Wait, wtf. I don't see how Phylactery Bound is a sandbag. Yes, he is intended to have synergy with the frost theme. But he's also designed to have that ability, as a lich. It's like saying you should move Flying to upgrades on Crystal Dragon because it's obviously a sandbag in Crystals and if you wanted to play him in a Tailwind deck you can upgrade it. The issue is more that Phylactery Bound is overcosted, not that it's a sandbag.
To me Endless Devotion on the Crystal Dragon is a sandbag*. Not because it doesn't fit a theme or an intended use, but rather because it doesn't fit into my playstyle. In the end that is all that matters for me. You can call it selfish, because it is. I wouldn't call it more selfish than wanting Devotion on it because Crystal things are a theme you like though. Generally speaking I don't agree with your reasoning either. At some point you mentioned something about diversity. Well, I think preserving a nearly unique ability on the only champion that is runable with it does more for diversity than having yet another champion with Endless Devotion does. And then this whole intended use stuff... you usually make a lot more sense than that. And considering that english is not my main language I decided to play it save and looked up the word in a dictionary just to make sure that it means what I think it does. It just.. it boggles my mind how you throw the term "intended" and the Jakei Shaman in the same paragraph. The Jakei Shaman is the obvious example that the intended use of a rune can switch at any moment. When the Shaman was originally released its intended use was being a support unit for ice amp/spell spam decks. That and nothing else. Now you can easily argue that it's so strong in a Crystal/Elemental deck that it's main focus shifted towards that. With that in mind I don't know how you tell what the intention for the Crystal Dragon is. It having Attack: Frost and two strong Ice-based abilities makes it just as much a FrostAmp rune as a CrystalDevotionWhatever champion. You can't argue that those two abilities and the attack type were put on it without an intention in mind. Endless Devotion and Freezing Aura being on the same upgrade path enforces that in my opinion. If you prefer the Crystal theme you pick the Devotion. If you want to run it with ice you can pick Freezing Aura. To me the intention here is to give the player the choice if they want either this or that. And I believe that it would be best for the rune if that part was left unchanged. *My definition of a sandbag ability is best explained with the question "If you could choose between this ability and nothing, what would you pick?" - If the answer is "nothing" then it's a sandbag for me.
If endless devotion turns out to only be 1 or 2 nora I wouldnt have a problem with catalyst staying on base as the champ would only end up being 1 or 2 nora more expensive than it is now with upgrades.
I must have been reading the wrong thread then. I was sure I was replying to somebody suggesting shoving interesting Abilities into upgrade paths just to push the Devotion theme that doesn't even lose out on much as it is when it comes to the Crystal Dragon. Sorry about that?
Crystals were all bad designed post-revamp, what people is saying is turn them what they are meant to without sandbaging them. The Catalyst: Frost on upgrades is more of a balance suggestions that has nothing to do with Crystal theme discussion.
... ohkay. All I can do is repeat myself: I must have been reading the wrong thread then. I wasn't aware that this is the "Crystal Theme Discussion" thread that I was interrupting with my comments towards a suggestion that I didn't like. :c In any case, in my opinion the Crystal Dragon works just fine in the Crystal theme as it is and doesn't need a change. The upgrade path that Devotion is on makes it rather easy to pick the Devotion without feeling like you are missing out on something.
