Good morning,
So…Having realized there is still a lot of time and this may still be considered work in progress I would like to bring this ‘pearl’ to the Team’s attention for some second thoughts and possible rework.
Please bear with me.
This is not about bashing the Developers or looking for problems where they don’t exist.
Its about improving everyone’s experience and making the game we love what it deserves to be.
Ok.To the point then…
In my personal opinion this design as it currently stands makes no sense whatsoever.
This last trait is bad…no…more than that, its terrible
Why would we have a Hero Class so questionable you probably DONT want it fully traited ever?
And even if someone more open-minded or with a different approach than mine finds some use for it…
Why would anyone spend 10 arcane traitstones on something that can be enabled after 1 battle without spending any (Chaos Storm talent) ?
I do apologize if someone finds this thread aggressive or insulting, but things like that are hard not to comment on.
Honestly though, the talent is okay because it can be turned off. The trait is terrible because only very few niche teams would actually benefit from random storms. It’s somewhat on par with transforming a random ally into a random troop when matching 4 or more gems, good for a few laughs, guaranteed bench spot on 365 out of 366 days.
It will be a chore to even level up this hero class, best approach is probably to first get to 100, then buy the last trait and never touch the class again.
What? A hero class that’s such a mess it’ll never see use? With an early talent identical to a trait?
This is definitely a first. I’m sure the devs have never done that before and will address it as quickly as possible, just as fast as the other 8 or 9.
You conjure a random storm on 4/5 gem matches.
Then your turn eventually ends, you pass and leave the board with a storm that gets in your way rather than helping you.
Then you get looped to death because the game in it’s current state is a fiesta of exploding boards and empowered everything combined with 50% mana start everything and weapons of an arguable balance level (Rope Dart).
This one might work a little better while sticking to the class theme:
Storm Soul Reset a storm to its full duration when matching 4 or more gems.
It allows you to keep the storm your team is designed around going much longer, without throwing a random wrench into your plans most of the times. It’s still able to hurt you by keeping opponent storms going, so making it only trigger for your own storms (all those where the remaining turn counter is even) would probably be a good move.
To be fair: the post was made after their weekend already started.
To be historical: this isn’t the first hero class with dumb, contradictory talents. This isn’t a thing they have expressed any concern about in the past.
The only thing this game is missing is a random storm. I think they tried it on the last underworld faction. But they change that.cos It was too confusing and weak. So they made it to summoning or something. I’m not exactly sure.
But yeah. This must go too the collection.
My personal opinion about it. It sux. But its mabye need on future troops that’s coming out. Might be a reason for it
They dont plan ahead. They create first then ask questions later. I think the devs are just going with the flow
We on the other hand. Likes everything to be perfect.
I posted a video which goes over my wishlist of changes when it comes to classes. I use the latest Hierophant class as a launching point to make my case as to how existing class traits just aren’t compelling.
See the upcoming Stormsinger class’ third trait just REALLY makes it bad. The most class defining thing the class is getting is a level one talent that MANY other classes have access to? This may be the worst one yet
Chaos Storm is a actually kinda fun to run with sometimes, but no way I’d want that permanently on my class.
I don’t think this class needs another trait that just creates storms. Thats the main problem with the main Suncrest kingdom. Many of their troops create storms, but don’t capitalize off them well.
Off the top of my head, it could:
Explode 2 random gems of the current storm color on 4 or 5 gem matches. (Possibly even just 1, even though this is technically weaker than something like Tidecaller has independently, this would be much stronger within the respective kit.)
All allies gain 2 to all skills when a storm is conjured. (For stat stacking, this has some pretty good potential when combined with something like chaos storm, but just having it count multi-triggers of trait-storms is worth a decent amount of stats on enemy/ally deaths or match start with how prevalent these traits are becoming, or with a spammy storm weapon like mountain crusher.)
Conjure a storm of one of my mana colors at the start of my turn. (If it is completely necessary that the trait needs to “call” a storm because they want the name “Stormcaller” to be thematic) While this still steps on the toes of wanting a consistent storm from a consistent source if you wanted to use hero weapons with more than one color, this has actual, real applications when use with mono color hero weapons at least, and I can at least think of a few interesting setups for it where I might pick it over a class that just creates that color storm at the start of a match.
What I don’t want to see:
Conjure a random storm at the start of my turn
Conjure a random storm when an ally casts a spell
Conjure a random storm (based on any possible condition)
Chaos storm is plenty if you want to roll the dice with actually random storms. We don’t need a hero trait with a random storm for any condition.
