Oooh, I would definitely take an extra turn instead of the armor boost.
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PLUS he gives life to an ally!
True, and frankly I think his 4 life is better than the Orb’s 6 armor, since it protects against true damage. Quite simply, the only real advantage the Orb has is that you can “pick” the mana type you create (sort of). But when every marauder-type Goblin already uses the precise type the Shaman creates, who cares?
Given the nature of the all-coloured orb, I presume the intention behind the whole design was to give players access to a kind of fill-in for all the colours missing in the line-up of their choice. Its was (from my understanding) never meant to be built around and should therefore not be regarded the center of a team but rather a support for a solid team.
Nonetheless it is debatable whether the nerf made the whole thing better or worse.
That said, I have been testing the new Orb with the 2 Skeleton, Keeper of Souls setup, with which I was able to win 90 percent of the Warlord II battles. As far as I can see I can now win about 75 percent of the Warlord I battles, so I haven’t bothered trying Warlord II. I still think the nerf has gone a bit too far, but it isn’t as bad as I thought.
Yeah the combo of more mana/fewer gems seems a bit much. How about having the extra ability provide a boost to a random stat instead of just armor? Think of it as a mini BtL.
Dunno what to make of this. Considering the orb had limited application before, I never used it much except in the arena. 8 gems doesn’t seem like enough mana creation, especially with the higher cost now.
But, I do see why they’d nerf it. The 3-of-something-plus-Orb was obviously being overused. My wife saw a team do this with skeletons and adopted it. IMO skeletons are too weak for me, but she loves that team. I’ve seen it with worms, too.
I see this as a bit of an over-nerf; if gem creation doesn’t scale with mana, it should at least be higher than 8. 11 would probably be a good limit.
Yeah this nerfing goes way to far. 20 gems for 8 in return is totally off base compared to similar characters. Like others said, the hero is pretty much useless nowadays and the orb was the only real useful weapon.
I’m pretty disappointed in this latest change. If you are going to nerf it down to 8, at least give the extra turn and scrap the armour bonus.
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I know they don’t usually comment on this kind of discussion, but on the off chance they might have something to offer, @Sirrian, @Nimhain or @CrowdedWorlds - thoughts or insights you guys had when you decided on these changes? We heard from you guys a bit when the goblin problem was discussed, but it’s been pretty quiet on this front, and I was just wondering. Thanks!
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I was thinking the exact same thing…
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IMO, A lot of these issues come from all the extra kingdom bonuses as well. Skeletons are weak characters but when we pack 3 together, you get a lot of extra bonuses. I use the Skeletons a lot but I get beat a lot on harder difficultly. If you don’t get your mana colour luck early, they can be defeated pretty easily with colour changing and silencing characters.
I do not think the extra turns fits into the orb’s design. The extra turn is kind of a goblin-exclusive thing (except for skeletons; well maybe they are undead goblins, eh? Oh and the Sphinx. And, oh screw that point -.-).
Anyway, reducing it to a static 10 gems would have been just fine for me. But apparently the devs had another idea. The new orb is pretty bad compared to the old one IF you are trying to use it the same way as before. It did not get nerfed in the strictest meaning, it got rather changed. Therefore it fits into a completely new role and should be treated appropriately.
Everytime theres a good troop or somethig some rather bad and useless player starts a trend on it so it gets nerfed… Half of the time its because they don’t have the troops or the weapon to use them on their on (And because they are so bad, cant defeat them) I use to enjoy so much this game, now its pretty much waiting for every now and then week to see which is the next thing to be winned and nerfed for you to drop it.
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Hey Guys,
Thought I’d jump in and explain some of the ideas behind the Prismatic Orb changes. Prismatic Orb was just way ahead of the other weapons because of its versatility, and it was making some teams a little too easy. We recognize the Hero is a little underpowered right now for high level players, but we’d like to bring the weapons in line, AND address the issue with the Hero (which is something we have planned for 1.0.9).
So as with the gem spamming with troops, we want to address weapons that created gems using Magic. We’ve found that 8 gems seems to be a good number to give a chance of a 4 of kind match either though it’s not certain.
