MovnTarget's Moving Target of Balance Patch 3

Feel free to state here what you feel is OP, UP, somewhere in between, or should simply be changed for the sake of change.


Make sure you give lots of good suggestions so I don't have to do any actual work myself.


Also keep in mind that Gedden had previously stated he was thinking on how to change DB and quickening so as to decrutchify us from them.

 

I have some suggestions for nerfs, but until SL is in a spot where it can compete without these units, I find it hard to justify any nerfs. Several themes need attention (draksar, sand/myx, still skeeziks) and it's hard to find only 5 changes which would bring them into viabillity.

 

1) Wyrmpriest - make him cost less nora, make rite/ritual not share cd and/or lower cd into 2. ( good start this patch )
2) Draksar Archer - just make him more effective, look at barb archer or so.
3) Draksar Lord - need something like warcry or commander draksar
4) Fallen Draksar - Split rune
5) Theme need Vitalize ( draksars )

other changes

Rip Demon Alpha - not worth 90 nora ( and i would love to see rip demon + rip demon alpha in same bg )
Draksar Legionnaire - lack of violent 2 big nora cost
Draksar Consulate not rly 81 nora material
Draksar Hunter - make hunter sketz upgradeable so he can be more flexible

 

Change Incorporeal, being immune to all but magic damage hurts multiple factions. Magic damage, while available in all factions, is not always available on champs that are worth putting in a deck, or are on more difficult to obtain runes. I believe this hurts the new user experience, since the theme they want to play may not have a way to counter incorporeal.

I think of incorporeal in terms of vampyres, since Vampyre was the first champ I saw able to become incorporeal. Most vampyre lore I know of, they don't become ghosts, they become gaseous, almost like a mist. I think it would be within that flavor to allow Magic, Sonic and Psychic to do full damage. Fire and Frost could do reduced damage, like 50%. Physical would still be 0%. What I think would be even more interesting is if Acid and Electricity did no damage to the target, but did a Lightning Storm type effect to surrounding champs.

Barring a nerf to incorporeal that fixes the need for hard counters, I'd like to see either more sources of magic damage, so you can use a champ within a theme without needing to get an exotic/legendary/limited.

 

Preparation onto Sandlion - ambush preparation may be interesting due to how the combo would work but would prefer mid-range + preparation

 

1. Sandspout down to 35 nora.
2. Horrific Mutation down to 35 nora.
3. Acid bomb/breath -4 nora apart from vindrax.
4. Collosal ranks 20/30/40 %
5. Rework skeezick warmage:

Remove blast from base. Give him magic bomb:1 at base, and skeezick alliance. Remove regen abillity tree#1.

Abillity tree#1: Teleport 1, teleport 2, Adaptive: SL

Abillity tree#2: Instigate, tempo, resistance: magical 3.

 

Draksar Broodling: Can we replace the second upgrade path with Reinforcement or Initiative? I don't know why anyone would ever take Regeneration on something that is designed to get close then explode.

I would like to see abilities that have a shared cooldown looked at. I mentioned this in a couple other threads.

Think of Pizza Hut in the late 80's early 90's. If you ordered multiple pizzas, they had a promotion where the first pizza was regular price, then additional pizzas were 4 bucks.

My thought would be to do the same thing for shared cooldown abilities. Any other ability in the game, my champ pays the full nora cost for it, and I can use the ability any time I want, and it cools down according to that individual ability. Its nora cost is based on the combination of that effect, AP cost, and cooldown time.

With Rituals/Rites/Reconstruction, I pay full price for each ability still, but the shared cooldown prevents me from using all of the abilities I'm paying for whenever I want. The additional abilities obviously cannot be free, since I still have more options than someone that has a champ with only one ability, but it also should be less than the full amount.

Poxbase has the Rites/Rituals at 8 nora each, and Reconstruct at 12 nora each.

I looked at Dodge (8,10), Block (8,10), Pummel (8,12,16), and Barrage(6,12,15). Dodge and block cost 2 nora more to have a cooldown of 1 instead of 2. Pummel costs 4 nora to go from CD3 to CD2 and 4 more to go to CD1. Barrage costs 6 to go from CD3 to CD2 and 3 more to go to CD1. I know these abilities don't directly translate, but it gives us an idea what cooldown changes cost.

By having 2 abilities with shared cooldown, the cooldown is effectively doubled. Not quite since you could keep using the same ability instead of alternating, but almost.

In the case of Rites/Rituals, I feel that the cooldown is 6 nora of the 8. I say that because Motivate is 7 nora, and provides a permanent +1 damage, where the Rite/Ritual of Power is +2 until end of turn and requires a champ to be destroyed. I actually think Rituals should cost more than rites since the wording doesn't state it has to be your own summon, but that's a different topic.

