Let's Talk Color Balance
I've played quite a bit with all the colors now and there is a great imbalance I'm seeing. I tired every color combination before dipping into blue, and once I did it immediately became clear that if you don't play blue you are severely gimping your power level and making the game less fun to play for yourself. I made some neat builds in R/B and R/G but they all have problems with consistency due to lack of draw sources and/or mana regen. Neither of these issues are ever a problem if you run blue draw cards alongside the chest of the dark wanderer.
The concentrate+darkwanderer combo is just so good it makes every deck not running it feel slow and boring by comparison. It is a problem.
I know blue is a control and manipulation color in the traditional CCG so it does make sense that they have stronger draw tools, but there are two issues with this right now:
- This is not the card game. Card advantage works a lot differently here and playing one expensive splashy card in this game does not have the same effect as it does in the card game. Ramping mana into playing a big splashy card just does not work in this game - you need recurring value. If you are not able to constantly cast cards it feels bad. If you are sitting around with empty spell slots just waiting to draw it feels even worse. Neither of these things occur when you run concentrate+darkwanderer.
- Right now there is no other reliable card draw outside of blue at all. IoC is the best option I've found and it requires you to kill stuff to get the draw and you still need to build around it heavily to get anything close to a decent return on the draw proc. I know its early in the game and there are probably a lot more card coming down the pipeline, but I'm not sure this is being properly considered given the initial offering provides no card draw in the other colors whatsoever.
I want to be clear that I'm not asking for blue card draw or the dark wandered chest to be nerfed. Other colors need a serious buff in the card draw department. Blue is also super strong for DPS with its control effects and the undocumented crits you get from attacking disoriented enemies so its not just the card draw that makes blue strong, its got a lot going for it compared to some colors that feel very underdeveloped right now - looking at you green >.>
Comments
Just to give you a few other options that are not blue cards: Tolaria Rep 100 Boots (Draw on Utility), Damnable Pact Tier 9 Mystic Study Card or Mythic Spell Pack (Lose Life, Draw X Cards), and then Dimir Class Level 20 Passive (Draw on Sacrifice).
I've yet to use the Tier 9 card because of the purchase cost atm, but the other two have been pretty useful to me. The boots can be pumped up by increasing your utility recharge speed, also.
I think for the other colors it becomes a balance of mana regen and maybe higher costing cards with slower draw. But once you get more card draws, it feels lower costing cards are nicer. It will depend on your build goal on what you decide to do and what limitations you have. It takes a lot of swapping of gear and cards to get a good balance.
For Green, you could use the Tolaria Rep 100 Boots and Animalistic Fury (or whatever the one that increases utility / secondary recharge speeds) to crank out more card draw.
I'm sure we'll get some more stuff eventually. Even in the CCG all the colors have decent card draw options (expect maybe white, but it at least has some mediocre options). There really should be at least one good draw option for each color, and just have the best ones in blue.
Thanks for bringing up some interesting options I have not considered, however these options don't really address the concern.
Don't get me wrong if I continue playing I'll be pursuing these options to allow me to break from blue in my dual colors, but I think card draw needs to be more accessible early on. I'm afraid it speaks to a core issue with translating the CCG to an ARPG format: ramping mana and playing only a few big cards every once in a while is just NOT FUN, or effective for that matter. I tried those builds first. I iterated on them for weeks. Then I finally got around to playing blue and the enjoyment of my builds shot through the roof. It just ain't right haha.
@nath#9170 I agree with ya that a lot more is coming and we need at least one decent draw card in each color. I'm not sure they are planning this though and that's why I wanted to raise the concern.
Yeah, the options for now are pretty limited. I sometimes like trying to work with a more tight system where you have to get a bit creative, but I, also, don't like being completely restricted. I am not sure if they are intending to make / keep the colors more independent of each other, or if they will try to blend them together a bit more. 🍻
Older players tend to have a lot more options compared to new players which is usually how it goes. But the one thing that I find more concerning is wasted resources used on things people currently have vs what they possibly could have. Then it just becomes a limiting factor (waiting game) until people get to play a bit more and enjoy the game.
I think the only piece of advice I'd say to anyone is to have patience with their resource management and for what updates will come. At least once people get into that Master mode power range, things tend to get a bit more flexible (minus the horrible drop rate for mod unlocks 😅)