I tried showing this game to my friend to get him into it. Played a ranked game just to show him how it goes. Immediate lava spout opponent. I'm trying to explain all the stuff that's happening and he's just like "but why does this exist?" and I have no answer. End of the game, his reaction to poxnora: "Lol. Thit is stupid." Back to other things. Why do you let such obvious cancer stay in the game? Why is it so confusing as to why they dont die? I don't get it. You can shatter summons all of them with barely any health left and half die and the other half just dont. Why do these exist. Player base will never grow with people just encountering Bane Shift like this all day and rage quitting the game.
I am in total agreement. The very composition of lavaspout is ridiculous and presents a variety of problems. I think it's a combination of abilities that make lavaspout problematic. 1. Rapid growth + lavafront on lavaspout ensures that if you cannot kill the lavaspout within 10 rounds there will be enough lavaspouts on the map to cause a moderate amount of lag from the lava front animation of so many lavaspout clones. There are enough morons abusing this game who know about this and take advantage of the lag that lavafront causes from splitting a million lavaspouts. 2. Fire eater + firenova will prevent one rounding a group of lavaspouts with spells, cones or bombs. Anathama and decay are the only counter to this silly crap. Disease used to counter it but some genius decided to remove the anti heal properties of the disease dot . Solution remove lava front and fire eater from lavaspout. Fvck lavaspout nobody cares about it. I hope it rots and that the idiots who run this rune cry me a river after it's nerfed.
The rune has only ever been abused, every game where I see my opponent drop a lava spout early I just surrender.
On a related note Mucker presents a considerable challenge to a new player until they are taught to save enough ap(with multiple champs) to split the mucker three or four times and cast a aoe dmg spell or use a cone/bomb because FS will set up a backfire most of the time.
It's likely that if he had that attitude it probably wouldn't matter a whole lot what he saw. That said, Lavaspout could probably use a change since it single-handledly defines a deck pretty much and is very hard to make any headway against if it is deployed early.
Yeah, but Mucker is really not the same kind of devil. It can be challenging depending on the deck. What I'd love to see is a tutorial mission where they basically teach you how to kill a Mucker. That would teach people about saving AP, counting AP, the role of damage spells and planning forward, all in one little encounter. If done right, that is. I'm sure it wouldn't be done right.
It's gotta be totally reworked because without all of its current abilities it would be worthless, which is exactly what makes it cancer. It's not a case of overtuned numbers or something, it's just a straight up toxic mechanic. People be like "just cast decay", ok, but what if I'm not FW? You should never have to play a specific deck just in case you encounter this one gimmicky troll deck that will Firk you up if you want to be anything else. And it's beatable, but totally luck based. The game I just lost my opponent drew lavaspout in the very first turn. Within 15 reveals he had beastcaller, warbanner, and the ghern. If he didn't draw lavaspout till near the end he would have been screwed, as the rest of the deck is pretty weak. This is supposed to be a strategy game, but there is no strategy with lava spout. There is no adapting to what your opponent does, lava spout deck will do the exact same thing every single game; turtle and stall until you have endless lavaspouts, then slowly advance across the field until the lag caused by 40 lava spouts annoys your opponent into surrendering.
Nah. Just removing the Death Nova and/or replacing Fire Eater with Lavawalker might do. But then again, people can make it have 20 HP with Spell Resistance and reduced CD on the ability, so idk. As for Sokolov's answer, I feel like "very hard to make any headway against if it is deployed early" is a bit of an understatement. It can be outright impossible if they get a decent draw on some maps. I think the main culprit is that damned Death Nova making it impossible to kill multiple at once. With anything. That doesn't even make sense to me.
For one, Rapid Growth needs to leave the game: it's just too easy to exploit, not only with Lavaspout (another surge plant champion in KF or ST and that flower would get out of control). Then we can talk further...
