Prismatic Orb
*Mana cost increased from 17 to 20
*Gem creation no longer scales off Magic. Now creates 8 Gems.
*Spell now give an Armor Buff, which scales off Magic.
This doesn’t seem very legendary anymore. It feels like it was changed to not be used anymore. I can understand the gem creation change as thats the way all gem creation is going, but the mana increase kills it for me. What do you people all think?
Agreed, if anything the mana cost should have dropped since the gem creation is almost halved in some team line ups …
7
Agree +1. I can see either Mana Increase or the Gem Limit as viable balance change, but both of them together is a bit overkill. I would gladly trade out the new Armor Buff to get the Mana Cost returned to normal.
I would make that trade also. I’m hoping this is just a test change and the pendulum swings back. It’ll be hard to see how this change affects the game when everyone drops the orb like it’s a hot potato.
Especially since the orb got a viable alternative in form of the Imp-erial Jewel.
Well it’s only viable for people 300+ or whatever level it unlocks.
I think it is all masteries 50+ so it is only like 60 levels after you get prismatic orb. Should not be too far away once you have the orb.
I’m level 280ish and all my masteries are around 46.
It’s 50+ all while Prism is 25+, so double the levels.
150 to 300 is not so small a jump. 
Oh, my bad. Thought it was 40+ after you got all the other fancy stuff there. Well then, I guess only another weapon rotting away in the new players’ vault ^^
Totally agree that the dual nerfs are overkill. I am not sure where the armor is coming from either, it has very little to do with the item’s identity. Something more creative or at least interesting needs to be done with all these things that can no longer be allowed to scale with magic.
I assume (read: hope) there will be a complete overhaul of the hero weapon system somewhere in the probably distant future. As a part of it most currently useless weapons might see some practical application.
I hadn’t realized the armor was given to the target ally rather than the hero, RTFM please… somewhat more useful. I’m going to give it a go for 20-30 minutes and see what happens, not expecting much though.
Dropping from 13 Gems to 8 Gems is massive. And requiring an extra 3 mana…wow. Think a developer perhaps got annoyed with Prismatic Orb & a few skeletons knocking their team off.
A couple months ago the devs nerfed exploders (carnex, gorgotha & herdmaster) so that they became a thing of the past, then it was spammers such as webspinner & shaman, now they take out prismatic orb. It’s almost like they want battles to be ‘death by a thousand cuts’ rather than a quick-ish battle.
No doubt they’ll take out the high attack teams (such as Gar Nok Marauders, dragon combos etc) next…
IMO, I think there was nothing wrong with Prismatic Orb - just an issue with duplicate team members. Not sure what new problems would result, but I would like to see each duplicate character (in a team) resulting in ‘minus 1’ magic to every member in the team. For example, three skeletons…minus 3 magic for all three skeletons & the fourth character.
OK I didn’t need 20 minutes. I assume this extends to other teams… triple Skeleton is still very much alive, its just not quite as fast. Filling the Orb has merely shifted to backup rather than being the initial primary objective. I will likely be testing out other teams to use, seeing as this is no longer going to be breaking speed records.
Also interested to see how Paladin would work with this.
NVM NO LONGER INTERESTED. Didn’t work so well.
Hm, not so in my opinion. Jewel only deals (a moderate amount of) damage spread over all enemies. And at a very high mana cost too. The only thing they have in common is that they get filled from all mana colours.
I actually tried Jewel for a solid hour, 3-5 different teams… couldn’t make that happen, it was so slow and any particularly dangerous team would actually nearly kill me.
+1 on the dual nerfs being overkill. While I expected some change or other, I did not expect such a dramatic overhaul of the weapon. And I agree, where does the armor buff fit in? I only have time this morning for a couple of tries, but so far it seems pretty lame now. Not a thing worth spending 20 mana on… Maybe I’m an outlier, but in my build it only gets fed with blue and green until my troops start dying off. And 8 gems is not much to go on.
Ugh, I’m trying not to be one of those “whine cause my favorite thing got nerfed” types but I am pretty sad by this change. It was not my favorite thing but I found it useful and not OP, and I think I had a well-crafted team built around it. Guess I’ll go back to the drawing board.
+1! I usually agree with the balance changes, but I didn’t see this one coming.
Agreement here, too. The Prismatic Orb was one of the last remaining reasons to use the Hero (for someone below 300ish, like me), and now it’s practically useless. 8 gems is just enough to regularly set up your opponent with great 4/5 matches unless you wait…and wait…and wait… for an optimal board. Should go back up to 9/10 gems, IMHO, especially if it’s gonna cost 20 mana. I mean heck, a Goblin Shaman takes half as much mana to get one less gem AND an extra turn to make sure you can take advantage of the mana you just created, PLUS he has awesome synergy with an all Goblin/Marauder team, whereas the Hero has no synergy at all other than with his weapon.
Not very legendary is definitely an accurate assessment. The armor boost is nice, but if you almost never get to use it, what’s the point?