Improve Classes (Full Analysis, Problems & Solutions)

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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I’ve done a lot of complicated stuff for a simple purpose: I’d like to see classes improved drastically, in the traits and talents department. There should be a better range of choices – both within an individual class via their talent options, and when trying to choose a class for a team (unless that team is something obvious like “Mechs means use Mechanist”). The classes with absolutely worthless traits also need to be buffed to match the current standard of power.

Here’s a link to my full analysis – one spreadsheet with all the talent trees, and one with all the classes. Updated for Doomsayer class.

(If anything doesn’t work, let me know immediately please.)

SPECIFIC PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS BELOW

Stat Talents:

(Or “Skill” talents in dev-speak… still a dumb name, we call them “Stats”!)

I’m talking about the basic ones with armor/life/attack/magic. Purple Allies gain 2 Life. Those ones. They’re kind of boring, which is okaaaay…

Problem/s:
When a class or tree is full of these, the result is that it doesn’t really feel like its doing much – which is, unfortunately, accurate. More importantly, when we get a choice of three stat options, it feels pretty lame… especially when none of them are really applicable to the team you want to use.

Additionally, there are too many uneven and underpowered options across the trees. Lvl10 talents that are only as strong as lvl1 talents when they should be considerably better (they’re numbers! It shouldn’t be that hard to make them equal value!)

Solution/s:
Lower the number of these talents that exist at all, and normalize the effective value on them so that we don’t feel forced to pick the “stronger” option or feel bad for picking the “weaker” one because it suits the team better (though if the numbers are reduced enough, we should have much less times where we have to make a choice like that). They could also stand to be slightly stronger than they currently are, particularly the higher level ones.

Weapon Talents

Basically an extension of stat talents, except way worse.

Problem/s:
When we get a choice of “Gain 2 Magic if using a Dagger” or a Bow or a Missile, and we want to use Dawnbringer or something (DB is a sword), that talent is wasted. When we get one or two of those and any other talent that isn’t as constrained, that choice is very simple. That isn’t healthy.

Weapon options also carry over the “uneven and underpowered” issues from above, except its worse and more obvious because these all do exactly the same thing. So when we see a lvl10 talent giving 2 magic and a lvl1 talent giving 2 magic, the reaction is to think that the lvl10 should be giving 3 or 4 or something. Same goes for a 2 magic talent and a 3 magic talent in the same tier (for essentially the same condition).

Solution/s:
Normalize the numbers as with stat talents – lvl 1/5/10/20/40 should consistently be worth 2/3/4/5 or 3/4/5/6 or something. They honestly could use a buff or two, considering that they are one of the hardest and most unlikely conditions to fulfill when making a team.

Another option is to just remove them entirely. The weapon types, as far as I know, don’t seem to interact with anything besides these class talents, which makes their presence seem forced. This would could reduce the number of stat talents enough to leave the other ones alone.

Lvl100 (Stat) Talents

There’s clearly a pattern here.

The talents like “All Mystics gain 2 Magic and Life when an enemy dies.”

The numerous talents like “All Wargare Allies gain 2 Life every turn.”

Problem/s:
These are bad. They’re the worst. Let alone the fact that they’re lvl100 talents and not only very underpowered but also uninteresting, so collectively not worth reaching the end of the class levelling road.

They are also very very rarely applicable to the classes that have the option of getting them. So they’re being handicapped that way too.

Even in the best case scenario, you have a hero type that matches and you have an entire team of troops that matches too. You gain 2 Life every turn on four troops. It’s not interesting! Not when we’ve got things like randomly executing troops (Shadow tree) or getting triple damage on skulls (Fire tree).

And, finally, there’s actually a hell of a lot of these things, between the ‘on kill/death’ and ‘every turn’ and so on. There are, in fact, only four lvl100 talents total that aren’t a persistent or recurring stat gain, and one of them is +10 Life to Constructs so its on the same level. This makes choices very limited and boring.

Solution/s:
Buff the hell out of them, remove them, or diversify them by having them apply to multiple troop types. (If they get buffed, do the same for Ysabelle too!)

I would like to see a totally different range of talents here, real game-changers like Fortitude and Fireblade.

Mana Link Talents

This is a less dramatic issue… I’m talking about “Magic Link” and so on. +1 mana on gem match.

Problem/s:
Now while I do think these should be in the pool of talents… they’re all on the lvl70 tier. Which doesn’t seem right at all, because lvl70 has legendary-strength talents and Link traits are not that strong (would you pick a Link talent over Lightning Strike, the explosion talent? Nope). They could be as low as lvl10 or even lower. Lvl20 is a tough sell because that’s where the storm talents are, which would make for a lot of bad clashes… and lvl40 is still too high.

