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Let healers act first?
Currently if you have a stunned card and draw a healer too bad, stun remains (unless you are using the healing hero) It might be interesting to see how the game changes if some effects such as healing acted first instead of left to right. This could also be a later ability for cards to have a movement priority skill
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**TL;DR: New Laertes seem to suck** (or me)
I think Laertes should be reversed, he is worst damage dealer right now IMO and he wasn’t really top deck material to begin with. Now you can only call him objectivly usefull when you have 4+ units and you need to somehow get 4+ heroes with a sub par hero first. Previously his function seem to have been to slowly grind away at meatwalls so you reach the glass cannons and turn the situation. At 2-3 DMG he is not longer able to do this at all making him completely useless at recovering the situations he is made for. All he can do now is trying to rush to 2+ units to be useful at all.
Seems like it would be better to give this to Otuk as his function already is to snipe strong cards
**If enemy have 1 unit and you 0-1 units:**
- Otuk is stronger with 3.5 average automatically targeting same enemy, Laetes will do 2.5 DMG first turn, then 3.5 DMG due to wound.
- Equal to Phantic with first turn with both 2.5 DMG average and then 2nd round Laertes is better with 3.5 DMG
- Slightly better than Anasi as he only does 2/3 DMG instead of Laertes 2.5/3.5
- Clom does 3 DMG for both turns, which average out to the same as Laertes but also heals hero
- Pavuk is better in most situation with an enemy having ATK
- Eliana whoops his ass unless its a shield unit
- Gorm will nuke the unit with 4 DMG 2nd turn unless it’s a healer
- Sidalis will do just as well first turn and then slightly worse with 2.5 vs 3.5 DMG due to wound.
_Conclusion: Barely better than using multi hitters if you have less than 2 heroes and enemy have one as the multi hitters only face one target. Any situation where the enemy have more than one unit will probably make all other damage heros a better option. (excpet possibly Clom and Otuk which will be situational depending on which enemy unit they target.)_
**If enemy have 1 unit and you 2-3 units:**
- Otuk is weaker as Laertes will do 3.5/4.5 DMG while Otuk still do 3.5 both turns.
- Phantic will do worse since enemy only have one unit.
- Anasi will do worse due to a single target only.
- Clom does 3 DMG for both turns, Laertes do 3.5/4.5. The heal hero VS. do more damage makes this situational.
- Pavuk is still debendant on if it’s more important to reduce ATK or health of the single enemy unit
- Eliana is pretty much equal unless it is a shield unit
- Gorm is also pretty much equal as well
- Sidalis is worse
_Conclusion: Better than or equal to all other heroes in single target DPS, but turns horrible if you loose unit(s). He could previously do this without needing 2-3 units._
**If enemy have 2 unit and you 2-3 units:**
- Otuk is weaker as Laertes will do 3.5/4.5 DMG while Otuk still do 3.5 both turns. Otuk might however pick a good target, situational.
- Phantic will do 4 DMG, but spread out. Situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Anasi will do 4 DMG first turn and 6 DMG second turn. Situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Clom does 3 DMG for both turns, Laertes do 3.5/4.5. The heal hero VS. do more damage makes this situational. Clom might also choose a better/worse target.
- Pavuk is still debendant on if it’s more important to reduce ATK or health of the single enemy, but do a respectable 3 DMG in total.
- Eliana is pretty much equal unless it is a shield unit, but also situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Gorm is better unless someone apply water to her sick burn.
- Sidalis is situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide
_Conclusion: Only better if you want to hit hard, but more consistent than Otuk and Clom since Laertes always target far left unit. He could previously do this without needing 2-3 units._
**If enemy have 3 unit and you 2-3 units:**
- Otuk is same as enemy with 2 units.
- Phantic will do 4-5.5 DMG, but spread out. Situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Anasi will do 6 DMG first turn and 9 DMG second turn. Very depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Clom is same as enemy with 2 units.
- Pavuk can be better if she shut down things such as Frenzy, situational.
- Eliana is pretty much equal unless it is a shield unit, but also situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide.
- Gorm is better unless someone apply water to her sick burn. Slightly worse as she migh not hit the burn wictims twice.
- Sidalis is situational depending on if you want to hit hard or wide
_Conclusion: Only better if you want to hit hard, but more consistent than Otuk and Clom since Laertes always target far left unit. He could previously do this without needing 2-3 units._
Any time you have 4+ units Laertes will be hands down best pure nuke damage, but also means you have to manage to get 4+ units to begin with using a hero that barelly competes with multi-hitters.
