Bodyguards overpowered?

[Caeruleus Mors]

I'm breezing trough hardcore with bodyguards alone as soon as i survive the early game and my main character can support level 6 to 8 recruits.

Dunno. Bodyguards seem overpowered, combined with other in-battle summoning skills and magic. Heroes dont die so you can toss them at impossible odds and chip away at the enemy for free too.

[Beautiful]

hopefully this gets addressed soon. but for now my personal makeshift workaround is to never recruit more than 1-2 secondary heroes

[Chrisme]

Originally posted by Caeruleus Mors:

[...]Heroes dont die so you can toss them at impossible odds and chip away at the enemy for free too.

I'm pretty sure that I have had heroes die on me already. Maybe not when attacking myself but when getting attacked by the enemy. Not sure if it's a chance or some other condition but they can die off.

That being said... I don't like the bodyguards mechanic either but mostly because I hate managing these additional weak units in the placement phase of every battle with a secondary hero.

---

Also, summoning is indeed OP, especially when you have the whole mesmer set that let's you keep a good amount of the summoned creatures. My biggest grudge is not the balance though (I actually like it this way) but the fact that battlefield participants become so numerous that my frames drop into the abyss.

[Nipu]

Chrisme, hero disappear if they are defeated near of a town. You can rebuy them on the most near tavern ( they will be on a priority list)

The bodyguard nerf will be simply : No instant replenish and Champion statue nerfed.

[Slurgi]

I agree, bodyguard is *way* overpowered right now.

Though really the problem isn't bodyguard itself, it'd be a neat skill if you had to invest in it properly, but the instant replenishment and the fact that you can have a couple extra heroes with meaningful armies on day 3 are the real problems.

[CatFresh]

Combine bodyguard with the spell evolve.

You now have a huge number of massive units for the whopping price of recruiting a hero.

[R10is]

Originally posted by CatFresh:

Combine bodyguard with the spell evolve.

Don't forget Army of Giants (on the melee guys) or FIrst strike (on the ranged guys).

And then, ofc there's the Destruction/Engineering skill combo, which at high skill levels makes an infinite army of walking bombs.
Combine THAT with Pyre's Demon Gate shenanigans, and even "impossible" battles become near cakewalks.

[Quillithe]

There seem to be a few skills that are a bit too strong on secondary heroes - in addition to bodyguard I'd throw in nobility, planning, and recruitment.

It feels like these should be calculated by the best score among heros, but (I believe?) they stack, so that hiring every hero with one of these skills is basically a bunch of free money (except i guess planning if the towns are built up). Estates and mastery do this too, but its not nearly as extreme.

Or maybe those skills are too strong? Planning seems fair since it's for one time costs, but being able to get +60-80% growth and recruitment cost reduction is pretty massive. Dropping gold costs for recruitment by 90% completely breaks the resource system, and you can just do it by hiring a few secondary heroes instead of sacrificing your skill points on your main one.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by CatFresh:

Combine bodyguard with the spell evolve.

You now have a huge number of massive units for the whopping price of recruiting a hero.

Bodyguard and devour is pretty silly too - fight as many weak neutrals as you can, devour like mad, get your hero to 40+ attack and defense

[.anointed.]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

There seem to be a few skills that are a bit too strong on secondary heroes - in addition to bodyguard I'd throw in nobility, planning, and recruitment.

It feels like these should be calculated by the best score among heros, but (I believe?) they stack, so that hiring every hero with one of these skills is basically a bunch of free money (except i guess planning if the towns are built up). Estates and mastery do this too, but its not nearly as extreme.

Or maybe those skills are too strong? Planning seems fair since it's for one time costs, but being able to get +60-80% growth and recruitment cost reduction is pretty massive. Dropping gold costs for recruitment by 90% completely breaks the resource system, and you can just do it by hiring a few secondary heroes instead of sacrificing your skill points on your main one.

Tbf, if the game has gone on long enough to the point where you are buying heroes to stack royalty and recruitment, then gold is probably trivial and you are days away from winning. All of my games are pretty much decided by hero lvl 10, anything after that is either memes or experimenting.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by PinkerStinklage:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

There seem to be a few skills that are a bit too strong on secondary heroes - in addition to bodyguard I'd throw in nobility, planning, and recruitment.

