Disclaimer: Keep in mind I do not own absolutely all the witches in the game after the revamp. Consider this a preliminary work, but also a first step. As many of you may know, most themes after the revamp were butchered, and sadly witches were not the exception. Fortunately, in the Q&A with Gedden thread, he explicitly said vampires and witches were going to be addressed soon, so we have a chance to actually grow the theme into a new direction, or to improve what we perceive as weak. In order to do this, we need to determine what's the full picture on the theme, so we can address what exactly is wrong with them. For starters, I compiled a list with the stats on every witch on the rune list, and the upgrades on each one I own. The interesting part isn't, imo, which witch have what stat or ability. The interesting part are the results: We had 13 witches before the revamp (I owned all of them, but the matriarch Sarinda, as I have no interest in stitched), and surprisingly, 11 witches still have elsari coven, elsari bladewitch swordmage being the only witch who loss the ability all together. I can not confirm if the matriarch gained EC, which is the only exception. However, out of these 11 witches, 5 still have it at base, and 6 got it as upgrade. We also got new witches. 7 witches within FW. Sadly, so far, I have found that absolutely no new witch got EC at base, and apparently only 3 of the new witches have EC as upgrade, the other 4 do not have access to EC at all. Outside FW, for starters, we have no witches on the prot side, apparently the owls decided being a witch is strictly a wrath thing. 11 new witches spread across SL, SP, UD, kanen and stitched. However, among those new witches, none have EC at base, and at least on the UD side, neither have EC as upgrade. So, we have that barely 5 units have EC at base, which is less than half of the available witches before the revamp. Big question: if so many units got EC as upgrade, does it worth the sacrifice? How much EC actually cost? Based on comparatives, I have found: For +7n: Reconstruct blackguard (fleshweaver) +5n: Revere FW dragon +3n: Disease aura 3 +2n: Subsume +1n: Dark raven form, phase shift, soul collection 0n: Splash -1n: Boon of the undead (!); Blind -3n: Fear 1, charm 1, Disease aura 1, death charged 2 That is, the owls consider EC to have a low cost as there are far more abilities on the +n side of the scale, rather than the -n. However, by comparing disease aura 1 and 3, we can conclude they priced EC at the same price than disease aura rank 2, and the same cost than splash. Something that also surprise me is how cheap is soul collection, but I digress. So, what can we conclude from all this? Simple: the owls admit the witch thematic ability is relatively weak, and they priced it accordingly. However, by placing it as upgrade on so many champions, they are telling most players the options are to play a relatively weak and cheaper thematic witch, or play a generic "meta", but stronger and costlier champion. Also, the addition of the witch class is merely cosmetic as most champions didn't gained access to EC. Now, if we're complaining about how badly the witch theme got treated, I suppose most of us are picking the later "meta stronger" champion even if is more expensive. Why? Look at the scale again. What's on the top: reconstruct blackguard and revere. Who would pick those abilities outside their respective themes? So for peanuts like +1n we can get soul collection, or +2n subsume, which are leagues above EC. Do you actually think EC is equally powerful to disease aura 2, or splash? So, what do you think? What do you prefer? To re-cost elsari coven and made it cheaper? This would cause most witches with EC at base to become cheaper, and the discounts for picking EC over anything else bigger. However, we would still have the "cheap thematic" vs "stronger generic" champion dilemma. To swap EC from upgrades to base and move something from base to upgrade? The cost for most witches would keep largely the same, but there would be more variety when picking builds, and the witch theme would be stronger as the FW player isn't actually sacrificing something to get EC on the board. However, this would restrict the witches to their themes, otherwise EC would be a sandbag in a non-dedicated bg.
1. should all witches have coven? 2. if not, how many in a bg need it for the theme to work? 3. is there any design/flavor reason which would guide which should have coven and which shouldn't, or is it just random? 4. is coven an auto upgrade on the witches that have it as an upgrade choice?
My thoughts I think Witches should be focused around Curse/Debuff/DMZ Key abilities and synergies should be based around Curse effects, Reveal in Misery, Forsaken Exploit and Hex. Curse as an ability is simply to bad to be worth using in so many instances. I think it should do a flat damage or users full damage instead of the 50% damage. Pain Curse should be on a Witch and be reduced to range 8 Coven as an ability should be on all FW Witches and it should be costed very low. It is a lowkey effect that can set up other effects but its initial effect is low and can be easily cleansed. Additional abilities i would like to see added: Defiling Curse Cursed enemy champions within 8 spaces is Defiled for 3 turns. Pestilent Curse Cursed enemy champions within 8 spaces is Diseased 3 Dreadfull Curse Cursed enemy champions within 8 spaces is Frightend 2
1. Yes (at least FW ones) 2. See above 3. The witches of Elsarin are a tightly woven coven 4. NO. Far from it.
I agree with this. I feel like witches should be about debuffing things and get their advantage from that.
thanks for the reply, but answers seem contradictory. if all fw witches should have coven (implying that all fw witches NEED coven) then how is it not an auto upgrade on those witches who can only get it via upgrade?
