I am not sure if he'll end up taking it out, but halfgodx was running Locust Swarm yesterday still. Locust Swarm changes made it the same as template as other AEs. And his cost didn't change much because I reduced his large negative modifier.
As for Dragons being "strongest BG for the last few months," based on what I saw it only really started being more regularly played since the last mid-terms, but that doesn't mean it wasn't strong before.
No skeezicks , I know we just got some. Anyways the art Is amazing sokolov. Some of the best I've seen.
Post skeezick nerf, dragons were the most common bg i would see. Glaurungod and jayscales were playing them, with an occasional random player i wouldn't recognize. I was playing sand, movn generally beasts, and krezio was doing weird krezio things. As far as locust goes, nerfing locust did to sand what nerfing strig warlock would do to flying. You build up these individually underwhelming runes into a cohesive, tanky group of units. You use a lot of AoE based damage to circumvent generally low dmg to cost ratio units, and then use dwm to create key powerhouse damage dealers. The theme then wins games by maintaining board prescence by increasing kill efficiency via swarm (similar to what warlock does by offsetting the cost of gale/swap). So nerfing a unit that functioned as both a significant AoE damage contributor, and as the main snowballing factor in the bg has turned an already t2-t1.5 bg into a significantly worse bg. Now add in that skeletons, myx, and constructs are all being encouraged, and nerfing the theme's answer to summon spam hurts even more. Like dont get me wrong, locust in a vaccuum is not balanced, but i could come up with a rune in just about every theme that isnt. These runes are allowed to exist because their themes are not meta dominant. That is the case with locust, and makes me question why you decided to nerf it instead of something like skywing eminent, which virtually everyone agrees is a problematic rune in our faction's most dominant theme as of late.
Locust was part of a negative modifier review as were many of the runes this release. The nerf was also discussed in the Council. Halfgodx runs Locust in Dragons currently (again, I don't know if he'll remove it in the future, but he's been using it post patch). Skywing Eminent was recently buffed and I haven't heard any specific nerf calls for it (either in forums, in-game, nor direct to me). At the end of the day I can only adjust things based on what I see or hear. This means either communication from players, something I see in-game myself or when I am reviewing data. I am not saying that makes it "fine" but that is the reason.
Smartly said, both of you! Glad to see we have people that can debate and rebuttle! hopefully mark can take this type of commentary as an example if he wants his ideas heard / to have an effect. hint hint. (no offense)
How often do you hang out in global chat? Honestly it might be the best place to get a sense of what people have a problem with. Pretty much any time ive logged on and there were the typical talkative players on (myself, mw, cydna, ballballer, dmr etc...) there was a complaint about how fotm and op dragons were, and eminent was pretty much perpetually complained about. As far as the communication thing goes, it gets kinda fatiguing checking the various council threads for edits. between work, my relationship, and the other stuff that eats up time i find it hard to stay up to date with upcoming change proposals due to the 8 upcoming rune threads, the imminent general changes, and the looking ahead stuff. Maybe in the future if you had a thread like "the patch is coming in 2 weeks, whats the op stuff from your faction?" I could give a little better feedback.
Oh look here's that Craft champ we could've used 2 expansions ago. Time to dust off the dumbequip.dek. Did Quarry Mark escape the nerfs all this time? I didn't follow that stuff closely.
It received some nerfs, but i think you can go ahead and use it. 35 nora, proximity based hunter equipped. I wonder if they fixed that bug where relocation allowed you to get hunter on multiple units. Happened to me when I used Crushing Charge near the equipped champ. Don't remember the exact conditions tho.
draksar and skeezick still need alot more buffs, especially draksar they are still really really bad.
