Card Balancing: Community Based Project

[omegareaper7]

It can be alleviated by regulating your damage output to around 10-11 HP/turn. However, this is difficult to do in a rush unless you're playing with stuff that burrows (which in most decks means Graboid/Shrieker) or you keep only one or two creatures on the field. If your opponent's running a mono- rush that's dealing 20 damage a turn, you can't afford to hold your own damage on a rein. Even if you hold back your damage to 11 per turn, there's no reason for your opponent to play any SoSac in their hand.

There is one point i would like to bring up with Shard of sacrifice. Even with 11 damage on the field, you still benefit from using it, albeit not near as much, but it still decreases the damage you take to half if they are even at 11 damage.

[mwaetht]

Compare Supernova to Quantum Pillar. Supernova, although it requires quanta, is a card that generates essentially 22 quanta. That's six turns of a Quantum Tower. Given that the average Quantum Tower in your average speedbow (also counting the ones that aren't drawn) will be on the field for considerably less than six turns, and given that the quanta isn't random, Supernova is by far the best quanta source available assuming access to reliable quanta.... especially
for speedbows, where Quantum Towers won't stay on the field long enough to generate much.

The suggestion to make it cost three will still just make it give a net gain of 21 quanta instead of 22, which really isn't too important. More important is that it has to be chained once a turn instead of multiple copies in a single turn, that it takes one more turn to play, and that PSNbows are now officially dead. However, although all these things work to be a good counterbalance to Supernova's OPness, I don't think they address the central issue- that it generates so much more quanta than a Quantum Tower will in most decks. The problem is that decreasing the amount of quanta generated to, for example, sixteen random quanta will be such a huge nerf as to drastically shift the game.

It can be alleviated by regulating your damage output to around 10-11 HP/turn. However, this is difficult to do in a rush unless you're playing with stuff that burrows (which in most decks means Graboid/Shrieker) or you keep only one or two creatures on the field. If your opponent's running a mono- rush that's dealing 20 damage a turn, you can't afford to hold your own damage on a rein. Even if you hold back your damage to 11 per turn, there's no reason for your opponent to play any SoSac in their hand.

There is one point i would like to bring up with Shard of sacrifice. Even with 11 damage on the field, you still benefit from using it, albeit not near as much, but it still decreases the damage you take to half if they are even at 11 damage.

11 damage without SoSac upped: Deals 22 damage in 2 turns
11 damage with SoSac upped: Deals 40 damage, heals 22 in 2 turns, 18 damage total
4 HP net gain

Nobody's going to essentially waste a card as powerful as SoSac can potentially be to block four damage. That's why I say there's no reason for the opponent to play any SoSac in their hand; better to keep them in the hand as a potential threat against the opponent.

[RootRanger]

They're all OP.
Nerfs would be great for the metagame. If Nova|Supernova and SoX were on par with other strong cards, there would be more viable decks worth using.

Nova rainbows need fewer quanta producing cards than mono and duo decks. A Nova rainbow can work well with only 8-10 quanta producing cards, but monos and duos need 12-14. Nova rainbows can have a much more efficient Deck Size:Quanta card ratio and can have an advantage over a lot of decks that aren't hard counters. Grabbow was very common in BL 1/2011 and it's still a great deck, partly because Nova allows few quanta cards to be necessary. If you need evidence, I finished 2nd place in BL 1/2011 (with a better W/L ratio than 1st place) by using Nova based rainbows almost every single game.

Well, here's the problem.

Hardly anything can beat Firestall as well as SoX decks.

This turns the game into RPS between Firestall, Stallbreakers, and SoX. There will be little room for creativity or original deck types. This really isn't the kind of game we want.

Upgraded Supernova is a much worse problem than the already overpowered Nova. By turn 0-2, it generates the amount of quanta that a tower could generate only after 21 turns! Supernova also comes with variety that monos and duos could never reach. Supernova rainbows can take the strongest cards of each Element all in one deck and play them much more quickly than monos and duos can. With common 6-turn wins, PC through Improved Steal/Explosion, denial from Discord and Black Hole, and defensive anti-rush cards, good Supernova rainbows are impossible to consistently answer. They are the one deck that cannot be hard countered.

[Pineapple]

The problem with Sacrifice is that it's easy to play and hard to counter. Sacrifice is best used in a fast deck with a reliable source of damage (i.e. poison, Void, Flying Titans), which means that any penalties pertaining to quanta-drain after Sacrifice is played are meaningless, since the reliable source of damage is already on the field. If Sacrifice's effect is balanced at all, then it should be counter-able by a wide range of the pre-Sacrifice decks (if not, then it restricts the meta-game). Therefore, if Sacrifice's effect is truly balanced, then it should not be a huge nerf for Sacrifice to affect both players when played.

