Also, R2P2 is really new. Remember how OP people thought Palp was?

Or Jango Veers waay back when.

53 minutes ago, Psalm 112 said:

Also, R2P2 is really new. Remember how OP people thought Palp was?

No, Palp never won enough events for any one to even begin to make that argument in a real manner.

You can find someone to tell you the sky is green, that doesn't mean people actually think that.

i actually wouldnt be surprised if special chaining gets the hit.

Its going to be insanely common come legacies. All they have to do is "Designate what dice you wish to resolve before resolving any" to stop it. Which is actually how i was doing it before learning you didnt have to state jack about what dice you want to resolve, just which are you resolving now.

I think two changes need to be made in the next RRG to help balance the game further:

1. Force Illusion needs to be at a min 'spot a blue' but realistically needs to be blue character only. I have zero idea what the designers were thinking allowing this card to be playable on all characters and neutral.

2. Special chaining needs to be looked at. It's a limited issue at the moment but thorough playtesting of legacies should identify the problem this is going to cause with certain character combinations ie Yoda, Poe2, Aayla, force power specials, weapon specials etc. It's a different form of action cheating but action cheating none-the-less where your opponent can't interact with threatening die. If a rule around this is not clarified, we are walking into a new meta of poe2/X. Even qui-gon gets a buff if he is paired with Aayla or Yoda and Obi-wans lightsaber. The fair change to the rule is that you cannot resolve die on the same action that it has been changed ie Poe special into lightbow special and no resolve.

Maybe we need to wait and see how the meta shakes out but it's going to make for an interesting regionals and world's season.

On 12/11/2017 at 10:49 AM, Vineheart01 said:

i actually wouldnt be surprised if special chaining gets the hit.

Its going to be insanely common come legacies. All they have to do is "Designate what dice you wish to resolve before resolving any" to stop it. Which is actually how i was doing it before learning you didnt have to state jack about what dice you want to resolve, just which are you resolving now.

See, I would hate that since that kind of lateral plays are one of my favorite parts of Destiny. Cause if you kill it for specials, you kill it with Focus die too. I for one love being able to use a 1 focus to change a One With The Force into a 3 focus and fix my whole die pool. Changing dice chaining would hurt a whole symbol type, which hurts more than it fixes imo. Maybe there is an argument that we shouldn't have specials that focus die in addition to other effects, but seems to be a big part of the game.

On 12/11/2017 at 8:26 AM, ScottieATF said:

If FI is a problem, Blue Only does nothing to address it. You'd just be increasing the QuiGon/Kanan+Kylo2/Vader share of the pie, and QuiGon/Kanan doesnt need the help since its making Top 8s at the highest rate.

I doubt that making FI blue only would actually increase the share of the blue decks running It since they already are at the moment. If anything, there might be decks that are being hated out by R2P2 at the moment, so who really knows? But what it would do is let you more easily kill Poe2, which is a large source of the consistency that R2P2 has. That's good enough in my book, if we even need a nerf before the next set comes out.

I don't think either will get hit. Force Illusion will get a correction to Blue Character only, though. Which really, it should have been limited to Blue only from the start.

18 hours ago, ordinaryjedi said:

2. Special chaining needs to be looked at. It's a limited issue at the moment but thorough playtesting of legacies should identify the problem this is going to cause with certain character combinations ie Yoda, Poe2, Aayla, force power specials, weapon specials etc. It's a different form of action cheating but action cheating none-the-less where your opponent can't interact with threatening die. If a rule around this is not clarified, we are walking into a new meta of poe2/X. Even qui-gon gets a buff if he is paired with Aayla or Yoda and Obi-wans lightsaber. The fair change to the rule is that you cannot resolve die on the same action that it has been changed ie Poe special into lightbow special and no resolve.

I just don't see how you could change that without breaking things in the game. I mentioned earlier it would mess with chaining multiple Focusing Die, but it also would mess with things like Holocron rolling in other die for specials which ends up hurting existing decks like Palpatine who use the Holocron package making them much too slow to use.

