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All balance suggestions in this thread are subjective opinions or complaints submitted by posters in this thread.
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Read this first! (or at least skim over it)
On the whole the current cast of demigods is quite well balanced. A win is mostly decided by skill and less by the choice of your avatar.
Admittedly some builds seem downright overpowering - immortal Sednas for instance - but even those builds can be cracked ... and they usually have a harder time in other aspects of the game, like getting to the point where they are finally awe-inspiring.
I want to know what the experienced players think about the current state of balance (sorry newbs, but getting trashed by tower rooks and not having a clue how to beat them doesn't make rooks overpowered).
Also, I'm not looking for single-skill complaints - everyone knows by now that QoT's Tribute skill sucks (at level 15 at least) - but rather how the overall performance of a demigod skilling strategy compares to the rest of the game.
For example: Regulus has at least three skilling strategies one can pursue: Snipe, Mines, Angelic Fury.* Clever minelayers are quite feared for their incredible burst damage and can easily dominate careless players but they can be comfortably countered by competent generals. Strong build but not everpowering. * Snipers deliver unexpected kills from a great distance, frustrating many players that fall victim to him. Can't really be countered, but the skill depends on the target having low health in the first place which means that the snipes rely on the performance on your teammates or the carelessness of the opponent. * Angelic Fury - er, I played that in the beginning. Are there good builds out there?
Anyway, Regulus has several main paths he can pursue, several pretty strong ones but not so strong that he can't be beaten without the need of a balance patch. But are some of his skills so weak that they will never get picked at all? If so, how should the change happen?
Please post your opinions and suggestions and I'll do my best to summarize the general consensus (btw, the initial QoT summary is solely my perception of her. Additional opinions welcome).
Lord Erebus
Build Strategies:
Summary:
Balance Suggestions:
Oak
Queen of Thorns
Build strategies:
QoT fares bad with every build against every Demigod. Sure, at the beginning she has great staying power, comparable to tower rooks. But she will barely ever land a kill. Her dps and burst damage are low. Popping into open form for spikes/spike wave/uproot consumes much time. Theoretically a combo of ground spikes, spike wave and mulch could deal heavy burst damage, but the delay between form switching makes that unfeasable.
She has only two feasible ways of playing her: Support and Siege.
Balancing Suggestions:
Regulus
Rook
Sedna
Passive and active self-healing skills can make Sedna nearly immortal. Her Pounce deals good damage and doubles as an interrupt. Silence interrupts, too, and prevents skill usage alltogether for some time in a large area. One of the strongest - if not the strongest - demigods around when played correctly. In fact, her healing builds are so strong that every other build of hers that isn't a variation of that becomes obsolete.
Torch Bearer
Unclean Beast
ITEMS
Update history:
Oh God no
The AI is retarded!!! Even Nightmare AIs are a joke. Experienced should mean played at a least a few games against top 100 teams and won.
JuareZz, after the first ladder reset I primarily played Erebus, Oak, Rook and Unclean Beast.
Reminds me of that line from Braveheart. "Iam skilled in the arts of war"
It's enough to know how to use the skills and know their strengths and weaknesses. Probably not enough to give a sage suggestion like reducing mana cost from 800 to 750.
Anyway, a little honesty helps to properly estimate the validity of the comments given. Saves us pointless accusations of noobness, too.
I would suggest tweaking the priest creep/minion mechanic slightly. It has been reported elsewhere that an invisible debuff gets applied on a demigod after receiving a heal from a priest creep or minion which is unique to the type of unit applying it (eg a monk specific debuff, a high priest specific one, a bishop specific one, etc). This debuff prevents any additional healing from that type of unit for a certain amount of time (7 seconds IIRC). However, players can stagger ranks of priest idols to get more incoming heals than if the idol ranks were the same because they don't apply the same debuff. It seems very counter intuitive bishops/monks gives more healing than bishops/bishops. The invisible debuffs could be consolidated into only 1 or 2 (eg a general heal debuff applied by both creep priests and idols, or 1 for the creep priests and a separate shared one for idol priests) to prevent this.
While the proposed coven change is crossed out above, I would argue that currently the first point is possibly too good (even without Horn). I personally think that 4/7/10 (so +2/+3/+3) might be better than the current implementation. Conversion aura and bite are just fine as is.
With regards to UCB, I agree that acclimation is probably a bit too good and both options mentioned would be potential fixes. For bestial wrath, what if a temporary movespeed buff were added? It would fit thematically with the lvl 15 ability for preventing slowing effects, plus it would add utility to it by working as a tool for chasing/escaping. Or what if it granted a temporary life leech effect? It might help if the duration increased as well, maybe to 7/8/9/10.
