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Completed Tower Changes - Old Thread


WindHunter

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As we announced in our recent Towers Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass across all attack buildings in the game. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for all tower based discussion. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change. 

Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes

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The following buildings have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads.

Splash Radius Changes 

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A majority of buildings will receive updates to their splash radius in line with the principles outlined in the Deep Dive. The followings towers will only have their splash radius increased. 

  • Living Tower: 5m --> 10m
  • Rioter's Retreat: 5m --> 8m
  • Stone Hurler: 5m --> 8m
  • Twilight Bombard: 10m --> 15m

Minor Changes

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It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. All values below are U3. 

Artillery
1. Orb cost: 2 Shadow, 2 Fire --> 1 Shadow, 1 Fire, 2 Neutral
2. Power cost: 190p --> 150p

Frost Crystal
1. Ice Shard (auto-attack):
   A. Damage: 72, up to 110 in total (637 dp20) --> 92, up to 138 in total (805 dp20)
   B. Splash radius: 5m --> 8m
2. Frost Wave ability radius (active): 20m --> 25m

Hammerfall
1. Power cost: 150p --> 130p

Hatecaster
1. Orb cost: 2 Nature, 2 Fire --> 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 2 Neutral

Howling Shrine
1. New Passive, "Strong Supporter":  Counts as 4 connected entities for the sake of determining root network supports while out of combat. 
2. Life points: 3160 --> 4260

Infected Tower
1. Slime Cannon (auto-attack):
   A. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1216 dp20) --> 124, up to 186 in total (1318 dp20)
   B. Splash Radius: 5m --> 8m
2. Virus (active): Change spawning effect to check for population limit, so Infected Tower cannot be used to infinitely exceed the population cap. 

Mindweaver
1. Edict of Command (active): Restricted to units with a maximum of 300 power costs --> Restricted to units with a maximum of 250 power costs.
2. Psionic Blast (auto-attack): 
   A. Damage: 250, up to 375 in total (2188 dp20) --> 290, up to 435 in total (2538 dp20)
   B. Splash radius: 5m --> 8m

Time Vortex
1. Life points: 2830 --> 1830
2. Splash radius: 5m --> 8m
3. Potentially tweak thresholds on shadow affinity (p) to make it a viable alternative in more scenarios.

Tower of Flames
1. Fire Ball (auto-attack): 
   A. Damage: 216, up to 324 in total (2430 dp20) --> 266, up to 399 in total (2993 dp20)
   B. Splash radius: 5m --> 10m

Volcano
1. Orb cost: 3 Fire, 1 Neutral --> 2 Fire, 2 Neutral
2. Gifted Eruption Healing: 150 life points every second for 5 seconds --> 200 life points every second for 10 seconds.

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Statistical Analysis

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The Skylords Reborn Wiki has recently been updated with a List of Card Statistics page, which includes the stat ratios used by the faction design team when balancing. While raw combat stats cannot tell the full story when it comes to balancing cards, it is still a very important tool, especially in the case of combat-oriented cards. Unfortunately, using statistic analysis when balancing towers is particularly difficult because of three factors. One, most towers have a randomness factor built-in, which makes their attack speeds variable. For example, a given Northern Keep can spawn with an attack rate of between 14 and 17 attacks in a 40-second period. Two, most of the attack speeds displayed on the card in-game are incorrect, which also means the displayed attack value is incorrect. Three, towers take up space, meaning their stat efficiencies are also tied to their sizes. 

To account for this variance and the existing inaccuracies, we have gone through each tower individually and performed repeated tests to calculate each towers average attack speed. Additionally, we have collected the model radius of each tower and used it to calculate stat efficiency by area. The pictures below represent an updated table of all current average combat values and many of the proposed combat values as well. In the future, we hope to update and correct all the attack speeds for towers. Explanations for the different ratios can be found in the Wiki page linked above.

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Pog said, good job on your work, it's amazing!

