Okra'Nos the Sleeper

First, a history tour.

Elementalist is the most hated class, due to its third trait. It stuns, freezes, entangles and burns a random enemy on 4+ matches, which usually means that the entire team gets bogged down unless impervious. Bogged down actually isn’t quite that bad, while it cripples skull based teams it still allows collecting mana and casting spells.

Dissonance is the most hated design idea that never came to pass. It’s a trait that silences a random enemy on 4+ matches, which usually means that the entire team becomes entirely useless unless impervious. Silence beats anything Elementalist does by miles, because all a fully silenced team can do is make gem matches, which don’t do anything because silenced troops can’t collect mana. Quite thankfully, Dissonance was considered way too toxic to ever get released.

Second, an observation.

The upcoming September mythic is currently planned to have a trait that curses and silences a random enemy on 4+ matches. Curse not only means that silence will pierce all immunities (except invulnerable), it also makes it next to impossible to get rid of silence again. This is basically Dissonance on steroids, it can even shut down teams right at the start of the battle, for the entire battle.

Third, a prediction.

There will be a shitstorm of never before seen proportions in a bit more than a week. It won’t take players long to realize it isn’t fun playing battles where you can’t do anything other than passing your turn over and over again. Against goblins, you can at least lean back and hope you’ll get to do something after a minute of extra turn spam. For this one, you need to keep making moves for the battle to progress, and each move will do absolutely nothing.

There will be some harsh nerf to make Gems of War playable again. Which will just fuel the shitstorm, because just about every player will have spent a fortune to obtain that troop, using saved up resources and real money. The official stance will be that no matter how useless the troop is after the nerf, it’s a “sideway change that doesn’t warrant any refunds”. And since “everybody has received so many other fantastic low rarity troops as part of opening thousands of chests”, it would actually be “a disservice towards players to roll anything back”.

Fourth, a recommendation.

Change that trait to curse and silence a fixed troop on 4+ matches, either the front one or the back one. Before it releases.

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cant be a shitstorm when there are so much less audience than 4 years ago

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whats the point of playing dices all the time when we initially loved this game for actually affecting the result? Stop switching reasons

There are ways to neuter Okar’nos and make that third trait irrelevant. It’s no different than a huge percentage of the other troops that have an obnoxious third trait or an obnoxious spell. Unlike a lot of these other “annoying” troops, Okara’nos comes without defensive protections against all that nasty stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if certain parties look for reasons to complain, going so far as to pre-emptively complain about stuff as to plant their flag before somebody else beats them to it…..

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Just pointing out, Okra’Nos deals damage and summons troops, making it a good addition to almost any team anyway. It’s not gonna be niche, rarely seen. Odds are that anyone with it will use it WITH elementalist, for maximum effect. So, match 4 gems and you curse, burn, stun, freeze, entangle and silence a troop, possibly all on the same troop at once. And get an extra turn. Combine that with troops that can match gems several times in a row, and the enemy team can get one turn and cripple your entire team, with no way to undo it.

If we don’t want to nerf this troop, and we don’t want a “massive shitstorm” backlash, we need some counter. A troop or several troops that can stand against this tactic, or better actively combat it and do well against this troop. Like godslayers against bosses. So do we have anything like that? Not really. Can we get something like that ASAP? It’ll be a while before we get a new troop that might fit that slot, and probably would need swapping into the list of planned releases. I’d suggest an immortal that can cleanse all allies. Kinda like beetrix, but different. Either it’s spell cleanses or the third trait cleanses a random ally other than itself, or have it trigger at the start of turn instead of when matching 4. Something different so it’s not just beetrix on steroids, and adding to the power creep.

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It’s also brown/purple/red, meaning that it’s gonna be used it two of the three middle ring regions, since they are always green, brown and purple (at least on playstation).

I mean, it’s nice that Okra’Nos has no immunities, so at least you can try to stop it before it triggers it’s trait, but if you fail, you are pretty screwed, with no way to combat it.

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The problem is that this particular nasty stuff could possibly already trigger on turn 0, so your battle might start out with some of your troops already silenced. Even without that, it will make Elementalist + Okra’Nos an omnipresent team players will consider a terrible experience to fight against, especially since Okra’Nos brings a lot more on top to the table than just the third trait.

Considering that “complaining” may take quite a bit of time researching and writing things up, I totally understand that most parties prefer to stay silent and just move on once a service game has reached the point where it can no longer be enjoyed.

