Druid King (re)balance

Largomets · March 2023

Been talking to a lot of the common folks in the community, and there seems to be an overwhelming consensus. No one seems to think Druid king is balanced. Some like it, some don't, but no one thinks it is balanced for the most part.

I was a bit surprised to see so few forum posts on the topic considering the fact I have yet to have a single conversation with a single player that thinks it is balanced and fine as is. So here is my outlining of what I believe is wrong with the deck, and proposed changes.

1) Chimera is simply too powerful. A lot of people complain about how a few crow cards can hand the game to 1 player. Chimera is worse. A few lucky draws early and a player can snowball the game in their favor AND rush a win AND block their opponent from advancing. This is too powerful an ability, especially since they stack with each other. It's a cool idea, but simply too powerful of a mechanic as is.

2) Agents that your opponent can activate when it is not your turn. This is an interesting mechanic, but again, quickly creates a scenario where the other player becomes helpless. If you get a few agents early, your opponent will have next to no counters. It's a fun idea, but needs balancing.

3) Vestiments and Wraith are simply too powerful, especially with the psijic deck. If a player gets vestiments early (god forbid turn one, it only costs 2 gold) then they can use any card with scrying on it to farm unlimited power. There's just no way this was intended game design, at least not in the manner in which some players are using the deck. It is possible by turn 4 or 5 for a player to be generating 10-20 power per turn before their opponent has had a chance to even buy a single decent card. That's not acceptable.

4) Bewilderment cards can HELP the opponent if they have forest wraith or other agents out. This is against the spirit of the patron. It's supposed to be a punishment you use on your opponent to counter their good luck, not a reward to them for their good luck. Especially if scyring is in play, it even then helps them there as its another card to cycle through. This is the only "detrimental" ability in the entire game. Honestly, I'd rather see other decks have "punishment" abilities before seeing this one neutered by an already imbalanced deck.

Here are my proposed changes as food for thought to show how you could maintain the spirit of the deck, but remove the unfair dominance and prioritization of RNG over all else:

Draoife Ritecaller/Eldertide Fenwitch - Change language to "When any card purchased from the tavern is placed in your cooldown pile, gain one coin." Removes the scrying issue, and also removes the ability to proc on your opponents turn/bewilderment

Druid King Vestiments - Change to "when any card purchased from the tavern is placed in your cooldown pile, gain one power." Maintains the spirit but removes the exploit of cycling cards with scrying. Also makes language clear that contract cards do not count for the bonus. I'd also consider increasing the purchase cost to 3 or 4 since this would still be a very powerful card for 2 gold.

Forest Wraith - Change language to "When any card purchased from the tavern is placed in your cooldown pile, gain one power." Same logic as Vestiments.

Stonelore Rockseer/Envoy of Draoife - "When one of your agents, excluding this one is activated or played, gain one coin." Makes no sense that it can activate itself since it already has the coin as a bonus. Also, again the ability for your opponent to increase your gold/power/prestige when it is not your turn, while novel, is simply too powerful in the current state of the game.

Chimera - Ideally, remove this card from the game all together as no other patron gets "multiple" bonuses when used. Changing the cards on the tavern is already a fine thing for the druid patron to do, and keeps it useful. However, if you MUST leave this card in the game... Remove taunt. Reduce health to 1. Reduce power gained to 1. Change 3 prestige to 2 gold. Simply put, this card is wildly imbalanced, and a player getting it early can end up with several of them which proc off each other and end the game early while the opponent has no opportunity to counter. That is WAY out of line with other patron abilities. The card is tremendously imbalanced vs. any other single card in the game AND how you obtain it makes the patron out of line with other patrons.

With these changes, druid would be "just another deck," not too strong, not too weak, and selecting it would be based on preference of play style. This would be similar in my opinion to changes made to Pelin, Rajhin, and Orgnum that took them from "luck is the most important part" to "use if your playstyle prefers," which greatly improved the game.

AnduinTryggva · March 2023

I play a lot druid king. While it IS snowballish this set is getting very powerfull in late mid-game or end-game phase.

