Short answer… yes - simply put, a troop that can consistently scale the gems it puts down as skills get higher cannot continue without a change
Longer answer… Bone Dragon is tricky. We need to balance him so he’s still a good pick early-to-mid game, where he CAN punish bad choices of the caster… a great pick in mid game as armor is scaling up, but once again, requiring timing to cast well… and still a viable pick late game, but NOT infinitely scaling with armor!
We have a couple of things in mind, which we’re not ready to share yet, but they require our next update to happen.
Things we’ve rejected:
- A mana cost increase… this would help, but ultimately the problem remains, and it just kills him early game, while having minimal effect in late game where surges happen more often
- Boost ratio lowered… this can actually make him tougher in late game as he creates less “blocks” of skulls
- A complete spell rework… we like his spell. His identity is great. He just doesn’t scale the same way other troops do, and it’s causing the problem
- Creating flat numbers of Skulls and stealing the armor… balancewise not a bad suggestion, but it just doesn’t feel like “Stripping the Flesh” to me, so it’s kind of an identity issue.
Anyway, stay tuned as we approach 3.0 Guild Wars and we’ll have more info on Bone Dragon + a few other over-achievers, as well as some UNDER-achievers. Now that the bulk of the server migration is done, we’re going to be full steam ahead on Guild Wars so it won’t be too long I hope!