I almost forgot we have blood bond... But its currently a bit overpriced at 6 nora. Needs a buildup + cant control when to trigger it... At most its rank 1-2-3 with 2-4-6 nora cost, getting 6AP wudnt break clops since most have 5SPD anyways.. Protective and Blood Bond sounds good on a thick hp melee theme But what about mobility? Thats the worst part and the main issue about playing a 2x2 theme with no ranged protection. I understand that blood bond may just be the remedy.. Since one dead clops grants the other one behind him that much AP to just leap towards the opponents. I'm sick of getting creepblocked by mechanical crabs and ranged to death. Bastion of Mobility is truly needed (peaks amulet is good with its surprise factor but wastes 1 slot)
I think the abilities vitalise, Pathfinder and Bastion of mobility should be spread throughout the cyclops theme.
Yeah or simply make them into one ability: cyclops racial... Its not really fun to KB a clops into an impassable and kill pathfinders to make them stuck. There should either be more pathfinder sources. Its quite fun to surprise deploy a Pathfinder to initiate a powerturn through impassables/elevated terrain. I can never do that to anyone with any other races. Its really what made Clops fun to play... And ofc the fact that 2x2s are the norm, its also unique for clops (and beasts to some extent) to creepblock everything and every path to a midfont. As for vitalize, i think its purely out of flavor... 5spd is not that much a problem when we can double deploy the first turn... Even if IS can go 8AP first turn, if I can double deploy I can still win against FF IS. So keeping 5spd and cheap clops is thematically fine imo, but Vitalize really needs to be on more clops champs. The problem as I see it is that there are just too much autoinclude in Clops. There are too much needed key abilities for them to work properly. Merging these different keywords into a single racial ability is a much more efficient way.. And yes, Siblings is not needed, but less pew pew death is needed if Siblings isnt around.
Why Cyclops need to be reworked NOW! As gedden said in the last Dev interview the steam release is coming fast. Well below a month. SP needs a theme that is newbie friendly and well fleshed out before that time comes. Cyclops need a theme redesign anyway so now is the perfect time to do so. What that theme should be I think the general Consensus is to make clops the SP death benefit theme using the format in my Post above and as Redscarlet suggested improving cyclops ability to deal with range and general mobility issues.
Adding more sources of pathfinding and including sources of bastion of mobility is a unbalanced solution. Either A you draw those champs and now the opponents has no way to stop your army from advancing or B you don't draw them and you're screwed. Based off the direction Cyclops as a theme is going range is really the only counter. I understand that as of now range is to effect towards dealing with Cyclops but those solutions are to effective. I think reflection combined with loads of hp is a great way to detour range. In addition maybe giving some clops mobility or Crushing charge on base would help with road blocking.
