"Potions are 1.5 times more effective on this unit" might restrict design

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"Potions are 1.5 times more effective on this unit" might restrict design

This forces all potions to have even numbers for (de)buffs effectively halving the granularity of change you can make to these types of cards. As we have learned from Hearthstone having too low numbers and granularity to work with can make balance changes really hard to make.


E.g. if it turns out that a potion card is too strong giving +10 STR but +8 is too low to be played the choices are to keep it too strong or make it unplayable because if 9 was a sweet spot, it couldn't go there for obvious reasons - what, is it gonna give +13.5 to witchers? I don't think STR is ever gonna go in half-steps.
 
What about staying true to the lore of the game: Potions now hurt bronze(Humans) cards but benefits Silver and Gold(Non Humans) cards.
 
Potions should only work on witchers ,, harm humans-humanoids and no effect on monsters

I hope they fix them because Swallow is a bit OP tbh
 
Potions should only affect Witchers, IMO. These effects could be narrowed/improved by adding additional Witchers, such as Coen, Letho etc. I don't think we need to overthink this with half points, damage to humans, etc. However...

To keep powers balanced, we could always add vittles for the humans!
 
Potions are really interesting and good idea. It opened up alot new possibiliteis for new type of decks, i was playing with decks for like 12h yestarday and i found out that those potions can give you tons of options. Theres nothing unfair in those potions, they are bronze and everyone can take them easliy to their own decks. They have very important balance meaning also, since some decks are able to basicly wound you till dead/clear your board, example Monsters, Skellige. So in situation like that potions can give you a chance to boost some of your units, so they wont get destroyed with 50% of the wounbding cards there.


Potions would be way too niche and situational if they only affect the Witchers.

Agree. Potions for witchers only would be too situational.

I hope they fix them because Swallow is a bit OP tbh

Its Bronze neutral card. So how can it be OP if everyone can use it.

What about staying true to the lore of the game

So lets stay true to the lore and lets remove: Geralt, Zoltan, Triss, Yeneffer and Ciri from Monster deck, since i dont think they would fight under Eredin leadership.
Cmon guys its a card game and it just cant be 100% true to the lore.
 
Potions would be way too niche and situational if they only affect the Witchers

Yes, I agree. Potions having special interaction with witchers is nice flavor too, but I think 1.5x modifier might bite in the future. Maybe a different interaction is possible that doesn't present a possibility of making some balance changes hard in the future.

Although I am sure the design team is aware of this and that they have considered it already. I may be overthinking it too, perhaps in the case of odd numbers it can just round down, but that's kinda messy to me, as it might be confusing to players.
 
Potions being bronze doesn't make them ok ,, just because everyone can have them it doesn't mean they shouldn't be balanced

Scorch for example was bronze and now it's silver for balance purposes
 
Potions being bronze doesn't make them ok ,, just because everyone can have them it doesn't mean they shouldn't be balanced

Scorch for example was bronze and now it's silver for balance purposes

Tbh scorch should remain bronze. Terrible change. Game becomes less and less tactical
 
Potions being bronze doesn't make them ok ,, just because everyone can have them it doesn't mean they shouldn't be balanced

+10 looks like a big number, but remember Alzur's Thunder is -6 and bronze, and they added a lot of bronze-unit with removing strength ability.
 
Tbh scorch should remain bronze. Terrible change. Game becomes less and less tactical


Scorch was beyond OP and having 3 copies of it was bad ,, the problem with making it silver is that there are too many good silvers and you can only have 6
 
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Potions being bronze doesn't make them ok ,, just because everyone can have them it doesn't mean they shouldn't be balanced

Scorch for example was bronze and now it's silver for balance purposes

Because scorch was a different story. You couldnt do anything about scorch and at some point the game changed in a game of scorches. With potions you can do alot of things. You can weather tham down, and even if you will use clear skies, potion buff will be gone. You can lower it effect with tons of wounding cards now. You can use dimeritium bomb and just wipe all the potions from the battlefield. So to be honest its actually better to take an additional 8-9-10str unit than swallow potion if you care about naked strenght only, since it can be scorched only to remove it, while potion can be removed by many different ways and in worst possible scenario, which will happen alot (since alot of decks will be weather focused) you gonna lose almost 2 cards at once if someone will weather your buffed card.

