From: Give Reflect to a random Ally when matching Yellow Gems.
To:
40% chance to give Reflect to a random Ally when my turn begins.
That’s just too slow and inefficient. I already wasn’t impressed with its current spell.
They also butchered the next campaign mythic. Bummer
Fountain of Stars
Convert all Green Gems to Purple Potions, and all Brown Gems to Skulls. Cleanse all Fey Allies.
to
Convert 5 Green Gems to Purple Potions, and all Brown Gems to Skulls. Cleanse all Fey Allies.
The first version was a potentially fun double converter that might make too many purple gems from potion effects.
The second version just converts brown gems to skulls. Converting 5 green gems in which you have no control over which gems makes it a pretty unreliable effect.
The 3rd trait also got changed hard.
From:
Bless a random Ally when a matching Purple Gems.
To:
15% chance to Bless all Allies when my turn begins.
I never thought 25% chance from Heirophant’s 3rd trait was any good. 15% is just gross. Bless on matching Purple Gems played well with the Mythic too. Bit of a shame.
The change from “chance to curse on gem match” to “chance to curse when turn begins” is a big reason Enraged Kurandara is worse than its unenraged version. It’s disappointing to see more of this happening.
If these would trigger at least with extra turns from 4-matches it would be something, but at the rate the fights are playing out this new effect won’t make much of a difference I’m afraid.
The first version was pretty much a guaranteed full purple board. While it might have been fun to see in how many ways the community would be able to abuse it to utterly break the game it just couldn’t be allowed to exist. The second version still has crazy potential in the hands of players. It doesn’t matter that the green gems get picked at random, you’ll still get a guaranteed extra turn and reap the benefits.
The effect itself is highly overpowered, you not only get a cleanse, you also get protection from status effects for the whole team. They attempt to balance it by making it unlikely to happen. I wish they’d get rid of these jackpot traits, they swing the game too much whenever they happen and just feel disappointing when they don’t. I’d rather play a match 3 game instead of flipping coins, wouldn’t be surprised if they add some “7% chance to kill the whole opponent team when my turn begins” trait next.
Actually it does matter that the green gems get picked at random, since now you have a single converter instead of a double converter. Only cast when you have brown/skull alignment. Got green/purple align but not brown skull? You’re just handing the AI purple gems if you cast.
I prefer the Boss version. Kurandara is Impervious, which means he can be shut down with Curse+Stun, AND you need a 4 match just to have a chance to curse the enemies. Enraged Kurandara is Invulnerable, which means he cannot be Cursed, and his 40% chance triggers at the beginning of the turn – no gem matching required! That means the state of the board won’t hinder your ability to curse the entire team, and 40% chance is pretty high.
Yeah, the spell already is an issue. Astral Spirit (ultra-rare) is probably going to do an equitable amount of damage for the same mana; Astral Mother may do more damage per cast, but Astral Spirit is going to cast twice in that span of time. Plus the “lesser” troop starts with Empowered and that’s a difference when it comes to the start of the match and things like board control.
And nerfing that trait makes it borderline useless. Astral Mother would be a helpful troop for defensive purposes if it was “reflect on Yellow” because one could probably assemble a viable team with her and churning enough Yellow to make it painful for attackers. But this new version is practically useless given the lack of player control over the process; it’s too unpredictable.
Prior to those changes, I was at least partially excited for her with the idea that I’d try her in my Centaur team (Artema, Oracle hero w/Firefly, Astral Spirit, Worldbreaker) in place of the mythic bringing up the rear. Now? I’ll hope to pull her on Friday for the kingdom stars and otherwise not use her in any serious team.
She wasn’t terrific or anything near overpowered in her original form, but now she’s not worth very much at all to the endgame player.
Still no movement on the Wyrmrun troops and what the faction’s schtick is. That’s surprising especially since the faction release isn’t that far away. Most dragon troops are big on AOE, so it’ll be interesting to see if the Wyrm troops have a theme that complements that or continues with the AOE.
If I had to try and guess, I’d go with something “normal”.
One troop as the tank – probably the Epic – who has some level of skull damage reduction and a spell that aids his tanky nature by filling some combination of life/armor/attack and gives barrier.
Probably one support troop as well, maybe something that gives a couple of points of Magic and enchant, because enchant seems to be something of a dragon thing at times? Alternately, something that can heal and/or summon? (Probably heal, unless they give it to the Legendary.)
And then two troops that do spell damage. The legendary doing AoE, and maybe having some Spell Armor as mitigation. The lesser troop doing targeted damage with some sort of kick above and beyond “vanilla”, whether that means splash damage or adding status effects.
…
The other thing I’ve noticed when perusing Taransworld the past couple of days? All those guardians that are coming up during Weeks 4-9 of the campaign? They’ve gone from a guaranteed extra turn if a particular status effect is resident on an enemy to only 50%. Though the “true” number is probably a bit higher when the creation of Potion Gems gets added into the mix, with the possibility of creating 4-matches.
It’s probably better for balance that the extra turns aren’t guaranteed, given the presence of enough different troops that can force spawn the necessary status effects on enemies. But it is a bit of an ahead-of-time nerf.
Honestly, the Guardian troops seem like a necessary set of changes. Just having the mana potion gems is pretty good shot of getting an extra turn. Of course, the placement is going to be random so it’s very possible to not trigger the effect, but having even one go off can cascade similar color mana potions to turn most of the board.
Including a 100% extra turn on x debuff condition would be overkill. They’re all Epic troops I think, so anything more I kind of think would push them into punching above their weight rarity-wise.
The good and bad part of Taran’s is that we all get excited when they add details and then get disappointed when the details get tweaked and changed. As much as I like knowing whatever is coming down the road in the future, I sometimes wish we would all just see the end finished troops and not see them during conception and adjustment phases. I think it would lead to them being better received if they aren’t being compared constantly to the form that “might have been.”
A nerf was necessary, but this seems like a rather poor way of doing it. A series of recent changes to troops have involved making a deterministic trait (Fountain of Stars, Astral Mother) or spell (Guardians) stochastic instead, which is quite detrimental to strategic gameplay.
That’s a fair point. Also, thanks for teaching me a new word!
I guess randomness doesn’t bother me as much as some other folks, so personally it’s not as big a deal. I’ll totally agree about being sad in particular about Astral Mother and Fountain of Star’s last traits since mythics could definitely use some more “x buff or debuff on color gem match” to help bump up their viability and power to offset the mana cost.
If the developers would take constructive feedback from these forums ahead of time, posting the “work in progress” versions of things in places like Taransworld could function reasonably well as an extra set of checks on things. Stuff that’s clearly overpowered or clearly useless could be noted by the community for adjustments to be made.
Alas, since that avenue of feedback doesn’t work very well, your suggestion is probably for the best. Even if one of the things I like to do is look at the “preview of coming events” and take some time to figure out how I might want to try and use those things. Especially when I have hours of time to think while at work and an opportunity to try and derive some creative ideas.
I knew how I wanted to use most of those Guardians before the nerf. Now, I’ll have to think about possible alternatives.
