Hello,
I would like to propose to remove immunity to mana burn from the game.
Only 3 troops has this spell but many troops are immune to it through some trait.
Troops with impervious, sky ancestry or mana shield trait are immune to this effect.
Beside that mana burn immunity renders these troops useless it is an unpaired drawback. No other spell effect is totally ignored or resisted in the game.
It would be a unique spell effect but with so much immune troops out there it is useless.
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Seeing as it’s basically the only thing you can do to ZG I definitely wouldn’t call it useless.
There are troops immune to every different debuff, it’s a game built around counters.
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As I remember ZG is impervious, so good luck mana burn him.
Mana burn immunity is like if a troop would be immune to life steal or magic damage completely.
I use Grey King for exactly that purpose all the time
You are talking about mana DRAIN, and topic is about mana BURN.
You’re right, my mistake.
It’s obviously of so little importance to me that I didn’t even realize there was a difference.
I can’t imagine them taking the time to remove immunity for something that is used so little but I wish you luck on your crusade.
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I find it hard to see the logic and reason.
There are about 800 troops in the game NOT immune to Mana Burn plus Stun/Curse exists to possibly deal with those less than 100 troops that are immune.
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Not to mention Queen Mab would be much more of a nightmare like in days of old if there weren’t as many troops to take in against her…
I can’t see why don’t you see that complete immunity to a magic dmg spell is a problem. With the increasing number of troops with spell armor and spell block a complete immunity is unfair.
There is a troop in almost every meaningful battle which is immune to it.
Your spell not just do less dmg it doesn’t do any. Very annoying.
I never liked this. Always said if it was going to be a thing that “Mana Burn” shouldn’t be a damage type, but rather just applied to the bonus of the spell. The one thing this did was keep Queen Mab from running roughshod on the meta (sort of) after Mana Shield was introduced, but her core feature was never the mana burn but the fact she could deal AoE damage (before submerge existed) while keeping the turn and had a way to prevent enemies from getting extra turns (long, long, long before Queen Beetrix or cleanse medals existed) while also being freeze immune herself (before stun even existed, and into a long stretch before it was prevalent, let alone before curse existed) and also being the only AoE troop with Arcane. Before mana shield existed (and the effect getting rolled into Impervious), there was this glorious patch cycle where on a properly played offense she destroyed everything, including the then-meta-at-the-time “chance to devour on skull hit and charged by the only empowered converter in the game and also devour immunity doesn’t exist” Great Maw setup (because, well, you could also Mercy into Valk into Mab). Oh, also this was during the time when 13 gems on the board effects only took 10 gems on the board. So, for the time, hastily slapping in a damage immunity trait did a bit to curb her dominance, because Valk was mana shielded either his patch or very shortly after, and was a very common troop especially after Khorvash was introduced shortly later. However, she wouldn’t really drop off the meta until much later, with a lot of other changes that came, and her worst defense meta came during the period of time when Kraken was basically broken due to blob match calculation, because it was an AI friendly loop with Freeze and, again, very little counterplay, which was long, long after mana shield went into effect.
Queen Mab was the only troop of the three that used this that was so powerful at the time where making things outright immune to her spell through traits even made any sort of sense at the time it was introduced (again, never personally agreed, but it made some sort of sense) and that time has long since passed. In a game where there are now a ton of setups that are outright lethal from first cast before giving up the turn and counterplay to Mab besides mana burn immunity (including Submerge being patched after release to make it also block AoE mana burn, since it didn’t when first released) it doesn’t really make sense to have full spell damage immunity on a trait as a counter-mechanic that exists for pretty much just Mab. While I think there should be always be more varied counters to Freeze, there are a few that are fairly readily available, and Mab no longer stands alone as the troop that takes away the biggest thing that is a deciding factor in winning games. PvP teams are so fast now that the mere presence of snap freeze alone already has huge potential to tank setups that don’t already counter being frozen. I would even argue that I would feel safer taking any given team without counterplay to freeze versus a team with Mab and any other number of troops that can trigger freeze but no Snap Freeze than I would versus a team with just a Snap Freeze hero. Don’t get me wrong, Freeze match traits can still be very powerful, but most PvP games consist of not letting the opponent match stuff, so effectively losing your first turn advantage some of the time is often far more relevant that maybe getting frozen for your second turn after the enemy had plenty of time to just blast you to pieces with the very situation that triggered the freeze to hit you in the first place.
