Ok Look Kafka. If all you’ve gotten from this is “people are upset with a weapon and a class” you are intentionally ignoring what’s being said.
Here’s the fact: Many people do not like the new pvp. Period. Change it back.
There’s zero variety. If you are going to have the hero included then randomly generate the defense team. Boom easy fix. Having it be the last team that the player fought with just leads to the identical teams we are seeing now. It’s like you guys don’t play test your own game sometimes.
In addition, nerfs should be off the table. For one very simple reason. How about you buff the ridiculous amount of outdated and useless classes??? Instead of knocking the best class down, put in some actual effort as devs and rework old classes! Give us a reason to use something other than elementalist-and not because you broke it.
PS: My account is 1437 and I have almost all troops. I could easily compete for top spot in my bracket…however after playing about 10 fights a day I get totally burnt out because its a GRIND. And against the same team. Today in red you basically see variations of stellarix, tak, and wand of stars. I use wand of stars and 3 taks back. My matchs go one of two ways:
I fill wand up and get an extra turn first, and I usually win. (unless they get their wand filled up and fill stellarix then its a tossup
They get their wand filled first, and I usually lose. So basically today was a coin flip.
You’ve essentially turned every pvp match into guild wars. I know some people like guild wars, but I think there’s an equal amount who absolutely detest it.
Or better yet as I just said: Buff the outdated classes. Many of the classes are from a time where everything was less powerful, and have never been updated. But…I think that would take some real work, so I doubt we ever see that
PLEASE please don’t. You modify the Wand & Elementalist combo, someone will dig out a different obnoxious weapon. Wand is popular - but it’s not the only annoying weapon by far. Nerfing one class and one weapon will only make things harder elsewhere in the game - and will not solve the issue with PvP. You nerf Wand, people will start using doomed books. You nerf doomed books (please don’t), people will turn to all the explode+summon weapons, you nerf those too…? Please, please don’t go down that rabbit hole. In turn, if you change Elementalist to be less reliable, you will destroy our win capabilities in high level events (and now that most events don’t have medals and have 16 tier rewards, not 12, Elementalist is a must from a certain point in the week) and in late stages of Underspire. We are frustrated with the number of battles and difficulty of events as it is, we don’t need to be crippled in one more way.
Even with 6 to 8 buffs maxed out, playing either Blood Frenzy region is now a crap shoot. I’ve lost more matches this week alone trying to run Tier 3 battles than since the new PvP was released.
Like everyone else has said already it’s a $%&t show with Wand of Stars, Takshaka, Stellarix, and Diamantina. It’s the same teams over and over again. That type of grind isn’t fun. Now add the fact that playing a Blood Frenzy boost all AI stats by 50% and now Stellarix who has ran away on a loop fest with the Wand of Stars is pounding you with 200 damage loop and repeats all on the AI’s first turn.
And if all this wasn’t bad enough now the gold payouts have pretty much tanked to the point there isn’t really a good reason to play PvP anymore. Prior to Monoliths most of my T3 battles paid out around 10500 to 13500 gold. Now I’m playing several T3 rounds where I’m only pulling 3000 to 4000 gold and if I want a chance at a higher payout I have to pay a 1 gem then another 3 to 5 low payments rounds.
Elementalist had always been a problem. Same as the good old times Orbweaver long time. Wand of Stars can easily take it anywhere because it has all the 6 colors. With the Class the Barrier clearly has to be removed or maybe the last trait. And with Wand of Stars the Blessing has to be removed or only given to the other troops but not to the Hero himself. That’s how I would see it needing to be changed to make it fit.
Elementalist class is one of the few things that help lower level players in Guild Events, Delves and Explores. So if it gets nerfed it will really mess up a lot of other game modes. If possible only restrict it in PVP.
A wild guess (and I think it is quite educated, but still a guess): in the old PvP, we were shown opponents from a pool of players that recently played PvP. In the new PvP, it is the same, but only players from a specific region are in the pool in that region. Which already cuts the number of higher-level / higher-team-score players in the pool, as they spread out across the regions - they can’t play everywhere at once, to be included in the pool. Then, on top of it, blood frenzy attracts all players - double VP is not something we can easily ignore - so the pool grows, but there aren’t more high level/higher-team-score players in the pool, there’s a finite number of them for me that can produce a 90-base battle. So the pool seems to be populated by lower level players, giving less gold per battle and less base VP (it’s just that now I see more 50-ish base VP battles, while last week blood frenzy was dominated by 25-35 base VP battles). if you go outside blood frenzy regions, the gold gain is higher again. I’m lvl 1738.
