Last week we pointed out the potential problems created when an Aethermon’s most powerful moves are exclusively useful as part of a combo.
We’ll highlight 2 examples of when I made this error and how the situation has been resolved.
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Sparkitty/Matchka/Harquat
Our Fire-Type player controlled Aethermon is built around boosting the power of its attacks by discarding additional Battle Cards.
To synergise with this, the moveset included a 5-Value finishing move “Afterburn” which deals 2 damage per card in the player’s discard pile. If the player has 8 cards in their discard pile (very easily achieved with moves that discard extra cards) this attack would do 16 damage – 4 damage less than the 12 damage we would expect from a blank 5-Value Move.
However if a player took this early, the player would only have a maximum of 4 cards to discard, capping this move’s power at 8 damage (4 less than the 12 damage of a blank 5-value move). Furthermore, most fights early don’t last long enough to put even that many cards in the discard pile, so it would usually yield even less damage.
We remedied this situation by changing this move to deal 10 damage +1 extra damage per card in the player’s discard pile. This change keeps the card’s flavour and relative strength, but protects players who take it early from having an unusable Battle Card.
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Cervistral/Cervaero/Cervaura
Our Sky-Type companion Aethermon faced a similar situation with its Value-5 “Aerial Assault” dealing 5 damage, plus doubling the effect of (F)lying buffs. Unfortunately early the most powerful starting (F)lying buff is 2 damage… so its peak value early is 7 Damage…
Our solution here was not to increase the Battle Card’s utility early game (like we did with “Afterburn”); instead we scaled down “Aerial Assault” to Value-3 (Deal 1 damage + double damage from (f)lying buffs). This means even if a player takes this combo card without the cards that maximize its value, players at least benefit from the additional health to get them through to their next level.
Keep finding your Answers AetherRen