Magma Fiend and Fire Worm thoughts

[toxicitzi]

Even with the buffs they've got I can't justify using them, because anytime I could put them in a deck, there's just much better options.. A good example for say a fun unit that isn't necessarily the best choice out there out of everything available? Boom Brothers. They're not as vulnerable as the worms or fiends are when using their BOOM! ability and that ability can destroy a lot of frontline L and even XL units with the amount of damage and splash it deals, that happens without needing to wait for 5 ground slams for the Fire worm, or 11 ticks of fire damage for Magma Fiends.

 

I've tried to make these fire worms and magma fiends work but they just can't work in the current environment, they struggle a lot even taking out some of the most common T4 threats and require a lot of maintenance in order to keep them alive against a small group accompanied by an Abomination / Hulk, then they're even more vulnerable to a Twilight Dragon.. To me, these units seem like very strong T3 era units and that's where their L counter would make the most difference too, you can try as hard as you want to jam them into the already crowded and heavy competition that T4 era of Nature, Fire and Bandit units have, but the best direction for both of these units I think is to move them away from T4 era into the T3 pool.

That's where Fire could use more units and where their versatility at a 2 fire + 1 neutral orbs will be most valuable, even there there's still some good choices with Magma Hurlers and Swamp Drakes for both L and XL counters, but having these units back them up and even possibly soak up some damage with their slightly heftier health will make them stand out as a commander type unit for a group. We have Juggernaut and Spitfire on the fire faction right now, but I would argue even Juggernaut is a bit situational, where as Spitfire is extremely situational, not to mention, both units require a pure fire T3 setup, which is where having these 2 would make fire decks a bit more interesting.

 

Also I'm not saying that fire is lacking options, we certainly have a lot of options thanks to mixing with Nature cards, or Twilight cards, but this could make a stronger argument to lean more into the Fire side even when going for a nature/twilight combination, because right now I find that there's only Unity buff, Inferno and Shrine of War making arguments for going 2 fire orbs into T3, things you don't necessarily need or are just very expensive in terms of power cost, like in the case of Inferno.

 

 

That's at least how I see their situation and deck building around them.. Do you all think they're in a good place? I've been playing predominantly fire decks for a long time as I love to see fire's destructiveness, but with these 2 cards I'm just not really seeing it and I'm not seeing any players ever take them in their decks either.

[UltDragon]

I agree that Magma Fiend is mid, why use it? It has nothing particularly special.

Could go further and add some ability to burn enemies around when attacking for a time.

[RadicalX]

Design wise Magma Fiend and Fireworm can be useful in Fire Frost decks considering Ice Age (g) supported shields pair extremely well with unity. Fire units can make use of their high base damage while being almost unkillable even at the highest difficulty levels. It is one of the weaker decks, but certainly playable and Fire Frost is in need of such splash synergies due to the lack of faction cards.

In terms of power Magma Fiend seems to be quite outdated. It used to be the highest base damage unit during the Twilight edition, but during the Renegade and Lost Souls edition mixed color factions got added to the game, outperforming many of the original card designs. Some of Magma Fiend's constraints were removed in one of our patches by reducing ability cost and increasing movement speed, but the card still only reaches a 1,5% pick rate across the most played rPvE difficulties. 

Fire Worm is in a slightly better state in comparison due to being more flexible. It is quite cheap, very mobile, can use the 40m range for focus fire or the dive passive for some decent aoe damage. It is not amongst the least played T4 XL units, but I would certainly agree the active ability is quite unsatisfying overall.

[shaulani]

Fire worm is quite strong. just build 8 + unity + revenge + the op green-blue 80% decreased damage spell + bloodlust + warshrine and they shred though everything without any issues. (except range blockers). But yes, I rarely use the special ability. Make sure to build max 8 if you use unity.

It's nothing special though. Emberstrike can do the same thing and is even cheaper. I do wonder though why you mention the boom brothers. I thing they are quite underwhelming. Can they even target air?

 

PS: if you read this and think wow they need 10 buffs to be useful.. they don't. Depending on the camp a single bloodlust or unity might be enough to survive.

