Exactly, Ice Storm is way better, making Deep Freeze only pickable on spell spam in addition to Ice Storm. The point of changing Ice Storm is to provide versatility to our spell arsenals. Entrepidus suggestion for it is weaker than the actual Ice Storm, and that's intended.
so we are making a spell weaker so it is on par with other spells? Why not just change deep freeze so it's not a cheaper weaker version of ice storm
Ice Storm is auto. So it's impossible for other spells to compete on every scenario. The idea is to change that aspect of "it's allways better to have a Storm" by nerfing it, to let us have a lot of other options. Versatility over Power EDIT: The suggestions over Ice Storm tells that. It's good on one scenario but not in the other, you got to choose.
Ice storm is still auto with this suggestion it's slightly debatable with another reduction to the longevity of the ice which has gone from 8>4>2 other than the ice I would still prefer it too deep freeze Edit: it's also situational better doing an additional 5 damage to flying champs
nor does it really have any secondary benefit at all. deep freeze at one point in time was auto include, time has passed and deep freeze didn't age well. meanwhile ice storm has never stopped being auto include, it is indeed interesting.
I hate the fact that you guys just want to nerf existing spells... how about some design creativity into changing shoeboxed spells? Nobody will run 20 spells in deck, so how about we think of some spell changes that will challange ice storms and gales? I see Ready as a problem in further ST development and showstoper for 7 spd units, I agree. Do we need more nerfs to ST? I don't think so. The current problem with the faction is that our staple themes got decimated in the revamp process and we need to get them back to playable state by smart design changes and synergy. What do we have as themes? Beasts Frost Crystal NKD Flying Lonx Leoss Terrain Elementals Maybe that is just too much? Maybe we need Leoss to go to IS/KF like Gedden mentioned, instead get Hoarfrost from FW which will give us Frost support. (dragon is already here, need lich now and further Hoarfrost development in future) Maybe Terrain could combine with Lonx? Lonx could get some terrain benefits and keep that thing rolling... I feel that Beasts/Elementals/Crystal/Flying are too mixed up, too many flying beast crystal elementals of all kinds. I feel, we need 3 maybe 4 main, faction defining themes which are clear and iconinc. I am not a fan of Ferren, NKD, Crystals, Leoss and so on in our faction, but since we already have them, we need a way to give them that iconinc ST feeling and fit them somehow as sub-themes/modules in our main faction defining themes.
Aww why did you have to ruin such a great post by bashing the beloved ferren which was one of the themes the entire faction should have followed synergy wise. Hoarfrost should not be a split rune just because it has a frost attack if you think we need a rune similar to it design and suggest one. Ready could be removed from arctic and are champs could finally have the 7 speed they deserve (extinguisher take the stage).
I see no reason why Hoarfrost should not be split, they fit perfectly into ST Frost theme. They made one step towards that with Dragon, why not take next natural step and split Lich. See, Ferren are just not my thing, but hey Ferren are here, good for them, just make them playable within own module or make them core of terrain theme.
It can fit thematically but I don't understand why a FW witch would side with the residents of the tundra this is more of a make it split because it'll help my bg than a make it split because it fits lore wise
for what it's worth I jakei and elementals to be the main stay of terrain decks. but terrain decks in ST have usually been a family deck, i.e yeti, lonx, jakei, elemental. it'll be interesting
just running some general ideas past everyone to see what your opinions are, these are only in regards to spells ice storm 50 nora - aoe -4, 10 damage, chill-2, no grounding, ice for 2 turns gale force - loses 6 frost damage cleansing storm - aoe-3 all targets are cleansed, friendly champs are healed 4. summon ant - gains skirmisher swap - range 7 snow storm 35 nora- aoe 4 impeeding snow over all terrain, grounding 2, frost damage 3. deep freeze 40 nora- aoe 3, 10 frost damage + non flyers are frozen 3 if on ice or snow. ( burning sands was used as a price comparison) lock down - aoe - 3 all champions in the effected area cannot be relocated or gain ap outside of their beginning of turn ap for 6 turns, this effect is hidden until triggered. retrieve 30 nora - target champion is returned to the nearest friendly deployment zone. rebound 30 nora - target champion has it's equipment returned to the rune dock with a 2 turn cool down and a 50% nora refund. target champion gain unequippable. retreat - cost reduced to 20-25 nora it's always been a good spell just costs way too much. honestly for the moment i just tried to focus on the spells that could be tweaked without massive coding redo's. as these would have the best chance to be changed. I wish I could hit more theme centered stuff for my suggestions but all of those ideas would need new code, maybe in the future but for now just running these ideas past you
Ice Storm - I don't like the reduction of the ice. It just recently was cut in half, does it really have to happen again so soon?! Also removing grounding while turning ice down to two turns nearly seems redundant. Is probably still going to see play with that change though I don't like it! Gale Force - Is it even possible to have knockback without damage being done, like from a technical point of view? Cleansing Storm - Not sure if that's a nerf or a buff. I think I like that more than the global version of the spell. Summon Ant - Seems like a needless change to me. Can do it.. or not, won't matter much. Swap - My main problem with using Swap was always the spell presence range and not the actual range that the spell gives you. 7 is the casting range of a normal flying unit.. if you actually want to nerf swap you'd probably have to go below that. Snow Storm - Sounds more like 30n to me. Deep Freeze - .. ok? Lockdown - Can't see that being good for anything. Nora Freeze - Probably an auto-include. FS/ST could do annoying things with that too. Retrieve - Still overpriced for the effect, I think. Rebound - Should be ok. Retreat - I could actually see it work at 30n, at least sometimes. 20n is probably too cheap.
