Thoughts on the current build after six play throughs

[Douchebro]

This game has been a blast. It has definitely sucked up a few spare hours during this crazy quarantine, and been a good time while doing so. So, after five or six play throughs, here are some thoughts.

Common Cards are the bottleneck for decks.

Because of the way that the skill grid system works (which is great, by the way), and the relative size of the draw pools for Silver and Gold tier cards, being able to find the higher rarity card that is clinch for a character is relatively easy. For example: if you want the Resurrection ability for Catherine, her gold tier pool is only six cards deep, so you're at a near 50/50 of having it show up in her first draw pool from a Spirit Healer III node. Another example: for Alphonse (currently the undisputed champion of reliable damage output), getting Prepared Attack to enable the card drawing that unlocks Alphonse's incredible damage output is a similar situation. There's only a few Gold tier cards in Assassin III, so if you have even a single Fate point, you're all but guaranteed to be able to get the draw you want.

Common cards, however, are not like this. The draw pools for common cards are significantly larger, and you're far less likely--even when burning through Fate points like candy--to generate a draw that gives you the card you want. This is where deck bloat starts to be a problem. While I understand that if your skill draw doesn't give you good options you can always Replace A Skill, and this can keep a deck lean, doing so just iterates on the same problem. If I am Replacing a common skill card, the draw pool is still large enough that the chances of me getting a usable or viable replacement are very low.

An easy example of this is Catherine's Strike ability. Nearly any game that I play with her, this skill is Discarded or Replaced, and when using the latter option, the draw pool for Holy Warrior is large enough, and the number of cards that I am interested in small enough, that even Fate points don't make getting a decent draw all that likely.

This is less of a problem on stronger heroes, but is devastating on Pierre, who is already anemic. Trying to build around Bringer of Flame and Consume Fire? Well, get ready to re-roll every single level up just trying to get another Burning Touch. I hope you can find your Alt-F4 keys, because you're going to need them in order to keep re-generating a deckbuilding draw until you get a useful card...

How to Fix It:

Clone Common / Uncommon / Rare nodes. Having a random node that generates on a skill tile that allows for cloning of cards currently in your deck. You can even have these take up multiple skill tiles for all I care. I'll invest two levels worth of skill points to be able to get the specific skill that I am looking for and already have in my deck.

Card Draw is the strongest mechanic.

This is nothing new to deck building of any kind. From Magic The Gathering onward, the basic rules of the game are the ones that need to be toyed with in order to accelerate a deck towards domination. Alphonse with Prepared Attack is the easiest example of this. Mastering it to keep two cards is even crazier. If you can stack a few +Draw items onto him, lean out your deck in order to use his Discard to Gain AP regularly, master Back Up Plan, and then use Stab to generate insane draw stacks to cycle through your deck, you can one shot whole encounters in a single turn.

How to Fix It:

This is tough. You can try to make the Draw mechanic into a diminishing return. This will, however, make cards like Pray or En Guarde less valuable. Either way, generating larger and larger hands is the only way to really unlock ability combos.

Channel is Unrewarding.

Currently, Channel only functions when the total cost of a spell is around 4-5 and under. The easiest example of this is Catherine's Righteous Blow + Smite combo. Lead off with the first, and the second comes free of charge. However, try and do this with Blizzard on Pierre, and you're now looking at two turns invested to generate 3 channel, have the correct card draw, and the necessary AP to cast. The more conditions placed on a combo to make it work means the more RNG events that have to line up to make the combo function. With max channel being 3 (and somehow Pierre having the worst increase max channel ability in the game vs Catherine being able to permanently increase her channel every battle, without being tied to a tile, and without a time limit associated), the only hope that a player has to generate enough AP + channel to cast the larger spells, the 6+ cost spells, is to have a Haste effect (which is the only buff status effect that won't stack on itself: if you +2 Haste onto a hero with 1 Haste, they end up with 2 Haste and not 3. This is not how Might, Enfeeble, Bleed... literally any other status effect works), have max channel increasing items, use Pierre's crappy max channel increasing spell, generate all that channel (usually item dependent to have double channel generation), AND THEN ALSO draw the correct cards in your hand. If you wanted to know why Pierre is currently worthless, look no farther than this. The current channel system places too many conditional events in series to have any reliability, and even when you do manage to pull it off, the effect is a big "meh". I'd really rather just have another Stab draw on Alphonse or waste another turn on Lucian getting his multi-hit finisher.

