Is the arena wizard still OP?

[jacksmack]

I see that Borg elaborated the point of my post.


To comment further on Hajewins post:

I also think its even worse than that.
Solo mages cannot do much either. They may be able to get a bit of damage on him before he turns from rock to Iron Steel plutonium but it can simply not be done fast enough.

And the clock really IS running against that type of wizard. once he is done spending actions on building up defenses he will start undoing everything you do.

The solo mage  will also have to spend some of his actions on positioning (teleport, push, pull) or he will not even be in range part of the time.
Result: The solo mage starts spending actions on swinging a weapon  and he is essentially losing the 'Do / Undo war' while dealing less and less damage.

[Mystery]

One problem is that when for example, a swarm beastmaster faces an armor wizard, he will have almost 0% chance to win unless the wizard makes some ridiculous mistakes or the dice are out of proportion.

Round 1:
Beastmaster: lair and something (spending most of his mana)
Wizard: battleforge and something

From this moment on, the wizard can very quickly armor up. The beastmaster will nor have the mana, nor the actions to effectively reduce this armor. His small creatures will not be able to deal any damage at all. The wizard is basically invulnerable and can start to use all his innate strengths to easily deal with everything the beastmaster trows at him.

Of course you can argument that the beastmaster should not have cast a lair in round 1 and go for the attack (maybe to kill the battleforge). Against that argument I say:
1) The deck was not designed to rush, and will probably do a horrible job at it.
2) A "mistake" like that should not have to mean a loss in round 2.
3) EVEN if he is able to be a treath, the wizard will start to use his shield. Combined with the armor it will be enough to survive the "weak" beastmaster rush.

If i play a fireball shooting adramlech warlock I have no chance against another Warlock that has 3 dragonscale and even an elemantal cloak. A mage with 3 dispels in a buddy build will probably never beat a forcemaster with 4 forcefields.

Swarm is not in particular viable in my point of view still. So you compare one of the weakest with one of the best, if not the best. And why focus on the shielded armor uped wizard kill that BF...  Not that you will then win but have an easier time.

[Halewijn]

I see your point. It's just stupid that a setup like that gives you around 0% chances to win. Even 25% would have been ok.

btw: My aggressive Adramelech warlock always runs around 4 dissolves and 4 explodes! And I almost always take one during the planning phase depending on my mana. If he decides to equip himself, I take it off a second afterwards.

[Mystery]

I see your point. It's just stupid that a setup like that gives you around 0% chances to win. Even 25% would have been ok.

btw: My aggressive Adramelech warlock always runs around 4 dissolves and 4 explodes! And I almost always take one during the planning phase depending on my mana. If he decides to equip himself, I take it off a second afterwards.

nor the bm will have the actions nor the mana to remove the wizards armor, where does your warlock get it them from (even more so with expensive explode? like to see that warlock book

To be honest I don't see 25% for a swarm build against almost all competetive books

[Halewijn]

nor the bm will have the actions nor the mana to remove the wizards armor, where does your warlock get it them from (even more so with expensive explode? like to see that warlock book

To be honest I don't see 25% for a swarm build against almost all competetive books

The basic idea is a warlock with a battleforge charging at you from round one. She wants to melee attack the opponent every round and use the quickcast for everything else.

In the beginning she does not have a lot of mana because the battle forge uses most of it, but after a couple of rounds she doesn't need much mana anymore. (eg. some rounds consist of a force push (3 mana) and a melee attack) During the planning phase, I always need to choose between positioning, dissolve/explode or an enchantment. In most rounds, I thus plan a dissolve/explode. She is action drained though, I have a variant build with [mwcard=MWSTX2FFC11]Sersiryx, Imp Familiar[/mwcard], but for some reason I have had better succes without him.

[DaveW]

@Borg: By no means do I undervalue Veteran's Belt or Eagleclaw Boots. I have books where these two are important parts of the win strategy. None of those books, however, are Wizard books. Perhaps I just play a Wizard and design his spellbook differently, but I just try to keep one or two points of armor on my Wizards and spend more mana and time focusing on ranged combat and removing my opponent's defenses.

