Boosts, Commanders and Defenders OH MY!

Please remember to change all the names to group them together if you make this happen. Will be a lot easier for new players.

Speaking of naming things, abilities got their names changed to "Throw X", but Hammer Throw is still named the same. Shield Throw even got changed to Throw Shield.

 

The downside to commander being split, for example in KF/Elves, is that several runes rely on that extra +5 HP because they are under 40, which seems to be the optimal minimum for any champ that is not summoned.

 

I don't really like the idea of splitting commander into multiple abilities.

 

I think the pricing structure is reversed for defense and maybe damage. Currently, you have 4 nora/+ 3 nora/+ 3 nora for ranks 1/2/3. That means the first additional point of defense/damage is more valuable than the last additional point of damage. But for these stats, the marginal value of each additional point is at least equal to the first additional point.

It's pretty easy to see with defense. If you assume a champion has 0 defense, and it is attacked by a 10 damage champion, 1 extra point of defense will decrease damage received by 10%. If you add a second point of defense above and beyond the first, damage would be decrease further from 9 to 8 (approximately an 11% decrease in damage received). because extra defense increase the particularly true with defense, which increases the effective health of the champion (i.e. a champion with 50 health and 0 defense can absorb a lot more damage than a champion with 50 health and 5 defense).

Damage is a bit trickier. By the same calculations above, you're getting a smaller and smaller percentage increase in damage dealing capacity for every additional point. However, given that leaving a champ alive with 1 health is similar to leaving the champ alive with full health (at least in terms of additional damage it can do the following turn), I'd argue that the extra damage is actually more valuable because it makes one-rounding easier (i.e. +2 damage is more than twice as good as +1 damage).

I'd switch the pricing structure to +2/+3/+4 or +3/+4/+5 (or something like that) for Commander/Defender.

 

3, 7, 12. Kabbala, Kabbala, Kabbala

 

1. Huge fan of "soft themes" as you call them, that is, abilities that do not require specific characteristics in order to interact to open up some bg construction space where relevant.
2. Huge fan of perpendicular themes, e.g. dmz in forsaken wastes, fire in UD. These open up tons of options, so there are firks and psychic.
3. Not a huge fan of themes that benefit from density of that theme rather than some strategic relation or interesting abilities (looking at you surge: x) but I have seen posts calling for these abilities to be on upgrades so they are at least flexible in what bgs they will fit in even if they don't allow for deeper personalizing and strategizing (e.g. lich king surge skeletons on upgrade)
4. As to splitting up boosts into components and other similar notions...like the idea because it softens barriers between themes...not sure about narrowing it down as far as you went as opposed to 1 offense 1 defense for example. Reason being that boost is not particularly interesting and the smaller you chunk it the more you will spread it and with the decision to cap the number of abilities per champ you have to have some notional level of lower bound of impact (looking at you sandbag evil aura and scry).

 

Petition to rename it to "Get Yer As s Movin".


Also, since Warbanners have been mentioned, could we please make it so full faction decks aren't always 29 runes + Warbanner?
I think Warbanners are crazy good for their cost. I've had plenty of times where I just deployed them to basically drain AP from my opponent by making him attack them (21 HP for 20 nora is a great deal in that regard). The way I'd like to see them changed however is away from being global buffs, because I hate global effects on runes (you can place them way in the back where they're quasi-unreachable).

 

Nice much better than 1 ability that gave all that. Keep up the good work.

 

While we are on it, should Motivate also be change into AoE?

 

Does Battlemaster really need to be removed? Its range is already much smaller then what you are proposing which would be a good balance mechanic for the non target restricted abilities like Battlemaster

Does the range really need to be changed for things like defender? The range for commander and the breaking up of boost is great but at the end of the day making defender just easier to use really takes away some of the risk vs reward of the system for unit placement and kinda kills the whole phalanx idea as well. Well really it makes it, imo, to easy as the whole point was blocks of units based on positioning working together at the cost of bunching up. 5 spaces is way to easy to work with for the reward, and if the idea is to make it easier to use or more rewarding then let it stack or add more abilities that can stack with it/them. Its just to easy for any faction to use which kinda steals core playstyle designs from IS as factions should be better then others at things like phalanxing imo.

