You wanna talk about real problems and holes they’ve dug themselves into, try Silence…
We have Disease, which only halves mana gain. Compare with the utter nightmare that is Silence and you’ll see Disease just doesn’t measure up. Which is why we’ve had almost no new troops with Silence.
I disagree simply because creating more troops with certain traits doesn’t suddenly mean they stop creating new traits, spells, and different troops. The problem is they usually only give 2-3 troops a certain spell or trait. That considerably limits how effective that trait is and what kind of team you can make.
In other words I mean that usually the troops they give a lot of the good traits or spells to somewhat stink. So then we’re limited to 1 good troop having the trait or spell we want. They could keep cranking out troops with those spells, while also still creating more spells, traits, and troops.
Which I completely understand they’re on a timeline and have to crank out as many troops as possible. So they just try to cover a broad area with a certain number of troops and move on. Hopefully as Sirrian has said they tried to get to 300 troops as fast as possible, they can now slow down and take more time with troops. Giving us effective troops for different traits.
Another thing is typically you’ll have only 1 or 2 troops created with the traits you need, but not the mana color you need. This is also something that can be remedied and created. If I need an impervious troop in my team, I should not be limited to certain color schemes. All our choices should be open and broad.
I agree:
Wraith is a pain in the donkey, but for me it’s the freeze not the death mark that’s the trouble.
It’d be easier if any of the Impervious troops were really worth using. But the better fix is to calm down Wraith by taking one of those touch traits off.
While we’re at it, fix BD and Courage…
But that’s just the issue as i see it. They need to create new and more relevant troops, but sometimes it’ll be a nightmare troops/trait/effect like it was with Manticore for example… Also as Shimrra already put:
So, in the future i fear that more “Manticores” and “Wraiths” are bound to come simply because the devs are limiting themselves as the powercreep increases. But well, as we can’t simply see the major plans they have so i’ll agree to disagree with you in a fair manner because maybe they already considered both of our points.
I don’t think Wraith should get adjusted. Yes, it is a little over the top, mostly due to the Deathmark/Chill Touch combination.
I feel like many of our “Tank” troops don’t handle statuses well.
I’d like to see some Tanks that get really enhanced by having a status applied to them. Apply a status to them, and they transform into something much more dangerous.
I think the rush they put on themselves was the main reason we saw those nightmare troops. I hope. They painted with a broad brush, instead of taking their time it feels like. Fingers crossed my friend!
Hey @HKdirewolf, speaking of Death Mark, CREEPING Death does AOE damage and has a chance to kill two troops instantly. Nothing CREEPING about it.
While Arrow of Slaying does damage to one troop and that’s it.
SMH
I still think that one is fair play. If I think Death should be allowed to have it, I can’t knock another that does the same.
But I think most, if not all of us here, agree that we have a buffing problem right now. It seems like almost everything in the game needs buffed, (exaggeration sure) but A LOT of things. As I said above though, hopefully the confirmation from Sirrian saying they have some planned is a sign of things to come in the future. Also now that hopefully so much time and resources aren’t going into fixing server issues.
So they have to decide how they want to approach that. Buff a lot of things or rein the power in, further balancing the game. Which probably would be more effective than just buffing everything.
Certainly, if they’re not going to nerf the dozen or so blatantly obvious things, then buffing the other 250 is in order.
I was just pointing out that they’re not being very consistent with the mechanic. Creeping Death already does AOE and is purple so goes with Sorcerer. It’s powerful WITHOUT Death Mark.
On the other hand, the Arrow of Slaying doesn’t even slay a War Goat.
“Certainly, if they’re not going to nerf the dozen or so blatantly obvious things, then buffing the other 250 is in order.”
This! A million times this. It NEEDS to be a priority for this game ASAP and should be top of the list for the developers once they’ve sorted out the server migration.
I have used Death Mark a lot to get easy kills in Warlord IV Explore. I’ve used this team:
Herald of Chaos
Revenant
Valkyrie
Giant Spider
It’s pretty ridiculous. I got a lot of Death Mark kills.
