Sunspear Changes

[HONUSDAN]

Thank you!!!

[Teddy]

@Nimhain I VERY strongly agree with this logic; With the current state of the game and the order that traits activate this is the best choice. If we were to leave storm starters the way they are now, it would be wise to reverse the order traits activating, currently storm power is always in the hands of the opposition thus making a storm every turn to override that order is 50% of why “X-Storm every turn” is so good. I know this is not a feedback thread for gameplay and mechanics, but this overall notion can be address while this has yours and @Sirrian 's attention.

To summarize on both me and @awryan I feel the community would be happier if a complete overhaul on the way we treat these mechanics would be the way to go with either:
Changing all storm starters to activating every turn (which gives room for class re-balances)
or:
Remedying half the reason why we need storm every turn with trait activation order being reversed (which seems to be the less intensive workload)

It’s always best to engage in open communication with these types of changes I do not wish to be an echo chamber for all of the ranting, but when a singular change is made which can destroy hours upon hours worth of work and investment I implore you to reach out to us.

[Magnusimus]

The top 3 teams I’m excited to try out now that I can (I wasn’t kidding before when I said I was sad because I got the level 100 talent right before the change, hence my disappointment ):

1. Standard Flammifer/Yao/Titania
2. Hero with Doomed Weapon / Infernus / Empowered Skull Converter x2
3. Same as 2, but make one of the empowered troops generate mana instead

I’ll have to wait until I can craft Stonehammer and Phoenicia before I can get too excited about those builds, but the former is top of my craft list right now, so it’ll be soon that I get to play with dwarves again!

(I love(d) dwarves. King Highforge carried me through hundreds of levels of progression, and to this day I think is my “most used” troop even though he rarely sees action anymore)

Thanks, Devs, for listening to us! I mind mistakes/oversights a lot less when they’re acknowledged and corrected, so kudos from me and mine

[Thevc]

Great news that sunspear is back to his best.

I am sincerely grateful.

@Teddy…giving all storm starters perpetual storms would increase class imbalance rather than remedy it. Rock solid classes types in particular would disappear over the horizon with tank heroes being almost stealthy due to damage resistance.

[Voq]

@Slypenslyde

I know you explained it to me as “a fun team”, but I’m still astonished that people were more angry about this than “GW hasn’t worked right on the Switch since release

I think that’s simply due to the player base size difference. This outcry came from PC/mobile/PS4/Xbox (and maybe some Switch players that are reading about future updates) whereas Switch bugs just affect Switch players. I assume most non-Switch players don’t read the Switch threads either. I did read the Switch GW thread, and was flabbergasted when the same bug came back, but I don’t feel I should be complaining on their behalf.

@Slypenslyde

or “the new troop released with the wrong ablity again”.

This one gets me. I signed up for this forum just to report a bugged ability for a new troop. Ba’el’s spell jumbles the enemy team, and was stacking enemies on top of each other if some were submerged. It seemed like it should have been easily caught in testing.

Since then, it seems like every month there’s a new troop that’s bugged or has an incorrect spell. It might be a minor bug each time, but this shouldn’t be occurring so frequently when most bugs are relatively easy to spot.

[ChunkyMono]

@Slypenslyde

I’m still astonished that people were more angry about this than “GW hasn’t worked right on the Switch since release” or “the new troop released with the wrong ablity again"

I started reading the 4.8 release thread, and it was 189 posts with an estimated 38 minute read time. I guess I read slow, because it took me a lot longer, plus with all the additional posts…

but my take away from most of it, was that because there have been issues with both Switch GW, and XBox/PS calendars in Jan and again in Mar, and because lots of other suggestions and complaints seemingly go unheard, (perhaps they are in the pipeline, just 6 months to 2 years out), that this fueled the perfect Firestorm.

I’ve spent time south of the Equator. I spent a year and a half in Peru. Later, I returned, and attempted to show a friend where I used to live in correlation to our current position, and was shocked that it was South, when I was sure it was North. Something about the angle of the sun was throwing me off.

My point is, if it’s not the Equator, it’s the International Dateline that distorts the communication between Devs and players. But the game has always been fun for me. And it’s because the Devs, especially @Saltypatra and @kafka have the patience to deal with an inflamed public, that keep it fun.

