Balance suggestions

[Demongod]

My opinion of these balance suggestions:

Nova/Supernova
I think you nerfed them too much. Having to pay 2 quantum to get 10 random quantum is pretty bad. I liked the old Nova better and I see no point in changing it because I don't consider it to be overpowered at all.

Same thing with Supernova. If you make it random AND make it give less quantum, that's a pretty big nerf.

If I were Zanz I would make Supernova cost 3 quantum and that's it. Maybe even 4.

Bone Wall
I like it.

Otyugh
I like it.

Pulverizer
I'd like to see the ability cost 3 quantum. 1 permanent destruction per turn should cost a lot imo.

Heal
I like the card but the name should change if it functioned like that. I don't see "heal" removing poison. If it only healed 30 and nothing more, it would make more sense.

Jade Staff
Hmm.. I personally wouldn't do anything to Jade Staff. Healing 8 HP per round sounds a bit high for a card that costs 2 quantum.

Miracle
Ok, I'm totally against this. The coolest part of Miracle is when you play it when you have only 1 HP left. "It's a Miracle!!!". This new card would heal 1 HP in that situation. I would probably make it heal 60 and remove all poison.

Hourglass
I don't think Hourglass needs a nerf. It's not that powerful really. That nerf would weaken Time decks a lot.

Sundial
I like it BUT I would put the hasten ability back (2 quantum in both versions). I don't think cards should be nrfed by taking abilities away when you do it in others ways as well.

Vampire Dagger
Yeah, that looks pretty good.

Phase Shield
I like the effect but I'm not sure about the cost. Nerf might be too big. Maybe lower the cost by one?

See this is the thing--all, or at least most, are simply nerfs to PvAI decks.  As for pulverizer costing any more than one, that's ridiculous.  Why?  Because it requires two colors.  If you cast it with earth and used earth, then it should cost 3.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

Demon, calm down a moment. These changes weren't proposed because the AI is too easy (though making the AI harder would be a benefit, as long as it was still beatable. Also, note that these changes would effect the AI decks, too). These changes were thought up because the balance of the cards to each other was off.

These balances would also allow more deck options for PvP as well, because with the fixes to Sundial and Pulverizer, along with some other cards, people would not be FORCED to bring permanent control in a deck. They could bring other cards to make their deck more effective, verses taking along permanent control and a Mark of Fire or Gravity or Darkness, which would only limit the decks and the metagame archetype.

[chriskang]

Nova/Supernova
I think you nerfed them too much. Having to pay 2 quantum to get 10 random quantum is pretty bad. I liked the old Nova better and I see no point in changing it because I don't consider it to be overpowered at all.

Same thing with Supernova. If you make it random AND make it give less quantum, that's a pretty big nerf.

If I were Zanz I would make Supernova cost 3 quantum and that's it. Maybe even 4.

I've got 2 concerns here:
1. IMO, you should never have to ask yourself whether the upgraded version of a card is better than the normal one. If the unupgraded version is sometimes preferred, then there's a problem. Currently with cards like Nova, Lava Golem or Sundial, the decision to upgrade or not is not obvious.
With Nova, what can make you hesitate is the card cost that goes from 0 to 2 (or even more if we follow your suggestion SG). Increasing the cost of Nova to the one of Supernova makes sense to me.
2. Second argument is more spiritual. In my view, Entropy is meant to be all about randomness and the current Nova/Supernova doesn't fit at all in this definition because it's fully predictable. The change I suggest makes the card more "in par" with its element's theme without changing its behavior too much.
Of course it's a serious nerf, but even after this change Supernova still has the potential to instantly generate 13 quantums, which is (nearly) equivalent to the upgrade of 4 quantum pillars into quantum towers. 4 card upgrades packed into a single Supernova is not really what I call underpowered.

Pulverizer
I'd like to see the ability cost 3 quantum. 1 permanent destruction per turn should cost a lot imo.

As I told, this is the first batch of changes I would do. If after a while we realize that Pulv isn't nerfed enough, we can still nerf more.

