Class traits and talents need serious rework/balancing

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

I’m sure this has been mentioned plenty of times, but there are far too many classes that are unusable because their traits and talent trees are garbage.

Pretty much everything at level 100 sucks except Fireblade and Fortitude, and needs to be replaced.

As for class traits, here are some suggestions:

Assassin:

-Deal double skull damage to poisoned enemies.

-Matching skulls attacks the last troop rather than the first.

Bard:

-Give yellow troops 2 mana per turn.

Deathknight:

-Deathmark a random enemy when one is slain.

-Summon a random undead when an enemy is slain.

Diabolist:

-100% chance to summon Nightmare when an ally casts a spell.

Doomsayer:

-50% chance to Deathmark on 4/5 matches.

Heirophant:

-100% chance to cast a random buff on an ally every turn.

Knight:

-Gain barrier on blue matches.

-Move to top position when an ally takes damage to life.

Necromancer:

-Add 50% of total souls collected to magic.

Oracle:

-Centaurs start with 50% mana.

Sorcerer:

-Gain 1 magic on 4/5 matches.

Warden:

-Summon a leaf storm at the start of each turn.

Warlord:

-Reflect 50% of skull damage.

These are just some ideas, but these classes could use some serious buffs to make them more competitive and to give them more distinct flavor.

6 Likes
2

Some of these give really nice flavour! Kudos.

Loved the suggestions for Assassin (esp. the backline skull damage), Bard (‘singing’ mana into yellow troops feels right), Knight (protector vibe done right), Necromancer (balance potentially an issue for lower level accounts, even if slow, but thematically cool).

Most people will probably say Rising Shadows is the other level 100 talent that isn’t garbage, and Lord of Storms/Thieves’ Guild are passable, although maybe not necessarily 100-level.

3

I forgot about Rising Shadows. It’s not bad, although I wouldn’t object to a small buff to maybe 10%.

4

It was 10% back in the day and was nerfed to 7% because arbitrarily losing TWO troops just because you lost one feels really, really bad. It’s basically a free instant Death Mark.

1 Like
5

Agree that most of the level 100 talents are garbage, and many classes have 3 garbage talents. I just want to add that the hero needs 4950 XP to get to level 100, so when you reach level 70 you are ever-so-slightly over halfway towards level 100 in terms of XP. Grinding out that many victories again - the same number as it took you to get to level 70 - for a useless talent is really soul destroying.

3 Likes
6

Lots of these are super overpowered; but I agree that talents need a major rework. I do, especially, like the knight’s talent (move to top spot on damage to life).

7

Regarding the suggestions presented, the only ones that aren’t completely ridiculous are gaining barrier on blue matches for Knight, Oracle with 50% mana start for Centaurs, Sorcerer with 1 magic gain on 4+ matches, and leaf storm for Warden. The others are just crazy overpowered.

8

I disagree.

Double skull damage for poison? Try triple for Fireblade. If anything this suggestion should be buffed to “double skull damage if poisoned OR bleeding.” If we quibble that poison doesn’t cleanse on a timer and so triple is OP, fine — keep it at double, or even 50% extra, and then give another talent to make bleeders take harder hits — limit it to double or 2.5x if bleed, being true damage, means it can’t really be called equivalent to burning even though it is very few troops that can even inflict it in the first place.

Per-turn perks exist, and are almost never worth it because they’re too slow. Same with “on death” effects — unless they say “on death, kill something else” they’re pretty hard to capitalize on (and even Uba doesn’t see much use these days — granted, that has a mana cost this would lack, but the OP isn’t suggesting a free kill anyway, just a summon that might not even happen if a slot is not available to receive said summon).

The per 4+ match talents would, of course, need balancing — the death mark one already demonstrates an attempt at this by putting it at a 50% trigger (and because the replacing of it that frequently also resets the timer so often that the trigger might actually be less likely, I’d be curious to see this in action).

The perma-green storm is no different than the perma-storms we already have in Sunspear and Stormcaller. Barrier on Blue is Rock Solid by another name — quibble about the thematic flavor if you want, but not the OP-ness.

Summoning a Nightmare every cast is OP, sure, but only for the meat-shield value, not because anyone wants a Nightmare to begin with. To save this god-awful talent (if it must be saved rather than binned and replaced altogether) I’d much rather see something akin to “summon a random steed/hell-beast (both of which I would prefer to be clearly labelled in-game the way “gnoll” and “spider” should be) on 10% of ally casts.

Ironically, the one suggestion I don’t like in its inception (though I’d tweak almost all in execution) is the one everyone else seems to like : I don’t want my knight jumping into the fray. If I haven’t put him up top, he’s not meant to be there taking the hits, and it would be annoying if he insisted anyway :joy:

1 Like
9

I’m going to just stop you right there. You’re comparing a level 100 talent (that’s 5050 battles at 1 XP per battle) to a trait, something that is unlocked with a couple arcane traitstones. It’s a world of difference.

1 Like
10

I didn’t notice OP listed all those suggestions as traits.

Still, I’d stand by the post — hero classes’ third traits should be just as strong as a Level 100 talent, despite the difference in effort to achieve them.

Because to say otherwise is to say, “well, Rock Solid is clearly better than basically all level 70 and 100 talents, so it shouldn’t be so easy to get.” Or even “Cleansing on 4+ matches is too strong to have early, so put it at the end of the tree — and certainly not as a thing that only costs a few arcanes.”

I’d rather see all the stuff that sucks get buffed or replaced so that it was good, rather than lock all the stuff that’s good behind gates of adamantine by rebalancing things such that all the “too good” stuff is hard to get, and all the easy-to-get stuff isn’t wanted by anyone.

11

Necromancer and Deathknight should both summon undeads based on their supposed role with their weapons and their third trait could be something related to souls.

Example:

  • Deathknight summons skeletons. Third trait increases his Skull damage based on Souls collected, so you have troops who can generate skulls to use his trait making him a good frontline fighter.
  • Necromancer summons “some undead”. Third trait increases his Magic/Spell damage based on Souls collected, so you have a spellcaster class who can summon bodies while he casts spells from the back.

They could both have a specific Talent tree allowing them to become even more specialized in their roles/themes. Something strongly tied to undeads like healing all undeads on 4+ matches for example or gaining a bonus of some stats based on the number of undead allies and such.

1 Like
12

I’ll admit I read quickly and thought he was referring to lvl 100 talents. As lvl 100 talents, I love them all. Traits? Not as much.

With that said, there are some seriously High end 3rd traits on classes and troops. While others have horrendous 3rd traits. They really almost seem like an afterthought. Clearly the balance is not there.

I love the assassin class idea. Every assassin, rogue, thief class in any game has some kind of modifier to enemies that are poisoned and they all have a backstab.

I had more to say, but I am sitting in my car ready to leave work and have an hour of traffic to deal with.

1 Like