Buff Trident or Nerf Earthquake?

[Captain Scibra]

Let's be honest, EQ is very powerful early game.  Typical decks run on a 12-pillar/30-card deck because it has the right feel, and this usually gives 3 pillars to start.  Then EQ comes along and kills them all.  Trident would be slow, but when it did it, it would practically say, "what now?" and be a not-so-bad hitter, and occasionally take out straggling pillars as they are played.  So why is one powerful and one is weak?  It's because the spell is too powerful to be effective on a reusable card.  So which end should conform to the other so they are relatively more balanced?  Should EQ affect less pillars, or should Trident gain an extra attack?  Should EQ be more expensive, or should Trident be cheaper?

[Cheesy111]

EQ is a good card, but it is not nearly as powerful as you believe it to be.  It's great against stalls, sure.  But EQ only kills 3 pillars of your deck if you're not running another element or a pend/pillar split, meaning it will only have the power in your example if you're running something off of the mark.  EQ is terrible against rushes - and not just immolation or novabow rushes, either.  A solid monolife or monodeath rush has a huge advantage over an EQ deck. 

[Absol]

Trident could be buffed into small weapons. Along the lines of Vamp Stiletto, Staff, and Arsen. It would be a big buff IMO.

[Mathematistic]

EQ wrecks a lot of things, but the same is -kinda- true for trident. Trident keeps you deprived from pillars. Unlike EQs which you need card slots for, trident is 1-card strong. EQ has obvious advantages in arena though, since arena decks could care less about their card advantage with double draw. Not sure how EQ is in PVP though, but low numbers of EQ --> insufficient and high numbers --> clogging, since you don't have that card advantage.
Trident, though, has a huge drawback- it is a weapon. It involves a high implicit cost. Not just a card, but a weapon slot. There are simply better weapons.
Also pillar bombing works best with other quanta denial cards, like DBH combo to achieve lockdown, but Discord is a weapon, so trident is simply out-competed. Trident is weaker because it takes up your precious weapon slot.

So yeah, either a small nerf on EQ, or a small buff on trident.

P.S. not sure how EQ works in pvp though. But, doesn't pillarless rushes dominate PVP? Someone give me some figures so I can make sense out of it...

[dragonsdemesne]

I think trident is at an appropriate power level for such an effect.  It requires two elements to work, it gives your opponent one turn of warning to prepare, and it can be destroyed, but if left uncountered it is a very strong effect.

I think earthquake is too strong, but it's hard for me to think how to nerf it without ruining it.  Adding too much to the cost makes it too slow and would make it useless.  Making it destroy only 2 pillars would weaken it a lot, but I think it would still be playable.  Destroying 1 would make it underpowered, unless maybe it also got a cost reduction or something.

Maybe the appropriate thing would be to do something like this...

Earthquake = 2  Spell: destroy up to 2 target pillars/pends in the stack
Quicksand = 3 Spell: destroy up to 3 target pillars/pends in the stack

That way, in unupped play, it's actually cheaper, but destroys less, but in upped play, where it is easier to recover from quicksand due to the faster speed of upped play, it destroys more, but costs more to reflect this.  This would also affect trident/poseidon.  In upped play, poseidon would simply cost 1 more to use, and in unupped play, it would be cheaper to use but destroy less.

[Frostguard]

I've encountered the same problem. Earthquake is ridiculously powerful; it can and it will destroy an entire deck right at the beginning of the game.

What do I mean? I run a deck in which almost one third of the cards are pillars. Most usually I draw one or two pillars in the beginning hand. Three happens occasionally. Anything above is extremely rare.

So, I draw, let's be optimistic, three of these pillars. Play them. Opponent destroys them right away. And now what? I could also add, for the record, especially for Arena decks, that they usually begin with several Earthquakes, meaning that they shut down the opponent for a long time - probably enough to get those Graboids out and finish the game.

The problem with this is that it makes the game very restrictive. This kind of deck needs either huge luck to win against - or Enchant Artifact (which needs Earth). Alternatively, a deck that can operate without pillars can work, but the number of those is very little.

[allembrande jackson]

I always wondered why it didn't just destroy one pillar (no pendulums or towers) in each pillar stack - that way it is less uneven (devastating for mono, meh against rainbow)

Another option is that it also damages the casters pillars (like a nymph's tears)

I think EQ is one of the most unenjoyable cards in the game.  It mindlessly ruins games by coming out two at a time in your last 'magic-spin' game in arena.

Change it?
Otherwise, just nerf it