Theres aleady 10 times more wounding units/ways/mechanics than buffing. So things like potions are necessary and there should be actually alot more of those to counter balance all the woundings we have in game. Most of you guys were crying before that Gwent is turning into wounding game, and now you want to remove one of the very few things which can counter balance that. Not everyone want to make a wounding/clearing deck like the one which MC posted before.

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Tbh scorch should remain bronze. Terrible change. Game becomes less and less tactical

Thats totaly wrong statement in my opinion. I feel it changed game to much more tactical now. But thats just me.
 
Was scorch powerful? Yes but it wasn't op just because everybody had it, it was element of tactical play. The importance of scorch was not necessarily in its ability to remove units from battlefield but more so in its ability to influence players plays. You knew that opponent had a scorch, therefore you you had to protect yourself from it. You need to think about what and when to play. Right now, you know that opponent won't have more than 1 so as soon as he plays it, you just put on cards without reservation. Scorch was a counterbalance cards where you could stop opponent from creating massive numbers. Now that is greatly reduced. The important thngs was that opponent might have scorch, not that he is got one. If you look at all changes now it seems Gwent has become just pure numbers game when you throw cool looking cards on without thinking to much. If you look at wounding mechanic, it just reduces numbers, it lacks tactical element as all cards after using abilities stop affecting other cards, witch means its basically all about reducing and improving numbers without even looking at cards as the are all essentially the same when sitting on the board. It does not matter which one you will wound, its still - X to opponent number. Potions seem to counter that by doing opposite, there is nothing tactical about it. I will wound you for 6, you will throw +6 card with some potions. What is so great about? It would be much better if buffs/debuff were done differently - for example, Dandelion buffs its row as long as he is on board- than wounding would be more interesting. Someone throw Dandelion on, board i use Triss to target him and remove buff. Instead we have very simple game.
Maybe thats what CDPR want, just casual game that will reach bigger audience. Throw some cards without thinking to much (i am not saying tactical element is completely gone but there is less of it with recent changes)
 
Was scorch powerful? Yes but it wasn't op just because everybody had it
So its the same with potions, everyone can have those.

Right now, you know that opponent won't have more than 1 so as soon as he plays it, you just put on cards without reservation.

With all the wounding cards like -6 Str and hundred others (trap cards, gold and silver cards) i wouldnt go that far in "put on cards whitout reservation".

Scorch was a counterbalance cards where you could stop opponent from creating massive numbers.

As mentioned above, I will be suprised if at the end of turns there gonna be more than few units on the board. Since combination of 2 cards can clear whole board or one side of the board. And in some cases even 1 card.



Maybe thats what CDPR want, just casual game that will reach bigger audience. Throw some cards without thinking to much (i am not saying tactical element is completely gone but there is less of it with recent changes)

Throwing some cards whitout thinking to much will for sure win you most of the matches... Also throwing some cards into you deck whitout thinking too much and whitout thinking in advance if what you have made actually makes any sense (which is the case in half of the decks i'v seen on gwentDB).

I was doing alot of theorycrafting before KTS after KTS and after GwentDB update and i can clearly say that before all those changes you were super limited in terms of deck building, now theres a shit tons on options for each faction and even for each leader.

I dont know, maybe some peeps are just scared of number of options we have now. And their old w3 gwent tactics wont work here anymore, which makes them upset...

The game is just simply much more tactical now but much harder to master, memorize and learn, since the number of options with all the buffing and wounding mechanics is so big that it will take alot of time before the meta will be set up and befrore we will learn and memorize all the possible plays which our oponents can do in certain situations. Trust me with old gwent the meta would be set up after maybe 2-3 weeks of playing and after that you would just "throw you cards whitout thinking" (as you stated above), because it would be just pure muscle memory thing since you would exacly see what your oponent is probably going for and just counterreact to it.
 
So its the same with potions, everyone can have those. .