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tell me exactly why do u like to waste your time on the most grinding mode in the game (pvp) for useless potion animations over and over again, make a list if u need.

Also you might wish to tell us how u love gacha approach for immortals chests being flooded with easily available and farmable silver marks/idols which take place of the most deficit resource ingame atm.

Also would love to see any outplay which increases your chances of winning against takshaka+elementalist when you have no 4-turn on the starting board.

Games meant to be gambling? No. I expect myself affect the result somehow and there are things I dont like. U think those are fine, but some people brightly thought the same about american president. World is a beatiful mess.

There’s no shortage of other troops – either that troop independently or used in conjuction with an Elementalist Hero – about who you can say the same. Plus the handful that screw you if said troop can just fill its’ mana once even without an obnoxious trait. (Chrysantherax anybody?)

Yes, the third trait can be a headache, especially combined with the Elementalist. But it’s hardly the only troop for who the third trait is a headache. And there are other counters available in PvP, such as the growing number of Immortal troops (plus Enraged Kurandara, Maelstrom Drago’nath, et cetera) who are Invulerable and not just Impervious and therefore immune to curse, all those status effects, lethal damage, et cetera.

My first thought when I saw Okra’nos show up in the spoilers was “he’d be a real monster if only he did true scatter damage instead of the ordinary type”. It’s not that I don’t believe he’ll be effective as he is or that he won’t be a challenge in many game modes when combined with a team that can accentuate what he does well. But there are an awful lot of troops about who you can already say the same thing.

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v

As usual, it’s not the trait alone, but the ability to loop near-endlessly, and the whatever else you pair it with that actually creates the problem.

Remember how this already tends to happen with both Elementalist and Wand of Stars. (And don’t forget the reign of terror that was Chalcedony and friends.) Toss in this new predicted trait and tried-and-true QB and any attempt to “shut it down” now gets Cleansed off under the very same conditions in which this new trait triggers, buying you at most one turn of reprieve.

First sounds like a good idea, they are the first in line to collect Mana and in many teams it is simply the dreaded Wand of Elementalist occupying that slot. Compare Sylvanimora’s third trait, it Entangles the one troop where a loss of Attack matters the most.

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they nerfed it to

40% chance to Curse and inflict Terror on a random Enemy, when my turn begins.

good job! *Hancock meme*

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is that real? wouldn’t surprise me. If so ugh. so instead of Curse + Silence that has to land a 4/5 gem match first and can hit the same troop multiple times, there’s now a free automated chance trait without touching the board that can mess a player’s team up or even lead to a free turn 0 troop loss. Great…

On the bright side, I guess no one is going to use the troop, so I don’t have to worry about it.

Glad to see they changed it to something less insane, but the new trait is pretty weak. I’d prefer 100% chance or something. Terror already has a low chance to do anything, why have a low chance to inflict it. And it’s only once per turn, so it’s not like you can spam it a bunch and guarantee it hits eventually.

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Well, not turn 0. The trait wouldn’t trigger until the enemy’s first turn, and then it could inflict terror on the last troop (40% chance x 25% chance to hit that troop), and then that troops could flee next turn (10% chance). So a 1% chance to lose a troop on your second turn?

Still sucks if it happens, but not anywhere near as bad as potentially starting your second turn with all your troops cursed and silenced.

Kinda, yeah. Might see some use in underspire and events with restricted team choices, but otherwise not really.

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It’s in spoilers now, but who knows, everything is a subject to change)

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sorry, I meant turn 0 in the sense the trait will happen and then activate before you can respond in any way.

A lot of Kingdom teams are held together by duct tape, so shoving things out of order (and giving curse for an Elementalist to really stick things) is not great.

I’ve seen Death Mark do some really dumb things, so I don’t love these luck moments ever.

I would love to play test against silence on 4/5 gem match first without the curse. I think there’s enough tools to get by now a days.

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Ruined another potential troop!

Thank you for starting this topic!

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Yea, some people watched Scrooge as a kid.

And thought it was an instructional video for life.

It’s supposed to be a game, people treat it like taxes .

No one can have fun.

When we have a Karakoth restriction in GWs.

I hope that the people that wanted the nerf, arnt gonna come on here and say. Omg we couldn’t win, bad team restrictions.

Because you did it to yourself, you was only thinking of one game mode , when asking for nerf.

Without nerf, this would of been really good in GWs attack.

So pleased remember who you are, and don’t be hypocritical when Karakoth happens. Thankyou.

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This is why we can’t have nice things.

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