff was which).


Upon reflection, maybe my vision removes too many unique archetypes into where everything is too similar. Because my other thought was to turn arcane golem into an efficient minion without any stacks from spells but instead got a minor heal every time a spell was played (heal - not health buff) but maybe that's too similar to Settsu's blast entry. :P

[Terra Reveene]

If only one nest got activated at a time when a spell is cast (you have two nests in play, play a spell, but only one nest spawns a dragon) then that'd achieve the very thing Rush described in the other thread. Worth considering. Having multiple copies of Dragon Nest in your deck would only really be useful then if you need to make sure you always have it at the ready.

[Memfisto]

Originally posted by Dip:

"you don't have a counter to my deck, you lose".

I don't find this to be innately a problem. The problem is more of the number of decks that require an answer paired with how many cards I have to dedicate to each deck. And in the case of dnest, that's a lot of cards.

I do find it problematic that you are required to have a counter to win, there is no going even or close to even unless it's a mirror against such decks in majority of cases. It may not be a problem if it's something a bit more general, such as having horde units for distracting cleaver/golem, defenso/boomer/fireball to stop last stand, or anything similar that counters a specific thing but is also versatile and useful against other matchups. In such cases you put 2-3 cards in your deck as a response to those specific family of cards and you can build the rest of the deck to either cover as many other cards in terms of countering, or go on with your own plan.

However, in the case of decks such as dnest, you are forced (no pun intended) to spend at least 2 cards to counter that. With how many similar decks there are that can get out of control fast if you don't have a way to deal with them, you are left with something like 3 cards to choose on your own if you want to have solid chances (not insta loss) against all of them. And even then it's a matter of what you draw initially as you can have a counter for 1 deck, but your first 5 cards are counter to other deck and you lose just because the deck you're up against is one that wins in first 45s if you don't have a good answer.

[Mordtziel]

I should probably rephrase. I believe that decks should consist of counters for each or most archtypes. Aoe for swarms, big minion/boss clear, something for spell decks, aa for flying decks, answers for building decks, etc. And I also believe there should be multiple answers for these things (grenadier, whirly scrat, annihilator, fireball, daggerfall, chain lightning, etc for aoe), unfortunately spell decks don't have many counters in the game right now(black hole, xiao long, guardian and that's it really). And dnest takes this small list of counters and makes it even worse by requiring multiple answers that can deal with a tanky swarm coming from both lanes that requires some kind of protection from stuns, which doesn't really exist beyond black hole or dropping something else after the stun comes in, something that can survive daggerfall/fireball.

[vango]

The good :

Dnest exsist and now spawns a unit that will rarely be seen outside of apeps 3rd perk.

The bad:

Before the patch dnest decks were extremely potent, allowing the user to not only benefit from the effects of the already ridiculously effective spells in the game, but to create a swarm of VERY high dps minions for negligable cost.

Evidently the balancing team thought the swarm of VERY high dps minions was slightly problematic, but not because of their VERY high dps, or resistance to common spells, or inability to deal effectively with dnest that produces said swarm, or the requierment to run very a very specific counter card to have a chance vs it, but because it was flying.

Now the nest spawns a non-flying variant of the VERY high dps swarm, only it is harder to deal with, spawns a lot more swarm, spawns additional swarm from already very high impact cheap (or free) hero perks, benefits from one of the most cost-effective buff spells in the game and to top it off it lasts A LOT longer, making it common to see 4 of them spewing VERY high dps swarm on the field even tho the decks never run more then 2 copies of the card.

The previouslt exsiting counter card (defenso) is now rendered useless by the sheer strenght of the swarm itself, the spells that spawn the swarm are also what defend it very cost efficiently from any possible counterplays or at least buy it time to apply its VERY high dps to opponents master by keeping all defensive units that the dnest player doesnt have an immediete answer for stunned.


Suggestions:

I would very much like to know, given the recent buffs to dnest , if we had a building like crossbow guild, but instead of a single crossbow dude it spawned pairs of legioneers, and instead of 6 mana it costed 2, would it be strong enough to have a fair fight vs current dnest decks. Pls make it happen.

Given that creating the most deadly swarm is apperantly the goal of the game, why not add a 0 cost spell that does lets say 40 damage to both masters. Or does nothing it really wouldnt matter at this point...
Or even better add a 3 mana spell that when casted replaces itself with a 2 mana spell that when casted replaces itself with a 1 mana spell that when casted replaces itself with a 0 mana spell that spawns a flightless dragon in front of your master and replaces itself in the users hand. That way at least we can pretend there is some progression.

[Tenby]

See, Vango, that post doesn't help us. I got your frustration, but we asked for constructive feedback and if you have suggestions, to tell us.

Thanks to everyone else providing us with feedback and suggestions! Go on with the discussion and the valuable input.

[vango]

OK how about a real suggestion then - dnest stats remain unchanged, but it now absorbs spells to spew units out.
So while you have dnests out when you cast a spell you will get the dragons INSTEAD of the spell effect, and not both at the same time.

[GReY WolF]

The right solution for the problem is drain hp from nest each time dragon summoned, so number of dragon from each nest will be roughly the same no matter of spells cost or mana regeneration rate, and also return mana restriction to avoid immediately burst of dragon, which is unavoidable without it. But duration can be increased to always gain almost full value of eash nest no matter spells mana cost.

For example:
Mana cost: 4
HP: 250, Duration: 60 sec.
Spawns flighless dragon everytime master cast spell with 3 or more mana cost for the cost of 25 hp.
So one nest will spawn at max 10 dragons if all 10 spells cast immedeately after spawning nest(which is not achievable), but expected dragon value will be:
4 dragons if you cast 4 spells within 36 seconds (very easy to achive, and can be used even with not all spell decks, but still gives a good value from use)
5 dragons if you cast 5 spells within 30 seconds
6 dragons if you cast 6 spells within 24 seconds
7 dragons if you cast 7 spells within 18 seconds
8 dragons if you cast 8 spells within 12 seconds (very hard to achive, probably only with Millos perc 3 or in mana frenzy, gives a lot of value, but still much less than it gives right now)