Pretty simple. I've been bothered a little by the cost of Dogpile for a while now, but I never said anything until I tried to put an actual Dogpile BG together (EDIT: I used to take Cackle always when Dogpile was an upgrade on many Hyaenids, now it is base -- that makes my concern even more relevant). 6 nora. For that 6 nora, you apply a debuff with each attack, and for each stack of that debuff on a foe, Dogpile units get +1 attack on basic attacks against that foe. It sounds great. It works pretty well, in good-case scenarios; however, is it overcosted? Stat Bonus: Damage 3 costs 6 nora. This gives the unit a hard +3 damage on all attacks against any foe -- the first attack, the last attack, every one in between, and same for the next target it lines up in its sights. Fury costs 6 nora. This is more backloaded than Damage 3, but it also scales in power indefinitely as the champ makes attacks. Eventually, you can have a real behemoth, shredding faces for 28 DMG, no... 29 DMG, no, 30 DMG! Violent is 5 nora. Dogpile's big brother, if you ask me, is Violent. Require other theme units to be nearby? Check. Amp damage? Check. Is temporary? Err... no. The buff sticks around. Is easily countered? Again, not so much as Cleanse easily counters Dogpiled. Then, there's Sunder, at 8 nora. For 2 nora more than Dogpile, you achieve a similar -- but far more powerful effect: you remove DEF, so everyone at the party gets to do more damage, regardless of race or whether the attack was basic. Better still, Each stack is "equivalent" to 2 Dogpile stacks (+2 damage). So, I'm sitting here, wondering if everyone else knows something I don't. I can see an Executioner walking up and activating Death Sentence for 40 HP loss with the right setup. Cool, but, is that seriously the justification for Dogpile costing 6 nora? Or is this more about SP's faction bonus (and since Nids are SP, a little sandbagging is cool)? I'd love to hear some others' thoughts on this. EDIT: Add Creep and Crawl to my list of gripy comparisons (for cost vs. value). It is insanely easy to trigger, and it gives handfuls of units Multiattack in a faction where most units have 11+ damage. But Creep+Crawl doesn't stop there; it also gives quasi-Flight, in Climb. So, for only 2 nora per unit, you can easily have an army of semi-flying units that attack for 1 fewer nora. If you're not playing Arthropods? No sweat. It's 2 nora.
I want... ...that, or for it to be an upgrade choice on most Nids -- or, for it to be cheaper. 4 is reasonable, considering it is almost entirely a sandbag when alone, and nids aren't "cheap" to begin with. I don't like the ability for what it does for Hyaenids vs. what it does to Hyaenids. It's a lazy racial birthed by SOE in its hasty, "make a bunch of racials!" era (e.g. Savage's resurrections, Fang and Fur giving ranks of Tough, Elsari Coven's BS resurrection loops, etc.). Come to think of it: how many early SOE racials even remain intact, today? (and what does that tell you?) What I want is an ability with a cost-value ratio that isn't prohibitive when playing outside Hyaenids, or in early game. Being potentially powerful in some BGs isn't worth 6 nora when the ability is base on half the Nids. PS: I never said Stat Bonus is the same at Dogpile. I said it's arguably better. Much better, IMO. I can walk up with my unit, all by his lonesome, and I can do +3 damage on any kind of attack, basic or other. I don't need enabling. That's all I was trying to get across.
In a hyaenid bg, dogpile can be really strong and personally I like that. It's what makes them almost competitive. The problem is is that when this ability is on base, deploying that champ in any non-hyaenid is almost not worth it. One suggestion could be to make it an upgrade on the "splashable" hyaenids and on the more theme central ones keep it on base, but I don't like this option. That in the end only really helps meta-built BG's and this is a direction I would like to steer away from. While I do like the way it works now on hyaenid bg's, there are certainly some hyaenids that should be splashable in other, non-meta theme bg's. Headshrinker or mundunugu in lightning for example. And when you are splashing these champs around, currently you almost have to run a second copy to make the most out of that ability, and then you are limited because they only reach their highest potential in that bg in pairs. So I think the best approach would be to redesign the ability. Here is my thoughts on how Dogpile should work: Dogpile: AP cost: 1 Cooldown: 2 Passive: When this champion makes a successful basic attack against an enemy champion, that champion gains a stack of Dogpile for 4 turns. Active: This unit may use this ability on a target champion with . That champion looses all stacks of Dogpile, and takes 1 damage for each stack lost this way. Thoughts?
