On Parity Shift 6. "problematic card".

bakija wrote:

And yet it is a single action that does both at the exact same time. So call it a false concept all you want, but it is the best way to sum up what is happening. My prey loses 5 pool. I gain 5 pool.

The point that you refuse to see is that the two effect are way too different to be added together. Pool gain help you against your predator, pool loss help you against your prey. But nobody ever use pool gain to oust his prey, and it's very risky to use pool damage against your predator.

Adding both and talking about excessive pool swing mean nothing, and achieve only an overdramatization that tire me. The "10-pool swing" is a dead horse you should stop to beat ; nobody say that 5 pool damage and 5 pool recovery is bad, but it's not really equivalent to an hypothetical 10-pool damage or gain action.

bakija wrote:

Graverobbing is a strong card that is extremely conditional and has an incredibly high likelihood of being a dead draw

But when the star align, a graverobbing can mean my prey loose 9+ pool (because I have graverobbed a full vampire), while I have 1 more action, and my prey 1 less. Or more than that with untap. Graverobbing *can* utterly destroy a player in turn 4 to the point he can't ever hope to regain the upper hand, and it's even one of the reason advanced against tupdog. I don't see a scenario where Parity shift is even remotely that powerful.

You can argue that multiples parity shifts in a game are likely and one successfull graverobbing can only happen once a while. But parity shift still can't be spammed without a lot of risks. In fact, a predator ghat try to kill me by doing one parity shift per turn is a lot easier to stop than the same one trying to do a KRC every turn, because he has to let homself be very low in pool, so counter bleed/damage or rush are that much more deadly to him.

Also, a Parity shift can more or less be replaced by two votes (like lily prelude and consanguineous boon) and the use of one additional vampire. It work toward two very different goal (one of the reason why the pool wing is not a good concept). That qualify for powerful, but it's not enough for game-breaking.

In short, Parity shift give a powerful effect, not a game-changing one. I believe that card that give powerfuls effect should be banned only if they remove completely entires decks or thousands of cards, and a quick look to vote deck don't convince me at all of that.

You add nothing to others points so I won't disgress.

Adding both and talking about excessive pool swing mean nothing, and achieve only an over dramatization that tire me. The "10-pool swing" is a dead horse you should stop to beat ; nobody say that 5 pool damage and 5 pool recovery is bad, but it's not really equivalent to an hypothetical 10-pool damage or gain action.

You assume the 5 pool would be to the person who called it, when in fact that is the last place I would want it to go as the shifter unless that was the last one that round I was calling that round and I needed the pool. It could just as easily be take 5 from my prey and give it to my grandprey.

Shard wrote:

You assume the 5 pool would be to the person who called it, when in fact that is the last place I would want it to go as the shifter unless that was the last one that round I was calling that round and I needed the pool. It could just as easily be take 5 from my prey and give it to my grandprey.

It's perfectly true, but all in all I don't really see a way the 5-pool gain is used to oust your prey. It's a defensive mecanism that happen to be doable on your ally, juste like you can use the same parity shift to do 5 damage to your predator if you need to force him to the defensive.

Or have I misunderstood ?

Ohlmann wrote:

The point that you refuse to see is that the two effect are way too different to be added together.

And yet the card adds them together. A single action that hits your prey for 5 and gains you 5. At the same time. With a single action. This is incredibly powerful. Arguably too powerful for a single card. It is one of the oldest cards in the game. And designed before anyone truly understood how that game was going to work. And as such, was made overpowered and undercosted likely due to just not realizing it. It probably should have been fixed at the same time as Banishment (which was also wildly overpowered when it was printed). Somehow, it dodged that at the time. I got no idea why.

Adding both and talking about excessive pool swing mean nothing, and achieve only an overdramatization that tire me.

As an aside, I'll point out that what does or does not tire you isn't relevant to the discussion. If you are growing tired of it, stop having it.

But when the star align, a graverobbing can mean my prey loose 9+ pool (because I have graverobbed a full vampire), while I have 1 more action, and my prey 1 less. Or more than that with untap. Graverobbing *can* utterly destroy a player in turn 4 to the point he can't ever hope to regain the upper hand, and it's even one of the reason advanced against tupdog. I don't see a scenario where Parity shift is even remotely that powerful.

And yet, again, Parity Shift is a consistently incredibly powerful card that you can rely on to oust folks and win games. Graverobbing can have a significant impact in a small, narrow number of situations. They aren't really comparable. One is an incredibly powerful, generally useful card that ousts people and wins games. The other is a very conditional, very difficult to use card that once and a while can be really handy, but a great deal of the time will be doing pretty very little, if anything. Which is most cards in the game.

In short, Parity shift give a powerful effect, not a game-changing one. I believe that card that give powerfuls effect should be banned only if they remove completely entires decks or thousands of cards, and a quick look to vote deck don't convince me at all of that.

Thankfully that is no cards at all. VTES isn't a game that does that. Villein doesn't do this either. Yet planet of folks think Villein is overpowered and needs a tweak. Cards don't need to be "instant win" to be overpowered and need changing. They just need to be too much over the power curve. Parity Shift is such a card. It is too powerful. It makes building other, non Camarilla based political decks sketchy (as they can't use Parity Shift). It is one of the most overpowered cards in the game at this point in time. If it were tweaked into something less dominant, the game would benefit.

bakija wrote:

There are a few Political Action cards that can do 10 pool damage at once, one of which requires extensive set up and the tapping of 6 minions to do it. The other ones are all completely out of your control, in terms of how much damage you do (i.e. they are dependent on random factors involving your prey's number or size of minions). There are a couple Political Action cards that can gain you 10 pool, but they also require extensive set up (i.e. 10 minions in play, one way or the other).

On a pedantic point, the size of minions isn't totally out of your control. There's not much stopping you, say, influencing out Arika, Banishing your prey's Santaleous and calling Ancient Influence while Santaleous is out of play (with, say, a copy of Gideon Fontaine).

If Ancient Influence wasn't once per game, I'm pretty sure decks would gear up for that a lot more. Ditto, Political Strangehold.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

On a pedantic point, the size of minions isn't totally out of your control. There's not much stopping you, say, influencing out Arika, Banishing your prey's Santaleous and calling Ancient Influence while Santaleous is out of play (with, say, a copy of Gideon Fontaine).

If Ancient Influence wasn't once per game, I'm pretty sure decks would gear up for that a lot more. Ditto, Political Strangehold.

True, true. Luckily, however, these cards can only be played once per game. There should probably be more of that floating around...