PVP Changes

[TheIdleOne]

@JHM

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.

The problem of Elementalist is not the 3rd trait.

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.

[DracoL1ch]

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!

[JHM]

@TheIdleOne

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.

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.

@TheIdleOne

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.

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.

@TheIdleOne

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.

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.

@TheIdleOne

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.

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.

[RootsSeed]

The problem is they are useful in other modes.

[alansirer]

good luck today mystic day…wand and queen bee

[renovatio]

pvp now is a disaster, just disgusting time-wasting without fun. plus the game crashes like crazy when fighting pvp battles, which leads to a waste of the trinkets. god, does any of the devs actually play?

[alansirer]

i think i have a solution.
new mythic troop.
name… the gray queen…(wife the gray king)
colors…yellow,green,red
clone the gray king but different collors
mana drain-silence and frozen.

[Kugare]

My wish would be a Blood Frenzy stat boost nerf - maybe down to 25% instead of 50%, because “broken” team combinations and traits like the one for Stellatrix to tank even more damage takes way to long with the danger to lose the fight anyway + trinkets. I switched over to normal fights for this reason. Beside of that, the lack of variety is horrible and boring.

[BranaHawk]

With the influx of Cosmic Dragons this update brought to PvP I thought I’d try a certain something in a team, a Godslayer. It was only when I got into a game I realised that Cosmic Dragons don’t count for Boss units, unlike Gem Dragons that are Boss units. Why is one Boss and not the other?

[Fourdottwoone]

@Kafka

Here is a quick and brief summary from the top of my head of what was posted over night.

Those don’t really touch the core issue that keeps getting repeated over and over again.

A lot of players liked the way PvP played after the first PvP update. This was suddenly changed overnight to a totally different play style. While some players prefer this new play style, the vast majority doesn’t.

1.) Don’t force a total revamp of a game mode on players without any prior warning. Communicate about it first several weeks ahead, to see whether your understanding of that game mode even remotely matches what players expect from that game mode.

2.) Don’t replace something that most players like with something that most players dislike. Find a way to offer both. If the “old” and “new” PvP would run in parallel (with separate leaderboards and VP pools), allowing players to pick where they want to participate, almost everyone would be happy.

3.) Don’t mess around with game mechanics that have a huge impact on other game modes, like Journey, just for the sake of putting more band-aids on PvP. The word “nerf” is showing up way too prominently in your summary. Nobody wants classes, weapons, dragons, empowered troops, extra turns and mana surges banned from every game mode except training battles just to make PvP more “fun”.

[CLARE]

players leave when they see too much influence of p2w on f2p model. this is what is happening now in pvp mode

[ANGI]

I am massively against hero or weapon restrictions in pvp!
Maybe some endgamers forgot how it is for beginners and mid-levels to not have many weapons and not having all classes maxed.
If pvp is not ruined already for them, that would be the last nail to the coffin!
Please players stand up for your rights!

[xolid99]

Please no nerfs. Just fix the issues.

As I said in another thread, you could easily make opposing regions, like in Red you can as a player choose an all blue team. As a mystic region, you can use say Daemons. For Divines you can use Dragons.

At least that way there is no same team vs same team. However it needs a proper look. Blood Frenzy is broken content as is too. It might need bonuses based on troops you bring rather than the idle 50% stat boost that permeates everywhere.

Who will chose a fight vs a 50% boosted Stellarix? It’s a 1 cast wipe for most of the player base.

@xolid99

Mad idea, but what about say Construct region and you can choose Beasts?

Dragon region, you can use Divines. I dunno but maybe the opposing type or similar, rather than it’s goblins vs goblins or elementals vs each other.

Colour restriction blue - you can choose your colour?

At least that stops the same team vs exact same team.

Sure we have 6 coloured troops and weapons, but for example you could go with purple vs say red and counter with webs. Of course there’s wand but you can go with Inari as well.

Brown you can go with Zuul teams by going say red.

And give the player the choice - ‘choose a colour’ you choose red vs Geheron brown. Maybe there’s a bonus colour of the day or troop type that day for more VPs. Blood frenzy is poorly conceived as is.

It also differentiates from guild wars.

[xolid99]

Yes kudos for your dedication.

[Theoden]

I think nerfing Stellarix would be a big mistake.

