With the much anticipated revamp firing up I'm sure we're all feeling the same level of anticipation and excitement right now. Unfortunately for me those feelings are being replaced with worry and anxiety. This isn't because I don't think the owls are up to it or that we're going to get the short end of the stick again but rather the lack of focus our faction has right now. I'm excluding moga and slags from this because they have pretty well defined themes atm but take a look at cyclops. What do they do? How about voil or hyaenid? Those themes have been all over the place and have lacked direction for a while. You'll notice that like most factions our themes are clearly defined by race (the exception being lightning) but unlike most they are held together with some duct tape and elmer's glue. They have surge or boost slapped onto things to promote 'synergy' without actually giving any sort of purpose. Hyaenid started off promising but now they're a pretty good example of what happens when too many hands end up in the cookie jar. The initial idea was for them to be a debuff theme. In general their damage would be average at best while they made up for it by grouping up and crippling their foes. I'd like to see that dream fulfilled by cutting the ties that djinn have to them. Serf would be removed from all of them and instead the djinn would have an ability that gives the closest friendly champion serf when their deployed. Djinn are nothing more then natural forces that manifest themselves to protect their home, they couldn't care less what race happens to be living on it. Then you splash in some hard debuff abilitys like metamorph along with some that you'd have to work for such as giving breaker spark curse. There's also an ability that I tried for a very long time to get introduced that I'd kill to have: it applies defiled and cursed to champions that are affected by cackle for the duration. The ONLY way a debuff theme works is if they can actually enforce the negative effects and a lack of defile was a major detriment to making original hyaenid work. Voil play like old school IS where you just power turn out the wahzoo and eventually win the game. It's a fun deck type to play and I didn't want that aspect to be killed so I never really minded much that all the theme support they got were abilities like boost or improve speed. I had previously toyed with the idea of making voil blind and adding an echo-locate ability to sonar. It basically boiled down to using echo to apply an effect to a champion that made it where attacks made on them couldn't miss (thus getting around the blinded condition) and they lost stealth but I never really tried to do much with it because I wasn't sure if anyone else would want to play something like that. Cyclops are a blank slate at this point. When SOE bailed they were just starting to get new runes and an ichor theme was being implemented but it was so early that it hasn't been fleshed out that well. They could also work as a stone theme or something else entirely so what is it that you guys are hoping to have as the end result here? Personally I don't want every theme to be a one dimensional summon -> charge in -> kill -> profit type of deck and I honestly believe that the owls don't want that either. The problem is that without a good direction to go on it's easy to slip up and have that happen by accident. tl;dr- What defining traits are you hoping the SP theme's have post revamp.
what about Djinns getting Dogpile (instead of Surge: Hyaenid) (could be renamed if that's the case) and increasing its duration to 6 from 4 (with individual tweaks). I always thought that a source of defile could be a great addition to hyenas. ComboAttack: Defiled?
I'm really excited of what they're doing on Cyclops. Buff their speed. Why most of the Cyclops have 5 speed? Man, they are giants! Have you watch the Wrath of the Titans movie? See how fast they are? Haha. I don't really like the ichor ability. It doesn't make sense :3 And yeah.. SP Beasts should be buffed too.
If djinn aren't removed from the hyaenid sub-group it causes the same issues that we have now. What do we do with the serf mechanic so it isn't useless without butchering the debuff playstyle that other nids have? How are you supposed to balance a serf nid in both decks types because chances are if it's good w/o serf it's going to be too good with it and vice versa. Most clops have 5 speed because of vitalize. It was sort of a work around to give us cheaper units without punishing their speed to hard. The problem was the game sped up too fast and decks like this fell to the wayside.
well, Zevenclops have wincon idea so it's much easier to play it that way than FF. just because you know what you need to do in order to win. Pathfinder is a nice theme ability, but I think it should be racial. it's simply not stable enough to roll the draw-dice and expect the best. Pathfinder - When there are X or more champions with this ability, this champion gains Mountaineer. Warwizard had very cool idea behind him, but I simply cannot imagine him being played (properly) with Grant: Teleport. 5 SPD base with high cost ability every turn is "somehow" not that productive.
