Name might need work, but the idea is that the troop loses mana at the start of their turn. I think one or maybe two mana would be balanced, making it like the negative version of enchanted (kinda like curse vs blessed, but without cancelling and removing each other).
I’m imagining an effect like a drip falling out of the mana orb in the corner of the troop portrait in battles, but falling in towards the troop, so it doesn’t obscure the shield info.
I think it’d be a great counter to empowered troops if you had troops that could apply this effect at the start of a match (empowered themself or with traits that trigger at the start of turns or the start of battle), meaning that at the start of the enemy turn their empowered troop loses 1-2 mana and can’t immediately cast. Obviously troops with immune traits and counter-status effects (enchanted or blessed) wouldn’t be affected, but it would at least give another strategy to counter certain playstyles that can be difficult to deal with.
I feel like spiritwalker and spirit gems were supposed to help counter empowered but they aren’t as reliable and the gems can really backfire.
What do you think?
The only way you’d be able to cast a troop with this effect on them (which, of course, would not work on any troop that’s invulnerable to status effects) would be to get a 4/5 match to fill their mana and get an extra turn, otherwise they’d constantly be stuck with insufficient mana to cast.
But this wouldn’t stop looping Journey Troop teams, because that’s how they operate.
Yeah, exactly. So, like silence but easier to get around. Rather than having to cleanse it from your troops, you can counter it by getting an extra turn while gaining mana. And it would stop looping teams from getting started but not from looping once they started. That’s what freeze is for. There’s no point in adding another status effect that’s just the same as an existing one. I was trying to think of something different. With the addition of terror (which is like a worse version of death mark, because only one troop can die/flee while the others just shuffle around), it seems like the devs want to add more and I thought it would be good to come up with an idea they could add.
I’ve thought about something like this status effect a few times in the last few years and the conclusion I end up at constantly is that for however much I’d want to see that on offense, it would lead to a very unfun play pattern on defense that outweighs any benefits.
The closest experience in-game currently would be a battle in guild wars versus a doomed book. The doomed book would cast on you, not looping, but refilling its mana entirely. Just when it looks like you have a chance, one of your troops is still frozen by snap freeze and the troop full on mana that would have saved you suddenly lost 2 mana so it’s not full at all and is stuck taking mana, thereby letting the doomed book cast again and successfully loop on the second attempt.
It’s a bad beat feel.
At least with silence, you know you’re screwed for a few turns and they’ve managed to keep silence as a semi-rare effect on top of a lot of counterplays available between impervious and bless.
I’m sure there’s some sort of variation that may work some day, but not as a reverse-enchant effect.