Certainly, my melee-type mages use the spells that you mention (though I was convinced to switch the FM to a Colossus Belt recently). I don't see the Wizard as a melee type is all, and I value these spells a bit less for him than from some others. Therefore, I didn't see the loss of access to these spells as being particularly dreadful.

Also, I am not a big fan of swapping torso armor (though I do it once in a while). Since the introduction of Acid Ball, probably only about half of the books I put together actually have had more than one torso piece. I tend to use Rust and Shift Enchantment more often, and I've been thinking about packing a Raincloud in a book or two for Corrode/Burn removal, etc.

[wtcannonjr]

I still haven't read anything in this forum that convinces me there is a problem that needs fixing. An overpowered mage for me would need to be able to win each match regardless of player skill. An example of something like this from another game was provided earlier for A Few Acres of Snow. A game strategy was discovered that every player could use to ensure a victory.

^^ here is your problem.  Overpowered =/= "cannot lose."  We're not talking about one mage playing in "god mode" that literally cannot not win; we're talking about a mage that has inherent advantages over other mages in an unbalanced way. 

Let's assume we agree that the Forcemaster and the Arraxian Crown Warlock are currently balanced relative to each other.  That is, if two equally skilled Mage Warriors choose either of these mages and build books for them and play each other - and repeat this many times, building new books from scratch each time - that they'll each have close to a 50% win record on average.  Then, let's give the Forcemaster 42 life instead of 32 life and repeat the experiment.  The Forcemaster will still lose some matches, because quite often an extra 10 life wouldn't have mattered (e.g. some matches are more lopsided than others).  But by making one mage inherently better than it was before, we've shifted the balance between these mages, and we might now expect the Forcemaster to win 50+X%, where X>0.  Thus, the Forcemaster is now overpowered to some extent relative to the Warlock.

This is what we're talking about with the Wizard.  The Wizard has inherent advantages (mage abilities, a particularly powerful Familiar with Spellbind etc, no triple school... basically a bunch of really good stuff and no drawbacks).  Because it is stronger than other mages in virtually every head-to-head situation, between equally skilled players, it is likely to win 50+X% of the time where X>0.  X isn't 50; e.g. the Wizard can lose.  But it's generally better on average than other mages.  And so much so that the metagame is shifted towards "Wizard or something that has a chance to beat a Wizard" - at least to some degree.  Imbalance like this is generally bad for the game, either because it skews the competitive scene, and because it gives a negative perception to casual players.

I understand this point of view, but I think you are placing too much weight on the possibility that any given Wizard book can include a more cost effective set of spells compared to another mage. For any given match or tournament it only matters what choices were made by each player when designing their specific book. Players must fight matches with a limited set of spells from an increasing wider set of choices in the spell pool. Even the Wizard must make choices on the number of copies and range of out of school spells to put into a book. This makes it possible for any mage to find an advantage during the match based on the choices they made in putting their spellbook together.

It seems to me that you are focused on the wider opportunity space the Wizard has during spellbook design compared to other mages and believe this to be an unfair advantage. I actually see this as an advantage to having the Wizard training as broad as it is. This forces players to consider at least one mage that they cannot simply optimize a spellbook design that they know has a good chance to defeat that same mage in most situations. i.e. If you see most mages as constrained to a smaller set of strategies based on their training and abilities, then the Wizard becomes a benchmark for everyone to use when innovating new spellbook designs.

A key point that I try to remember is that in any given match a player doesn't know what spells you are bringing in to the arena. So whether or not you have easy access to one school or the other doesn't ultimately matter. If your design philosophy is to try and counter every possible strategy, then the Wizard has a more cost effective way to do this. But then that is what he was built for - flexibility and counters. When you compare this design philosophy across mages I can see where you might find the Wizard a stronger mage than the rest. This type of design philosophy seems to have the goal of lowering your risk in any given match up by ensuring a counter to opponent strategies. I think other design philosophies might look at the challenge the Wizard presents and find other solutions.

[bigfatchef]

Only looking at the mage abilities card, the wizard has an advantage over all other mages. Over some more than over others. I think there is no discussion here. And nobody says he is unbeatable, just better.

Questions are:

1) how big is this advantage?
What amount of skill and match-up-luck is needed to have a 50% chance to win (average value after several games)

2) how is the setup of mages meant to be?
By creating a spellbook you need to think of your own win strategy as well as of counters to possible foe-strategies. Is it intended, that some counterstrategies are totally the center of thoughts of every spellbookcreation?
After that: what space is left for win-strategies and does this provide a huge impact on some advantage in 1)?

