(NEW) Next Patch Feedback Suggestions

Yes I know that we cant be the same power level as the others but with the advent of the revamp the attrition/slower pace of the faction has all but been eliminated and yet the champions we play haven't been moved into the new era. The high speed, high damage runes are taking over and we are left as a support faction our FF days are almost gone.

 

Well i can't disagree with any of that. Being outmanoeuvred and having my backline poked down while the frontline get kited around by pesky elves and the like is pretty much how i lose every time. However I feel that simply changing FW to adhere to that playstyle would jeopardize what it 'feels' like to play a FW bg. Its always been my personal opinion that the undead units should be tougher to kill, things like headless on wandering zombie are what make some of the FW units so useful.

Maybe instead of making the change in the Boon of the Undead we could try and strengthen the themes. I mean how easy would you guys think it would be to hit a skeleton with a bow and arrow? I'd imagine half the arrows would pass through holes like in the rib cage so maybe evasive on skeletons would help. Obviously zombies can't be evasive but they are walking meatsacks which in most contexts require nothing short of dismemberment or destruction of the nervous system to stop in their tracks so maybe resilient would fit them?

I feel that not only would this help our reputedly slow and cumbersome swarmer types sustain through constant barrage of range damage that exists in most bgs but it would just generally help with keeping the undead horde alive, i personally feel like when i have a ton of cheap expendable zombies or skeletons littering the map i'm playing FW correctly.

 

This couldn't be a more truer statement, But it has been the other way around with low damage, removal of riposte, little to no defense, lack of speed as well as removing the core abilities on some champs and the cost of the champs going thru the roof in the revamp makes them a easy targets.
We have lost the Dread, Soultap, Backlash builds, mobi is way expensive, Haunting grip is short lived, we have no combat detection champ, HW ravish is 20%, no relic movers, lost Sands of Time, Worms are laughable, Witches lack stopping power. Since the revamp the changes that have been made hasn't helped the faction.

The last champ we received was a split with FS

 

I'm sorry, but I disagree with this. All factions should have their own, unique strengh. Back during Octopi times, the faction flavour was well kept by making every faction to have an advantage and a weakness over another. Back then, UD was a combination of swarm, ranged, and debuff which made it a little bit difficult to play, but powerful regardless. At the same time, many faction which stack up all things up to eleven had only one or two things up to eleven, and the rest was lackluster. For example, Prot was primarily focused on healing. So it wouldn't matter that they had tanks which hits with a pillow made of feathers, because everybody in the back was healing and cleansing them as soon as they got hit.

Right now, and I insist, many times we got hammered by factions which had all these things and more in one way or another. When Meowss first showed up, they single-handedly exploited both faction´s meta by making each others ocupy filler spots.

Worse than that, when trying to make up for those limitations, instead of buffing existing themes, like swarm and revival, they created genres which didn't really made up for their limitations. I don't want to bad mouth Creep because I found the way to exploit it, but this doesn't really benefits strategy or existing themes within FW. More over, Humans and Spirit themes were lackluster simply because they never developed past basic ideas. Witches were an interesting combination, which kind of improved FW's lackish damage, however, the skillset avialable is too limited and poorly experimented by player who lean over Skeleton spam.

 

High Ability Costs:
Dread - 10 Nora compare yeti's Frightful Aura: 4
Demoralizing Descant: 5 nora vs Sunder 8 nora
Revel in Misery - !!!! 12 nora (witches get it and 1 speed and flight for whole squad for 30....what?. life siphon 10 life drinker 8. this is off)
Aspiring Servant - 30 nora, i think servitor deserves a discussion onto himself
Poison Cloud 3 - 12 nora. you pay additional 3 nora per cast range, would like this brought down.
Ravish - 10 nora
Revere: Mairdreth - 10 nora to maybe save 9-10 and maybe disease 3 a couple people.
Leverage Lich - 10 nora to...maybe get 10 nora back? what? backloaded break even...ok?

Wonder what you folks think of these, I know many if not all of these have been brought up before. Yes these are all spot fix, band-aid looks, but my overall feel for fw is that so much of its strength is backloaded, coupled with the fact that our racial is mostly cosmetic/backloaded and our faction bonus is backloaded it surprises me not at all that we "crutch" on creeper, tomb, dots. Feel there is merit in cleanng this up

Missed 1: appears mairdreth is paying triple for less benefit, desecrated zone of 1 space should cost 2?
http://poxbase.com/ability/355
Missed 2: corruptor's ability is very very pricey, which results in 5 speed and low damage. I don't know what you folks think about this one either, but I feel it could come up a bit given the faction he is in, sarinda nerf, mobi nerf. I don't see the danger, would love to see viable
http://poxbase.com/ability/530

 

Dread got much larger range then aura,which is the reason for the higher cost.
Demoralizing descant and sunder serve two different functions so you cant really compare them.
Revel in misery is an amazing ability,its costed right,especialy when you consider how much acolyte costs and how revel is much stronger,it is located on champions with crappy design,which i feel is the problem,not the ability itself.
Like revel in misery,aspiriting servant costs is fine,its just that the champion its on could use a small tweak/buff.
Buffing poison cloud just for fw is stupid,especialy when its mostly used in fs bgs where its just fine,most poison bg are really strong and dont need such a buff.
Leverage lich is crap,like every leverage ability in the game,and its something that should be adressed.

