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Lets talk about the Orbweaver class

#18

Life and Death Orbweaver is particularly troublesome during Guild Wars because the troops you have access to in fighting it is reduced to a single color. Any troops that don’t have that color are useless, even if they were the best troop for it outside that color. Voice of Orpheus? Can’t use it on Green/Brown/Blue attack days.

Life and Death is a huge problem with Orbweaver because of several reasons that flow with each other:

  1. Orbweaver has a 35% chance when taking damage to summon a Giant Spider.
  2. Orbweaver is almost always played with Life and Death.
  3. Life and Death uses Black and Purple.
  4. Giant Spider transforms any color into Purple, but Giant Spider itself uses Green and Blue. Giant Spider also has Magic Link, gaining bonus Purple Mana for Life and Death. Giant Spider on top of funneling mana quickly into Life and Death summons a Spider Swarm, which uses Red Mana – which again doesn’t color block Life and Death at all.
  5. Orbweaver has Haunted Weave talent which webs a random enemy when summoning a troop. Now Orbweaver’s third trait reads: “35% chance when taking damage to summon a Giant Spider and web a random enemy.”
  6. Orbweaver has Stealth, so you can’t target it without stunning it.
  7. Life and Death Blesses you, so you can’t be stunned to remove the Stealth.
  8. Life and Death also enchants which is a ticking time bomb for when there aren’t gem matches. One purple match and a few turns later Life and Death is ready to cast again.
  9. Life and Death doesn’t just deal true damage, it also heals the caster.
  10. Then it Death Marks TWO targets.
  11. Then to pour salt on a wound, it drains mana from the first enemy troop, just in case they were full mana and ready to cast the next turn. Now you’re a turn behind getting the mana back to cast it.

If I was going to severely nerf the Orbweaver + Life and Death combination, I would take a nerf bat to the following things:

  1. Life and Death should have its damage reduced to (Magic/2)+1 instead of Magic+1. There’s no reason it needs to deal 1 true damage to two targets per Magic and heal for the same amount. That’s ridiculous.
  2. If it’s going to keep Bless, it should lose Enchanting. And I’m not sure why it has Lightning, that doesn’t fit its theme at all, it’s just an annoying way for it to ping off Barrier on the first two enemy troops.
  3. Orbweaver’s chance to summon should be more like 10-15%. Look at all the other summons in the game… Backup is 35% chance when an Ally dies. Hellsteed (Diabolist) and Wind’s Child of Sky are 25% chance when Ally casts a spell. Knowledge’s Golem Protector is 20% chance when you take damage (and Ancient Golem doesn’t loop at all!) Shadow’s Call is 20% chance when an enemy dies. Spawn of Hell is 50% chance when an enemy dies. Orbweaver is 35% chance when you take damage, and the troop it summons can summon more troops.
7 Likes
#19

I’d just add to that, that hero talents and weapon upgrades often do very small amounts of damage or apply damaging status effects, which means that orbweaver’s trait has a lot of opportunities to trigger

3 Likes
#20

I have to disagree that orbweaver nor life and death needs to be nerfed. In my experience, the life and death meta team, while OP, isn’t broken like the meta dragon eye team was. I play GoW on the Switch and we are behind you guys in the # of troops and weapons at our disposal yet many players have overcome the team in pvp. It is nowhere near what some players here have claimed in terms of numbers won. In Guild Wars, I had used it as one of my defense teams as well as faced it. While it won the most of all my defense GW defense teams (7/15), 2/3 of the players facing my team beat it. I’ve beaten it more times than I’ve lost against it myself.

1 Like
#21

You have put forth a great assessment as to the perfect storm that is the Orbweaver/Life and Death combo. I am not sure I am on board with nerfing the class or the weapon but I am not sure anymore. The lethality of Orbweaver is specifically tied to Life and Death. Without that single weapon, it is a rather mediocre class that gets almost no use. As such, I am not sure it is fair to nerf it. Perhaps changing the Familiar trait with something like Dark Ancestry might work. It would not really be a true nerf as an argument can be made that Dark Ancestry is actually better than Familiar in the vast majority of scenarios. But it would assist in toning done the L+D/Orbweaver grief so fights can no longer devolve into a spider-fest.
Regarding Life and Death, there are other threads about how and why the weapon should be nerfed. Again, I am not sure - I know many would like to see Bless or Enchant removed. I actually would try a smaller nerf to start if one is to be implemented. You indicated how the Draining weapon trait can be a major pain. Personally, there have been times I would have defeated an opposing L+D team if my front troop did not get drained by the spellcast. In fact, many of the most annoying weapons in the game either have Draining or Leeching. L+D, Norberts Turnip, and Secrets of the Crypt can all be a blight to face and all have the Draining trait. Essence of Evil and Jar of Eyes both have the Leeching trait. I would not mind seeing all of these weapons nerfed by taking those traits away. But I digress…
I believe that stripping the Draining trait from L+D could be more impactful in the whole Orbweaver/L+D meta than one might think. If that is not enough, then perhaps a larger nerf may be in order.

#22

And don’t forget #12: This bug on the known issue list:

  • If multiple skull matches are made by a spell, and the opponent Troop has a Trait which summons a troop when damage is taken, if the Troop is summoned infront of the Troop targetted by the skull damage, some of the skull matches won’t do damage.
2 Likes
#23

OP means over powered. Anything that’s OP should be nerfed. Otherwise the game is out of balance.
While everything that is under powered… Should be buffed. But we don’t have enough life times to ever see that happen.

1 Like
#24

OP ≠ broken

#25

Some great ideas here.

1- I really like this IF the devs stop neglecting soul generation and retroactively balance the summoning troops accordingly. I would think that troops that summon on cast would all have to also generate souls (with the interesting side effect of not being able to summon on their first cast).