How to Fix It:

Currently, the only hero that genuinely suffers from the channel problem is Pierre. Catherine has a few high cost channel spells, but she also has plenty of other useful abilities. Having a Talent that increases maximum channel would be a great start, and an actual reason to use a Talent node in a skill tile. Lowering the cost of high channel spells might be worth considering. As would increasing the effect of high channel abilities. As is, the only real "combo" to use with them is casting The World. And, honestly, if that's the "combo", there isn't a combo at all.

Items Dilute Decks.

Outside of items that give Surge or 0 cost movement, there's very little use for most items. Unless it has Retain, +Draw, Attack or Spell damage, I don't even bother with items. They are just extra clicks to generate gold in order to farm uniques from the unique merchant. Otherwise, they just destroy the distribution of cards in a deck and aren't worth it.

How to Fix It:

I imagine that the Socket and Enchanting systems are the mechanics you're intending to use to make Items and their effects actually worth a player's time. Being able to slot cards of your choice (especially if you can duplicate cards, per the discussion above regarding getting extra common cards) that's a horse of a different color. As is, the only items that are actually worth anything are usually Uniques (and even then, only a few of them).

Healing is Worthless.

+2-5 HP as a secondary effect, conditional on having heroes directly adjacent? Really? Why bother. A card spent in this way isn't anywhere near as valuable as a card spent dealing 3-5x that heal amount in damage. The faster you clear a fight, the less damage you take, effectively "healing" the damage avoided. The way that the game is designed currently devalues healing on a fundamental level.

How to Fix It:

Increase the heal values, and/or allow heals to strip a random debuff off of a hero. Currently, the positional requirements and low heal values make them of dubious value. I'd be far more likely to have an interest in generating heals if they cleared off Bleed or Poison stacks.

Defense cards are pointless.

Similar to the way that healing is a waste of a card slot as compared to generating extra damage, generating Guard is often a waste of time. Again, we can look at the completely overpowered Alphonse as a point of reference. Would you rather use a Parry card... orrrrr.... generate Draw so that you can play a 0 cost card to increase your Stab stacks? Or maybe just play another Stab. The answer is ALWAYS just play Stab.

How to Fix It:

Guard needs to mitigate status effects like Bleed or Poison, and possibly halve the stacks of Enfeeble/Burn/Chill etc., if the Guard value mitigates all of the damage from the attack. As is, there's no motivation whatever to ever play defense cards if you can use an attack card instead.

Deck Bloat is a fundamental side effect of the current mechanics.

Every time you level up, or even in camp, you generate skill points. Eventually, a player has developed a good combo in their deck, and the number of skill cards that could possibly add to or increase their deck's power is down to one, maybe two cards... And as mentioned above, the card drawing mechanics make finding those cards, especially if they are common, extremely difficult (again: strange that 'common' cards are harder to manage than 'rare'...) to obtain. Instead, you are left using the Replace choice on the same card over and over, keeping one "throw away" in your deck in order to generate stat points.

How to Fix It:

Add +Stat nodes to the skill tiles. If I could forgo the addition of a card, which then prompts the need to waste another skill tile to Discard that card, in order to generate stats, I'd just take the raw stats. A quick note regarding stats: Initiative is pretty pointless. If each +Initiative tile instead was a choice of +2 Initiative or +1 to a stat of choice, I'd actually be motivated to choose one of these tiles.

Alphonse is Overpowered.