There are days where I wished that Death Mark functions like Hunter’s Mark. But instead of doubling skull damage, it doubles spell damage.
Might be even worse, but it’s just an idea of mine.
I proposed the same thing a couple of months ago. Death MARK seems to me to be better suited to putting a target on someone’s back, not killing them outright.
“Marked for death” means exactly what it says - there’s a target on your back or a price on your head.
Alas, my suggestion wasn’t very well received.
Honestly, I’d like to see it combined with Death, taking into account @HKdirewolf previous suggestion of only Death having Death Mark.
What if Death had a different power, say Soul Extraction, that kills instantly.
And then you could have the Death Mark mechanic be more like Hunter’s Mark (have troops who double extra damage to Death Marked).
And you could combine it with Death and say any troop with Death Mark has a 75% chance of instantly being killed by Soul Extraction, in lieu of the normal percentages.
That could actually be a new trait for the future. That and an armor trait that reduces spell dmg by 50%.
If my math is right a single cast of death mark, assuming it isn’t cured, reapplied, or extended by another debuff, has a 30.9% chance of killing the target before wearing off naturally.
There is also a 30% chance of any debuff not wearing off naturally before turn 5.
My suggestion would be to replace Death Mark with something akin to Final Fantasy’s Doom. You get a 5 turn counter, after which you die. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 gold. It would have a 70% chance to wear off naturally, giving it the same kill chance as current Death Mark. It gives you 4 turns to cast a cleanse to get rid of it or to win the match before going splat, but it also prevents the very cheap feeling of getting sniped by a Wraith. Would need to make sure that reapplication didn’t reset the 5 turn counter though.
Why are you all coming up with spells that do the exact same thing death mark already does? lol that’s not creative.
The problem is with the skull damage hit applying death mark. Not death mark itself.
The skull hit needs to be removed. Not saying anyone isn’t entitled to an opinion at all, but just making spells that do the same thing as current is pointless. It’s basically just giving it another name.
I think if they remove death mark in it’s current form it would be a step back and a real shame. It’s a fear mechanic more than anything. Spells are fair play, but spells added with skull hits are just cheesy af.
I disagree. Application on skull hit is fine (although very strong for a common…), it is the 10% chance of instant death with no recourse that is the problem.
Oh so you’re just saying people need to be made aware of when they’re troops are going to die, as opposed to just at a random time?
Not saying that can’t be added, but it still gets to the same destination.
And really doesn’t fix anything to boot.
If you don’t see a problem with a player being able to apply a deadly spell onto you with a simple 3-skull match at the start of the match, then i’m sort of curious about the standards here.
Especially whenever real-time pvp becomes a thing. No thank you.
Cut off one head, two more grow back.
It is the unmitigated randomness that, to me, makes it feel worse. Maw’s devour for example, it “felt” like it was really high because it was random. Whenever the AI got to eat you on a skull match, it felt cheap, especially when unavoidable on first turn. But devouring on spell, not so bad as you could take steps to mana deny and see it coming. Likewise with Death Mark. I can’t allow the enemy a single skull match because of that small chance my top troop will just die instantly. But if I knew I had 4-5 turns, and felt like I could win before it killed me or get off a cure, that gives me the ability to react. The player gets a bit of control back and not “bad rng, flee and start another match”
You still run the risk of making Death Mark useless with that mechanic. A lot of teams kill before that or cleanse.
I’d argue that it is the unknown that makes it so deadly.
As you mentioned Maw there, Maw was effectively killed in regular play when they nerfed him. Only thanks to that recent event was he majorly used.
Having all these troops “killed” in regular play over and over is exactly why we have so few outliers now. Death Mark is a substantial unique trait. Spell application on skull-hit however is not. It is not tied to wraith. It’s nothing special and thus should not exist. There’s nothing to be missed if it went away.
Just my opinion and argument here. The many will outweigh the few as always, and the devs will do whatever they want at the end of the day.