Heal
I like the card but the name should change if it functioned like that. I don't see "heal" removing poison. If it only healed 30 and nothing more, it would make more sense.

Miracle
Ok, I'm totally against this. The coolest part of Miracle is when you play it when you have only 1 HP left. "It's a Miracle!!!". This new card would heal 1 HP in that situation. I would probably make it heal 60 and remove all poison.

Here, I was looking for some ways to add more counters to poison. The best solution would probably be to create new cards with this ability but creating new cards takes time whereas balancing is very quick (all the changes I suggested probably require less than 3 hours of work from Zanzarino). That's pretty much why this thread is all about the second solution.
Now if you consider that we're only talking about card changes and no content creation, the first obvious change appears to be Heal cause for now it's seriously underpowered.
Adding a "cure poison" effect to Miracle made sense too but I had to do something to nerf the healing part on the other hand. Right now, I find the card very close to be OP, mainly because of its synergy with Shard of Divinity (6 x Shard + 6 x Miracle = potentially more than 1000 HP healed). The suggestion might not be the best idea of my life but I found it fun when I wrote it:
* the synergy with Shard of Divinity remains
* the effect is similar to the old Miracle, as soon as you cast the spell when you have 50% health (instead of waiting for 1 HP left)
Also, notice that I'm aware that this is a serious nerf here. That's why I lowered the cost of the card.

Jade Staff
Hmm.. I personally wouldn't do anything to Jade Staff. Healing 8 HP per round sounds a bit high for a card that costs 2 quantum.

Vampire Dagger
Yeah, that looks pretty good.

Let's talk about Vampire Dagger first: it currently deals 4 damage and heals for 4. If your compare it to Jade Staff, that deals 4 damage and heals for 5, there's a problem.
Either Vampire Dagger needs a buff, or Jade Staff needs a nerf. If there are people out there that think Jade Staff is OP, I'd be happy to discuss with them. Otherwise I'll consider that boosting Vampire Dagger is a good move. After the buff though, we'll get the reverse situation: Dagger damages and heals 5/5, Staff 4/5.
So what should we do? Buff Jade Staff too, to make it a carbon copy of Vampire Dagger (5/5)? Or, as the Life theme suggests, make it more "healing" oriented?
I chose the second solution: nerfing damage to 2 and buffing heal to 8 seems quite balanced compared to the new 5/5 Vampire Dagger.
You might be right on the card cost though. Increasing it to 3 or even 4 might be needed.

Hourglass
I don't think Hourglass needs a nerf. It's not that powerful really. That nerf would weaken Time decks a lot.

Sundial
I like it BUT I would put the hasten ability back (2 quantum in both versions). I don't think cards should be nrfed by taking abilities away when you do it in others ways as well.

IMO, what makes Sundial so imbalanced right now is more the hasten ability than the stasis effect. I know the AI uses it stupidly but in the hands of a human player hasten is extremely powerful. My suggestion for Hourglasses isn't that much an issue for Time decks cause those should be able to find quantums quite easily. It might be more disturbing for rainbow though and I think it's a good point. Rainbows need to draw a lot to be efficient and this process shouldn't be as easy as it is now.
I agree with you to say that removing an ability from a card isn't a good way to balance it, but IMO if you let hasten on Sundial you'll have to increase the cost even more to make it correctly balanced.

Phase Shield
I like the effect but I'm not sure about the cost. Nerf might be too big. Maybe lower the cost by one?

Does it look so imbalanced if you compare it to my new Sundial?
* Stasis blocks creatures from both side for 2 turns at the cost of 3 Time
* Phase Shield blocks your opponent's creatures AND weapon AND lets you attack meanwhile. No matter what, this is much stronger than Sundial. I think it deserves a high cost.

[Demongod]

Demon, calm down a moment. These changes weren't proposed because the AI is too easy (though making the AI harder would be a benefit, as long as it was still beatable. Also, note that these changes would effect the AI decks, too). These changes were thought up because the balance of the cards to each other was off.