This is a recurrent theme throughout this entire discussion. There are a few fundamental rules of the game that he breaks: tons of 0 cost cards, 0 cost damage that builds off other 0 cost casting, huge amounts of Draw, more +AP cards than other heroes (some of which are even 0 cost!)... And then there's the real issue. None of the cards that make his combos work are particularly bad or highly conditional. They are easily found, easily drawn, almost always usable, and his combo practically writes itself.

Lucian's Opener mechanic is vaguely like this, but far more reasonable in terms of damage output. You can burn through a hand on Lucian, do tons of damage, but it eventually stops.

Alphonse can reliably go infinite with around a 16 card deck.

How to Fix It:

Mastered Stab needs to cost 1 AP, and instead either add additional attacks (lets say 3 hits per 2 spells) or the attacks need to deal +1 damage each. 0 AP Stab is so strong that it isn't ONE OF the strategies that work, it is THE ONLY strategy that works.

[iacs]

So basically if i take that Animal Kinship III node there is no way in game to convert it to Elemental school and it is likely to make my elemental druid weaker by diluting my cards. Thus i declare second skill board a complete bust. Hopefully third one will have more elemental nodes.

[dwmr]

You are right - you can only get Elemental cards by rerolling Elemental cards. However as mentioned, in the next iteration, you will be able to pick the deck you want to draw a replacement card from, so this will be less of a problem :) Hang tight!

[iacs]

I have played elemental druid for several days now and i think i'm now competent enougth to do some recomendations. Let's start with a little fact - elemental druid is not her wizard analogue. Where Pierre focuses on single target spells, Ida has three things in elemental school - battlefield alteration (buff for your half of battlefield, debufs to enemy's half), utility like channel and card draw and AOE. As in where Pierre hits one time per spell, Ida hits multiple - it can be multiple enemies like Volcano or multiple times like Thunder storm, does not matter. What matters it that it is multiple strikes.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2089030797

I have so far found two cards of Thunder storm and they are not that hard to get if you have Elemental or Elemental II node on skill field.

So, thunderstorm is good, it hits multiple targets, does not overkill and hits for 6+Int modifier three or four times, but how to imrove it's damage? Answer is Critical. Normally it is not that good thing for Pierre with his single target spells, but for Ida every single point of Critical improves all four lightning strikes or applies to every target on battlefield for things like Volcano.

First way to get critical is to wear Silver bracers.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2089031312
They are easy to find and do not even need to be enchanted - you need their card, not properties on them. 1 AP converted to card draw - which gives you another chance to draw Thunder storm if you do not currently have it, and 5 critical. What is 5 critical? It is 20 more damage for 1 AP. Brilliant.

Second way to get critical is to hire Catherine. Make her healer and get her activator card from healing school. And every single time you are healed you get either critical or might. Both increace your damage greatly and actually it does not matter which buff card she had found.

Third way is to get critical from Ida's own atack skills or other, more rare items. Items can be hard to find, and skills cost AP so i'd stuck with first two ways.

Remember, bracer's skill plus thunderstorm is 3 AP so this combo can be cast in a single round and currently for me it deals 64 damage ( (6 base + 5 int + 5 critical) x 4 ) to multiple targets without overkill and without need to position Ida in any specific place. And if Ida gets Catherine's buff damage is even better.

What to do if you do not have thunder storm at hand? Buff your battlefield with things like inspiration zone(draw three cards) or bed of flowers which gives AP, then move on it. Or get some channel to spend on card that draws other elemental cards or on Volcano.

That's how you play spellcaster Ida.

[iacs]

Bad news - it looks like Thunder storm is nerfed - now critical applies only to first lightning strike. And thus Caterine's buff for might is better. Fortunately Ida is still prime AOE spellcaster because she also has Tornado! And it still applies accumulated critical to all enemies on battlefield. So now you spend round to accumulate critical and then you go full force Tornado.

[iacs]

Well, Ida just got to level 20 and now she has her fifth additional piece of skill board. Whan can i say - random is just too random. In all five boards i have 4 Animal Kinship III nodes and 1 Primal III node. Count of Elemental III nodes is 0.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2092085572
For elemental focused build. Where game does not allow school conversion for skills. Also, drawing golden skill card from random nodes is essentially impossible even with crash-reload strategy. Only viable source of golden elemental cards are Elemental I nodes. And even they require whole fortune and crash-reloads to get skill.