For Cyclops they should all gain mountaineer, ponderous, and bonus speed, Remove path finding from Alpine Cyclops, Some of their damages might need to change.
Yeeaah. Liked the idea of every Cyclops have mountaineer and bonus speed. That makes sense Ponderous, however, we already have tortuns on that part.
Cyclops need to all be increased to 2x2 (except for Runt, And for god's sake why isn't Youth 1x1,) and gain Mountaineer on base. Speed is debatable, I like them as slow giant enormous damage high hp hard to maneuver doods. Voil need some reworked synergy. I like that they have the powerturn thing going for them, but they need some Shroud-like abilities or something to encourage them to bunch up. Make em all swarmy. I like your Hyaenid idea, a debuff theme would be really cool, especially if they got some defiled somewhere. Moga/G'hern needs some rework. There should not be a moga worth more than 50 nora, except for Dirge. They're not as tiny as they're supposed to be. Lightning is actually really cool right now. Slags... I don't know, I just dislike slags ever since they took my blue belly away from me. Beasts could use a few buffs, but that's all. Djinns should all lose race: Djinn and just be elementals. Then give elementals a theme. Just rewrite that whole piece of lore, what ever happened to The Exile? Seriously, how upset would you be if you were The Exile and all your buddies were like, "Oh hey, we're gonna go hang out with them instead." No.
Really like the Hyaenid ideas too! King Ngozi should be implemented! Haha! http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/king-ngozi.1702/#post-18702
I can get behind nebron's proposal of a change to Hyaenids. For the rest: - Moga/Slags: I'm happy with them. - Voils: Their terrible racial should be reworked (it isn't terrible power-wise but it's so bland and random), then more synergy would be welcome. I have no issue with them just getting more Bulkwark and Surge, even if it's one of the most uninteresting sort of bonus it goes well with their swarmy sub-module and someone at least should have it besides moga. - Clops: As others have said they need to not be forced to run Alpine and Wardrummer to be viable, that's just not possible. A racial that includes Mountaineer at the very least would be welcome. Or something more interesting that doesn't force them to enage in order to deal damage. - Lightning: A way to not be ***** by resistances and company (the worst offender atm is Void Shield).
average damage of a clops? thinking around 14ish They need to jhave 1-2 range and there boost nweed to improve range. It makes sense.
I'm glad i'm not the only one that wants nids go get back to their roots. For cyclops the current problem is that there is only 1 unit with vita and 1 with pathfinder. You can have a theme with low speed units and still do well if you have more champs that can give them the extra speed. With wizard providing a new movement source for clops I think we could have a solid archetype without slapping mountaineer on every champ. I've never been a fan of racials being abilities tacked onto every champ but instead being a core set of champs that benefit from each other and work very well together. We could have 1-2 supportish 6 speed clops with vitalize while the damage dealing monsters have 5 speed to make up for their high damage output. Remember we're talking about a global revamp here in which everything will be toned down, including speed. I'm fine with voil having a less satisfying theme and just keeping their current playstyle but I was still curious what others thought about it.
I think that hyaenids can be divided in three: Debuff hyaenids - older hyaenids - these need defile Deep wounds hyaenids - with the exile, witchdoctors and executioners - these need another revere: the exile unit Serf hyaenids - with djinns and the new hyaenids - these need a rework I think that serf could be reworked into a single target, activated buff, acting as if the djinn is channeling his elemental power through the body of the hyaenid. My proposition: Serf to the djinn becomes a blank passive, and djinns gain a activated ability called "channeling", channeling reads: target friendly champion within 3 spaces with the serf to the djinn ability gains berserker 3 and unstoppable for 1 turn and gains this unit remaining AP. This unit loses all AP. I think it will keep the flavor and will avoid the problematic interactions of the current ability. The coding should be easy because it's the "puppet master" ability with a condition and with different abilities.
That's not what I mean. I'm saying that wizzy proved that clops can get other types of mobility that doesn't revolve around mountaineer. I'm not saying they should rely solely on him to be their mobility.
Nids are not as bad as yall seem to think they are. Neil has crushed me with them before, and the djinn were integral to it
It's not a matter of strenght, I know that Nids are a solid theme. We were discussing their flavor and the perspectives of evolution of the theme.