These balances would also allow more deck options for PvP as well, because with the fixes to Sundial and Pulverizer, along with some other cards, people would not be FORCED to bring permanent control in a deck. They could bring other cards to make their deck more effective, verses taking along permanent control and a Mark of Fire or Gravity or Darkness, which would only limit the decks and the metagame archetype.

God forbid someone has to forgo one quanta a turn in order to splash a key card to make aggro decks work!  My god, the horror!

Tell me, what exactly is the point of making cards in this game when rather than actually have to deal with them, people simply WHINE, *****, AND MOAN until they get a nerf?

No--here's the thing--if a card in this game doesn't force your opponent to adapt to it or lose...

THEN IT'S GARBAGE.

But fine, don't listen to me.  Let's just make Elements a complete solitaire game and see who can have the fastest-going deck, while making False Gods impossible to have a great win percentage against, no matter how good your deck is.

Already, veteran players (and myself) have grown bored of the game.  And now you're going to make the only way of doing the only thing that's challenging impossible?

If you nerf sundial, then you better give another way of maintaining that win percentage against False Gods.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

If you nerf sundial, then you better give another way of maintaining that win percentage against False Gods.

Why? Fake Gods are supposed to be hard. If you have an 80% win rate, then they are obviously too easy. If we were to take out losses due to bad draws, the win rate would be much higher. Keep in mind that these changes will not happen over night, or any time soon, for that matter, and probably not until the PvP issue is fixed (this might be more likely with client downloads of the game and Peer to Peer hosting, though that is just wishful thinking for now).

God forbid someone has to forgo one quanta a turn in order to splash a key card to make aggro decks work!  My god, the horror!

Sure, one less quantum per turn isn't that much if you're playing a mono-element deck, but when you're forced to play Mark of Fire to take Explosions in pretty much every deck you play just so you can be competative, then something is wrong.

Though, I really don't know why I'm arguing with you; you really don't seem to understand.

[Demongod]

If you nerf sundial, then you better give another way of maintaining that win percentage against False Gods.

Why? Fake Gods are supposed to be hard. If you have an 80% win rate, then they are obviously too easy. If we were to take out losses due to bad draws, the win rate would be much higher. Keep in mind that these changes will not happen over night, or any time soon, for that matter, and probably not until the PvP issue is fixed (this might be more likely with client downloads of the game and Peer to Peer hosting, though that is just wishful thinking for now).

God forbid someone has to forgo one quanta a turn in order to splash a key card to make aggro decks work!  My god, the horror!

Sure, one less quantum per turn isn't that much if you're playing a mono-element deck, but when you're forced to play Mark of Fire to take Explosions in pretty much every deck you play just so you can be competative, then something is wrong.

Though, I really don't know why I'm arguing with you; you really don't seem to understand.

No, there really is nothing wrong.  Other colors have other permanents capable of screwing you over.  There are quite a few weapons out there that should you let them go active they will make you hurt quite badly.  Consider a mono-time deck with rewinds and eternity locking down your draw.  Or what about an earth/gravity deck with pulverizers and otyughs+armor?  Or maybe some sort of earth/water quanta kill deck with purifies so that you really can't even get in poison edgewise?  Or what about wind decks that just snipe you silly with Eagle eyes?

No, there is far more uses to explosion than to deal with sundials.

Now please stop thinking like a scrub.  Sundials only shut down one way to win--attacking with creatures.  There is still poison, there is still having your opponent deck, there is lockdown via quanta/creature kill, and there is fire with fahrenheit. 

If you want to nerf sundial, the best nerf would simply be to make the unupgraded version cost 2 time, and the upgraded version be the current unupgraded one.  There.  Done.  No need to beat it down until it's dead.

As for False Gods...

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIFFICULT AND "LOL YOU LOSE AUTOMATICALLY BECAUSE THE COMPUTER IS TWO PLAYERS AT ONCE"[/SIZE]

[chriskang]

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIFFICULT AND "LOL YOU LOSE AUTOMATICALLY BECAUSE THE COMPUTER IS TWO PLAYERS AT ONCE"

Sure, there is.
"Lose Automatically" is 0% win rate.
"Difficult" is 20% win rate.

