(OLD) Next Patch Feedback Suggestions

Hello all FWers.
I'll be spending some more time collecting and ironing out feedback for witches to bring them up to the level of spirits/skeletons/zombies.
As you may have heard from watching the Q&A with Gedden on the general discussion board they are currently doing some work on other stuff so we have a number of weeks to iron out and prioritize some suggestions.

I'm looking to have a maximum of 8 changes ranging from 1 being priority to 8 being expendable if needed as I may require some leeway for other balance suggestions.

I'll be looking through other threads as well.

I'll update the main post with some ideas but please note again that they are merely suggestions:

BUGS:
Elsari Coven currently Curses based on number of units with Elsari Coven when the enemy enters a DMZ zone. This doesn't match what the ability says and is inconsistent. Suggest Basing all curse durations on number of witches.

Propagate carrionling currently summons fully leveled carrionlings and they have surge Carrionling instead of surge worm.

1) Cackling Witch
Path 1 (Elsari Coven, Rabid 2, Horrific Howl)
Path 2 (Sonic Roar, Deafening Aura, Defiling Aura)
Base: Attack Sonic, Cackle, Def 1, Range 1-2

Path 1 allows her to either synergies with witches as another coven source or with rabid for revel synergy otherwise Horrific Howl for non-theme use.
Path 2 allows her to either run a super debut combo with roar and cackle for melee hate, a more damage based distract punishing range or melee engagement, or defiling aura which helps witches keep units cursed.
Base range reduction and ability bloat allows for a much cheaper build. The extra defense helps her staying power.

2) Forsaken Follower-
Path 1 (Elsarin Coven, Afflict 2, Drain 1)
Path 2 (Summon Skeleton 1, Ritual of Destruction, Ritual of Power)
Base: Attack Magical, Defenseless, Pawn

Path 1 is her defensive combo set with two combing off summoned skills and 1 as a stand alone option.
Path 2 includes either summon skeleton to combo with the 2 available path 1 upgrades or Rituals to combo with the other witches like necromancer who summon champs. I thought it would be too combo-rific if she had access to both a summon and a ritual but if you don't think that is to synergistic you could switch summon skeleton to base and coven to upgrade path 2 instead.
Base you have streamlined and cut the fat to make her nice and lean with flavor.

3) Dark Seductress-
Path 1 (Domain: DMZ, Rabid 2, Mark)
Path 2 (Charm 3, Fascinate, Abash)
Base: Attack Magical, Shadestrike, Hidden: DMZ, Ambush HP 50

Keeps her stealth theme oriented but ties it to DMZ instead.
Path 1 gives her options for more tanginess/synergy with DMZ, rabid for pure more damage/revel in misery synergy, and mark for out of theme play.
Path 2 is basically her Seductress theme options. Charm 3 for Dbuffing, Fascinate for more DMZ synergy since this will pull in and curse enemy champs and trigger ambush, and abash for pure tank 1v1.

4) Curse ability
Curse rank 1 Nora 4
This unit makes a 5 dmg attack at range 1-5 and that unit becomes cursed 4 (this is not effected by defense). If that unit was already cursed this deals an additional 5 dmg.

Curse rank 2 Nora 8
This unit makes a 8 dmg attack at range 1-5 and that unit becomes cursed 4 (this is not effected by defense). If that unit was already cursed this deals an additional 5 dmg.



5) Elsari Magelord
Name- Elsari Witchlord
Race: Undead Lich
Class: Witch Wizard
Path 1 (Revel in Misery, Evil Aura, Commander: Witch)
Path 2 (Rabid 2, Elsari Coven, Shadestrike)
Base: Attack: Magical, Pain Curse, Curse 1, Boon,

Pain curse - Lower damage to 5. It's global and is more in line with the magic '5 additional damage if cursed' theme. This also strengthen's it's use more for synergy with revel in misery then use as a hard attrition engine that benefits more from split use then the actual theme that focuses on the condition.

I'm referring more toward Spark Croan and Spark curse which basically turns all units with static greeting into global curse machines. For this reason SP splits benefit more from pain curse then witches do.

Brings pain curse into witches and commander: Witch access shores up the defense hole in witches as many are very squishy. Also allows him to be lich/witch theme bridge and solo in either effectively with path upgrades.

6) Witch Hourglass
30 nora
Sands of time
All witches within 8 spaces gain Forsaken Exploit.

7) Haunting Grip
40 nora, After summoning the haunting spirit give it short lived 2.

This will make it less problematic for bgs that have absolutely no magic damage and prevent stacking numerous spirits on the board.

8) Worms
Necrosis - When this unit is deployed expand your shrine deployment zone by 1. This does not expand the font bonus. When this unit destroys an enemy UNIT with a basic attack expand your shrine deployment zone by 1, this does not effect your font bonus.

(Caveat: if this is deemed too powerful by Gedden then I would recommend only keeping the SDZ reduction tied to deploying non-anthropod/worm units only)

 

First is first: what happened to all the supposed improvements we were talking about the witch theme?

You're not telling me the patch where they nerfed witching hour and modified curse was our supposed witch theme improvement patch, are you? I mean, the only thing that got a serious buff was foul rite and so far the results have been far from impressive. C'mon, anything resembling FW that is slightly better than the rest immediately get nerf called (see: ghost), and certainly foul rite isn't one of those things. From my experience, still looks more like a one trick pony bg that only works against relatively new players. Ultimately, playing an undead champion with soul collection have proven to be far more efficient than foul rite, IMO.

What happened to modifying elsari coven to count the amount of champions with class: witch rather than champions with the same ability?

What happened to revamping the blood banshee into a spirit / witch champion and cut down the vampire aspect?

