The power of seek

[Arcanes]

This poll is It's indeed very forced, i can't find the option "They are different things", if the question arises as it, obviously seek looks better and OP, I think they are very different circumstantially (Or should).

Seek ability born like... a always limited search to a specific requirement type card, it appears in the initial idea as an ability from "Tribes" for "call" other allies from the same group, but the ability to seek for Ravenscrest then appears: Valley of Secrets break this "rule" and this worry me a bit about the future, like aramia, can scape from our hands.

I think that define well the seek ability is essential in this set, for keep safe the future scenarios.

But seek vs draw, are different, and "shouldn't" be a problem byself.

It would seem that, for this particular case, even the seek for SE is more unfair than the asking CC payment, if someone has played Homunculus, you will check that seek from Vigilant Wisp is much more strategic and restrictive to use than seek to Aldmor Scout, and in turn who has used the Twilights will see seek Luminary is much more restrictive than Lorhon (without real cost), but much easier to use than Vigilant Wisp even with 2SE vs 2CC!!, because you can find and play the card immediately to not spend resources to trigger it.

Seek always is (and will be i hope) based on 1 card search, draw is more generic, you may draw 1,2,3, x cards in Draw always have access to renovate or improve your hand, with all the cards in your deck available, the seek instead, I think it should be restricted as I said, to a Tribe ability, and have perhaps as a general rule that dev team need check, maybe, that the allies have Seek + Meek, for balance its ability to "collectors group", or maybe even use a exhaust in the ally that seek.

However, Lorhon Seek don't really look so OP O.o even when is... like free... why? maybe becouse he force to control de number of allies in board, a nice alternative can be the "sacrifice" like a alt cost for seek.


So, in asbtract:

Seek 2cc from homunculus, looks balance in real game. Becouse restrict you for search and play at same time without spend resources.

Seek with 1SE, looks op in real game in aldmors.
Seek with 2SE, don't is really used in twilights (they preffer lorhon) but looks more easy to use that 2cc from Homunculus, you can search without restriction ally and play it with full Resources aviable if you are really in problems.

Seek with Lorhon looks good, but not OP byself(Forgive for now any other twilight combo, we are looking in the seek ability)... even when is without a real cost, the "sacrifice" aparently control a bit the board size.

Seek for non-tribe context, looks dangerous in the future.

Draw give you undeterminated ammount of cards from your deck, seek only will give you one, and from a restricted sub-group.

Meek is working in homunculus for balance the seek ally.

So, in any case, i think seek should't be aviable for SE cuz leaves free resources for instant use the card without a delay in the game tempo
However, only for CC (and i think that 2cc is enough for control de use of this ability) the ability looks IN GAME more balanced and strategic for be used or not.

[Mightyoak713]

Good thread Bob, as we have discussed before and( I wont admit I agreed with you ) Seek imo is most likely better due to a well crafted deck having its goal, some call them agenda decks, ignoring mostly the opposition and only going for their own goals. Noting this I stand by Seek being better bc no one ever excludes draw. Its potential only boosts the goal of any given deck, easiest example being ofc twilight, seek any ally with the goal in mind of a specific trade or action.

[qaz92zaq]

Seek = you get what you want/ need.

Hands down better than a random draw.

Mostly this.

Enough allies do many interesting things seeking an answer is not hard.

If you want numbers assuming seeking and drawing are the same cost I'd say 4:1 in favor of seek assuming your deck is built for it.

[Anasia]

I think "seek" ability hurts the game and makes it predictable and thoughtless. Now player doesn't need to make the size of his deck smaller in order to get all core cards in time and doesn't need to play strategically with cards which he has in his hand, he can just seek. Maybe I am exaggerating, but only because the amount of "seek" cards is rather small yet. I really hope the dev team would be wise enough and won't let this ability to go beyond the tribes.
Right now it's not better than draw in an average deck that is not built around a specific theme, because of restricted card pool that you can seek. But if the ability will extend in the future, it will be far more powerful than a random draw.

[Kross]

Lol draw is better than searching in TCGs because the "seek" is used to get specific kinds of cards, in order to speed up the game overall. But drawing can get you any card.

As long as the cards that actually are searchable are only good when being used in combination with certain other cards, then it'll be fine.

For instance: searching a templar is fine, but searching a tidal wave is probably not okay. (Even though we kind of already can with Forgiveness, but its no where near the same thing, obviously).

But lets not forget that we have a DT and a PFG.

[Kip thorp]

I'll make my last post here, maybe.

But this whole tribe thing w locations benefiting tribes , not just allies or attachments or abilities but just one dam class of cards is a nightmare.
Add Seek to that and you've got what we have imo, a world class , no fun , cookie cutter NIGHTMARE!

I'm so trying to stay on topic.