I was very unlucky with Diamantina, taking 34 Gem eggs to find Sapphirax. I was spending 300 gems a day on Dragonite for 9 months to get Diamantina, making it an extremely expensive troop for unluckier folk like me (over 75,000 gems in my case).

I wasn’t nearly so unlucky with Stellarix, but it’s an even more expensive troop.

To dangle powerful troops like these in front of players to encourage huge gem spends, then nerfing them later, would be an incredibly egregious bait and switch that would anger many players.

Please don’t do this.

[Elfin]

My point was strictly about Nexus. I don’t use elementalist except for PVP, GW and with Nexus teams. I primarily use Archer/Sunspear/Archmagus for everything else. There isn’t a need to use it everywhere.

For PVP, it is a blunt instrument. Some people want that, some don’t. It limits your creativity in putting teams together but as we’re seeing, that happens anyway based on meta team troops. It will continue to be that way. See goblins, mother of darkness, tower/ Enraged K, pathfinder troop teams for reference.

I honestly don’t care that much either way, but nerfing elementalist does not solve the problem.

I really think all this talk about elementalist is overblown. PVP is what it is, and will continue to be that way.

[Hi_Bob]

Kafka, I must admit, that’s some pretty good selective hearing. Not sure how it captures 230 out of these 237+ posts, but hey, I guess you’ve all already decided your next moves. Good luck

[Elfin]

Even when you’re not wrong, you still are so offensive. Please tone it down.

[Swupe]

INSTEAD of NERFing selected things like Elementalist’s 3rd trait you could BUFF things insted like medals of Orpheus to 20% or even 25% cleansing chance per medal.

Pretty sure nobody would cry about that change as it benefits everybody in every game mode and would make fighting against elementalist much more easier task.

Edit: You could also make the Impervious and bless talismans dirt cheap (1 silver for example), so it’s only a small PvP fix.

[NerdieBirdie]

Love to see the good discussions and debates about the inevitability of metas and how nerfing can be a band-aid fix to a larger problem. Good points on all sides there.

@Kafka

• Want a more efficient way to farm Class XP
• Note: This doesn’t have to be a solution provided in PVP even if it was the way to farm Class XP in the old system.
• Want an easy way to manage teams in PVP
• Want to be able to set PVP defense teams - not use attack teams as the defense team
• In relation to defense teams: the dev team already agreed to surface a way to test teams like how we used to be able to test our teams easily. No ETA yet (not sure which update this will be included in).
• Want to be able to farm for Pet Gnomes, not having Casual PVP is making this very difficult
• Note: If this isn’t solved by the feedback about having clear easy and normal opponent options, maybe this is something we can address in a different game mode?

@Kafka

• Want more variety in opponent teams
• Note: There was code in the old PVP system to be biased towards showing PVP opponents who had a different defense team - I’ve asked for this to be reviewed and checked
• Want clear Easy > Normal > Hard opponent options
• Want Opponents to be based on Team Score, not level, for this reason

Good stuff, no qualms here.

@Kafka

Want the Elementalist class reviewed and possibly rebalanced (nerfed)

• Particularly review Elementalist + Wand of Stars combination

I think there’s been a lot of healthy debate here. Elementalist is absolutely fun to use for the player. It’s fun to use teams which cripple and crush the opponent. This applies to most “OP” or “meta” things even outside of this game.

What’s not fun is to be on the other side of things, crippled and crushed by Elementalist. This class far exceeds the abilities of most other classes (this much, at least, I don’t believe is controversial). It’s incredibly difficult to counter, as mentioned above, due to stun immunity, and when paired with Wand of Stars and the 50% Blood Frenzy buff, it’s not too unlikely that your opponent can destroy you in one round.

Although I personally hold that Elementalist is overpowered even if other classes were to be buffed, I agree that nerfs can harm players (especially new players) and that the “need” for nerfs may be symptoms of a larger issue. It’s an issue that needs to be addressed carefully and thoughtfully.

@Kafka

Apply PVP region restrictions to Hero Classes

• Note: I have concern this would make PVP more difficult for most of the player base

This, to me, is again a symptom of a larger problem, namely those discussed above regarding the very few counters that can stop certain combos like Elementalist and WoS. Given WoS has every mana color, it’s able to be used in many PvP regions. Elementalist is by far the most used class in PvP (and for good reason). Disallowing all but one class per region just because one class is causing frustration goes too far.