Change her final trait to ‘convert a skull to a doomskull when matching purple’. Would generate the doomskulls she needs to make her ability effective without really increasing the risk to herself by triggering.
Could also have it trigger on 4 or 5x hem matches. Thoughts?
11 Likes
I thinks this is a good suggestion, it keeps her theme with the kingdom and turns her trait into something original while also empowering her spell.
Makes the trait do basically nothing of worth on its own other than enhancing a spell that is badly concepted in the first place.
The problem of the troop is not the trait, it is the spell, so i’d like to see changes there instead.
Good suggestion!
Yeah, this would help bridging the huge chasm in situations where her kit is terribly underwhelming to something where it is universally useful, even if limited. The spell is just extremely non-threatening for a 24 mana spell if there aren’t many (or any) doomskulls on the board, and if you are using stuff to put doomskulls on the board, you generally don’t want or need a pitiful AoE damage support to facilitate your strategy. “Silence divines” is okay, but this should be an extra thing she does by virtue of being a mythic on top of having a complete, if limited, kit (like Gard’s Avatar). Plus, it is extremely unlikely that we get such a thing (small, passive doomskull creation) on a different troop that also has a spell that will synergize with her in some actual meaningful way.
At the same time, there is no way this is going to happen, since it was already arbitrarily decided that disease on purple was the right fit for her for some reason and thats what she went live with. It is far more likely we either get nothing, or just a small flat numbers buff (leaving her still “bad” with multiple layers of non-synergy or anti-synergy with stuff she seems to be intended to be used with?) than any actual significant change in how she works.
1 Like
I get your feeling about it, but actually having some way to generate Doomskulls offers at least some mana generation when those Doomskulls are destroyed/exploded. Sure her spell per se is quite insipid aside from silencing Divines because NOW WE NEED IT MORE THAN EVER but not… 
What could be done to her spell to give some flavor to it? 
Maybe reducing a random status boosted by the number of Doomskulls? Hmmm… maybe it’s not relevant since these Doomskulls will leave the board at the end of the spell.
Generally speaking, exploding doomskulls is worse than exploding regular gems, which then explode the Doomskulls around them.
That is why her spell concept doesn’t work, when you build a team that actually puts significant amounts of Doomskulls on the board you generally also have means to utilize those in a much better way than just directly exploding them. Blowing them up directly will prove to be a net loss.
This proposed trait would improve her spell very slightly if you have no other means of creating Doomskulls in your team at the cost of the utility of her original trait which is significant.
And this change would not at all improve Valdis if you actually have Dhrak-Zum all-stars in your team and really don’t want to blow the Doomskulls up like that.
And the spell would still be aweful at all times against non-divines period with a now worse trait.
Instead the spell should get rid of exploding Doomskulls, and go with something different entirely maybe scaling of Doomskulls in some way but not blowing them up.
The Doomskulls being exploded will contribute as damage to the first enemy so i’m failry sure the devs considered it and increased the spell cost…
With four Doomskulls being exploded you are dealing extra 20 damage to the first enemy, so in a sense it’s already a pretty decent damage boost, plus some mana gain, so maybe it would be interesting to focus on an additional effect?
I’m lost about the Disease aspect of her trait, since “Valdis” seems to refers/allude to:
This name derives from the Norse name “Valdís”, composed of two elements: the “valr” the slain (in Valhalla) plus “dís” (Norse goddess). In turn the name means “the deities of Valhalla”.
So a fallen norse deity would she be a deity infected by some corruption in some sense? Is her fall tied to the fall of Drak-Zum as kingdom?
But if you have a Doomskull-centered team, you cash in on the extradamage from Doomskulls anyway, and do it much more efficient/damaging by matching them with Bloodhammer/Glaycion casts, instead of exploding them beforehand. Even blowing them up with a regular mass exploder yields more mana gain/same-ish Doomskull damage as casting a Gorgotha class exploder rarely leaves Doomskulls on the board(aside from new settling ones).
In any case i really don’t see the need to change a working trait that has a consistent value for the sake of very situationally enhancing a spell that is flawed in concept, instead of changing the spell itself to work without such an enhancing trait.
But traits reducing skull damage are more common than traits reducing damage spell, so there is that to be considered when we evaluate the extra damage to the first troop from matching Doomskulls or exploding them. And adding Doomskulls via this change on the trait would also favor better damage and some mana gain if you choose/can match those Doomskulls instead of using them for her spell only.
Anyway, you are not wrong on the possible direction you want, we can brainstorm things here so feel free to contribute when you get an idea, but it’s hard to even consider what else can be done…
It’s just that her whole concept seems quite vague and we can’t point out many changes because we don’t know what the devs wanted to do with her design in the first place…
I think its a neat idea, but… its taking away a bit of power from her kit to fix a problem that could be dealt with in other ways.
Now this is definitely a interesting idea could even do both. That would definitely make this a much more useful troop.
I think this is where I get stuck when thinking about how I would improve her, but I think I’ve got it now 
(I just had a little daydream session trying to work out her vibe). The way I picture her is falling out of a portal in the sky, landing with a thud amidst the warring divines in battle mode, like Thor, etc. This sends out a shockwave (damaging all). The divines are flabbergasted (silenced) ("Wha… What the…?). She looks up, and says something like, “Alright, f***ers [is this allowed?].” Then she hurls a dagger through the eye of Infernus.
Thus, we should change her spell to, “Halve the life of a selected troop [the knife, out of order I know], and deal (the current amount of) damage to all troops. Silence all divines.”
Oh and doomskulls now heal her 
(first trait) (seriously, though, I think that’s a winner. She’s the goddamn mythic of Dhrak-Zum, she eats doomskulls for breakfast, right?).
EDITS: Or maybe she can eat all doomskulls like the Zombie, boosting her magic 
or some other stat (mega doomskull armour??? Alternate spell, “Doomskull Necklace” maybe we can give that to an underling), or have her damage boosted by doomskulls (she just loves being surrounded by death/doom)(thus working well with her Dhrak-Zum buddies).
Also her new tagline is “Catch my dise-ease” a la Matchbox 20, because of her third trait, and the current one is corny . Corny alternative - “I see you’ve played knifey spoony before; how about knifey facey?” It’s Australian-themed, even!!! I will settle for “Alright, f***ers.” My whole sense for her is like, “Your days are numbered, now (@divines)”. A rework of the current line would also be okay (I just feel it reads weird).
@Devs, yes I’m Australian, yes I’m for hire
1 Like
The above post is pretty much the least that should be done. Anything short of @Jonathan 's idea is just a waste of time. Please implement immediately.
I do not have Fallen Varadis, so you can trust my judgement on this. These recommended buffs (If you can even call them that because they are so slight…more like tweaks) are fair and balanced. Thank you.
1 Like
I’m not completely sold on any of the buffs suggested above. But can 100% agree Valdis desperately needs a change/buff.
If the developers didn’t Nerf the Divines a few weeks ago ahead of release, this Mythic troop would be beyond unacceptable as a “solution/counter”.
I spent a lot of resources to get this troop and haven’t used it once.