With the revamp I had high hopes that the game would become fun again but most themes just became bland reskins of each other. In an attempt to make it more interesting I had sent a proposal to gedden about making hyaenids fun again but after 3 weeks of silence I think it's time to accept it and go back to the games I've been playing recently. I'm going to post the discussion after this purely so that others can see the kind of things that I felt the game needed in order to be fun and competitive. It's a long read but it was a very rough draft and I'm not saying that everything listed is balanced or 100% how I would have liked to see it implemented. I had an overarching idea on how I wanted nids to play out and made a list of hypothetical things that could achieve that goal in a fun/unique way. Anyways, I'll probably still post occasionally but I doubt i'll be in game anymore. Will probably still comment on decks (Especially for you xuv <3 ) and stuff from time to time.
I'll go into a little more detail this time around though. My goal is to turn hyaenid into a debuff style theme with the simple goal of taking champions with low base stats and enabling them to take down titans through utilizing various debuffs and abilities that synergize well with them. I've always viewed the hyaenid race as a simple shamanistic type of people and I feel this would be the best way to represent that in a fun and unique way. To begin I'll list some of the simple changes: Hyaenid Stalker - This guy never made much sense. He was an assassin for a theme that assassins don't make sense in and to top it all off his kit didn't make sense. Remove scrapper and assassinate 1 from base, add death sentence to base Upgrade tree 1 is now: Scrapper, shadowstrike, stealth Upgrade tree 2: Knockout, cackle, dogpile Stalker is now a unit that can harass the enemy and rips a single target in half in a way that synergizes with the hyaenid theme. He can also be built as a melee fighter or as a stealthy annoyance depending on player preference. Hyaenid Breaker - A pretty vanilla ranged unit that I'd like to bring into the theme a little more. Remove breaker from base Upgrade tree 1: Cackle, lightning storm 2 Upgrade tree 2: breaker:lightning, spark curse This gives him 2 build paths: one that fits into hyaenid and one that fits into a standard lightning deck. Now comes the fun part! There are some new abilities that I had been working on that could turn the hyaenid theme into something spectacular. 1.) Burden- Target champion within 4 spaces gains all negative conditions on champions within 2 spaces and those champions are cleansed. This would replace cleanse on the hyaenid witchdoctor. I feel that if this is viable (Sok and I aren't sure how well this could be coded) it would single handedly make the hyaenid theme cooler. You could pull good debuffs off champs that you were about to kill onto another enemy, cleanse your own champ to use an enemies debuff against them etc. 2.) Spirit Corruption - When this champion successfully damages a champion with a basic attack, that unit becomes defiled 3 and loses 1 hp per negative condition at the start of every turn. One of the main issues that hyaenid would have is the mass availability of cleanse and this helps them be relevant. This is basically an ability version of the ST equip harmless baubble. I would put this ability on hyaenid spiritspeaker and a new hyaenid unit. Hyaenid bulwark and headshrinker would be renamed along with their rework. Hyaenid bulwark -> Feral Hyaenid Flavor text "Sometimes the rituals don't work out as planned. Sometimes that's better though." He would get a new ability that I haven't figured out a name for at the moment so i'll just call it X. X- Any time this champion would have it's stats raised they are lowered instead and whenever this unit would have it's stats lowered they are raised instead. (I hope that's clear but basically any stat changes that would be made to him are inverted.) Speed -> 5 Base: Attack physical, dogpile, X Upgrade tree 1: vulnerable, tough 2 Upgrade tree 2: rabid 1, antagonize Vulnerable now becomes an ability that gives him +1 def, stall (On mundun) now gives him a speed buff and you could channel stat debuffs onto him via witchdoctor and the burden ability. This could also synergize with other new abilities as I'll detail below. Hyaenid Headshrinker Hyaenid Ritualist (No flavor text change required) Range -> 1, damage type changed to magic Base: attack: magic, instill fear, instill calm, dogpile Upgrade tree 1: Detection 2, vulnerable Upgrade tree 2: Cackle, choking stench Instill is a new type of debuff where you cripple your opponent at the cost of debuffing yourself. "But wait, why would you do that?" Good question! It allows you to get greater effects onto the enemy and synergizes with the playstyle that I'm attempting to lay out for hyaenids. So for instance: 3.) Instill fear - Target enemy unit within 4 spaces becomes frightened 3, cursed 3 and defiled. This unit becomes cursed 3 and blinded. 4.) instill calm - Target enemy unit within 4 spaces becomes pacified 3 and slowed 3. This unit becomes pacified 3. The negative effects could eventually be something that works with the newly done feral hyaenid such as: Instill weakness - Target enemy champion within 4 spaces and the closest champion to it loses 3 damage, 2 speed and 1 def for 3 turns. There is also the wonderful idea that sok had which i've tweaked slightly (Again, bad at coming up with names): Y - Champions within 4/5 spaces are cleansed and friendly units affected are healed for 1 hp per ability removed this way. Inversely there could be a spell/ability which does the opposite: AoE 3 - All units are cleansed and lose 2 hp per ability removed this way. This is much further down the line but I wanted to include it so you guys could see what I eventually envisioned for the hyaenids. Globally their damage and def would get lowered to cap at 9/1 respectively because their weakness is meant to be that they are fairly fragile and can't deal a whole lot of damage on their own. I understand that something like this is a lot of work but if there is interest in making this a reality someday I can present you with easier changes that could temporarily shift hyaenid closer to the eventual goal until such time that the new mechanics can be fully implemented. Thank you for reading all of this because it ended up being much longer than I intended.
Just saying, never suggest theme revamps that involve new abilities as that takes a lot of design time compared to other things. Anyways, I'm also a big Hyaenid fan (admittedly of the Djinn-Nid variety) but I...think you're overreacting.
I am sad to see you stopping just as i return. Hope after a break you may come back to enjoy it. As for the Hyaenid Ideas. I love it. Matches what Nids i feel were meant to be originally. You best keep commenting on things though Nubron. (does anyone other than me still call you that haha?)