(And yes, Ik it's an iteration)

Though Mindweaver confuses me, why nerf the only reason that people would pick it for in the first place? I, as a Pure nature player, would probably never take it instead of Living Tower, and now probably even less so. Would it be okay to ask why this nerf is being considered? (I read the deep dive but i probably forgot if this specifically was discussed, sorry if it's in there and I'm just being dumb)

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9 hours ago, Venomlord said:

Just one thing out of curiosity, why do you want to make Artillery, Hatecaster and Volcano more splashable but not Deepgorge?

Hatecaster and Artillery are currently hybrid pure cards and as such are only used in very limited circumstances. Generally speaking, a pure card is the pay-off for investing that many orbs into a faction. This is true either through higher stats and/or more complex and interesting abilities. Neither the Bandit nor Twilight faction have strong stationary defenses as part of their identities and in both cases the buildings are neither powerful nor interesting enough to warrant their current orb restrictions. We could buff both cards more, or we could make them more splashable. The nice thing about the orb change is that it means they will be used more frequently without us needing to make substantial number buffs to justify their current costs.

Deepgorge is in the opposite position of Hatecaster and Artillery. If you read our Deep Dive on towers, you will recall we talked about wanting to make fortress cards like Deepgorge have a different feel to them than standard towers. Fortresses should be strong solitary defenses which can hold positions easily. Having a powerful self-sufficient defense fits the thematic identity of Stonekin well and so we have tried to improve Deepgorge to fulfill its intended role. 

Volcano does not necessarily need to be made more splashable and at the same time it doesn't need to be so restricted. In previous discussions I have been pretty clear that I don't think loosening orb requirements should be used as a standard method of buffing a card. Instead, a card should be buffed to fulfill its current requirements. While I still fully agree with this, I think towers are a bit of a unique case due to how few of them exist in T4. If a player wants strong T4 defenses, they really don't have many options available. Some decks, especially decks with 2+ Shadow orbs, are forced to rely on T3 towers. While this is a minor issues right now since Necroblaster is the strongest tower in the game and because there are very few T4 defense situations currently in game, it will not always be like this. After we nerf Necroblaster and add new maps and game modes T4 defenses will be in higher demand. So opening up the few existing options to more decks seemed like the best idea. Also, given we are continually adding new cards to the game, we can always create more T4 towers later with higher restrictions when we have more time. 

8 hours ago, Sanguiris said:

Though Mindweaver confuses me, why nerf the only reason that people would pick it for in the first place? I, as a Pure nature player, would probably never take it instead of Living Tower, and now probably even less so. Would it be okay to ask why this nerf is being considered? (I read the deep dive but i probably forgot if this specifically was discussed, sorry if it's in there and I'm just being dumb)

Outside of the new Fire RPvE, where you won't be using T3 towers to defend anyway, and the Colossus in position 4 of Titans, the change to Mindweaver has no effect. All T4 PvE units have power costs of 250p or less, while T5 units are not controllable anyway. What this change does is give us the ability to differentiate between units which can be controlled by Mindweaver and those which can only be controlled by Mind Control. Once the mind control mechanic changes occur, Mindweaver will be able to control more units than it does currently.

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why is lifestealer getting no buffs?! it takes like 15 attacks to kill a single t1 s squad. Using your fire rate thats 43 seconds to kill a single s squad at t1 which means the tower will regen 215 health but will lose 750 from its own attacks which means vs a t1 s squad the tower has an effective health of 1200-750+215= 665 which is abysmal. it suffers from the same problem that snapjaws does which makes it extremely ineffective against squads of enemies. Considering lifestealer is supposed to be a cc tower to counter s units this is a major problem. Look at how it does vs 1 squad of stonekin shards and then try makeshift tower and see how obviously broken lifestealer is. makeshift has 41% of lifestealers damage and a slower fire rate and yet it kills a squad of shards taking 10-25% of its hp in damage while lifestealer cant even reliably kill a single squad. Furthermore the self damage entirely defeats the purpose of a cc tower which is to lower overall damage to your defensive installation. Even if shadows best t1 def strategy via splicer didnt exist, current lifestealer would still be useless because phase tower completely outclasses it even though phase tower has been nerfed and is balanced with weaker stats to make up for its ability to move. Lifestealer needs at least 10m splash range to even see if the damage can properly distribute to squad members and after that its self damage mechanic will still likely need work or removal. 