ice storm - it's still an auto include, i'm moving the grounding from ice storm to snow storm to give snow storm the reason to be included as an aoe option, snow storm also needs it more then icestorm for it's purpose. as it stands no matter what I do to ice storm every faction runs an aoe so ice storm will always be an auto include, so my goal was to make other aoe's competitive options for it's slot, while not making ST the AOE spell spam faction again. gale - yes we do it already against IS. cleansing storm - well I suppose we can keep global but remove the healing then. summon ant - in the last week I've killed 14 shrines with ant, and no idea how many extra attacks finished off relics for me. I'm not hittign this one too hard because I suspect an anti summon wave is coming anyway. swap - was only light tapping swap I make use of the 8 range frequently, most players don't even consider it an auto include though I suppose I could drop it to 6. snow storm - costed to match sandstorm, and this is probably better then sandstorm due to it being impeding terrain. 35 nora will likely be undercosted if a terrain theme emerges. deep freeze - added freeze to help out monk decks or terrain decks, and an alternative spell to use aside from ice storm. with arctic flight as it is the aoe needed to be reduced by 1 minimum anyway. lockdown - every deck in the current meta runs ap gain and or relocation effects. this spell can easily stop those shenanigans and maybe even cause a counter spell scenario to someone using a spell like swap or a relocation relic like hideout. against ud it would stop minos or even cause a suicide scenario with a deep elf priestess( i.e they run up expecting to be able to priestess to pull their champ back ). it has uses, maybe I didn't push it enough though i'll think on it some more. it's intended that the spells, effects, and abilities still get used but have no effect. retrieve - if you think about how kf uses vortex it's pretty well priced imo. two champs go in you vortex one away you are fighting 2 v 1, or you can run up to get the finish on a champ then bring your champ back to the font. I considered putting a 10nora refund on friendly but that would be likely pushing it too much. retreat - ya wasn't sure where to put it's cost, at 25 you are removing your own champ from the board and getting maybe 37 nora on a 75 nora champ? that does allow you to redploy next turn but not a huge savings on the champ for sure, still I could see it being runnable at 30 anyway thanks for the response i'll change them up after I hear a few more responses
Gale - That shows that I'm probably more rusty than rust by now. :/ Summon Ant - In those 14 shrine kills: How often did they actually decide the match for you? I think if you are in a position to finish a shrine off with an ant right now you'll probably still be in a good position in one or two turns to do that with a "normal" champion. I might be totally wrong there but my first impression was that forbidding the ant to attack shrines would just make you win slower, but not considerably less. I didn't even consider relics to be honest, could argue about how often you get a swarmable champion + relic in a favorable position but you have more experience with that so I'll skip that for my own good. As said, either way is fine. Won't hurt the "main purpose" of the ant. Deep Freeze - I kinda always liked the idea of Deep Freeze being a cheap nuke that you have to be careful with because it'll likely hurt you too. I'm generally OK with the change but I don't know how often that IF condition is going to be triggernd and actually matter in the current game. As of now you'd likely toss an Ice Storm / Barrier for the ice followed by Deep Freeze.. and then you'd hopefully be at a point where you can finish your target off instead of being happy about how slow it is next turn. Retrieve - More rust. I didn't look the rune up and thought you were just suggesting a cost reduction. Didn't even notice the lack of "friendly" there. <_<; Yeah, making it useable on enemies would make it pretty good.
for the ant almost everytime I just drop ant and a co-ord tower, transmute shrine and the ant can usually get in a spot 30 damage on shrine. combine with other attacks and it's a surprise shrine kill
