Welcome! I think it's great that you put things up on the Crate to give players a chance to discuss upcoming changes as opposed to just making a change out of the blue! I do hope that you will reconsider changing Seism. I think it will just make it confusing with some relics being at 15 hit points and some at 20, especially with your example of the Watershed Anchor. Although, you already have some outliers with The Foulest Mushroom and Tortun Land Cannon being at 25 hit points. In terms of Unholy Tomb, I think Seism is currently in a good place. The FW player can't simply see a big map and think, "Ha ha, my tomb is auto-deploy now!" Instead, the FW player has to cover the tomb with another relic or strengthen it with a Mason's Spire. It makes for a more strategic game.
Do you think it's confusing now? There is already this distinction. It used to be much worse too. But I think generally having 2 class of relics (15 HP and 20 HP isn't all that confusing). Or if it is, then we should have been complaining about it a long time ago and continuing to complain about it right now, regardless of Seism. Yea, I will probably address those too with this pass (regardless of whether Seism is changed). ~ Do you think all relics should be 20 HP?
will you nerf arctic wail if you reduce the hp of relics? if not dice will be on here 5 seconds after that change complaining about wail
This would be preserved in the new paradigm with UT at 15 HP, and in fact, is probably more likely to be viable since Seism will cost less, making the trade even more effective so the other player HAS to be more careful, not less. Also, you are more likely to see more Seism after this change.
Well, no, having 15-hit point relics and 20-hit point relics is fine. I guess I just don't like it if a summoned relic has less hit points than a deployed version, such as your example with the Watershed Anchor. There's so much to remember in this game as is. The new player will have to be like, "Hmmmmm...this relic has less hit points than it normally has. Oh, that's right...it was summoned, not deployed." You could really have a Ph.D. in this game with the amount of knowledge that the player has to have.
Oh, absolutely, that's why I said I didn't like that idea either. Those relics will have either 15 or 20 HP (most likely 15). This is also why I started moving away from the summons which had a different version of the same champ with the same name and making them their own unique champion with their own stats/abilities. Yes, it's a "new" thing to know, but it's better than having 2 things with the same name that's different.
I'm onboard with this. Especially if you add more seism to champs then it would keep the ability viable. Instant killer to AoE relics and summons and heavy damager to others in play. I like it!
Instead of deployed vs summoned relics, why not make it combat vs behind shrine? Relics deployed in combat have 20, the rest have 15.
That's going to be a part of it too, yes. But I think it's also reasonable to keep the current paradigm of things like Bone Trap and Barricades being at 15 HP, right? Or are you suggesting those would go up to 20 HP and be ok? I personally like the idea of Seism having enough oomph to be killing these "lower value" or "summoned" relics AND back of shrine relics.
I don't like seism, but we basically nerfed all relics to make seism more effective. Seism- When this unit enters a font space or shrine space containing a relic, the closest enemy relic is destroyed. It's no longer global but we don't have to change all the relics again. Another option Seism- When this unit is deployed, any relic without an aoe effect takes 10 damage. This eliminates the tome of hate nonsense, and any other sitting relics that are 50 spaces away and not close to combat.
I think Bone Trap would be fine at 20 HP. I've never really played with barricades much. If there's a way to get a lot of them at once, then they should be 15, but otherwise 20 is probably ok. I think the ice blocks would be fine at 20.
I like a simple approach so would aim for 20hp standard relics. Seism working as is. 10 or 15, one not both, for summoned relics and call them ‘summoned NAME’. Or have a different skin / name / graphic / halo. Like illuminated. It’s still a CHOICE to run a seism champ. It’s still a CHOICE to deploy two relics with one as a screen. It’s still a choice to run a champ with a summoned relic as a screen. In that scenario, Perhaps seism works as is but on closest non summoned relic? Or still works as is on closest relic thus no change.
