Demon Warrior rerework

[jade anchor]

TL;DR Make her 6 mana with 400 health and 90 damage, doubled stats on 4th play onward

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Current state, comparison
Her rework is pretty sad. Currently you basically go from a bad 3-cost card three times to a 5.5-cost card. That's not enough of a payout for how much you destroy your gameplay just to get her activated. Her activated form is not even worth playing unless totally necessary, which makes it even worse of a payout, and makes it even harder to activate her.

Her unactivated form is worse than a 3 cost Warrior in a few aspects. Worse damage delivery, lower health. Her activated form is basically an enraged Woodsman, with all the same weaknesses that make such single-body expensive bland cards never played.

Card           -  Cost - Health - Damage - Attack delay - Cooldown - Speed
Warrior        -    3  -  350   -   70   -     0.60     -   2.10   -   5
Demon Warrior  -    5  -  300   -   75   -     1.40     -   1.90   -   4

Woodsman       -    5  -  600   -  100   -     1.00     -   2.00   -   6
Demon Warrior  -    5  -  600   -  150   -     1.40     -   1.90   -   4

Issue
The cost of being obligated to play her is more than just "2 mana" three times. That extra 67% mana over a Warrior comes at a very real cost of tempo, board control, and cycling to better cards. That can be a large amount of XP loss, that the activated form never makes up for. Once you activate a card like this, you should feel good about using it, it should feel reliable and a bit stronger than a card of the same cost. This is not the case for this Demon Warrior. You only get further behind by playing her even in her activated form, since she's so slow to do anything, playing a more expensive card that has better abilities, or a few cheaper cards, will always lead to a better position.

5 mana cards
Cards that cost 5 are sort of problematic. They need to be really worth investing this much mana into it, when so many cheaper cards also have strong abilities, and paying just a bit more can lead to other cards with far higher pure stats. They hurt your cycling, but aren't expensive enough to warrant being massive threats like the old Demon Warrior was. Designing such a cycling card that goes from 3 mana to 5.5 around this difficult amount of 5 mana is rough.

Suggestion to 6 mana
I suggest that she becomes a 6 cost card with enhanced stats, with her base form similar to a Shi-Hou and her activated form becomes similar to a Blue Golem, both very generic yet solid cards for their cost. You would then go from an okay 4-cost card three times to a 7-cost card onward. The heavy loss of tempo early on would then properly be rewarded with a card you can actually use in the late game. This would be a sort of successor to the 6 mana Rock Rivals.

Keeping her at 90 disallows her a few damage thresholds early and later. Slower attack delay means she takes a bit more damage in return. Faster speed and the inability to gain Giant Growth (because we know Blue Golem has been balanced around Giant Growth lolz) means you can't build as much of a push with her, although she reaches units faster. It would feel rewarding to play her in her activated form, but you'd still need to play her right to get value.

This might be too valuable depending how often you can realistically get her out in 1v1 or 2v2. Base health could be 350 or 375 instead, or maybe even on 5th play.

Card           -  Cost - Health - Damage - Attack delay - Cooldown - Speed
Shi-Hou        -    4  -  400   -   75   -     0.90     -   1.80   -   7
Demon Warrior  -    6  -  400   -   90   -     1.40     -   1.90   -   4

Blue Golem     -    7  -  750   -  200   -     1.10     -   2.20   -   3
Demon Warrior  -    6  -  800   -  180   -     1.40     -   1.90   -   4 

PS. Yeah I know Shi-Hou isn't a card; they're tied to either Tranquil or Wildwalker who each have their own special ability, so the base body would therefore be more like 3.5 mana

[opaque fossil]

Supported! Played around quite a bit with the new and old DWs... the old ones at least were huge to win in mana frenzy.. the new ones are underwhelming unfortunately. I like the idea of having a cheaper card ~3 or ~4 where playing multiple times is worthwhile in a longer run, but this version's stats just don't compare to other cards.

[unique solar]

I think putting her into 6 mana brings her back to the "make a deck as cheap as possible to cycle DW" which I assume they wanted to get away from with the direction of years long changes of making her cheaper, weaker, and active earlier.

I'd personally prefer moving further into that direction to be more versatile in deckbuilding around her. Maybe even put her quest into 2 stages that each bring a small powerup and then rebalance her stats so she isn't that weak early, but doesn't grow too strong late.

I've been having somewhat decent fun with the current design by moving away from "invest everything into DW" and seeing it pay off a tiny bit feels nice, but it definitely needs some more tweaking as she's quite the weight to pull early.

[jade anchor]

I was also thinking of changing her the other direction, into a 4-cost card, where the activated form feels decent to play when necessary, but wouldn't feel like "I must play this before anything else"

I think the comparison to Rock Rivals would be good to show how she'd work at 6 mana when activated. Rock Rivals wasn't a free win, and we still had to build proper decks around it, not pure cycle decks. It could get overwhelmed when played wrong.

Would of course play it first when idling at 10 mana, but it also had a very strong ability in Taunt, which meant it would often save other units during bridge fights.

[unique solar]

You could build pretty close pure cycle decks, it worked just as good that way, and it was nerfed for a reason

[jade anchor]

How would you design a card that requires activation, where the end result isn't strong enough to warrant cycling, but feels strong enough that it feels good and not a waste of time to have activated it?

It's like always been an issue, and they often become in a state where the only balanced state is when they're part of a deck made for them, rather than being part of a regular deck

that's been the fate of a lot of cards; balanced around their cheesiest usage