Nightguards

[shaulani]

Aren't they too weak right now? I've seen replays (e.g. titans solo) involving strategies where nightguard captures swamp drakes, fathom lords and other high value targets. But right now, the only time I've seen someone using this ability is vs the large lost souls bug (frankly, it appears only sometimes in rpve9 vs lost souls, thus you can't even rely on finding a valid target there). I mean, you can still use that unit as an expensive swift large counter unit and it might be as useful as it used to be in pvp too, but I don't really understand why such changes were implemented.

Feel free and correct me and name some high value targets that are worth changing into in pve.

[WindHunter]

You can read more about the changes to NG and their reasoning here: 

 

[shaulani]

Thanks for the linked article. However, I don't really see how that change makes any sense at all.

Did you play titans map? The deep one sits under a mark of the keeper. And he teleports units close to him making it impossible to swap him out without clearing the mark of the keeper in the first place. Furthermore, to my opinion, the deep one is not that useful, as it's hard to keep him alive given shadows only support spell at t1 is the one reducing damage by 50%. You charge in one base and probably lose the deep one afterwards.

Rageflame is a good card, but once i realized that i can't swap the unit to anything useful, I was discouraged to check the ability at all, as I considered rageflame clearly t3. It's completely unexpected that you can change it to it.

 

Furthermore, this change made parasite swarm one of the most useless cards in pve if you don't have all 3 upgrades (I've found out about it the hard way).

 

For me, it looks like the goal was to make nightguard reasonable weaker and I do agree that the card was quite powerful in the first place. However, aren't there always powerful t1 cards?

Nature: Mana Wing / MoK

There is no real replacement for these 2 cards in any other faction.

In terms of pve-survivability at t1, nature got cc and heal, fire got suppression and damage spells, frost got cc and wintertide while shadow got nothing? Unless you count soulspicer as a viable option.

[RadicalX]

The general issue with Nightguard was how she trivialized a variety of expert maps. Convoi and behind enemy lines are some of the best examples here as these maps could be solved almost entirely by spamming Nightguards. Building up an unbound L-unit army while simultaniously turning off any dangerous patrols took the entire challenge an expert cPvE map is supposed to be. After the nerf you can still utilize Nightguard by taking Rageflames and Devastators, but the maps still offer complexity through Stonekin Warriors/Twilight Horrors respectively. 

In regards to Titans you can just pull the units away from the MotK to make the Deep One swap easier (will also provide a much better angle to kill the Swamp Drake). 

I think you got a very good point in regards to Parasite Swarm upgrade progression. This should be adjusted as the U3 bonus was never directed towards PvE usability. 

[WindHunter]

On 10/2/2023 at 6:23 AM, shaulani said:

Furthermore, this change made parasite swarm one of the most useless cards in pve if you don't have all 3 upgrades (I've found out about it the hard way).

While perhaps too late for yourself, Parasite Swarm's U2 and U3 upgrades will be swapped in the upcoming update, making access to Parasite Swarm's stronger swap substantially more accessible.