Okra'Nos the Sleeper

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

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.

8 Likes
2

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

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4

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

5

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…..

2 Likes
6

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.

3 Likes
7

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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8

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.

4 Likes
10

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.

13

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.

1 Like
14

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’s the real problem.

Remember how 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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