May i suggest giving player two new board fragments so that he can choose one he wants instead of generationg single random one? As game currenly saves immediately after you select a skill and it finishes generating new board piece so you can not change result of random by any way other than restart.

[dwmr]

Thanks iac - as mentioned we do have changes coming up for the card draw system to reduce this problem, as well as an NPC to help train you to roll for specific nodes! We are still in the midst of testing this and other changes, and they will be revealed at the end of this month.

[iacs]

Good to know - i just got another part of skill board. And now i have 0 Elemental III nodes on six board pieces. Had to take Wild Hunt from Primal III node - it is at least somewhat usefull.

Despite extreemly bad luck i managed to somehow make viable spellcaster build.
Skills
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2092788666
Setup at the end of long battle
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2092778253

[iacs]

So I have just finished the game - act I of it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2093143476
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2093144175

Thus i should add few of my thoughts on our little elven girl.

1) As i have said before - Ida means AOE. Yes, Pierre has few AOE spells too, but they are 1 - golden ones, 2 - require significant preparation due to high cost. Ida on the other hand focuses on air and earth magic designed to clear all that annoying enemy hordes from battlefield.
Air spells do direct damage - Thunder storm and Gust of wind the silver cards and Tornado the golden. Earth spells put shaking ground and lava traps on the battlefield.
2) Ida has two ways to get channel - one from Nature's flow, buff placed on battlefield, and other is Nature's way, golden card that discards some other card to get power to grant channel. As for spending channel, our elf uses it to draw some attack spells of same rarity.
3) If you play spellcaster, invest heavily into Thunder storm - it is a good damaging spell, it becomes significantly better when mastered and every new card gets your intelligence higher and higher, increacing damage. Main Ida's stats - Intelligence and Dexterity. Around four Thunder storms and one Tornado are enougth to finish the game.
4) However, luck may fail you and you will have no Elemental III nodes on your board, what to do? Take Elemental I node and reroll like crazy - burn through fortune, crash the game, take dump nodes to replace the skill. You need that Tornado and you'd better have Nature's way card to get channel. Channel means getting new spells for as low as 0-1 AP from Wisdom of Lands and Master of Lands.
5) Now, what other card to pick other than spells? I actually have found that Primal III node is a decent option. Who said bear? Forget it - what you really need is Wild Hunt. Get it and make it golden. Five free movement points! You can run circles between Nature's Flow - which gives you channel, and Nature's Bounty - which gives you new cards. If you have Animal Kinship III node on your board, try to get Full Moon - your wolf will be more robust after becoming werewolf. Of course, this is option if you play druid the first time and have started with basic specialisation - if you have Forest Seer as specialisation, you do not have wolf, so no need for Full Moon.
6) Lastly, let's talk about artifacts. Sweet sweet things from artifact merchant and from random drops - only things worthy to be transmuted at altairs.
- First for you to get is Sorcerer's Apparatus - more max channel, more channel gain, small intlegence boost - must have for every spellcaster, be it Ida, Catherine of Pierre.
- Next artifact to be your goal, when you have found some enchanted item (likely helmet) to raise your max channel to 5, is Ethereal Dawn. This artifact gives you The World - skill that is hard to use by Pierre as he always have more pressing ways to spend channel. Ida on the other hand is perfect with Ethereal Dawn - just get your channel to 5, end a turn and start next one with World. Then cast all your attack spells.
- Then get some draw increacing artifact. I personally used Mageburn as it not only get me incredible draw, but sinergised with Pierre's pendency to burn stuff - animals, undead and cultists. Eye of Judgement, Wastlander's War Horn and Entallment also work.