80% win rate is what we call "easy".

[Scaredgirl]

If you nerf sundial, then you better give another way of maintaining that win percentage against False Gods.

Haha, here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the true motives of Demongod. He doesn't give a s*** about game balance, all he wants is to keep his overpowered Sundial so that he can keep that 80% winning percentage against False Gods.

When I joined the game, the best anti-False God deck had maybe 40% winning percentage and the game was doing just fine.

[Demongod]

Way to miss the point.

Difficult is "you need to play your deck well".

Frustrating is: "oh look, the computer simply overruns me and there's nothing I can do".

And honestly, CK and SG, I thought you two were smart.  Apparently you two aren't.  Otherwise you'd realize that there's literally nothing to do in elements aside from fighting FGs.  And that furthermore, that the

COMPUTER DOES NOT MIND BEING BEAT.

Oh, and as for players dealing with sundial: if you're not willing to pack permanent destruction despite KNOWING that there are cards in so many different colors that can screw you, then that's no reason to nerf.

Oh well.

Continue to be scrubs.

[Delreich]

COMPUTER DOES NOT MIND BEING BEAT.

But some players do mind the lack of challenge.



The casting cost increase for Oty seems a bit excessive, depending on the stats. I think upping the ability cost and making the elite oty a 0/4 would be enough for a first step.

Miracle nerf needs a change. As it is, there will be someone who thinks using it at full health will give them 200 hp. Make it something like "recover half of the health you've lost" instead (and consider changing those halves to 3/4).

Sundial
I like it BUT I would put the hasten ability back (2 quantum in both versions). I don't think cards should be nrfed by taking abilities away when you do it in others ways as well.

IMO, what makes Sundial so imbalanced right now is more the hasten ability than the stasis effect. I know the AI uses it stupidly but in the hands of a human player hasten is extremely powerful. My suggestion for Hourglasses isn't that much an issue for Time decks cause those should be able to find quantums quite easily. It might be more disturbing for rainbow though and I think it's a good point. Rainbows need to draw a lot to be efficient and this process shouldn't be as easy as it is now.
I agree with you to say that removing an ability from a card isn't a good way to balance it, but IMO if you let hasten on Sundial you'll have to increase the cost even more to make it correctly balanced.

The hastening wouldn't be such a big issue if the casting cost is upped to what you suggest (no more "five cards in the first three turns").
With hasten for two light, it would be like a short duration multi-element hourglass with an added effect. Also, as you said about pulv, it's just the first step.

Phase Shield
I like the effect but I'm not sure about the cost. Nerf might be too big. Maybe lower the cost by one?

Does it look so imbalanced if you compare it to my new Sundial?
* Stasis blocks creatures from both side for 2 turns at the cost of 3 Time
* Phase Shield blocks your opponent's creatures AND weapon AND lets you attack meanwhile. No matter what, this is much stronger than Sundial. I think it deserves a high cost.

Sundial leaves the shield slot open, and PS doesn't stop momentum. Still, for a first step it should do as suggested.

I'm not sure about the (super)nova change, but the rest looks good.

[Scaredgirl]

And honestly, CK and SG, I thought you two were smart.  Apparently you two aren't.  Otherwise you'd realize that there's literally nothing to do in elements aside from fighting FGs.

Yeah, I think everyone here is a retard when compared to your superior intelligence.

So let me get this straight.. veteran players are getting bored because there is not enough challenging content, and your genius solution to this is to let PvE be too easy? Why not buff the Sundial so that you would win 99% of time against False Gods? That would be even better.

We can only hope that Zanzarino hires you instead of Chriskang.

[Evil Hamster]

Demongod has been warned to tone down language or be banned.

Back on topic---

I think the Supernova should be what the original Nova was before it's nerf:

Pay 3 life to gain 2 of each quantum