[plastiqe]

I noticed that the Buff this Card and Nerf this Card section are cluttered with topics that may be redundant or badly kept.

I protest, my Supernova topic is the prettiest one in the nerf section!

[Rutarete]

Posting to keep track. My suggestion for SN is to have it give, instead of 2 each, either 1 or 2 for each element. Nova could be 0 or 1. It makes them less dependable, but not completely useless for their purpose.

[tallguy2241]

A thought for SN: how about it gives 2 of each quanta, EXCEPT for entropy. That way it cannot be chained as easily.

[furballdn]

A thought for SN: how about it gives 2 of each quanta, EXCEPT for entropy. That way it cannot be chained as easily.

Or make it cost 3 . That would also prevent mass chainings.

[RavingRabbid]

I noticed that the Buff this Card and Nerf this Card section are cluttered with topics that may be redundant or badly kept.

I protest, my Supernova topic is the prettiest one in the nerf section!

Sure it is. It's just ask two members three cards. I also asked a third, but that card will come next week.

[Atico]

Turning SoS into Permament do nothing for "weaker elements" like  . It will be buff for the best like  or  . Sometimes I think that we should remove SoS from game and maybe add Shard which increase Poison (like SoP increase attack). SoS is too powerful. One card gives 3-4 turns longer game. Sometimes games are very equalized and simple coin toss decide which player won. SoS there gives too much advantage... If You want to talk about DimShield remember that it cost 5 (so it can't be used by everyone), You can destroy it and You can put damage by spells. In SoS You can't do this...

Nova for me is very difficult topic. We can't compare this with other cards. Maybe it will be more interesting to add 24 random quantum (or little less, maybe 18?)

[jmdt]

Some of you guys support hate nerfs, lol.

If you increase supernova to 3 you didn't just slow down the speedbow, you would eliminate the speed part all together atleast in the current context of decks.  Maybe that would be good for the game, but it would be a much stiffer nerf than you guys realize, it would hurt much worse than the immo nerf.  It would make many speedbows nonfunctional in the speed department.  It takes generally 2-3 supernovas to fire a deck, making the 1 cost increase propogating.  You guys complain about supernova chaining, but that is the way the card works.  Its a short term burst of quanta in exchange for the long term support of a pillar/tower.  Yes it takes 6 turns for a QT to match a SN, but a lot of games do last a larger number of turns.  With losing its speed advantage nova would lose its intended use.

The best proposal I've seen to balance both novas is to add a health cost to the admission of using them.  If you want access to early game rainbow quanta, you must pay a health penaty, say 10 hea.  With this model, A) current decks can more or less stay intact and B) it would be much easier to balance.  The problem with raising a single element cost of these is that in the case of these two cards that would be a prohibitive nerf and take then from tier 0 to tier 3 or the garbage tier.  We need a smaller nerf to make the cards 'weaker' while also retaining their intended use.

SoSa...I don't have an opinion on yet.

[RootRanger]

I think a cost of 3 for supernova is a great nerf. This nerf will cause Supernova rainbows to need more quantum towers, maybe around 8, which means Supernova rainbows will be on par with monos and duos based on the amount of quanta sources needed. Of course, Supernova rainbows would still have better versatility, and they would probably still be the dominant deck in upgraded play, but they wouldn't be as difficult to counter as before.

A couple things to clear up:

Quanta production is not the only factor when comparing Quantum Tower and Supernova.
There are very few upgraded rainbows with Quantum Towers that would not want to use Supernova. Quantum Tower only has the advantage in extremely long games. It's true that Quantum Tower produces more quanta than Supernova after 7 turns, but Supernova is worth using even in games that tend to last much longer than 7 turns. This is because quanta production is not the only factor; speed of generation is also a factor. Supernova has significantly higher speed of generation than Quantum Tower, which makes it worth using even in games lasting much longer than 7 turns. Here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3807.0.html) is an example of a well-known deck that uses Supernovas despite having extremely long games.

There is no nerf for Supernova that is a "hate nerf."
The truth is that the game would improve in quality even if Supernova was completely removed. There would be more decks that are viable because there would no longer be one card that completely outshines the rest (other than SoX, but that's banned in most places anyways). This isn't what I'm suggesting, but the point I'm trying to get through is that any nerf to Supernova, no matter how strong it is, is better than no nerf at all.