Balance Proposal: Twilight Hag

[Hirooo]

Hello,
in this thread I will present the first proposed change from the newly found Balance Discord. You can check it out here. We are currently still trying to structure the way we work but you can most likely expect a similar post for every card change we will propose. The first card we agreed to change is obviously not one targeted by heavy discussion but a simple buff to a clearly under performing card. Keep in mind while we can change core values like hit points redesigning abilities will have to wait.
Greetings,
Hirooo

 

 

Twilight Hag

 

Card Changes:

• 785 hit points changed to 850 hit points

• Femme Fatale Ability: 100 energy cost changed to 50 energy cost

 

Discussed card changes:
Twilight Hag barely sees play in its current state. The card isnt viable in PvP and doesn't perform strongly PvE either. This means we are purely talking about increasing the cards strength in some way.
One aspect we talked about but decided against was increasing the units combat ability by raising the damage value. Fire Nature already has a wide array of L counters available in Drones, Virtuoso etc. Fire splashes even have magma hurler as a ranged L counter. Further buffing Twilight Hags damage would only make her contest magma hurler in that role.
Instead we wanted to buff the unique strength of the card in its crowd control ability. Increasing the radius was something we wanted to do. But due to current development limitations and feared problems with the corresponding animation made us stick to pure stat changes.

Chosen card changes:
For what it offers Femme Fatale has a very high cost of 100 energy. To be able to use the ability in an economically viable way we chose to greatly reduce the to 50 energy. The card is on the squishy side of tier 3 units. The stat efficiency is low even for the low energy cost. So we increased the hp pool to allow the unit to better use its ability. Overall we might further buff Twilight Hag but would like to see these changes play out.

Edited August 7, 2019 by MephistoRoss
Added poll option

[Flrbb]

some information I do miss: when will the modification be applied?

[WindHunter]

I think this is a good first step for this card.

[Kubik]

@Flrbb no date yet. This was meant as way for players that do not use discord to see the proposed change and react in case there would be anything wrong. And as backlog of the changes, because discord do not store history infinitely.

[Ultrakool]

Added a poll

[synthc]

I think that the card will still be useless after receiving a buff like this.  If we look at other T3 units with CC abilities, those abilities are always very aggressively costed when compared to spells, due to their more restrictive nature (in terms of positioning and bound power).  Examples being Fathom Lord, which has excellent stats, and a cheap paralyze (the strongest kind of CC); Swamp Drake, which has solid stats for a flying unit and what is essentially Oink for 30 power (with 2 fewer seconds to hit the affected unit without reverting CC); and Timeless One which is cheap and has a dirt cheap ability.

Twilight Hag, on the other hand, has abysmal combat stats, and even at 50 power, the ability is still worse than Oink in most cases.  A few things to consider:

1. You have to bind 75 power in order to use Twilight Hag's ability.
2. The unit is occupied for the full duration of the ability, meaning that she doesn't do damage or knockback while using it.
3. The ability only takes effect around the unit, unlike Swamp Drake and Timeless One where you have a decent bit of range to place the CC optimally.  Combined with her low HP, this makes getting her into position very difficult.
4. If the Hag is CC'ed or teleported the ability is cancelled.  This means that the ability is completely countered by several spells that don't cost that much more (even after your proposed change) and are very likely to get more value by hitting other enemies.
5. As a non-squad M unit, she can be completely locked down by knockback.
6. The ability radius is actually much smaller than the aura would suggest (small enough for ranged units to hit her, charge units to charge at her, and Grigori to disintegrate her), so there is room to increase the AoE.
7. The ability doesn't affect female enemies, as well as many beasts and some other units (mostly anything that doesn't have a male voice).  This may not be very significant right now, but as weak cards are buffed, many of those unused cards will be used and this downside will become more apparent.
8. As far as the unit's combat abilities go, it's not even cost effective against units it should counter (e.g. Fathom Lord, Virtuoso, or even Fallen Skyelf).

And the upsides:

1. She can't be knocked back while using her ability.
2. Her damage buff/healing is nice, but only really does much if you have a lot of units around her (which makes her even more vulnerable to CC).
3. Her knockback radius is pretty big, making her good for locking down M and S units.

I can understand wanting to be conservative with buffs in order to not break things, but I think that if we're going to make much progress we can't be afraid to be more aggressive with our buffs.  We should be putting units into a state that puts them on par with other good units; then if they end up being too strong, we can always dial them back after testing them on the test server.  A common and effective methodology for pre-release balance (which this is) is to push the unit to what you see as the reasonable limit (some designers would argue even beyond that limit) in order to find the unit's strengths and to get a good feel for its interactions, and then dial it back if necessary.

My proposal:

I think that buffing the ability and increasing the unit's HP for more survivability is the right approach, it just needs a LOT more:

• Increase HP from 785 to 1350.
• Decrease ability cost to 15.
• Increase ability radius by 5m.

If CC hits more than 1 unit, it's still generally a cost effective way to counter the Hag's ability.  Pure fire has Wildfire, which easily kills her even at 1350 HP unless you cancel the ability and move her (and pure fire doesn't need any help in T3 anyway).  This is a huge HP buff, but it still doesn't put her in a normal stat per cost range for a T3 unit (Silverwinds have nearly double her current stats).

A better alternative would be to give her damage resistance and CC immunity while using her ability, along with a moderate HP boost and ability cost reduction; but that would probably be a lot harder to implement - the above solution should suffice.

[Karosuke]

I play twilight on rpve a lot. From my understanding she can be used to transform into skycatchers later and with some decent frontline her knockback and L damage is actually not that bad. The range on her attacks is also not bad. I use her along with creepers on t3 and morph them later which actually works quite "well".... twilight-level-well... From my perspective her pros and cons are:

cons:

- 75 power. just no. even with breeding grounds..

- range and cost of ability having her to be that close is meh... most of the twilight units are melee

- 2 nature orbs. for pve its kinda ok since you need 2red2green anyway for your t4 but in pvp I think 1red1green1neutral would be way better

- knockback while channeling makes her ability even worse in addition to what I mentioned before

 

pros:

- range on attacks is pretty good

- damage is actually fine if you think of her not being ment to be a fighter but rather supporting and protecting

 

So I think getting her to 2 orbs req might be a little too difficult. But reducing her cost to 65 and upping her ability range to at least exceed or match her auto attacks would be healthy. another approach could be to make her ability an aura so she can move. If you want to take smaller steps make her immune to knockbacks. Just buffing her stats won't do the trick imo. To sum it up:

- power 65

- 1 green, 1 red, 1 neutral orb

- range on ability at least + 50% OR immune to knockback

- cost of ability to 60, benefit all twilight units, ability is an aura (pick 2)

might still not be enough but steps towards the right direction. A whole different attempt would be to make her t2. Twilight lacks ranged t2... a lot (deathglider is NOT considerable as the only ranged t2)

just my 2 cents. threadbump btw. cheers.