Spellcasters are too strong for now

[Gorf]

Compared to more warrior type characters, magicians can dish out insane damage in such a short time that its basically impossible to recover if you had equal forces starting the fight.

I think being able to cast as many spells as you like in succession is broken and way too strong.

[Seswatha]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

I've played the game enough to know the difference, including campaign with Rasc.

There's noting preventing you from speccing him into 1 or 2 magics, and in fact you should. Damage magic is potent up to a point but eventually falls off compared to unit damage.

Rasc's chicken stack is also incredibly broken lategame and can kill pretty much anything turn 1 before it makes a move, partially thanks to the fact that chickens get double upgrades from tech.

If we talk pvp on a small map sure the wielders that start with a magic skill have and advantage.

It's not just the damage magic. Full casters get skills that generate a mountain of essence at the start of a battle. Not only can you outright kill half their army you can cripple what's left and you can do it from turn one, at any range. All you need is one fast guy who gets to go first.

To even use the tech you need to upgrade the town enough to get a large build slot, build the thing, and then spend the resources to research it.

The caster meanwhile has to... level a few times.

You mean essence burst? Anyone can get essence burst. Having essence burst + a magic school trained is 2 skills. And I wouldn't call it "a mountain" but it's enough for a couple of nasty spells. But you still need your stacks alive to generate essence for any serious fight. As for "half an army" that depends on what stage you're at, spells deal like a bit less than 300 damage max (single target), while stacks with upgraded caps can have 1200+ hp. Plus spell resistance pretty much kills magic damage. Furthermore, you have essence burst and attuned, the other guy has prepared and eager and oneshots all your "fast" units before they get to act with +2 move and +45 ini.

But yeah if we talk small map where you can't even build any large buildings before the final fight magic is going to win most of the time unless maybe facing someone like P'Cha who negates most of it from the start.

[Yes YES]

Need some spells like "Anti-magic" or "dispel" in 1-2 rounds etc updates. Or rework magic spells system for more balance, otherwise this game will become boring to play.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

It's not just the damage magic. Full casters get skills that generate a mountain of essence at the start of a battle. Not only can you outright kill half their army you can cripple what's left and you can do it from turn one, at any range. All you need is one fast guy who gets to go first.

To even use the tech you need to upgrade the town enough to get a large build slot, build the thing, and then spend the resources to research it.

The caster meanwhile has to... level a few times.

You mean essence burst? Anyone can get essence burst. Having essence burst + a magic school trained is 2 skills. And I wouldn't call it "a mountain" but it's enough for a couple of nasty spells. But you still need your stacks alive to generate essence for any serious fight. As for "half an army" that depends on what stage you're at, spells deal like a bit less than 300 damage max (single target), while stacks with upgraded caps can have 1200+ hp. Plus spell resistance pretty much kills magic damage. Furthermore, you have essence burst and attuned, the other guy has prepared and eager and oneshots all your "fast" units before they get to act with +2 move and +45 ini.

But yeah if we talk small map where you can't even build any large buildings before the final fight magic is going to win most of the time unless maybe facing someone like P'Cha who negates most of it from the start.

Yeah I have to say I tested the big chicken and I'm impressed with their power but it's entirely dependent on the scale of exactly how long the map is expected to go. I think the issue here is my definition of late game is how far you're likely to get on any of the game's premade skirmish maps, which are admittedly not very big. Now if we're talking campaign where you'll be walking around with the same units for dozens and dozens of turns then I can see where you're coming from.

Also essence burst ranks up three times. At max rank its +4 of every essence I believe, couple that with a few upgrades and decent items and it's enough to wipe out most early to mid tier armies without much issue. It's pretty apparent that late game (far longer on than any skirmish map will last) you'd have issues with pure magic damage but the melee troops need so much investment of time and resource that I just don't see any game sans the campaign where you're likely to reach that point.

For comparison I've yet to see any AI field even a single tier 3 unit before I've killed them and that's over the course of like 10 different maps and games. Maybe an actual player would have a better time of it but the AI is fantastically inept to the point if the map has a portal it entirely breaks their AI.

[kirill-busidow]

Magic is overpowered in this game. Should be limit to 1 spell per round.