In other words: is it a wanted part of the game to think a lot of “how do i get through a bomb-safe wizard?“. Or is mage wars losing some original variety of spellbooks by this?

[Borg]

Certainly, my melee-type mages use the spells that you mention (though I was convinced to switch the FM to a Colossus Belt recently). I don't see the Wizard as a melee type is all, and I value these spells a bit less for him than from some others. Therefore, I didn't see the loss of access to these spells as being particularly dreadful.

There you have the problem.

1/ He's not a melee type, as you say, but he builds up like one, and he spends no more than 1 QA on it ( BF ) to make matters even worse, leaving him all his QA's to play as he likes while he becomes more invulnerable with each passing round.

2/ Therefore you shouldn't value these spells less for him but actually value them higher because he can build up like a melee type, while the melee types in turn cannot play like him.

[DaveW]

Certainly, my melee-type mages use the spells that you mention (though I was convinced to switch the FM to a Colossus Belt recently). I don't see the Wizard as a melee type is all, and I value these spells a bit less for him than from some others. Therefore, I didn't see the loss of access to these spells as being particularly dreadful.

There you have the problem.

1/ He's not a melee type, as you say, but he builds up like one, and he spends no more than 1 QA on it ( BF ) to make matters even worse, leaving him all his QA's to play as he likes while he becomes more invulnerable with each passing round.

2/ Therefore you shouldn't value these spells less for him but actually value them higher because he can build up like a melee type, while the melee types in turn cannot play like him.

I suppose he could build up like a melee mage, but I'd rather invest that eight mana on a Tower and attack the opposing mage with it instead. You still get the extra quick action, but are trying to kill the enemy at the same time. I just never play a Wizard with much armor is all.

[jhaelen]

I still haven't read anything in this forum that convinces me there is a problem that needs fixing. An overpowered mage for me would need to be able to win each match regardless of player skill. An example of something like this from another game was provided earlier for A Few Acres of Snow. A game strategy was discovered that every player could use to ensure a victory.

I don't think that's a useful definition of 'overpowered'. Its an even stronger requirement for something I'd consider 'broken', not just 'overpowered'.

To me, 'overpowered' just means that something is a stronger option than any other option. E.g. imagine two Mage Wars spells with identical costs from different schools, except one is dealing an additional die of damage. That's for me an example of 'overpowered', i.e. it's strictly better than a comparable option, but you still may prefer the weaker option because it provides better synergy with the rest of your spellbook.

Regarding your comparison with 'A Few Acres of Snow', the story I heard about it was a bit different:
A top player had discovered a strategy that he claimed would always result in him winning. While the designer didn't believe it, the player kept winning almost every game. Other players tried to adapt the strategy and found it to be very strong but weren't nearly as successful, because the strategy actually also required skill.
Also, said top player typically still managed to win if other players tried to use his strategy against him.

As I said, that's just the version I heard. I haven't been that interested in the game, so I don't know which version is closer to the truth.

[Werekingdom]

If you look at the wizard's schools pre-nerf then you'll see he was not that powerful.

-Earth: The warlords tend to play the earth spells more effectively then the wizard.
-Fire:  The warlocks tend to be better with fire. (possible exception for the fire elemental)
-Air:  I see air as a strong school that no one plays, or they misplay it.
-Water:  The Siren should replace the wizard in this school. This is the only school I think is OP. As a druid player, I would have perfected to fight a fire wizard over a water wizard any day of the week. The utility of the water school can make it hard to counter.
-Arcane:  This the best school for the wizard, mana drain, powerful spells, powerful creatures. Like the necro & druid, the wizard is powerful late game but vulnerable to early melee rush builds.

[Kaarin]

Warlords didn't tend to play better with Earth spells than Wizard. Earth creatures are slow and unmovable so You either want to use Summoning Circle or Teleport on them, both arcane spells.
When it comes to elemental attack spells Wizard had action advantage over Warlords and Warlocks thanks to Wizard Tower. Only Adramelech Warlock had some advantage over Wizard because she could give flame+1 to her enemies.