Solution/s:
Move these down. Way down. Possibly (hopefully) into some of the space being vacated by weapon talents. This would also leave room for more exciting lvl70 talents, though alternatively some of the less powerful lvl100 talents could be moved down to lvl70 in exchange for more interesting talents in that range instead.

Class Traits

Traits, not talents.

Problem/s:
Basically, the old-guard classes (and maybe some newer ones) have really underpowered garbage for traits, when we have other classes like Bard and Sunspear with god-tier traits. And it should not be this way.

Solution/s:
Buff the hell out of the traits in question and/or redo them entirely.

Broad Spectrum “This Needs Help”

Talent Trees: Arcane, Death, Knowledge, Morale, Wind (and anything with an abundance of stats)

Talent Tiers: lvl5, lvl100

Classes (traits mainly): Knight, Necromancer, Priest, Sorcerer, Warden, Warlord

29 Likes
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Oh and while I have your attention … please buff Poison. Its hilarious.

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Amazing work and analysis.

I want to also think that a key for PVE is survivability. Maybe “barrier on brown” shouldn’t be the only color that gives this. Maybe another few classes could get barrier on purple, or yellow, or blue. Maybe some classes literally get 100% skull damage reduction or something, or others have high shielding.

Why does everyone use titan/sentinel/runepriest? It’s because in high level events (delves, raids, tod, etc), you simply need that barrier otherwise you’re getting one-shot. This limits the design and classes you can play in these events.

I think if you look at the classes and ask: “why does nobody play this?” it comes down to either no 50% mana, or the class is too squishy.

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Yeah, when the event enemy can deal 100+ damage per skull hit, it’s insane not to have titan hero up front with barrier on brown to block the skydrop skull hits the AI is guaranteed to get a few times a match. add onto that immunity to status effects and explosions on 4/5 matches and the Titan class just blows all the other classes out of the water. The only other class that “compares” is the thief class just for the pure cheese of stealth+summon weapon+summon traits; and the thief is only really useful as an AI controlled defense team class.

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Yeah great analysis.

If I should have only one wish: more Fireblade-like talents. One for each status.

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Dang it, I was working on an elaborate set of tools to visualize the classes to say exactly this, then a large number of personal crises meant I had to pay attention to other things.

Nearly half (59 of 119) of the available talents are “gain stat”. Most of those contribute less than 5 total stats over an entire game. Those talents effectively don’t exist, but it means some classes only have maybe 3 or 4 talents to choose from.

If you want to see the skeleton of where I was going, have a look at http://slypenslyde-gems-classes.glitch.me/classInfo.html. Each class page lists the talents I considered “interesting” from some perspective. An awful lot of classes only have 2-3 actual decisions to make along the tree.

(Also if you dig, I don’t know why the links on the “talent stats” page are broken. I kind of had a large personal crisis at this point and haven’t looked at the code in a few months.)

3 Likes
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Good wish, buuuuut: if they put those all in class talents then it (probably) removes the possibility of getting them further down the line on new troops like Webspinner.

I don’t disagree, just would have to balance it between classes and troops.

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Gonna float the idea I’ve had several times again:

I think the talents we have (which are really just recycled traits) are generally on the power level of 1st or 2nd traits for most troops. There are a handful that are worthy of 2nd or 3rd traits on legendaries/mythics. I think that pattern should be followed in all of the trees. This probably isn’t exactly what I’ve called for before but I think it’d be more interesting if every talent tree were:

  • Level 1: Some racial bonus on the power level of “gain stats”.
  • Level 5: Some kingdom bonus on the power level of “gain stats”.
  • Level 10: A racial/kingdom bonus.
  • Level 20: A “1st trait” powerlevel ability on par with legendary/mythic traits.
  • Level 40: Strong racial or kingdom bonuses.
  • Level 70: A “2nd trait” powerlevel ability like Empowered, Rock Solid, etc.
  • Level 100: A “3rd trait” ability such as Fortitude or Rising Shadows.

I want to reiterate most level 100 talents are garbage. The only reason Priest has an interesting one at all is it has so many other HP-oriented talents. There are many classes that stop gaining anything interesting as early as level 40, or only have an interesting choice in 2 places, etc.

That’s why I think the strong stuff should happen only at levels 70 and 100. You have to work hard to get there. You should feel rewarded. But only 5 trees have a talent that feels rewarding, one of those is only good on Priest, and at the moment I can’t even explain why I listed Lord of Storms as “interesting” (it was probably the 4/5 match trigger).