So in the case of Rites/Rituals, having a second ability that shares cooldown, you are paying 12 nora in cooldown costs, but essentially getting 6 nora worth of benefit. My thought would be that the first Rite/Ritual a champ has would be 8 nora, as it is currently, and each additional ability sharing the cooldown would be 3 more nora. I say 3 and not 2 because you still have the flexibility of using one rite/ritual repeatedly instead of using each one half as often. That gives you an average cost per ability of 6.5, a 5 nora savings. If there are ever champs with 3, it would be an average cost of 4.66, a 10 nora savings, and with 4, an average cost of 4.25, a savings of 15 nora.

 

Dodge and block are overcosted too.

 

decrutchify us from quick/db.......idk how thats gonna turn out

 

Draksar archer to get violent back preferably with no cost increase but i could understand if it did

 

I would really love if wyrmpriest could get a) the three rituals/rites on his upgrade paths, b) death charged and recharge base instead of immunity: magical and regen (it overlaps with rite of creation) c) a little nora discount acconting for what darklord says above, otherwise it feels like a wasted change, also, it's a possibility for a splashable magic damage unit if his damage goes up a little.

Talking about that, you should give the meta players a reliable magic damage unit that can be splashed, here some options I thought of:
Giving skeezick wylder a meta build (could be as simple as changing magic nova on path 2 for something cheap like defenseless (assuming it gets toned down a bit it shouldn't be OP), or restructuring it completely to charge/ no charge build)
Giving spellsword magical attack (2-4 range) instead of one instance of nova
Change wyrmpriest as above.

Try to change skeezick herder and dune walker into playability, addressing desert walker cost and the stuff you know it's bad, this would easily put 2 themes into rotation again.

 

i would think giving dune walker grant:tunnel sand would go a long way to bringing back sand BG's wouldn't it?

 

I have 4 suggestions for champs, with some ability re-costing thrown in.

Sandhunter

Gains attack magical
Damage to 10
Loses upgrades: sand fall 1 and 2. Gains upgrades: trail sand, desert walker and sand veil
Nora cost, with tunnel sand 1 selected, to 67 with sandveil, 68 nora with trail sand, and 72 with desert walker

Reduce Desert Walker nora cost. +4 nora over trail sand.

Acid Elemental

Nora to 75
bombs to be re costed across the game.

Skywing Imperator

Nora reduction to low mid 80. Thinking 85 with max bombs.
Bombs re costed to achieve this.
Desert Walker nora reduced to achieve this.

Skybreak Dragon cost to 82
Gains Storm acolyte

 

i would only run acid elemental at 75 if it had deflect and bomb 3 at that price. His stats are terrible

 

Make master trapsmith not suck.

 

1. Give draksar some range outside of pope hat (who is only runnable because of Sermon anyway) - it's not that we haven't got units it's just they're sub par to every other faction.
2. Draksar High Marshall, who's he marshalling? How can he be a dictator (dictate) and empathetic? Either make him a tyrant or make him the good guy draksar - give him like commander : Draksar aswell and possibly command : block. Empathy just isn't thematic at all.
3. Draksar Lord, this guy definitely needs Draksar warcry WITHOUT a cost increase. Then he'd be like a harder hitting DK which doesn't have... you know, Divine Favour 3.
4. Draksar Morph - make her runnable some how. Just please do it.
5. Give us a reason to run Basilisk Templar and Blackscale Centurion instead of them just being boring beaters.

Cheers!

 

Tainted vinecreeper has hidden sand and ambush, but has an upgrade chain of plant regeneration, which doesn't work in sand. Can we get that swapped? Perhaps zeal, or a combo attack, or entangling attack?

 

a combo attack would be great

 

entangling attack or dragging attack would be gold

 

• About Basilisk...it kind of sucks that he doesn't have much protection against most things and that he has to choose between 3 of his former big abilities, BUT I really like that he's cheaper. Petrifying Gaze works well for me so I'm glad to be able to run him at a lower price.

• Yeah, Acid Ele is just bad. Choosing between Deflect and Acid Greeting AND a huge price for awful stats? No.

• Dune Walker being able to have both Grant: Trail Sand and Grant: Tunnel Sand would be great.

• Also, please make Skeezick Wylder a cheaper (low 70s) source of Imbue Stun with some weaker upgrades that allow him to be out of any theme. SL could use the board control. Even moreso if we ever decrutchify DB/Quicken.

• As nerfs, please consider the powerlevel of Skywing Rumbler with Surge: Dragon rank 2. Also, Maulers seem too powerful.