Exactly. I wasn’t in a top guild before the before the complete revamp so I never got to cash in.
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Oh yes of course Spirit Fox is fine, i wasn’t trying to make the case for Spirit Fox being too strong or broken.
I just took him as an example to illustrate that manadrain seems to basically come at no additional manacost on several spells.
His manadrain is subtle and reasonable albeit practically for free, i wouldn’t want to have him changed in any way. I probably should have been more clear about that and that i just took him as an example as he is one of the more commonly used manadrainers atm, after Famine and Khorvash(those two are actually op).
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And what about adding a “mana drain exhaustion” to mana drain?
After you drain a troop, an additonal mana cost is added to your troop like 50% to what you drain.
For example, you cast Famine and he drains 60 mana from the enemies. For the next cast, you will need 30+20=50 mana. So one cannot spam Famine anymore. Because for me, one issue with Famine is that he can continue during the whole fight to drain your team (the other issues not discussed yet is the very good traits that he has)…
Note that for Manticore it will be only 3-4 more mana points.
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Not sure how that would work but it’s an interesting concept. The Silent One silences himself, so there’s always that.
By that argument, troops that cast mana draining spells should also drain themselves of mana. I think you’re onto something here.
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I don’t see Famine (or Khorvash for that matter) being a real meta everywhere problem right now, but I do agree both need tuning down a bit.
I’m with @gouki that manadrain is a real frustration, sometime overpowered and often under-costed.
@emos I posted a (big) thread the other day on rationalising (and improving) status immunities. Am on mobile so can’t easily link it right now.
I also suggested actually having some counters to mana drain…
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I am extremely wary of counters to mana drain. There are other ways to prevent a spell from going off (silence, devour, killing the troop) but with the exception of silence (edit: see below) they are very difficult to just pull out on command. Troops like Spirit Fox, Nyx, and Khorvash provide a last layer of defense against troops like Maw and Famine. I really would hate to see the effect on the meta the first time a drain-proof troop comes out that has a similarly dangerous spell.
Edit: silence is woefully underused, it seems. There are, by my count, five troops in the entire game that can inflict silence. Only the legendary troops (Dracos 1337 and TSO) can hit a specific troop at will with the effect. The others (Satyr Musician, Pride Hunter, Blast Cannon) either target random troops or the first troop. By contrast, there are 21 troops in the game with immunity to silence. Let’s start requesting that the devs add more silence troops to the game before talking about walking back mana drain.
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Agree that there is a balance to be found. At the moment, mana drain is too common, too effective, too easy to do and impossible to directly counter.
I did chuckle that the last line of defence against the worst mana drain is your own mana drain…
Partly agree. Silence is a very frustrating effect: limited use when attacking as you can usually rely on casting more spells than the enemy, and annoying for the player on defences: any effects that stop you playing (in a sense) (like silence, mana drain, maybe freeze) also to an extent stop you having fun. I believe that’s far more detrimental to the player base than the fewer people who ‘like a challenge’. Most players don’t play for a challenge, they play to get stuff and improve their collections.
Agree that we could see a few more Silence effect troops, but that is as well as, not instead of, helping counter mana drain.
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The irony did occur to me as I was typing, but it’s still true. (Kind of like how the defense against Empowered Mercy was Empowered Spirit Fox.)
And I agree that game-stopping effects like silence/freeze/drain are infuriating in the hands of the AI.
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I am surprised, no one mentioned Famines traits, which when there 3 of them in the team are devastating. Halve enemy masteries is very strong trait and when I played against 3 I got one mana surge in entire game.
And his 3rd trait is even worse. 3 skill points each turn for each famine is incredibly strong. After 5 turns my Gorgotha had 0 magic and became useless.
IMO full enemy team mana drain is strong enough even for Mythic and he does not need anything more.
And about EK. I honestly do not understand the nerf. No one did mind (at least I think) his 50% skull damage reduction. Why did they reduce it? And the increased mana cost? How did that help. You can still fill him in 2 turns. IMO his main problem is his full mana drain and huge true damage. My take on this is that one of them should go.
I will mention one more troop that I think is OP. It is Nyx. When he drains o legendary or even Mythic, he creates so many blue gems that he can easily fully fill all blue troops and even gain an extra turn.
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Maybe locust swarm should do the same thing to your team that it does to the enemy team… drain all of that mana as well and damage it to one of that famine teams cards.
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Agreed. The traits should not stack neither jinx nor the 3rd trait. So you would not benefit from having more than 1 famine in the team. To be fair, I was of the opinion that mythic based should be unique in the sense that you cannot have more than 1 in the team.
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I agree. I remember that @Tacet mentioned this in one of his videos some time ago. But I do not think that anything has changed since. IMO Famine is not the only problem. If opponent has for example 4x Death your first troop loses 12 HP per turn. This can be a real problem for players who do not have 50+ HP troops. The same for the new mythic dragon.
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4x death would actually drain 8 HP by round. So it is not so bad. But as said, I think they should look into limiting the stacking of mythic based troops
Elemaugrim is triggerd on match 4/5 so not really an issue.
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This is not a bad idea at all. I’d go so far as to extend this to all Mythic third traits, all guild guardian third traits, and the new GW prize third traits. There is one problem with this: we’ve had a couple of troops come out recently (Garuda and Tesla) with third traits that are less effective variants of Mythic third traits. If the Mythic traits are limited to one per team, what to do about those?
Are you using a 1-troop defense by chance? (I may have asked you before, don’t shoot me)
Because Famine is literally everywhere for me, like I said. As prevalent as BD was back in his heyday.
The big difference to me is that Silence is a “lost two turns” mechanic. If you were fully-charged when silenced, you’re still full-charged when it wears off.
Mana drain is a “return immediately to Start, do not pass Go and do not collect $200”.
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Currently have four troop troll defence for pvp.
Rock Trolls, Dark Trolls or Sea Trolls? Please specify.
Beinga Trolls.
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