TOPIC: Wand Rework Design // Meta Issues // Suggestion

With a Wand of Thor’s Fury, I believe that is 24 in a round (8+2+2, and again with MoMM). A Wizard could do this twice a room with the current rules (max five wand uses per room).

Harlax wrote:

Xavon wrote:
Frankly, I think we seem to be blaming the wands, when the offender is the Motor Mouth Medallion.

.

This needs to be a token.

Motor Mouth Medallion. Allows Dwarf Fighter unlimited Taunts.

As someone who mains Dwarf I need this token!

While i avoid playing wizard with a passion second only to avoiding bard i have interest as a player coach. Please for love of whatever deity not another thing for coaching/party card.

I keep wands till the box overflows then scrap/transmute box they go. I can't bring myself to use the things.

I liked last year's concept of permanent wands, i went and bought a few of each just to have for the rare if chance i'll play wizard again. I'll just consider that 10 bucks spent and move on. It bites but it's secondary market and we all need to make sure we're alright with our token purchases knowing that stuff can change. I know i've held off buying stuff that later got expensive due to not wanting to risk it.

Matt wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Xavon wrote:
Frankly, I think we seem to be blaming the wands, when the offender is the Motor Mouth Medallion.

.

This needs to be a token.

Motor Mouth Medallion. Allows Dwarf Fighter unlimited Taunts.

As someone who mains Dwarf I need this token!

While i avoid playing wizard with a passion second only to avoiding bard i have interest as a player coach. Please for love of whatever deity not another thing for coaching/party card.

I keep wands till the box overflows then scrap/transmute box they go. I can't bring myself to use the things.

I liked last year's concept of permanent wands, i went and bought a few of each just to have for the rare if chance i'll play wizard again. I'll just consider that 10 bucks spent and move on. It bites but it's secondary market and we all need to make sure we're alright with our token purchases knowing that stuff can change. I know i've held off buying stuff that later got expensive due to not wanting to risk it.

Maybe the will be the Dwarf Fighter class unique Legendary.

Mike Steele wrote:

Matt wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Xavon wrote:
Frankly, I think we seem to be blaming the wands, when the offender is the Motor Mouth Medallion.

.

This needs to be a token.

Motor Mouth Medallion. Allows Dwarf Fighter unlimited Taunts.

As someone who mains Dwarf I need this token!

While i avoid playing wizard with a passion second only to avoiding bard i have interest as a player coach. Please for love of whatever deity not another thing for coaching/party card.

I keep wands till the box overflows then scrap/transmute box they go. I can't bring myself to use the things.

I liked last year's concept of permanent wands, i went and bought a few of each just to have for the rare if chance i'll play wizard again. I'll just consider that 10 bucks spent and move on. It bites but it's secondary market and we all need to make sure we're alright with our token purchases knowing that stuff can change. I know i've held off buying stuff that later got expensive due to not wanting to risk it.

Maybe the will be the Dwarf Fighter class unique Legendary.

We got the uncommon lenses so would love to see a dedicated rare/transmute to get the motor mouth effect. Ideally i'd like to see a straight non neck UR but that means having a UR token that's dwarf only. Versus a transmute means it's not going to be pulled via packs.

isauteikisa wrote:
Final analysis:

The proposed changes to wand mechanics for the 2019 season are not only a nerf from the infinite use of the 2018 season, but also in many common scenarios a nerf to the old functionality of the punched wands as well. While reusable wands may have increased Wizard damage output significantly at the cost of only a neck slot (and having to carry a bag of wands for every room), the proposed wand change is far too harsh of a nerf. If wands weren't a significant issue pre-2018, then this change is far too strong. If they were, this still creates a potentially bad play experience for any wizard that wants to use wands, due to them being one-use-only instead of spreadable across multiple combats (if you used the wrong type, or had a short room, or had any other reason to not use a wand for the old 3-tick duration).

This is an exceptionally thoughtful series of posts with wonderful analysis. Thanks, isauteikisa. Very much appreciated. I have been struggling all week with how to articulate my concerns here, but you did it beautifully and diplomatically.

I was a very early adopter of MMM and have been using the “cast and blast” approach nearly every turn since GenCon 2017. Which is to say that I’m certainly feeling considerable whiplash from all of the rules changes on wands. In 2017 I bought about $100 worth of the old rare charged wands so that I could get the most out of MMM (always reserving the final punch for transmuting to Philosophers Stone). I initially opposed the 2018 rule change since all my recently-purchased charged wands became immediately worse (and worth less) than the new chargeless wands. But I rolled with it. Embraced it even. Bought another MMM for the other wizard in our group. Bought the IS Fluorite Cube. Bought the 10 rare Thor wands I needed to keep blasting every turn. And had a blast playing wand wizard at GenCon again.

And now we are changing the rules again? Really? After the community has spent two years investing in wand-focused builds with mutiltple URs? I know TPTB doesn’t mean to, and I know it’s not personal, but this leaves an awfully bad taste in my mouth. Feels like a pretty gross bait and switch.

