Rework Death Knight into an actual tank and rebalance other minions for higher dificulties plus some feedback

[Jackal]

Most of the minions are useless without some self sustain and tankiness, I see no reason to bother using anything else besides lost souls and bone golems. Dps, sustain, buffs, debuffs, tankiness. Even the skeleton is tankier than death knight.

Besides it got his def stats nerfed by 2 points. 6 armor 6 resistance. Even makes it worse with such a low HP Pool. It basically becomes a snack for the axe dwarves.

Maybe the game would feel alot better if the enemies didn't actually rush to spam you with marks, aoes, block/wards... There's no actual strategy that feels satifying to use, it's basically a DPS race and there's no reason to pick anything besides luck stacking ignore block/ward etc...

Not enough item variety, it gets really dull and predictable when chosing the routes throughout the dungeon, sacrifice a minion to get the same items again and not worth bothering...

[NomadGMZ]

Agreed. Pretty much every minion needs to be reworked, but the Dark Knight definitely did not need more nerfs.

[Asylum]

Death knight is good.... idk what u mean. hes the best frontliner for stress based builds, he combos so well with them in his stance and stress based on buff move with his ult keeping him alive if need be.


EDIT: This reever guy doesnt even own the game why does he even have an opinion on this matter

[Paradox]

Originally posted by Asylum:

Death knight is good.... idk what u mean. hes the best frontliner for stress based builds, he combos so well with them in his stance and stress based on buff move with his ult keeping him alive if need be.


EDIT: This reever guy doesnt even own the game why does he even have an opinion on this matter

Dark Knight's health is way too low. I've seen him get 1 shot, from full health, on turn one, before I even got a chance to do anything. What's funny is that they even lowered his health already in a patch. His armor/res isn't nearly high enough for such a low amount of health.

Now, his stress damage is amazing with an AOE comp, but if he's dead...

[holy-death]

Originally posted by Paradox:

Dark Knight's health is way too low. I've seen him get 1 shot, from full health, on turn one, before I even got a chance to do anything.

Enemy chance to crit and the amount they crit for should be looked at, because it's the crits that go through armor and block, if I recall correctly.

Right now I find Dark Knight to be one of the two main early game tanks (Skeleton being the second). With ultimate Dark Knight can literally heal himself to full.

What helps, a lot, if stressing enemies so they lose attack damage, meaning Dark Knight can tank their attacks with his armor. The problem is when they become inspired or have a "debuff" that's actually a huge buff (double attack on Miner). Then they can stomp you into the ground, sending crits left and right.

[Star Paladin]

None of your suggestions mean a thing if they don't give you Intel as to what you'll be fighting. Your just totally guessing like a crapshoot until enemy information is available.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Originally posted by Paradox:

Dark Knight's health is way too low. I've seen him get 1 shot, from full health, on turn one, before I even got a chance to do anything.

Enemy chance to crit and the amount they crit for should be looked at, because it's the crits that go through armor and block, if I recall correctly.

Right now I find Dark Knight to be one of the two main early game tanks (Skeleton being the second). With ultimate Dark Knight can literally heal himself to full.

What helps, a lot, if stressing enemies so they lose attack damage, meaning Dark Knight can tank their attacks with his armor. The problem is when they become inspired or have a "debuff" that's actually a huge buff (double attack on Miner). Then they can stomp you into the ground, sending crits left and right.

Dark Knights might be one of the best classes against weak enemies, sure. However, every class is good against weak enemies and Dark Knights are terrible against strong enemies, like I mentioned in my example (turn 1 = dead).

[spyke2009]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Originally posted by Paradox:

Dark Knight's health is way too low. I've seen him get 1 shot, from full health, on turn one, before I even got a chance to do anything.

Enemy chance to crit and the amount they crit for should be looked at, because it's the crits that go through armor and block, if I recall correctly.

Right now I find Dark Knight to be one of the two main early game tanks (Skeleton being the second). With ultimate Dark Knight can literally heal himself to full.

What helps, a lot, if stressing enemies so they lose attack damage, meaning Dark Knight can tank their attacks with his armor. The problem is when they become inspired or have a "debuff" that's actually a huge buff (double attack on Miner). Then they can stomp you into the ground, sending crits left and right.

