Could we make seism take more skill?

I completely agree with the original post and the title of this thread.

Several posters have claimed that Seism doesn't take any skill. I agree with these statements, and I would like to add that I find the Seism ability very "unpox"-like. You are normally very good at designing interesting game mechanics, that encourages skillfull play, but Seism somehow slipped through. Ill try to explain what I mean when I say that Seism doesn't take any skill.
In order for a game mechanic to require skill the mechanic should be made in such a way that it only provides the user with an advantage under certain conditions. The more difficult these conditions are to create or predict (without being random) the more skill the mechanic requires.
With that in mind lets take a look at Seism: It is very easy to asses whether or not the conditions for seism to be effective are there or not. It is 100% sure that the ability is going to trigger (As opposed to deploying a champ with reclaim or detonate relic). It is very easy to know what relic is being hit. You almost never have to make any cost/benefit calculations because you only pay 10 nora for Seism and the cheapest relic you can destroy is 20 nora.

I believe this shows Seism really is an abillity that requires very little skill. Changeing the nora cost to +5 nora or reducing the relic-damage to 15 will better this, and I will take this change any day over no change, but really I think the ability is an abomination and that it should be reworked.

No, not at all. Demolish is 30 nora and takes up a rune slot. Unless the Demolish opponent lacks skill and clumps his relics together, casting demolish will at best be a trade off in nora cost and most often a loss in hard nora (using 30 nora to destroy a 20 or 25 nora relic) - This fact forces you into some interesting cost/benefit considerations - "Is the immediate removal of this relic worth the trade off?". Of course deploying a Seism champ will, or at lest should, force you into similar considerations, but in way to many cases the end-result is "Deploy". If the vast majority of scenarios where you have theses considerations all give you the same result it does indicate that the ability is unbalanced.
I could also try state it like this - A player who doesn't consider any of the above (read "a player without skill") but just deploys his seism champ as soon as the opponent has played a relic, will more often than not perform the same action as more "skilled" player doing all of the above considerations. Indicating that no consideration is necessary in the first place. Again indicating that Seism doesn't require any skill.
Demolish and erode are completely different.
Soak the earth even more
Overload is also different because it destroys your own relics as well.

I am absolutely convinced that your observations are wrong, and you could argue that my observations are as well. Lets see some statistics before we engage in this type of argument.

As soon as a relic is deployed Seism is usefull.
When I play SP now I go by this rule "Only deploy a relic if you get its nora worth of return on the turn you deploy it" - This means I rarely play relics against SP at all. But even in this case Seism works because Im not using my bgs full potential.

 

I like it, but it perhaps should be more expensive.

If the cost was, say, 14 Nora, then a seism champ would be more of an investment, and you'd have to think harder about when to deploy it.

I also think it is a meta dependant ability, so should be given time to settle in.

The worst thing, imo, would be to reduce the damage. If it doesn't kill the Relic it is kind of useless (well, much less useful).

 

Agree heavily on this!

 

Why exactly is it useless? Because you won't be able to kill relics back in the shrine? What relics do you find that problematic that are out of reach that the meta requires seism units?

 

Because it wouldn't actually destroy any relics except tome of hate.

 

Inferno is a ranged attacker with alt damage, prep, and fire bomb in moga. He will be fine. I am more worried about Chipped Boulder Monk becoming so expensive that she is worthless.

I also come down on the side of relic spam being more annoying than deism so I would prefer for there to be no change.

 

I think sok is right about this one. Killing one relic seems pretty reasonable to me as a relic counter ability. Relics are in a unique position of the 4 rune types in Pox because they generate Nora Font-relevant health pools at neutral/contested positions at will. They were and continue to be quite strong with a lot of hidden power because of this fact.

Destroying a single relic also doesnt necessarily pay for the cost of an unoptimal deployment after your opponent has used it on their turn (since one of the drawbacks of Seism is you have to invest in the particular champ that has it entirely, not just the small chunk of nora that the ability costs).