One major prediction made last year when the wand rule was changed the first time was that players would be incented to buy the two URs (MMM and ISFC) and a handful of rare wands and never have to spend another cent on wands ever again to get maximum use out of those two URs (barring elemental resistance issues). And it seems that prediction has come true, with lots of wizards gobbling up both MMM + IS Fluorite Cube. But with the proposed changes for 2019, players who expected wand use to be “free” after purchasing 5-10 wands will suddenly have to spend potentially signicant extra $ per run on consumables in order to get any continued use out of those two UR tokens.

It’s one thing to nerf a token in a way that makes it less powerful (like this year’s nerfing of the Lenses and Cloak). But it is another thing entirely to nerf a token in a way that requires people to actually have to spend money to keep using that token. Honestly, it feels plain wrong. Perhaps even unethical.

(To be clear, I am NOT accusing TPTB of being unethical because I honestly don’t think TPTB is intentionally trying to pull off a bait and switch. I know they have the best interests of the game in mind, so I will gladly give them the benefit of the doubt that this is just an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned change.)

Can any of you vets recall another token that went through back-to-back major rule changes in its first two years? And can anyone think of a single instance of a rule change that forced players to spend more money to keep using a token?

At the end of the day, even though it gutted the value of all my recently purchased charged wand, I was willing to embrace the 2017 wand changes because chargeless wands actually reduced the cost of playing a wand wizard and provided a viable way for new wizard players to be competitive with vet builds without having to spend big money on consumables or OOP tokens like MEC and Cabal. This latest proposed change, though, is entirely different. Playing a wand wizard just got considerably more expensive. And those old pre-2017 charged wands just got even worse because we can no longer manage the use of the charges. It’s all or nothing regardless of actual usage. Adding insult to injury, we can’t even save a final charge for transmutation into Philosophers Stone anymore. It is a truly awful rule change.

And what a missed design opportunity for UR and relic and even legendary wands! I suspect that those ideas are on their way to the graveyard now that wands are to be consumables again.

Maybe the worst part of this is that we don’t really know why TPTB think this change is necessary. Please correct me if I missed it, but I don’t know that we’ve received much of an explanation or justification. Last year’s changes were in the name of eliminating the token punching burden from DMs; mission accomplished.) Of course we can speculate, but if we knew specifically why the changes are being made, perhaps this would be easier to swallow. Just as importantly, if we can better understand the perceived problem, maybe we can help find a better solution.

Please don’t get me wrong - there is so much to love about what is happening in TD right now. And I appreciate fully that Jeff’s job must feel impossible sometimes (given all the critique). It’s just that this wand stuff feels exceptionally out of character.

Goal was to eliminate punches, which last years solution accomplished but so does this year’s solution.

The main problem is the elimination of a consumable. Especially it made attack scrolls virtually worthless compared to wands. So not only would attack scrolls rarely be turned in, wands would never be turned in. With token sales higher than ever this seems like a bad move to me.

It also restricted the future design space. A wand that lifts another player to make a melee attack at ranged? A healing wand? Many things can’t be made with non-consumable tokens as they would be OP.

I play Wizard occasionally and I picked up an MoMM and ISFC as well for the build with the change to wands last year. I will still use them going forward because even if the wand is active the entire room before it gets turned in it is still the largest damage dealing consumable by far. Average 3.5 rounds of combat x (8 pts of Wand, 2 pts of ISFC, and 2 pts of Mastery) = 42 pts of damage from a Rare. Compare that to a scroll the best a single target is going to get you is 14 and damage scrolls are Wizards based items.

Clearly without the design change there was no use for Wizards damage based scrolls (other than AOE). So now Wands become the single target best consumable, Scrolls are best AOE, buffing, and healing.

Ed

If you get a with a group that will share the consumable cost it is one thing, otherwise I would skip consumables all together. The cost just add up too quickly.

I threw momm on my bard instead of aotf last year because wands were cool again, and the bard used wands! Yay, never again if these are the future of wands, philosophers stones and a legendary monk cloak here I come.

The original poster spelled ^^ out the issue almost 100% he just forgot the bard 3 pts per use, and similar issues, that said a bard who can attack, sing, and wand is doing work.

I would have preferred last years rules stayed in place since that is why I got MoMM and ISFC as a nice option for when I get forced out of playing paladin. I made the purchases based on the wand rules. I don’t like to use consumables, I feel they are better used for trade goods. But given the low price of wands currently, I ended up picking up a bunch of wands from Trent and Kirk to make the 1 wand per room workable. At this point I have close to 100 rare wands so I can still use MoMM without being to concerned with the cost. Still that’s close to $100 in tokens set aside just do to a rule change. I’m just thankful wands are cheep right now otherwise I could not justify then investment in cash and traded items to get to that quantity.