The points you bring up are all valid. First point: I also do not want to create a situation that is TOO finicky in terms of math. It is anti fun by and large. In addressing the finicky design concern One solution would be to add a minimum damage. This will make using the ability up close always have an expected effect. Then to build on this idea, and answer the concern of not increasing strategic play enough there could be two more tiers of damage: 15, And full (esentially AEs, but here is why they WOULD work). The 15 damage threshold is going to be targeting the relic at the very end of a font in most cases. So when a 5 speed walks up to the mid font (6 spaces away) and places a relic on the font to contest. You deploy a rune 8-9~ spaces away, you would deal 15 damage to the relic. Then your ranged champion you deployed on your first turn and is already on the font taps the relic to kill it. This is cool: you traded some ap in your mid font ranged and some positioning on your seism to kill a relic. Was it a good move to get rid of the relic? Depends on the situation, but it just created a dynamic which was not there before, and both player feel a real value from having played the relic and the seism in a manner that required finesse. Deploying not close at all, even very badly would deal 20 damage. The ultimate goal is to have a situation where a relic, say guard tower, can be destroyed, but only with the help of seism. As far as seism countering 15 hp relics (altar of sacrifice wtf!), I think 15 hp relics should only be those which are shadowspawned. And I think they should be revealed from any seism damage. Seism would also still be equally as strong against a long distance relic (behind shrine), which is actually perfectly fine from a design perspective (balance is debatable). Lastly a very interesting dynanic: Seism would also be strong In a situation where a unit is played on a side font, but still gets a relic kill on an aggressively placed relic. He would get a full benefit of positioning, and relic damage on a relic he wouldn't be able to reach with a similar position on a closer font. This advantage is actually more interesting than the current iteration of static 20 damage. It rewards a player for using his rune in a technical yet easy to calculate way, while differentiating the choice to play the rune closer to the font he wants the close relic kill on (while also lowering the nora invested by a player. You could make seism also non global to avoid this situation. However, I think that the side font situation is minor in the grand scheme of things. I think the change would add valuable gameplay elements as a whole. As an added bonus, seism screening would still be a viable tactic to protect long term back of shrine relics.
First idea would work better as a simple once only aoe. But it's awesome. TOH, and UT in general aren't good at all: they aren't worth being dead spaces in a deck versus ST and SL 2/8 clans where you can't do anything to combat the AOE relic kills. For this reason, the meta only ever asks for 1 or two seism champions anyways. As a continuum to the proposed seism changed, I absolutely think relics like UT and TOH should be more powerful (Or costed less) but aoe, not global. Right now, FW does fine without using them thanks to xulous and statue, and aaryo eye splitting, I don't think they need nearly risk free scaling (assuming there were no global relic kills) Also, nora mine is a little weird as well
I just wanna eliminate relics sitting behind shrines, i've been a fan of giving relics that are global a large aoe for a long time. Changing everything again just to make seism not broken seems dumb, when we could just make seism not broken. Nothing else needs changed about relics right now and is largely irrelevant to this conversation as seism was mostly created to stop relics from sitting behind shrines Ex. tome of hate, unholy tomb, etc. I always thought between seism, and relic overload, seism was perfectly fine. I guess since seism is seen more often it's deemed worse, but the first time I saw relic overload and I was playing fw with a relic summon bg I nearly cried.
Seism was NOT created to stop relics from sitting behind shrines. Relic HP was not consolidated for Seism specifically, and further consolidations of relic HP isn't dependent on Seism changing (there are still a number of 21/25 HP relics that don't need to have a weird HP value). Also, we are not "changing everything again." It's literally going to be one change to the DMG value of Seism, and then changing a few relics that have 20 HP now to 15 HP. The other relic HP changes are happening regardless just to finish the clean up of relic HP from before. All in all, it's a pretty simple change and actually doesn't change anything with Seism mechanically. It's also not because Seism is "broken." I actually think it's a reasonable ability in its current state in terms of overall balance, I just don't like what it is doing in actual gameplay and think it could be improved from a design perspective.