There are some good ideas here. But the game is so well balanced that I'd rather not have any nerfs than possible nerfs which have the risk of going too far.
By well balanced, I do not mean "perfectly balanced" vis a vis the different demigods. If you try and make each demigod roughly equal to each other on a power/functionality basis, I think the risk of failing is not worth the small gain you'd get. Right now, there are imbalances, but they are minor compared to the importance of player skill.
The focus of the design space of this game is around team play, not individual demigods. What the devs did, which I think was brilliant, was provide enough game space so that individual ingenuity and team skill could work around relative statistical imbalances in the demigods. Every demigod can do something useful in almost any situation. One of the consequences of this is that player/team skill trumps individual demigod choice very decisively.
Because of this, I don't think the devs should focus on balancing at all now. Two exceptions: fix Sedna's healing wind bug and fix horn of battle. After that, they should prioritize the changes that really make a difference for enhancing good team play: team automatch, accurate stats, native voice IP and more maps.
Yes and buff mards hammer (favor)
Erebus:
Oak:
Queen of Thorns:
Regulus:
Rook:
Sedna:
Torch Bearer:
Unclean Beast:
Items:
One thing I'd like to see tested, and by all means lemme know if this is retarded, is for QoT's open form range to be reduced fairly significantly so that when she chases a target she stays in range to use spikes. Currently she falls out of range and then maintains max firing distance which makes the followup difficult.
I think Rook's armor is fine btw. Yes he has less armor than UB but he only has 400 less at level 20 and has about 600 more HP, a fair tradeoff in my opinion.
Lately in Pantheon, I've played against a lot of Erebus using minion swarms to take down towers and harass players. I've tried the same tactic using Oak and Sedna and came to the conclusion that Erebus minions may be a bit too good. From a purely mathematical point of view, Oak and Erebus can do the same amount of dps with their minions. The problem is that Oak has to use Surge of Faith and be in close proximity of his minions to do so and Erebus doesn't.
I think the Coven skill needs to be adjusted but I am not against erebus eventually having 10 nightcrawlers. If you compare Oak Spirit War skill vs Erebus Coven Skill, its obvious that Erebus has a big advantage early game.
Skill points used
0, 1, 2, 3, 4
Number of Nightcrawlers
2,6,8,10
Number of Spirits
0,3,5,7,10
So with just 1 point in Coven, Erebus has 6 Nightcrawlers versus 3 Spirits, 2 Yetis or 2 Shamblers. Yetis and Shamblers being also rediculously expensive comparatively.
Perhaps the curve should be adjusted to 2,4,7,10. Erebus will still have an advantage over other generals when it comes to raising an army but it won't be overwhelming with just one skill point.
Similar skills do not need to be directly equal to each other, so long as the overall skills of the DG are equal. I do not think that Erebus' other abilities are so good that he can't have the best minions in the game, per se, especially if those other minions are still valid choices (I don't think the are for Sedna, and QoT, but that is besides the point). If anything, Make Yeti's a good deal more cool, and perhaps buff shamblers a bit.
They should implement that the dmg dealt by specifice minions is shown...
Items: Remake all the 1% proc crap. no item should even have a proc rate lower then 5% which is once in 20 hits, compared to the once in 100 hits of 1%.
Scale the effects to keep them ballanced if needed.
Oh yes Do that plz
Make them activatable...
There aren't enough activatables imo. Having to choose lategame between something that is giving good passive buffs and a useful ability and something like flag locks and ports would be a good thing. I rarely need activatable items apart from the wand of speed and a few nice favor items.
Also random chance stuff of 20% or lower than can determine the outcome of a fight isn't very interesting and is bad for competitive play.
Yeah, I mean, Journeyman's treads are just too inconsistent right?.... right?
Honestly, sometimes I think 'competitive' players just want a game to be a yardstick for their e-peen. And just because you have a hard time abstracting low % effects happening, or high % effects not happening, doesn't make you more competitive.
Honsetly I think we need more low % proc items, not less. They seem specifically designed to combat minion swarms.
I'm not a very competitive player, I hardly play at all, but I don't think low proc chance items are a good part of the game because they can decide the outcome of an engagement purely by rolling dice in some cases. Take for example wyrmskin handguards:
If the ability doesn't fire, the player with the item is frustrated because he didn't get a snare that would have allowed him and his team to gank an opponent. He was unlucky.
If the ability fires, but not until too late, it's the same result
If the ability does fire, his opponent is frustrated because he got unlucky.
All this kind of mechanic seems to do is frustrate and introduce a large amount of luck into engagements, which as I said, is poor for the competitive crowd. You seem to have an issue with people playing games and trying to win...if you're not interested in competition in the game why post in a balance thread? Hardly any of the issues raised affect casual play...