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Green Dragon should give Magic Shield to his adjacent units.
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Why doesn’t magic shield protect against burning? even if the card takes no damage the burning effect still goes on causing them to take double damage from hero next turn through the shield.
It’s effectively a counter to magic that doesn’t counter
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> *Originally posted by **[Karmic](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10553725):***
>
> Why doesn’t magic shield protect against burning? even if the card takes no damage the burning effect still goes on causing them to take double damage from hero next turn through the shield.
>
> It’s effectively a counter to magic that doesn’t counter
Magic shield seemed tp be too strong so it was nerfed that way. Before last nerf it used to alway prevent satus effects whatever damage was done or not, now it never prevents them.
If it seems to be too weak right now, i’d suggest to go half-way and make it so that status effects are prevented if no damage is done, but applied otherwise.
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> *Originally posted by **[Ziovi](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10555040):***
> > *Originally posted by **[Karmic](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10553725):***
> >
> > Why doesn’t magic shield protect against burning? even if the card takes no damage the burning effect still goes on causing them to take double damage from hero next turn through the shield.
> >
> > It’s effectively a counter to magic that doesn’t counter
>
> Magic shield seemed tp be too strong so it was nerfed that way. Before last nerf it used to alway prevent satus effects whatever damage was done or not, now it never prevents them.
> If it seems to be too weak right now, i’d suggest to go half-way and make it so that **status effects are prevented if no damage is done, but applied otherwise.**
I think this makes very good sense.
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That would be a buff in the right direction, lol. I liked the old magic shield where it blocked everything lol. It was too strong but still it was fun. :)
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On another point…
I think Crusher is a bit over the top, right now.
Compared to hawk warrior, which is a very good rare card imho, she gain +1 HP and +1 ATT, which sounds pretty reasonable, when you consider she has +1 CD and +1 rarity level. However, since she has the “extra attack” skill, that +1 ATT basically already counts as +2.
What makes her very strong is also the fact that the “pierce” skill removes one of the “extra attack” weak points, and while she is more sensible to both attack’s buff and debuffs, i think the former are way more common than the latter. Also, with 7 HP she is pretty hard to kill while being such a hard-hitter.
Now, if we want to keep her current skills, removing 1 ATT would be way too big of a nerf, since at that point she would be on hawk’s warrior same level. However, i think removing 1 HP could be ok (i think she would still be stronger than how she was, anyway).
Otherwise, i’d suggest to just remove the recent changes, considering that she already was a pretty good epic.
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I’m not really sure why they changed her to be honest. 5/7 with pierce was fine. If she drops to 6 hp she gets one-shot easily like Kathoras and Alara by electrocute. I would buff her to 4/7 and change extra attack to another skill if a 6/7 effective stat is too much.
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I agree, the change on Crusher was a bit over the top. I know Storm is trying to incorporate more cards into the card combine system but after the change, all you need to do is spam a couple of Crushers with Champion units like Odysseus or Wren and it’s game over.
That said, at this point, I think it’s best to leave the card as is, like what we did with Time Elmental and for future changes, tell the players first before implementing them.
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My spreadsheet does not lie. Crusher became better than all other cards besides Legendaries by a wide margin.
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I need to check my swag bag then. 6/7 is the best guaranteed attack damage period. Elder dragons can multi-attack but not sum the damage on one opponent.
So she’s basically a giant Orc titan able to destroy dragon airships and massive flying death-breathers with ease in a few rounds, according to my order of magnitude rubric. :)
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ok – will revert crusher and buff laertes a little.
Will also try to fix magic & wind shield to stop effects with no damage, but that will touch quite a bit of code.
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> *Originally posted by **[Sir\_Valimont](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10555585):***
>
> My spreadsheet does not lie. Crusher became better than all other cards besides Legendaries by a wide margin.
But according to your spreadsheet, Huloth is also better than all cards other than Legendaries by a similar margin of 25 points.
Now I’m really interested in the exact formulas you have behind the score for each card, but I’m much more of an Excel guy than Google spreadsheets.
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Huloth is 21 over the next epic, Crusher is 33 over _that_.
Epics average around 710 points, and Huloth is the upper end at 775, with Elren the lower at 650. Crusher is all the way into the 800s since the shift but was comfortably in the middle of the pack before.
