(x-post from reddit, thought it was more appropriate here)
I’ve already posted elsewhere my thoughts on the updates, but I’d like to give my two cents on why puri needs to be changed, and why group purification is fundamentally too polarising to exist as it does on prod.
Let me explain what I mean by too ‘fundamentally polarising’. In many games, particularly genres in which the metagame is clearly defined and extremely relevant to the game, such as CCG’s or MOBA’s (think LoR, Hearthstone, LoL), there can exist certain things that disrupt game balance in such an adverse way that they cannot exist in a ‘balanced’ state. These strategies, techniques, abilities, etc. have almost no middle ground between being pathetically underpowered, and absurdly OP. Developers in these cases only have 3 options: nerf it to the point of being essentially useless (Troop of Elnuks in LoR) ; let it exist in it’s current, meta-defining state (Shudderwock in Hearthstone? not too familiar); or rework it entirely/ remove it (Aatrox in LoL with self revive).
Lets take the LoR (Legends of Runeterra) example and compare it to puri. In the past, this card - Troop of Elnuks - would essentially randomly summon anywhere between 1 and 6 minions instantly on to your board. The difference between pulling 1 and pulling 6 was between summoning a decent unit, and instantly winning the game. Clearly this was a fundamentally unfair/unfun card to play against as it simply turned the game into a dice roll of ‘how many summons am I getting off of this’. The devs (understanding good balance) acknowledged this, but could not make the card balanced with simple numbers tweaking without reworking it entirely due to the way its effect is worded. They opted to simply make it a unplayably bad card until they can either rework it or accidentally make it OP again by introducing cards that synergise with it. Group purification, and the tome itself, as they currently exists, share many of the same problems.
As it is (on prod) the floor for value for puri is just too high to justify the incredibly high cieling for value. In the very worst case scenario , you are getting a the same group heal as a t6 tome, which arguably is even a straight upgrade due to lack of speedy and better stats on equip. In the very best scenario, you are clearing an entire parties worth of debuffs, potentially saving many people from nexusing, on top of the heal, with one button press on no cooldown. This variance is what makes the tome so unbalancable, because simply making the cooldown longer or changing radius doesn’t alter the fact that many players can use it at the same time, or group up, or work together in any number of ways avoid these conditional downsides, essentially making the nerfs useless. This brings us back to our 3 options, and Deca have clearly gone with option 3, to rework it.
I think the changes are potentially too extreme, but are definitely good steps in the right direction (but I’m not a game designer lol), as well as show that Deca have actually correctly identified the core problems with puri that not many people can put a finger on. The cooldown increase, group heal scalability, and group puri removal address the main problems puri has currently: spammability (all tomes in general), decreasing the gap between the value floor and cieling (healing less with more people), and bringing back status effects as difficulty elements that players actually have to interact with. That last one cannot be overstated enough and is so important, that I’m surprised that Deca hasn’t made an entirely separate post on it (maybe they will).
Group purification, allows players entirely bypass a whole portion of the game designed to create difficulty (albeit artificially sometimes with confusion blind etc). This can be seen in the desperate attempts by Deca to accommodate this unbalanced mechanic by trying to circumvent it with many fast, frequently applied debuffs to counter-spam the puri spam, or un-purifiable debuffs appearing in more recent dungeons. Obviously not everyone carries around puri priests, but it’s very existence in organised play (discords) make it unignorable, and force Deca to balance the entire game around players potentially never being debuffed. While the efforts to patch up the massive imbalance that is puri haven’t been that misplaced, with the addition of Vital combat removing the last barricade between players ever being affected by multiple chained debuffs and unrelenting puri spam, Deca’s hand has been forced.
With these changes, I’m actually confident now that Deca does know what they’re doing balance-wise, and it does make me sad to see the huge backlash against some of these changes, many even saying this will kill the game. Partially this excessive backlash could just be a symptom of me entirely misjudging the situation and putting to much faith in Deca’s design sense, but mostly I think it comes the lack of communication on why certain changes are being made. I’m aware Deca has said in q&a’s and previous posts what their intentions are with these updates, but they are neither easily accessible for the average player, nor all in one place. If anyone’s still reading this, and could only take away one things, it’s that Deca really needs to give some context/reasoning behind all their balance changes to make it clear why some things are being changed. This would leave no room for silly theories like Deca employees having random grudges against classes, and would give the community a real insight and sense of direction for the game. I just feel like a simple flavour text like they do in Legends of Runeterra for all balance changes (those devs have a great relationship with their community coincidentally) would go an incredibly long way.
I know this went on for ages, it’s 5am and I’m very tired. This started as a realmeye reply but I just decided to make my own post because I really care about the game’s future and just want the best for us, and I’d hate to see it all slide down the drain due to an easily fixed lack of communication from the devs, and the subsequent lack of understanding from the community.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk,
Tele