I am 100% against the changes to gnark, I feel this is in the wrong direction since I don't care for using lonx at all, this means you would be turning gnark into a shoebox rune for me since at the moment I'm using alot of beast types that are not lonx since my amp deck is broken. Why don't you just call all lonx beasts and call it a day? I don't see the point in removing gnark from every other battle group type so that it only works for lonx when you could easly just make lonx type also beast. I would like to see the shaman back into regular play, I used to have a pair of these in my deck but I feel as if they don't have a meaningful space anymore and that their cost verse some of the newer runes seems to be rather high verse how useful they are. I feel the "defenceless" skill should warrant having a 30% less nora cost or alternatively having better skills/stats, since this is generally a weak rune that is made weaker by having defenceless. I also feel that the self cure would be more useful if changed into heal other, since empathy and self heal to heal others is a really really bad plan and is a waste of two skill slots. I feel if it had inspire and heal other this would be a meaningful rune that I feel is missing from this faction at the moment. Maybe make it so it can't heal self as a way to balance it, so its only heal other. Having it so it can only heal itself is next to worthless when no ones going to target that weak rune anyways, this isnt a tank rune so why are you giving it a self heal kit as if your expecting it to be taking many hits? I think change'n her damage from psy to frost and change'n the heal self to heal other and putting inspire in the other skill upgrade (so you can have both inspire and heal other) would make this change from a shoebox rune, into a rune actually worth playing again, it would also justify the defenceless skill since its a meaningful rune that people would want to target then, otherwise I see this as a yet another 100% negative nerf of a rune as if out of spiteful hate against the whole faction. She even got a damage reduction and still nothings been done for the positive on this rune? Not even a nora reduction for the loss of both speed and damage? Really? I think change'n blizzard would also be good, but "WHAT" changes are you hope'n to make? Personally I would like to see a higher frost amp on him, aside of the amp there was never really a reason to pick this guy unless you needed to spread more snow. I feel for a champ with only 9 attack, 6 speed and 1 def, this rune should be cheaper then 78 since runes from other factions cost less and give you more attack, speed and def combined, since we don't have buffs or debuffs anymore theres no way for us to even the playing field with our weaker units, so our units are 1 for 1 weaker then pretty much every faction. To correct this I would like to see debuffs and buffs focused on more in this faction. I'd like to see some kind of a slow aura around the blizzard elemental, like ice font but something like snow font instead of snow fall, so anyone within 2-3 spaces of it would have to walk through impeading snow to get at it or walk by it, this would also help the faction stay on cold ground since there seems to be little runes to help with doing this aside of the glacial titan. I also think upgrading the attack range to 1-3 would go a long way for this unit, you would be able to have a large unit in front of it to take for it, so you would be able to keep your frost amp together longer. If the range isnt changed, or the amp isnt upgraded theres again no reason to take this out of the shoebox cuz the shaman does its amp job but better since your able to stay back more and cleanse people. I'd like to see more focus on fixing the core issues that are wrong with the faction as a whole verse just picking some runes at random to change. It seems to me now that the lonx have more units that the Jakei have almost been turned into a 2nd class citizen of the ST faction. I want to see a amp deck and debuff/buff revival, this is why people love ST, so why are you focusing on anything else? Stop turning this faction into a meat shield faction (thats slow with no damage) and give us some more buffs and debuffs, speed boosts, speed removals, damage buffs, damage debuffs, THIS is what you SHOULD be focusing on when you realize without this your forcing a weak faction to go head to head verse others that simple out damage, speed and def them. I'm a bit in shock actually how a company can justify nerfing an entire faction without balancing it out by adding more def or damage or lower nora costs, it feels like someone spit'n in my factions face.
NEW Jakei Maiden (nora modifier remains the same) Faction: ST Race: Jakei Nora: 65 Class: Shaman DMG: 0 SPD: 5 RNG: 1 DEF: 0 HP: 41 Base Abilities: Arctic Cleansing Aura Hearten Easy Target Heal Champion: 2 Upgrade Path: 1 Heal Mass - 1 <-3 Nora> Heal Mass - 2 <Default> Heal Mass - 3 <+4 Nora> Upgrade Path: 2 Charm - 3 <-2 Nora> Soothing Serenade <Default> Abash <+2 Nora> ------------------------------------------------------ NEW Jakei Maiden (nora modifier reduced by 8) Faction: ST Race: Jakei Nora: 67 Class: Shaman DMG: 0 SPD: 5 RNG: 1 DEF: 0 HP: 41 Base Abilities: Arctic Cleansing Aura Hearten Heal Champion: 2 Upgrade Path: 1 Heal Mass - 1 <-3 Nora> Heal Mass - 2 <Default> Heal Mass - 3 <+4 Nora> Upgrade Path: 2 Charm - 3 <-2 Nora> Soothing Serenade <Default> Abash <+2 Nora> Both of these Suggested changes make her much more of a support rune while making her cost reasonable for what she does. One upgrade path was changed slightly to give her more options. Instead of two ranks of charm one was removed (Kept the other in-case you really like charm) in favor of soothing serenade.