Add psychic ping to this thread and count it as cancerous bullshit that should not exist. Takes absolutely no skill to use. Every time I see it in a game I question myself "why does this exist?" Not unique and just a way for stupid asholes to win.
yea. my encounter with spout was pretty discouraging. muckers are tuff as well for 60 mana,, maybe keeping the split and low ap,but removing the reconstitute and ponderous would make it a little more reasonable?
def true,, its just I rarely have enough champs around , all with an ability to cause dam, and since it reconstitutes , itll have to be 1 rounded,,, probably have to use a lil spell power as well. its a big investment to destroy a 60 mana champ... but I understand yer point,,, besides I mostly play FS,,, so its fine either way.
Epic. Blame the prospect. Where did the Sok from yesteryears go? I can assure you, sir. This is not the attitude the front desk lady should have, much less the games developer and off topic top contributor.
I think that's valid criticism now that I re-read it. Maybe I worded it badly, but to be honest I was not really blaming him so much as that there isn't a way to get away from that kind of evaluation in this context. For example, if one were to watch a game of League and see a fed Maokai tank everything and not die, one might ask "Why does that exist?" but it is not necessarily representative of the whole game - it's one possible outcome (but a fed unkillable champion that pwns face is a common occurrence). Games of these types will always have scenarios where the winning side seems to have an overwhelming advantage and if you dislike that aspect of these games, it's hard to imagine you'd enjoy it or see it differently just because one example doesn't exist. Even with Chess one could see a game where one guy ends up with 3 Queens and wonder "WTF?" This isn't meant to be a dismissal of what the player felt (which is important no matter whether or not their evaluation is correct or even why they made it), as I said, in this case I do think Lavaspout is a problem. But it is also important to try and understand where the evaluation comes from rather than take it at face value. I think this is simply a logical statement. Hope that makes more sense. (Also, I am still me, I don't think I've changed much, to be honest. I discuss/debate with players regarding game issues as I have done since before I was even a developer. Sometimes it's because I feel strongly about a position, other times because I need to better understand where the player is coming from. I still engage with players and take their feedback seriously and often reply to their comments/issues with walls of text sometimes Actually, one thing I know that has changed is something I've been trying to do. I know in the past I have often used very sterile/technical ways of writing when discussing topics and because of what I had been accused of being condescending when I didn't intend to be, so I have actually tried to use more natural language when discussing topics, but it doesn't always come easily as I have a certain way of writing and that style of writing is also important in my line of work when writing documentation for programmers and other developers to follow.)
This might be true. It's one of those abilities that feels more fitting for a card game rather than a tactical one. That said, it does make the two champions fairly unique, but it does appear likely that they are either going to be abusive or terrible with very little room for middle ground. I think though that there is room for runes that aren't very good in competitive play, but can be interesting in casual/solo play.
Lavaspout - rapid growth (lavafront + death nova fire + fire eater) = apocalyptic game ending lag and no way of killing all the lavaspouts to prevent them from exponentially growing the next turn. Sok no one is going to care if you destroy this silly rune. We all hate it and there is one guy out there who abuses this rune and he is a complete asshat.
I am definitely intending on changing it, the question is really what the best approach is and what the new use of these runes might be, especially if Rapid Growth goes away.
You could always just replace Rapid Growth with Replicate if you want to keep the original feel of the rune. Up the HP by about 25, add Lava Front to base, and replace Lavawalker on U1 with Lava-fall 2. Lavawalker is redundant anyway with Fire Eater being base (since Fire Eater allowed unimpeded movement through lava).
I just had another thought: would it be possible in any way to add a terrain growth-type effect to Lavaspout similar to Glacier Engine, Rock Generator, etc.? Like, remove Rapid Growth and add Lava Front to base along with an ability that states: "At the end of your turn, spaces adjacent to terrain generated by this ability become Lava. When this unit leaves play, at end of turn, and the end of each turn thereafter, this terrain manipulation effect ends on the most recently affected spaces." Keep its stats relatively the same, with maybe an increase in HP to around 30. Would this work on a champion, or does the unit have to be immobile?