Don't forget the chimera only drops when you have sufficient druid cards in your hand. And the numbers required are far above those needed for crow.

I won't say that a slight nerf on chimera would be damaging but druid is not as op as crow or orgnum spam that snowball much much sooner in a way that is impossible to catch up. I have won against a good druid hand of my opponents as well as I lost my druid matches.

Largomets · March 2023

The reason I think Chimera is worse is because once you have it, it's very hard to counter. You can get one as early as turn 3 if you're chasing it and have good luck. At that point, the only counter is to save up 5 power (hard to generate that early) or be playing with psijic (now instead of buying cards you need to spend 4 gold to turn patron) or rahjin (assuming you can manage to get a card that breaks patron).

At least with crow there's enough gold cards in the deck early that even if they get a "lucky" combo and every purple card hits, it's only for 1 turn. That lucky combo on green is effectively game over. Plus, Chimera can create more Chimera cards. You can be easily looking at more than one within the next few hands after the first. The only other deck that "creates" cards for you is orgnum, and those are a mixed bag since they can make it hard to buy things in the tavern, whereas the chimera compounds power AND prestige AND blocks their power AND lets you control the tavern. There is no other single card in the game that comes anywhere near that level of raw power. It does everything except generate gold.

spartaxoxo · March 2023

I don't agree the Chimera is imbalanced. It's not trivial to proc and the harder it is to use a patron, the more powerful it should be.

Also disagree about sending cards to cooldown needing changed, especially the idea that there shouldn't be counterplay to bewilderment. Bewilderment is already one of the most powerful and damaging cards in the entire game. It is cheap and easy to use and can be spammed. It requires NO RNG.

There should absolutely be more counterplay to it.

I do agree the deck is imbalanced though. I think Forest Wraith and Vestments should have a higher coin cost.

In addition, I don't think any of the cards should proc on your opponent's turn. Only your own.

Personofsecrets · April 2023

In my opinion Chimera wasn't the best designed not necessarily because of it's power, but because it's a card that you either get as a natural end game and isn't really needed or it's a card that you get by dumb luck in the early game, via the right contracts showing up at the right time, and it then impacts the game way too much.

It's not balanced in the sense of there not being a great middle ground with when they end up getting generated.

As we discussed, I do think that the designers knew how scrying would trigger the Druid King cards, but were okay with it. At the same time, I think that they were mistaken in being okay with these lines of play. Okay, it's sort of a powerful and cool thing, but the mechanic has outlived it's welcome. Being able to abuse scrying is pretty heavily RNG based around getting 1 of 4 power generators or 1 of 2 gold generators. One you are able to assemble a scrying combo though, it too easily fuels itself in the sense of allowing itself to be used turn after turn after turn because the scrying cards allow for such powerful card selection and cooldown pile shuffling. This entire line of play also takes up a huge amount of time and especially so if a choice, like the cooldown pile shuffle being avoided, has to be figured out partway through a turn for some reason or another.

As for the cards triggering on the non-owner's turn, although I don't find that particular effect too powerful, I am sort of surprised that the designers made it into a thing. Isn't that mechanic not much more than an unfun memory game, such as some game effects that were recently changed, which could hold back unskilled players? I think so. And the alternative is that the agents just stick around, which as Largomets points out, is too powerful of a style of gameplay. Stacking agents, especially in games where power generators aren't showing up, has been and will continue to be a cheesy way to win.

AnduinTryggva · April 2023

Largomets wrote: »

The reason I think Chimera is worse is because once you have it, it's very hard to counter. You can get one as early as turn 3 if you're chasing it and have good luck. At that point, the only counter is to save up 5 power (hard to generate that early) or be playing with psijic (now instead of buying cards you need to spend 4 gold to turn patron) or rahjin (assuming you can manage to get a card that breaks patron).