Yeah, spot on with this some stress debuffs are buffs and we're not talking berserkers here just random chance regular stress debuffs. Not to mention the dwarves have debuffs that remove all armor. no debuff remover? that being a costly spell OR mummy drafted in the fight? no sense expecting the knight to survive. Honestly if the goal is to have minions that are expendable they could be cheaper to build. Then again the game literally warns you that it's what they were going for so. It's hard to say just how far from that "artistic vision" they'll want to stray.

One thing I've noted is this game seems by design to encourage you to double up on at least one of your minions. I think there's a disconnect with how people are trying to play the game and how it's intended to be on some level.

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Dark knights are just bad and people think they're good because their ultimate heals them, but that's just a trick. Other minions don't have to heal because they have a bigger HP pool and can just then focus on DPS instead of spreading out their damage via AoE HP absorb ultimate.

You're usually better served replacing dark knights with skeletons because at least skeletons have more burst damage with their double attack and even have an attack that ignores armor. Enemies die quicker? Don't need to waste a turn to heal.


Dark knights didn't need a nerf, but they probably need to ditch their healing ultimate so the devs actually retune them to have the raw stats to actually be able to take a beating.

Besides, the reason why players overvalue the dark knight's healing ability is because all the enemies in this game deal so much damage. So many of the enemies start the fight with blocks and wards and yours rarely do meaning they're laying right into you while you're playing catch up out of the gate shaving all those blocks/wards off. It sucks.

[Jackal]

Originally posted by Asylum:

Death knight is good.... idk what u mean. hes the best frontliner for stress based builds, he combos so well with them in his stance and stress based on buff move with his ult keeping him alive if need be.


EDIT: This reever guy doesnt even own the game why does he even have an opinion on this matter

A Frontliner shouldn't be squishy. Relying on that ultimate to heal is nonsense, it works well early game, but when you need the wrath for something actually game changing then you will regret it. Golem have almost the triple HP and can heal at no cost and stack insane damage buffs, 3rd Boss was a joke with golems tanking explosions, they actually barely took any damage and had less armor / resistance thank a level 1 Dark Knight and Lost Souls were unaffected cause full of block / wards.

Right now Dark Knights are only good with 2 Lost Soul 2 DK for the stress combo. i Actually managed to reach 3rd Boss with this comp on easy mode. But on normal mode forget it, you need HP to actually tank and self sustain and DK can't rely on a crap ultimate to just get a few HP that will go down again on next turn to a crit and you will have no wrath.

Overwall a frontliner should feel bulky and tanky. Dark Knight is none of that with his low HP. The armor and resistance are an illusion cause of the insane crits and debuffs and the lack of self sustain. Same reason why skeleton is pretty trash and expendable unless you are using a lich.

Either rework him into an actual tank, boost his hp to 150+ and give him some way to get block/wards like bone golem and heal or just turn him into a pseudo dps buffing his charge even more for the cheap 4 DK strategy

Or..

Actually rework some minion into a healer like Vestel from Dark Dungeons where his abilities are just focused on healing. Actually Occultist and the Flagelant are type of mechanics a healer could use in this game.

The Blood Phantasm is just pure trash alone, I wanted to try 2 of them so they can heal eeach other while in that stance with 2 Head Hunters in the backlines spamming mark but it's not even worth cause they are squishy and they cant boost ward/blocks for pyromancer.

[holy-death]

Originally posted by Paradox:

Dark Knights might be one of the best classes against weak enemies, sure. However, every class is good against weak enemies and Dark Knights are terrible against strong enemies, like I mentioned in my example (turn 1 = dead).

Untrue.

1) What makes Dark Knight better at tanking from other classes is his armor and his ability to self-heal with the ultimate. You can't put, for example, Zombie, Banshee or Wraith in front and expect them to do better (Banshee *might* work, with extra Evasion from Wraith's trap, but there is still a risk she will eat hits regardless).