As for your druid's comrades, first choise is Catherine. Tank, heal, gain channel and even give it to Ida if you have lucked in necessary spell - all you want. Train her in Spirit Healer primary and Divine secondary - defencive aspect of it. You need heal and buffs from her. And to tank. My second choise was actually Pierre - he has few good support skills - Gravity Surge and Great Barrier, and at the end became a natural piromaniac - burning through few enemies that were hardy enougth to survive Ida's AOE with Faming Grasp + Inflame + Absorb Fire if needed, through it was always secondary role, primary he was supporter. Because when there is only one enemy commander left on battlefield, all Ida's lightning actually hit him and she rarely needs help. Through Pierre actually helped to setup Ida's last strike on Rift Lord by applying over 90 Burn for her Explosion from Mageburn - Pierre lucked into Tripple Cast and Enflame in one hand.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2093140721

[Fringehunter7719]

Originally posted by Douchebro:

Mastered Stab needs to cost 1 AP, and instead either add additional attacks (lets say 3 hits per 2 spells) or the attacks need to deal +1 damage each. 0 AP Stab is so strong that it isn't ONE OF the strategies that work, it is THE ONLY strategy that works.

I was coming to the forum to essentially post this. I too think there's a lot to love in the game, but Alphonse is essentially broken right now. You can more or less clear the game with him alone with his starter deck if you just master a few cards and clear out a couple.

Mastered stab works really badly.

I also agreed with a lot of the other points in the post.

[PowerofTwo]

Regarding isacs skill boards i get the feeling a few nodes are bugged atm. I like to do alot of theorycrafting soooooo lets just say i aquired way way way way more skill points than i'm suposed to have *tihi* and accross prolly a hundred boards i've seen things like Force III for Pierre, Sab III, Trapper III , and i think Elemental III just have NEVER shown up. Again over a sample size of a good hundred cells / class.

[dwmr]

Originally posted by PowerofTwo:

Regarding isacs skill boards i get the feeling a few nodes are bugged atm. I like to do alot of theorycrafting soooooo lets just say i aquired way way way way more skill points than i'm suposed to have *tihi* and accross prolly a hundred boards i've seen things like Force III for Pierre, Sab III, Trapper III , and i think Elemental III just have NEVER shown up. Again over a sample size of a good hundred cells / class.

Hey there, are there particular specializations you play with or do you experience this with the default classes? Will give the spawn weighting a check again.

[PowerofTwo]

Originally posted by dwmr:

Originally posted by PowerofTwo:

Regarding isacs skill boards i get the feeling a few nodes are bugged atm. I like to do alot of theorycrafting soooooo lets just say i aquired way way way way more skill points than i'm suposed to have *tihi* and accross prolly a hundred boards i've seen things like Force III for Pierre, Sab III, Trapper III , and i think Elemental III just have NEVER shown up. Again over a sample size of a good hundred cells / class.

Hey there, are there particular specializations you play with or do you experience this with the default classes? Will give the spawn weighting a check again.

All Defaults.

[dwmr]

Gotcha, thanks. Apart from checking the weights, we do have plans to give more control to you as well through the introduction of a skill trainer NPC who can reroll certain skill nodes on your grid.

[PowerofTwo]

Originally posted by dwmr:

Gotcha, thanks. Apart from checking the weights, we do have plans to give more control to you as well through the introduction of a skill trainer NPC who can reroll certain skill nodes on your grid.

NP, to be fair just a stright up "respec" option would be nice. Maybe cumulatively prohibitive gold costs or maybe only for classic tho i understand how that might be agaisnt the spirit of the game.

[iacs]

So, skill board generation is just bugged to never generate Elemental III node for default specialisation. Pity. I hope that will be fixed in next build.

Also, dwmr, in April developer posted their plans. Including theese two points:
---
1) Your specialty class now gives double the chances for nodes of your preferred type to spawn (e.g Playing Alphonse as a Trapper makes Trap skills spawn 2 times as often).
2) Your first epic skill node will always be tied to your specialty class.
---

Is it already done? Like "does Forest Seer spec Ida have Elemental III guaranteed as first epic skill node"? Because if yes, i'll just replay her with spec.