 

Ravish is basically just a sandbag, it's completely useless 90% of the time and I would much rather just have my high warlock 10 Nora cheaper.

Dread is a really strong ability and the fact it stacks means it has to maintain a high nora cost to keep dread bg's not ridiculously overpowered. I do however think that dread could do with a small nora decrease to around 7 or 8.

Revel in Misery is an extremely good source of healing, at least in specific bg's 12, may be an excessive nora cost however.

Poison Cloud is ridiculously over costed and I believe this is because it never got a cost reduction when it's nerf to the spell basically crapped on the ability equivalent.

Demoralizing Descant is fine in my opinion.

As for the other 3 I never really ran champs which had those ability's so I can't really say anything about them.

 

Completely agree on Ravish, the ratio is so bad and the cooldown so long that i can't even get decent results with it in a full death benefit deck.

I do however also not understand where these poison cloud suggestions are coming from. Of the 10 or so champions which use it Wretched Witch is the only FW champ. If you want to buff poison cloud to buff the witch then you are buffing FS poison decks indirectly and much more dramatically in the process.

 

To the above, I agree that the champs themselves need a look in most cases and this is a rather involved approach to looking at those runes except wbere the ability is near unique. So we should have a discussion of wretched witch, mairdreth, etc... I just think with priorities where they are right now, we might be able to sneak in a few reasonable tweaks to our runes by looking at those abilities.

 

I like most of what is being said, however... This part causes me a bit of worry. I have been reading quite a bit regarding "Cheap Meat" decks (as well as the recent encyclopedia for it, which is unfinished). Most of what is being said seems to say that Cheap Meat (like other themes) was hit hard. Currently it seems to me that the theme rather relies on the Dusk Creeper being like this, unless the other staples for that theme are de-shoeboxed. So I would be wary to nerf this rune, or any FW rune for that matter (too mcu FW nerfs imo).
Just an opinion of course, but it is something to consider (unless you already did or I'm an idiot, both of which are possible).

 

Eh, I think Creeper probably could take a punch in the gut, or at least a harsh tickle. He's probably 2x auto in anything FW.

A great compensatory buff would be to change DH back to 7 flat nora on real champ deaths, and then turn Haunt/WtD into summons. Eh...?

 

Dusk creeper is the fw faction bonus.He is gluing together whats left of fw.Atleast when he is nerfed we wont have any more overpowered runes,aside from polluted martyr.

 

Which means we could totally make the FW bonus flat nora back on real champion death - pretty much what Dusk Creeper is now.

 

And then everyone who doesnt play fw will complain about it and it will never happen,people who dont play fw already consider fw to be popular and very strong.

 

Yeah, pretty aware of that. Pipe dream. But something like 4/2 even back on real champ death would be strong but not unbalanced.

 

That's exactly what we need i think. I love the faction bonus, it really fits the idea of sending forth unending waves of the undead but the problem i've always had is that we essentially don't have a bonus until our champions are already dead. Which when you compare it to the other faction bonuses which consistently help them throughout the game is a huge disadvantage. This however feels more in the middle, we still don't have a bonus persistently helping us but it does immediately give us nora when a champ dies which we can use to try and create some kind of an advantage right then and there.

 

That right there is a major issue, actually.
"Note: Forsaken Wastes tends to be best played by more advanced players." -FW faction overview, Game Info; Factions, FW
Ugh. That is NOT something I want to see anywhere, even when it IS true. What happens here is that people end up seeing FW as the "pro" or "elite" faction. So whenever they lose to it, they're going to feel justified in calling for a nerf to it, because in their minds, those highly skilled players (who are totally awesome, by the way!) don't deserve to also have the best stuff.
It's a common mentality today unfortunately, that the best are only the best because they have good things, not because they are actually good at what they do.

I personally enjoy fighting FW, because it feels like the tide could turn at any moment, for either side.
On the other hand, fighting any of the other factions always feels one sided and boring to me, I'm either flying the ROFL copter, or getting chased by it.

Okay, I'm done with my rant. Sorry guys.

Actually on topic...
Imo, the problem is not whether the FW will fit the flavor, we all know how to do that fairly easily. The problem is making one that will actually be on par with the others, but won't get hated on too much (even though the other factions' bonuses get plenty of hate, I know FW's would actually nerfed if it was hated, such is our lot).

 

If we get a balanced bonus,people will complain,because a balanced bonus will be stronger then what we have now.I still remember how everyone thought the entire game would be broken and utterly unbalanced if the diseased had decaying effect rather then inhibited which we have now.

Anyway once all our themes are dead(almost there)and our two op runes are nerfed:dusk creeper and polluted martyr,then fw will be dead,and then it can get reanimated with some buffs.

 

Yeessss, yesssss! Let them think they have won, and just when all have forgotten us, we will rise again, stronger than ever, and we will drag the living to the grave!