Stating this as a question rather than a suggestion or demand of the devs, but: How do you think the game would look if Malik was left unchanged skill-wise but was simply disallowed to be assigned as your defence deck? More variety in crews and in the arena or another top champion being 75% of the landscape? Do you think the game would be improved if Malik could only be used to attack? Do you think the current "can't beat 'em? join 'em!" balance of the game is just a natural thing that occurs in all online competitive games?

Thanks for the open questions. There are a lot of topics here. For one thing the defense deck "system" is imperfect and something we continue to think about adjusting. The reality is that our heroes are well balanced. Take all 24 heroes, and build a nice themed deck around each one, using the best cards. You will find that most of those decks have high win rates against some and low win rates against others. Very few if any will have good win rates against nearly all others. This holds true for Malik. Top-end players routinely chew up Malik defenses with smartly built counters. Malik continues to be the best overall defense choice though, because building a counter for him is trickier than it is for any other hero. That's what it comes down to. Maybe you could build a stronger deck with Luther, but that deck would be easier to counter. And part of the ease of countering such a deck is its predictability ... which is something Malik has very little of since his skill works with all cards. That being said Malik *is* very strong and we always do think of ways to balance. I'm not sure I want to nerf him (or how one might do that) but fanning the flames of competing strategies is always a good way to round out the metagame. I'm always keen on suggestions for new mechanics that might serve as counters, if you guys have any ideas. I certainly have a few we'll be adding sooner or later. --- One other point you've hit on well, I think. You are correct that players don't always choose something because it is the "best." It is also because it is the easiest, fastest, or most fun to use. In the case of Malik, he's easy to use and fast to use, which makes him great for grinding. The fact that he's so prominently used in general contributes to him being used on defense, too. As a larger point I do also think that players tend to flock to deck types and ideas. And there's nothing wrong with that. It makes a ton of sense. At the end of the day it's only a minority of players who are always actively looking to invent new deck synergies whereas most spend their time building towards the known "best" strategy or strategies. This is even true amongst creative players. Many of the top-end creators will spend only 10% of their time dabbling in new synergy and the other 90% just paying brass tax (grinding) with the known strongest thing. Clustering around these top-end strategies is not only normal, but also to be expected. I'm not sure it makes sense for we devs to say we disapprove so much as to observe it's an existing phenomenon and to cater to it or to cater to those outside of it as best we can.

I think you're right. The defense deck system doesn't reward creativity. I like deckbuilding. I love trying out Saa-ras elf scout rush, or flux mages and sorceror staffs, or Sidalis singularity. And often they make good attack decks against a specific archetype. But for defense, a deck must be able to withstand all attackers, from the aformentioned elf scout rush to singularity decks to grindy vyrecall/rage rune decks. And then your best bet is the deck that can put a dragon on the field on turn 4 and clone it a bunch of times. There's also more randomness involved in Malik's ability, cards that go well with it like clone, and card that work well against it like berith. And if the expectation is that a tuned attacker beats a stock defense deck, the higher variance the better for the defender. I don't see an easy solution. I think the game would improve if Malik were taken out, which is not a good position to be in. And if you did that, perhaps Luther or Kutyr would become the next Malik and you've solved nothing. It's also a core truth of Storm Wars that hero matchups, and now also equipment, play a bigger role than the cards themselves. That means there is essentially only one Malik deck, and all Malik decks have the same counter. If there's a difference, it's mostly Flashfire Jewel Malik vs Magic Mirror Malik vs Corsair Sword Malik and so on, but whether you put Champions or Dragons or Meks in your Malik deck ultimately doesn't matter much. And as I've said before, a defense deck must counter a wide variety of decks (and higher variance is better), so a lot of people go with a combination of champions/dragons/meks (or just put in whatever they have out of those epics and legendaries). That's not a suggestion to change the basics of Storm Wars; just another argument for why "tried and true" wins out over new inventions. It's not (just) that players are lazy, it's that there's not much room or benefit to being creative.

thanks for the response I mostly agree that the heroes are balanced, but I was sort of theorycrafting to myself and finding that I considered Kutyr, Luther and Zuu the top tier, naturally stronger than the other twenty one when disregarding the game's actual card pool and equipment list. Malik becomes strongest only when you consider all those gorgeous nine-cost cards available to lucky players!

Malik is overused and overcentralizing the game in my opinion. It is just very easy to make a powerful deck with him once you start getting slow but powerful epics and legendaries. Fast dragons/meks/astaroths/other high cost cards is all-round hard to beat when summoned so fast. Maybe a flat 1-2 or 2-3 hasten effect is better for Malik. Then it won't just be optimal to spam high cost cards, since the hasten effect would work equally well for all cards.

> The reality is that our heroes are well balanced. Take all 24 heroes, and build a nice themed deck around each one, using the best cards. Can't agree with this ... Game has several different independent parts: Arena, Tourneys, Dungeons, Coliseum. Arena: about 18 of 24 heroes are mostly out of use. Laertes, Clom, Kiri, Eliana, Sidalis, Vyona are completly forgot. Tourneys: depends on tourney's conditions you may build good deck around each hero. Dungeons: here you may build good deck around most of the heroes, but few of them is still out of use. Coliseum: same as Arena, just enemies w/o items. I think, that most of the time players spend in Arena (+ crew battles) and Coliseum so most of the well balanced heroes never go to the active decks.

> *Originally posted by **[Blastar](/forums/32949/topics/840173?page=1#11438845)**:* > Malik is overused and overcentralizing the game in my opinion. It is just very easy to make a powerful deck with him once you start getting slow but powerful epics and legendaries. Fast dragons/meks/astaroths/other high cost cards is all-round hard to beat when summoned so fast. Maybe a flat 1-2 or 2-3 hasten effect is better for Malik. Then it won't just be optimal to spam high cost cards, since the hasten effect would work equally well for all cards. In dynamic games I have played, buffs are typcially recieved better by the audience than nerfs. As such, I would reduce the cost of most cards rather than reduce Malik's ability. That would make the difference between Malik and non-Malik casting times more similar. Also it would make unsummon better. I don't really understand why you can't unsummon when someone has too many cards in hand as it is, I would just stick them back on top of the deck.

> *Originally posted by **[Sitri_](/forums/32949/topics/840173?page=1#11440053)**:* > > In dynamic games I have played, buffs are typcially recieved better by the audience than nerfs. As such, I would reduce the cost of most cards rather than reduce Malik's ability. That would make the difference between Malik and non-Malik casting times more similar. > > Also it would make unsummon better. I don't really understand why you can't unsummon when someone has too many cards in hand as it is, I would just stick them back on top of the deck. > That would be good, but seems like a huge change overall, but something must be done since Malik is simply the best hero overall.