Hello there everyone. I'd like to start this thread for constructive criticism for the 'Greens'. No, I do not want any rage posts, posts saying anything was 'gutted', or any similar. This is only for constructive, explained criticism. If you'd like to suggest a change please do so with supporting information. Just to preface: This game has changed and I couldn't be happier. I feel they were trying to move away from Swiss Knife champions and increasing power creep and did a good job. The Nora costs are indeed higher now but it was increased across the board. I feel this will cause players to have to pay more attention to battlegroup construction and their play. I also feel that by lowering all of the roles a champion can fill that it will make the value of abilities such as scry go up because you will have certain champions for certain roles. This should allow a move away from 'do everything' ~70 Nora Battlegroups to a meta where the champions you deploy matter and that it moves away from one-rounding and maximizing damage to a game where tactical, thought out Battlegroups and plays matter. I also feel they because there will be fewer champions on the field that healing, debugged, buffs, dots, etc. will matter more do to a lack of 'focus firing' down a target a turn. Disclaimer: Please do your best to avoid referencing the pre-revamp Poxnora for balance purposes. If you miss an ability or role a champion filled that is fine. But comparing abilities and Nora costs is pointless because it is not the state of the current game nor the game state they wanted to keep. Thank you.
First suggestion: When building a split battlegroup for KF/IS Druids I noticed that all of the Take Form abilities seem to cleanse on transformation. While a nice trait I feel it may be a little unhealthy due to that allowing the Druids to usually bypass a non-champion cleanse option as well as being crushing against debuffing or status inflicting strategies. I ended up cleansing a 'Whisper of the Mind' just because I wanted to be a bear. This allowed my AP to invalidate a spell and the Nora cost on it. I might suggest that cleanse be removed from the abilities with no other change or possibly have another variable added on instead Of cleanse. This may not even need to be done to them all but it was something I thought worth looking at.
The take form ability states the champions is cleansed with full hp of target champion. It is part of the ability therefore it is fine. it's a heavy costed ability at that; usually with transform/take form abilities on champions that champion doesn't do much apart from take the form of another for it's nora cost.
Ah, I understand their a high cost but I didn't think handing out cleanse so readily was that great a plan. The Elven Druid alone gets three chances to cleanse itself. If it's deemed okay, that's fine. But I feel that it might be a good idea to watch. I welcome your opinion and everyone else's heartily though. I can see your opinion that they may not have as much as other champions at that level but since the number of abilities is dropping as well as the deployed champions I figured having 'cleanse' attached to an ability matters more now than it did before.
There are large issues with the revamp. The largest is the new upgrade system. The system itself is fine, but the choices on champs are terrible. Many champs have the option of 3 different ranks of the same ability and on most champions that makes for an obvious choice that will always be picked. I have looked through lots of champs and almost all of them have an obvious 2 upgrades that everyone good will always pick. Why have pretend choices? It would be very easy to give every champ at least 2 viable builds. Another thing to keep in mind is that exotics should be exciting and people should want them. Why purchase lots of product if the best/coolest things are the easiest to get? People buy boxes to get the higher rarity runes. Bloodworm is an excellent example of what I am talking about. It isn't a bad rune, but he has 2 really basic abilities and that is all he does. Exotics should do something interesting. After that there are A LOT of balance issues, but that can wait and is too lengthy to get into in a single post. Making upgrade choices matter and be interesting should be priority number one.
I agree that false choices is something to try and always prevent. Designers do not want to give the illusion of options but rather have options present. It is important that players have access to the customization that Poxnora seeks to offer instead of having 'cookie' cutter builds. Something to point out though is that a lot of people are complaining due to the 'rank' set. I feel the rank set is a good idea and this is why: Previously most champions had two auto-upgrades. It wasn't really disputed when playing a meta battle group which upgrades to pick. With the new upgrade system they provide two real variables to consider: with a rank set it allows a unit to be made cheaper by giving up quality or more expensive to get the most out of their abilities. With the current look at pricing, ability distribution and battle group building the option of having a champion be more expensive or cheaper , even by a few Nora, matters. In a game I played I was only a few Nora off from a champion deploy that probably could have won me the game. The other set having most of these 'auto-upgrades' in them also provides a real choice. If you choose to have a unit be part of a theme it is used to strengthen that theme. But by sacrificing some of that inherent theme synergy they can elect for another ability to be more of a main player rather than support in theme or to not be bogged down by racial abilities in a meta/split battle group. I think it's best we evaluate the upgrades that are present to establish the role or roles we want a champion to have without trying to over do it and allow too many roles or abilities for one champion. Another conversation might be to allow the 'ranked' set to be a certain ability for a certain race or class. Such as all witches might get Curse as their ranked skill set, have Coven on base for some and in the upgrade for others. This allows you to know, alright, this witch has coven. I know it will contribute to the theme because of that and it's ability to take support. Also, I know since it is a witch I'll have access to spot curse. I think uniformity and choices in that manner allow runes to have clear roles over others to avoid the 'shoebox' scenario many may face as well as to give themes and battle groups apparent strengths and weaknesses. Such as a battle group may not have access to cleanse but might have an alternative to work past that. So instead of sticking the same abilities on multiple champions and making all of the choices blend together or seem similar, even across factions, it allows real pros and cons to be present in group building.