I haven’t used the class at all, so I don’t have any teams to recommend. There are no losers here tho. C’mon y’all, group hug. You are invited to @bobbydvt247. Let’s cash some cheques. They all good now.

[FeelTheBern]

I think this was gone about in the wrong way
Talents are the problem more so than traits, and certain traits are way more outdated like sorcerer and necromancer
The generic talent trees have a handful of good ones and loads of worthless or near worthless ones
Usually level 70 talents are the only ones where we need to stop and choose according to needs, based on team or enemy
I personally don’t care much about this change, but it should’ve been waaay down the list if at all

[xolid99]

This thing about Phoenicia being super effective in PVP though is a bit overated.

YG is more effective than Phoenicia in PVP and by using Sunspear as was/is.

Phoenicia works better in explore as 9/10 the opponent won’t neuter it with things like freeze, empowered start, run loopers and so on, have barriers and the submerge that ruins it’s use.

And, I’ve 4k battles with Phoenicia in ranked pvp from when it came out, but just haven’t used it in months. When I did, I used it with YG or Doomed Xbow and the weekly glory troop if I recall.

Sunspear I used for Doomed Xbow and Qilin mainly, sometimes Tina, sometimes Ragnagord, sometimes with ZG and Fireblade. Wrath and Infernus spring to mind for using Sunspear.

Frostmage is a hard counter to Sunspear, and a lot of teams use it.

[Dust_Angel]

First off, it’s a relief to see that some common sense has prevailed and recent changes were reversed and we actually received communication, but that’s about it, nothing more.
I’ll bite the bullet, be THAT guy and risk looking ungrateful bastard but don’t you think all of this mess would’ve been easily avoided if you haven’t created the said mess in the first place? Wiping the floor after you dropped a glass of milk is just the natural thing to do for any civilized being.

@Nimhain

For context, when we were first made aware of potential issues between the Heatwave trait and the Firestarter Talent, we looked at potential fixes with the least impact. This is why Heatwave was changed instead of Firestarter, as Firestarter is in the Fire Talent Tree, and the Fire Talent Tree is shared with multiple classes; changing it would have affected all those classes (and we were fairly certain there would be some people using it on those classes who would be affected). For that reason, we changed Heatwave – so that only the Sunspear was affected.

Sunspear was released in August 2018, that is eighteen months ago, give or take a few days. “Potential issues” that were brought up were redundant Firestarter (due to it being inferior version of Heatwave; and also redundant Nature’s Aura due to Heatwave which made Watery Binding the only possible choice out of three for level 20 talent trees), in other words - problems with talent trees and not with hero traits.
A year later (August 2019) Corsair hero class with +2 mana trait was released but for some reason it took another six months for Sunspear’s change to identically functioning trait. Why?

Anyhow, Talent Trees being out of touching bounds, there were three possible ways to proceed:

1. Unfortunately, things are the way the are and we leave them intact until maybe someday a full-scale hero class rework happens;
2. If a change is really necessary, do it to Heatwave that is Sunspear’s main selling point and identity;
3. If a change is really necessary, do it to Fireproof (that was also mentioned by players as a “possible issue” when hero trait is identical to a talent tree perk) removing guaranteed immunity to Burn and making players choose between Burn immune/Freeze immune in hero talents.

Why the worst course of action was chosen - I fail to comprehend.

I feel it ultimately boils down to not understanding why players were mildly upset with Sunspear issue when it was released eighteen months ago (and that, ironically, is not exactly a rocket science) and then throwing down poorly executed change completely out if the blue after which, understandably, much noise was made and hasty step back was taken.

@Nimhain

Yesterday, there was a bit of commotion on our forums about this change. We were confused, as we felt the new trait was of equal value.

Now, this makes me really confused. On what planet permanent storm trait and +2 mana trait are of equal value?

Here’s to hoping that any possible future changes will be given clearer and more rigorous thinking-over before actually implementing anything (even though it might take thirty-six months to do something).

[HONUSDAN]

@Dust_Angel

Now, this makes me really confused. On what planet permanent storm trait and +2 mana trait are of equal value?