 

It should be noted that again your complaint of defensive stacking WAS IS at the most basic level when the whole game was designed/made. Battlemaster and Defender were the original passive AOE stat buffs and they were only or largely only in IS because that was what the faction did. Stacked AOE/target buffs from before the very first expansion. Add to that only IS had Warcry and was the only faction able to phalanx at all and you can see why its such an important uniqness for the faction to retain, it is its roots. Making it so that it can't do that or complaining that it can is essentially complaining that FS has leap/mobility or that KF has range units. Its what the faction was built to do.

If its the idea that stacking buffs is bad, I say BS as its a valid tactic and when its correctly balanced abilities with the correct cost vs reward its fine, its just become to simple with large, cheap AOE and global buffs and spot buffs that are anything but weak. Heavily restricted range/effect/targets of these abilities works a lot better in balancing them as it requires you to risk taking AOE damage and their are more then a few ways to reduce stats or ignore them out right. So split up boost, put a range to commander ( imo smaller then range 5) but dont kill a core aspect of a whole faction. I mean the game already killed phalanx once and it took years for IS to get back on its feet and to get any semblance of its former self back. Would that happen now? Dont think it would be as bad but you would be killing traditional IS.

Factions should have things they are better at and weaker at then others on the whole faction level. If anything this is more a result of blending faction identity to much and giving every faction near equal ability across the board at nearly everything. Which these changes have a very real chance of doing even more so by making the concept of phalanx easier to pull off with higher ranges and less risky unit placement.

 

Buff stacking was sensible when Attack and Defense worked like they did and provided percent valuations. With the current mechanics, additional defense in particular escalates its own power, and stacking is therefore inherently more powerful. Additionally, the post-revamp numbers for damage mean that damage stacking is proportionally more impressive. Pox has evolved into a state where boost-stacking and phalanx gameplay is unstable. While still theoretically balance-able, that style of play now requires such precision that reducing its thematic emphasis is a prudent choice for numerous practical reasons.

 

Not really now that sunder is a passive on attack effect, and mechanics like strike/bombs exist to fully ignore defense outright, its actually a good deal easier to counter today then when it was at its old hight. What you are really complaining about is the ease of stacking, and the power of each ability stacking in conjunction with the overall loss of the weaknesses of doing so/factions that allowed for such strengths. Breaking them up into whats being proposed is a great idea. As is removing the global nature of many of them ( should go farther and hit things like motivate as well) or also reducing the ability spot buff and actually price AOE buffs correctly ( i.e. higher). The point is that being able to stack/phalanx is good, it should just come with drawbacks such as mechanical counters, loss of the ability to react to multiple fronts and loss of board control as well as movement restrictions/placement restrictions. its just to easy with the current ability make up.

Restrict range/effects/targets and imo ideally you would also rebuild faction weak points ( IS use to be a lot slower with less range and our units use to be expensive but rely on buffs to be powerful) instead of just taking a core playstyle of a whole faction, a semi unique one at that and cutting it out of the game. Make it harder to pull off not easier or cutting it out of the game.

 

BUFFS ARE NOW ON THE AXIS....OF...EVIL..


On topic; honestly I like where this is going, yes, yes, yes!

 

This shows how old DMR is...my worry about reducing faction bonuses is that, at some point, the benefit of being able to select every rune outweighs the loss from a faction benefit. I find this to be less flavorful. Also, from a design perspective, it is more difficult to balance a particular rune when it can be paired with many other combinations, as opposed to a smaller set of faction runes. I've never really liked split bgs for this reason (i.e. bloodthirsty blade with tales of valor, various FW equips w/ magnetic rover...I can't remember others off the top of my head).

 

kinda my point as to why it should stay to you know...not give every faction everything. Or do you actually y like playing faction D456 and Unit X 486

 

You forget to mention that apart from robodog which can reach high dmg withtout boost for protective, the ALL other strux have a very low base dmg. So what strux are supposed to do? High hp and 8 dmg? Or should you force me to play 88 RR x2 for have a champ who deal some dmg?

 

Constructs and beasts will likely be effected the most by this change, but it is better to make an overall good change then look at other ways these decks could be improved.

And I believe sok said that a theme review is on the agenda anyway.

 

There's been a few people saying 5 range is too much.

Seems like the choice is between 4 or 5, it would be good to get a few more opinions on this from people who have used boost abilities a lot.

If it was range 4 would having a third rank of defender (+3def) be more reasonable?

 

No it wouldn't. Compare to current defender, which is not a bad abillity.