It feels like these should be calculated by the best score among heros, but (I believe?) they stack, so that hiring every hero with one of these skills is basically a bunch of free money (except i guess planning if the towns are built up). Estates and mastery do this too, but its not nearly as extreme.

Or maybe those skills are too strong? Planning seems fair since it's for one time costs, but being able to get +60-80% growth and recruitment cost reduction is pretty massive. Dropping gold costs for recruitment by 90% completely breaks the resource system, and you can just do it by hiring a few secondary heroes instead of sacrificing your skill points on your main one.

Tbf, if the game has gone on long enough to the point where you are buying heroes to stack royalty and recruitment, then gold is probably trivial and you are days away from winning. All of my games are pretty much decided by hero lvl 10, anything after that is either memes or experimenting.

On smaller maps, sure, but it really doesn't upscale well - and it means every nobility hero is a massive gold boost effectively.

Plus I'm pretty sure that stacked nobility and the lucky set probably let you recruit near-infinite units which is probably bad.

It's not a huge deal - obviously some skills are better on secondary heroes than others, but these two seem so much better than the rest that getting a lucky hero or two with them is a massive bonus.

[Descending Minor Key Line Cliche]

Bodyguard used to give each hero that had it their own small unique bodyguard units. If that hero had Mastery, it would be the same as their Mastery unit - except it was always the upgraded version. They weren't real units, but if they died you had to wait a few days before they'd come back. It was a SUPER fun skill.

It was changed to what it is now, IIRC, to NERF it... lol. It was pretty silly, tbh, because Olane, for example, could get an Apex at level 2, which obviously let you pull off some silly stuff. But it was fun, and was nowhere near as annoying as Bodyguard is now lol. I wish ThingOnItsOwn would just change it back :(.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by i - VII - VI - V7:

Bodyguard used to give each hero that had it their own small unique bodyguard units. If that hero had Mastery, it would be the same as their Mastery unit - except it was always the upgraded version. They weren't real units, but if they died you had to wait a few days before they'd come back. It was a SUPER fun skill.

It was changed to what it is now, IIRC, to NERF it... lol. It was pretty silly, tbh, because Olane, for example, could get an Apex at level 2, which obviously let you pull off some silly stuff. But it was fun, and was nowhere near as annoying as Bodyguard is now lol. I wish ThingOnItsOwn would just change it back :(.

Yeah, I'd like the old bodyguard back too - apparently it was too strong for rushing but I'd just have it shifted around on skill trees some if that's the case.

At the least I really don't like current bodyguard working off the highest power army, I'd rather it just be some cap based on the week, like it adds units to make an army power of 200 per skill to a cap of 50+150 per week that passes or something like that (numbers may be nonsense)

[CatFresh]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by i - VII - VI - V7:

Bodyguard used to give each hero that had it their own small unique bodyguard units. If that hero had Mastery, it would be the same as their Mastery unit - except it was always the upgraded version. They weren't real units, but if they died you had to wait a few days before they'd come back. It was a SUPER fun skill.

It was changed to what it is now, IIRC, to NERF it... lol. It was pretty silly, tbh, because Olane, for example, could get an Apex at level 2, which obviously let you pull off some silly stuff. But it was fun, and was nowhere near as annoying as Bodyguard is now lol. I wish ThingOnItsOwn would just change it back :(.

Yeah, I'd like the old bodyguard back too - apparently it was too strong for rushing but I'd just have it shifted around on skill trees some if that's the case.

At the least I really don't like current bodyguard working off the highest power army, I'd rather it just be some cap based on the week, like it adds units to make an army power of 200 per skill to a cap of 50+150 per week that passes or something like that (numbers may be nonsense)

I like that. Have bodyguard start out giving little army power, then daily (or even weekly) grow. I remember my first play through I didn't read the "tied to largest army" part and just assumed it would give me a few units as bodyguards. After accidentally finding how OP it is, I HATE the skill.

[Firathmagi]

So...

- when units created via bodyguards die, they will now take some time to replenish (10% replenishment per day)
- the champion statue now gives:
- week 1-3: +1 bodyguards rank
- week 4-6: +2 bodyguards rank
- week 7-9: +3 bodyguards rank

is in the beta branch right now

[Quillithe]

Sounds better, but I'm still not a big fan of how powerful spamming extra heroes is - for example it still bothers me that towns get garrisons, presumably so they don't just get captured by any old hero without any army. But they still do because every hero has bodyguard skill and brings a bigger army than the town garrison.