infected tower is getting a useless 8.7% damage buff and you are deleting its only use case by removing its ability to bypass the unit cap. The damage buff (and splash radius increase) is not enough to make it worth using and considering youre also removing its only use case, this ends up being a massive nerf. Why was infected tower given such a useless change and are there plants to rework towers such as this that will still be useless?

tower of flames looks interesting. it will finally have competitive damage however the increased health rather than ability to knock is very puzzling. i get that fire does have access to some cc at t2 via rocket but really that theme should carry through to t3. tower of flames has no knock currently but really should be knocking L to maintain parity with the lower tiers. 

similarly for volcano it would be nice to see it knock xl,

idk what to say about howling shrine. this falls squarly in the still garbage tier category with infected tower. it will literally have less health than the t3 frost fortress. This is a prime example of how unhealthy the current root system is. this card is completely awful by itself or in any standard defensive installation. the only time it becomes worth using is when you have power bound to useless entities who do nothing but provide battery support. But whats weird is that youre also encouraging players to instead use howling as a battery due to its superior support per power ratio. This in itself just shows how poorly howling shrine is treated despite being what should be the keystone structure in all of nature. The root network needs to be completely reworked so atrocities like this (and treespirits) dont continue to take the place of what should be great cards for nature. 


would also be nice to see trap structures get buffs somehow before drpve

also dont forget church of negation is still unusable in shadow and needs a practical source of healing to be added

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I would recommend ruminating a bit more on the proposed Root Network changes and the mechanic in general. Adding the "Strong Supporter" passive to Thornbark (+3 support) and to Howling Shrine (+6 support) does a lot more in defense scenarios than you might realize, especially when combined with the new Sylvan Gate which can connect root network entities over a 100m radius. It seems that you are assuming that a given Root entities needs to have 6 support permanently dedicated to it at all times when this is not true. Often in maps with defensive situations, you are required to defend multiple locations, but these locations are not attacked simultaneously. This means that strategically placed Howling Shrines can support each other simultaneously due to providing full support when not in combat. With Sylvan Gate gaining a 100m pull radius this has become even easier and cheaper as you no longer have to create giant Root Nexus chains. I have included, from left to right, the Minimaps for Insane God, Defending Hope, and Crusade below. The red dots are Howling Shrines and green dots Sylvan Gates. While all 4 Howling Shrines cannot be fully supported simultaneously, all 4 will not always be in combat. In general, when necessary, each one will be fully supported and when it isn't in combat, it is functioning as a combat support for the other Howling Shrines.

The_Insane_God_Minimap.jpgDefending_Hope_Minimap.jpgCrusade_Minimap.jpg

A properly rotated and fully supported Howling Shrine is one of the strongest defenses in the game against incoming waves of enemies. Both the turrets and the paralyze/root attack are affected by the linked fire speed up enabling a single Shrine to crowd control several units simultaneously. Additionally, properly positioned the Shrine can fire 3 turrets at once. The only additional change I would consider making without seeing the current Root Network changes in action is increasing the firing arc of the turrets slightly to make positioning easier and reduce the amount of esoteric knowledge a player must possess to use the card to its full potential. 

PS: You might notice there are no proposed changes to any T1 buildings. This is by design and was hinted at in the Deep Dive. Changes to T1 towers have an impact on other game modes and so have to be pursued more cautiously. 

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Hatecaster:

Orb req change to ----> 2 neutral, 1 fire, 1 green

 

Too strong a buff. Waaay too strong. Hatecasters are the best tower power cost wise in the game.

It has paralysis ability, is extremely tough hp wise and great dps for 100 power.

Giving everyone a t4 option to use it is basically more op than necroblaster.

Terrifying. Plz no

 

Infected tower:

Added Pop check

 

...... Really? This is not a balance change, it serves no purpose.

Infected tower bug spam has no effect on the game.

You're just patching content out.

 

Mindweaver:

Realistically a tower that sits there and can't move should have no restrictions on mind control ability because it can't move.

