Fractal & Nightmare nerf

[Shylderidh]

I'd rather nerf ghosts of the past than nightmares, and eventually pests and perhaps ray of lights rather than fractal (out of pestal and rol/hope, I don't see many really efficient fractal decks).

Making ghosts far weaker creatures (3/2 ?) costing only 2  would make ghostmare far less efficient against any deck having some novae to generate time quantum (in addition ghosts being weaker would force ghostmares to use other creatures as damage dealers, reducing the ghost and nightmares frequency).
Making pests start burrowed, costing 1 quanta to unburrow and only draining quanta if unburrowed would make pestal (and other pest based denial decks) far less efficient.
Making rol cost 1  (1  would be evil) would make rol hope a little harder to use.

[willng3]

I find it funny that nightmare is now considered OP.  I remember before people were saying it was UP.  Then it was buffed...to drain some life.  Oh, and ghost was added to the game.

I had literally the exact same response.  Nightmare was borderline useless before it received the HP bonus and then was meh until GotP was introduced to the game.  Suddenly it's OP.

Of course, with both cards reasonably balanced by themselves it's somewhat difficult to say which is the main culprit of the combination being so powerful.  If anything I'd say they're both equal, but I don't believe that nerfing Nightmare will bring about the right change.

[RRQJ]

I find it funny that nightmare is now considered OP.  I remember before people were saying it was UP.  Then it was buffed...to drain some life.  Oh, and ghost was added to the game.

I had literally the exact same response.  Nightmare was borderline useless before it received the HP bonus and then was meh until GotP was introduced to the game.  Suddenly it's OP.

Of course, with both cards reasonably balanced by themselves it's somewhat difficult to say which is the main culprit of the combination being so powerful.  If anything I'd say they're both equal, but I don't believe that nerfing Nightmare will bring about the right change.

Yeah, it just doesn't add up.  If it's OP now it should have been OP before, since it's effect essentially never changed.  You could have clogged the opponent's hand with chargers/angels/unupped phoenix/etc., but it would appear that never took off.

So that would mean ghost is the problem.  But the only thing where ghost is different is that it does damage upon discard.  Is it the damage from discarding ghosts that's making the combo "OP"?  If so, I guess you can consider reducing that damage for balancing.  But I get the feeling that's not the issue.

[Shylderidh]

I think the power of ghostmare mostly comes from the power of the ghosts.

When your opponent has his two first ghosts out (which will happen rather fast with most ghostmares taking just a darkness mark and many time pilars) he is doing 14 damage per turn. If by this stage you don't already have a shield or some creature control in your hand, you are very likely to be dead before the end of the nightmare chain.

If the only counter you have are individual creature control spells, or creatures to outdammage the ghosts, your only option is to empty your hand by using them, making nightmare more efficient, and eventually ending discarding ghosts.

In most games ghostmare win with the opponent not even discarding one ghost. Just because the ghosts are powerful enough to kill someone who can't draw a counter to their attack power. 

A fact is the ghosts with their 7/4 are the best midrange attackers in the game, ideal for nightmares even if you remove their "do damage on discard" ability, as they are both in the most powerful, in the most resilient (not killed by one rain of fire) and in the hardest to play for the opponent with their 6  cost (and in addition there is the synergy between nightmare and reverse time) ; a nightmare deck can probably work decently with some others like toadfishes, gargoyles, mummies, etc... But they both are less powerful and require less quantum to play, increasing the risk to see the opponent finally use them, and in elements not offering any synergy with nightmare.

[Poker Alho]

hum, so the ghost of the past is the root of the problem here? yeah i actually wouldnt mind seeing a nerf on him

[OldTrees]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

Clogging the hand / preventing draw was found to be useless for the cost
Adding Ghost of the Past made it merely UP and no longer useless but caused a forced combo
Adding the healing removed the forced part of the forced combo and IMO balanced Nightmare

[omegareaper7]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

Clogging the hand / preventing draw was found to be useless for the cost
Adding Ghost of the Past made it merely UP and no longer useless but caused a forced combo
Adding the healing removed the forced part of the forced combo and IMO balanced Nightmare

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,20703.0.html They may have been added different days, but the drain affect on nightmare, and ghost of the past were added during the same update.

[OldTrees]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

Clogging the hand / preventing draw was found to be useless for the cost
Adding Ghost of the Past made it merely UP and no longer useless but caused a forced combo
Adding the healing removed the forced part of the forced combo and IMO balanced Nightmare

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,20703.0.html They may have been added different days, but the drain affect on nightmare, and ghost of the past were added during the same update.

That update was a long one that was in beta for awhile. There was plenty of time to playtest between the addition of Ghost and the change of Nightmare.

