Non-Client Non-Balance Stuff

I think the faction bonuses are just fine as they are. They've been constantly re-developed over the years to the extent they are far less noticed for their benefits. SP for example use to have like 12% nora refund in the early days? SL use to get like 40% damage reduction? (Could of been 20%, memory is a little foggy.) - Over the course of time these benefits for a faction have dropped and dropped. FW is one of the few that has barely been altered cause really, there's nothing wrong with it. Faction bonuses should be left as they are, especially now that PSN players are here and being active. Changing them now would result in confusion for many of those players, and most likely frustration from the PC users. If you really 'must' change them, just remove them and be done with the concept. Faction bonuses as they are now play a minor difference, as opposed to back in 2014 when they were a more deciding factor.

 

May have been 14 or more at one point, don't remember but it was 12% back in 2011 for sure. Also, font bonus was getting +2 AP on all your deployments IIRC. SL was not 40% damage reduction. It was a DEF buff and initially, which affected evasion before dodging was removed and then it was +ATK/DEF but ATK is not the same as DMG. FW was at point a fixed bonus but it got changed into %, which is different though I'd also consider it to be more consistently powerful across all decks compared to just getting -6 or whatever it was.

That being said, I do think bonuses are more or less alright though I wish they didn't exist at all.

 

SL bonus used to be +7/14 DEF, when DEF interacted with ATK. It provided no ATK bonus. It was then changed to -20%/10% damage from "attacks", and was then changed to the current form of -2/1 damage from champions.

UD bonus has always been +DMG, although it did not used to have the melee limiting component.

KF bonus used to be +1/2 SPD before the changes to SPD -- the current +1 SPD is mostly equivalent to the old +2.

FW bonus used to be -6/3 champion CD, but was changed to -60%/40% so that it would have a larger comparative effect on expensive champions.

IS bonus used to grant +15/30 shrine HP. It was changed to spell resistance because +Shrine HP is garbage.

ST bonus has remained unchanged.

FS bonus used to be +8/4 nora a turn, but that was considered too powerful and so changed to +6/3.

SP might have at one point been 14/7% refund -- I know that it used to be 12/6% refund up front, but was changed to 8/4 up front and 4/2 on death so reduce how front-loaded the benefit was.

 

Can't have an impact on the meta if there's no meta huehue.

 

FS was 8
SP was 12%, went to 8/4 or something.

 

At any rate, my point is was that the faction bonuses are balanced as they are now. Not enough to go unnoticed, but not to much to the extent that they're overwhelming. If you want to spice things up and make some aspects of themes and their thematic more enjoyable and interesting; start with fixing things that were otherwise broken. FW Spirit decks for instance now have no synchronization to them. With the loss of Surge:Spirit, they're a horrible theme that'll never see attention again due to them not being remotely competitive as a racial theme as a whole. Sure you can counter argue by saying there are plenty of Vengeful champions within the Spirit themes, however that is a concept and not really a thematic. A theme perhaps, but Vengeful based decks are better off with cheap meat to build it up, which few Spirits are below 50 nora.

Outside of that, most things are interesting enough to a new player, or even old players providing they are willing to try out new things. I usually make a new deck each day to play around with, so I don't get bored of running my Vampyres constantly. Not a difficult task. Perhaps introduce a new race or two down the track. Perhaps update some of the older runes so they're not so horrible to the extent people over look them because the newer generation of runes are simply better in every aspect. That'd be better idea rather than making new champions constantly and expanding into new abilities.

 

Instead of bonuses totally going away replace them all with +X initial rune reveals and have split get nothing. That way FF bonus would be consistency over Split Factions rune quality/selection.

I agree with Streea that spirits could use some glue. Vengeful could possibly work if the summon to real units was on the table but would need to be done carefully. More Soulsift, soulchanneling, soultap and things centering around soul tapped condition could also be nice.

 

Another idea: Remove Warbanners from the game.

 

"Guardian of Ailur: This champion has Melee Specialist 2 and Bravery so long as you control no more than 4 champions." Something like that? Bravery is ~8, Melee Spec 2 is ~5, Guardian could be aggressively costed at half the combined cost or so. Numbers could be tinkered.

Seems to me like that would acceptably address a lot of the requirements for a good Aulir ability:

1. It needs to encourage some sort of theme, rather than being an isolated ability
2. It needs to provide a benefit for being outnumbered
3. It needs to encourage keeping a low number of champions

Bravery requires keeping champions close together, and implicitly demands a racial similarity; it gives Surge: Enemy, which grants unlimited up-scaling benefit for being outnumbered; the X-or-less clause keeps the champ count down, and therefore implicitly reinforces the racial similarity to keep Bravery ticking, while still leaving openings for strategic non-Leoss splashes. Finally, by costing the ability between 5 and 10 nora, you can keep these champions functional or slightly nerfed outside of a dedicated Leoss deck, because they would mostly just pay for Melee Specialist at slight cost increase, while providing an advantage above-cost when used together.

Picked 4 as the number of champions so that the Leoss player could reasonably fight on two fronts with strike teams of 2, because otherwise you have no way to trigger Bravery on the second front.

Also, now that I think about it, this could be one of those theme rebuilds for the non-balance thread. @Sokolov

 

Something that gives them Blood Rage when near Bloodied champions? "When this champion is adjacent to a Bloodied enemy champion, this champion gains Blood Rage and Blood Frenzy 2"? Could be a bit strong with Blood Crest, but eh. I think something like Blood Rage would be a good idea, because it has synergy with the self-healing on attacks that Vamps have, while also sort of converting that self-heal back into damage, which makes them work better with the FW bonus.

Or maybe a particular ability called something like Vicious Strike, which is a modified version of Blood Rage: "AP0, CD1: This champion loses 12 HP and makes an attack at RNG 1 against a Bloodied enemy champion. The AP cost of this ability cannot be modified." Cuts off the AP cost, cuts the CD in half, increases the HP cost and restricts it to Bloodied only. Admittedly, this could lead to some terrifying burst damage out of Vampryes, but that's what Blood Rage does as an ability anyway, I guess.

???

 

12 hp is abit too much.
most vampyres can't even heal that much with an attack.
also it'd be great if vampirism(the fw spell) could be reworked for vampires.
but out of all the things vampires need the most its probably in theme cleanse.

 

Toll-Taker has Gravetend, so this is nonsense now.

Considering that it is a 0 AP, CD 1 attack that they can probably set up with a basic attack right before it, no, I don't think 12 HP is too much. It would ultimately be up to Sok, though.

 

When playing Vampyres I always feel like variety is what they need most of all, there are some great champs in the theme but the majority are straight forward melee beaters which limits your options in how you can play.

For a FW theme their damage is pretty good and unless you line them up to get one rounded they can be quite 'tanky' due to the healing. What i'd really like to see is some more support themed abilities in there, Mason's Spire or even something like Deploy: Blood Crest would be great. More standard stuff like Invigorate for engaging or Grant:Reflex/Evasive to mitigate damage wouldn't go amiss either, those kind of abilities would give champs like Elder Bloodbinder something to do other than poking.

I really like the idea of things like Blood Rage which take advantage of their ability to heal, swapping HP with Drain seems pretty effective too. I don't know what else to suggest with that right now but i was thinking of something along the lines of the Valdaci Sacrifice abilities.