What a chincy way to lose a battle particularly a guild war’s battle!!!
I was facing a nasty enough line-up with a giant spider, the relatively new mythic that starts with ‘E’ and a Kerberos. All had all traits active. I had EK, Abynissia, Mercy and Queen Mab. Usually my EK is successful in knocking out the traits and my mercy was already used to feed my Aby and was not ready to use again. I was in control of the battle when the hero was knocked out in a cascade of gems. Then the death curse hit. I knew I was screwed.
I was hoping only to lose 1 troop before getting my mercy powered up to cleanse everybody. NO. I played my turn the computer had its turn and I immediately lost 2 troops (EK and Aby). Then to add insult to injury the death mark took out mercy the following turn so I was left with my Queen Mab (still with the death mark that did eventually go away) against 3 troops one of which immediately summoned another. Now its 1 against 4 (one of which was impervious). Good luck.
I managed to get it down to 1 vs 1 before bad luck gave the computer 2 skull attacks against me that I desperately needed.
I lost the battle not because of lack of skill, but being victimized by it and bad luck (primarily the hero not being stunned even though there was at least 3 opportunities to do so). I hurts to lose a long win streak to it as well.
The death curse relies on losing the hero so there’s no skill involved other than having the third trait active and having the hero in the line up with the correct class (BFD).
While I’m on the things that irk me I’ll add devour. It really needs to be revamped because it’s way overpowered as a capability. The way it should work is there be a basic attack and if that kills then you get the devour.
I’d go as far as suggesting that the third trait on sacrificial priest and arch druid should be death curse. At least then the cards would be playable and increase the pool of cards that people use right. I mean people want parody and more across the board fairness, give it to them in spades.
An Famine, Dragon Soul, Justice, Queen Mab, Khorvash etc (The most notoriously hated enemy troops ingame) has to go ofc! With all the other DM’ing troops… side note don’t see this happening in all honesty as much as I hate going up against these troops myself the only way round it is luck/chance aka getting 4 matches etc before your frozen and killing them off getting those matches before you die to DM and so on yes it rages me aswell as everyone else you just got to persevere through it unfortunately.
Any duplicate thread was buried so I didn’t see it.
Anyway the death curse would be in reasonable balance if it only impacted one or at most two random troops, not the entire team. That’s more devastating than every troop that has the death mark as it’s primary attack (except Death which is a mythic troop and I don’t think the third trait should be comparable to a mythic’s main attack)
It already is rather mediocre outside of Sacrifice/Elspeth shenanigans. Just marking a single troop with the condition of the Hero having to die for it is ridiculous, laughable really.
Yes if that trait was somehow able to trigger multiple times it would be, but it isn’t, in fact it is bound to the condition of your Hero being killed.
In a general sense of power among the Hero classes i’d rank it below the two instant-killers(that should be pretty obvious), Sorcerer and the two 50% troop type mana classes(arguable). That puts DK kind of middle of the pack.
There is already a change for Deathmark in the pipes for the next patch further weakening that class.
All that being said, i would embrace a complete change of his trait to something really useful and maybe less polarizing, but another straightup nerf on an already mediocre trait(that is very easily outplayed btw) seems just pointless
Instead of nerfing Death Knight, and Death Mark. People could use to learn the right troops. Instead of just 1 team for all battles. Also instead of nerfing hero classes, can we please buff the necro hero class into something that isnt something so laughable trait wise. I mean the match 4 or 5 and get 1 extra soul is the worst 3rd trait i can think of.
This is fairly accurate on offense, but for defense the usefulness to the AI for the DK class is vastly superior, as is the users perception of usefulness. When fighting heros, I’d estimate over 90% of them are DK, and that type of grief/RnG defense meta is the reason for the outcry over DK, not an absolute power comparison in all use cases.
I disagree on the Ai being superior at all with DK compared to the two instant kill classes, the other classes i mentioned i agree that is why i marked them with (arguable).
You can control the time of death of a DK with comforting certainty. On three of the GW days i have teams that never run in danger of popping the DK before the rest of the team, on others i have to take extra measures that fail very rarely(with the DMs of the DK even more rarely being able to kill something in the 1-2 turns they are up before the match ends). You can skull bait freely with a DK on the enemy team, but with Archer/Assassin, a single skullmatch can ruin your day. I welcome DK enemies, it means that slot wasn’t filled with a less controlable threat.
The claim of death marking a single troop with the condition of the hero having to die is laughable is itself laughable when you consider no skill or effort is needed to apply it. It’s a freebie with the intention of knocking out a troop or two and if you’re lucky it turns the tide of the battle as it did in my case. People put the DK as the first troop with the expectation it will be taken out first or second. At least other troops have to be powered up to apply the death mark so effort has to be expanded to utilize the ability. Here no effort has to be used. The quicker the hero dies the more likely it’s third trait will be effective. It’s obvious players consider it very powerful because they are using it. The inference the trait isn’t very strong flies in the face of the fact so many people use it.
Using the right troops. What do you think EK and mercy are? They are correct troops to use. EK because of his ability to knock out traits and mercy’s ability to cleanse. However you do have to use mercy occasionally to power up other troops and to win the battle. Sometimes mercy will be down in mana.
The most laughable claim is “you can control the time of death of a DK with comforting certainty.” Not true with cascading gems after matches or in my case using the abynissia again to power up other troops like the mercy or EK. What happened was there was at least 2 skull matches that took out the DK in an uncontrolled fashion. Considering how much armor and health the DK had at the start of that turn I had a reasonable expectation the DK would survive without any trouble. I was expecting to power my other troops somewhat. It did well for my Queen Mab, but not so much for the EK or mercy.
Then I lost 3 troops in 2 turns because of an overpowered, chincy trait that happened to survive at least 3 stuns and was triggered by an un expected cascade of gems.
Welcome to traits… No effort is put into having all your beasts start with 50% Mana, every skullmatch buffing your whole team with attack and life, every troop of a colour having +5 to all stats or whatever else other traits do, they are all free you don’t have to spent mana on any of them.
So you are using them thoughtlessly then and fail to counter DKs, that is on you not the tools that are there for you to use correctly.
I with 100% certainty can, i have not lost a single troop to Deathcurse in GW so far, and it is much easier to control than Assassin/Archer or Devour kills.
If you play carelessly it is on you to deal with the possible consequences. Occasional skullmatches from a cascade won’t kill a DK on their own, you have messed up and dealt damage to the dk before if they die by a random skullmatch.
Either don’t be careless or bring reliable stun, if you don’t want to play that way, that is fine it is your prerogative to do so, but don’t call something unavoidable that isn’t.