What happened to moving pain curse from the magelord to another witch, like the blood banshee?

What happened to sprinkling more abilities like shadestrike or defiling aura on more witches to made more cohesive the whole theme?

You're not telling me you already made these suggestions and all we got was that carp called foul rite and nerfing witching hour, are you?

 

I would like to see Undead removed as a race. Keep Boon of the Undead, champs like Executioner and Ghoul that currently are just Undead should be changed to Zombie/Skeleton/Spirit, something that exists already.

Remove Surge: Lich from all liches. Liches are supposed to be powerful undead wizards that command other undead. Replace that with Surge: Skeleton, Zombie, Spirit so the liches fit in other themes. Even consider making existing liches into Lich/Spirit, Lich/Skeleton, Lich/Zombie, which is how a few are already. Some of the champs that are liches, such as Anthropomancer, I feel aren't powerful enough to be liches, they should be another race instead.

Since this would impact Leverage Lich, remove the ability replacing it with something else, or make the already powerful liches even more powerful, raising their nora cost further above 100, but allow Leverage Lich to stack and extend it to 5 turns.

On some of the lumbering zombies, can we have Rabid 1/2/3 replaced with a new ability, Infection 1/2/3. We have the spell Plague and Plague Trap, but no other way that I can think of to make a unit infectious. Alternatively, replace Disease Aura with Infectious Aura.

 

If you want to focus on something, focus on our C/UC champion runes. Half the problem is our lack of useful easy access runes, other half is our lack of synergy.

1) Remove Zombie apocalypse from the game. It was a good theme that got nerfed into oblivion. Instead, give Zombie Plague to select zombies and give the infected corpse an ability that deals 1 damage per turn to units affected by zombie plague. Attrition is our factions play style, cater to it.

2) More champion specific, give the necromancer summon: festering corpse as an upgrade option. Let her usefulness be for multiple themes instead of just one.

3) Skeletons in general need an identity. We have weak skeleton tanks, weak skeleton summoners, weak skeleton archers, and weak skeletons with rend. Take your pick of any skeleton and buff them. I would aim for skeleton merc and skeleton infantry myself. Make one play very defensive and one more aggressive.

4) We need another buff to soultap. It is nice that some units heal based on the number of units soultapped but we need more synergy to make it work well. More units with soulfeast would be a great start. Give it to some of our shoeboxed spirits and they may very well make a comeback.

5) Now that we have worms, lets make them good. Carrionlings have always been a joke but if all our worms spawned the little guys as a swarm ability we could work in some nice synergy for the theme.

Over all, we need to push our runes closer to a real theme for the faction. I see attrition as our theme so lets push that. DOT's, Swarms, and surges should be out main focus

 

All of this. I think its important to stay focused on one particular theme or just champs in general, before moving on to another. I have no idea why there was effort basically wasted on creeps when witches were the first initial "buff" and it was dropped right after. Before moving on, make themes more cohesive one by one. Then with each patch we can continue on to vamps, creeps, spirits, humans etc.

 

Yes. This.

 

Make Gedden realize that no matter how expensive the Tyrant gets, the problem will always be with Stitchling.

 

Well, what i have read so far from the liches thread that i like is.
Make the pot relic harder to kill.
Something racial with the lichbone staff.
Fix Serkan with a surge proper to FW.

And move creeps to last in the importance of fixing things.

 

The pot should spawn like a spiderling egg, but shadowspawned.

 

Agreed to the shadowspawn pots

 

Agreed. I don't think any true FW player really gives a crap about creeps right now. We want the true themes of FW to be fixed.

 

I gave the whole buttload of those suggestions and basically it was too much with the limited resources.
At this time we need to prioritize to get the most bang for the buck.

 

Is this true? Do you want the majority of the patch to focus on the Witches/Human theme and leave the others out? If that's the case then I'm down with that.

 

I would rather we fix either the Zombie, Skeleton, or Spirit theme first as they are our core themes. I think we are getting a lot of cries for witches and (creeps) because they were our newest toys but we really need to focus on our core first. Going to make a few long posts later about the three cores later.

 

In my opinion I'd like to see some really focussed prioritized changes that really get to the heart of some issues be it in multiple themes or one.
Exceptions to this would be runes that are totally useless right now like Black Ops and Crown of night barbs.

I also would agree with going after Common, uncommon, rare, exotic runes that are more accessible.

 

I want the patches to focus on one theme and stick with it until there is cohesion or support that makes a theme competitive or even fun to play with again.

Thank you for the dialogue btw.

 

I agree with Dem. Focus on one theme at a time. Look at all the other factions... they are just spitballing random nerfs and buffs and it does nothing honestly. One thing in a theme is nerfed then another is buffed so it's right where it was before. Focus on one thing at a time... Don't worry about the big FW picture just yet. One piece of the puzzle at a time, brochachos...

 

So which theme then? The initial push for creeps was because they were the current theme that was totally gutted and literally unplayable (now they can at least be played).

This could be done with either or a combination of specific champ reworks or ability tweaks.

For instance the Bloodbanshee rework to just witch with the fold in for pain curse which would help witches significantly.

Creeps removing the decrease on death portion of the ability.

Spirits/death benefit - Rework of Collection of soles? seems like it would be perfect for another restless soles source that is more accessible. I like the idea of more units with Soul Feast or vengeful as the main dmg instead of surge.


This also brings up the idea of perhaps we should push for the bonus change. If there is ever a time now seems like the best right before any steam releasing or getting too far the rabbit whole as far as champ changes.

 

Who told you otherwise to burn him on a stick.
Oh and black ops suck, even if it cost 5 nora i really dont care, maybe someone smarter can enlight me.

 

Naw black ops is useless.