I think your analogy to sunder is a bit off. Here's how. If a champion with sunder applies a "full" debuff to a target after 1 attack, every other attack (regardless of whether they have sunder) deals more damage per attack. If a champion with dogpile applies "half" a debuff to a target after 1 attack, every other champion with dogpile deals more damage per attack. In the sunder scenario, the player pays 8 nora to deal additional damage for every other attack. In the dogpile scenario, the player pays 6 nora to get half that bonus damage for every other attack made by a champion where he has already paid another 6 nora for the ability. This suggests that 4 nora is overcosted per champ because the player has to buy another 4 nora ability on another dogpile champ to get the benefit. In this sense, I think +3 damage is a more appropriate comparison than sunder. For 6 nora on +3 damage, you get +3 damage per attack for every attack made. For 6 nora on dogpile, you get +x damage, where x is the number of attacks made by champions with dogpile. For the first, second and third attacks, +3 damage is a better benefit to have on each champion (since dogpile will give +0, +1, and +2 damage for each attack). For the fourth attack, the abilities will be equivalent. For the fifth attack and onwards, dogpile is superior. To use a simple example (which does reflect all possible situations), a player has 3 champions with +3 damage and another player has 3 champions with dogpile. Player 1 attacks once with each champion, dealing +9 damage for +18 nora. Player 2 does the exact same thing, but deals +0 damage on the first attack, +1 damage on the second attack (due to one dogpile debuff, and +2 damage on the third attack). The results speak for themselves. Player 1 deals +9 damage for 18 nora; player 2 deals +3 damage for 18 nora. In my limited experience, there aren't too many champions or too many bgs that require enough attacks to kill other champs to make dogpile worth it. With respect to purpletop's point about removing dogpile from base (for at least splashable champs), I agree wholeheartedly. But I've always thought that no champ should be forced into buying a theme-specific upgrade. If theme upgrades were optional, there would be real world data that determines whether a theme ability is overpriced vs. underpriced. To take dogpile as an example, and assuming it was an upgrade, if no one chose the ability and everyone chose instead to run the dogpile champions in the meta, then that would show in some empirical sense that players thought the ability was overcosted. An easy way to boost the theme would be to decrease the cost of the ability. It's not a perfect solution, but there's a benefit to voting with one's feet. I'm assuming the ability works like it's described (I haven't tested the ability in a bg yet); that +3 damage is appropriately costed (in comparison to rend 1 or other dot 1 abilities, it seems reasonable); and I'm ignoring the additional benefit of death sentence interactions. Also, I apologize. I don't have a "good" solution. Everything above is complaining without a suggestion. I'll think more on the subject. But you're on the council, so that means you're smarter than me and will think something up
Personally, I just don't think lowering the cost of Dogpile to 3 or 4 would send Hyaenids into dangerous territory, balance-wise. We're talking about a theme that isn't viable for higher tier play, and we're talking about an ability that is only sometimes useful -- even in theme. I just find it hard to buy the argument, "3-nora Dogpile would be too cheap." Paying 3 fewer nora per Nid isn't going to break anything; in fact, it may be just what the theme needs, because -- I'll reiterate -- Dogpile itself can be pretty good, sometimes, and I think the Nid theme has been fleshed out pretty well, to date. So, if a theme is outwardly "compelling," the units cover all the typical "must-have" roles, and the units are costed fairly (racial, aside), then, historically, we've usually cast our focus upon the racial and its cost. Not sure what's left to look at, re: Nids.
Yeah I think nids as a theme are fine, but hyaenids outside of hyaenid based decks is where the problem is because of dogpile. My suggestion would make the ability much less of a sandbag and still keep its powerlevel in hyaenid themed decks. I'd actually think it would be better at CD 1 not 2. In any case I wouldn't say the ability currently is overcosted, but it was just made with a streamlined design towards one particular theme, which can take away from deck building potential
I compeltely agree with OP and made those comparisons myself after wondering what hyenad problem is. Dogpile is a theme disabler instead of enabler. making all hyenad weak.
ok so then what if dogpile put stacks on enemy units when attacked, then at the end of the hyena players' turn every enemy champ with a dogpile stack looses it and takes 1 damage per stack? Similar but it's backloaded so you wouldn't be killing them on your turn and reaping the benefits (Globes etc), but the ability still wouldn't be a sandbag in non-nid bg's Just trying to generate some options
If it was up to me, I'd say Djinns should really just be the output (Judgment, Death Sentence, etc), while Nids should be stacking (DOTs, Dogpile, Cackle). Otherwise, playing both of them just forces you to deploy deploy and deploy with no cross-benefits. Most Djinns also have different DOTs, which to me, is a bit redundant. I'd rather take out their Surge: Hyaenids ability upgrade into a source of output for taking care all those DOTs... heck you can even do a simple: For each debuff cleansed from target opposing champion, this champion gains +1DMG, and a rank of X aura. or something (for the Djinns) If its what PT states = killing them on their own turn, just like their DOTs.... most dies out of 6-9 dmg of DOTs and they ends up capturing the globe... why not a Dead Eater/Soul Collection since Nids eats carcass anyways. That'd be a bit OP tho... lol.
That's exactly what I'm going for. Paying 6 nora on one or two units for a good ability is fine and dandy, but when your whole army is 6+6+6+6... it's a lot of nora being spent to enable a theme -- more than most themes pay out of the gates, anyway. So, if we're saying Hyaenids are good, but not as good as Voil, then we have to ask, "Why?" I'd argue that Sonic Flight is pound-for-pound WAY better than Dogpile, and yet its cost is only +2 over Dogpile, and it requires NO synergy to work. I guess that's my point. So, yeah... 4 nora would be a great way to boost Hyaenids without going nuts, and it's only one change, so it doesn't clog the patch queue. PS: Reducing the cost of Dogpile obviously makes Nids more viable outside of theme. That's a big part of this thread, as well. Again, it's easier than just moving Dogpile to upgrades and tweaking a dozen units individually.
Um, yeah. Good luck with Moga. The whole theme basically needs a revamp. G'hernbound creates a dynamic where the theme perma-fluctuates between utterly crappy and laughably OP -- no gray area. Honestly. Moga should just lose G'hernbound and be really crappy, stat-wise, and G'hern should all have "Boost: Moga"-esque abilities. Then, you can actually balance Moga around the units, instead of around the units plus an ability that reduces cost by 8 across the board, plus an Overseer ability that negates it. It's just too many variables across too many units.
@allyorbase I am not unreasonable. Our previous debate on Dogpile seem poor on my part when you put your thoughts this way. I have changed my views, and agree with yours now. EDIT: I read further down the comments, and found this gem. Should be on the OP.
