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Building Changes Round 2


WindHunter

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As we announced in our 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 our second round of building changes. The original master thread can be found here. 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.

Previously Announced:

Newly Announced or Updated:

Fortress Changes 

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One category of towers we spoke of in our Deep Dive were Fortresses. Fortresses are expensive towers from T3+ that have large models. Due to the way space works in BattleForge, larger towers should have higher stats in comparison to other towers as you can build less of them in a given area. We have decided, outside of the unique case of Church of Negation, to make 200p the base cost of Fortresses. This allows us room to pack more stats into a single building. Our goal is to move Fortresses in the direction of self-sufficient defenses that can hold positions even in those locations where you might only be able to build one or two.

Deepgorge.png Deepgorge
1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m.

While Deepgorge has substantially increased in strength since the most recent changes, particularly in connection with North Star(b) with which it naturally synergizes. Unfortunately, due to the tower's large size, its ability radius is still too small when the tower is placed behind a wall making it difficult even for a well-placed Deepgorge to hit all melee attackers on long walls. 

Howling_Shrine.png Howling Shrine
1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total ➜ 750, up to 1125 in total (3750 dp20)
2. Crowd control duration (both affinities): 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds

Howling Shrine is feeling better after the buffs both to itself and to the root network in general. When the initial changes were proposed, some people suggested larger buffs to the card but we urged caution due to the difficulty in account for how things would change once the full set of root network changes came through. Now that we can evaluate the changes more fully, it appears that Howling Shrine is still a tad on the weak side. To remedy this, we are giving it a +25% damage increase and increasing the duration of both its root and paralyze to help it keep dangerous melee units at a safe distance. 

Volcano.png Volcano
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20)
3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690
4. Infused Eruption's (red affinity) Rage:
   A. Rage scaling: 100%/200% ➜ 75%/150% 
   B. Rage timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds
   C. Attacks per stack: 4 attacks ➜ 3 attacks
5. Lava Sea
   A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   B. Bugfix the ability so that it works

Making Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the nerf to Rage's percentile damage increase (12,000 --> 13175 dp20). Additionally, the rage should activate substantially sooner. Previously it took 29 seconds in combat to full scale, now it should only take 22 seconds. One thing we learned in the wake of Volcano's previous changes is that its Lava Sea ability is bugged and does not work. Fixing the ability to function as advertised should do much to make Volcano a larger threat. 

Worldbreaker_Gun.png Worldbreaker Gun
1. Life points: 4500 ➜ 5400
2. Descriptive: Add "Has a long range of 50m" to its Ground Attack description.

WBG is the best defense in the entire game, but that is achieved primarily through its Heavy Snowball ability augmented by Skyelf Sage. In terms of functions as a tower, it is still good but has uncharacteristically low life points for its cost and tier. We are giving it a slight bump in total health, which should help it when functioning as a tower while leaving it unchanged as a long range artillery piece. 

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.png Artillery
1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m
2. Increase turret turn speed. 

Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall.

Fire_Bomb.png Fire Bomb
1. Damage: 715 up to 1650 in total ➜ 720, up to 1800 in total
2. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Allow to hit air units & enable splash overflow fix.

Hammerfall.png Hammerfall
1. Increase turret turn speed.
2. Breeze of Life (g) / Breeze of Strength (b):
   A. Maximum capacity: 1500 ➜ 3000
   B. Recharge rate: 15 per second ➜ 40 per second
   C. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Breeze of Strength, Ice Shield cost: 495 capacity ➜ 600 capacity

Increased turret turn speed should increase damage output due to faster target tracking. Change to affinity effects: Higher maximum capacity should make both affinity effects better, but especially the healing one which is only drained as required. Higher recharge rate means that a new Ice Shield can be bestowed every 15 seconds instead of every 33 seconds, even with the higher cost. Range increase to make it easier to place units around it. Total charge time is now 90 seconds. Additionally, Hammerfall's shields do not decay while within the aura. This makes them a stable source of extra health for allied units. Hammerfall's recharge and healing is still less than Healing Well's, a T2 60p card, with the same maximum capacity.

Infected_Tower.png Infected Tower
1. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1215 dp20) ➜ 138, up to 207 in total. (1466 dp20)
2. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m

+20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it.

Kobold_Laboratory.png Kobold Laboratory
1. Mason Mastery radius: 25m ➜ 30m
2. Material Research: 
   A. Changed buildings ➜ buildings and walls
   B. Allow repairing while in combat
   C. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   D. New description: "Friendly buildings and walls in a 30m radius have 50 / 50 / 50 / 70% lower repair costs and are repairable in combat."

