Hey Ashenwind! Its been a while!
With respect to the discussion on Rhea Glad, my perspective actually lean more towards Whodahackii's in that, she is strong and useful, but I would not consider her as OP. And I do feel that you have been too harsh on the elves as a whole, not giving them the credit they deserve. (sure I have some qualms about them initially and towards specific ones even now, but took me a while to see their value) Let me share my alternative pov on some of the points you mentioned.
First, on the simplified points: I think it is flawed to summarize rhea as a hero that has got everything covered. Cause the matter of fact is she dont. Her various utilities only come together under different scenarios. If all of her abilities are available from turn one and remains constant till her demise, then surely, one can consider her capable of all the mentioned abilities. Fact remains that celestial form mechanic balances the range of things she is capable of and restricts her utility that way.
1/2) For attack and tankiness, on paper it looks good, but after testing out, she would pale in comparison to many champs without them. with increased survivability, it justify her usage outside of event and the 1 turn price to pay on celestial form transformation.
3) Range attack: This seems like the recurring theme for melee classes elves. Its a pretty cool feature. For players that dont intend to use her at the front row in arena can now have a glad on the back row. in pve, this maybe the area she shine as compared to other champions, but does that alone make her OP? Makes her useful but not OP cause you still pay the price of 1 turn of doing no damage while activating this range ability and it lasts for 3 action points. There is ultimately a limit as to how much she can attack, does not go on forever(after any fix). If pair her with rangers and refresh shadow, once 3 AP is up, she is back to melee again. In her melee form, based on the likely build most players will come up with( full attack), she will be very vulnerable.
Since you brought up sven( pre nerf) often to compare, we can try to draw some comparisons your way, but essentially they are still very different heroes for me. Svenzerk which summons a ranged wyvern was considered OP as if the battle field is left with him alone, he can summon a wyvern beside him that destroys many things, prompting many triggers in one turn. Essentially, that can repeat with him as a sole remaining unit. But our dear rhea glad when left alone, can transform into a range, can only hit once. Not to mention how crazy a wyvern zerk attack can go, need we discuss more about the gap in their power levels?
4/5/6) Disable has a 75% chance on attack. Only if she survives until then and is not CCed. Multiple attacks in a single turn. Pve its possible. PVP depends on triggers, but unless you are lucky, she probably attacks 1 to 2 times in one turn. May sound alot for a champion, but after all the buffs, you still cant compare her to a zerk. Strong, but only feasible if she survives till then. compared to shadows that refresh more than 1 unit, this is way mild where she only refresh herself. if she is alone, no way she can attack multiple times in one turn.
Now returning to the point of how elves are fundamentally different from normal heroes, for every turn that i choose to transform, a normal hero can use it to deal 100% of attack to more than 1 unit. Her CF transformation dont deal any damage. Does not have any effect to disable units. Although elves get a natural cleanse on transformation and after, they synergize with existing heroes in a very different way, which already made many players reluctant to build them until they see a clear use of them outside of event. So now, we have a hero that players can more easily think of ways to integrate into their formations to use (more so in pve) but still does not easily fit in any team, and you still calling for a nerf? Who will even want to use her after then? xD Pretty ironic when in a few post earlier you complain that elves are useless. I do not quite understand what you wish for...
Now on to the topic of Freya. You know from my name, she is my favorite and surely she dont seem obsolete with the entrance of rhea. In fact, it may even be interesting to explore combinations of these 2 champions together. On your point that how Freya is not capable of everything, which makes her weaker, I on the contrary, look at it differently. Precisely because of how freya isnt multi-talented as you mention, she remains better off than rhea glad in her specific scenarios. Without being bounded to celestial form mechanic, Freya glad with talents and aura of units around her, can deal massive damage to tanks from turn 1. Freya dragoon has her unique stunlock attack triggers from turn 1 which remains attractive. Freya serker has amplify and cleave damage from turn 1 that cant compare. Warlord and serker both have agressive on attack triggers that would be very painful when integrated with a trigger team also.
Lastly, I feel the game has picked up and changed in a different way with the addition of talent tree. Just look at how leon SDD replaced drake sdd as the stronger version. Darrion SDD is in fact still the strongest build when comparing them at the same maxed level. Valiants keep their positions, but perhaps it also suggest to us how we can appreciate the elves differently. I for one, will not consider all the other previous elves to be bad design. Take Emilia for example. Not sure if you heard from discussions on discord or elsewhere, there are players who are working on builds around Emilia with high talent points, both path ways in what could potentially be a new meta. Altima, both paths have vast potential too. Have you seen Altima's paladin's aura? It is pretty sick if you pair her up with the right unit within the right formations. Do you know that tess royalhuntsman curse still goes off even when she dies? Raegar samurai bleed and fear can really be impressive if you compare a maxed talent version of him to the maxed talent tanks that some of us face in arena now. Elves just seem more underwhelming as they are harder to max talent now in assuming you are from everglades, a server flooded with talented units. In a server like arathos or even gevalon, many players are having a good time with the elves (i am in those chat servers, happy to invite you if you are keen). Also i guess with talent dungeon coming, we should have an easier time and see new metas in the time to come. We just got to be more patient.