I think of it as being comparable to Shatter and it comes out looking pretty normal. One-time use in exchange for frontloaded power (which is kinda necessary against relics to make the ability relevant with Detonate Relic or Reclaim already existing).

 

Because it is a one use ability, and you use it to kill a relic. You don't use it to damage one as that has very little tactical value.

For example, you might want to kill a inaccessible banner to get the -5 HP for a kill, but just damaging it would be next to useless.

 

I am with badgerale in that - the cost should be greater, while it keeps the damage at 20. My reasoning for this: relics average at 30-40 Nora. Keeping the Nora cost of seism too low will just lead into a Nora gap between the relic deployer and the seism deployer that might end up with only summon relics being constantly played.

 

I don't see what is inherently wrong with either a nora gap or with people playing summon relics.

 

Nothing wrong with people playing summon relics.
But....
A Nora gap leads to less need of consideration when deciding whether to deploy a seism Champ or not.
Less need of consideration means less skill
Less skill means boring and repetitive games.

 

To go along with what sok said, Seism costs 10 nora. If you are running it you are making a pretty strong statement about the fact that your opponent is running relics that are going to be worth spending 10 nora on this other ability vs. other abilities. That may always be true in a hard core this counter costs less than this active effective perspective, but it still means you could have been running a champ whose package has 10 more points of abilities dedicated to killing or locking down your opponents rather than blowing up their back-of-the-field banner until they redeploy it again in 4 rounds.

Which is the other part of it, you are counting on the fact that this relic destruction will be enough of a swing in momentum to make up for the fact that you are going to be using a one-time effect (like jab and such) and are going to have a weaker than its cost champion in board impact (assuming the rest of its abilities are properly costed). So including vs. not including that champ is a real decision and comes with real costs.

 

And if you really see seism champs as being dominating and too strong, run less relics or more summoned relics, so you are punishing them for wasting some of their champion costs on these guys.

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with the term Nora gap or with people playing summon relics. The problem arises when the Nora gap is too big, or when we put only in front of "people playing summon relics".

I don' know the exactly cost of seism, but if it is lower than 10, I surely would keep a champion or two just to drop and check traps, and hey, bonus if they have a banner out, for it is a 0 risk game...

 

It is exactly 10.

 

It is enough investment then, but I think it is borderline OP, and over efficient for sure... I support a hike to 12 due to average cost x HP of relics, so it stays closer to half of a relic cost of 30, plus a small discount for being limited in targeting.

 

If that happens, I would request it be removed from Chipped Boulder Monk.

 

You are welcome. I’m happy you took the time to reply.

When talking playing PoxNora as a hole I completely agree with your more general definition of ”skill”. My definition concerns whether a single game mechanic requires skill to use or not.

Although I'm no fan of On-deploy effects I will reluctantly agree with you that they do require some skill, and force the players into other types of calculations. The problem with Seism is that spot removal of a relic is such a game changing event that these calculations almost always ends up with ”deploy”. Actually they so often end up with ”deploy” that someone never even considering these calculations and just deploys seism champs whenever there is an enemy relic on the board, will end up making the right move more often than not.

It is true that on-deploy effects makes you consider the question ”Do I want to deploy this champion now”.
First - This does not make it irrelevant to discuss the nora cost of the ability itself.
Second – Almost all the champions with access to seism are so efficient that the question is easily answered with a yes. The only exceptions are Excavator and perhaps Mortar. Boulder Monk also takes some consideration but this is mostly due to stasis. Maybe this is just because these champions happen to be super effectively designed, but I am quite sure it has more to do with Seism being underpriced.

You wrote that your intention with Seism was not to give a counter to back line relics – It does however appear that most people who like seism like it for this reason. So we should probably try not to come up with changes that alters its ability to counter back line relics. I therefore have the following two suggestions.

Change the HP of back line relics to 15
Change the damage of Seism to 15
Cost of seism remains the same
--------OR-----------
Increase the cost of Seism by +5 nora