And you have to kill the unit anyways once it wears off. In fact that's the main reason i don't use it, it's only useful if you're losing and the ai

sent a crab or XL unit, which is not that common.

 

Restricting this ability in anyway is just asking for trouble, its already a weak tower, why make it a weaker pvp tower as well?

I've never heard pvp complain, do t3 towers exist in pvp?


 

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17 hours ago, WindHunter said:

I would recommend ruminating a bit more on the proposed Root Network changes

TLDWTR rumination has occurred. Those arent entirely great examples of where howling would shine with the proposed changes. I do like the idea of buffs to the usability of the multiturrets but the support provided increase wont be that impactful in most extant situations and will also be less efficient than thornbarks with breeding grounds (or elder) in the case where it was used solely as a battery any time pop cap isnt an issue which is most of the time at t4. I remain unconvinced these buffs are adequate for howling, especially considering there should eventually be significant competition for a t4 root output once spore launcher is buffed.
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considering i was one of the first people to mention additional support value at least in public channel and within the last ~8 months that ive been regularly keeping up with the discord i understand the purpose of the current root network which is to make use of otherwise unused power as well as to convert weaker entities from lower tiers into stronger effects via a higher tier output to increase overall power efficiency. That said there are still significant drawbacks to the current design. But first let's look at your example maps.

The insane god has staggered waves which would present a solid case fort this strat however when you get to the center part you will only be at t2 unless you orb stack which will get you t3. now you can then rush to cap a t4 or use amii but realistically the defense on this map is designed for t2. Furthermore once you get t3 you already have access to razorleaf and thorn bark which can be used instead of howling shrine which requires the t4 bound power unless you enlighten it which is a ton of power to ask considering there arent any announced changes to som yet unless you intend howling to be used primarily in a splash deck in which case why are you even buffing nature. Not accounting for power bound in breeding grounds since chances are theyd be built regardless, thornbarks will have a supp to power ratio of 30p/s while howling will be 33p/s, now i dont play expert but on adv and std youd be plenty able to work a strat at t3. Assuming 2 concurrent assaults with 4 howlings at 800 power youd have 12 supports while 4 razorleafs and 2 thornbarks at 960 power will offer 8 supports which based upon my experience should suffice. We also cant forget that in the two options where you dont use op enlighten you are also binding 250 or 300 more power to facilitate howlings strat which makes holwing both more expensive and less efficient. All of this said, you can without much difficulty simply defend using t2/t3 with conventional means at each spawn location so you are fighting the weaker witches rather than the stronger bugs. I think the proposed changes would be a nice option in theory but i dont think this map is a great example of the changes functioning well since it requires so many caveats to be used compared to more easily accessible strategies.

Defending hope is probably the strongest possible example though it does have a few partial failings as well. Firstly it is a single player map and single player maps inherently are less important to overall gameplay than multiplayer maps since this is an online multiplayer game, while minor this should still be noted. I do think the staggered waves would provide a good use case for this strategy especially considering in the lower two difficulties at least theyre significantly stronger than the waves in the insane god. That said howling would still be a bit of a stretch to use because once again you arent at t4 when you do a significant amount of the staggered defense. You can definitely get to t4 before the last wave obviously and then build this strat but it wont overall be as clean of a process as something you could access at t3. This also brings up the main problem i see which is the concurrent wave attack at the final defense where suddenly you go from super strong fortresses to wastes of space because the network loses out on their support bonus and so you will likely reallocate previous resources such as treespirits or thornbarks as dead weight in the center area to actually facilitate the strategy. I think this map is probably the best of the three to show how it could work best but overall it is shame because it is a single player map and so will occur much less often. Additionally id be concerned about the prevalence of 'dead' entities players use in the middle area to power root cards on the outside which is simply not a good mechanic in the case where they use tree spriits or living towers since spriits are intentionally being made useless to facilitate this and towers will have to be built far enough away to be disused if they are to be used as a battery later on. Alternatively they could be used initially and powered via treespirits but their destruction could pose a needless downtime when the player needs to switch to thornbarks or razorleaf at t3 before then switching to howling at t4. Overall you end up doing a lot to facilitate what should be a rather straightforward defensive installation. 