2 with high-lvl specialisation skill.


Same as in new Kings Bounty: Armored Princess.

[TGHoly]

I also support for 1 spell per round also the game need anti-magic spell.

[parent child bowl]

They'd have to completely rebalance essence if they chose to limit spell casting to once per round.

[Warling]

Magic has been harsh, mostly due to how fast one can get essence, which is more fine later on (very painful for me but I can accept that.) Early on when I have no real production it is catastrophic when a enemy hero blasts me with arcane blast twice in a single turn. I think there is a need for re-balance, mostly there is in no con for heavy magic use every battle.

[Seswatha]

Again, there is no "warrior" in this game. Everyone is a wielder. If you use order units pick up order magic at the very least etc. If you don't use creature's essence in your army effecively you're not using a big portion of their power. Anti magic is called "destroy essence" btw, though only 2 factions can master it (at least reliably). The others can do it by killing essence producing units though.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

You mean essence burst? Anyone can get essence burst. Having essence burst + a magic school trained is 2 skills. And I wouldn't call it "a mountain" but it's enough for a couple of nasty spells. But you still need your stacks alive to generate essence for any serious fight. As for "half an army" that depends on what stage you're at, spells deal like a bit less than 300 damage max (single target), while stacks with upgraded caps can have 1200+ hp. Plus spell resistance pretty much kills magic damage. Furthermore, you have essence burst and attuned, the other guy has prepared and eager and oneshots all your "fast" units before they get to act with +2 move and +45 ini.

But yeah if we talk small map where you can't even build any large buildings before the final fight magic is going to win most of the time unless maybe facing someone like P'Cha who negates most of it from the start.

Yeah I have to say I tested the big chicken and I'm impressed with their power but it's entirely dependent on the scale of exactly how long the map is expected to go. I think the issue here is my definition of late game is how far you're likely to get on any of the game's premade skirmish maps, which are admittedly not very big. Now if we're talking campaign where you'll be walking around with the same units for dozens and dozens of turns then I can see where you're coming from.

Also essence burst ranks up three times. At max rank its +4 of every essence I believe, couple that with a few upgrades and decent items and it's enough to wipe out most early to mid tier armies without much issue. It's pretty apparent that late game (far longer on than any skirmish map will last) you'd have issues with pure magic damage but the melee troops need so much investment of time and resource that I just don't see any game sans the campaign where you're likely to reach that point.

For comparison I've yet to see any AI field even a single tier 3 unit before I've killed them and that's over the course of like 10 different maps and games. Maybe an actual player would have a better time of it but the AI is fantastically inept to the point if the map has a portal it entirely breaks their AI.

Essence burst is +6 at level 3. Big spells cost like 12-16 though, or 6/6. 7/7, 8/8. So it's not enough to cast top spells from a single school (might be enough with other bonuses), but can allow to cast some mixed big spells. Still saying that you can spam spells with it is a huge overstatement. You can cast a few, it's not enough to "wipe out a mid tier army". You still need creatures for mana, if your creatures are dead or their essence is destroyed no mana. Also you're not guaranteed to even roll it early on.

Current skirmish maps are pretty small though I haven't checked all of them tbh, there might be some bigger ones. But if you balance for small maps magic becomes terrible in campaign or large maps. Unless you make it scale better into the late game somehow. I agree that small maps favor wielders that start with a magic skill and can max it fast (mostly arcana/creation/chaos). However if you want to change it just nerfing magic is not the answer since it will break other scenarios. Also on small maps wielders like P'Cha and even Vilja might be able to fight magic damage builds, though I don't have enough MP experience to be sure about that.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

Again, there is no "warrior" in this game. Everyone is a wielder. If you use order units pick up order magic at the very least etc. If you don't use creature's essence in your army effecively you're not using a big portion of their power. Anti magic is called "destroy essence" btw, though only 2 factions can master it (at least reliably). The others can do it by killing essence producing units though.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

Yeah I have to say I tested the big chicken and I'm impressed with their power but it's entirely dependent on the scale of exactly how long the map is expected to go. I think the issue here is my definition of late game is how far you're likely to get on any of the game's premade skirmish maps, which are admittedly not very big. Now if we're talking campaign where you'll be walking around with the same units for dozens and dozens of turns then I can see where you're coming from.