Maybe they could have chosen to not have SO many specials change other die, but I think you lose more than you get by "fixing" dice chaining. Hopefully we are just all over reacting to how good, but we will see.

Palpatine is so far in the garbage chute he might as well be abandoned.

Theres several upcoming cards that will royally screw him over. Indirect damage builds as a whole will shred him since they do on average 1.3-1.5x the damage but its unfocused - well, unfocused means nothing on a single character!
Nevermind kylo's tie.... indirect as a whole stops him from seeing play again.

5 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Palpatine is so far in the garbage chute he might as well be abandoned.

Theres several upcoming cards that will royally screw him over. Indirect damage builds as a whole will shred him since they do on average 1.3-1.5x the damage but its unfocused - well, unfocused means nothing on a single character!
Nevermind kylo's tie.... indirect as a whole stops him from seeing play again.

True, he's probably going to be in a bad spot in the next set. However, I don't think his playability justifies nerfing the holocron package because he's not the only one who uses it(though probably the best example). And really who knows, maybe he won't be as dead as we think what with Rend and Wave down the pipeline to him to use. Now if only there was some sorta engine designed to let him take advantage of those cool ability upgrades...

11 hours ago, Atomisk said:

See, I would hate that since that kind of lateral plays are one of my favorite parts of Destiny. Cause if you kill it for specials, you kill it with Focus die too. I for one love being able to use a 1 focus to change a One With The Force into a 3 focus and fix my whole die pool. Changing dice chaining would hurt a whole symbol type, which hurts more than it fixes imo. Maybe there is an argument that we shouldn't have specials that focus die in addition to other effects, but seems to be a big part of the game.

I doubt that making FI blue only would actually increase the share of the blue decks running It since they already are at the moment. If anything, there might be decks that are being hated out by R2P2 at the moment, so who really knows? But what it would do is let you more easily kill Poe2, which is a large source of the consistency that R2P2 has. That's good enough in my book, if we even need a nerf before the next set comes out.

I think you missed my point.

I wasn't talking about Blue Only increasing FI usage. I was saying that if you accept the premise (for arguments sake) that FI is too good and is unduly impacting the meta changing it to Blue Only doesn't fix that problem. You aren't increasing the share of Blue decks running it, but if it is that good it needs to be adjusted, you will be increasing the share of the meta that Blue decks occupy, and they already occupy too much.

R2P2 might be winning, but it is not the most represented deck in the Top 8s. If FI is so good it needs touching, and I'm not committing either way on that, restricting it to Blue Only just means you'll be indirectly buffing decks like Kylo/Vader and QuiGon/Kanan by leaving them still able to abuse FI. And those decks don't need the help. And it's not as if QuiGon/Kanan offers a very different matchup to R2P2 where you could assert that less R2P2 would allow predators of Q/K to be more involved. The decks play and present too similarly for that to hold water.

4 hours ago, Atomisk said:

I just don't see how you could change that without breaking things in the game. I mentioned earlier it would mess with chaining multiple Focusing Die, but it also would mess with things like Holocron rolling in other die for specials which ends up hurting existing decks like Palpatine who use the Holocron package making them much too slow to use.

Maybe they could have chosen to not have SO many specials change other die, but I think you lose more than you get by "fixing" dice chaining. Hopefully we are just all over reacting to how good, but we will see.

But can you not see the potential issues all this special chaining brings to the game? As I said, it's a limited issue at the moment, but once legacies drops and the blow out NPE potential will be huge.

I've never been a huge fan of Holocron > Force Power > Force Power Special but it was so wildly inconsistent it never really presented an issue within any of the metagame.

I acknowledge the change it would make to resolving focus sides as well woiod be unfortunate but could be addressed in a sub-rule where it only applies to special sides. Plus the amount of times a focus is resolved into a focus is also minimal, I don't think the impact would be detrimental to very many meta decks.

The ability to play a force ability for free and ignoring Blue Only restriction is justification enough for bringing holocron.

