Just a bit of a fun (and possibly quick) thought experiment, what are the rarest, most elusive traits that can appear on a “standard” troop?
(“Standard” means excluding the signature 3rd traits on Legendary and Mythic Troops, also Guild Guardians, Dooms, and GW prize Troops whose 3rd traits are all but identical within their own group)
Gold - These traits only appear on a single Troop currently:
Gem Fragment (2 variations)
Frozen Shieldbreaker (Ice Fragment) - August 2021
Living Quartz (Stone Fragment) - August 2021 (there could potentially be up to 6 color variations of this trait, but only two actually exist so far)
Ive never bothered to look at those troops prior to your post. With exactly 9 banding troops, it almost feels like a campaign theme that they gave up on and decided to just release.
The best part is that if the banding traits were changed for any other traits out of the blue, most people would be none the wiser.
They “could” make banding traits work but if Ulf Harrigan’s 3rd trait is their idea of effective use of banding, it’ll never work.
According to the “lore”, most of those banding troops were the supporters/army of the deposed Emperor that the Hero was helping regain his throne during that campaign.
I’ve always had the impression that there was meant to be something more to the banding troops, like maybe each of those traits was meant to activate at the start of each turn as opposed to just once in battle. Something akin to a “we’re used to fighting together and drawing strength from one another” sort of thing. And even that would be of the same limited utility that the 3rd trait from things like Mambasira, Champion of Anu, Champion of Gaard, Bard (Hero), et cetera. Even the “upgraded” version wouldn’t be tremendously powerful outside of early-game players and would require really long matches to really mean something.
Banding traits were introduced during the leonis empire campaign, which had us fight with Emperor Korvash to regain the throne. This was before they added heroic gems to campaigns (you guys remember the lycanthropy gem nightmare?), and they were probably experimenting with a new mechanic to make troops important to the campaign more powerful.
Banding traits also show how much power creep this game has gotten over the years. They probably need to make Ulf Harrington’s final trait give 10 to all his skills for each ally with a banding trait, and even then it wouldn’t be overpowered.
If u guys look at the incoming immortal troops and guardians…this game is becoming quite ridiculous and probably a “pay some more money to destroy everything” kind of game. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stellarix is left behind during the holidays when they release Super-Sayin-Omega-Blaster-Basher-5000.
To be fair, these current banding traits would never be good. they are very similar to Accursed/Color Brand/Troop Bond traits etc. and those weren’t impactful since maybe… literal day 1 of traits (just a reminder that the game didnt actually launch with traits).
It’s just that troops keep getting more and more powerful, so we look at bonding traits (like troop types that give 1 life for each ally) as weak. The devs would probably have to rework all of those traits to something more meaningful or replace them with already existing traits that would make more of an impact, but that is a dream that will die along with Gollum in the fires of Mount Doom.
As an outsider looking in, I feel like these Banding/Bond/Brand traits would need an extra 0 at the end to make them more viable than just throwaway traits in the current state of the game. (not including Mambasira/Champion of Anu type 3rd traits)
Having a +10 would have a very meaningful use at the beginning of the game to seek out similar synergies and want to trait them while not being a complete dud at the current top end of the game.
Granted, of all the things that could use adjustments in Gems of War, Banding changes would be near my bottom.
I would rather let them be percentage increases, because then you don’t have to worry about the trait becoming weaker relative to high player stat bonuses. Like +5% per ally (with a minimum +1 x # allies), i.e. a full Banding team totals a +20% bonus to the relevant stat(s).
Anyway, I recently acquired The Bestial Fey and immediately noticed its second trait is unique:
Flurry: 25% chance to create a Freeze Gem at the start of my turn.
At first this seems like a simple variation to The Fallen Satyr’s “Death Sign” (which is also unique), except that Death Mark Gems are non-matching and must be Destroyed to activate. “Flurry” is really more a variation of “Embers”, the signature (but shared) trait of the Fire Rift faction.
The problem with letting it be percentage is that they’re basically still negligible when they would/should be most beneficial (early game) and would be dire to deal with in the late game, particularly versus scaling content like Blood Frenzy and Journey.