Crusade is one of my favorite maps but i gotta say it is a poor example for the ideal case for the proposed changes to howling. at least on adv and standard most of the waves come relatively close together but also most of the waves before the final wave are quite weak as it is a beginner map so current structures are more than enough. Additionally the map design is such that you arent likely to be at t4 (barring stacking or skipping) until theres basically only the final wave left and as we all know, if all of the shrines are firing then none of them are giving that juicy support bonus. So in reality assuming howlings damage can outpace razorleafs youd still need 2 thorn barks for every howling you are using which doesnt excessively complicate the strategy but it is not nearly as simplistic as your 4 dots would lead people to believe, especially considering you wont likely be using shrines until the last wave where their support bonus will have no effect.

Now with regard to shrine changes specifically, considering even the examples you came up with arent overall good examples for maps where a support buff to shrine will be very impactful I am still unconvinced that the currently proposed buffs are adequate. i definitely like the idea of the larger firing arcs so positioning isnt so tedious, especially considering its large size and square shape it could be very difficult to position properly in many different areas especially near walls, but if 3 turrets can be reliably accessed it will surely add an improvement that can be felt by the player even in a low support situation. 

Tangentially speaking about the direction of root network in general, I think one of my main problems by far is the general suggestion for the player to use some entities as 'dead' cards simply as a battery for the root network. Thornbark partially avoids this as powerful output cards at t4 could act as a combo/extension to its use at t3 however in cases where cards are left as batteries at their own tier like thornbark+razorleaf at t3 or cases where cards are used only for battery such as living tower being placed far out of range or cases where cards are designed to be literally useless outside of batter duty like treespirit, this is where the problems arise. No card's primary use should be battery duty. if you want a card that can be a battery then make a root battery building card giving it 1 nature orb and 30 power cost and call it a day but dont do stuff like make the most thematic t1 nature unit literally useless to facilitate this toxic root mechanic system. I think in the case of living tower at least perhaps if it was within a certain distance to howling shrine it could grant one support even while attacking. In this way at least howling could act as an extension at t4 to actual use of livings at t2 rather than simply encouraging people to building livings way out of range or destroy them and have to wait for the power to cycle, it would also give more synergy to the the root structures overall. Also once spore launcher gets the massive buffs it needs it will be hard to consider howling as a good option outside of battery duty unless spore isnt intended to be buffed as the keystone t4 root unit...

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Infected Tower:

I would like to refute this absurd nerf, what purpose would you have for Infected Tower other than it being a defensive tower? Why on earth would I even use the twilight bug ability in the future? 

I am an avid Twilight bug deck user and have been using such deck in Battlegrounds for a long time but I have to say ever since the new update on battlegrounds, the deck has become even more lackluster to single unit clear + Infect/frenetic/disenchant, which brings up the point on why hasn't the team been revising changes on these kind of one man army strat since they obviously allow you to get top 10 in the speed run rankings every time? 

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Lets' dispel the myth the common opinion that everybody thinks is that the twilight bug deck strategy is easy and requires no skill when in fact: 

A)  Limited Air Counters:

A typical twilight bug deck (SSFN) has limited choices to Air counters, lost dragons, spitfires, and any other flying units do tend cause problems. Your choice of options are: 

  •    Soulshatter - Damage is not reliable and spread amongst other units within the vicinity 
  •    Thunderstorm - Decent but also faces the same problem with Soulshatter 
  •    Revenge and Sandstorm is unreliable and does little damage and DPS is dependent on variables
  •    AOP, does the most damage out of all spells and is excellent but does not typically kill the unit 
  •    Frenetic is dependent on being lucky and hoping that there is a ranged unit able to target the flying units. 