Seek simply gets you what you need, and if you can hold on to it to get more of that and even more seek ability it just builds a scenario described above.
Seek this to get that which allows you to regain X to get something else to seek that or something other again.....all in 1-2 turns.
Why would anybody play anything else?
Why take a chance on just "Draw". How random is that,
Why not take the sure bet.

Not to mention so many allies are buffed just a bit to make then not insta kills, that they survive, everything but a TW.

Nope, SEEK. Is better, if you like that kinda thing,
Why take a chance, when you can eliminate taking that chance and get what you need.

(Sorry for the rant, but great thread , it allowed me to express my frustration, I have no idea how this will be fixed, or if it will, I mean w heros at fixed health , for the most part, bigger decks won't help those who don't run the current , messed the hell up, Meta)

[igornvidal]

So, in any case, i think seek should't be aviable for SE cuz leaves free resources for instant use the card without a delay in the game tempo
However, only for CC (and i think that 2cc is enough for control de use of this ability) the ability looks IN GAME more balanced and strategic for be used or not.

Thats it. Seek costing SE is OP. That's my only concern.

[udy]

Randomness is one of many factor that make Card Game fun (especially digital card game)

-make sure every game is unique (being beaten by the same deck, with the same card, with the same play is boring.. for both players)
-give chance for a cheaper deck to beat the expensive one
-give chance for a casual player to beat pro player
-etc

even when all things run well until turn 10, it doesnt guarantee that you will not lose at turn 11, and vice versa. Thanks to randomness.
let us keep SE that way

[The MiddleAgedNerd]

Randomness is one of many factor that make Card Game fun (especially digital card game)

-make sure every game is unique (being beaten by the same deck, with the same card, with the same play is boring.. for both players)
-give chance for a cheaper deck to beat the expensive one
-give chance for a casual player to beat pro player
-etc

even when all things run well until turn 10, it doesnt guarantee that you will not lose at turn 11, and vice versa. Thanks to randomness.
let us keep SE that way

I agree. Im not a fan of the mass seeking. Glass chalice is good. But still random. You have to have tje random factor. There are many good things with the new update but many silly things. Seek on the scale it is now is silly. The aldmor and twilights pulling the exact right card everytime is too much. Its fun when you pull 4 bad santas or 4 7 cost allies in opening hand. Or you zhanna and never see a tidal wave etc. Its supposed to have a random factor in play. Itherwise its not a card game. Imagine poker if you could seek an ace of spades (RIP LEMMIE). a couple seek abilities is fine but there are too many and we only have a third of lost lands. And tribes are fun but right now non tribes are struggling more. Im aftaid the other 3 sets are gonna end up being 80 percent useless. Lets not turn 400 cards into firesnakes.

[bobrossw]

This poll is It's indeed very forced, i can't find the option "They are different things", if the question arises as it, obviously seek looks better and OP, I think they are very different circumstantially (Or should).

I know they're different things, but my intent with the question was really just to start thinking about it in terms of relative power. That matters when you think of things like card costs. Currently many cards with seek are cheaper or the same cost as similar cards with draw, (compare Aldmor Scout to Wizent's staff). So I thought this sort of discussion may help in determining if their power levels are currently matching their costs, or if perhaps some of those seek cards are under-costed. If seek is generally as useful or less useful than draw, many of those cards may be costed appropriately. If seeking one card is generally more useful than draw, they may be under-costed (hence people may experience them as overpowered). While I share some of the worries that the game may become "seek-based". I do believe a lot of those things could be handled by just making the costs of the abilities reflect their power. If searching for a specific card in a subset of cards grants a massive advantage, then perhaps it should set you back a meaningful amount of resources or SE - and while some may argue that costing SE is essentially free...you may think otherwise when your allies are not getting zapped by Zaladar's lightning because he just needed his aldmor chieftan too much.


So enough of that rambling. I do think an important distinction to make with seek is that the power of seek may depend on what class of cards it's searching for in what specific type of deck. There's a lot of variables there, but I'm going to try to break it down the way I see it:

Seek on Vigilant Wisp - searches for homunculus allies. Costs 2cc to cast, kind of hard to kill for a 2cc ally, ability costs the same as Tome of Knowledge. Gets you:
Ally control - Thunderstrike Golem, Entangled Wisp
Heals - Armored Packbeast
Win condition - Bog Dweller, Entangled Wisp, Void Wretch, Aetherborn Wisp, Radiant Wisp
Hard to kill allies - Packbeast, Eternal Troll, Fortified Wisp
Draw - Vigilant Wisp (so you can double-down on your seeking, or make it harder to destroy your draw engine).
Iceproof? - Stalactician (I don't envision using this much in a homunc deck, but you could pull one as tech if ice became a thing).
Lightning attack - this is relevant because of lightning quarry...Those nish decks will use portal, seek all their vigilant wisps, use them to renew resources and then play bigger stuff...flooding the board quickly.
Choice of CC - this is an important advantage of all seek cards - if I draw a supernova with Tome of Knowledge but only have 3cc left, I won't be able to do anything. If I seek an ally and have 3cc left, I can ensure that it's something I can cast.

