Guest posts by Vara

1

Card Ideas and Art / Re: Untapped Power l Energy Rift

« on: May 12, 2011, 02:29:29 pm »

I reply to your balancing siren with this:
though it takes 6 life, you generate 6 life quanta with rustler/leaf dragon, enough to mitosis many creatures, or get you half way to a dragon. In one turn, a 6 qunata leap is extremely powerful, hence why there is an HP cost associated with it.

I disagree with this agrument.

This card + (leaf dragon) + mitosis + emerald dragon = 3/4 cards; easy-to-destroy pernament and very vunerable leaf dragon; get one emerald dragon every two turns at the cost of 12HP.

But:

Shard of readiness + mitosis + emerald dragon = 3 cards; no easy-to-destroy pernaments or creatures (emerald dragon has 6HP, which is a loth harder to kill than a 3HP leaf dragon which dies to almost anything); get a FREE emerald dragon EVERY turn.

The second combo requires less cards, less quanta, has less weaknesses, doesn't drain your own HP and is twice as productive. And even the second combo is considered as balanced.


And note that even if the production is doubled by a leaf dragon, the health cost doesn't seem to be worth it. The three generic quanta cost do incredibly slow it down making it useless in rushes and and the HP cost makes it useless in stalls. Unupgraded, this generates much less quanta and has a much lower quanta:health ration, making it practically obsolete.

The only use I see for this is in rainbows with lots of SoGs which sometimes need to get a little bit quanta of a specific type in order to play one of it's more expensive key cards, like permafrost shield. But those will need to draw this card early or their pillars will already have generated that quanta anyway, and they don't want to add lost of them to their deck eiter because multiple of them are no use (HP cost...).

In short: this card in massively underpowered.

2

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Nerf rainbow quanta (aka. SoG, SoD, SoR and Tower Shield)

« on: April 12, 2011, 02:35:39 pm »

The raibow quanta balance is in one word "flawed". If you are running a mono or duo, paying 3/5 quanta for a card is costly, but if you run a rainbow deck, those rainbow quanta can practically be ignored since your quanta towers generate three times as much quanta anyway. And what happens at the balance community? "We should rainbow card X because it's true cost is the cost of the card divided by three."

And the result? Mono or duo deck end up paying three times the amount of quanta for cards as they deserve because those cards get balanced for use in rainbow. Rainbow is aready OP currently (the majority of PvP2 anf anti-FG deck are rainbow) so we shouldn't advatage it even more.

To my opnion, cards of the "other" element should be designed to be played in any deck for all elements, not to be an useful-for-rainbow-only card. (Not claiming they're useless for other elements, but rainbow already gets many advantages by using every element and then they also get the advantage of other-elemental cards too...) Especially tower shield is suffering from this.

I think the most apropriorate nerf would be to make three rainbow quanta being able to by paid wind quanta fromm all elements, but the whole cost must be paid from a single element.

For example, the SoG costs 3 other quanta. You can play this with 3 , 3 , 3 etc., But you can NOT play it with  , because those are different elements.

Rainbow decks, if run by quantum pillars, are usually low on quanta initially so they get difficulties playing this early. They will get to play them eventually, but not early. If a rainbow deck has 24 quanta, two per element, they still can't play SoG until at least one of those pools reaches three quanta.

I think that this delay to rainbow decks may fix the great advantage rainbow decks get over other quanta a little, especially for those of high cost other-elemental cards. This may also help to the overpoweredness of SoG a bit, as it had been quite impossible to balance it without making it useless for non-rainbow decks.

3

Crucible Archive / Re: Psychopomp | Psychopomp

« on: April 03, 2011, 07:57:52 pm »

This is beyond OP. Just compare it to Fahrenheit:

+ Fahrenheit is 1 damage for every 5 quanta, this is one for every three;
+ Fahrenheit is a weopon, which means there can only be one at the same time, or you'd need Animate Weapon;
+ This is death, Fahrenheit is fire. Death has explosive quanta generation methos with Schrodinger's Cat + Soul Catcher. Three cats + three catchers + six pillars = 27 quanta each turn with only 12 cards. Fire doesn't have such quanta generation methods. Say you've got three copies of this card, your damage output increases by 27 each turn.

A fire stall is already a know strategy, now add death stalls to it...

CC may counter this though, while fire is more immune to CC. I think that this should simply not be in death and have it's ratios ajusted.

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Forge Archive / Re: Chandrasekhar's Limit | Chandrasekhar's Limit

« on: April 02, 2011, 01:33:11 pm »

I do not see why anyone would use this card. Unupgradedly, this costs 6 quanta while black hole only costs 4. This requires an duo element, while black hole is mono. This has a turn delay before it's ability can be used, while black hole is cast instantly. This refunds 12 quanta to the opponent, while black hole doesn't give refunds at all. Both cards require gravity.

5

Crucible Archive / Re: Celsius | Celsius

« on: March 28, 2011, 02:38:00 pm »

I agree with Nephycos, if this is named anything related to temperature, it should be named Kelvin. Celsius simply doesn't make sense; it's way too hot. Fahrenheit (the weapon) could easily have been named Celsius.

I actually thing this should get a completely different name which isn't related to temparature (not even Kelvin) at all. Water reflects a cold element, and that shouldn't have a shield which reflects heat just as much as fahrenheit does.

