When everything must be buffed to keep up with one thing, that’s usually a good sign that that one thing is too powerful for the rest of the game.
Also, when everything gets a lot stronger over time that is known as “power creep”. Power creep over time actually can destroy a game. When everything is too strong, where is the fun? When everyone uses the same overpowered things, it’s boring. And what can be done to add improvements or interest when everything is so strong you can’t much more than just bigger points values?
The problems: Too strong too fast with almost zero time investment needed. Too easily used in too many scenarios. Too easily abused as well, which is why everyone abuses it. It’s only a mid-game class and yet it’s stronger than most other classes in the game.
Let’s compare the most recent class, Nightweaver. Nightweaver is mid-game, too. It’s also brand new so we can’t say it’s too old to compete! I’ll only go to level 1 on each class to save space. It also only takes one quest, an orb, and one battle to achieve all traits plus the level one ability, so it’s the bare minimum.
-
Nightweaver / Elementalist
-
Trait 1: Allied Mystics gain 2 Life. / Allied Elementals gain 2 Life.
Basically the same thing. Continuing…
- Trait 2: Gain 1 Magic when an ally casts a spell. / Allied Elementals gain 2 Armor.
Only the hero gains magic. Also Nightweaver and Mydnite are mostly about generating and using Skulls. Even the weapons generally make skulls. Having the hero gain magic is not as useful as it appears as it seldomly means any real improvements. Still admittedly better than a bit of armor.
- Trait 3: Give 2 Magic to all Mystic Allies when matching Purple. / Stun, Freeze, Burn, and Entangle a random Enemy when matching 4 or more Gems.
Nightweaver limits itself to mystics only. Again, Mydnite is mostly about skulls not magic attack so it’s not as good as it sounds. Stacking four different statuses all at once has zero class, color, or other limits. And it’s very easy to get 4+ matches as elementals often spawn gems of a color, cause elemental storms, and/or create Elemental Stars which are dual color + explosions.
*Level 1, one win required
*All Daemons Gain 1 Attack, All Purple Allies gain 2 life, Hunters’ Mark random enemy on 4+ match / Stun random enemy when skull damage is done to hero, freeze one enemy at start of battle, summon random storm on match of 5+
Hunt is the most dangerous option, but it’s randomized who gets marked. It may take many times for the lead troop to get marked. The rest are regular “meh” abilities. All three on Elementalist are nasty. Auto-freeze screws over anyone in a colored area (ie: red only) and is most common. Random storm makes chaining easy to spam negative effects, but is less common. Stun happens when people wise up that skulls can kill their leader while they are up front. Second most common, from my experience.
I have max level Nightweaver. I run full Mydnite teams for fun. Wand of Stars / Stellarix / Elementalist is still a lot more powerful most of the time. From my experience, The ELEMENTALIST with the WAND is the lynchpin! If that hero doesn’t die, I can’t win. Even if I luck out with Terror and the Elementalist moves back one space, I still won’t win unless they are defeated. The wand explodes the board forever and then instant-kill troops or Stellarix kills my team. This tells me that the Elementalist and the Wand of Stars are the biggest problems with Stellarix being secondary.
Nerfing Loops is debatable. Capping extra turns from matches to maybe one or two could help stop all the silly looper junk forever, but that seems like a last resort as it also destroys lots of other things. Honestly, all game modes where the enemies get tougher each time eventually get to the point you need looping. It’s not just Journey. Yes, it can get boring which is one big problem with looping.
Looping isn’t always bad to fight against, IMHO. It can be fair if it has a chance to fail and/or doesn’t do much damage per turn.
I find that when fighting Goblins at worst each team member gets a go then it’s the other player’s turn. Your guys will all be standing, most likely, at the end of the turn. Just grab a coffee and wait a bit. The more dangerous Queen Beetrix can lock herself out of a loop if the brown gems fall wrong, Scatter damage is stopped by Submerge, and even with Arcane she doesn’t deal a lot at once so there is a chance to retaliate against her. Beetrix is literally the final boss of her area. She should be dangerous, but not unfair. Goblins and Beetrix take time to get going too. It’s not a turn one thing.
Honestly, it’s not as bad as what people are doing with the Wand of Stars team. “Turn one. I explode the board over and over, gain massive mana, deal chip damage from skulls, then kill one or more of your guys. Oh and you are frozen so no extra turns for you!” is not on the same level as extra-turn guys like goblins or Beetrix. One player was posting in the bugs sections that he only got 15 extra turns. They were saying they normally get more and so felt that getting only 15 was a bug.
- Capping Elemental Stars so only one is made at a time would help prevent this.
- Making the wand use three elements instead of all six would help a lot.
- Fixing Elementalist so there is some randomness would also help. I agree there! Maybe even weaken some abilities?
Yeah, that’s what happens when something gets meta-breaking or meta-defining (depending on your perspective). It starts to remove the fun and annoying behaviors (as well as rude remarks) start up. The game changes even if you are winning just the same. It’s one of the saddest and most annoying things about mainline competitive Nintendo games like Mario Kart and Smash Brothers. It happens everywhere, sadly, not just Nintendo.