These two are the ones I'm aiming at: Acquatic (-15 nora) and Rift Bound (-8 nora). But I'm sure there are other out there. With Acquatic, champions benefit of a starting cost build upon a low SPD value while, during a standard game, they gain 12 nora of value from +1 SPD and Mobility. You can speculate on the fact that the boost comes only from water generation (and you have some drawback without it), but the fact is that an Acquatic deck is built to prevent the drawback. So the ability is not a drawback in the strict meaning of the word, just something that may limit the kind of decks where the unit can be included (i.e.: play an acquatic unit in a sand bg is not smart). (The funny part about acquatic, is that some unit have a built-in element that negates entirely the acquatic drawback. For example Trail: Water for 5 nora and Water Front for 4 nora! I hope they have some manual modifier on them to avoid a +10/+11 neat gain of nora value...) The same can be say about rift bound unit, where even the value of -8 nora for the -2 Max HP that could happen outside of DMZ is questionable imho. TL;DR A drawback ability should be something that works and penalize the units in any situation, not something that can be negated before the match by a deck building strategy; in this second instance, the ease of negate the drawback should be properly accounted in the cost of the ability.
please specify if your talking about semi aquatic or aquatic. aquatic i feel is completely fine semi aquatic does actually cost nora. their are only 2 champs with built in anti aquatic counter.... razor fin which is 8 speed 30 hp and is still lumbering if going over normal terrain...and wave crusher which is shortlived and immobile... (for aquatic)
R.I.P. reading skill. You are so miserable nowadays.... Acquatic. And thanks to remember me that crusher can completely ignore the lumbering part of the skill due to immobile and deep-dive... Razorfin has trail... so when exactly can suffer the negatives of be acquatic? Terrain stabilizer? It only get lumbering if no other watergen avaiable. P.S.: Semi is almost on the same boat... you get +1 speed for 2 nora instead of 8 in a wide range of circumstances. And I'm not even sure that the cost of base speed follow a linear rule considering that 8 speeders with no big drawback are quite rare.
I played a game with a full Arroyo/DMZ bg the other day and one of my Rift Bound units lost 20-30 max hp over the course of the game despite having DMZ spammed everywhere i could. It has a more significant effect than you might think.
Alright, let me try again. First off, i asked if you were talking of aquatic or semi-aquatic, because a large part of the time people refer to both as aquatics... Secondly crusher does have deep dive this is true, but he also has Short lived 1. this means the first he does nothing, then gains 5 ap from his 4 speed plus 1 bonus(for being on water), he deepdives some where, and then only the turn after that can he attack somone if you are within 3 spaces of him. if not, the next turn he just dies. Now you also must remember there has to be water in a 2x2 area for where you want to deep dive him too, this means you need to either play another spell to get the water their or you need to have the water generator already running for quite a bit. Now on to razorfin, this is how i know you have never played aquatics, if you have trail water and you go onto normal terrain, you still have to use two AP to go onto that tile as an aquatic, that is becuase water terrain only is created once you have moved not after, hence he is lumbering on normal terrain.... To boot, he is 60 nora for 30 hp. i play aquatic at the moment, one of the only people that do, now semi-aquatic is a whole different thing, they have LOADS of water gen, but they also have to pay for semi aquatic. aquatic by themselves have nothing except spells, relics. and again equips do not work for example tidemasters bandoleer... for the reasons i stated above.
One out of...? And after 30 turn? -8 nora? Questionable... I wrote "Lumbering" somewhere up there, exactly for the 2 AP cost on normal terrain. Yep, the poor guy could not go full 8 SPD across the map, but it negates the loss of life and, for the 60 nora bundle, it still have 14 dmg, a DoT and a nova (if not Dive in your face). The low HP is a common problem if you play the role of the glass-cannon rune.
Both are fine move on, haven't really seen that many semi or full aquatic bgs in a while. Arroyos might need looked at, in combination with the fw bonus they are all really cheap and good at what they do. They don't need nerfed yet though, unless sok keeps giving them options to spam spirits.
I disagree. But the general idea is in the OP, and I'm not the one in charge for balancing stuff, so I will move on.
I'm sure if i were sad enough to note down exactly how much hp each Rift Bound champ loses each game then i could give you many more examples but that would be beyond reason so i stated the most recent one in memory. At an estimate I'd say most champs with Rift Bound will lose at least 10hp before even making their first basic attack if you don't make a significant effort to keep them inside DMZ. I run extra DMZ in my bg because i don't like them losing HP turn after turn and despite this i still find that keeping them inside DMZ frequently costs me extra AP or positioning. So yes i think -8 seems appropriate.
@Ralphen , read more thoroughly what @Gnomes is saying, he made some points you seem to have missed(and I was going to talk about but then I read what he posted). Aquatic is nowhere near being undercosted, even if you make a lot of water. Now about Riftbound, I would say it does seem to cheap for what it does, but since @potatonuts shared his experience with it(and what he says makes sense) I think we should at least wait a bit longer before changing an ability upon which a whole theme depends.
