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It is known, and that explains a lot !
Bruenor is a permanent that everyone has, so he's probably got good to great gear.
Drizzt is a permanent, but you need to unlock him so he's probably behind in gear, plus he's not great so you wouldn't be using any blacksmithing contracts on him to boos him further.
Regis and Cattie-brie are event champs so their gear is limited.
Wulfgar is both an event champ and brand new, so his gear is more likely than not pretty weak.
If you looked at them all compared to the ones you are dropping or moving away from the prime location, they hurt your DPS a significantly.
No, the problem with Companions is that they're competing with essential group powers -- drizzt and wulfgar are both in benchslots with high-power buffers. Using Regis eliminates the only meaningful healing the game has for higher difficulties. Bruenor is an inflexible formation buff that is comparable to Deekin, who's formation buff can be completely open-ended. And then there's Cattie, a 10th slot hero in competition with Ishi or Stoki for utility/low-tier buffs.
In summation, they're a bunch of champions designed for a completely different game than the one we're actually playing.
Sometimes i see devs do strange things. First they add Drizzt as bonus and make him completely useless. This main hero in story, but in game he nothing.
After that devs add Drizzt and core champions buffs in Tier 4 blessings. This buffs only works for newbies, but when you reach Tier 4 globals you already unlock all event chars with timegates and events. And even with this buffs core champions still useless. Who want use Jamillah when you have Strix? Or maybe Bruenor instead Deekin (Deekin even without gear better than Bruenor). Also bonus for 12 core heroes, but who want dps for supports?
After all this fails, devs make full bonus for Companions of the Hall and again, he looks like for newbies only, but if you plan to use this buff you need do a lot of things.
Devs, if you do something for game balance atleast play in your game, maybe use testers. Many players from this forum can test game for you if you give some free chests for that. Devs add new features very slow, not check any game balance and metas and make completely useless event heroes. I know this only EA, but even games in EA have test server where devs test things before full release.
Sorry for bad english.
And I certainly could not have said it better.
As for the testing, do they have this player council here as they do in CoTLI ? If so they may have people to test things, but the way the council is set up, no way for those people to get ideas or bounce off things with those outside the council, since, at least in CoTLI it is a totally closed off no information in or out.
I almost totally agree with all of you. BTW I still have faith... because the second variant of this event (Father and Son) is a perfect example of how you actually could make the Companions of the Hall relevant. Let me explain it better:
We could have a new campaign (not 10ish days events for the love of whatever you believe in - please) that you unlock after getting Drizzt in wich you're forced to play ONLY the members of the Companions. Lots of adventures, variants, growing in difficulty... for example, the first adventures could be good for people who has just Drizzt and Bruenor.
With that, you also add a new currency, let's call it "Companion's tokens" or whatever. With a number of these tokens, that you can basically get just like we get dices for the Highrollers event but only when playing the Companions only campaign, you can (ANYTIME) open Regis, Catti-Brie and Wulfgar's events in order to unlock those champions and do harder adventures/variants in the Companions only campaign I just mentioned... and if you've them already, you can just keep getting those tokens for dedicated chests or other cool rewards.
I get it, some of you play since the start and already have those champions... but as most of you already stated, they (with the exception of maybe Catti) ended up being almost useless. This way they could again become relevant for noobs and vets alike, without having to rebalance the whole roster around these champs.
IMHO this is the only way to make everybody happy.
The rewards could be cool skins for some champions (even if they aren't Companions), cool potions and stuff like that. And of course, with a new campaign we'd have new blessings too, with bonuses usefull even for other campaigns.
In the future the same thing could be done for other teams, like Force Grey or the Waffle Crew, I dunno, but the team who's most in need of something like that now is obviously the Companions of the Hall.
Meanwhile, new 10days-ish events could anyway pop up with other "all around good" champs without affiliations. We're happy cause we get to play more stuff, Devs are happy cause they sell more stuff (don't get me wrong I'm not saying you're just interested in money lol, just sayin)... it's a win/win situation that doesnt throw in the trashcan most of the stuff done till now.
PS: I'm going to make a new thread in the "suggestions" forum aswell, I don't wanna spam but imho this is both a good answer to this thread and legit "new suggestion" material. If you agree with this idea, please take a moment to go there and write your answer there.
