Why was Gwen's ability changed?

[blueblurr]

So it was last night on the test server that I noticed Gwen's ability changed from 1.29 to 1.3.

Old: "Target weapon gains +2 attack and does not suffer durability loss until the beginning of your next turn."
New: "Target weapon gains +2 attack until the beginning of your next turn and +2 durability."

Clearly it can only be viewed as a nerf. And I'm sorry if the issue was already addressed, but I did not see it anywhere.

9/10 games the change will not matter, given Gwen's playstyle. But when I was playing against an Elementalis who was loading up the board and pumping up his allies to survive the 4 retaliation, I noticed that my bow went to the graveyard on the last hit by his ally. Shocked, I clicked on Gwen on the start of my turn and discovered why. I was playing a go-for-the-throat style Gwen with ITF and rain delays, and even tracking to see when my opponent has item destruction and I need to hold an extra bow.

My question is why was the change needed? Can anyone from the DT chime in? With item destruction floating around freely now (Lay Line Nexus), I hardly see why this nerf was necessary. Were people actually complaining about 1.29 Gwen?

[iClipse]

It's not necessarily a nerf, because now you get extra attacks on your bow, even if you have no Rapid Fire attached. Anyway, it was changed so a lone style Gwen was less annoying and a little bit less strong without overdoing it.

[Helio]

Also, you couldn't use acid jet with the old ability...

And at least now I can attack on my turn to wear down SS...

[blueblurr]

Well this is clearly an outrage. I am going to change my avatar to a pony, start two other threads just like this one, and complain (all in the name of balance) until proper measures are taken. Gwen should be T(-1), Tier Negative One. Your computer should start printing out $100 bills when you select Gwen.

[Armoek]

well this is clearly an outrage. I am going to change my avatar to a pony, start two other threads just like this one, and complain (all in the name of balance) until proper measures are taken. Gwen should be t(-1), tier negative one. Your computer should start printing out $100 bills when you select gwen.

rofl

[razcrux]

"Infinite" is always a tough one when designing games. Gwen does indeed have a tougher time with LLN and Sever Ties floating around but we have some plans for her in the future to re-vitalize her with new cards in the expansion.

Solo Gwen was made a lot harder because of LLN and Sever Ties, not because of the ability change, and so ally-supported Gwen makes more sense in the current game, IMHO, than solo Gwen.

But then again, I might be wrong and someone may have an awesome solo-Gwen deck built that laughs at me -- there are enough variations possible that it's hard to predict.

Meanwhile the +2 endurance ensures that she doesn't auto-win vs. weenie rush decks [who die without doing anything if it was infinite] and the +2 does actually help Gwen a lot if you go more ally-centric in 1.3x than solo-centric. Why? Because in my ally-Gwen [speaking personally at least] Rapid Fire becomes less crucial than having lots of allies coming out and playing arrows, and the +2 endurance ensures that my Soul Seeker or Katar stays usable for basically 'infinity' (since I only shoot 1/turn and every 3 turns I gain +2 endurance) -- as long as it isn't destroyed by an enemy LLN of course.

The +2 endurance is more of a long-term consideration, more than anything. And for all practical terms it means when you use her ability it is as if it was infinite on that turn [since your shots are "free"].

Gwen, like all heroes, is still fairly new. We have 200 cards and as soon as we add another batch of cards there will be worlds of new possibilities. Making a hero who can only have their item removed by destruction cards is limiting the variation and options available to deck building. And it would force us [and deck builders] to pack many anti-weapon cards because only that would work, which in turn impacts Gwen more... so letting allies damage the endurance with suicide-runs indirectly influences what counter measures they implement [ok this is getting very abstract now!]

One thing is for sure, all heroes in 1.3x need to adapt, not many heroes can play exactly the same decks as they used to and expect to still win as well as they did before.

[iClipse]

Well this is clearly an outrage. I am going to change my avatar to a pony, start two other threads just like this one, and complain (all in the name of balance) until proper measures are taken. Gwen should be T(-1), Tier Negative One. Your computer should start printing out $100 bills when you select Gwen.

Lol! Well, I can tell you there was a huge debate about it first. The outcome was that not enough heroes could deal with the stall of Gwen, so it was changed. I'm NOT saying I agreed with that, I'm just saying it's the general outcome.

[blueblurr]

"Infinite" is always a tough one when designing games...
Meanwhile the +2 endurance ensures that she doesn't auto-win vs. weenie rush decks [who die without doing anything if it was infinite]...
The +2 endurance is more of a long-term consideration, more than anything. And for all practical terms it means when you use her ability it is as if it was infinite on that turn [since your shots are "free"]....

By this same logic, why was DC allowed to maintain a weapon with infinite durability? (Calm down Browny, I'm not asking for further changes to your beloved DC). At least Gwen had to build up her SE (she has no access to Shadow Font) before she could make her weapon infinite. DC can do it on T3 for no SE.

Here comes the "apples to oranges" retaliation since I'm comparing two separate factions. But raz is right; for better or worse, solo heroes are not very viable in 1.3. I guess I just need to learn to adapt.

[Warr Byrd]

By this same logic, why was DC allowed to maintain a weapon with infinite durability? (Calm down Browny, I'm not asking for further changes to your beloved DC). At least Gwen had to build up her SE (she has no access to Shadow Font) before she could make her weapon infinite. DC can do it on T3 for no SE.

Because that is the point of the What Big Teeth. It only has one attack, has no secondary effect, and replaces one of the Wulven ability cards, so it gets to have infinite durability. As opposed to Gwen, who could then use her Golden Katar (which doesn't lose durability during defense) or Soul Seeker (which would be dealing four damage and healing three for each kill) forever. Two entirely different things.

[razcrux]

By this same logic, why was DC allowed to maintain a weapon with infinite durability? (Calm down Browny, I'm not asking for further changes to your beloved DC). At least Gwen had to build up her SE (she has no access to Shadow Font) before she could make her weapon infinite. DC can do it on T3 for no SE.

Here comes the "apples to oranges" retaliation since I'm comparing two separate factions. But raz is right; for better or worse, solo heroes are not very viable in 1.3. I guess I just need to learn to adapt.

Indeed but the difference is it's the weapon that is infinite, like Katar, not the hero ability that makes any weapon infinite; big difference :-)