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Make Laertes’ damage trigger at 1, 3, 5 units and he’ll be quite strong I think. Swarm decks would be a good thing to encourage into the metagame too, with summoning skills and cards now becoming prevalent. Would turn Laertes into quite a nice staller.
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i think kathoras is pretty weak for an epic compared to other 8 costs cards. even treespeaker which is a rare is much better.I think adding one more hp would make it ok.
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> *Originally posted by **[shabnam2](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10558046):***
>
> i think kathoras is pretty weak for an epic compared to other 8 costs cards. even treespeaker which is a rare is much better.I think adding one more hp would make it ok.
There’s a separate thread for this [discussion!](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/32949-storm-wars/topics/644565-lets-discuss-kathoras)
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Ok so this one will be a large post, i will break it into sections, and try in each case to give multiple options that are both balanced and that can be built on with other features. That way a planned expansion/new feature doesnt have to be reworked OR the implementation, but of course leaving room for tweeks for feedback from the community and devs. I sort of apologize in advance for the length of this post, sort of because i think its always best to explain thought process(es) behind why i think a change is good for the whole, but this tends to make something that would be lengthy to start with, much more lengthy. So it is for the good i think that this will be so long...but that does entail reading a book. ;)
part 1: The game of crowns. i mean arena.
So we are at this point facing one issue(massive crown swings), but also i think going to have an issue further down the road that isnt fully appreciated yet which comes in two forms: A growing player base, and a growing "top tier" card collection for the top players. In order to make arena competitive i think a few changes can be made to help with this. The first major change needed, desperately at this point, is how crown distribution occurs(elo). You would think this should be rather easy, and indeed in some ways it is, but i feel it necessary to point out that we also have some rewards based off elo gain, namely "fame" If the over all numbers for gain/loss are reduced that system as well will need a tweek down in order to not make it impossible/hard to gain levels in. For that reason i will use a high "base" gain/loss in order to make it unnecessary to make a change to it, but the numbers involved can easily be reworked, the idea is to provide a good base formula.
So my initial formula for gain would be something along the lines of "base" up being 25, base "down" being 30. Keep in mind that it IS important that elo gain should happen off of a higher win percentage, meaning any gain/loss to elo should favor losing to a small degree. You dont want to need 2-3 wins to = one loss, but neither do you want a 50% win rate at the same elo level to equal a net gain or neutral gain. So the over all swing should be relatively small, up to a say 40 loss(meaning 2 wins even at the a huge elo difference = a minor gain) but a 50-60 gain max for wins. Why this difference? well as the player bases card collection creeps up to better and better cards and decks, the higher players will be MUCH harder to fight and win, a loss to them will still hurt, but not irreparably so, and you can gain double what you would lose for a win, which should give incentive for trying people "out of your league" that show up in a random listing, without making a loss a joke. Which i DO think prevents the arena from being truly competitive right now. When i know i can fight someone and gain 50-60 crowns but lose 4-7....the upside to fighting them is immense, the downside basically non-existent. SO basic formula(assuming i dont get an operation out of order, havent yet finished my cup of joe from waking up):
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b=base
p=player elo
e=enemy elo
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Win: b+((p-e)/25) unless the result is less than 25, then 25.
Loss: b+((p-e)/50) if result less than 30, then 30.
This should let players fight a bit over their head for a basically neutral win/loss number, without having to fight hundreds of ranks over themselves. it also, since it counts "slower" for a loss, should help prevent a loss quickly getting to 60 just because they fought someone a few hundred elo under them. Only when someone is greatly lower, or higher in elo, does the number really really add up. meaning the relatively even elo spread now in the system should allow for a 4w/3l to still amount to roughly the same amount of elo regardless of where those wins or losses took place. instead of a massive loss.
Part 2: How to train a player.