But since you mentioned a rework of elves, how do you think they can be made better?
If you ask me, I really dont think there is much to fear of rhea glad. She is just an alternative for the assassins and serkers in arena. For new servers, like the previous poster mentioned, we are getting so much hard content now, with a extra hero that could help with formation, its a good thing. But one will not be worst off without it since there are counters and alternatives for her. Although I have a rhea glad now, I may just use her for talent points once event end to make a rhea dragoon with more talent points. I hope you get one soon.
Frey
HI Frey! It's been awhile, where have you been?
(I wrote a long post before this, but it was lost because the forum asked me to relogin
)
To make things short, I won't be complaining here if:
1. rhea gladi's cooldown is 3 turns instead of 2.
2. her aura has harder requirement (maybe similar to tess GR or Taegan RM) or has lower activation rate (30-35%).
Currently due to her own aura, with the aid of other heroes (especially archers), she can actually cast her CF 2-3 times within the time needed for Freya Berserker to cast her skill. Her aura also basically remove the drawback of losing one turn to activate CF.
3. her first chain lightning doesn't hit her main target. The current one essentially make her double attacking her main target AND stunning him/her while also damaging two other nearby targets (as well as stunning them). Either make her range attack to chain around like Raegar's and/or give her different on-attack skill while maintaining the stun OR do not make the first chain lightning to hit her main target.
As with what I have said in my previous post , Matilda Spirit Walker offers more than Emillia Inquisitor can. Emillia does have an edge in arena due to the charm effect on her on attack skill, but outside arena she can offer less than Matilda Spirit Walker can in term of utility. Also, currently, Matilda Spirit Walker may cast her skill a lot more times in a single battle than Emillia Inquisitor can. Which mean Matilda has better chance to activate her aura. She also remove buff/debuff when summoning and sacrificing pet. If you say Emillia can be really good if her talent is built, so is Matilda, and Luthor even. Luthor has advantage of being quite common despite being a 5* hero and accessible through 3* hero selector. So it's faster and cheaper to build him the same way you want to build Emillia as battle priest.
It's just that it seems some people prefer boobs over effectiveness on resource usage
Joking. Don't take this one seriously
As for Leon and Darrion being the best as sdd main damage dealer, due to a bug in her chain lightning effect, untalented Rhea Gladiator with decent equip can easily outdamage them. Even if this bug is fixed, I imagine she'll still among the best choice since she can easily refresh herself, and that her CF cooldown is very low to begin with. And unlike Drake/Leon/Darrion, she can easily decimate the small treants on 3rd raid boss due to her being a ranged attacker during CF. And there is also that planned separate talent tree for heroes like Rhea Gladiator that can change their attack type to range as well.
In problem with how I feel she is stronger than Freya, it's because the possibility of her activating CF 3 times within 6 turn. During that, it's either her enemies have been stunned completely all the time, or have already died due to her buffed attack and chain lightning damage. All the while, Freya can only normal hitting, pray that she triggers her aura (since none has as high as 50% chance of activating like Rhea's). and pray that she's still alive to activate her skill. Even when her on-attack skill doesn't activates, Rhea can still tank some damage more than Freya can because her CF reduce damage by 40%. Also, she can do the pummeling from anywhere in the map, since she is ranged unit during CF.
I love the current Freya, hence why I'm complaining about Gladiator Rhea.
And speaking of talent, and one hit killing, a full talent Darrion/Leon with proper attack equip may kill a guardian with less than 6000 def in a single hit, without the aid of attack increase aura from other heroes. I have a full talent Leon myself, and have been killing most guardians on my rank in two hits
It's rare to meet one which survives two hits. But I guess, it's more because I usually stayed in lower rank of Expert..
As for rework, it's mostly about their cd and some other stuff. Rebalance is actually the better word.
2 turns is too fast, 4 is too long. 3 turns cd is actually acceptable.
-The current Altima paladin absorb too little damage from her ally. Also, her return damage at the end of the buff is actually reduced by DEF and MAG, severely reducing the usefulness. Make her absorbs 40-50% damage and/or make her return damage to be 130-150%.
