dogpile being costed properly and giving hyaenid synergy would be a much better outcome than it being removed outright.
It should be dog. Rank 1 dots are 3 nora and ten times better than dogpile. only scenario dogpile is better is when you're circle jerking on a tough 3 tank with ur nids
Well id rather dogpile just became better than remove a thematic ability altogether. Id like it to be better and be put on an upgrade line. As it stands now though, yeah the current dogpile is very very very meh
I think having abilities that interact with dogpiled units would make it better. E.g. dogpile inhibited when this unit attacks a unit they become dogpiled. If that unit is dogpiled it gains an additional stack and also becomes inhibited for 3 turns. Id say half the problem with nids is that they're giving up stats in order to pay for their synergy so if you combined a bunch of generic conditions with dogpile then it would be less of a sandbag and they could afford better stats.
interacting with dogpile seems to be a better idea then just letting it be a stacking damage increase. Piled healing " This champion makes an attack against a DOGPILED enemy within it's range and heals 1 hp per stack of dogpile on it. Peak pack opportunities "the first basic attck each turn that this champion makes against a champion with 3 or more stacks of dogpiled it gains 2 ap,." just some ideas
Doesn't it just need a cost reduction? It seems to function pretty well. Also it would be good to have it an upgrade so that they aren't sandbagged outside of the theme. This would also mean the D'jinn/Hyanid variant wouldn't have anti-synergy due to reducing dogpile synergy. Speaking of which, the gift of the D'jinn abilities could be stronger, only beserker seems impactful enough to be worth it.
Default cost of runes has few times been changed according to abilities synergy, faction bonus and deck type, to avoid useless expensive champions and op cheap ones that annihilate with only 3 spells and 0 base damage . In this case if on upgrades is easy to find a better cheaper alternative even if you play them as a theme. Simple example: stat Bonus: Damage +2 effectiveness can be considered equal to dogpile if spread on same number of champions. But it's not a racial
I may be in the minority here, but I think Dogpile is okay as is. Been playing Hyaenids at the top for a while and the ability does more than I initially expected. Maybe it just fits my playstyle though. It's useful against Tough/Enduring Aura champs and for buffing Stalkers up. That being said, if it costed less I obviously wouldn't complain.
Is there any reason to prefer dogpile over sunder 1, given their respective prices? The answer is pretty much death sentence, but other than that, sunder 1 is better at a roughly the same price, even within hyaenids. (Note: I haven't checked the most recent prices-I'm going memory, which is a few months dated). Maybe that's enough in a pure hyaenid deck. But if it is, death sentence should really be spread around on more than just a single legendary rune. The real issue with dogpile, as baller noted, is that it's a sandbag outside of hyaenids. This means that every hyaenid unit is paying for essentially useless abilities and every mixed deck including a hyaenid will be at a slight disadvantage in terms of nora efficiency. Put otherwise, there's a reason why stormreader and flamefist see the most action outside of hyaenids...they don't have that ability (or the associated nora gimping). Long-term, that hurts/discourages deck building diversity. I agree with baller's suggestion that no theme ability should be base. If the ability is good enough to unite a theme, players will choose it and will play the theme. If not, the runes can still be used in new or creative combinations with other runes without penalty.
@Raikan brings up a good point re: Sunder vs. dogpile. Both Death Sentence and Judgement synergize with stacked debuffs. However, both sunder and dogpile stack, so the two abilities are truly redundant. Only difference is a 1 Nora discount for locking dogpile into the Hyaenid theme. The discount seems insufficient for the restriction, especially considering the hyaenid theme has Djinn/elemental and The Exile modules that won't combo with dogpile (but would with sunder).