Dark Ritual Breaks the game

[Pai De Familia]

I mean, for real. It makes every other aspect of the game pretty much useless, just slap some dark ritual heroes in the battle and like a unholy flex seal it fixes pretty much everything. I would not mind if you could use it only once per battle but every 3 turns??? And not only that but you can reanimate zombies that already died. At this point the zombies are pretty much minced meat on the ground. It's a good game but I got a feel that it is still pretty much a beta that needs some balancing. So much that everyone that plays multiplayer has rules on what can and cannot be used because some stuff completely breaks the game. Anyways, this is just my 2 cents.

[Pai De Familia]

it's a good idea, but I still feel it's way too much effort to fix something that it is broken in the game.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

it's a good idea, but I still feel it's way too much effort to fix something that it is broken in the game.

Just a suggestion, until its fix'd.

[Pai De Familia]

*If* ever gets fixed

[Black Hammer]

Hero stacking is extremely strong, but that's a separate issue.

[M0rgi]

Easy way to fix dark ritual would be to leave reanimated zombies with just one action instead of 3. That would cut down on their damage significantly and dark ritual would still be worth picking

[Terminal]

Originally posted by M0rgi:

Easy way to fix dark ritual would be to leave reanimated zombies with just one action instead of 3. That would cut down on their damage significantly and dark ritual would still be worth picking

The problem is that Decaying Zombies are used as units outside of Dark Ritual, and if they only get one action under all conditions that makes them the most useless unit in the game.

Unless you meant they only spawn with one action point on the turn they are summoned and otherwise are standard, which yeah, would be a pretty solid nerf to Dark Ritual. I can't say whether it would be necessary though.

[M0rgi]

Originally posted by Terminal:

Originally posted by M0rgi:

Easy way to fix dark ritual would be to leave reanimated zombies with just one action instead of 3. That would cut down on their damage significantly and dark ritual would still be worth picking

The problem is that Decaying Zombies are used as units outside of Dark Ritual, and if they only get one action under all conditions that makes them the most useless unit in the game.

Unless you meant they only spawn with one action point on the turn they are summoned and otherwise are standard, which yeah, would be a pretty solid nerf to Dark Ritual. I can't say whether it would be necessary though.

Yes that was what i meant first turn only one action rest of combat full action. Its powerul enough with it as enemy has to spend actions to kill those zombies or suffer not doing so and you still get some damage/decay from it

[Midas]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Originally posted by Midas:

Everything in the game works this way though. Unit type rarely determines what works on it in AoW4. You can heal undead, you can drain life from machines, etc. It's all pretty standardized now.

I don't mind a common heal working on undead it worked in the first 2 games on them and only 3 is the exception here, its more a balance, faction design and immersion thing to allow this or not, but cranking out zombies and skeletons from elementals and drain life working on machines is something that makes no sense according how AoW was designed as a series. Its part tradition, part immersion breaking and most importantly as the OP says unbalanced in competetive PvP, like a small duel map, when your opponent is quickly in your face spamming hero signature abilities like Dark Ritual.

This could be avoided by house rules or gentlemen agrees, but something this obvious needs to be fixed by the devs themselves sooner or later as it feels bad, when unit types do not matter in tactical combat anymore?

Look at the whole picture of necromancy in AoW4. I see quite some need for buffs, too. The shadow T5 Tome is the worst out of the T5 Tomes and yet heavenly influenced by the necromancy theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2amqR3aODs&t=1s

Not that i agree with everything this content creator says, but i think he kinda nailed it with T5 tomes.

Tome of the Eternal Lord is last spot, while Tome of the Arch Mage is A, but only because Disruption Wave is banned, its more like a S+++ even or especially in SP as well. Tome of Eternal Lord, which basicly only got necromancy themed spells and has no insanity influenced spells, like a T4 Tome of Oblivion, which is one of the best T4 Tomes acts like a noobfilter - even in SP. Its that bad. It feels more like a generic T3 Tome.

Battlefield Reanimation is better than this guy says, but its nerfed with the next DLC by Final Banishment, but its a T4 spell, and won't help any against early Dark Ritual abuse, what its instead doing, is, making the T5 spell Battlefield Reanimation, look worse as well and Eternal Lord will never be picked in any competetive situation, basicly late game FFA games, when its likely to even see T5 tomes.

I don't know, if there are any balance changes to existing tome spells, but if nothing is changed, this won't be looking good as far as the T5 tomes are concerned.


TL'DR:

Basics like elementals not behaving as elementals and machines not working as machines is screaming for fast fixing, even if its just to provide AoW4 the same strategic layer of the previous AoWs.

I am around since AoW1s development giving the devs feedback and i have never seen a game made by TS polished in under 1 year or whenever they release fresh content. Did not happen even once. So, i hope. Midas, you don't mean, the Devs don't need our help finding bugs and inconsistencies. There is Beta, but its not quite enough to find everything, especially stuff like this that tends to fly under the radar.

Thanks Pai De Familia, its an interesting topic, did you make a report in the offical paradox forum or AoW4 discord? Devs should definately be aware of this and fix these goofs.

It's not any more imbalanced than anything working on anything else. What makes sense thematically and what is balanced are not directly connected. If anything the only real problem here is that a non-necromancer hero can even get dark ritual to begin with. It's yet another example of how bad the random hero skills are. If a bunch of things just couldn't be turned with necromancy all that would mean is a nerf for shadow tomes.

[Pai De Familia]

I do agree that dark ritual should be only for necros, that hero's skills should be related to culture/tomes and trait, but I also believe it is strongly unbalanced. You can pump a bunch of cheap ass elemental and keep reviving them eternally before turn 20. There is nothing that powerful that early in the game.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

I do agree that dark ritual should be only for necros, that hero's skills should be related to culture/tomes and trait, but I also believe it is strongly unbalanced. You can pump a bunch of cheap ass elemental and keep reviving them eternally before turn 20. There is nothing that powerful that early in the game.

That's supposed to just be part of Shadow's thing, though. They have lots of easy access to making zombies, and get access to strategic spells for raising zombies far sooner and in far greater numbers than any other affinity's battlefield summons. Raise Zombies is literally in the T2 necromancy tome and lets you do the raising portion of dark ritual every turn as a battlefield spell. Then at T5 they get a mass battlefield rez that ALSO raises all the enemy dead as zombies. This is meant to be a perk of playing shadow.

[Pai De Familia]

Devs changed to single use only, YAY devs!!!