Also essence burst ranks up three times. At max rank its +4 of every essence I believe, couple that with a few upgrades and decent items and it's enough to wipe out most early to mid tier armies without much issue. It's pretty apparent that late game (far longer on than any skirmish map will last) you'd have issues with pure magic damage but the melee troops need so much investment of time and resource that I just don't see any game sans the campaign where you're likely to reach that point.

For comparison I've yet to see any AI field even a single tier 3 unit before I've killed them and that's over the course of like 10 different maps and games. Maybe an actual player would have a better time of it but the AI is fantastically inept to the point if the map has a portal it entirely breaks their AI.

Essence burst is +6 at level 3. Big spells cost like 12-16 though, or 6/6. 7/7, 8/8. So it's not enough to cast top spells from a single school (might be enough with other bonuses), but can allow to cast some mixed big spells. Still saying that you can spam spells with it is a huge overstatement. You can cast a few, it's not enough to "wipe out a mid tier army". You still need creatures for mana, if your creatures are dead or their essence is destroyed no mana.

Current skirmish maps are pretty small though I haven't checked all of them tbh, there might be some bigger ones. But if you balance for small maps magic becomes terrible in campaign or large maps. Unless you make it scale better into the late game somehow. I agree that small maps favor wielders that start with a magic skill and can max it fast (mostly arcana/creation/chaos). However if you want to change it just nerfing magic is not the answer since it will break other scenarios.

You're treating it like a caster focused wielder doesn't have an army. They do, probably similar in gold cost. The "warrior" wielders vs the "caster" wielders is in regards to the skills they are likely to learn. Every level a wielder who's specilization is using magic is more likely to get abilities that support casting, the same way a more army focused wielder is more likely to get things like +damage or +hp. That's not hard to test you can level two or three wielders the skills they get are pretty consistent from map to map.

Level up Rasc and you'll be hard pressed to find essence burst or +spell damage where as that dragon caster will almost always see it within the first two or three levels. That's not to say Rasc and other more army focused wielders can't use magic it's that they don't get the skills to cast it as effectively nearly as quickly. A shield of order is a decent tier melee troop, but they only have 25 hp. Say the AI brings 4 stacks of these guys with around 10 per stack if you can hit them all one arcane storm can do over 500 damage to that army, flat out destroying a massive chunk of their men. Sure some late game troops with large stacks can manage that too but you'll get arcane storm way before you'll get those late game stacks and arcane storm only costs 14 essence that's not hard to get for some of these wielders with decent upgrades and items. Even if they bring massive single units like dragons that's not going to help since they can literally lock them in place and use spells that outright kill a specific number of troops instantly at any range.

And yes, with maxxed out essence burst and some boosts to spell damage one arcane storm can absolutely devastate a mid tier army. You're confusing campaign (which does not play out like any skirmish map and the AI doesn't even need to build troops half the time) and actual skirmish maps where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with.

Do I think the spells need to be nerfed? I'm not sure, but they should definitely be capped at how many per turn you can cast. I should not be able to cast multiple mines, arcane storm, lock down a unit, and throw another one 10+ tiles away all in the same turn.

[Seswatha]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

Again, there is no "warrior" in this game. Everyone is a wielder. If you use order units pick up order magic at the very least etc. If you don't use creature's essence in your army effecively you're not using a big portion of their power. Anti magic is called "destroy essence" btw, though only 2 factions can master it (at least reliably). The others can do it by killing essence producing units though.





Essence burst is +6 at level 3. Big spells cost like 12-16 though, or 6/6. 7/7, 8/8. So it's not enough to cast top spells from a single school (might be enough with other bonuses), but can allow to cast some mixed big spells. Still saying that you can spam spells with it is a huge overstatement. You can cast a few, it's not enough to "wipe out a mid tier army". You still need creatures for mana, if your creatures are dead or their essence is destroyed no mana.

Current skirmish maps are pretty small though I haven't checked all of them tbh, there might be some bigger ones. But if you balance for small maps magic becomes terrible in campaign or large maps. Unless you make it scale better into the late game somehow. I agree that small maps favor wielders that start with a magic skill and can max it fast (mostly arcana/creation/chaos). However if you want to change it just nerfing magic is not the answer since it will break other scenarios.