This is the link to the discussion in the "suggestions" forum:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/627690/discussions/2/1742220359690024895/
My suggestion https://steamcommunity.com/app/627690/discussions/2/1742220359690488455/
This is how they are in the books:
Drizzt = lethal fighter, should be more powerful than any champion they've included so far.
Catti-brie = strong fighter (archer)
Bruenor = average fighter
Wulfgar = strong barbarian
Regis = weak rogue with a powerful gem
The group has no healers or magic users and the top 4 are all fighter types... they just don't work in the current meta.
Idle Champions is all about using 1 dps and 9 buffers. Drizzt should be the obvious choice as the 1 dps character, but what are the rest going to do? Catti-Brie shoots arrows, Bruenor hits things with an axe, Wulfgar hits monsters with a 2-handed hammer... they're all about damage, not party buffs.
The champion designs partly reflect that. Catti-brie has no real buffs, and Wulfgar brings stuns which don't do a great deal... but he's in the super-buff champion slot, so never usable. Bruenor is okay, but Deekin outbuffs him and has awesome utility. That just leaved Regis, who can't compete with Celeste's raw buffing power, or her party-heal ultimate.
It's sad, but they're just a write-off.
But designing a group of 5 characters, ie more or less half of an entire formation, around each other as a cohesive pre-determined team? This is new territory for them... and they're trying this in a game that already has a much more condensed roster compared to their previous game. (see note) Which means that there's less wiggle room for adaptation around picking these Champions over the other options in their bench seats...
If you're building a formation around this group, your options for tanking and healing will be biased towards Arkhan (tank with emergency self heals) and Calliope (damage shield isn't "healing", but it could help delay attackers for a bit and there's no actual healer available with Celeste and Tyril's seats occupied). Strix could almost be considered for help there since she can revive an ally, but that trick could only work once without a healer to help her recover from it. Anybody in Nayeli and Jarlaxle and Asharra's seats are free game to consider for extra support. Hitch's buff can support Wulfgar but not Drizzt and I'm not sure how much help that is. You won't be trying to use anyone from Hitch or Jamilah's seats as your main DPS since the point of using the CotH group would be Wulfgar and/or Drizzt as main DPS.
Granted, future releases could allow us to revise our assessment. (New options in Nayeli or Jarlaxle or Asharra or Jamilah's seats. New healer? New buffer? New characters with interesting utility functions (speed boost, stun, enemy debuff, etc.)? Anything to give more options to use to build around this group.)
Note: Crusaders starts with 20 bench seats by default. Champions starts with 12. Crusaders introduced 2 new characters per event through two years of events and 1 new character per event in this current year. Champions started out introducing only 1 new character per event. Crusaders expanded to 24 bench seats with the addition of 8 new characters obtained from the permanent campaigns, and then later expanded to 28 bench seats as they started on year 3 events. Champions has not yet budged on the number of bench seats.
Edit: Oh yeah, Nrakk does stuns and that could help play into Wulfgar's abilities. So one could possibly consider him instead of Hitch.
Hell it is already proven that having to dedicate half of your formation to getting a single buff to work is a bad idea from the current state and all that idea is doing is making it so you have to dedicate even more of the formation to try and get that buff.
The more likely result from adding a good buffer in slot 11 is that Arkhan will actually start being considered as a possible DPS choice and Stoki/Ishi/Jarl being dropped from the tenth formation slot as the further push from an extra dedicated buffer will increase the total more than they can.
Except for the fact that Celeste heals and provides substantial, meaningful healing amounts FAR after all other healing values are rendered entirely pointless (like when a single enemy attack deals 1000x more damage than all passive healing sources combined). Celeste is critical to farming at your wall. Regis cannot and and will never be able to offer the same capabilities.
Cattie-brie is a good 10th slot option, however.
A thought I just had. No idea how it may or may not mesh with established lore. Bruenor's race is specified as "Shield Dwarf" in contrast with Binwin being a "Mountain Dwarf" and Barrowin just being a generic "Dwarf". I don't know the DnD lore to know why they aren't just all given the generic label, but since Bruenor does get that classification that sounds like it has tanky implications...