So 3 talent trees, spread across about 7 classes, have a reward for level 100. That’s terrible payoff for playing between 2,500 and 5,000 battles to unlock it!

6 Likes
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Yeah you’re right.

Honestly, I am not against the fact that Hero’s talents could be the same than troops 3rd traits (traits still should be different).

At least, give to the Wind tree the x3 versus Stunned (or whatever status).

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Or give the Wind tree something (almost anything really!) besides stats stats stats stats stats.

Doesn’t help that the other two are a summon and a miniature mana boost. … lame …

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I think the solution to the entire class problem is simple: appoint @Shimrra to oversee the overhaul.

QED!

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Things I’d like to see:

  • Status effects similar to “gain barrier on brown match” and “gain enchant on green match” for all other colors (and possibly skull matches), e.g. “gain bless on yellow match”. Since there are way more talent trees than colors, add a second color set for negative effects (e.g “stun random opponent on brown match”) to the same talent tier.
  • Race diversity. Allow different picks for the hero race, e.g. “the hero now counts as Orc”. Should be available early in the talent tree, for a choice between three different alternate races.
  • Talent effect magnitude based on champion class level. Should mostly apply to bonus stats, e.g. “+1 Armor for each 20 champion levels” instead of “+3 Armor”. Makes leveling up more interesting, there’s currently huge stretches where nothing improves at all.
  • Pick of preferred mana color for mastery purposes. Remove the fixed +20 bonus from the class, add a talent tier that adds +1 mastery for each champion level, based on which one of the three available color talents gets picked. Yes, that’s a total of +100 at max level, the net effect is still very small for anybody except beginner players. Possibly throw in +1 mana for matches of that color into the deal.
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Great review @Shimrra

There are a lot of redundant features/duplicated ones and a lot of things that don’t make much sense. Also there are so many good ones. The recent bandit nerf for example is potentially a buff with more of a chance of Sisters spawning (think Lust - charm - death of AI troop and yours). Sisters are better than bandits.

Bar anything else, there is a treadmill to levelling classes with a new one every month. Eventually we will get them all. A big issue for me is stopping playing a class that you got to 100 because there is another to level.

You stop because of that and because of the fact there is no gain from using a class past 100, other than if there is a fan-dangled talent that you want to use. Continue using it and you will get behind the curve of the class treadmill. The system sort of makes us have to level the next one, and it is tied to kingdom levelling.

Further incentive to go beyond 100 would be nice. Not something that oodles of spare time would reward, but something that achieves something. Not another talent level, not another stat bonus, but maybe something like a small ‘spendable’ currency for xxx wins and so on.

Reinstating class wins would be nice and maybe there could be some kind of bonus for reaching so many wins, but nothing that makes you any statistically stronger.

I’ll throw it out there and say xxxx wins +5% to chest pull shards just as an example.

I’d like to see some classes improved - Warlord is just wrong with the hero being Giant. Sorcerer hero class needs a buff. Knight is pretty poor. Oracle - could be better etc. Lightning Strike is awesome, maybe there could be a similar talent exploding a different gem colour on some classes. And as @Fourdottwoone suggests some status effect changes and others which give bones to levelling.

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Well I wasn’t going to say it… that quickly. I’d do it though!

This is probably the only major point I missed in my initial post, I did some brainstorming with my guildmates and the idea came up at least once or twice. (Of course you were there. Keeping everyone else informed!)

Probably forgot about it because it’s not related to my gigantic spreadsheet…

Ahem. I agree it’d be good to have something beyond 100, but nothing major. Maybe even just the sort of thing we get for leveling our hero past 1000 (an event key and some glory per level, for those not in the know) - it isn’t much but it’s something. I’d just be happy if it was tracked, god knows a ton of us have an overflowing amount of Titan games and so on.

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I’d like to see each class have its own unique talent tree, then the other 2(or even 3) could be the generics

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Great points made here

Stepping out side the boundaries of the OP here : weapons skills /traits /whatever they are called should be inactive when the hero is stunned… the only thing that’s affected (as always) is if the hero is frozen and the weapon skill gives an extra turn (which the hero then doesn’t get )

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Can’t say about weapons, but every hero ability (both traits and skill trees) is disabled when hero is stunned.

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Each class of the hero must bring bonuses: 25% gold, 50% souls or good luck!

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Do you plan to write reviews about Dervish, Plaguelord and Tidecaller?

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I’d love it, if so—even if the suggestions continue to go ignored, it’s still great to see what @Shimrra cooks up. Always great ideas (and one of the few forum-goers that l’m aware of actually getting a concrete game-improving suggestion into the game!)

1 Like