While we are on the subject, the current class weapon is also designed to “clear a storm”, so it can do 40 “extra” true scatter damage (for a total of maybe 70 something). This is extremely weak and ill-fitting for something that puts you in such a disadvantageous state (as well as runs contrary to synergy, as was likely discovered with the harpy quartet). Since the damage happens before the storm clear, it means this weapon getting a kill would immediately cancel any storms that occur on enemy death, removing one of the most common avenues to consistently get a storm in the first place aside from starting with one or the aforementioned chaos storm (which is, again, random). I think storm cancelling still has potential to be a mechanic, but it doesn’t fit here at all. I hope this weapon at least gets the harpy treatment to not clear the current storm otherwise.
@6:25 of the video, you go over Armor of Light, Gift of Fire, and Healing Herb.
Everything before that in the video, you talk about the speed of the game and that many things aren’t fast enough.
Here you suggest Healing Herb because it scales.
I’d have to argue, Armor of Light or Gift of Fire are better because they give you a quick flat bonus that helps win those matches quicker versus messing around trying to get 4 life here and there via green gem match.
You’d have to trigger Healing Herb 4 times to get the value of Armor of Light. Depending on team composition, I’m not grabbing Green Gems 4 times or even once willingly.
I could see the case to be made for Armor of Light, but the core point is that non-scaling talents like that are just about always worse than something that can scale.
In the grand scheme of things, you’re going to get substantially more value out of something that can passively give your hero life over something that just gives all your troops 4 more armor once.
Giving your troops 4 more armor is a substantially weak trait in general as 4 armor is completely inconsequential in a game where armor is regularly completely removed with various troops and weapons, or true damage hits beneath it.
You’re right that it has more value than the video suggests, but the core point remains that a one time mediocre stat bump loses to a scaling one everytime.
I’ll give you an example, mid-game. If you’re on a red GW and people set Dwarf defenses, that 4 armor can be the difference between saving your troop and losing your troop depending on stats. Dwarves drop in efficiency when it starts to take 2 or more casts to kill a troop.
In a game that lasts 1-5 turns, I usually don’t need something that scales. I’ll take the flat gain and win before the scaling talent matters unless its something based on 4/5 gem matches and its a team that can do that multiple times in one turn.
Healing Herb vs Armor of Light: I’ll take the 16 armor upfront over 4 healing if I grab a green gem since most games won’t last enough long enough to get any value out of Healing Herb.
Healing Herb vs Gift of Fire: Your theory, Healing Herb is better. If I’m running a Sunbird team in Explore, I’d rather have a one Fire Bomb, one Sunbird cast wipe if possible and Gift of Fire does a better job there as Healing Herb does nothing here.
I’m looking through the rest of the hero classes and I can’t find any other situation comparable to this instantly, but the next comparison is using Orb of Winter in a thrown together team vs using Orb of Winter with Queen Mab, Skadi, and some other Glacial Peak troop.
Sure, the thrown together team can scale and make Orb of Winter more powerful over time with something like Qilin, but I’d rather take the 12 extra starting damage and win quickly. If it was something like a Delve, I wouldn’t use either team.
Alternatively, you run a team that nets you green mana and you could gain 20 life in one turn. 60 over the course of a fight.
Of course there are circumstances where having 4 armor on each troop would be more beneficial, but again, the point in the video is that these talents of a one time minor stat are not built with the pace of the game in mind. You’re entire argument centers around the idea that it’s impossible to get a bunch of value out of a scaling talent that you could trigger multiple times in a single turn.
I know you understand the game well based on your arguments, but if you’re trying to convince me that 4 armor to all troops is going to net you more value than something that you can regularly abuse to gain more health in your troop, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.
If something is able to be triggered multiple times over the course of the fight (not to mention multiple times in a single turn), it inherently has higher potential value than something that gives you a benefit once and that’s it. That isn’t an opinion, it’s just a fact.
I tried to ask about this on-stream. Response was … interesting.
My personal opinion is that the trait is awful, primarily because the storm is random. This goes directly against what any well-crafted team is trying to achieve: reducing or managing randomness.
If the randomness was at least reduced, that could make the class at least vaguely usable. While it’s up to the designers to decide on how this could be done, the first ideas that come to me are either:
Summon a storm of one of the colours of the first troop, or
Summon a storm of one of the colours of the hero weapon.
Either of these could make it possible to build teams around the class. As it stands, that seems basically impossible.
I actually think it’s so bad, I’m planning to skip the trait until I’ve finished leveling the class. A random storm will interfere even with fast farming teams.
