Steem Monsters Imbalances - Weakness and Magic

Steem Monsters recently rolled out a tiered league system, whereby you can earn booster packs by achieving certain point totals. I think this is a fabulous change, as it lets players from all levels have a chance at earning prizes. The current season ends shortly, and with that comes some changes to the game, outlined here.

There are definitely some problems with the matching algorithm, which they are also trying to fix next season. But even with that being true, I've been fairly successful this season. Quite frankly I have been punching above my weight. With a level 4 Summoner, I was able to get up to a Diamond tier. According to the changes that are being introduced next season, I should really only be competitive in a Silver tier with a level 4 Summoner. I point this out not to brag, but to illustrate the point that this game currently has some big imbalances.

Dark Dominance

A big reason I've been able to get so high with mid-level cards is because the Weaken ability is currently overpowered, especially when paired with Zintar as your summoner. As an example, check out this screenshot of a recent match I had. It's worth pointing out that this match happened when the rules had been modified to allow Melee attacks to happen from any position. I don't know what level this player's Summoner was, but it must have been at least 6, based on the rare card level restrictions as it relates to the Summoner level. Clearly, I'm outmatched here. There is no way I should have been able to win this battle, but I did. By having two modifications to melee attacks (one from Zintar, one from the Undead Priest), I have effectively negated all of my opponent's melee powerhouses.

Steem Monsters has realized this, and therefore plans to reduce the effectiveness of the Weaken ability in the next season. They have a history of doing this as imbalances are discovered. They previously removed the Fear ability, prior to even getting out of pre-release battling. With Weaken being so much less powerful, I think we will see a lot less black teams being used next season, which should make the prices of black cards go down.

Magic

Based on what I'm seeing as I battle, I feel like magic as an ability is currently overpowered, and therefore will likely experience a nerfing in the future. They have already identified the Alric/Medusa/Mermaid combo as too powerful, and are introducing lowered health next season to try to combat this. I predict it will not be enough and lower level blue teams will continue to dominate, when matched against similarly leveled teams. Part of the reason can be seen when looking at the definition of the different attack types on the steemmonsters.com site.

Here we see that magic attacks are better than melee or ranged attacks for three reasons.

1. They never miss
2. They circumvent armor
3. This is the big one - They can attack from any position.

The ability to attack from any position is like getting free extra attacks if you're facing someone using melee attacks. Add to this the other two advantages, and it's clear that magic is a much better method of attacking than melee or ranged.

Position is crucially important in this game. But the odd thing is, you lose control of what position your creatures are in once you hit Rumble. The game goes on autopilot, and without careful planning, you can find yourself with a very ineffective team. Unless they are all magic users, in which case position does not matter so much.

As far as I can tell, the only things that prevent an all out magic attacking frenzy in the leagues are:

1. The most powerful magic attackers are Epic and Legendary, so the casual player may not have access to them.
2. There are only a limited number of magic creatures in each splinter. Once they introduce additional magic creatures in future releases, this restriction will no longer be there. Unless steps are taken to prevent it, magic will become even more dominant.

I should point out that I am not complaining about the imbalances, just pointing them out. I think they are an inevitable consequence of designing any game. I actually like finding these and trying to exploit them, so I'm going to keep looking and see what havoc I can wreak with my mediocre cards.