Not its not the same, as scorch influence tactical approach, potions don't
With all the wounding cards like -6 Str and hundred others (trap cards, gold and silver cards) i wouldnt go that far in "put on cards whitout reservation"..
Wounding cards have little tactical element to them (some of them grant better result when played against more opponents cards, thats it) With scorch being a trap a protection tactic was necessary, now its not gonna be the case. Wounding cards (the way they are implemented) are just minus X cards to your opponent score. Nothing more. Disregard for a second artwork, and cool description of a card and see what is the mechanic behind it. It is incredibly simple mechanic. It does not matter on which card you will use it on, effect will be the same (as long as the have 6 strength). Potion are the same mechanically. Just a simple + x


.
I dont know, maybe some peeps are just scared of number of options we have now. And their old w3 gwent tactics wont work here anymore, which makes them upset...

The game is just simply much more tactical now but much harder to master, memorize and learn, since the number of options with all the buffing and wounding mechanics is so big that it will take alot of time before the meta will be set up and befrore we will learn and memorize all the possible plays which our oponents can do in certain situations. Trust me with old gwent the meta would be set up after maybe 2-3 weeks of playing and after that you would just "throw you cards whitout thinking" (as you stated above), because it would be just pure muscle memory thing since you would exacly see what your oponent is probably going for and just counterreact to it.

I am not scared of new mechanics. I don't want W3 gwent. I just want new mechanics to bring something interesting to the game. I am not opposed to wounding mechanic, nor potions one as long its good. The one we have are just boring and have complexity of old "War" card game (which ironically was one of the inspirations for Gwent) Sure, there is great number of different buffs but you don't have to memorise anything as it does not matter as your buffs don't really influence opponents play and opponents play don't influence yours. What is the difference to you if he has a wound card or potion? It will influence the score but it won't influence the way you play your card. You don't have to protect yourself cos you can't . The only thing you look at is the score. Do i have more or less. Thats how this new mechanics work. There is nothing tactical about them just pure numbers.


Again i am not saying that Gwent don't have tactical elements, however instead of adding to it, CDPR does something thats just throwing cards in
 
Not its not the same, as scorch influence tactical approach, potions don't

Potions dont have tactical approach? So play your weather cards at the begining of the round and lets see what will happen next if ill have heavy potion build.. It works exacly the same as with scorch cards before, it will make your oponent thing twice before he will use weather, or any other strong wounding/debuffing cards since he will have that in back of his head that if he will play it now you can fk him up with buff/potions afterwards. Its exalcy the same story as it was with scorches before...
 
Potions dont have tactical approach? So play your weather cards at the begining of the round and lets see what will happen next if ill have heavy potion build.. It works exacly the same as with scorch cards before, it will make your oponent thing twice before he will use weather, or any other strong wounding/debuffing cards since he will have that in back of his head that if he will play it now you can fk him up with buff/potions afterwards. Its exalcy the same story as it was with scorches before...

I am not sure that i understand your example. Lets say i play frost, (you have a heavy potion build) take your units to 1. You use potion to buff them to 10 or so, thus making my weather card useless. Am I correct?
 
Sure, there is great number of different buffs but you don't have to memorise anything as it does not matter as your buffs don't really influence opponents play and opponents play don't influence yours

What ? How my buffs dont influence an oponent play when he will have for example deck focused 100% on wounding and destroying units but ill take that possibility by simply counter buffing my units in the middle of his combo ? Go and check MC's "lemme hear your war cry" deck and asnwer yourself how my potions/buffs will influence his playstyle.
 
I do not fully understand what is going on in CDP RED with Scorch card.

On the one hand, they make Scorch much more unique due to silver status. It can be one Scorch card in deck now, it takes very important silver slot.

On the other hand they introduced a lot (really A LOT, please check percentage of wounding cards among of all available cards) of cards with wounding mechanic. So now it is quite easy to differentiate strength values of the cards. As the result, it will be very hard to get let's say 20pkt scorch. Maybe 12-15 poinst to scorch one card, which is protecting others. But I think you know what I mean.

I realize it is the topic about potions :) So I wish to add that in my opinion potions are ok, BUT in case of witchers:
  • they nerfed Vesemir to 5 strength, like other two witchers, it is HUGE change, because now they all are very endangered due to equal value
  • Geralt is gold, so he is immune to potion (in general, I know that gold status can be removed)
 
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