So.. bit of a tangent here.
The same patch that introduced the concept of Mana Burn immunity also introduced Devour immunity. This is an immunity I feel has stood the test of time, and that actually made sense to introduce when it was. There are a variety of troops with Devour and unchecked devour is very swingy, even in a vacuum. Most troops that devour also do something else with the spell (even if it is mostly just minor damage), and when you devour, you generally get a lot of oomph behind your skulls so you can still use the devour as a win condition if the enemy has some devour immune troops. Unchecked Mana Burn in a vacuum is a few points of damage more per spell hit, and if it is your primary form of damage, it cannot be used as your win condition if anybody on the opposing team is immune - it won’t boost your spell damage enough to be lethal to non-immune targets outside of very early game, and you’ll just stall out.
I sort of feel the same way about submerge, but pure defensive submerge exists (Aquatic trait, Undine trait) within a small enough subset of troops that it doesn’t make full AoE troops feel like they are always disadvantaged versus something that did a less amount of damage spread out differently… but full AoE still feels a disadvantage most of the time nowadays. AoE is already naturally disadvantaged damage type in that it generally doesn’t hit as hard as spells with less targets, and so it will take much more turns before you remove an enemy threat, along with the super-prevalent spell armor and auto-summons making it a pain to use as a primary damage source since you’ll actually need more casts to win rather than fewer. This, combined with Water talent tree is used enough in PvP and nearly always has the deluge talent (sumberge on match 4) set that you generally can’t bring full AoE setups into PvP unless said setups also have great focused point damage or keep the turn. Of course, the best AoEs have massive secondary effects and synergies which do just that (Gobtruffle, Queen Bee, the doomskull converting weapons) or can be set up to instant or fast lethal (Rowanne, Tesla), but the existence of these troops and the natural disadvantage AoE troops have now leaves most of them either shelved or relegated exclusively to “punch down” or “farming” situations where also no counterplay exists, such as low difficulty explore, PvP opponents with low enough stats that you can 1, 2 or 3 shot with no resistances, or during events when a single cycle of AoEs you get from enchant/board explode start will wipe them out without having to refill mana.
Ideally, the concept of Mana Burn being a different damage type should be the thing that is scrapped, and have it just apply bonus spell damage based on the target’s current mana. Then it won’t matter if mana burn immunity exists, since it would just block the advantage the spell would have versus immune targets rather than it being a disadvantage outside of very early game by making it have no effect on way too many relevant troops. If it weren’t such an anchor tied to a troop’s neck to have, then maybe we can see more troops being put in with this mechanic so it isn’t just wasted text space to be clarified on a bunch of traits.
Also there are other considerations, such as the previous world event she was in where “mana burn damage” was not counted as spell damage for the purposes of the medal boosts, that exist from this janky implementation of “mana burn is sometimes spell damage but other times not and you can be fully immune to it”.
6 Likes
Mithran, thank you for the lengthy explanation of how the queen of destruction became a joke.
I could live with that kind of mana burn immunity where it would only protect against the boosted part of the spell, but full immunity is unfair.
I didn’t want to mention the medal thing here because it is a bug imho.
bumping this up
Bumping without adding anything to the discussion is against the community guidelines, pretty sure.
It’s considered a form of spamming.
On Topic: I’d like to see Mana Burn be in addition to Queen Mab’s base spell rather than the whole of it, and then give more troops mana burn rather than remove it (and the immunity) from the game.
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Awesome post. Completely agree with your proposed solution.
I came back from a hiatus during the time of Queen Mab. I was horrified at how much stronger Queen Mab was compared to everything else, with my favorite comparison being Behemoth (I’m glad they buffed Behemoth). Queen Mab’s 3rd trait alone was stronger than most troops that existed. The fact she had an extra turn was just questionable.
You know what though? I’m glad they added Mana Shield at the time, even if it means its completely illogical now. It actually means they cared about their game and the player experience and attempted to reduce the amount of grief that was possible. In theory these things should be adjustable when its no longer needed
That was when the game was really great.
I wonder if their modern day response tactics would have ever added Mana Shield, considering they’re hesitant now to nerf anything due to user blowback. (some people are always going to complain when their easy win tactics are taken away)
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