Patch Notes: August 31st, 2020 Discussion.

Can you bring back Aggressive? This would allow you to keep skellies strong and make FW players happy. Aggressive back in the day was the main counter to summon units. I beleive this would help balance summons as they are now. Back in the day Lonx hunt leader had aggressive and violent was used a summon buster if used right.

 

If the ability still exists in the database, I can look at it. Might be difficult otherwise.

 

1. I think most would agree that zeal damage needs an ability cost increase but to lose it from one of the best IS ranged units and see it appear on Great Eagle begins to raise alarm bells for me. A range reduction makes more sense or even throw it on exorcist just to change things up a bit.

3. Portal mage was interesting it required the right deck and draws to be effective but now she's just a slow zero attack support unit with no redeeming qualities.

4. It's shoeboxed for me, as I ran x2 and liked to keep them together to receive Fury bonus's. Which makes nova redundant since they take fire damage. While a Fire Eater upgrade path may be too much, it needs at least immunity fire.

5. Why no comming back for unleash ? What if enough players wanted it back ? I thought this whole thing was democratic and community driven...

 

Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Oh well!

However, we still need to look at Debilitate. It's good, but it's also a bit random and has no direct correlation with any theme. This begs the question of why it was chosen as an upgrade since the thinking was, "Let's make Mena more theme centric." Since Debilitate is a really abstract option, why not replace it with HM 2 or Healing Mind, which have the same cost and give him back some of his healing flavor? Also, Magic Beam and GMA are for Magic Amp, but they're on the same line. Why not change it so that you can maximize healing, Magic Amp, or Aurora?

Current
UG1 > Illum (4), Regen 2 (5), Deb (6)
UG2 > GT (5), GMA (6), MB (9)

Change
UG1 > Illum (4), Regen 2 (5), MB (9)
UG2 > GT (5), HM 2 (6) or Healing Mind (6), GMA (6)

This way, he keeps his new thematic feel and cost and is better balanced with MB and GMA on opposite lines, and he gets a part of his old healing back for people who want it. As a plus, this change looks better because UG1 is utility and UG2 has a faction focus.

Personally, I like Healing Mind better since it accents Mena's ability to snipe from long range and because it connects with part of his flavor text, "To fight wisely is to arm your strength with your mind."

 

Any chance we can make it so red lightning gets ionisation buff?

 

Spells cannot be meddled with but as soon as that's an option, that'd be one of the fixes.

 

Aww that sucks

 

Hello,
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to Etherielin and whomever has made this new patch happen. This was unexpected and such a nice surprise to see some love shined on this old game. I am sure not everyone will agree on changes to be made but I for one am very grateful to see some new life and don't expect every idea to be perfect. This makes me want to log on more and even to get on discord to have discussion with the active players and I thank you for that, good luck and carry on.

 

1. Why does it raise alarm bells to you? If I find a different, fitting champion to give Zeal: Damage to in IS, I will. It's likely going to be the October shoebox rune buff.

3. Swap and Grant Teleport offer Tortuns the mobility they normally wouldn't have - are AP saving and free mobility not incredibly important to tortuns? I do agree Portalmage could maybe use a little extra something (but not much), but in its old form it just didn't work in the world of rituals. Once I can tackle main summon mechanics, I'll see about bringing the summon ability back, but for now it has to be put on hold.

4. How does fire nova 3 stop that? It's an active ability. Tackling fire eater of fire immunity would make them even more expensive. If a 61 nora Rip Demon was overpowered and a 67 nora Rip Demon is underpowered, what do you believe is the ideal nora cost for the rune not to be considered ridiculous considering the set of abilities it has?

5. Yes - that doesn't mean that abilities proven to be unhealthy within a specific theme can come back. Unleash is a big can of worms in skellies because of how many unleash procs they can get in a turn. Like said I am watching the Skeleform closely and if it's entirely gone from play, I will look into buffing it. My goal isn't to shoebox anything, but I don't want things to be bonkers either.

I like it. I'll see if I can sneak it in, although I'll place Magic Beam and Healing Mind in one upgrade line as and Grant Magic Aura to another so that you can have a "classic" Menalaus this way. (Healing + Magic Aura support)

Thank you! Cortices and I are doing what we can, the next patch is also going to arrive soon. Stay tuned!

