Jakei Frostseer and Frost Greeting

For me, this was the thrust of the thread, and the question I answered. I expected, if further discussion was desired outside of whether the ability was working as intended for the champion, follow up on that.

For example, you might have said, "Well, then I think all the non-Sonic Greetings are bad and sandbagging their champs so we should consider changing them or recosting them."

Or "Oh, well then Greetings themselves are probably fine, but the Frostseer would be better without it because ST doesn't need global damage of this sort. Of course, this would remove her one unique aspect so... "

Or whatever. Then I'd have something to follow up and continue the discussion.

That said, you did start saying some stuff in your latest post that I can reply to, but what I am about to say is basically me just describing her ability list that we can ALL see:

You say this as though she does nothing except counter illusions. What can we discuss if you won't concede she has other traits other than a 4 nora ability and an ability you think is bad?

The fact of the matter is 4-6 RNG at 10 DMG is above average on both counts, and she has to pay for that in nora. She also has an AE effects which generates terrain in U1 (one with damage too, if you want that).

It is true that there are other champs who have similar abilities, but that's just how it is - we don't have infinite resources to give every champion multiple unique abilities every expansion - there is going to be some overlap always especially with a game that has gone on as long as it has. Heck, even if we gave everything new abilities, there are only so many roles and so many slots.

It is precisely for this reason that I made her a champ with good range, terrain generation and a global damage ability with some support. This differentiates her quite a bit from the other ranged frost attackers like Shardseer or Shardmaster whom are largely about pure DMG (note that Shardmaster actually costs more just as much if you remove Vuln - Fire). She is more of a versatile champion with a few different functions in a terrain deck than a Frost-Amp Multiattacker. But this is all easily seen just by looking at the champion and comparing it. You simply insist that she does nothing for the faction except for being an expensive illusion counter - and you are certainly allowed to have that opinion but you basically don't leave any room for discussion.

It's perfectly reasonable to argue that she might be a better at 5-6 or 3-5 (and therefore slightly cheaper) or some other suggestions for re-arrangement that would make her more efficient, but you said this wasn't a buff thread so what can I say there?

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Personally, I don't also don't believe every champion released has to streamlined to a specific small range of nora costs and compete in the same way for the same slots. Reality is that if this was an OP champion who did the same thing as the Shardmaster instead we wouldn't be talking about it at all (at least not in this thread in this manner) - which is silly because in that case it'd be a worse example of "nothing new." Pox is a deckbuilding game as much as it is a tactics games - it's up to you to decide what you want in your deck and where to invest your resources. As the developer, I try and create some semblance of parity, but a lot of it depends on what you, the player, is looking for when building your deck. There are cases of runes sitting around not really being used until someone figures out something that it works well with or other rune comes along, etc.

She may not be super unique, but I think she is far from a clone of an existing champion.

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The thread also led me to the thinking that I should rename Sonic Greeting to avoid future confusion, as it is basically not the same as the other Greetings at all - which is a valid point that was surfaced via this thread.

It also seems like we are talking less this champion specifically perhaps, and more about the general idea that people don't like paying anything more than 75 nora for champs, even if they have above average range and solid DMG - which is basically why champs are constantly moving towards 3-5, 4-5, 5-6 RNG over anything else, and why so many ranged champs are starting to come with drawbacks.

 

What do you think is not costed properly?

 

Not necessarily. If Snowstorm was 5 nora it'd be played regardless of what it did, or if it was 120 nora it wouldn't be played regardless of what it did.

Terrain harassment was viable in the past (and in fact needed nerfing), and honestly I think is generally undervalued. (We often hear people complain about decks that use terrain, but no one seems willing to spend nora on countering enemy terrain.)

Cutting Frost Greeting basically makes her less unique, MAYBE it makes her playable? But I think you'd argue very much the same stuff now even without it because it all still applies except she is 75 nora instead of 80.

Perhaps we should talk about why isn't global DMG not worth a few nora? That might be an interesting discussion.

The flip-side is that every new champ is hyper efficient so that it is always meta, then very quickly you are back to everything powercreeping everything and we hate that too.

The direction I am taking it offering different builds and variety in champions (which is why I like Themes) - sometimes they are more playable than others, but that's the nature of a deckbuilding game.

YOU decide what you want to run from the available options. If all I did was continually give you runes that is viable in most decks, I am taking away your choice of deckbuilding and just saying "buy the newest runes and run them because they will always be better than what you have."

Bottom line is I don't want to just want to powercreep everything, and I don't want to make every champion more or less the same. I also don't want to further erode faction flavor. So I try and find niches and spaces and uses for champ designs that still fit with the themes of the faction - that's the intent.

 

So it sounds like you advocate moving all towards towards a sub-75 nora cost with 6 SPD, and a mix of melee + ranged capabilities?

 

Avalanche is actually Frost damage internally now There was also some unpreventable damage bug with it so we fixed that and made it Frost at the same time.

 

I could see that regarding Avalanche, how do you feel about Snowstrike? That is also on the upgrade tree.

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Keep in mind also that if she had 0 abilities, she'd still be 60 nora. 10 DMG at 4-6 RNG doesn't come cheap. So to get her to 65 nora that'd be Attack - Frost + Arctic... and basically nothing else.

I mean, yea, if she was 60 nora base stats, had 20 nora in abilities, and costed 65 nora of course she'd be strong...

Unless you are arguing that RNG in general should be cheaper, there is no way to get her cost to 65 in a reasonable fashion. That's crazy.

 

In general, I am finding that unless one of the base abilities is negative, fitting in a non-basic attack/non-racial ability on base for an above average ranged unit is very difficult.

I do think moving Greeting to U2 would help her playability, even if I feel like it just means it becomes the only viable upgrade. I am not as convinced that Avalanche is not useful on her as mw24 claims.

 

Do you think Flight is undercosted?