It’s somewhat circumstantial. 90% of the time a storm is going to be more beneficial, but there are a few teams like the one I use for blue guild wars that the mana boost was more helpful. It’s based off empowered converters which, in case you haven’t noticed, is what the devs are in love with right now. Most teams and player base tend toward using explosions to gain mana making the storm more valuable to us.

[Mana_Surgeon]

Thank you Nim and Devs! I really appreciate the fast response, and taking our feedback into account.

@Evelyn

Thank you for listening! I would actually say it wasn’t just Phoenicia that needed Sunspear - in fact, nearly every existing Sunspear team was built around the original trait, so I don’t think most of them would have worked.

Yep. Infernus really likes the original Heatwave, as do Divinia, Hero+Doomed Blade/Crossbow/Jack-o-Lantern, etc. Any exploder that uses red in some way would’ve lost significant options with the 4.8 change.

@Mithran

Going to further give my feedback that it would be completely unnecessary to change anything on the Fire Tree, to remove the fire tree from sunspear, or even remove the Fireproof trait from Sunspear. There are overlaps with the talent tree, but there are also other choices . It doesn’t bother me that one of the minor talents of one tree on a class coincides with one of the minor traits (it would if one of the minor talents was strictly better or the same as the legendary trait, as was the case with pre-release Stormcaller, which was addressed before release).

Exactly this. The majority of hero class talents have zero utility, it’s not worth the trouble to try and rebalance the game to make some of these have marginally more value. As someone who’s accepted the limitations of the current system, I’m far more afraid of the cure than I am of the disease.

@Mithran

Still, the +2 purple link is enough to occasionally set Archmagus apart and carve out a niche. Thats what I’m hoping for whatever classes happen to land with these, as there are some that have really bad traits right now. I still think we need some tree tweaks for these classes to be decent even with the trait changes, but thats what I’m hoping for.

If we’re talking big picture, I’d rather see the talent tree system flushed entirely for something simpler and more individualized to the classes. If we stripped each class’s talent trees down to the talents people actually want to use, we’d see just how skewed the class balance was and could adjust accordingly.

Short of that, I actually do think giving stronger traits to classes with some of the lousier talent trees (I’m looking at you, Wind and Death trees!) would be an effective way to balance the classes.

@xolid99

Frostmage is a hard counter to Sunspear, and a lot of teams use it.

How do you figure that? Sunspear hero is immune to freeze, and there are many ways to build a Sunspear team so that submerge isn’t an issue.

[xolid99]

@Mana_Surgeon

How do you figure that? Sunspear hero is immune to freeze, and there are many ways to build a Sunspear team so that submerge isn’t an issue.

Soon as I see Sunspear and Phoenicia I run a team with Submerge. Frostmage good at that if running control, not looking to freeze the hero. Maybe stun perhaps if running stun somewhere.

The only issue comes if TMQ is there, so that’s my primary target. If no TMQ it’s a none issue.

[Mana_Surgeon]

Ahh, gotcha. Thought you meant a Sunspear attacker was countered by a Frostmage defense, not the other way around.

I can’t say I’ve seen too many Phoenicia defenses, but Sunspear is not a class I would recommend for building defense teams.

[HounganAtLarge]

Has both freeze & entangle on start. So it’s not a BAD choice. At the least, it forces opponent to have reliable cleanse.

[Magnusimus]

And it can be scary if it’s allowed to do triple skull damage…

It’s just getting all those stars to align when Cleanse exists that’s the problem

[Razzagor]

Glad to see that it was changed back.

[Butthurt]

I am clearly the only person sad about this as sunspear goes back to messing with my double cunning + Shahb cheese team.

Also how can this get turned around so quickly and they still haven’t removed bless from life and death?

[Mana_Surgeon]

@Magnusimus

It’s just getting all those stars to align when Cleanse exists that’s the problem

Exactly. Especially since 2 Cedric medals is plenty reliable in most cases. Root Trap and Snap Freeze aren’t nearly as devastating as they used to be.

Not only that, supposing I’m facing a Sunspear defense with my non-Sunspear class. Would I take a permanent fire storm, on top of all the other benefits my class offers? Unless my team strictly does not use red, in many cases are the answer is yes.

[EmmaLovesYou]

This is all so cool to know, i never knew all this, ty