It’s become clear that generally most people currently don’t see the value in storms and feel them quite underwhelming to their viability which in turn has left suncrest as one of the 3 worst kingdoms. While I think the core idea in wording is solid the functionality of its action isn’t. Here is what I think a storm should be…
Storms are fixed at 10% of the boards total gems so 64 and the spell changes its action to every turn it replaces 6 none storm color gems with 6 storm color gems. The effect could be something cool like a bolt of lighting striking each gem and then a cloud of smoke to which hides the gem as it disappears the gem color is changed.
Not only is this infinitely more viable it is a lot more clear what effect it is having and how it can be used with any real function.
I agree that the effect of the storms are kinda… Hard to see, but the effect you suggest doesn’t seem reasonable.
I guess, currently, the way storms are implemented, it just improves the drop rates of the “stormed” gem by a relatively low number, but that’s an “invisible” effect.
So, let’s say there is a red storm, the percentage goes like 22% for the stormed gem, 13% for each 6 other gems
To make the effect more visual, we could have 13% for each 7 gems, and have a new “temporary” white gem fall at 9% chances. That white gem would, once it reachs it final location (when the cascading gem animation is done playing) turns to the stormed color.
That’d let us actually see the value of the storms.
On my “todo” list is to run some test with Abhorath. Write down the distribution after 10 casts without a storm and 10 casts with a storm. That will give me 640 gem spawns each way
The whole repeated reasoning of “i can’t see Storms doing anything, therefore they are useless” is moot.
It is like saying a manipulated 6-sided dice that has a 1 in 4 chance to land on the 6 isn’t better than a regular one in a nice evening of D&D, because the human mind would not recognize this effect in action, without statistical analysis.
Sure some additional % tuning could be done, but the problem is that players would still not recognize the Storms benefits until it gets boosted enough to produce regular extra turns after explosions, at which point Storms would be way to impactful to just be low(no)manacost secondary effects.
Anyways, the storms may be too subtle to be considered worthwhile acticely gaming them by some people, and that might be a valid point, but that is why they are minor secondary effects to spells with virtually no relevant extra manacost.
I also don’t think Suncrest is particularily weak, they have some really solid troops considering they only have their starting lineup of troops so far, i’d argue there are old kingdoms with less appealing troops, even if you completely disregard the Storms.