I could care less if holocron decks get hit a little bit by removing special chaining. And spoiler alert: i also use holocron decks, and feel a bit cheap doing it, so this isnt me having a vendetta against them.

On 12/10/2017 at 0:59 AM, Rafug9 said:

I think special chaining will be getting the nerf hammer. Especially with yoda on his way

I can see them saying that you resolve a symbol on the dice showing. To prevent to many specials being chained in. But then again I can also see specials be coming what makes blue different from the other colors so chaining in specials could become the norm for blue. Either way I don't see anything being too broken at the moment now that FN is out of the picture.

6 minutes ago, ozmodon said:

I can see them saying that you resolve a symbol on the dice showing. To prevent to many specials being chained in. But then again I can also see specials be coming what makes blue different from the other colors so chaining in specials could become the norm for blue. Either way I don't see anything being too broken at the moment now that FN is out of the picture.

This is a good point. It could be something that is mainly exclusive to blue heroes - in saying that, combined with shields, they're a tough faction to deal with. And I am exclusively a blue hero player.

1 hour ago, ScottieATF said:

I wasn't talking about Blue Only increasing FI usage. I was saying that if you accept the premise (for arguments sake) that FI is too good and is unduly impacting the meta changing it to Blue Only doesn't fix that problem. You aren't increasing the share of Blue decks running it, but if it is that good it needs to be adjusted, you will be increasing the share of the meta that Blue decks occupy, and they already occupy too much.

There's at least some counterexample to this with Fast Hands. Making it yellow only didn't make everyone rush to yellow decks.

Force Illusion is in a different category - it's really a ludicrous card, and may be skewing enough to pull everything blue if you make it blue only. But I don't think the core theory is inherently true.

2 hours ago, ordinaryjedi said:

But can you not see the potential issues all this special chaining brings to the game?

So what is the best you can come up with?

I get a Turn 1 result of 5 damage and 2 shields with Poe/Yoda and a Poe's Blaster.

45 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

There's at least some counterexample to this with Fast Hands. Making it yellow only didn't make everyone rush to yellow decks.

Force Illusion is in a different category - it's really a ludicrous card, and may be skewing enough to pull everything blue if you make it blue only. But I don't think the core theory is inherently true.

I also think they key difference is that with Fast Hands the most represented deck was hit by the change, and honestly was the reason behind that change. With FI, if you change it to Blue Only, you aren't actually hitting the most represented deck.

If it Poe Maz was a mono-yellow deck there is no way Fast Hands gets changed to Yellow only.

2 minutes ago, Amanal said:

So what is the best you can come up with?

I get a Turn 1 result of 5 damage and 2 shields with Poe/Yoda and a Poe's Blaster.

The problem he's highlighting with chained specials isn't necessarily that the end result is terrifying in isolation. It's that it present an impossible choice for mitigation. It's similar to what happens with Poe/Maz - you're forced to use up mitigation on otherwise weak dice because you know they'll instantly become something worse without you having a chance to do anything about it. It's a subtle but very real dilution of every bit of dice mitigation in the game.

I don't know if I think it's that big a problem yet that needs to have something done about it, but it is something that's accelerating as we get more and more specials in the game and they get better and better.

20 minutes ago, Amanal said:

So what is the best you can come up with?

I get a Turn 1 result of 5 damage and 2 shields with Poe/Yoda and a Poe's Blaster.

That's a strong opening round for only needing to roll 1 special on any of your character die. Your example shows a 7 damage swing that can't be interacted with if you can't mitigate the initial die. Do that every round without thinking and it's GG. In the mirror it's basically going to be who can win the initiative and get their weapons with specials out faster. This gets worse each round as further special upgrades are played.

However my issue isn't with the result, my issue is with the interaction and effectively being able to action cheat your whole round in 2-3 turns. We end up with a poe Maz meta again where it's just stupid and players before for the next set to help try and counter shenanigans.

I know I'm looking at worst case scenario but if it's easy to connect the dots before the set is release, imagine how much easier it will be in reality.