So… I think it’s not an intentional thing, but a side-effect of how the pool of players to be offered is designed to work. Actually, the very same thing happened in all regions during Vault events since the changes - whenever people start hunting for pet gnomes, gold gain per battle drops like a stone
HOWEVER. The worse issue I’m seeing is that I can’t seem to win a 90-base VP battle in a blood frenzy region. I wasted 10 Victory Talismans this week already, it feels like there’s no point in trying to get them, because I’m losing these battles anyway. AI is just getting to loop and killing me in a few moves without giving up its turn, while I rarely get to take more than one move. The enemy stats on these battles are just bloated to the extreme
The feedback on this thread has been very mixed. I understand the attitude against nerfs, but the elementalist class has been the center of debate since it launched. There’s a reason it gets used more than others in PvP, and a reason it’s the only one being discussed as needing nerfs/balancing. It’s too powerful. Compared to other classes, it inflicts way more negative status effects on enemies, way faster, and has a combination of traits that - while fine on their own - amplify this problem to another level.
Wand of stars is a good weapon, but it’s not a guaranteed loop. Like beetrix and others, it has a high chance of looping, but when it misses it gives a great setup for the enemy. High risk, high reward. That’s fine. The problem is when a player uses a good weapon with an overpowered class, it makes that weapon seem overpowered. The same is true for at least a dozen other weapons, e.g. essence of evil.
And this is good, in general. But when one thing is overperforming, it’s sometimes necessary to nerf it. Just as long as it doesn’t get over-nerfed, like journey troops did.
I put disclaimers all over that post for a reason
That was a dot point summary off the top of my head of the discussion that happened in this thread last night, I was dot pointing what you were all talking about. It was not my report to the team, it was not meant to contain every minute detail.
I probably shouldn’t have said “want Elementalist reviewed” I should have written “Discussion about Elementalist in PVP” or something else - the point is, the wording only matters in that I didn’t mean to freak you out, that post was for you all here, not for anyone else.
I take it everyone is having a hell of a hump day (or Tuesday for those not yet at Wednesday yet).
I could definitely use another coffee, can I grab one for anyone else here?
Iced mocha for me, cheers
Edit: I just realised this post was a reply to Kelana, sorry Kelana, this was not meant as a direct response to you, I guess I hit reply on your post instead of the main reply button for the thread haha
We have already seen how well the journey troop nerf has gone so nerfing is clearly not the answer. This will just cause issues in all othe game modes where for example element is the only way some restrictions can be made workable for a whole guild roster to obtain rewards.
We lost 2 long time guild members today and several announced their incoming retirement from the game already due to the recent fiasco.
So if the game is coming to an end, please just make it official and everyone can look for a replacement game instead of hoping for better times that most likely will never happen. Thanks. @Kafka
Yeah wand of stars with a free bless and loop potential is not any kind of overpowered, it’s just about the same power as any blasting/summoning weapon, that’s right. Those are our high skill players debates, ladies and gentelmen.
OK, no. Really no.
Elementalist is overpowered in every mode. It’s just that most modes are unbalanced and badly designed from a player POV, in order to force players to spend money. So having an OP class we can use to make those badly balanced modes easier is a relief. I get that. I agree with that. But nothing exists in a vacuum in this game, so if the class is too strong and makes events easier, it also makes PvP battles harder when it’s used by the enemy team.
It needs fixing in PvP because it is too strong everywhere and it is obvious in PvP.
Just nerf the third trait to inflict a random status effect, from the choice of four. Just one. That’s the only change needed. But it means that the class isn’t throwing out status effects faster than pretty much anything else in the game by doing FOUR at once, over and over.
Just to prove my point, before you argue that nobody thinks it’s too strong outside PvP:
Lots of players are pointing out that elementalist is stronger than any other class. And that applies to every mode. And they like it because it makes those modes easier, which is needed (especially for newer players), because the game is badly balanced.
Let’s just be honest. We all KNOW elementalist is OP - that’s exactly why it gets used so much. We all know that in order to bring it in line with other classes, it needs to be nerfed. We all know that there’s also a lot of other classes that need balancing by buffing (a lot of buffing in some cases, the classes are wildly unbalanced), but ideally they can buff a bunch and nerf one or two and find actual balance somewhere in the middle.
The only reason most people are arguing against this is simple. We don’t trust the devs to be competent enough at balancing the class.
That’s the plain and simple truth. We know it should be nerfed, but the devs will probably mess that up and it’s safer to just leave it overpowered. Or to ask for them to buff everything else to match, which is more work so they’ll probably not bother (consider the fact that they haven’t buffed them already). But the class will still be OP if they don’t fix it, and making everything the same power level will just make everything great to use in PvE and terrible to play against in PvP.