2) What can kill Dark Knight with a single hit will most likely kill any (or almost any) minion anyway. Or make them dead-dead within that turn anyway, so I fail to see why it makes Dark Knight specifically weak in such scenario. I'd rather say it's an enemy who's hitting for way too much damage (in which case Dark Knight still remains one of the best minions to tank hits with, due to his higher armor value and the ability to heal with his ultimate).

Originally posted by spyke2009:

Yeah, spot on with this some stress debuffs are buffs and we're not talking berserkers here just random chance regular stress debuffs.

I didn't mean Berserkers. I literally meant a stress debuff that's called "berserk" or something like that, which gives an enemy an extra attack in exchange for 30% of their overall health.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

The problem is that Lost souls is overpowered, shade is overpowered....they will get nerfed into the ground.....rinse and repeat until we get a decent game.

We also need a mechanics that prevents people from dragging the combat into 100 rounds just to heal and do other stuff.

In short: balance all minions faster

[Paradox]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Originally posted by Paradox:

Dark Knights might be one of the best classes against weak enemies, sure. However, every class is good against weak enemies and Dark Knights are terrible against strong enemies, like I mentioned in my example (turn 1 = dead).

Untrue.

1) What makes Dark Knight better at tanking from other classes is his armor and his ability to self-heal with the ultimate. You can't put, for example, Zombie, Banshee or Wraith in front and expect them to do better (Banshee *might* work, with extra Evasion from Wraith's trap, but there is still a risk she will eat hits regardless).

2) What can kill Dark Knight with a single hit will most likely kill any (or almost any) minion anyway. Or make them dead-dead within that turn anyway, so I fail to see why it makes Dark Knight specifically weak in such scenario. I'd rather say it's an enemy who's hitting for way too much damage (in which case Dark Knight still remains one of the best minions to tank hits with, due to his higher armor value and the ability to heal with his ultimate).

Originally posted by spyke2009:

Yeah, spot on with this some stress debuffs are buffs and we're not talking berserkers here just random chance regular stress debuffs.

I didn't mean Berserkers. I literally meant a stress debuff that's called "berserk" or something like that, which gives an enemy an extra attack in exchange for 30% of their overall health.

Armor only reduces the damage by its own value.

(As of 156.08 N)
A dark knight has 70 vigor and 6 armor/resistance.
A zombie has 110 vigor and 6 resistance.
A banshee has 85 vigor.
A wraith has 80 vigor.

That means the squishiest of them all is the dark knight, being able to take only 76 points of damage. Now, sure, he can self heal for 35-60 damage for 60 wrath. But in the later difficulties of the game he doesn't even last long enough to get back around to his turn to heal.

Look at bone golem for comparison. A bone golem starts with 165 vigor and can self-heal for 0 wrath for 25-33 (which will scale even higher as he lvls and gains vigor).

[holy-death]

Originally posted by Paradox:

That means the squishiest of them all is the dark knight, being able to take only 76 points of damage. Now, sure, he can self heal for 35-60 damage for 60 wrath. But in the later difficulties of the game he doesn't even last long enough to get back around to his turn to heal.

"Later difficulties of the game" are simply imbalanced. You can either buff Dark Knight or nerf enemies. It's as simple as that. But there is no problem with Dark Knight himself as a concept.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Originally posted by Paradox:

That means the squishiest of them all is the dark knight, being able to take only 76 points of damage. Now, sure, he can self heal for 35-60 damage for 60 wrath. But in the later difficulties of the game he doesn't even last long enough to get back around to his turn to heal.

"Later difficulties of the game" are simply imbalanced. You can either buff Dark Knight or nerf enemies. It's as simple as that. But there is no problem with Dark Knight himself as a concept.

Well, he needs higher numbers, that's my point. He's a front line that is squisher than most back lines. If they want his health to be super low then he needs considerably more armor (but then in lower difficulties he will basically be immortal). The most reasonable solution would be a lot more vigor and his ult should be a lot cheaper or do more (either additional effects or damage/healing)

[Jackal]

Given his current build, he should heal for like 10% of the stress damage dealt and boost his HP to at least 100. Not sure if that would be enough tho. His ultimate cost is just way too high for such a low gain, other minions will need the wrath more than just to heal the DK