 Bosses such as Lost dragon and Bandit Corsair relies heavily on your teammate being able to provide support OR the use of spamming tower of flames which is manageable but conflicts with the idea of the micro and macro-ing bug strategy - Which brings me along to the next point: 

B). A Twilight Bug deck requires you to be very Micro and Macro intensive:

This deck requires you to be efficient in spawning bugs as if you do not keep up with the reinforcement, your units will deplete faster than you can send the next army along the way.  This is why the strategy is so fun as it has similar elements to Dota (and in some sense is the only substance in Battleforge that is similar to Dota) which consists of: 

  • Micromanagement is intensive and requires good command input, the input consists of: 
  1. Selecting Cultist masters
  2. Input command ability to summon Nightcrawlers
  3. Selection of 2 Infected Towers 
  4. Input command ability for Infected Tower to activate ability (20 seconds)
  5. Drag selected units and select group
  6. Form new group (CTRL + Number) 
  7. Select new group and dispatch army 
  8. Repeat step 1 but also during this time, you would have to account for a ten second interval in order to reactivate Cultist Master ability, (however, this is also dependent on you having the power to activate Infected tower ability as most of the times you would be using spells to support your first/second dispatched army but this should is also leveled out during the mid game as you would have more inbound power and infinite void return) 
  9. Select and command first batch army to the next enemy base
  10. Repeat step 1-7 
  11. Drag to select and input new command to create a new group when one army joins the next and progress further on
  12. Repeat 1-11 

Other variables to consider during theses steps:

  1. Map awareness and movement, requires you to switch back and forth from enemy camp and Infected tower camp.
  2. Input of spells which requires more input commands and selection of what ever it may be - Usually consists of 10 spells (Also account for the 0.1 interval for next spell selection and activation) - This hinders and slows down the time on when you can switch back onto your own base and continue with the Twilight bug spawn
  3. Enemy anti magic zone - restricts your spell activation in some certain areas thus making you use more time to search out 'non-anti magic zones' in order to play out spells
  4. Splitting your army into two different locations, Incidences like these occur when you have killed the majority of an enemy base and have too many units hugged around a untouched flying unit(s) or boss unit(s). Units that are not attacking are inefficient and serve no purpose, this is why you should split and send your army to the next enemy base while the others are taking care of the former enemies.  
  5. Division of armies is even more difficult requiring even more micromanagement and map awareness. 

 Unit distribution is generally difficult and requires good map awareness. (In this instance, one should not rely on the card "tunnel" or "Portal Nexus" to channel such strategy but rather summon units from the tower and send them alongside to your other troops as this is the most effective and fastest method to build up your army.) 

C. Deck is impractical in Fire Rpve, pve and pvp;

  1. Fire RPVE: The twilight bug strategy is inherently useless and almost impossible in Fire RPVE battlegrounds, enemy output and damage from the fire faction will kill all bug armies due to their mediocre health. Volcano, FIre dragons, batariels, Pyromaniacs and spitfires will melt through your bugs like butter leaving you with a non existent army. There are ways to defeating enemy fire camps but this consists of establishing a constant 300+ army but at that stage, your teammates would have already cleared 3/4 of the map (You would also have to take account of the time for your army to travel up to the latest enemy camp). 
  2. General PVE: I can't comment much on PVE maps but generally unless you are not looking to clear the map somewhat efficiently, then yes it is viable (but it will take hours). Otherwise, I guess the average user would be looking to complete the map in an orderly fashion. A majority of Expert Maps have time constraints and will not allow for you to perform such strategy making it unviable. 
  3. PVP: If you have enough time to set up 2 infected towers and a few cultist masters in order to summon a few twilight bugs then your opponent must be doing something wrong. The only time I can see it working is within a 3 vs 3 where your teammates can stall long enough for you to get the setup right but even still this would be farfetched. 

D. Lag?: 

I've played enough twilight bug games in my time that I have received no complaints on lags or lag spikes from teammates, the general output of bugs that you produce at the end of the game is usually in-between 150-250 units. Generally there is not enough time for you to produce more as map clearage is very fast (especially if you have teammates on baterials). If you are spawning in 300+ units then you and your teammates must be doing something inefficient, it is not wrong to spawn more but additional units over 250+ serve no purpose as they have no attack targets and would not be soaking up damage either. All enemies have a hitbox to unit cap and it would be a waste of time to spend effort in spawning more bugs rather than using spells to eliminate them. 