I think I might do a recording of this and see how it goes.

Force Illusion will get rotated out as will Holocron. I am guessing that is the solution to those cards. FI is a good hard counter to big modifier dice. It is more of a NPE than an OP card. If you god roll a bunch of modifier damage all you are doing in milling them. Otherwise it is a field medic taking up an upgrade slot or a less effective ancient lightsaber. Granted it triggers when you can block damage and need not take an action but as far as Tank cards go, it is only good against decks running a lot of modifiers. Otherwise that upgrade slot can be used for something better.

I called special chaining very powerful when Force Focus was spoiled. I do think it may get out of hand. One thing to keep in mind is the specials getting focused to have to be real good, as in two dice good cause that is what you are burning up to do that. It is an action cheat, but so is All In with a focus on the table. How often does All In get used?

I think the special chaining will be a problem but I also think we have to wait and see how big of a problem it will be. The real key is how many dice can be put on the table with killer special abilities. Hand crafted lightbow, y wing, force throw. It's got to be something worth two dice and those dice have to be on the table to resolve.

19 minutes ago, Mep said:

Force Illusion will get rotated out as will Holocron. I am guessing that is the solution to those cards. FI is a good hard counter to big modifier dice. It is more of a NPE than an OP card. If you god roll a bunch of modifier damage all you are doing in milling them. Otherwise it is a field medic taking up an upgrade slot or a less effective ancient lightsaber. Granted it triggers when you can block damage and need not take an action but as far as Tank cards go, it is only good against decks running a lot of modifiers. Otherwise that upgrade slot can be used for something better.

I called special chaining very powerful when Force Focus was spoiled. I do think it may get out of hand. One thing to keep in mind is the specials getting focused to have to be real good, as in two dice good cause that is what you are burning up to do that. It is an action cheat, but so is All In with a focus on the table. How often does All In get used?

I think the special chaining will be a problem but I also think we have to wait and see how big of a problem it will be. The real key is how many dice can be put on the table with killer special abilities. Hand crafted lightbow, y wing, force throw. It's got to be something worth two dice and those dice have to be on the table to resolve.

You raise a valid point. You have to canabalise your own die to do this but you are getting extra benefits from Poe and Yoda. Poe you get a shield. Yoda you can turn a die and basically tack on anything else you might need - shield, resource etc. So you are still getting something for eating your own die.

Then there's Poe or Yoda into force speed...

1 hour ago, ordinaryjedi said:

However my issue isn't with the result, my issue is with the interaction and effectively being able to action cheat your whole round in 2-3 turns.

If I remove the Poe's Blaster dice and lower the chain to 2 Damage and 2 Shields, then I can break the chain in a way that significantly affects the result. I think at that point the act of chaining out the specials is a very sub-par turn for you.

Poe/Yoda at lease as far as they go I think has some interesting choices for both players to make. Poe/Maz on the other hand had none, it is hard to remove two dice, so removing a single Poe dice still meant you were going to take a U-Wing or Thermal to the face.

Neither.

Learn to play.

~D

On 12/10/2017 at 0:19 PM, Mep said:

I think Legacies needs to come out before any adjustments are made. Those two characters won't be getting adjusted during the movie's first run schedule. I am also not sure they are too good. I think they are just the most consistent deck. In tournaments consistency matters - a lot.

I think Poe will be problematic going forward though increasing his cost gets him paired with Aalya instead of Rey.

BTW, FFG has ZERO ISSUES with changing the rules of this game. They have added to and modified this game quite a bit in the past year. If the special chain becomes a huge problem, it will get changed. We all see it coming, but it has to happen first before anything is done about it.

Pairing Poe2 with Aayla is arguable worse than Rey2, as in worse to play against. You will never have a beneficial die roll against that deck unless you can immediately resolve.

To add on ...

Special chaining is going to be the new action cheating. I also think that Hero's ability to special chain will offset Villain's explosiveness and "better versions" of cards...