With the magic scaling being removed from gem creation, we need something on the weapon that would scale off magic. If we increased Life, we’d end up with teams with more life than the Zaejin kingdom bonus. Increasing Attack caused the Skeleton teams to be get out of control, and increasing Magic… we all know how that turns if we’re not careful! We felt that increasing armor was the best solution, and gave troops like Rowanne and the Paladin another means to get Armor to boost their spells.
As for the Mana cost increase, we found in testing that the Orb was going off too often. As we have only a couple of Prismatic weapons, we need to see how they perform in the wild before understanding were the Mana cost range should be.
Before we released the balance we did several tests on our servers and we able to win fights on Warlord II. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be any changes in the future. We’ll be keeping an eye on it and making adjustments should we feel it needs them.
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Also goodbye GoW. Another mindless overnerf in a long series while the game keeps suffering from the design changes dumped without thinking and playtesting. Really fun to face supposed glass cannons that happen to be 10/35 with 17 attack all meanwhile the stuff the player would use gets just killed off. En-masse.
I just announced to guild that I stop playing until 1.08 is out.
How about an increase to Mana, like the Sunweaver, instead of armor? This would fit better with the prismatic theme, providing mana charge and avoiding the loop issue.
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I like this idea
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Soo… two weeks or so then?
I figured the change played into something like this. The thing about scaling is that you’ve got to be very careful how it’s done.
Honestly, if the Hero scaled off anything except Armor there’s a chance he’d be giving 8 or 9 to any creature.
8 Health per cast would be crazy, as would Attack, Magic, or even Mana really. In a way, even the staff were backed into a corner on this one.
I’ve actually run across teams of 3x Brian’s + Prism Orb, the idea is to boost the orb so high it couldn’t possibly not refill it’s self with an extra turn, and I’ve heard of people getting stuck in it’s endless loop. So scaling Gem Creation the same but lower wasn’t a good option either.
If a boost to weapons similarly to what’s planned for 1.0.8 is coming out maybe 1.0.9, then I could see the Orb becoming more powerful. Boost it’s rarity, it creates 9 gems per cast rather than 8, that sort of thing.
Yes the Hero’s dead for late-game players, but this is mainly because this game is still early in it’s building block stages. Something people here seem to forget is that we’re playing nothing more than a Beta of sorts. This game is far from completion, and more so than one or two years away.
Nerfs, buffs, changes, it’s not stopping here, or next week. Every patch requires troops be inspected again, and again. It’s not easy with 140+ troops, and tons more planned for release. (Can you say, “10 more kingdoms”?)
Don’t like something today? Wait. Don’t like a new change? Wait. How long do you wait? Wait, and find out.
Nothing is officially settled, nothing is 100% ready, and nothing is guaranteed to stay the same. So wait and see what’s in store, because the train ain’t stopping, and even if you jump off you can come back anytime.
Well, just a fixed amount to Mana then, also like the Sunweaver. Whoever says Magic =must= scales into a weapon ability anyway? The point I’m making here is the Prismatic theme. And armor seems to have no relevance at all.
Also keep in mind, for most of us high level enough to have the prismatic orb, the order of acquisition, perception-wised, is Prismatic Orb then Sunweaver. However, for many upcoming players, they will be encountering Sunweaver first, since I doubt completing all the Kingdom storylines will net them enough XP to get to level 300. So a Mana-charged prismatic orb would become a very appealing transition from the Sunweaver back to the Hero. The charge amount could even be lower than Sunweaver, like 4 or 5, and I’m sure many would still make the switch.
*Fixed it for ya!
No one, but you can’t deny it’d make the Hero’s Magic feel completely pointless, something no other weapon’s done before.
The issue with this is the Prismatic Orb’s purpose, it’s built with the intention of creating mana for a specific type of troop to power off of. With mana generation, it kind of defeats that purpose by directly powering up the troop, with the possibility of creating gems for no reason. In turn making the gem creation (it’s main purpose) completely pointless.
Not saying it’s a bad idea, but I’m not sure it fits the orb as well as you believe.
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