2 - Could work if it doesn’t mess up Giant Spider too much (it really benefits from magic link; EDIT - I had Spider’s traits all wrong, I could dig stealthy being swapped for Big or Venomous; of course then it would only be fair to offer refunds for Giant Spider, since most people will want it to not be stealthy a la Bandit).

3 - I’m against removing the bless or death marks from L&D, which define the faction. I’m 50-50 on getting rid of the enchant affix - it’s what lets L&D teams get away with subpar mana generation (somewhat uniquely), but I don’t think L&D is an overpowered weapon in general. I think the random unearned summoning is stupid and unfun to play against, not the weapon.

4 - This is a creative solution, but I worry it’s too much of a gimp of Orbweaver, a really mediocre class otherwise. The main value of summons are as a comeback mechanic, and it would be weird for Orbweaver to lose its summons at the exact time it needs them most.

2 Likes
#26

I think the main reason people are asking for a change of the current LnD-orbweaver combo is not because it’s unbeatable, but rather because it’s extremely unfun to play against.

I would personally favor making giant spider stealthy, as suggested above, so after a certain number of enemy kills the hero can be targeted and disposed of.

#27

A suggestion I’ve made in the past is that summons should have diminishing returns on their percentage chance. Every time a trait successfully summons a troop, the chance of it working next time drops by, say, 1%.

Of course, the problem is arguably just Orbweaver’s trait, which is broken simply because 35% on damage received is insane. It completely sucks all fun out of the game. I end up having to retreat from fights that become impossible to end because of it. It shouldn’t be at the same rate as Backup. Drop it to 25% and I think major changes to summoning traits won’t even be needed.

#28

Love those coming here basically saying “L2P cuz my L&D def in gw get killed”…

Maybe the L2P should learn to pick days where to put defs, my yesterday def and 1 of the champ that got similar (but she made a mistake enemy realized AFTER she was 6-1 lol).

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Oh and just in case, i am not someone that got problem killing it and wanting it nerfed cuz cant beat it (proof below, last gw) STILL i recognize and have np admit that L&D + Orb is stupidly OP, while seem some others are gonna commit suicide if you take away their shiny toys (i dont have 3 nysha and my orb isnt even 100 or could do even better).

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3 Likes
#29

Some more thoughts on proposed solutions:

Such a harsh damage reduction would threaten to nerf L&D into irrelevance - there’s no way to boost the magic of elves, and the weapon itself has no damage-boosting effects. Other than possibly doing something with the enchant (which I discussed here), I don’t think we need to change the weapon for simply being good and requiring a different strategy to approach. The game would be very boring if we weren’t allowed to have different kinds of good weapons/troops/classes.

Since it’s a third trait, it has to be better than Golem Protector at a minimum. As I said above, I don’t think activation rates are really the solution, especially since the RNG in this game is unashamedly streaky.

That being said, I have far more of a problem with the Backup talent being 35% than I do with the Orbweaver Familiar trait. Backup randomly rewards my opponent for losing and punishes me for winning. I have control over how and when I damage my opponents, so activation of Familiar is under my control in most circumstances. (Even though I’m still being punished for doing damage, I can manage the risk, unlike with Backup.)

1 Like
#30

Thanks again @Dust_Angel. Green Day here on Xbox, and I used your team vs Goblins and Orbweaver. Except of course I swapped Titan for Frostmage. I ain’t gonna use no Blue Mana user. (Don’t tell me Titan is designed to use Blue either. I’m in denial)

It worked perfectly. Well, one cast of Glaive made two Giant Spiders, webbing both front troops, so that’s still a thing. But bunny’s blessed removed that. Much obliged.

And vs Gobbos, 1 Bandit did spawn, but unless it’s untraited, it doesn’t prevent focus fire the way a spider does. So, not buying your argument @Mana_Surgeon. But we both are entitled to our opinions, and it’s doubtful the devs would act on any proposed changes anyway.

#31

This happened to me as well except it was GW and it was over an hour long battle. I will never forget.

1 Like
#32

Well there’s nothing more enjoyable than spending what feels like an eternity killing multiple troops in guild wars, 47 to be exact against the orbweaver meta yesterday just to win one battle. I was so engrossed in the battle, I completely forgot about having fun and that’s what games are suppose to be, right? :joy:

2 Likes
#33

Without the L&D / arachnean weaver combo this topic wouldn’t exist. So it’s not a thread about the class per se; its a combination of class/weapon/support troop. Yes it’s annoying especially in wars but I cannot support any proposals to nerf this team. Threads like this completely wrecked dragon eye. In pvp you can ignore it and remind yourself that the majority of players CHOOSE to set annoying defs like goblins and L&D. It’s not worth all this drama when it’s only relevant a few times a month in guild wars. It’s not as if it’s a big issue when nearly everyone is chasing Geoff’s carrot in explore.

3 Likes
#34

I couldn’t care less for guild wars, I was pointing out how much fun it all provides for the game :+1:

#35

I wasn’t sorry to see dragon’s eye nerfed, although I don’t think it’s a comparable situation, the dev’s actions were mainly motivated by how easy it made high-level delves.

And maybe less people would choose explore over PvP if defense teams such as the Lnd-orbweaver one were addressed more quickly, instead of letting them grief players for months/years.

1 Like
#36

The community were crying in their cornflakes about dragon eye. It got nerfed and suddenly became even more potent in pvp. More crying ensued and it was always about pvp not delve. I wanted dragon eye to remain because it’s a great leveller for new players across all game modes. But those who complained didn’t care about that. The end result was that dragon eye was castrated to an unusable state. If that’s what you want for L&D then carry on.

1 Like
#37

with the last 2 new hero classes not having stealthy, I’d much rather any change be done to Orbweaver and not Life and Death.

3 Likes