Elemancer v7.6 & v7.7: Time to Change
The latest round of playtesting exposed a huge power outlier: Chronomancy. Mainly the “reanimation” style abilities that allowed you to play abilities that you discarded this turn. Having two or three of these in a hand resulted in absurd numbers. I don’t think it would happen too often, but I decided to reduce their frequency drastically.
Overall the various Elemental builds are fairly well-balanced, and I’ve come to the realization that maybe it’s ok when one combination of boss abilities is not performing as well as the other two. So long as the remaining two builds are comparable in power then there’s meaningful player agency since there’s no objectively “correct” combination of abilities. This does mean that one of the three boss abilities is objectively better than the rest, but I think it’s fine to have an outlier like that if it makes the Element work.
I’ve finally added Hydromancy into the testing rotation, though I’ve had to add a few caveats to make the decks better reflect endgame decks from actual gameplay. The main adjustment is that each Water deck has three Tier 2 non-Water cards to make them more realistic. With this testing, Water is underperforming compared to other Elements, even with buffs from previous updates. I’ll keep an eye on that and make some slight adjustments going into v7.7, but nothing too drastic yet.
Elemancer 3.0
All of these slight tweaks may be for naught as I do plan to shift the paradigm of the game into more distinct phases. Along with that, cards need to be buffed across the board to accelerate the game. I’m trying to determine the optimal number of turns for each stage of the game (Tier 1/2/3) and the game as a whole. I don’t want it to drag out too long, however I want there to be enough turns for players to customize their deck and experience PvE gameplay.
Though it may seem a little crude and simplistic, my initial idea for buffing abilities is to give them a baseline +1/+2/+3 damage based on their Tier (1/2/3, respectively). I think this, on top of the existing damage distribution, should be noticeable enough. Obviously, that remains to be seen, but a less dramatic +1/+2/+2 might be enough to make new Tiers feel distinct and powerful.
As I was putting this article together, I moved forward with this more sweeping update first rather than making the balance updates based on v7.6 and v7.7 testing. I plan on maintaining the older version as a playable game that may get balance updates. It’ll be good to compare the two, but I think this new direction will ultimately be preferable.
I’ve added some quality-of-life updates to the cards. The large shift in gameplay necessitates updates to the map, so I took the opportunity to give those a touch-up as well.
I’ve been testing Elemancer 3.0 (v9.0 going forward, much like 2.0 started with v7.0) so I’ll be posting again soon with some updates from this major shift. I’m leaving v7.7 in place as a decent fallback. Part of the reason I left v8.0 open is to leave room for updates to Elemancer 2.0. However, I’m liking a lot of the changes thus far.