Just to note something: In the new poxbase, is possible to find that elsari coven is not available to any witch outside FW and that from all the 9 champions within FW who gained class witch, only 3 gained EC as upgrade, none at base. Maybe I didn't had all the witches in the game when I did my little research, but I do happen to own all the witches with elsari coven. Now answering to @Ragic: the main problem with the witch theme is how little synergy there is outside elsari coven, and more importantly, how much they are asking us to sacrifice to keep said synergy. Take a look again at OP. For +1n we can gain soul collection (soul collection!) or subsume for +2n. Or we can actually save 1n by picking BotU. For such petty nora, why someone would pick EC? If someone ask me, I would have to say elsari coven is grossly overpriced on the new system. Abilities like subsume or reconstruct blackguard made the champion stronger on its own, while EC is only relevant if a significant number of units with said ability hit the board, otherwise is worthless. That alone is a huge difference in power level, and a significant reason why the witch theme is worse than ever. We have few witches with EC at base. If we deploy one or two champions with said ability, EC have a barely noticeable effect. We either pick EC as upgrade in as many champions as possible in order to keep a reliable effect, but by doing so we have weaker champions that cost roughly the same, or we pick upgrades that made our champion stronger, but we weaken the overall theme, and more importantly, EC becomes a sandbag on those champions who have it at base. If we forfeit subsume or soul collection in order to play a cohesive and reliable theme, ffs, I think we deserve a better discount than 1 or 2n. Or are the devs telling us the witch theme is nothing but spamming witching hour?
Examples: would you choose coven on dark enchantress while you can choose charm or fear for 3- nora? would you choose coven on inkblight witch while you can choose blind for -1 nora or subsume for +2 nora? would you choose coven on bloodbinder while you can choose blood magic or dark raven form for +1 nora? this is why elsari coven is not auto. It's like having a creeper choose creep as upgrade when you have better upgrade options.
not trying to be dense, but if you would run a wtich in a witch deck without its coven upgrade, then that means those other upgrades are serving your needs MORE than the coven upgrade would. And that suggests that the deck can function at some acceptable level with witches that don't have coven, which then means that all witches in the deck don't NEED coven. I get it that the deck would work better if all witches had coven on base. Im just trying to get a feel for how important it is to have coven on every witch in the deck.
I'm afraid you're intentionally dense. This is the last time I reply to this topic. The point is simple: the deck works better as a meta generic bg where all the champions happen to have witch class, than an actual witch bg based on the elsari coven synergy. That's because the costs are roughly the same when comparing a "meta" build with a "thematic" build, although the later is overall weaker. If we're going to play a bg where most champions have no synergy outside witching hour, then we could just play a generic meta bg anyway. Remember: we used to have two playstyles in witches. At one hand we could spam pain curse and cursed treasure, or we could stall with wicked aura and AP drain debuffs, like drudgery or punish. However, we lost wicked aura and punish, so the later is no longer an option, and the first have been weakened because the condition cursed have been shortened and need to be reapplied constantly, which in turn limits how often pain curse or cursed treasure procs. So, if one playstyle got killed (funny enough, the IS version still goes on), and the other got severely limited, what's the point? Now, changing to another topic: I keep tracking the values for the different abilities on the price scale, and I found something interesting: Elsari siren: Disease aura 1, 0n. Splash, +3n. Elsari Coven, +3n Fleshblight zombie: Disease aura 1, 0n. Zombie apocalypse, +2n. Black death, +3n. Elsari coven is worth the same than black death, and is more expensive than zombie apocalypse. An ability that is a conditional swarm tied to the race of other champions (including the swarm) is cheaper than another ability that is a conditional small debuff tied to other champions with the same ability. Let's take a moment to let that sink.
by that logic then all skeletons should have boost skeleton. quit being so F'in touchy Shim. This isn't the general forum, you don't have to pose here. edit: and learn to read question marks as actual questions, and not assertions in disguise. not everyone is going to be as familiar with the needs of the theme as you are (including the devs), so I find it odd you get offended when asked to explain your ideas. Why did you even make the thread? Just PM Gedden your wisdow directly and save the rest of us the time wasted in reading your opinion/fact.
See? This is the reason is hard to take this argument with you seriously. You are comparing two abilities with wildly different effects, which is a faulty logic at best. Boost race requires one champion to affect several champions at once. EC requires at very least 2 champions with the same ability to have any effect at all. Boost affects friendly champions, EC affects opposite champions. Boost isn't the only synergy the skeleton theme have, elsari coven was basically all the witch theme had.
the owls stated that there not doing anything with witches until the next expansion in preview 6 "Some have been wondering about the champions who were of the Crone class and are now Witches, so lets take a little time to talk about this. First-off in most cases champions will not have their name changed -- they will just have the class Witch instead of Crone. Example: Ritual Crone will keep its name, but it will have the class designation of Witch. The major stuff we have planned for Witches won’t come into play until the expansion. As you can see below the Ritual Crone does not have some unique Witch ability, but it in general falls in line with what we see as the class’s role."