I'm not taking credit for this argument, it was introduced during the DoW2 patch beta as a response to the 20% knockdown chance on shotguns. In that game it would decide if a unit could escape an engagement or not, and it was decided by the developers and the players that having an activatable ability would be a better option for the reasons I've already stated. This is nearly identical to the case of things like the Poisoned Dagger, Journeyman's Treads and the Wyrmskin Handguards where a number of dice rolls determine whether an opponent can withdraw or not.
Slight tangent here, but just pointing out: the argument was not "introduced" in DoW2. Someone took it and applied it to DoW2, buts its been used in much older games, the oldest of which I know of are Warcraft 3 and Guild Wars, but probably in ones even older than that, as well.
The 1% items trigger quite reliably when getting swarmed by cannonfodder.
Somebody mentioned that mines wreck TB-- I dunno about anyone else, but even my (terrible) TB has never lost to a Mines Regulus before... Fireball, cancel, move right, fireball, back off, fireball, fireball, cancel, move right...
Either make UB's Ooze work on towers, or make Spit not work on towers.
All this kind of mechanic seems to do is frustrate and introduce a large amount of luck into engagements, which as I said, is poor for the competitive crowd.
What % snare would be appropriate on a 100% proc chance? I'd wager 3-5%, and if it were an activated 15% snare I'd wager it would end up being a 45-60 second cooldown.
Do you agree with those ballpark numbers, and if so would it actually make those items more fun? Also bear in mind that an activated item would swap item slots and be made into a trinket, so the issue with few gauntlets being used would be further exacerbated.
Hey, i'd love to get some feedback for my idea to make TB's aura effect the time it takes to switch forms, haven't seen any comment to that.
if you don't like it i still think that the time it takes to switch forms should be equal for fire and ice (right now it takes much longer to switch to fire then it takes to switch to ice). any reason fire takes longer?
btw i'm not saying the time should be reduced, only equal, make switching to ice longer and switching to fire quicker.
Yep your numbers are about right I think, I don't know for sure if it would be more fun, since that's a kinda arbitrary measurement, but I think I'd enjoy a bit more stuff to do in combat short of rmb everywhere and activate skills every 5 seconds or so. Maybe I'd just like a little more micro reward.
Some gloves can go in the activatable slot, some can go in the equip slot, the choice is more what to spend on than how to make use of slots in the critical part of the game (early-mid) and at the moment the only smart choice is to stack HP for about half the characters. Artifacts aren't obvious in which slot they go in from their picture, and neither are the trinkets. Theres no need to restrict trinkets to the only class of item that can be activated apart from consumables.
I didn't mean to have 100% proc chances on slows permanently, as you say the effect would be small and then its just back to being a crap item for the most part (I think few players would rate maim to be equal to something like motb).
I think it at least open the door for something other than health stacking in a coordinated match...being able to focus fire and snare/weaken/stun/silence/mana drain a single target is exactly the kind of move that will counter health stacking, since a team of three can buy one of each of these activatables and properly disable an enemy to the point where having 4-5k hp isn't going to be enough on its own to prevent a ganking.
The artifacts are all great examples of this, if we had instead of the wyrmskin gloves, the journeyman's treads and the duelist's cuirass cut down versions of the bracelet of rage, deathbringer and the Orb of Veiled Storms, I think there would be a lot more thought into whether you actually want your entire team buying +hp items or not.
I've tried playing Sedna as a support character, and it's definately weaker than just HP stacking like normal. Taking the cloak of night and trying to get ninja pounce/silence combos going, while spending nearly all gold on buying items for an UB ally and getting cit ups just isn't effective. With a bunch of activatables that option might be there, which would make things more interesting and give players more options than "Stack HP and spam skills".
I realise this means you'd need to be able to buy skills that some characters get, which changes the skill pool by allowing everyone to get a blink/silence/whatever ability. The advantage is that you get a more varied fight, open up a whole bunch of new strategies (metagame) and allow some team-play options that just aren't there at the moment. Yes if you give everyone the ability to 2sec silence a single target with a 5k item that means Sedna is no longer unique, but the difference is that she can do it every 10 seconds, whereas an item would have a nasty long cooldown (30 - 45sec) so you could only use it as a surprise attack in the important 3v3 engagements rather than just spamming it like people do with pounce/silence/spit/towers/bite.
Fair enough
My argument is in no way water tight, I don't pretend for a moment that this would magically improve the game for free. It would need serious balancing thought and would take some implementation time (though it wouldn't be much...you could do it all in a lua mod) that just doesn't appear to be available at the moment.
But I do think it would be a better game with more activatables.
Bleh wall of text.
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