What it doesn't give you - cards that deal a lot of damage from hand. The general limitation of homuncs is they almost always need to stick a turn to do something. It does give you some sticky allies though, so that should be possible. Also those nish decks use portal and lightning bolt well, but they need to draw them the old fashioned way.

Overall - I think homuncs can seek enough things to respond to most situations in a homunc deck. Twilight are a bit strong right now, so it's hard to gauge whether this is appropriately costed or undercosted, IMO. I sort of love using the guy in my Monster Garth - IT's ALIVE! deck, but a 3cc activation may wind up being the best course in the end.

Seek in Twilight there are two ways to seek in twilight decks, but I'm only going to cover the answers that you can seek for here.
Tech - Twilight Ritualist - such a versatile card that it covers all your early ally-removal and taking out draw engines etc. With haste, this guy's a beast.
Ally Control - Avatar (since it's functioning like Viska these days by pulling luminary for haste) -but also because it floods the board when you're behind, Twilight Ritualist, Demetreyo, Twilight Opportunist (works a lot like demetreyo - sit there and soak damage, or kill something).
Resource Acceleration - Twilight Shepherdess
Draw/Seek - Twilight Luminary
Win Condition - Luminary, Avatar, Kallista, Demetreyo, Champion, Warden, Shepherdess - there are so many possible win conditions in twilight, they almost all start with allies.
Buffs/Debuffs - Orphic, Lifegiver, Herald, Luminary

What's missing - it's kind of tough to take out a fatty with those tools. It's still possible, but it takes some work, and perhaps drawing a control card would be better suited for that job. Ritualist covers most holes in a twilight deck, and there's really no reason to bring other tech, but if you were rellying on say a Ley Line Nexus, seeking twilight won't help you. A lot of the twilight decks use King's Pride as part of a win condition. That part you'll have to draw the old fashioned way. It should be noted, however that there are plenty of win conditions available to twilight as allies - so you could seek a win-condition if you build for it.

Overview - given the power of the twilight tribe at the moment and the number of options available with twilight allies, seek in twilight is very powerful. I'd say it's more valuable that glass chalice of knowing in most situations. I also think "Kill target twilight ally" as a cost is sort of trivial to a tribe that features cheap allies that kill themselves and recursion.

Seek attachments in priest decks- General of Unaxio is one of my favorite new cards, he's so great for so many different uses. It makes me sad to do this analysis. The hard thing about this is that depending on the deck, you'll only have access to a sub-set of these. As a result I'll stick to priests, since they've got the most possible attachments to possibly seek - and generally if one class has an attachment that does something, priests have an attachment that does something similar. That said, general can be useful in priest, warrior, hunter and rogue decks (maybe also a mage damage over time deck?) to pull certain key cards that can swing the mid-game.

Ally control - Zail's Hymn, Embers of the Just (more importantly, it can seek all pieces of the Embers Jericho combo)
Ally buffs (win condition) - there are too many great buffs available to priests and templars to name - suffice to say, with enough of them you can make any ally into a monster. That said, you need a lot, so just drawing one probably won't do much.
Draw engine/recursion/combo pieces - Confluence of Fate, Divine Connection, Lingering Essence, For Unaxio! (these cards can be combined to do some great things depending on the hero/deck)
Utility - Nowhere to hide (this is a great tool against Moonstalker - with General of Unaxio, you can have one in your deck and be certain of getting it - running this card is almost silly if you don't have General), Sacred Fire Walker (great counter to mind control and supernova spam), Holy Shield (use it to protect self or an ally), A Legend Rises (get that ally undisabled),
Healing - Live together die alone (I wouldn't normally use this card, but it may be worth having one of with general of unaxio in deck).

What's missing - the biggest missing piece is ways to deal with opponents using A Legend Rises and swarms of opposing allies. In a priest deck, you sometimes just need a tidal wave, and General won't help you get it directly (he may help you set up a draw engine - but priests have easier ways to draw).

Overall - there are so many great attachments that this guy helps you get. The drawback is that attachment decks are sort of clunky, and you only get 4 generals of unaxio. So if you want a lot of answers to come with your general of unaxio, you'll have to build an otherwise clunky deck - and those answers will often be rather specific. On the plus side, you will be much more consistent with certain key cards. Indeed, you can use General of Unaxio exclusively to ensure that you get one or two key cards (like warriors getting blood frenzy and crippling blow, or hunters getting hunter's gambit, into the forest and anmor's call). In either case, he's definitely worth his resources, and the seek is preferable to draw. You do pay for it in other ways though, so I'm not sure where I stand on this being just strong or potentially overpowered.

I'm too tired to go on...but you get the picture. Perhaps someone else would like to pick this up for the others?