But what you suggest will just make these things worse. Thick Head will not stop you from being frozen or drained, but it will stop you from stunning Mab, BD or Wraith whose traits will freeze and deathmark you.
2 Likes
To throw my 2 cents in: how about making it a complete protection for the troop that has the trait and a chanced immunity for all allies (non-stackable)?
So, with thick head for example, the troop having that trait is totally immune to stun, all its allies have a n (n = 30%?) chance of ignoring it instead of being affected. If a second Troop has thick head, two of the troop are immune, the others are still just 30% resistant… (may be any other percentage ofc)
Skull immunity.
Totally not OP. still can be stunned. not that different from entangle, but can be use against unit with impervious.
i disagree, too op. just try to imagine seeing more of gorgotha’s 75% around in more troops…
no need totall immunity that 75% will already be too much
I’m talking about running sub par troops in my own team to counter the meta.
Adding one of the single immunity troops would weaken a meta team.
And you’re assuming everyone will use it the same way you do? Most likely they will abuse it in defense (where it helps more than on invade) which will results in a stronger defense meta, the opposite of what you seek.
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I think your idea is on the right track. Perhaps they could fix barrier to stop all the damage from BDs skulls and incorporate that into your idea.
I also believe that his mana is too cheap. If they could slow him down some, along with his sidekick Manticore x2, then maybe the matches would not be so brutal.
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I’m wondering what would happen with “unresolved” skull matches that are still connected in 3+ patterns… Skulls would just disappear?
Maybe an easier way to achieve the desired effect could be:
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Whenever an ally’s Armour is broken, immediately grant Barrier to all allies. → Not as perfect as you would like i think, but still good in the sense that the first attack would be soaked/negated, but the remaining skulls could still kill your first troop, but not damage your second.
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Whenever an ally’s Armour is broken, immediately remove all skulls in the board and give 1 life boosted by skulls removed to the first ally. → Still would need the restrictions you suggested that at least 10+ armor need to be removed/destroyed to trigger.
I fear that these triggers can also add some more trouble when people chose to use these effects on defense.
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If we had a trait that only activates on when the armour hits zero, that would be nice.
Check out this bullshit:
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So Barrier won’t be part of the solution any time soon…
My opening post idea was to simply immediately steal the turn when BD breaks your Armour, in an ‘interrupt’ manoeuvre… this would give you control of the board with all the skulls sat on it…
Thinking further, it could:
- steal the turn and end BD’s spell when Armour breaks but before skulls are created on the board (so they don’t get created)
- steal the turn with the skulls on the board and not resolve them - instead they resolve when you make your own move as if you also matched them
- steal the turn with the skulls on the board and remove any matching skulls with no effect
- steal the turn and immediately reset the board, removing all gems and letting new gems drop in as if you’d done it (like with Abhorath’s spell)
Item 4 seems more feasible to be implemented i think.
easiest fix is to make barrier block all the damage that occurs in one instance. So that it would break the barrier, but not his armor. they would then be able to do damage with skulls after the cast, but it wouldn’t kill the troop through the barrier. Also you shouldn’t be able to break armor through barrier, that is retarded imo. If barrier could counter bone dragon it would go a long way to balancing things, and also skull spam teams.
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Then you are using a sub par troop on defence, which is generally a bad idea.
I really wish the game could have some kind of proving ground for ideas.
Hearthstone’s Tavern brawls can develop a meta within a day with a much larger card pool.
Path of exile has things called Leagues that run for a few months with something that drastically changes how you play the game.
The only way this argument is gonna end is with examples and results.
Barrier needs to be fixed. PERIOD.
But if you want a counter to BD how about this:
Trait: Hulk Smash
If a troops armor and life are reduced to zero in a single turn, troop is revived with +5 to all stats
If it helps you win, it’s not sub par any more.
Deep Borer was never considered a very good troop on its own, yet when you combine it with BD or Famine it can be surprisingly effective on defense, and so has joined the meta as part of the most used defense teams. Any other troop that can help gather wins (even if it’s by virtue of a single trait) can and will join the meta.
Stealing the turn sounds like an even worse and more irritating solution than Mana Shield (and its extension to impervious) was to Mab.
We don’t need to break a subset of the game to get a good counter. Rewarding getting whomped and forcibly breaking turns just sounds like another thing people will use to annoy each other on defense. Then we’ll be back here in a month complaining about that.
The entire team is pretty much useless if you pull bone dragon to the front and entangle it. Right now you need at least two troops to do that. If you want a contrived counter, how about just combine them?
Forest Lights
10 yellow/green
Ultra-Rare/ Fey
Traits: Fast, Stealthy, Agile
Pull an enemy to the front, and entangle them.
No damage, not much better than Khopeshi or Dust Devil, low enough rarity and cost for the general public to use it, and it counters bone dragon spammage in one team slot. You still have 3 team slots for damage.
I believe barrier is working as intended at present, but yes, it should also probably function like Agile does, blocking any number of simultaneous skull hits (but subsequent cascades are fair game).
2 Likes
That would be perfectly reasonable, though I’m not keen to see barrier-spam become the new meta. Does anyone remember the 4x Celestasia loop? (Never again, please!)
In contrast to @KrudlerTheHorse’s video above, I posted one of Agile completely dodging a similar (but slightly less extreme) skull spam:
Agile only goes 25% of the time, so it’s not nearly as reliable as a perfect barrier would be, but barrier seems to not be as good as it should be…
I had something like happen to me even though my troops had about a third of the armor yours do. The attack and health values more than doubled if not tripled. I thought it was a glitch because I had faced the same team before and the skulls formed were much less and more like I had seen in several other games.
WRT Courage’s third trait, it is WAY over powered particularly combined with the Bone Dragon. Skull matches are relatively common in a match anyway and is a favored move of the AI to allow an increase of 3 to both attack and health. Justice has a similar trait, but requires the enemy to die to get it. The max benefit the third trait should give is add 2 to either attack or health, not 3 to both.
As it is now I will not fight a line up with 2 Courages and a Bone Dragon. Even 1 Courage and a Bone Dragon is dicey.
BTW I thought the barrier blocked all simultaneous skull matches, not just a single match. At least that is how it has appeared to me. I had seen times in which there were multiple simultaneous skull matches like with a Bone Dragon and my Winter Knight sufferred no damage because of the barrier.
A thought I just had that would help is any bonus to attack has to wait until after the present impulse is complete (after the cascade is done) so you have to wait until later in the turn or a later turn to enjoy the benefit.
Chip damage from incidentals (exploded/destroyed skulls, multi component spells) traits (death, famine) poison, burn, and skull cascades all would still drop barrier, as well as lethal damage and devour just straight ignoring it. Even without skull spam teams, at present, I can mostly ignore the presence barrier on the enemy team.
I never had trouble with team Stacy, and even being pretty low level at the time it was a “thing”. And now stuff like Dragon Cruncher and Queen Mab exist. Even so, that one was more about the near-infinite self looping having a ten gem spawn and less about the barrier. If she was put back in her pre-nerf 10 gems state even with the proposed barrier buff, you’d be able to dispatch the entire team with hilarious speed once she dropped a turn regardless of how much life they buffed to, even with barriers up. I’m still of the opinion she got a bit over-nerfed, but that is another discussion entirely.