[Xamuel]

Fractal is uber-expensive, does not need nerfing.  And I agree with what everybody else is saying, the OPness of nightmare comes from ghost's being such a howitzer on his own (he's almost as strong as the  dragon).  And even that's not really "OP"...  it's just a deck which works well against some strategies and less well against others.  The one place I think Nightmare is a bit OP is in AI4 using the unstoppable Day Traitors deck, and there it's only OP because of poor Artificial Intelligence not realizing it's a poor decision to play tons of rays of light when the enemy has a solar buckler.  But that deck takes soooo loooong to achieve its victories, it's not even worth using then.

[willng3]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

If you're looking at this based purely on announcement date, that is correct.

But there's much more to this than just looking at dates.  Ghost was not available for PvP use until after the buff to Nightmare was announced, and that was enough time for users to gauge whether or not that buff would make a difference for Nightmare in the PvP world.  It was near impossible for anyone to accurately measure Ghostmare's power in PvP at the time when the deck was only being used against AI3 and T50.  Buffing Nightmare added an extra annoyance factor to Ghostmare but did little else to improve it.

Perhaps it would have been more accurate for me to state that having to face GotP+Nightmare as an opponent was what caused outcries of it being overpowered as I can still clearly recall the complaints players voiced after having to face it themselves in T50 and PvP for the first time.  And then later of course the Arena sent this over the edge.

As an interesting fact:  The first nerf thread for GotP appeared within 2 weeks of its live release.  The first nerf thread for Nightmare appeared several months after GotP's live release, after the Arena's arrival.

[OldTrees]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

If you're looking at this based purely on announcement date, that is correct.

But there's much more to this than just looking at dates.  Ghost was not available for PvP use until after the buff to Nightmare was announced, and that was enough time for users to gauge whether or not that buff would make a difference for Nightmare in the PvP world.  It was near impossible for anyone to accurately measure Ghostmare's power in PvP at the time when the deck was only being used against AI3 and T50.  Buffing Nightmare added an extra annoyance factor to Ghostmare but did little else to improve it.

Perhaps it would have been more accurate for me to state that having to face GotP+Nightmare as an opponent was what caused outcries of it being overpowered as I can still clearly recall the complaints players voiced after having to face it themselves in T50 and PvP for the first time.  And then later of course the Arena sent this over the edge.

As an interesting fact:  The first nerf thread for GotP appeared within 2 weeks of its live release.  The first nerf thread for Nightmare appeared several months after GotP's live release, after the Arena's arrival.

Didn't we have the "Insert AI deck" feature during that period? (I forget exactly when that hit)

@your interesting fact
Does that signify that it was Arena Powers + Nightmare (Arena) was the problem and not Nightmare (PvP)?
Someone should really start investigating and figuring out how to nerf/buff the arena powers rather than letting those problems be disguised as buff/nerf card threads.

[willng3]

People seem confused:
Ghost of the Past was added before Nightmare started healing.

If you're looking at this based purely on announcement date, that is correct.

But there's much more to this than just looking at dates.  Ghost was not available for PvP use until after the buff to Nightmare was announced, and that was enough time for users to gauge whether or not that buff would make a difference for Nightmare in the PvP world.  It was near impossible for anyone to accurately measure Ghostmare's power in PvP at the time when the deck was only being used against AI3 and T50.  Buffing Nightmare added an extra annoyance factor to Ghostmare but did little else to improve it.

Perhaps it would have been more accurate for me to state that having to face GotP+Nightmare as an opponent was what caused outcries of it being overpowered as I can still clearly recall the complaints players voiced after having to face it themselves in T50 and PvP for the first time.  And then later of course the Arena sent this over the edge.

As an interesting fact:  The first nerf thread for GotP appeared within 2 weeks of its live release.  The first nerf thread for Nightmare appeared several months after GotP's live release, after the Arena's arrival.

Didn't we have the "Insert AI deck" feature during that period? (I forget exactly when that hit)

I couldn't find any specific information about it in the Patch Notes and Development News board for some reason, but I see instances of people using it well before 1.27 was released live.  So that part of my analysis was wrong regardless.

@your interesting fact
Does that signify that it was Arena Powers + Nightmare (Arena) was the problem and not Nightmare (PvP)?
Someone should really start investigating and figuring out how to nerf/buff the arena powers rather than letting those problems be disguised as buff/nerf card threads.

I believe it does.  With the AI having access to double draw as well as the capability of using up 12 Nightmare to stall your drawing during a duel, the AI gets a much greater advantage from using Nightmare.  Similar circumstances exist with Black Hole, Silence, etc.  Outside of Ghostmare I've never really seen a practical use for Nightmare in PvP aside from it being randomly splashed in some Speedbows.  So I'd agree with your last point about buff/nerf threads being used to attempt to resolve these problems.