So one thing that will i think in a few months times be very very noticeable that isnt so noticeable right now is that the top players in arena will tend to have better cards than lower players. As this game IS so new, and getting cards IS slow right now, its not super noticable, but make no mistake eventually the top players will basically be untouchable to anyone without top cards. Yes right now uncommons can get you super far. But that will not always be so. Nor should it necessarily BE so. But i do think that as limited as card growth is right now, new players will face a larger and larger hurdle to building their collection, when they cant even get 2 gems from arena because the top 200 is filled with decks using cards way better than theirs. So one way to help mitigate that is by creating challenge leagues: limiting which heros can be used, or what rarity of cards etc. This way someone with a few weeks in game play can still have a chance, if they are good at deck building, to take home a big prize, that can help narrow the card gap faced in the standard league arena. Yes older players get to play it too, but since they arnt bringing epics/legendarys(or the number is limited) more people have a chance at winning. If you are familiar with Magic: The gathering this was done through type 1, 1.5, and type 2 decks. limiting certain power cards/sets from play. want to play on the bleeding edge? play type 2. want to use that black lotus? type 1. Considering how new this game is, and the over all limited card sets, as well as the difficulty of getting high end cards, i think the best policy would be 2-3 different arena types, one limiting the amount of rares/epics/legendary in a deck to a set number and one completely cutting off epic/leg, with limited to no rares. As each would have comprable prizes award, and the difficulty of trying to stay say #1 in even one league is hard enough, it shouldnt be an issue having one person claim all 3 1st prizes, but even then at least even newer players will always have a chance at winning the whole shebang.
Part 3: Is this guy still writing suggestions? aka waaa players crying aka but seriously i think we need more options to get cards.
So im going off of here, some "guesstimation" from things players have said/numbers that have been reported on buying packs etc, since we dont know the exact formulas determining rarity some of this may be off, but the +/- thresholds of the numbers i will use should be comprable hopefully. Regardless take any of this with a grain or two of salt as i cant read dev minds, other than knowing certain features are planned to some extent, and others on a kind of "gee it would be nice if bugs would go away so we could make something that does X" any number of those features could make ALL that im about to say 100% unneeded/unnecessary. That stated right now epics and legendarys are just too ahrd to build anything approaching a good supply of. will players who play massive amounts eventually have 10+ of every legendary? possibly, but at the same time that makes this all the harder, as new-mid length playing players will have no recourse not only in main arena, but coliseum as well. limiting new player growth even more than it is currently. No you dont want someone to have 0 reason to put money into your awesome game, at the same time you dont want someone to need to spend 60 hours a week for 3 months to even have a chance at having 1-2 of each top card. unfortunately thats more where players are at right now, and indeed even if you WERE to drop 200$ in kreds and then buy nothing but dragon packs the over all gain in cards is...low. 2600 gems/25 per dragon pack for instance gets you 104 packs. cards like slow time are estimate to drop 1/100 packs. so 200$ should net your roughly 1 of each legendary, and 1-2 of each epic? that is an ABYSMAL investment. no other way to look at it, even with other planned features, i just dont see how current rates for epics/legendarys is anywhere approaching "good" for free or pay players. because of that i have a few suggestions to take into consideration.
idea 1/2: cut the singles shop prices in half AND double the cards gained from packs/cut all card pack prices in half. This should together make both the singles shop look very inviting to build to a specific deck OR random drawing from packs to get you to several "strong" decks in a much shorter period of time, while still needing a good bit of grinding/money invested to get all that you want. It should also enable, down the road when future expansions come out, and new players join during them, the ability to within a month-2 of time to have a collection at least approaching "good" instead of pitiful compared to players who have played a long time or spent very large sums of money.
idea 3 instead of 1/2: increase card pack size a small amount (2 cards each) so that an increased rare/epic/legendary chance over all packs dont end up leaving players lacking in c/uc cards. and maybe a minor price cut as well? idk that could be tweeked later.
idea 4: this should be implementable with either of the above - aside from the above ideas, i think a timer based card system should be implemented. whether its a roulette based system every 1-4 hours you get a spin, or something more along the lines of a online time system with set rewards. ie 5 min online free common, 15 more min unc, hour rare, 4-6 hours epic. yes both systems give an advantage to longer playing players, but their is no way around that to start with, and this at least gets players some free loot regardless of skill level/cards they own, which right now the two best methods for more loot are heavily dependent upon that.
idea 5: right now Endless Dungeon is good, i wont even say great(since you can just 0 star the first mission and make more cash/exp per hour) for leveling heros. its very bad for chests...not only can you NOT get epics from it, you dont even get golds at the same ratio as arena. Now im not saying it SHOULD have epics, i kind of like the incentive to play arena. but as is arena already beats it way out for gaining gold, even ignoring fame levels as a bonus. Also considering how hard ED can be even with great decks at your command, i think the gold rewards should be upped a notch, and the chance for a gold chest should at least be = to arena's chance. Otherwise you really have no reason to play ED when your heros are max level. Arena is way better for gold AND chests.