At least with crow there's enough gold cards in the deck early that even if they get a "lucky" combo and every purple card hits, it's only for 1 turn. That lucky combo on green is effectively game over. Plus, Chimera can create more Chimera cards. You can be easily looking at more than one within the next few hands after the first. The only other deck that "creates" cards for you is orgnum, and those are a mixed bag since they can make it hard to buy things in the tavern, whereas the chimera compounds power AND prestige AND blocks their power AND lets you control the tavern. There is no other single card in the game that comes anywhere near that level of raw power. It does everything except generate gold.

It is much easier to get Crow flowing than druid due to the much reduced minimum requirement for synergy. And also there is some means to prevent the drop of chimera for your opponent.

NeKryXe · April 2023

I think Druid King is funny and well balanced. All decks are powerful when you know how to use them. Like said before, Crows are easily stronger, and Orgnum also. Even so, I'm ok with it. There are always ways to deal against those decks, or, when you don't know how, just fight it using it. The good thing with ToT is that if something seems strong it's strong for both players. So it's all good.

rbfrgsp · April 2023

I agree with all of these, they would make for a much more balanced play style.

My absolute least favourite action in the whole ToT game is proccing opponent gold in your own turn. One of the fundamental laws of good game design is "don't pu ish successful play". And you should never see your opponent gain a benefit from you playing a good card.

The Chimera changes are too heavy handed for me. I would prefer it if Chimera retained its taunt and its hit points but all other abilities were removed, and it was an "invisible" card. IE: it does not count towards any additional deck combos.

Largomets · April 2023

rbfrgsp wrote: »

I agree with all of these, they would make for a much more balanced play style.

The Chimera changes are too heavy handed for me. I would prefer it if Chimera retained its taunt and its hit points but all other abilities were removed, and it was an "invisible" card. IE: it does not count towards any additional deck combos.

This would be better than nothing. However, my largest issue with Chimera is that it procs off an already powerful patron pull. It would be different if it was a card you purchased in the tavern and cost 9 or 10 coin. Turning the Druid dial removes 2 cards in the tavern, which is REALLY powerful in top-score competitive matches. Having any card with taunt on it come out of that is game breaking in my opinion. Remember how frustrating Rajhin was when all those little negative prestige cares also had taunt on them? That deck got way more balanced when they fixed that.

Bat · April 2023

I don't agree at all with this assessment and I've been playing this deck with Loremaster Celarus as a matter of fact more than on occasion since the Druid King was implemented.

The reason I don't agree is that your opponent can buy these cards too. If you choose to play some other strategy when these two decks are in play then you should consider bereaving your opponent of the chances they have to pick cards while you don't - you can delete two cards from the board simply by using two of your power on Druid King patron for example.

I've lost countless of matches with these two decks in play, and won many too. It's not imbalanced, it's just like with all the other decks; you need some luck on your side and play with the cards you choose to buy. I even lost a game where I wanted to strat on Druid + Loremaster today, where the opponent was more invested in Pelin. Druid King is neither overpowered or imbalanced.

Bat · April 2023

On the argument that Forest Wraith and Vestments cards are too overpowered, I don't think so, they are not unless you have a bunch of toss cards - either you play out the Forest Wraith by the Loremaster patron if your opponent has many such cards in their hands, or you prevent your opponent from buying too many toss cards if they get a vestment card early on. The Druid patron itself will help you delete cards from the board if you don't want your opponent getting a hold on them, or you can use it in the hopes of getting an ambush card in their place for example.

There is good enough counterplay against both these cards and depending on your other patrons there is good enough counterplay against the Druid King deck in its entirety - this deck should remain as it is for now. Duke of Crows is where a nerf is sorely needed.

Bat · April 2023

"Druid King Vestiments - Change to "when any card purchased from the tavern is placed in your cooldown pile, gain one power." Maintains the spirit but removes the exploit of cycling cards with scrying. Also makes language clear that contract cards do not count for the bonus. I'd also consider increasing the purchase cost to 3 or 4 since this would still be a very powerful card for 2 gold.

Forest Wraith - Change language to "When any card purchased from the tavern is placed in your cooldown pile, gain one power." Same logic as Vestiments."

