Hearthstone
Should permanent buffs (Dire Frenzy, Immortal Prelate) include a cost increase?
I'm curious if anyone else has thought about this possibility. The earliest example I can think of is Kingsbane. Back in the day, having your opponent constantly re-equip a 13/4 lifesteal weapon for 1 mana felt bad, but honestly, I think it would be just as bad with a higher cost (also, the Leeching Poison nerf alleviates this a bit).
As I mention in the title, Dire Frenzy allows things like playing a 5/8 rhino and two 4/6 scalehides, for example, all in one turn for 9 mana, and having more copies of each to do it again.
I'm not sure if Immortal Prelate can be quite as oppressive, but it does allow some really wacky combos.
Consider this: in Dalaran Heist (where insanely OP combos are SUPPOSED to happen), the Bartender can offer you "Give a minion +4/+4, and increase its cost by 2."
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I'm curious if anyone else has thought about this possibility. The earliest example I can think of is Kingsbane. Back in the day, having your opponent constantly re-equip a 13/4 lifesteal weapon for 1 mana felt bad, but honestly, I think it would be just as bad with a higher cost (also, the Leeching Poison nerf alleviates this a bit).
As I mention in the title, Dire Frenzy allows things like playing a 5/8 rhino and two 4/6 scalehides, for example, all in one turn for 9 mana, and having more copies of each to do it again.
I'm not sure if Immortal Prelate can be quite as oppressive, but it does allow some really wacky combos.
Consider this: in Dalaran Heist (where insanely OP combos are SUPPOSED to happen), the Bartender can offer you "Give a minion +4/+4, and increase its cost by 2."
"Be excellent to each other." -Bill and Ted
Cards should be balanced inside their effect. There isn't a problem with an increased cost for a big buff.
However, you have to remember that the kind of buff you describe have a cost on card advantage: you must draw the card to play it again; so you need a tutor, a draw engine or time to play it again. And you did need to draw the buff card and to play that buff card, and again this cost some draw/time and some tempo.
This is the difference between things like Dire Frenzy and the Bartender's buff: you don't need to draw and cast the second.
That's a fair point. Since you mention tutoring, I'll point to Master's Call. I also think about how much value is generated. Even with Zul'Jin recasting Frenzy and Call in the best possible order with the best possible targets, you still only have a limited number of buffed minions. Does anyone think Prelate's infinite value is problematic?
"Be excellent to each other." -Bill and Ted
Nope.
Because you need to hoard your deck with buff cards that are otherwise pretty bad, AND most importantly, you need to play them in Combo.
All this with an upfront Tempo loss that is built-in in both buffs and buffable cards, as per their stats/cost ratio.
The Tempo gain can only happen turns later, and/or with further Tempo loss if you go for tutored draws: however efficient, draw power costs mana and does nothing on the board.
So it's not just about mana. Or better, it's not just about the mana cost of one single card.
No. That's the payoff.
No.
/thread
No, it's balanced by the trade-off of needing to draw them again.
The fact that no one is using it should tell you something. Maybe one day there could be a Prelate meta, but at the moment it's nearly impossible to tutor, so it's hard to abuse.
In fact, that points to the real issue here -- permanent buffs are not really a problem. The problem is that Team 5 has consistently undervalued tutor effects. The kobold that draws a weapon, Crystology, Raiding Party, even Spirit of the Frog ... all of these are extremely prone to abuse because of their low mana cost and specific wording.
The answer is that Team 5 needs to be very careful about the mana costs and wording of tutor cards. Hiking the cost of permanent buffs would only treat the symptom, not the disease.
Many of the current permanent buff cards are midrange in nature. You need an upside for tailoring the playstyle a certain way sometime. If you up the cost of those buffed minions you become that much more worse against any control deck with actual removal because you also lose the ability to reload the board/apply pressure as midrange more effectively than at the minions' initial cost.
I use Prelate, but not for the actual buffed Prelate. Instead I play it for the deathrattle to add it to Da Undatakah along with things like Mechano-Egg or Mechanical Whelp. It was better before the nerfs as it could ramp up and beat Warriors with one minion that would die and spawn an army of 8/8 dino mechs after playing it a few times, while also going back into my deck so you could refill again later. The buffed Prelate was bonus!
With the rise of other decks and a little less Warrior lately it is a little slow in the meta. But still a ton of fun!
Quick! Someone give me something clever to write here.
No, it's shuffled back into the deck and you have to recover it to benefit. You pay a little now at a tempo loss for a tempo gain later. That's how these cards work. Messing with the cost (which would be weird as hell and prohibitive) would essentially be deleting the cards.
I don't think the concept of shuffling permanently buffed cards into your deck is inherently overpowered, especially since you typically pay the price for it in stats/mana. Insofar as problems do occur, it's always because there is a card that facilitates searching for the buffed cards, EG Shiny Cavernfinder in Kingsbane rogue, Master's Call in beast hunter, etc. The buff effect is only as strong as your means of reliably finding it are.
That said I do think Master's call is probably too powerful as it singlehandedly enables the whole beast hunter concept. Without it they probably wouldn't even run Dire Frenzy, because stronk cards on the bottom of your deck are still dead cards. In a meta without Dire frenzy it'd probably still be on the balanced side but the two of them together are pretty crazy.
Prelate is a Timmy-trap card. The promise of infinite, giant payoff belies the fact that it's an impractical and understatted minion. Having infinite value rarely matters and if a meta were ever to come around where it did, people would tech in owls and spellbreakers to counter it. I'm not saying you can't have fun and occasionally win big with the card, but it's nowhere remotely near a balance concern in normal hearthstone. Probably a decent card versus adventure bosses though.
i would assume the cost increase is on the card like dire frenzy. a +3/+3 buff would probably be 2 or 3 mana (going by the basic card blessing of kings). throw in the restriction that it requires a beast and it really is well balanced. prelate might become an issue in wild at a later point but that card is also a bit more balanced than people think because if you can bounce it, it loses all the buffs. the only way it can keep the buffs is if it dies.