idea 6: also @ ED. A further change that could be made is removing chests and maybe gold entirely from ED and making it a random card draw. even if the rare/epic/leg rates are super low, it could still be a great way to build commons/uncs to upgrade with or fill a deck out. i mean even something like 1 in 50-100 ratio for a RARE would be ok, as you are getting cards you can combine(or sell) into better things. While it wouldnt still be the best thing for established players, it would give a great boost to new players building a collection. Indeed this change alone could be strong enough to negate any/all of my card ideas above.
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Gasp. stops for breath...ok i think i might have gotten them all down now. maybe. not sure. ;)
Anyway if you made it all the way through, ty for taking the time to read it all, and thank you for a great game.
p.s. as my monetary situation does not allow me to contribute with actual cash i really am looking forward to you implementing kong ad's. id love to generate some cash for you.
p.s.s. idk why kong hs such a hard time with formatting...it was all formatted, looks fine, but it just wants to smash it all together on posting. Meh manual breaks work i guess. still annoying. its 2016 and they cant get basic formatting right still.
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As players begin to accumulate stronger cards, I think Heroes on the whole are becoming too fragile, relatively speaking. It is extremely easy to beat another player with a slightly lucky draw, in many cases, just because 2 cards come out first and rack up 20 damage in 2 turns. I think a good solution would be a buff across the board for Heroes, +5 or 7 HP each. One nice way to do this could be to introduce a permanent inventory item obtainable at the end of a campaign event! A couple ideas for that sort of thing exist in [this thread](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/32949-storm-wars/topics/635563-suggested-new-items).
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> *Originally posted by **[Sir\_Valimont](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=3#posts-10565318):***
>
> As players begin to accumulate stronger cards, I think Heroes on the whole are becoming too fragile, relatively speaking. It is extremely easy to beat another player with a slightly lucky draw, in many cases, just because 2 cards come out first and rack up 20 damage in 2 turns. I think a good solution would be a buff across the board for Heroes, +5 or 7 HP each. One nice way to do this could be to introduce a permanent inventory item obtainable at the end of a campaign event! A couple ideas for that sort of thing exist in [this thread](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/32949-storm-wars/topics/635563-suggested-new-items).
I agree that increasing heroes’0 HP a bit would be good. I think it would also help to tone down the “slow” skill a bit without directly nerfing it, which wouldn’t hurt much (imho).
You could also do it by increasing heroes’ max level, but that would be problematic because it affects different heroes in a different way, and it also affects their card limit… so i guess sir v’s suggestions would probably be less problematic, as long as when we talk about “campaign event” we mean something that every player will be able to obtain at any time, and not some sort of temporary event (+5 or 7 HP on every hero is a pretty good advantage)
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The unlimited-HP on Clom is interesting but I think the increase in damage actually makes him a bit overpowered. He dwarfs Otuk in terms of tankiness now, for example. There is a lot of parity in unit strength in this game, especially because free players can acquire cards so quickly. Having a Hero with double normal life is extremely strong because any kind of deadlock almost inevitably ends in his victory. The best tradeoff would be reduced damage output, but Clom is now near the top in that category too.
I would return the damage to 3 at top-level, and I expect Clom still to be a top Hero.
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> *Originally posted by **[Sir\_Valimont](/forums/32949/topics/621433?page=4#posts-10570029):***
>
> The unlimited-HP on Clom is interesting but I think the increase in damage actually makes him a bit overpowered. He dwarfs Otuk in terms of tankiness now, for example. There is a lot of parity in unit strength in this game, especially because free players can acquire cards so quickly. Having a Hero with double normal life is extremely strong because any kind of deadlock almost inevitably ends in his victory. The best tradeoff would be reduced damage output, but Clom is now near the top in that category too.
>
> I would return the damage to 3 at top-level, and I expect Clom still to be a top Hero.
I completely agree.
I would also suggest to reduce its HP by 5 again, as all the heroes were two days ago. (Of course, the HP of all the other heroes stays unchanged.) I don’t know if that would nerf it too much, though.
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Not a major deal but thought I would mention again- Gibberling Imp should get +1 hp to differentiate it from Skirmisher, as well as to make it a bit more in-line in terms of strength with other uncommons.
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