[toxicitzi]

On 11/8/2024 at 11:40 AM, RadicalX said:

Design wise Magma Fiend and Fireworm can be useful in Fire Frost decks considering Ice Age (g) supported shields pair extremely well with unity. Fire units can make use of their high base damage while being almost unkillable even at the highest difficulty levels. It is one of the weaker decks, but certainly playable and Fire Frost is in need of such splash synergies due to the lack of faction cards.

In terms of power Magma Fiend seems to be quite outdated. It used to be the highest base damage unit during the Twilight edition, but during the Renegade and Lost Souls edition mixed color factions got added to the game, outperforming many of the original card designs. Some of Magma Fiend's constraints were removed in one of our patches by reducing ability cost and increasing movement speed, but the card still only reaches a 1,5% pick rate across the most played rPvE difficulties. 

Fire Worm is in a slightly better state in comparison due to being more flexible. It is quite cheap, very mobile, can use the 40m range for focus fire or the dive passive for some decent aoe damage. It is not amongst the least played T4 XL units, but I would certainly agree the active ability is quite unsatisfying overall.

I'll agree that this is definitely an improvement over how they used to be, Magma Fiend having slow before was a very questionable decision, but on the ability of Fire Worms, that one right now feels like a mismatch. I see that more on a bruiser type unit meant to be in mid to close range of a combat area and be able to survive taking some hits, where as Fire Worms are now 40m away and need to dive to get in position before they even start doing their earthquake.

 

Is changing their ability at all possible? Right now worms look like more mobile Battleships, except for being on the ground and their range being 10m shorter from their barrage, so the way I'm looking at it Fire Worms make sense like that if they got some kind of mini-barrage ability, or while still at that range, having a hit and run ability with its ground diving. Them becoming hit and run diving units would be interesting for disrupting camps, while dealing damage as they're doing that.

 

For Magma Fiend, I remember even back then Fire Dragons had the highest damage possible. In any case even if Magma Fiends have impressive DPS values on single targets, the way their damage gets split is pretty bad for taking out priority targets.

 

On 11/8/2024 at 7:50 PM, shaulani said:

Fire worm is quite strong. just build 8 + unity + revenge + the op green-blue 80% decreased damage spell + bloodlust + warshrine and they shred though everything without any issues. (except range blockers). But yes, I rarely use the special ability. Make sure to build max 8 if you use unity.

It's nothing special though. Emberstrike can do the same thing and is even cheaper. I do wonder though why you mention the boom brothers. I thing they are quite underwhelming. Can they even target air?

 

PS: if you read this and think wow they need 10 buffs to be useful.. they don't. Depending on the camp a single bloodlust or unity might be enough to survive.

That example wasn't to say that Boom Brothers are especially powerful, I used it to compare how cheap they are and their ability to Magma Fiends and Fire Worms. They have an ability that can break formation with their knockback on all sizes of units, even kill a good number of big priority targets and that's before you even engage with the rest at melee range.

I don't think they need to hit air units to be useful as most high threat targets are usually on the ground, but I'll take your point on Emberstrikes, I didn't think much of them as I thought they were still starter cards, but maybe on some maps them being able to reach air units for similar splash damage might be more useful.

 

As for that example? Man. That is a lot of buffs.. If I buff 2 Abominations and 3 Evil Eyes the same way, or 2 Giant Wyrms and 3 Fire Dragons, a Regrowth might not be needed with the regenerating they'll get from bloodthirst, or the tankiness they'll have from Unity and Revenge. ^^

[This Is Halloween_2]

Fire worm is alright right now because of it's 40m long range & the ability to spam them. But it's ability is mostly useless, that is true.

Boom brothers are ok, their ability does a lot of dmg & they have XL counter & XL knockback. With the addition of fire force, unity & bloodthirst, an emberstrike & brother boom army is quit good (but you need to spam their abilities a lot).

It's true however that magma fiend has no use right now for an army composition. Even after the buff, the unit is underwhelming at T4.