Not to mention that we all know if they start buffing everything else up to similar OP levels, they’ll just make every PvE mode have higher requirements to compensate, making the game even more unbalanced, in all likelihood.
The devs really need to balance game modes better as well, especially if they nerf ANYTHING. Because any nerf will make it harder to get event scores and rewards, so those score requirements need to be adjusted down accordingly. And we also don’t trust the devs to do that either. And with good reason. Journey showed how badly they can mess it up, how heavy-handed they can nerf stuff and how badly they can adjust for such nerfs afterwards.
So yeah, I get the “no nerfs, you’ll only ruin it” attitude. But it doesn’t change the fact that there’s one class overperforming and if it actually got balanced correctly the game would be better for it. The devs just need to actually listen to players and be willing to buff it back up if they do go too heavy-handed. Something that they could really do with doing in regards to several changes anyway.
People tend to think the 3rd trait is the problem because its 4 effect for 1 match, but really… who cares about the burn? who cares about entangle on the 2nd/3rd/4th slot troops? most stuns don’t even matter.
Its the freeze that bugs people. Elementalist could just be Freeze an enemy troop on 4/5 match and people would still hate the class a lot.
Freeze exists on other troops as well. So its not even that the Freeze effect is the core problem.
But before I shift away, Freeze is both a necessary thing to stop the endless looping potential that many teams have nowadays, but also ends up being insufferable to be on the receiving end. How do you make Freeze fun? … yeah, good luck.
The actual problem is that Elementalist is immune to basic stun, so you can’t stop what its doing, but most importantly, its also immune to freeze, so you can’t freeze the freezer from looping.
I actually don’t care if Elementalist ever gets changed. No nerfs, let me use my troops in other areas in peace. Too many things have been ruined to the point of not being useable because of pointless nerfs.
If something needs to be changed, the Water tree should be the thing to go.
It’d be nice if the immunity to stun goes away, but then it’d still be Elementalist vs Elementalist and who can get the first stun off wins the match… that still sounds horrible.
How do you get people to stop using Elementalist? Remove the freeze. But then, no one would ever use Elementalist because the rest of the stuff doesn’t really matter.
Why does everyone use Elementalist? We need Freeze options. duh. Frostmage is too inconsistent.
From your point - Self-looping shouldn’t be a thing. That makes more sense said that way. And exactly why journey troop was ‘fixed’. And suddenly freeze is not that much an issue. But hey, we have blessed wand with self-charge!
It’s the combination. Being able to freeze all four enemy troops very quickly, especially since the class has a “freeze on start” trait option to block looping, PLUS being able to entangle the first (and second onwards for once the first is killed) troop to block skull attacks, PLUS being able to stun troops to block their traits (the number one way to get around most of the status effect issues on most teams), PLUS burn which I agree is largely useless. Doing all four each time the trait triggers is way too powerful.
Like I said, if it just randomly picked one from the four and applied that, it would be way less of a threat. It triggers and probably doesn’t freeze your troops, so you can loop. It probably doesn’t entangle your first troop, so you can skull attack. It triggers and probably doesn’t stun your troop that can bless or cleanse allies with a trait, so you can still get out of status effects if they are a problem. There’s always a 25% chance it just burns, which is no big deal. And even if it does one of the worse status effects, and happens to hit one of the worse troops for that effect, at least it hasn’t done ALL of them. To leave a team unable to do anything to combat it, would be so much more difficult.
But it’d still be powerful. 75% of the time it’s doing a decent status effect, and most of the time it’s going to hit a troop that is hurt by having that status. And if it manages to loop a few times, it still gets to apply a bunch of status effects, it just takes longer, meaning it has a better chance to lose the turn and let the enemy counter. So, it’s not overpowered, just powerful.
Totally agree. So frostmage should get a buff and be the main class players use to freeze looping teams, instead of a “jack of all trades” class which overpowers it by applying more effects. And elementalist can still freeze, but not on top of everything else.
Yeah, I actually agree that this is a nasty combination. Without the third trait, being immune to stun and freeze is powerful, but not impossible to counter. Curse and stun would do it and we have troops that can do that. But, with the third trait, being immune to effects and also throwing them at the enemy at high speed, just makes it way too powerful. Nerfing the third trait would probably make the class balanced, but it might also need a look at the immunities it has access to.
And I think that’s why it was given immunity to stun, to counter itself. So, it’s not first to trigger wins. But you could nerf the third trait and remove immunity to stun, and it would only have a small chance to get stunned by an opposing elementalist, so it’s not such an issue.