Absolutely not, these two cards are pretty much the only leverage a player can have when used with Loremaster, if an opponent strats on for example Duke of Crows or Pelin. These proposed nerfs would be much too damaging to the entirely utility of this deck.

Largomets · April 2023

Bat, I don't recognize your name so I'm not sure if you are a consistently ranked person in ranked competitive or not. With that said, I'm talking through my own experience of consistently being a LB person and finishing top 2% of each season since it came out barring this last one where I wasn't playing as much. The conversations I am having with other such individuals who are playing the game at the competitive level consistently and therefor know the ins and outs of every deck at a very high level can see plain as day how overpowered Druid is compared to all other decks. The only difference seems to be that some people still enjoy the deck and abusing the imbalance (and taking their licks in stride when RNG favors their opponent) and others don't like it since RNG is more important than skill when it is in play, and that's typically not fun for people who are playing competitive.

The issue with Druid is that there is no real counter deck. It synergizes not only with itself, but with all other play styles. It doesn't matter what counter move you want to use to negate it, it feeds off and boosts off ALL of those other strategies, which in turn reduces the game to a point that luck is the largest factor. Before crow, orgnum, and pelin got re-balanced, they were much more RNG heavy than they are today. Druid is currently in a worse state for balance than any of those decks were, even before they were nerfed.

Bat · April 2023

Largomets wrote: »

Bat, I don't recognize your name so I'm not sure if you are a consistently ranked person in ranked competitive or not.

Your suggested nerfs to both Vestments and Forest Wraith would render the entire Druid King deck entirely useless as you don't propose any buffs of other cards in its deck. The whole strategy is to get either of those cards and have some toss cards at hand. You can certainly counter that very niche strategy by any number of strategies with the other decks - for example you can counterplay it with Pelin to great success.

The whole argument from your side is that the deck is too overpowered, while matter of fact it really isn't. It's very niche and you have to really build well towards it, all the while your opponent can bereave you of that building in numerous ways, be it buying cards themselves, using power or Celarus patron to send agents to cooldown pile, deleting cards from the tavern with the Druid patron, et very much cetera.

Bat · April 2023

I have better ideas for balancing the two most contested cards;

Forest Wrait - this card could cost 6 gold instead to acquire but also come with a taunt for 3 points. This would make it fair since it's very easy to just rid this card through the use of Celarus or if you're lucky any of the tavern cards that send agents to the cooldown pile, or just using some of your power to rid it. If you choose to not deal away with this agent on your opponents side, that's your choice - the functionality should remain the same.

Vestments of the Druid King - this card could cost 4 gold instead of 2 to make it a bit less easy to grab early on if the tavern RNG favours your opponent. That way this card could prevent your opponent from getting 2 cheaper gold cards early on or from getting the Vestments card and bank 2 gold for a writ in the same turn. The functionality would remain the same.

The suggestion to nerf these cards into rewarding one measly power per purchased card while in play, would quite literally render the entire Druid deck useless.

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Bat wrote: »

The suggestion to nerf these cards into rewarding one measly power per purchased card while in play, would quite literally render the entire Druid deck useless.

I agree. The Druid King deck needs nerfs but the nerfs proposed in the OP are extreme overkill that would make DK the worst deck in the entire game. A lot of people called for the total removal of power from Orgnum for example, but a coin cost adjustment made that deck much more reasonable to play against. DK needs similarly light touches.

I agree with you about the coin cost increases. I also think "in play" should be redefined so that it doesn't count on your opponent's turn. That's the changes I would make, personally.

Personofsecrets · April 2023

Bats suggestions that cards which anyone can buy are therefore balanced is hugely flawed. If there was a card that cost 1 gold and said "win the game when played," such card would show us how balance is detached from the opportunity to buy. Also, the idea that if someone wins and loses equally with a deck indicates that it is balanced is also not worthy of consideration. I win almost all of my games when Druid is a patron. Does that mean that the deck is suddenly too good because of my experience? See, it's a silly notion. Anecdotes can be useful, but not in this way.

The ability for scrying too trigger cards like Vestments or Wraith causes imbalance. My opponent and I can be playing a mostly fair game where we are gradually making prestige, but if I have access to one of these scry combos, especially vestments since it is shuffled into the deck after use, then eventually I will set up a degenerate combo turn where I blast by the opponent in prestige. This happens all of the time and combos of this sort in a game that essentially has no interaction on the opponents turn undermines the rest of the game via power level and inevitability.

There is no reason that Druid needs such strong power generating cards. It's a slow grind strategy deck. Maybe it is interesting for there to be multiple ways to play it, fine, but Druid King would still be a high pick for me even if it lost these power generators. It wouldn't suddenly be unplayble or unfun. It has strategic importance outside of the power generators merely as a deck that starts with a 1 gold generating base card and lack of powerful 6 cost cards.

One thing that I think is mistaken from Largo is to say that Druid King has no counters. There are decks that tend to do well against me when I play Druid King. Sometimes I change my Patron choice away from Druid King when I see Ansei, Sorcerer-King, or Pellin show up. There isn't a card that says "all Druid King cards are now countered," but fast strategies seem to do better against Druid King. Maybe one could say that my play style is at fault, but I also think that I recognize what's going on within games enough to make this call.

Bat · April 2023

No, actually, arguing against strawmen is not worth my time of day.

Jusey1 · April 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

A lot of people called for the total removal of power from Orgnum for example

I mean, I think it would be a better idea to make Orgnum be a "Power for coin" patreon as I don't think Orgnum's Patreon is balance-able with the current ability as it will always be just a "Let's spam the button!" strategy with it. It also makes a lot more sense for it to be used to get coins because pirate deck.

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Jusey1 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

A lot of people called for the total removal of power from Orgnum for example

I mean, I think it would be a better idea to make Orgnum be a "Power for coin" patreon as I don't think Orgnum's Patreon is balance-able with the current ability as it will always be just a "Let's spam the button!" strategy with it. It also makes a lot more sense for it to be used to get coins because pirate deck.

I think Orgnum is a lost closer to balanced now. It doesn't need to play like other decks to be balanced, it just needs to be reasonable to use some other strategy while it's in play.

Largomets · April 2023

I think Orgnum is a lost closer to balanced now. It doesn't need to play like other decks to be balanced, it just needs to be reasonable to use some other strategy while it's in play.

Agreed. Orgnum used to mostly be a coin toss deck. The re-balance has brought it more in line with traditional strategies.

One thing that I think is mistaken from Largo is to say that Druid King has no counters. There are decks that tend to do well against me when I play Druid King.

Probably fair, but what I mean is that there is no decks that are the "logical counter" to Druid king because the deck, by design, synergizes outside of itself AND with itself. If someone picks crow or orgnum I can pick rahjin to mitigate the power of those decks. If someone picks red eagle or rahjin I can pick psijic. If someone picks hlaalu I can pick red eagle etc. etc. If someone picks Druid, it doesn't matter what I pick, rng has become the most important factor of the game (and hoping my opponent is less adapt at capitalizing on rng)

Every deck has strengths and every deck has weaknesses. Good players know the ins and outs of both and work to capitalize on what is in front of them, varying their play style slightly to prioritize how to play. The really top tier players adjust their deck picks to counter what someone else has picked, or tip rng in their favor in the first few rounds based on if they go first or second. Druid is also the most broken deck when it comes to favoring player 1. Some decks slightly favor player 1 for early rng and some decks slightly favor player 2 for early rng. Druid gives such a massive advantage to player 1 that if I'm player 2, and a top-tier player has picked druid, there's over a 70% chance I lose regardless of how well I play. They fixed these issues in crow/pelin/rahjin/red eagle by adjusting the cost of "broken" cards or nerfing their ability.

I for one don't miss the days when armory was cheaper, midnight produced more power, orgnum was mostly just flipping that agent back and forth each turn, and the rahjin agents all had taunt. Why did they fix those decks but have not even hinted at fixing the most imbalanced deck they've ever produced?

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Druid King is actually not that good against an Orgnum power rush.

All of those other decks were fixed with light touches, not gutting all of their unique functionality.

Personofsecrets · April 2023

Well Largo, it finally happened. My opponent got two luxury exports on their first turn. On my turn I got vestments and time mastery. It was an easy easy spank. No contest. Vestments is busted.

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Good RNG can make any match lopsided. But, the Vestments would have been nerfed already if it was actually the case that it was busted. Vestments and time mastery require the both to be in your hand at the same time, and then that it keeps happening because otherwise it's not generating that much power.

Personofsecrets · April 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Good RNG can make any match lopsided. But, the Vestments would have been nerfed already if it was actually the case that it was busted. Vestments and time mastery require the both to be in your hand at the same time, and then that it keeps happening because otherwise it's not generating that much power.

What you wrote out is an extremly poor argument. Afterall, there are a number of things that take time to change. Sometimes it isn't obvious to those who can make changes that a change is for the good. Sometimes there is the understanding, but still not the will. Perhaps there aren't even the resources to make a change at this current time. Also, sometimes bad changes happen. That would seem to poke a major hole into your thought. By your logic, any change that happens is always something that happened as soon as it possibly could happen, and that is false, the world doesn't work like that. For one, knoweldge isn't perfect. For two, action takes time.

I could say that I'm consistently in the top 10 players at the end of season and have even played past 3000 score to claim spot number 1 last month and therefore I have the knowledge regarding what the best cards in the game are, but that too would be a logical fallacy, wouldn't it be?

What would be nice to have is data about Vestments versus other cards. For example, if we knew what percent of games were won by players who purchased Vestments during their game, especially the first turn, versus purchasing other cards, then that could help indicate how many different games Vestments is impacting in an imbalanced way. But we don't have that.

Unfortunately, I therefore have to suggest that we fall back on player experience because we don't have data. And I think that the game that I remarked on is telling. I've never beaten a player before who opened by purchasing 2 Luxury Exports. This was a first time event. And it isn't just that game, but many games where Vestments is the only key card causing victory from as early as the first turn of the game. Do you have any PVP anecdotes that you could use to point out when Vestments unerperforms?

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Personofsecrets wrote: »

lBy your logic, any change that happens is always something that happened as soon as it possibly could happen, and that is false, the world doesn't work like that. For one, knoweldge isn't perfect. For two, action takes time.

This is a strawman argument. A card being busted isn't something that is going to be something that is subtle, not be obviously for the good, etc.

Busted indicates that is a large statistical outlier. Those kinds of things get noticed pretty quickly and changed quickly as well. Not always in a way that is productive. But studios take note of busted gameplay elements and are generally quick to at least address them even when they aren't quick to correct them. They don't tweak every underpowered or overpowered element quick, but busted things they do.

Busted gameplay elements tending to be addressed quickly does not mean that every change ever will always come quickly.

Personofsecrets · April 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Busted gameplay elements tending to be addressed quickly does not mean that every change ever will always come quickly.

Yes, so if the designers were to changed Vestments tomorrow, I wouldn't be that surprised. I wouldn't be surprised because sometimes changes do take time and we see that historically speaking with many different changes. One would be the DK Chains "too high too low" bug or the bug were players get into a state that makes them unable to use charge abilities until they go through a door. Changes also sometimes take extra time because games themselves change over time and that happens even without additional designer input. That is to say that part of games is a metagame which players need time to figure out. Once players do finally figure out the metagame, then it can become revealed to everyone how certain game pieces suddenly seem to not be balanced.

spartaxoxo · April 2023

Personofsecrets wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Busted gameplay elements tending to be addressed quickly does not mean that every change ever will always come quickly.

Yes, so if the designers were to changed Vestments tomorrow, I wouldn't be that surprised.

Balance issues are quicker to fix than bugs.
Bugs take longer because the devs have to figure why something is wrong then come up with a fix. Something like removing a card effect or increasing it's cost is simple.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vestments got a coin cost increase so you can't buy both time mastery and Vestments turn 1. It is overpowered, it's not likely busted imo.