Cactuar Crate: Planar Disturbances

After the chasm change:
40 nora is expensive for domination. It should cost 20 nora to cast, or last for 4 turns at 40 nora. Looking at enslave and honestest mistake for reference. Slavers whip could probably be shaved down to 38-40 nora now.

 

Enslave makes the unit immobile and Honest Mistake is very buggy as well as positionally demanding for a faction in which top players will can play around it and Enslave simultaneously with the same positioning.

 

I'm not sure what it is now but from memory I think it was 35 nora on release with the deal 10 dmg to shrine for 5 nora and the deal 10 dmg to all relics on a 2 turn cd.

 

the first part is correct, the second was 10 dmg to all relics every 4(or more) turns, which was bad atm in a relic because it took too many turns to do antthing and it ended up killing itself anywsy but if i remember correctly the same patch overload was changed it got added to other runes so dunno.

 

Be careful about discounting possession too much, since you can still do a lot of damage running champs over damaging terrain. +4 ap domi would often do 40 dam on a map like Nora Glades (8 ap move over lava + next turn dam).

 

love has been the answer all along!

 

pretty sure UPS was at a cd1 when i used it, and 35ish nora sounds right. i didn't use it in most decks but it was staple for a bit

 

i remeber this change, i was one of the activists(?) that pushed it.
the problem is that the waiting is too long, not the ammount of dmg. would you consider 5dmg every 2 turns instead of 10dmg every 4? or even make it a passive that deals 5 dmg at the start of your turns?

 

Don't know if its been mentioned in this thread or not, but go ahead and trash deep dive. It is currently aut draw win on some maps especially forsaken wastes and the bigger KF map.
Needs to either disappear or have a range attached. Global troop movement is nuts.

 

This could be mere speculation but I'm thinking that Kinetic Impulse is objectively undercosted based on the grounds that anything that has it is hits like a truck and range manipulation is so easy to come by. That and you guys specifically design runes so that it's not a drawback and the champ works perfectly fine at min and max range.

 

There's many ways to manipulate range. Even if your designs were borderline and there was a legit drawback to it, people will find ways to give stuff additional range. It could also just be that Gravitone and Icefang just happen to be OP as Firk by themselves(they probably are for multiple reasons) and they just happen to get better easily. In Gravitone's case, Bouncer makes that guy a straight up 1-5 so he's running around hitting you for +8 damage for 8 nora or +6 for 8 without Improve Range. He also has Slam which is terminal cancer on range(just make it 1 for range and 2 for melee like sunder ffs). Icefang doesn't need something as drastic as an aura buff but he's a nearly 1:1 HP to nora beater who ends up hitting you for 20 or so damage, aoe damages you twice before dying and casts baby snowstorm while he's at it. So thinking about this on the long run, Icefang's ranged DPS will be hurt by the ranged stance nerf since Kinetic Impulse will not be giving him a full +8. Gravitone will continue to function effectively as a 12(14 improved) base damage unit with Slam and that's kind of my gripe with the unit; it will always Bane Shift on you with ridiculous damage be it from the 6+6/8 plus whatever Slam does on top of the racial buff. It's also beefy af and will always end up being 60+ EHP because of defiance+resilient.

Basically, go easy on the tank stat low 70s ranged beater DPS hybrid things plz. Also Blastmage is the only balanced one because it's SP and SP is always balanced @Ballballer tell him

 

Maybe the dmg from Kin Impulse should be capped?

 

Just a reminder that Fleshweaver's upgrades are still something of a joke.

 

Gravitone is a good comparable, but it also shows how theorycrafting can only take you so far. Lonx Howler is another great comparable that looks incredible on paper and is really scary to face in game, but neither of these common champs actually have a footprint in the current meta. It's a bit unfortunate that nobody has taken bursticade and really tried to optimize it, because gravitone seems like he would be an excellent fit there and could prove your point. Instead, it's just icefang looking really powerful in a handful of decks because he's a recent legendary that few people have access to. So far, it looks like icefang and vothsair overlord are the legendaries that have actual staying power, and what they both have in common is a (no-doubt undercosted) anti-melee invoke ability coupled with other abilities that give them heavy advantages vs. ranged. It's telling that icefang first entered the discussion wrt an upgrade ability that isn't chosen by those who run him.

 

People have known Icefang is OP since day 1. Everyone I played against complained about him on discord soon as I deployed him or went like "oh wow" once they saw his damage output in frost or beasts. It just so happened that @Ballballer played some noob who ran the Trash upgrade instead of Zeal:Speed, which is what pretty much makes the Ranged Stance drawback negligible.

Gravitone is overshadowed by stuff like Plainswalker in jank BGs so he's mostly confined to troll decks and will not really be on the spotlight that often but it's one of those units like Skeezick Whorl that just hightlights how dumb ranged Slam is. Whenever you make a non trash range unit like Gravitone, Augur or Whorl and it has slam, it just makes the game miserable for the opposition because of the way ranged units work in this game.

 

Oh yeah, icefang is clearly nuts. My issue is that there's a tendency to oversimplify these champs down to a single ability or interaction. When you combine that with an essentially binary discourse where runes are either "OP" or "trash", it becomes difficult to translate complaints into solutions. As you've noted, gravitone has both of the strengths that many people have identified as problematic on icefang (1-5 range + kinetic impulse, it doesn't pay for that 5th space of range) and on top of that, it has slam, which not only synergizes with the kinetic impulse kit, but which is also dangerous on range for other reasons.

The term overpowered implies a ladder of strength. When we say that something is overpowered, it means that it outperforms alternatives - within and without its faction. If you believe that the goal of balance decisions is to create an environment where we choose runes for aesthetic or synergetic reasons rather than because they outperform the others, then it makes sense to target the runes at the top of the ladder first. I agree with you that gravitone is strong on paper, but it's not clear to me where it sits on this ladder.