 

Double posting to let everyone know that initial patch notes are up in the spreadsheet. Please take a look, let me know your thoughts and keep suggesting as there's still one week to go before the changes are final!

 

Thanks for the changes, and I hate to challenge it one more time, but I think having 2 Grant: X abilities on opposite lines will get you nothing but complaints because of Karmic Reward. It might be too much for a long range champ. I'd setup it up just as I had it, but whatever. I really appreciate your openness.

 

Karmic Reward can proc only once a turn as far as I am aware.

 

Addressing this - I talked to Sokolov and to his understanding spell seals were never meant to be run as 2 copies of one rune (so 2x obelisks for example). While making a change last patch we didn't split the seals from each other, so you cannot run 1 of each still and it's something that will be fixed with this patch.

As for the Crawler - still checking if we can make it a 2x2.

 

Any chance on changing battle maps?

 

Not for this patch was the last update from Cortices on it. We're still working this one out as apparently new obstacles have shown up related to the client.

 

@Braxzee One thing more so that I understand your point clearly - is your goal to have Trail: Crystal on Crawler back at the cost of Swap Rank 3 (and being a 2x2) or to simply have it be a 2x2 with Trail Crystal and Swap Rank 3? The latter will cause issues and giving it planar bound forces swap rank 3 to be gone anyway, so I am asking to make sure we are on the same page.

 

BEing a 2x2 champ should not allow him to swap. Remove swap and and put trail crystal on or give him planar bound like you did to phoenix. Swap and trail crystal together is what gives it bugs or the ability to swap bugs out trail crystal. Hence no complaints or bugs for crystal dragon

 

Understood - take a look at the spreadsheet and tell me if this is roughly what you were thinking of.

 

1. When I saw the list of KF changes in comparison to the nerfs of other factions, it looks like (at least to me) a balance shift towards that faction, hence the "alarm bells".

3. AP saving and free mobility are obviously important to all races, but as slow moving tanks it should be less so for Tortuns. The theme suggests increased defense over mobility.

4. It doesn't but it makes it less efficient than other similiar runes. Demonic Sandclaw, Needleclaw Imp , Ambassador Berkchani, Ranger. With its artwork , fire damage and now Fire Nova, it's odd that it should take fire damage . If damage shield physical ( should be fire anyway) was replaced with Nova in U1 and immunity fire was on base that would seem a better fit.

5. True but it's not just skellies that can fast swarm summons.
The worst offender is the stiched combo - Magic bomb from Magearm with a tome equipped onto Dark Rising pack then cast Arise.
All summons need font ignorance, unequippable, faithless, and be unable to generate ap for skills like unleash and impatient. ( I know the latter is currently not possible).

 

Again one by one:
1. In the last patch KF faced the most nerfs but also had the most significant shoebox buffs in terms of scope. Great Eagle did prove to be buffed slightly too much (too cheap) and is getting trimmed down next patch. As you can notice in the spreadsheet I do my best to shy away from buffing my faction as I know I am horribly biased towards Fairies.

3. Correct - wouldn't having a support champion that specifically makes your slow moving, hard hitting champions able to occasionally relocate be a great boon in that case? They're still tough as nails, but they are given limited options to bypass the problem of being sitting ducks a lot of the time. Portalmage helps that. I'm thinking about buffing it next month slightly by making Portalmage slightly harder to remove from the field, but I believe its opportunity cost (incredibly cheap for a support) is really great for Torts.

4. The problem with immunity fire and fire eater is that it would also let them walk / heal on lava, which is a significant boon especially with the current rotation in mind. I'll observe Rip Demon for another month and adjust accordingly if its play rate hits a dramatical low.

5. Both Skellies and Stitched Combo are being nerfed.

All summons already have font ignorance. I am not sure if faithless and unequippable are the way to go and I think it's better to deal with problematic summons directly instead of just crippling every single summon in the game because of the few problematic ones. Summon: Tortalleon ability is essentially a casualty of such sweeping changes.

Again thank you for your feedback - there are initial patch notes for the next patch up right now that are up for discussion this entire week. Let me know what you think.