Some minor suggestions to Ray of Light and Shrine of Memory

[Jodekoek]

Been playing a lot of shadow/nature lately and I have some minor suggestions in case the team is interested:

 

1. Increasing Ray of Light's healing to from 3% per second to 4% per second or from total 3300 healing to 4000 healing.

- Personally I feel this card is still a bit too weak and is too dominated by Surge of Light. I'd like just a bit more incentive to use it. I think for a slow, gradual healing spell it can pack a bit more punch still.

 

2. Reducing the cool-down of Shrine of Memory from 60 seconds to 30 seconds after being built or increasing the speeding-up of void return from 300% to 350% or 400% .

- I feel SoM is by far the weakest void return building of the four factions. I reckon this may have to do with Nature's faction design? Due to having to prevent too much abuse of voidlessness (mind control, promise of life, etc)? Either way, I always find myself craving one of the other faction's void returns and indeed often feel forced to go furnace of flesh with cultist masters as it just feels too slow. What bothers me the most is that ridiculous 60 second cool-down after construction. I get that with Shrine of War as it is so insanely powerful, but this one is kind of weak in comparison if you ask me, so it feels like too much.

 

Just some thoughts. Cheers!

[Cocofang]

I think the issue with Ray of Light is that percentage healing is really bad on T2 because units have such low health. An additional percentage wouldn't change that. Splitting the healing into a flat and percentage component or adding another effect would probably help.

[Jodekoek]

49 minutes ago, Cocofang said:

I think the issue with Ray of Light is that percentage healing is really bad on T2 because units have such low health. An additional percentage wouldn't change that. Splitting the healing into a flat and percentage component or adding another effect would probably help.

That would be even cooler, I agree. Perhaps an added instant healing of 750 or something of that nature, to still keep it slightly inferior to surge of light in terms of emergency healing? Either way it feels too useless right now. I like that all the healing cards are distinguished though. Can't tell you how many times my Batariel died because of that pesky delay in equilibrium but it is good design.

[Cocofang]

Instant healing on cast would just turn it into a T2 Regrowth.

[Jodekoek]

I think the card should provide at least some instant healing, it would be so weak in t4 it could be distinct from regrowth in that way. But, perhaps a better idea is to provide instant healing per unit? Whereas surge works best for a small army, perhaps ray of light could reward a large T2 army and instant heal let's say 250 per friendly unit, making it inferior to surge if used on a few units but superior if used on large groups? And then a small % heal over time on top of that with a total maximum. Idk.

[Metagross31]

I think what Coco referred to was something like "heals 20hp/sec + 2% max HP per second" so even low hp units get some nice heal over time. (The numbers are just an example and not to scale)

[Jodekoek]

3 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

I think what Coco referred to was something like "heals 20hp/sec + 2% max HP per second" so even low hp units get some nice heal over time. (The numbers are just an example and not to scale)

That could work too, though it would have to be a substantial healing over time. I think instant heal is a better design and needs to be present in the card to some degree, because if it is just gradual slow healing then a player may as well just heal up with viridya (also T2) or stand next to a building to slowly heal up. I think it has to helpful during a fight, and for that, healing over time of this card would have to be increased dramatically; or better yet an instant healing could be added. If the battle is so easy that slow gradual healing is sufficient then a player just decides not to put the card in the deck, I reckon. If the battle is hard then you almost have to have some instant healing. The middle ground idea could be making it a very powerful gradual healing to sort of delay the death of your army long enough to survive but it would have to be quite powerful. Just my 2 cents.

[This Is Halloween_2]

I'm not sure changing the effect of the card to a regrowth effect is a good idea, or even changing the card healing effect for that matter.

1 thing to remember with cards, particularly for T1 & T2, is that they take permanent deck slot while often losing in term scalability over the length of the game (in T3 & T4).

For example, surge of light becomes completely obsolete in T4.

Ray of light has a big upside for itself : it scales in efficiency throughout the game. The card is still efficient in T3 & T4. This can justify putting the card in your deck.

What I would change to the card is :

1) Increase the area of effect from 15 to 20m. This would help maximise the effectiveness of the healing while moving. Right now 15m really force you to stay a small place, you can't put the area centered a bit in front of you then move a bit 10m forward after killing the front of a camp & still be in the area after. It would also help in term of scalability at T3 & T4, or scale with big T2 armies.

2) Increase slightly the maximum amount of health healed to the 3750-4000, again here to keep the spell interesting in term of scalability.

 

The design of the spell itself being a %hp over time means the spell cannot be a "competitive option" as heal for T2 against surge of light.

To create space for this card, you must play on the deck slot limitation & the ability of the spell to scale in efficiency throughout the tiers. That's where you can create & justify a meta-slot for the card to the player, not by giving it a direct heal (which in term of design would mean copying existing spells, not that great).

Hence I would personally favor a buff over the potential the spell can bring in T3+ while being available at T2.

Edited October 7 by This Is Halloween_2