E. Nobody plays the deck (except a few) 

Why kill off a unique game element when there is only a very few who play the deck anyway? its not like it's game breaking or super overpowered, the twilight bug deck has counters and can be entirely lackluster / killed off if not enough effort is spent. Most if not all strategies right now induces Tunnel vision to one location only, there is almost no effort needed in sending your army forwards and clicking a few spells. What other strategy requires you to be as intensive in Map awareness and switching back and forth on different locations? 

 

My complaints about the nerf: 

What is the sole point in capping the twilight spawn at 40 bugs when I have invested time and power in creating a few cultist masters and a few infected towers. Why should I even use the infected tower ability in the first place? 

  • Hypothetical t2 usage; problems and queries: 
  1. Induce me the idea that I would use the infected tower ability at t2?
  2. which Fire Nature or 'Fire' or 'Nature' unit would I use to invest in making a 40 bug army?
  3. How long will it take me to get a 40 bug army assuming you are not using free generated units such as Nightcrawlers from Cultist masters? 
  4. And at what point do I want to kill off my units to make a twilight bug? e.g. Is investing in a sunstrider enough rationale to make a twilight bug? 
  5. Seeing how Sunstriders are the cheapest unit, would I want to spend power on 40 Sunstriders to make an army = 2000 power + 60 (Infected tower ability) to make any army?      
  • Hypothetical t3 usage; problems and queries
  1. The same po,ints from "t2 usage" applies to "t3 usage" 
  2. On presumption on not using Cultist Masters (due to lack of t4 orb), It makes no sense on why I would I use such strategy when I can summon twilight minions/bandit stalkers (60 Power) which is much stronger than the twilight bug itself which costs more power invest in? 
  3. At this point, there are far more efficient/stronger cards in the game in order to make an army with. 
  • Hypothetical t4 usage; problems and queries
  1.  Now please really do tell me on why I would cap myself with 40 bug units at t4 when I can summon 4 bloodhorns and 2 giant wyrms?

 

The case for Tower Defense? What about willzapper?

If the case is to situate Fire Nature with a tower which can defend then why are you not changing Willzapper, a card which is relatively unused in PVP and PVE? You have to acknowledge that WIllzapper is a relatively underused card which serves no purpose in PVE. Although it might be situational in PVP, I assume that there are very few players that use it when there are other favorable strategies on the market. If you are counterweighing changes for the increase in Tower defense in exchange for Nerfing the ability then you have to revise on what Fire-nature/twilight faction is about. 

TLDR: 

Please do not kill the most unique strategy in all of battleforge, my overall opinion on unit cap is that it is illogical and you would be changing Infected tower for the worse, if anything, the changes you are making would make it similar to that of incubator. There is no point in using the infected tower ability anymore because you would be rendering it with a useless ability. Like @JarodDempsey said: The buff is not enough to make it worth using anymore. 

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All summon abilities which can permanently and significantly bypass the population cap will be removed. This is less principally a balance issue than a performance issue.

BattleForge is an old game and only so efficient. Additionally, a good amount of our players play the game on older hardware. This contributes to substantial amounts of lag and frequent crashes when playing with people running Twilight Bug and Satanael decks. Even I, who have a top tier PC, regularly crash whenever I play with someone using either of these two deck archetypes. It is very frustrating to get 25 minutes into a game, then crash because you looked at a teammates army, or be unable to play when you get lag spikes sometimes lasting close to a minute in duration. 

We are open to ideas to change the buff the ability, but unfortunately we cannot leave it in its current state due to the performance issues. 

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@TREX All Towers have damage capabilities, except Stranglehold G, Willzapper and Lost Converter.

Stranglehold G can be put aside since P has damage. Lost Converter doesn't even have internally assigned classes, clearly an oversight. Which leaves Willzapper as the only building that is somehow a designated Tower, yet cannot deal damage. So I would argue that in its case we are looking at a faulty class assignment, it should be a Shrine instead. Same as Lost Converter. As such Willzapper falls outside the scope of a Tower/Fortress rework.