6

Card Ideas and Art / Haste | Hurry

« on: March 27, 2011, 05:29:18 pm »

NAME: Haste ELEMENT: Time COST: 8 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Discard and replace all cards in your hand. Get quanta equal to the cost of the discarded cards.	NAME: Hurry ELEMENT: Time COST: 7 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Discard and replace all cards in your hand. Get quanta equal to the cost of the discarded cards.

ART: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/611159 IDEA: Vara NOTES: This card discards all cards in your hand instantly and will also be instantly replaced. You also get quanta equal to the cost of the cards which were discarded. "Replace" means that you draw as many cards as the amount of cards this discarded. Note that the Haste/Hurry wont be redrawn or refunded, as that card is consumed before the effect triggers. For example, if you hand consists out of: + Devonian Dragon; + Crimson Dragon; + Time Factory; + Haste. And you play Haste, you'll discard Devonian Dragon, Crimson Dragon and Time Pillar (Haste will be consumed too), you'll lose 8 , recieve 10 and 10 and get three new cards in your hand. SERIES:

Balance notes:

This means that you get an instant great quanta burst, but you will need to sacrafice your current hand to get it. Even though you'll end up with the same amount of cards (minus one, the "haste" card doesn't get replaced), this means that you'll have much less cards left in your deck, which increases the cances of deck-out. Eternity can help against this, but what if you were forced to discard it...?

The fact that this may force you to discard crucial cards makes you need to always put multiple copies in your deck of cards which are the key for your strategy, which makes you unable to put much variance in this deck. Alternatively you could use huge 60-card decks, but that will make you suffer from randomness of the draws.

The limit of six cards in a deck also works against you. You could try to use this gard to fund dragons, but to play three of those, you need to discard three other dragons. Eternity won't be happy either rewinding dragons to avoid deck-out.

Also note the massive cost of Haste. It will take some turns before it can be played, which slows it down for a rush deck. Immolation and Supernova can be played much earlier and get the damage out much faster too. This card needs Time Pillars, and won't work basted on other rainbow quantum generation.

This card may open a whole new sort of rush strategies.

7

War Archive / Re: War betting - Win 10 upped Shards!

« on: March 26, 2011, 01:36:42 pm »

 

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Card Ideas and Art / Re: Holy Blacksmith | Steel Enchanter

« on: March 08, 2011, 05:06:34 pm »

For me, the name is reversed

Pretty nice, but why  and  ? They're the same to me :/ Maybe lessen the activation cost by 1 for the upped?

Paying or makes an HUGE difference (which in one of the reasons why it's so incredibly imbalanced). Earth and light are two elements which don't mix. To be able to use Holy Blacksmith's ability, you need eiter an duo or a rainbow. Steel Enchanter on the other hand is completely capable of doing this mono (or duo with an non-earth element).

Example: would you rather have the Graboid's evolve ability cost or ? The fact it costs it one of the few things that balances it.

9

Card Ideas and Art / Re: Dimensionless Spirit(voted for further development in the aether/life challange)

« on: March 07, 2011, 06:42:52 pm »

Note that accoding to how the current evolution system of elements works, if a creature evolves the result will keep any staus effects which the source had. Immaterialness is a status effect.

Bassically: this will generate an immaterial Vitalis.

10

Card Ideas and Art / Re: Putrefaction|Putrefaction

« on: March 07, 2011, 03:04:42 pm »

Useless. How many burrowed creatures are there? Antilon, graboid, shrieker and devourer. That are four which it could possibly hit.

How many not-burrowed non-immortal creatures are there? 64 common, 2 rare, 12 nymphs, 15 flying weapons, and a Voodoo Doll, Spark, Ash, Maligant Cell.

With this card, you pay two death quanta to possibly infect four different creatures; with plague, you pay four death quanta to possibly infect (see above) creatures.

11

Card Ideas and Art / Re: Holy Blacksmith | Steel Enchanter

« on: March 06, 2011, 03:07:13 pm »

The gap between upgraded an unupgraded is way too big.

Unupgraded costs you an expensive 8 quanta, while upgraded is practically free 1 quantum.
Unupgraded is duo with an element that diesn't mix at all, upgraded it mono.
We don't care about those six attack points (which you use to justify the differences); if we use that card, whe want to protect our pernaments, not to benefit from it's horrible cost/damage ratio.

In short:
+ Unupgraded is useless;
+ Upgraded is epic;

Remove the attack from the unupgraded version and reduce it's cost.

12

Card Ideas and Art / Re: Gluon|Micro Black Hole

« on: March 05, 2011, 09:21:48 pm »

Everyone is thinking about buffing it to increase it's attack and drain epic amounts of quanta from enemies, but what about a typical upgraded Cremation rush? They usually use Rays of Lights or Ball Lightning as immolation fodder, but considered the upgraded version is free, why not replace those with this card? Cremating is killing. So besides getting +9/+1/+1... quanta, the opponent gets -1/-1/-1... too. This makes fire rushes so much more powerful; cremation will be buffed from recieving 20 quanta to recieving 20 and destroying 12 (total of 32 quanta affected) (in case of rainbow enemy with eash quanta slot filled). The fire deck wouldn't suffer any costs at all either for replacing them, it's just a pure buff.

I'd like to see more counters against rainbows, but this is just overkill... cremation would be buffed by up to 60% (note that most people on PvP2 use rainbow).