Disagree on Runepriest. While not the greatest setup in the world, it has great synergy with Stonehammer. Its a rather slow burn trying to use it as a solo dwarf skull bulldozer for a skull spam team, but thats mostly because it doesn’t have Hunt. Still, there are applications of this trait, theres synergy, and there are far worse traits (and kits) that should be addressed.
Warden with +2 green would be pretty dang good, considering the class is viable with an essentially useless trait. Don’t have any objections there.
Of those with objectively “useless” traits, the ones that spring to mind are Necromancer and Knight immediately before Warden (with the noted Rowanne synergy, albiet very limited that this would factor into the specific break point, it was never really thematic). For “underpowered and don’t really contribute to their identity”, the list is a lot longer, for which I’d include: Sorcerer, Slayer, Priest (thematically fitting, just super weak for practical reasons), Oracle (has a really bad trigger condition for such a small boost, but the trees for this class are also not very practical for this), Heirophant (trigger chance and condition is far too sparse for random effects), Diabloist (summoned troop is really bad and the summon chance is far too low for the condition), and Barbarian (yes, this brand new class has a trait that doesn’t fit its trees at all and is under powered compared to one of the first class traits). The upcoming class for Sin of Maraj has a death mark match trait currently slated… at 25%, which is just totally random and doesn’t fit in with any of the other tools, so while the trait itself probably isn’t totally useless, thats another one I hope gets changed before release because its just kind of haphazardly tossed on there.
Most classes problems are that they lack one of the trees or traits that brings some kind of essential tool as a starting point - half mana, skull resistance, rock solid/fortitude, lightning strike, stealthy, root trap, snap freeze+deluge+insulated, banishment, fireblade, and purification a being some of the more singular ones you can work with even if they don’t really have any other tools to speak of on the class, especially if you have a couple in places where you can mix and match. Even starting storms are getting more and more marginalized as time goes on and more troops get this ability farmed out to them. The worst trees right now, in my opinion, are Wind and Morale, having pretty much no top picks in the entire lineup unless your other trees have really weak options and are almost nearly a wasted tree slot. Others are really weak unless paired with something where they can pick one or two specific support abilities with synergy, like Chaos, Light, Death, Knowledge (especially if you have a better level 70 pick) and probably others. If we want even sort of balanced and usable classes, we can’t have classes with bad traits that stack all the “only good as a very specific niche support pick” trees on them, and there should be some combination of things that add up to one being picked over another if you have access to the same level of tools (other than “because I need to level this one right now”).
If Priest were to get the +2 yellow, its current innate yellow link would probably better suited to be a spell armor type trait than a physical armor type trait. Knight should have had a skull resistance trait from the start. I previously said it would have make sense for Knight to have +2 Armor to all Knights every turn, but I’m currently thinking even that is really underpowered. Maybe give Knight a trait for barrier when matching yellow gems or something. Or one of them one, one of them the other. Knight is technically a blue class, but its only practical application currently is with yellow. Or Knight could just have an armor match trait for all allies or something.
I’d say Diabolist is probably the best candidate for the +2 red mana link except that it actually uses Purple mana as a primary mana color. I mean, it doesn’t fit the name of the trait, but I hope that doesn’t stop them. They kinda softballed this probably because of concerns about what happened with Orbweaver when the stars aligned for the right synergy, probably without realizing the biggest thing about Orbweaver even under perfect conditions is that it summons when its not your turn and has stealthy, two key pieces that will never line up for this class.
For the brown match trait, yeah, Slayer is an option, considering its trait still has no practical application in game, so its not too late to rework it without irritating everyone. This one has other problems, namely the disparate trees, and absolutely no brown synergy. However, I’m not sure they’d want to actually put the Stone tree with a +2 brown link, and I’m not sure I’d want it on some random class that isn’t even sure at what it wants to do. I’d actually rather see this go on Barbarian so I could make better practical use of the Forest and Storms synergy.
Oh, I like to think of Archmagus as Purple Frostmage without Freeze (or freeze resistance). I do actually factor in the double purple link (if my primary spell chain needs to open with purple) but having arcane (the tree, for half mana) and arcane (the trait, for magic ramping) actually factors into that about as much. The classes are very similar otherwise - both have Arcane (talent and tree) and Storms, so its down to Water versus Chaos its down to Snap Freeze/Insulated/Deluge and 25% freeze on cast versus steal 1 life match trait and disease match trait (which you then have to pick over spell resistance) so Frostmage usually wins out unless really need to boost that fast purple start (or, far more likely, you are just leveling classes). But thats enough to set it apart, really. Still don’t think Archmagus is that bad because Arcane and Storms happen to be very usable trees and the +2 purple link can be set up to have synergy. It has a complete kit (with Chaos kind of tacked on for whatever reason), unlike a lot of the other classes.