As for Infected Tower, what do you think it would need to receive in compensation? If you could make an Infected Tower that operates under a pop cap but is still good to go, what would it look like?

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I never knew Infected Tower didn't check pop cap but I do think that sounds more like a bug. I mean, I like abusing mind control abilities in PvE and that has always checked pop cap and it would been wicked bad in PvP (I assume as I don't PvP) if mind controlled unit counted against other player's pop cap (or AI/unlimited in PvE). I like the principal of all permanent units you control counting towards your pop cap (I mean if there is no pop cap, with Juice Tank, I usually can just wait it out and amass 100s of Windweavers or something so what is point of orbs -- okay maybe 100s is a little overblow).

 

Now, I saw Twilight Curse to create Twilight Bugs and at first I thought that sounded pretty powerful to only realize Twilight Bugs aren't that strong for 110 (or 100?) power. Then it has the same benefit of reducing bounded power so that is still pretty neat. Maybe they can add more cards like Twilight Curse in future? No idea...

Edited by Lans
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7 hours ago, WindHunter said:

All summon abilities which can permanently and significantly bypass the population cap will be removed. This is less principally a balance issue than a performance issue.

BattleForge is an old game and only so efficient. Additionally, a good amount of our players play the game on older hardware. This contributes to substantial amounts of lag and frequent crashes when playing with people running Twilight Bug and Satanael decks. Even I, who have a top tier PC, regularly crash whenever I play with someone using either of these two deck archetypes. It is very frustrating to get 25 minutes into a game, then crash because you looked at a teammates army, or be unable to play when you get lag spikes sometimes lasting close to a minute in duration. 

We are open to ideas to change the buff the ability, but unfortunately we cannot leave it in its current state due to the performance issues. 

To be fair there's worse stuff than Satanael or Twilight bug decks when it comes to causing lag spikes... Have you also looked at all the teleport stuff that can get extremely laggy if you ass in a couple support cards? No idea how you would want to balance that stuff other than just removing certain cards...

Anyway, in order to address the peformance issues, are you also planning to do similar changes to cards such as cultist master and/or infect? Even though not permanently, they still can significantly bypass the population cap, which can also be long enough to make the lobby crash because of THAT 60iq guy in the match who nether warps everything into the middle of camps because all he can do is spam Lost Spirit Ships. What about Banzai Lord? have 10 -12 of these with these birds and use a teleport, you don't need hundreds of bugs to mess up the match with a lag spike.

 

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We likely cannot make any changes regarding teleport abilities. In terms of cards like Banzai Lord, it is definitely important to be aware when developing future cards the effect additional spawns have on game performance. In a specific sense, we are currently discussing the possibility of reducing total birds from 3 --> 2 for Banzai Lord to help alleviate some of this issue. 

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If the nerf is based population bypass that triggers lag spikes then the following cards also must meet population cap:

  • Infect
  • Satanael
  • Cultist masters
  • Banzai Lord
  • Sunken Temple
  • Harvester Corpse Summoning
  • Nightguard Sawp
  • Grim Bahir's infectious spit and etc

Nether warp Is definetly a big problem when teleporting more than 10 units across a field, it is undeniable that users have faced crashes from nether warp and its most likely happens throughout netherwarping teammates units towards the final boss. I suggest a teleportation limit of 'x" amount of units being able to pass and warp.

 

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Oracle mask used its' ability to make iteself invisible to buffs.

 

In all seriousness what do you think of the idea of removing the AOE power of Tower of Flames to make it a more DPS focused tower, while shifting that AOE power to oracle mask so it becomes a viable defense?

Edited by Eazay
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12 hours ago, Eazay said:

the idea of removing the AOE power of Tower of Flames to make it a more DPS focused tower, while shifting that AOE power to oracle mask

this is an interesting idea. both t1 and t2 have their two main towers separated between dps and cc so t3 could possibly follow this. plus if there is any detriment to tower of flames passive dps in favor of its active ground attack id like to see that removed regardless.

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