What if they were to add a new specialization choice for him alongside his current choices of a self boost or a team boost, and that choice could be for something like "his shield intercepts the damage meant to hit any adjacent ally"? Or rather, add that in as a new ability with a weak base value and the spec boosts that ability just the same as how his self boost and team boost mechanics are set up (variable that gets boosted could be percent of damage intercepted (boost increases this) and/or percent of intercepted damage that Bruenor then has to actually suffer from (boost reduces this)), and he'd have a special mechanic where he has his own personal damage shield (similar to what Calliope provides to others - maybe it could even be a separate pool of bonus health from that one (fill it in as a third color on his health bar)) that he uses on himself periodically (think of it as being like a health bar for his shield and he keeps repairing it).
Something like that could make Bruenor a potential tank (with more flexibility in positioning compared to other tanks in the game).
And... Hmmm... Regis himself isn't a healer or mage, but that gem is magic, yes? Maybe we can rationalize something coming from that? Thinking of how to add it... What if a healing spec was a new alternative alongside his buff ahead and buff behind options? Even with that thought though, I'd assume that this would underperform compared to Celeste's heals. Maybe Regis can heal the entire party at once but the strength of it is an equal value as what Celeste can deliver to each target... but it's divided by the number of spaces in the formation (regardless of whether or not they're occupied (so if Celeste can heal 100 HP then Regis heals for 10 or 11 HP depending on if the formation can fit 10 or 9 champions))... and maybe the heals hit slightly slower compared to Celeste as well (like once every 1.1 seconds instead of once per second). It's not much and we'd still want to look outside this group of five characters for additional support, but does it sound like a reasonable enough suggestion?
I don't know, just spitballing a few ideas. And I didn't really touch the core concern about multiple seemingly damage focused characters clashing with the core game mechanics which gravitate towards focusing around a single main damage dealer...
Would it be possible to design synergy mechanics in such a way that they can be universal boosts with an extra boost applied for members of the character's own group?
Looking at any one of Wulfgar's synergy abilities as an example... Let's consider "Companion - Bruenor". Increases the effect of Bruenor's Rally by some % for each stunned enemy. Imagine instead if this was named something more like "Companion's Rally" and the effect could be something along the lines of "Increases the effect of the first named upgrade of each ally in the same column as Wulfgar by some % for each stunned enemy. This effect will also affect Bruenor's first two named abilities at double that rate, regardless of Bruenor's position relative to Wulfgar in the formation." So if this affects Deekin it buffs Story of Doom, if it affects Celeste it buffs Crusader's Mantle, if it affects Nayeli it buffs Aura of Courage, etc. And for Bruenor it would mean a buff to both Inpired and Rally. It allows Wulfgar's Bruenor synergy ability to influence something with or without Bruenor's presence, albeit with limitations on how much non-Companions get from it.
They could make a change like that along with similar changes with "Companion - Regis", "Companion - Catti-brie", and "Companion - Drizzt" as well... Or perhaps they could just mash them up into one unified ability (expanding the position-based rule to all targets but with decreased effectiveness for each position away from him they are, and allowing Bruenor, Regis, Catti-brie, and Drizzt to all get a stronger non-positional buff instead).
This thought would just be a first step in reconsidering how the Companions of the Hall synergize with each other and with others outside their group, though.
The other thing to think about would be whether they can fit in dual-purpose behaviors like this originating from every member of a group. Anything that can still be useful in general, with or without the other members of the character's group.
Drizzt kind of already has something that sort of does this to some extent. (Self buff based on number of Companions of the Hall in the formation, but everyone who isn't Drizzt receives the buff at half strength. Does nothing if he's the only CotH in the formation though... (Maybe that can be tweaked so that the buff for the rest of the formation is calculated from something different?))
Although I kind of feel like there ought to be some potential to do some sort of synergy effect with Drizzt's ability that makes it possible for enemy attacks to miss. Like a (very short) temporary ability buff for the ally that the enemy tried to attack, or something. Or maybe that enemy gets stunned if they take any damage within 1 second of when the enemy missed an attack (DOT effects like from Delina (if anybody would even include her instead of Hitch) could be a sneaky way to trigger this instead of just hoping for good timing). Whatever it is, maybe on top of that Catti-brie could have a special condition in her ability "Powerful Draw" where if she hits an enemy who has missed an attack within the last 2 seconds (or however long) then it counts as if the enemy is at spawn so she can deal extra damage to them) no matter how close to the formation they actually were, and/or it gets a guaranteed crit. (Could also be relevant if other characters besides Drizzt can cause enemies to miss. But maybe the guaranteed crit part could only be for when it follows a miss that Drizzt caused.)