With Orion I feel like the “Siege” Trait is mostly useless since it only works with invading in PVP and it’s only 2 attack for all allies. I think it might be better with a different trait. Maybe buff the third trait to 80% as well.
Agree, moving to triple damage instead of double should sort him out.
Swamplash: I’m thinking fine as designed but with a triple damage conditional instead of double.
Orion: True Shot is very powerful, and his spell makes it even more powerful if you manage to get the setup and then strike with skulls, but you rarely have an opening to actually cast the spell if you want to use it for hunter’s mark application, and the damage is very low for having dropped the turn otherwise regardless of the mana cost. Generally speaking, it is much easier to either double Orion’s attack or just match twice as many skulls via a support rather than trying to apply the hunters mark and then trying to line up random skulls before it fades for the same effect, which takes way too long with such a vulnerable troop out front. An extra turn condition seems to be in order for his spell (13+ yellow gems, perhaps).
3 Likes
Orion in my opinion should be the hunter mark king. He should be able to hunter mark all enemy troops with his skill, as well as dealing decent damage to one enemy troop.
Wild Hunt (12 Green/Yellow)
Deal 70 damage to an enemy troop and place Hunter Marks on all enemy troops.
Gain +5 Magic
(skill is with all magic form PL.)
Mana cost gone up with one.
1 Like
This would be more of a buff to Hunters Mark, but I keep beating the drum that HM should allow the marked troop to be hit with skulls regardless of formation position. Great way to nail that normally protected 3rd slot troop. Apply this buff to Hunters Mark in general or just make it an Orion-specific ability.
3 Likes
My rework:
All You Can Eat (11 Green/Brown)
Devour an ally, Heal, and gain 20 attack.
A tiny cheaper in mana cost, and take away create 6 skulls with gaining 20 attack.
Also give him the Stoneskin trait so he can be a panser.
Skull distracts don’t work quite as well as before, but eating a troop has a high chance of a good buff, full heal, and a favorable trade. If you are lucky, you can keep the turn and run them through. Functionally, it is hard to set up a Black Beast team that is spell damage heavy, which is why he has dropped off in the meta - you have to skull your way down, which is often too slow to counter whatever is going to kill your whole team in one turn. Despite being able to reach ~200+ combined life armor very easily, he is also very fragile given current cascades and can now lose that in a blink versus a base attack troop. Not and endgame troop, so I wouldn’t balance him as such, though, which is why I have to say that he is fine where he is.
1 Like
I wonder what you think of my idea, @Mithran. Also must not forget he is an Epic, my opinion is that most of the Epics should be viable for endgme players, I think.
If I were balancing for endgame viability, I would give him either a minor skull resistance trait or entangle immunity (or both) as his third trait in place of Regeneration or Cunning. Slightly less mana cost would help as well. I don’t think he needs the 20 attack, still. He can still be quite nasty even endgame (eat a deathknight, start the cascade chain), just a lot of the current meta counters it by being too fast. He can’t compete with a lot of the meta because his setup is too slow and not guaranteed to chain (plus entagles are so easy now, pretty much nullifying his usefulness), not because hes not threatening and capable of quickly bashing his way through an entire team with a summoner behind him.
Gaining 20 attack makes more sense than creating 6 skulls tho, that more often than not will backfire. Hes a front troop afterall, also stoneskin might save him if your bone dragon fails with the skulls, and/or for generally being a panser.
The six skulls is there to potentially force a trade. His increased defensive stats can either allow him to take that hit, leaving you to set up into him getting another devour off, or use that hit, taking a huge chunk out of the top troop. Occasionally both. If they ignore skulls, you can usually bash through anything that doesn’t have heavy skull resist. Rarely, you’ll get an extra turn and usually just kill the first troop, and rarely, you’ll get hit by multiple skulls leaving you back where you started. There is the risk there of backfiring and getting enough skulls for black beast to die, which has increased with unity, but I believe this to be core to his design and one of the only reasons I liked him after his buff. I have 896 invades with Black Beast, used to be one of my favorite troops. Not having the skulls would kill him for me for good.
Damn, thats a lot of invades with him. I have to be honest with you, I have zero invades with him. But still I believe most of us can see that he is a little meh…
Apropos Boraelis: I was up against him yesterday as possibly everyone else in the Dugongs.
He then froze all enemies and dealed AoE damage, i think that would be a good rework for him.
I will add to the troop:
“Extra turn if he devours a Goblin.”
And maybe boost the number of skulls to 7 or 8.
2 Likes
I want to thank the Devs for the rework on Artema that happened in the last patch. It may have been an coincidence, but she is one of the troops that we have been discussed around. I do not know if they read this thread or not, but hopefully they check in sometimes.
Backstab (10 Purple/Brown)
Deal [Magic + 5] damage to the enemy with most mana, and drain their Mana.
After a little back and forth I am very happy with this suggestion.
3 Likes
Ferit was one a fairly strong option because of his full mana drain combined with above average single target damage with the drawback of not being able to target. I used him a lot in early game PvP. Options available now make him a joke in terms of damage output even at early game, but mana drain still scales infinitely.
Overall, I think he could use a buff. Thematically, his spell should have greater effect on daemons. Although he drains, not being able to target it and hitting the last troop, who usually fills last, has limited usefulness unless you are in a one on one situation. This was way more common in the old days, but not so much now even at early game.
I’d give him give a slight base boost in spell damage and triple damage and extra turn conditionals. Raise mana cost a bit to compensate. Accordingly:
Backstab (12 Purple/Brown)
Deal [Magic + 8] damage to the last enemy, and drain their mana. Deal triple damage if they are a Daemon. Gain an extra turn if the enemy dies.
3 Likes
At early game, and particularly in quests, Ferit was sometimes helpful to keep a “boss” under control (like mega-Gorgotha, or Goblin King). A buffed version of Ferit would potentially be useful in Dungeons for the same reason, but he’d need to be a better option than a targetable mana-drainer like Spirit Fox or Moloch to play that role.
1 Like