You're treating it like a caster focused wielder doesn't have an army. They do, probably similar in gold cost. The "warrior" wielders vs the "caster" wielders is in regards to the skills they are likely to learn. Every level a wielder who's specilization is using magic is more likely to get abilities that support casting, the same way a more army focused wielder is more likely to get things like +damage or +hp. That's not hard to test you can level two or three wielders the skills they get are pretty consistent from map to map.

Level up Rasc and you'll be hard pressed to find essence burst or +spell damage where as that dragon caster will almost always see it within the first two or three levels. That's not to say Rasc and other more army focused wielders can't use magic it's that they don't get the skills to cast it as effectively nearly as quickly. A shield of order is a decent tier melee troop, but they only have 25 hp. Say the AI brings 4 stacks of these guys with around 10 per stack if you can hit them all one arcane storm can do over 500 damage to that army, flat out destroying a massive chunk of their men. Arcane storm only costs 14 essence that's not hard to get for some of these wielders with decent upgrades and items.

And yes, with maxxed out essence burst and some boosts to spell damage one arcane storm can absolutely devastate a mid tier army. You're confusing campaign (which does not play out like any skirmish map and the AI doesn't even need to build troops half the time) and actual skirmish maps where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with.

Why would you have 4 10 stacks of shields of order when their base stack size is 20? it's just asking to get nuked by aoe. A 20 stack of them has 500 hp, so arcane storm with max channeling will remove a little bit less than 1/3. And that's if you have arcana 3, channeling 3 and you assume essence burst 3, the earliest you can get this is lvl 9 but this means no command and lvl 9 is very optimistic to get the exact combo in practice. And yes, wielders have different chances to roll skills, a seer is more likely to roll channeling or arcana. A reaver is likely more favored to roll prepared to go first and take out mana generating units or magic resistance which nerfs magic damage way more than channeling buffs it. "where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with" - current skirmish AI is pretty dumb, I wouldn't assume stuff based on how hard you can stomp it. The game probably needs bigger maps too, that have at least 20 turns of creeping before players meet.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

You're treating it like a caster focused wielder doesn't have an army. They do, probably similar in gold cost. The "warrior" wielders vs the "caster" wielders is in regards to the skills they are likely to learn. Every level a wielder who's specilization is using magic is more likely to get abilities that support casting, the same way a more army focused wielder is more likely to get things like +damage or +hp. That's not hard to test you can level two or three wielders the skills they get are pretty consistent from map to map.

Level up Rasc and you'll be hard pressed to find essence burst or +spell damage where as that dragon caster will almost always see it within the first two or three levels. That's not to say Rasc and other more army focused wielders can't use magic it's that they don't get the skills to cast it as effectively nearly as quickly. A shield of order is a decent tier melee troop, but they only have 25 hp. Say the AI brings 4 stacks of these guys with around 10 per stack if you can hit them all one arcane storm can do over 500 damage to that army, flat out destroying a massive chunk of their men. Arcane storm only costs 14 essence that's not hard to get for some of these wielders with decent upgrades and items.

And yes, with maxxed out essence burst and some boosts to spell damage one arcane storm can absolutely devastate a mid tier army. You're confusing campaign (which does not play out like any skirmish map and the AI doesn't even need to build troops half the time) and actual skirmish maps where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with.

Why would you have 4 10 stacks of shields of order when their base stack size is 20? it's just asking to get nuked by aoe. A 20 stack of them has 500 hp, so arcane storm with max channeling will remove a little bit less than 1/3. And that's if you have arcana 3, channeling 3 and you assume essence burst 3, the earliest you can get this is lvl 9 but this means no command and lvl 9 is very optimistic to get the exact combo in practice. And yes, wielders have different chances to roll skills, a seer is more likely to roll channeling or arcana. A reaver is likely more favored to roll prepared to go first and take out mana generating units or magic resistance which nerfs magic damage way more than channeling buffs it. "where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with" - current skirmish AI is pretty dumb, I wouldn't assume stuff based on how hard you can stomp it. The game probably needs bigger maps too, that have at least 20 turns of creeping before players meet.

