Hazy Skies Malice on Nightmare Final Stand is absolute BS

[phroZac]

50% less ballista tower vision and range....WTF, seriously? That's a game over notification. The only way to win right now is with massed arbalist and grand ballista towers. Knowing that Hazy Skies is a thing, players aren't going to use ballista towers at all and opt for tons of Impalers. This malice has to go.

[76561199207523213]

Hi there! Thanks for the feedback on this, The balance around some Malices and blessings isn't quite where we'd like them, so rest assured it's something we're looking at tweaking fairly heavily! I know that doesn't help with any current games you have going, but hopefully it helps to know it's something we'll be changing soon.

If you're curious about what other issues we're looking in to, feel free to take a look at our balancing thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426450/discussions/0/3113669366296954035/

[phroZac]

Awesome! Yeah, I finally got into a position to beat custom Nightmare(with pause), then I'm hit with Hazy Skies and it was essentially game over. I was swiftly crushed. It did get me thinking of other strats to negate Hazy Skies to which I was going to try even MORE arbalist towers(around 12) per defensive point and loads of flame tanks, but I stuck it out and finally beat Nightmare because Hazy Skies didn't drop this time. Whew! Fun game you guys got here.

[akimbojoe]

I got this on my final night and I think it's a frankly stupid idea for a malice. 50%? Who thought that up? The towers can just barely shoot over one wall. They're useless. I was already mixing them with archer towers but now relying soley on archer individual damage my defenses are getting battered and nothing can stand out there and weather these enemies for long. Really bad idea.

[Chaos]

The 50% tower range decrease is a joke, towers just become glorified walls, it's the worst debuff I've ever seen and makes the game unplayable, how the hell did you guys come up with that?

[akimbojoe]

Whoever thought up this idea on the team deserves to have an uncomfortable amount of trouble passing their next bowel movement. Not unpassible mind you, just difficult.

[SwedishGoblinTwitch]

My suggestion is to eighter lower range 20% instead of 50 or lower damage 30%. That would be manageable

[joemama1512]

There have been topics on this and most people agree that this is ridiculous. Especially since you MUST have AOE in order to win higher difficulty levels. You cant beat 500 enemies in brutal on the very first attack aftter like 3 days without Ballista's area of effect damage.

However, the git gud crowd will happily tell you that it IS in fact possible to do. All you have to do is magically know that it is coming and then completely ignore use of ballista. Seems like a fair and balanced and totally reasonable solution to me!

[Ysthrall]

Just ran into this Malice for the first time, on Horrific. Is it not present on lower difficulty levels?

It does seem to be a rather over-powered.

I'd agree with reducing it from -50% to -30% or similar.

[joemama1512]

Yes it exists everywhere as far as I know. Ive seen it on normal and veteran.

[Kodaaa]

Originally posted by jamess:

Hi there! Thanks for the feedback on this, The balance around some Malices and blessings isn't quite where we'd like them, so rest assured it's something we're looking at tweaking fairly heavily! I know that doesn't help with any current games you have going, but hopefully it helps to know it's something we'll be changing soon.

If you're curious about what other issues we're looking in to, feel free to take a look at our balancing thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426450/discussions/0/3113669366296954035/

By the way, it is worth fixing this, because the tower has not 50% attack range, but 30-40%. If you look at the cells, then in a normal state there are about 8, and when this 50% appears, he has 3 attack cells.

[NDXON]

I want to reiterate that this completely ruined my first and, at this point, probably only game. I got this on the final Death Night and died horribly, but tried 3 or 4 more times and eventually beat it, although I lost most of my army. I then spent a lot of time reinforcing my base to prepare for my final stand... only to get it AGAIN on my final stand, at which point I just quit. It feels terrible to have had a 4-hour run destroyed by this.

[Ysthrall]

I hope that it's a random assignation, in which case you're terribly unlucky.

Were you not able to reload an earlier save and get a different one? Or were you playing on Nightmare or something?

[NDXON]

Reloading earlier doesn't change which malice you get, and I'd have to replay like an hour or more of the campaign to effectively change my strategy, which is a level of savescumming I'm not going to stoop to. Instead, I'll just play a less punishing game!

[Tyrant]

reduced fire rate could be an option too

[Dekinai]

I think reducing the range is bad, i would actually opt for reduced fire rate. This way they are still viable as a defensive weapon.