Allow Kobold Laboratory to have a niche use in defense and to provide something beyond what Glaciation is capable of providing. Change is meant in preparation for DRPvE and will also be useful in maps with prolonged defenses, especially near walls.

Lost_Converter.png Lost Converter
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. Corpse cost to freeze: 200 ➜ 250 stored life points

Morklay_Trap.png Morklay Trap
1. Enable splash overflow fix
2. Explosion Blast total damage: 2640 in total ➜ 4400 in total

Increase total targets from 3 to 5 and enable splash damage properly transferred even when units die.

Stone_Hurler.png Stone Hurler
1. Damage: 100 damage, up to 150 in total (834 dp20) ➜ 120 up to 180 in total (1000 dp20)

Align actual damage with stated damage on the card.

Twilight_Bombard.png Twilight Bombard
1. Remove "Siege" from Infused affinity
2. Add "Rage" to Infused affinity. 
   A. Stage 1: +25%; Stage 2: +50% damage
   B. Attacks per stage: 3
   C. Reset timer: 10 seconds
3. Increase turret turn speed. 

Twilight Bombard (r) has Siege as its affinity effect, which is largely useless. By changing it to Rage instead, we make the choice between the two affinities one of increased damage versus crowd control.

Waystation.png Waystation
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. New passive, Fast Construction: Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Infused damage buff: 30% ➜ 40%
4. Tainted poison damage: 30 life points every second ➜ 40 life points every second
5. Corpse storage: 2500 total ➜ 4500 total
6. Corpse cost per potion/poison (both affinities): 180 ➜ 400 stored life points will be used up.
7. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m

The first step in what will eventually be a full rework of Waystation. For now, the addition of fast construction means it can be set up offensively as its name suggests and the addition of Soul Suction means it should be able to easily gather corpses to fuel itself. Gave a small boost to both affinity effects and increased the radius to require ranged units to enter its effective radius to damage it.

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Awesome!

Volcano's Fire Sea ability being bugged explains, why it felt so week when I tried to use it in the past 😅. Fixing this and increasing the range helps this card a lot in becoming more fearsome.

Removing Twilight Bombard's siege actually removes a very, very nieche usecase it had in PvP, where you could sneakily try to set it up where it can cliff you opponents base. This felt a bit toxic though, since it was basically game over, if you can't stop it in time. Only ever happened to me once though.

What will the Soul Suction animations for Lost Converter and Waystation look like? The current one from Soulsplicer looks a bit "shadowy", which fits Lost Converter quite well, but might look a bit off on Waystation.

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volcano definitely looks interesting thought im still disappointed green seems to be a black sheep when not used with commander elf or similar damage reduct.

will fixes to lava field also buff enemy volcano? bc imo it is plenty strong as is. also those goes for base stats increase too, hope thats just for player version

does morklay explosion on death already hit air? else i notice that theres no mention of it getting the firebomb change to hit air which would be puzzling

as one of the very people people who actually made much use of kobold lab im happy to see it getting some nice qol buffs

other changes explicitly listed here seem ok, def waiting to see what waystation and infected tower reworks have, esp bc i had a super good suggest for infected tower

 

also has there been any update on fixing model size or like hitbox, i was reading the rocket tower page and did those proposed changes to the collision boxes ever lead to anything?

 

also also when are we getting bene mo effect for structures 

Edited by JarodDempsey
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9 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

What will the Soul Suction animations for Lost Converter and Waystation look like? The current one from Soulsplicer looks a bit "shadowy", which fits Lost Converter quite well, but might look a bit off on Waystation.

While not perfect, the plan is to use the existing animation for both Lost Converter and Waystation. Given they both have a Shadow orb it should be close enough. But it is interesting how Bandit's aesthetic is much more Fire than Shadow. If we were to do the same thing by adding a Fire animation to a Bandit card, I do not think anyone would question it. 

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overall solid changes.

Since the Sunken Temple was part of the last tower changes (reduced orb cost from 2 nature to 1nature1neutral). Would it be possible to set a waypoint. You can't really use it behind walls and out in the open it requires a lot of micro-ing or it may be sniped by enemy ranged units

It has the additional downside of using up a lot of unit space if they just idle around. Imho Sunken temple should work as a way to intercept attacking units (long range) or as a damage sponge.

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  • 8 months later...

Suggestions:

Wilzapper: make it work as the pve version, paralyzing enemies, maybe make it t3 to balance it

Inc Mo upgrades, should do something other than increase the hp of a building that tecnicly doesnt get into combat

Vodooshack could have a faster construction passive

Rioters Retreat should also work as the PVE version, have higher dmg and knock back medium and small

Crystals: are a good idea but kind sucks, maybe make it so instead of buffing affinities they buff colors, and also need to improve their buffs, only the fire crystal is some what usefull

 

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