Beast herder gets nerfed and this effects Azaren and Tusk. The lumbering on Tusk is pretty heavy. I have not seen how Beast herder worked before caused a imbalance, I saw it making a ST theme competitive.
Azaren is my #1 favorite champ in the game (followed closely by Tracker Gnark), and it pains me a lot to see how much he has been butchered because he has a big sack of meat as a summon. Maybe if Tusk gets worse he can be a better standalone champion.
Beasts in ST stopped being an option a long time ago, when people complained on the formula + boost + ST faction bonus + Sok loves ST where too much. Probably next expansion heroes gets a lift up since Hero (ability) will be redesigned.
Honestly I think the Herder abilities were nerfed the wrong way. I think the Lumbering, Lethargic portion should have stayed and the AP gen removed. As they are they are more often used to support ranged beasts or zombies instead of doing what the ability was intended for and that is make unviable units viable by removing their drawback.
Tusk is pretty bad, the lumbering makes him, Mastodons, and other low key beast champs to not even have a chance. I believe this was the result of the Strig getting racial beast. I can see how Gale rider could be abused to no end. Strig as beasts was a bad fix that now causes other champs to suffer.
Yes, this is another topic I'd like to approach. Giving race Beast to Strigs was a pretty bad move, I feel, mainly because it limits design space to no end for future beast development, simply because: flying is a heck of an ability; Strigs have a racial of their own. When you start piling up beast synergies and strig/flying synergy it's bound to be problematic, specially considering the strict guidelines for pricing abilities and etc. On beasts specifically they are all pretty bad and get hated on much due to the amount of HP, which is scary for people who dont know the game well. Shrugs.
Herder abilities were nerfed because they were essentially extremely overpowered abilities - they have been for a long time. I didn't want an ability that could effectively negate an -18 nora ability on everything, thus we moved to a scenario where it's provides movement/AP utility. I believe this works in both Beasts and Zombies and Charge also helps their melee gap close. In the case of Beasts very few were Lumbering so it was essentially not doing much aside from Tusk. And now Zombies that are Lumbering actually have that drawback instead of it being free nora. Note that Tusk no longer has Lumbering as part of this change so I don't expect it to nerf Azaren all that much (I am actually running a Beast deck with Azaren right now), if at all.
No specific changes have occurred due to Strig becoming Beast. That's just part of the race consolidation. Pox doesn't need everything to be its own race.
I personally don't have the "HP Ratio" hate that some people do, but several prominent players (such as DMR) do exhibit concerns about high HP ratios such as beasts. I wouldn't say that DMR doesn't know the game well, but I do think HP ratios can often be misleading in isolation.
Well, right *now* anyway. One day we'll have 50 different runes for ospyrans of all things, I garuntee it, and THEN asking for everything to have a suitable race is warranted. Just not right now .
Yeah, you could bundle strigs/ospyran into it. Perhaps also make all griffins part bird and part beast?
There are counters to high HP in FW via loss of life and UD uses them for extra health. You have to be careful deploying High HP with low defense and dmg.
I am not running Mastodon and Rhinos, but I do run Snowcat Burrow. Charge 3 and the decreased AP cost on Herder has been very helpful IMO. Snowcats with Charge really helps extend their limited threat range. I can see giving some Beasts who already have Charge an option away from Charge (or have Herder giving something else is they already have Charge), such as the Rhino, but the Lumbering part didn't help the Rhino anyway.
I don't really see as a positive at this point in time. It's not as though Beasts are actually being held back because there are Flying Beasts. Strig, in particular, have their own flying racial which means they are largely run together anyway. So they are Beasts and you can run a Lonx Beast Tamer in them, but there isn't a whole lot else that they benefit from. Making them Birds without doing anything else would basically just nerf some side-synergy and not accomplish anything real. At the same time, it means stuff like Wingmaster Clerics can't be run for ranged support in Beast decks anymore.
Could Mastodons get lumbering removed? The trample feature on them helps with some high defensive champs and all those swarming Arroyos and skellies every where.
Good points here Soko. I think I can understand where you are coming from. Although, revising the nora cost on the ability that summons Tusk might be a good idea - is Azaren still 100+?