-Magebane Raegar will be more useful if his CF activation also seal aura, or deal some sort of damage to enemies. He only have 2 out 3 possible effects a hero can get in a single skill, so it should be alright to add something. He may only cast it once per arena battle unless refreshed more than once per turn anyway. It will also make him useful on other content, as well as the future talent dungeon (as they say the enemies there have aura)
-Improve Samurai Raegar fear infliction rate to 50-75%. Also, making his on attack skill to be similar to his CF activation (inflict bleed then fear) will improve his dps too. It's quite fine I think, since he has lower than average activation rate (60%) and does not have his own attack trigger/refresh aura anyway.
I don't want to be viewed as impartial just because Taegan is a cute pretty boy (which I've been asking since the first elves appear), but his and Tess' skill sets are actually among the more balanced and has definite theme while still viable.
Also, it will be nice if there is one of elves who can prolong other Elves' CF.
Hello Ashenwind~~ I have been lurking xD Quite caught up with many things lately, but I am often hanging out on the discord servers: Join us!
https://discord.gg/868hD6V
I feel quite neutral about the proposed changes you have for Glad Rhea.. is she causing lots of problem for you in arena? Do you think she will? Is she going to be OP in every PVE scenario or just seem so for current event? If it is no to all of the above, then I really feel there is no need to nerf her. As a player, if sven can be left the way he is now, and vincent berserker can be left the way he is now for their utility in pve, I see her standing in the same tier as them and not higher. I am really looking forward to having more champion options to bring to pve or even arena, but your proposed changes run the risk of making her less appealing to the existing choices I have...at the very most, the impact of the suggested changes will reduce her DPS but will not change the way players will use her.
If the reason to nerf her stems from how she will replace freya, I still cant see why xD I really do think if she will be a strong unit for raid, she will actually complement freya warlord or berserker well rather than replace her. Which I feel is a main difference between your perspective and mine on the heroes. I dont really fear how each new hero can potentially replace another or a Valiant. I always look forward to seeing new heroes complement them instead. The strongest and the most fun auras in game are found in team setups whereby their aura is similar (trigger ranger, SDD) so their little probabilities can stack up high enough to reach a stable usable and reliable rate. So with regards to Rhea glad, I also try to see her as a contributing member to a potential setup that will be more stable to use rather than a direct replacement of any existing hero.
I do not see her posing a big threat in arena, even as she is now at a CD where more people will consider her for arena. She may seem strong at mid tier arena range, while it is still early to tell, she is likely not going to be as popular in top tier arena. VS a team of archers, she can still be very vulnerable. At CD 3 my guess is she will have little chance to be a top tier arena hero...
Likewise in the case of SW Matilda vs Emilia Inquisitor, while you maybe right that Matilda may provide more utility in more scenarios, Emilia is unique in that she can potentially hit harder by herself whereas Matilda needs to rely on a trigger to hit at 120%. That said, rather than having to choose one over the other ( while it is a choice to be made in the near term) if a player is considering to play the game for long, why not build both and see what kind of formations they can result in? With the pool of heroes now, even an all healer offensive team seems very possible.
There is at least one player in Arathos who is running such a team in top 10 arena. Sometimes I feel that us players are too afraid of having too many options to try. But end of the day, we really do not have to build all the possible formations. For example a trigger square can be helpful, but say if new formations appear that helps for pve, with a ranger square already, it is not compulsory to build something new. IF we can achieve all the potential builds in a short time, then the game will not have much more for us to do. Hence to me, it is a good thing, that there are more heroes that can do different things, but also when they can do similar things, to bring out the power of auras.
And yes!! Like you I have a tonne of luthor stored up and just by this fact, he seem to be more attractive to build if I want to make another battle priest, although I converted my theia into one alr ( damn is she useful with her revive but not much aura synergy with the rest) xD
Yes talent works magic, but I am pretty sure an attack leon will have problems chopping down a max talent tank too..hahaha.
The suggested improvements on the other elves certainly looks interesting, although at present, there are already players integrating them into their teams for what they are now.
For example for altima paladin: I agree that little damage is reflected. If too much gets reflected at the end, she would be OP imo, otherwise she be too squishy as she dies too fast fighting ranger squads. But how I choose to use altima is that since her reflect does not deal as much damage as some may wish, it still builds up to an extent of weakening opponent archer units and remove their miracle buff from raid set. That way, my other units have no problem OHKOing them at a later time ( for eg my mystics or champions)
Taegan is a cute pretty boy?! xD I guess he doesnt rub me the same way haha. What definite theme do you think Taegan and Tess share?
The thing about prolonging elves CF seems debatable. Some people want them to be able to transform in and out fast while others like yourself prefer them to be longer...I am quite neutral on that too cause it is too circumstantial. But yea! Perhaps when it is in the form of a buff from a hero, it would be helpful.
Anyway, do add me if you have a friendslot! You are on everglades right? My code is yhxz2y. