Well, judging from the beta v.03 on-line matchups, its easy to see that Illusion dominates Holy. Just about every player has a better win percentage with Illusion vs. Holy. I play random as many do, and usually win with Illusion vs Holy and have a hard time with Holy vs Illusion.

 If you compare the two card sets, I believe there are two big reasons why. Power 3 - Holy Guard vs Hypnosys and Power 4 - Diving Justice versus Wall of Reflection.

These cards just don't compare. Considering that both Illusion cards include direct damage, while the holys only deal with creatures.

Both the Wall and Hypnosys need to be toned down or the holy cards boosted. We could add healing to the holy cards, but that will translate into longer games. I suggest making the Wall 0/10 and Hypnosys affect 1 creature instead of 2.

What do you think?

Also, a few other notes about Illusion.

Spectral Assassin, reduce the direct damage - 12 is just too much. Compare this to Holy's Divine Intervention, which is only 10 heal.

btbarrett

 

 

 I think you way overestimate the difference between holy and illusion.  After more than 100 games my record with holy was close to 4:1 while my illusion was 1.5:1.  Maybe I'm an exception but reducing wall of reflection to 0/10 and hypnosis to 1 creature is far too much.

 Also, keep in mind that there will be 6 classes in the final version and as much as we might like they can't all be equally balanced against each other.  Some mages will inevitably have an advantage over others but in the context of the entire game they can be balanced

I assure you that the other classes are much more comparable to Illusion than to Holy (and some have a few even stronger cards). Nerfing Illusion into oblivion (HALVING the effects of some of their cards?) won't do anything. If anything, Holy should be boosted slightly.

In addition, the biggest problem with Illusion is the lack of Healing in your general mana in the game. If you can counter your opponent's Wall of Reflection with one Rejuvenation after saving Earth for some time, then there's no balance issue. If you cannot counter your opponent's damage at all because you have no (viable) heal (which should simply not be possible in a game), the Wall is too strong.

 My records with each are pretty comparable, but the sample size is relatively low.

 

Illusion can seem very dominant when your opponent has little to no healing  resources, since illusion can really deal out damage effectively.

 

That said, I agree about the holy 3 -- fix that and most of the problems go south i think. 

Shard:

 I think you way overestimate the difference between holy and illusion.  After more than 100 games my record with holy was close to 4:1 while my illusion was 1.5:1.  Maybe I'm an exception but reducing wall of reflection to 0/10 and hypnosis to 1 creature is far too much.

 Also, keep in mind that there will be 6 classes in the final version and as much as we might like they can't all be equally balanced against each other.  Some mages will inevitably have an advantage over others but in the context of the entire game they can be balanced

 

^this 

Only thing in Illusion need to be nerfed is the wall of reflection. 

Well,

I do agree that Holy needs to be bumped up compared to all the card sets.

How about adding protection to self as well as the neighboring creatures for Holy Guard.

Divine justice could not harm your own creatures (or at least harm them less). Look at Dark Ritual, it costs 1 and deals 3 damage to opponents creatures and 3 health to your own. Why isn't Divine Justice = 4 X Dark Ritual..that would pump up Holy.

You could also add a health component to Wrath of God aka Drain Souls.

Keep in mind that the costs of all spells are their mana cost + 1 turn. Dark Ritual is only useful in a few circumstances - you could certainly cast it 4 times to have the kind of improved Divine Justice you want for Holy, but in the meantime, your opponent could cast 3 more spells than if you cast one (current) Divine Justice. (E.g. by the time you cast Dark Ritual for the 4th time, he has 3 unblocked creatures.) But I agree that Divine Justice seems a bit weak or at least too situational for its mana cost, that Cleric needs some kind of real heal/lifegain spell and that Holy Guard needs to withsand more damage itself (or block more). Right now, I will simply ignore its blocked units for a turn or two and then AoE everything including the Guard and its neighbouring creatures.

Wrath of God, however, is very good right now (compared to Cannonade from Mechanician, it deals 16-20 damage (Cannonade: always 20) most of the time, too, it costs only 6 mana (Cannonade: 7) and, more importantly, if you have Cannonade, you cannot have Steam Tank (which costs 8 mana), e.g. your strongest creature with class mana is only 6 mana strong instead of always either 7 or 8 with Cleric).

Perhaps having better options in slot 1 would help Cleric be more competetive?

 I agree with what was posted above.  I hear a lot about Holy being underpowered, but I actually have a better win percentage with it on multiplayer.  A lot of times I end up being more impressed with some of the Illusionist spell effects, but Cleric chalks up the wins just as easily (in my case, it seems, even more so).

I disagree. I know several strong players who have better win percentantage with Holy. Holy is defensive, while Illusion is much more agressive.

I too think they are fairly balanced.  One thing to keep in mind is that illusion will probably win more against inexperienced players.  A LOT of players I have seen play as if they are only looking at their own cards and ignoring their opponents possibilities ( even when it is illusion vs illusion so you KNOW all of your opponents illusion spells ).  I believe this inexperienced style of play benefits their Illusion playing opponents more so than Holy.

When experienced players make the adjustments needed to combat Wall of Illusions and/or Hypnosis I think the two classes end up quite even.  I almost always play completely differently against Holy and Illusion starting with turn 1.  As an, Holy has a hard time against Phoenix while I don't remember ever losing a game as Illusion when my opponent cast it.  I often meditate turn 1 against Holy if I go first, I hardly ever do so against Illusion ( not saying this is the best strategy, just pointing out the differences here ). 

 However I do think the wall might be more fair by having it damage the controller of the damage, not the opponent only.  So Wall + Armageddon/Acid Rain/etc.. would not work.  If my opponent has Wall of Illusions and Armageddon and I get a bad draw ( no or low heal without ice guard for instance ) I feel like I have no way to win.    

 

I'm accumulating data, and it seems that I win significantly more often against the Archmage AI when I play as Illusion, rather than Holy.

I believe Wall of Illusion is very strong - because there is no way to avoid (eventually) taking 20 damage from it.  The only decent counter to Wall of Illusion is some good healing effects - but those can be hard to come by.

I believe Divine Intervention is underpowered - simply because I can almost never find a use for it.  I've griped about Divine Justice, but I find myself playing it once or twice whenever I have it available.  Divine Intervention, however, doesn't even have that going for it.

I'll be posting my Holy vs. Illusion thoughts in a few days, once I have more data.

--Mr. Strange

 I'n a few days I am going to post a my analysis of the 3 predominant matchups so far as well ( Holy vs Holy, Illusion vs Illusion, and Illusion vs Holy ) . 

I would like to say that there area  few other ways to counter the wall besides heal ( and I think almost any of the heals can counter it when played right ).  If you force your Wall playing opponent to drop it in front of a fragile creature that dies before the wall ( sweepers, etc.. ) or better yet in front of nothing, there are many critters that can drop in front of their wall that suddenly turn the 20 life into a huge detriment.  Ice guard, Mind Master, Astral Guard, Wall of Lightning, Lightning Cloud, Elven Healer, Forest Sprite, Elf Hermit, Master Healer, and Hydra are all pretty good counters to a Wall of Illusions. Carefull use of any of the Elementals works as well.  Of course only using these creatures along with other smaller 3 attack creatures gives Illusionists a headache. 

I am not sure if playing against the archmage AI gives a very good indication of balance. I have been starting to use the 'hotseat' feature and playing both sides to test out matchups quickly.  Not ideal but I think it's better than using the archmage. 

Divine Intervention is probably my favorite and most used Holy spell against other Holy mages! I don't use it often against Illusion but when I do it still seems ok.  Divine Justice seems fine to me, with careful planning it can completely turn some matches around.  

 

I look forward to your post Mr. Strange.

 

 

 

 

 

I jumped online and played several games vs Holy mages today, and all five of them made heavy use of Divine Intervention.  They all were playing a pretty standard lowball-highball strategy, where you stall the game with some punky creatures for 5-6 turns, then start dropping a series of big hitters.

Unfortunately for all of them, I was able to defeat that strategy every time by using a more aggressive mid-level creature strategy, and timing my damage spells to let through several big hits.

I suspect that if lots of people are playing a build-up game online, then Divine Intervention would be pretty sweet.  Three of the Holy mages I fought literally never cast any holy spell other than Divine Intervention and Monk.

--Mr. Strange

Alright, it's time to get some data out there about how well I've been performing as Holy vs Illusion.  Last version time I played 180 games as a cleric - with this new version I have just 100 under my belt as an Illusion Mage, and another 60 as a Cleric.  But I think certain trends become clear.  It is significant that a handful of cards changed potency with this patch, so it's not quite correct to directly compare old win/loss records to my current data set.

In a nutshell:  Games played: 160  (100 illusion, 60 Cleric)

Games won:  73 (53 Illusion, 20 Cleric)

Overall win percentage: 45.6%

I'm going to spoil things a bit now, and show you what those numbers look like if we remove the matches where I fought a Necromancer.  My win record against Necromancers was an abysmal 8 out of 27 games.

Games played against non-Necromancers: 133 (79 Ilusion, 54 Cleric)

Games won against non-Necromancers: 65 ( 48 Illusion, 17 Cleric)

 Overall win percentage against non-Necromancers: 48.9%

------------------ 

 I kept track of several stats in my games, including which cards were significant in determiing the outcome, which matches hinged on specialty cards, and which cards underperformed.  Some new observations below:

1 - Faerie Sage.  I originally didn't like this guy, because I found him to be too mediocre overall.  Now that I've been playing as and fighting Illusion mages, I have a new respect for the importace of healing effects.  I now find this guy to be a very refreshing addition to my hand when I draw him.

2 - Faerie Apprentice.  This card is cheap, but it's a game-winner.  It's like a Goblin Berzerker, but with an extra ability and no drawback.  If I also have Flame Wave in hand, I'm almost guaranteed to gain a big early advantage by just playing these guys and then wiping out the board around turn 3.

3 -  Goblin Berzerker.  This guy is terrible.  I played him in exactly 1 game out of 160.  And he screwed me.

4 -  Fire Drake.  I almost never played this card, either.

5 - Merfolk Elder.  This guy is tremendously good.  He's the best air card in the game, even though he's in the Water element.  I think his presence makes the relative power of air cards much higher - and air has a lot of cards which seem too strong to me.   I think this guy might be the real culprit.

6 -  Holy Guard.  This card wants to be useful, but it's just not.  I believe everyone knows that this card is failing to pay the bills.

7 -  Divine Justice.  I played this card on average more than twice when I have it.  But I'm not sure it's ever helped me much.

8 - Divine Intervention.  I find this card totally useless.  I play very aggressive games, where there just isn't time to see this pay off.  I'm waiting to play in a different environment before I call it useless.

9 - Angel.  I never use this card unless I'm seriously out of other options.

 10 - Madness.  This card is nice, and I almost never played it.  But that's simply because it's situational, not because it's bad or out of theme for Illusionists.

11 -  Phantom Warrior.  I almost never played this card, which is interesting.  I was really looking forward to using it back when I couldn't play as an Illusionist.  But it turns out that stalling a blocker for 4 turns isn't really that compelling.  I suppose it says something good about Illusion cards that I always have something better than this to save up for.

12 - Hypnosis.  I love this card.

13 - Wall of Illusion.  This card is super-powerfull, and I won't spend lots of time repeating the arguments around it.  But suffice it to say that Almost all of my lost games were games in which I did not have this card.  My Illusionist win ratio WITH wall is around 78%, compared to 52% overall.

14 -  Spectral Assassin.  This card is great fun, but interestingly it did not figure into my winning strategies very frequently.  It's certainly a very good card, but Illusion is full of those.

15 -  Spectral Mage.  This is my favorite Illusion card, period.  He's a big burly creature, who SLAUGHTERS several of my most troubling nuisances - Master Healer, Hydra, Elementals, Dragon, and ESPECIALLY Astral Guard.  He can single-handedly act as Astral Guard defense, which is tremendously comforting.

16 -  Oracle.  I don't know why her attack is so ridiculously high, but I'm glad she's on my side!  Interestingly, her direct-damage ability rarely comes into play in a significant way because she tends to not last very long.

17 -Hypnotyst.  This guy is tremendous for one big reason - he deals damage to your opponent when summoned.  He looks less threatening than the Oracle, but his boost to Illusion power makes him a very fearsome threat to the entire board.  I really like him.

Observation: Almost every Illusion card (except Madness and Phantom Warrior) frequently showed up on my "significant contribution" list after a victory.  Only four Holy cards (Divine Justice, Wrath of God, Monk, Archangel) showed up with any frequency at all.

 

Opponent Mage Breakdown 

Things have shuffled a bit since my last data run - this time Dominators were the big losers overall, with just 8 victories credited to them.  Mechanics, Holy, and Chaos mages all did well - averaging about parity with their win/loss records.  Illusion mages actually did rather poorly, but I suspect that's because most of my matches against them were Illusion/Illusion, and thus I knew exactly when they were holding the Wall, and played accordingly.

But Necromancers just spanked me.  I won only 8 games against them out of 27.  Of the 19 games I lost to Necromancers, only 3 did not turn on some Death spell wiping out my board - Blood Ritual, Greater Demon, Drain Souls were the three likely candidates.  I'm actually pleased that Cursed Fog is no longer the horror it was - in fact the AI rarely used that spell against me, and when it did I didn't fel cheated the way I used to.

(One of the games that Death won without one of those specialty creature wipes was a fantastic game where he dropped an Astral Guard, and then used Nature's Blessing on it every turn until I was exhausted and unable to defend.)

Greater Demon almost always wins the game when he hits, and Blood Ritual has caused me tremendous pain.  I'm going to say that those two cards are overly strong.

Keeper of Death made a few appearances, but he was not the obvious inbalancing influence that Blood Ritual and Greater Demon were.  I firmly believe he's too powerful, and expect that human players will demonstrate this fact conclusively.  If he only produced half as much mana I think he's be pretty strong.

------

Well, unfortunately this post was a bit less directed than I generally like.  But hopefully I've made my points.

--Mr. Strange

 

Haha... it's interesting that the Necromancer  won with a purely Control strategy while the Dominators fared so poorly.

From what I've seen of the cards that Dominator's have at their disposal, they have the most technical and difficult task set out for them by preventing their opponent from playing what they need, rather than being able to deal with it once they cast it. Perhaps the AI simply doesn't handle that kind of idea with the same ability it does the other wizards. Even playing it as a player is hard.

I think a current problem are mediocre/too situational cards in some elements (including Cleric and Dominator). Cards like Ancient Horror or Mindstealer are either too weak for their cost or you have to save mana for them - something you can't really do as Dominator because as soon as you lose the mana advantage, you lose the advantage your class is built around. That makes their job much more difficult, because to get that, they cain mainly use their cost 1, 2, 3 cards. And if that for some reason doesn't work out, they...have a problem. A big one.

I think right now it's important to look both at cards that are too strong and those that are too weak - we kind of need a baseline for balancing purposes. If we had that (e.g. a somewhat balanced matchup or something like that), it would be simplers to compare other matchups and draw the correct conclusions.

Although I did very well against Dominators - I don't think they are weak.  I live in mortal fear of Astral Guard, and always play a very conservative mana game - which I believe gives me a strong edge when compared to Dominators.  I also think that the AI isn't "mean" enough with the Dominator - the way that players certainly can be.  Giving me -1 mana in all elements a couple times during the match is nice, but it pales in comparison to doing so on three successive turns when I'm at a disadvantage in creatures.

Actually, almost all of my dominator games have been really great - almost never are they steamrollered - which happens in about 25% of my victories with the other classes.  I suspect that humans playing as Dominators will do very well.

--Mr. Strange

i play only holy and illusion is easiest matchup for me. Except 1 card that i hate very much, that guy for 8 mana wich has 40 hp and generates illusion each turn. Thats very overpowered imo. Unless i have dragon against him, i will see next guy like him in 4 turns wich would end game for me;/ Also 6 damage to creatures is painful, and sometimes even those 6 damage to you is unreal.

 

And about Wall of reflection, it sux against holy. Holy is about board control and making combos or big creatures, if you manage to kill first wall, not dying in process, you got very big board advantage while your opponent has empty spot in place of wall. Opponent lost 4 illusion mana - gj