I'm literally just using examples of troops I've seen the AI use in stacks I've seen them use. Why they do it I have no idea but yes the current skirmish AI is so bad it can't even competently play the game. So in that instance you have campaign (Where the AI is just gifted free units and told to run at you) where early game things don't matter much because of how it plays out and skirmish mode where the AI so so incompetent it doesn't matter what you do you'll win in 20 turns and early game units are pretty much all that matter.

I have little interest in playing pvp so that leaves me with two extremes and a system that works very differently depending on which scenario you are in which I think is the core of this problem. Most of my experience is with the skirmish AI most of yours seems to be with the campaigns and these two things seem to play out so differently we might as well be playing different games entirely.

For comparison in the 10-15 skirmish maps I've played over the last 20 or so hours I've not seen the AI hit beyond level 8 one time and I've never seen them even field a tier 3 unit. Meanwhile I'm consistently ending at level 16-19 so perhaps the issue is the terrible AI and basically anything I used would be wiping the floor with them no matter what it was.

[Seswatha]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grumpy Old Guy:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Seswatha:

Why would you have 4 10 stacks of shields of order when their base stack size is 20? it's just asking to get nuked by aoe. A 20 stack of them has 500 hp, so arcane storm with max channeling will remove a little bit less than 1/3. And that's if you have arcana 3, channeling 3 and you assume essence burst 3, the earliest you can get this is lvl 9 but this means no command and lvl 9 is very optimistic to get the exact combo in practice. And yes, wielders have different chances to roll skills, a seer is more likely to roll channeling or arcana. A reaver is likely more favored to roll prepared to go first and take out mana generating units or magic resistance which nerfs magic damage way more than channeling buffs it. "where the AI will probably never field a tier 3+ unit even on the largest maps the game comes with" - current skirmish AI is pretty dumb, I wouldn't assume stuff based on how hard you can stomp it. The game probably needs bigger maps too, that have at least 20 turns of creeping before players meet.

I'm literally just using examples of troops I've seen the AI use in stacks I've seen them use. Why they do it I have no idea but yes the current skirmish AI is so bad it can't even competently play the game. So in that instance you have campaign (Where the AI is just gifted free units and told to run at you) where early game things don't matter much because of how it plays out and skirmish mode where the AI so so incompetent it doesn't matter what you do you'll win in 20 turns and early game units are pretty much all that matter.

I have little interest in playing pvp so that leaves me with two extremes and a system that works very differently depending on which scenario you are in which I think is the core of this problem. Most of my experience is with the skirmish AI most of yours seems to be with the campaigns and these two things seem to play out so differently we might as well be playing different games entirely.

For comparison in the 10-15 skirmish maps I've played over the last 20 or so hours I've not seen the AI hit beyond level 8 one time and I've never seen them even field a tier 3 unit. Meanwhile I'm consistently ending at level 16-19 so perhaps the issue is the terrible AI and basically anything I used would be wiping the floor with them no matter what it was.

I would just wait for them to fix the skirmish ai (or give it harder difficulty with more cheats) if you mostly play skirmish vs ai, it's not working magic or no magic. It needs to have proper stacks instead of running around with barely an army with 5 different wielders.

[kitttich_kotgaf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von VanLaser:

Spell casting is pretty strong, but not because of damaging spells. Damaging spells are kinda tame compared to the other options.

I usually play creation arcana and creation. This combination is just savage. Rooting an enemy in place for multipe turns? Giving a frontline ally 225% melee damage reduction? Putting down 3 bushes at a time to waste the turn of enemy units? Teleporting your ranged units across the map onto high ground so they can blast off enemy ranged units? If anything.

I wouldn't nerf spells, because they are in a very good place. But I think that the non-spell skills could use a little extra when leveled up to rank 3.

Can't agree with you. I played Loth spellcaster (the one who starts with wonnabe necromancers). You can easily wipe out a lot of enemies with just pure arcana focus even on low levels. And Loth is only faction who has reliable source of arcana.
I don't know how it is played vs player, but vs AI is totally a OP.

[Darkhain]

Being able to cast all spells in the same turn, is pretty much stupid.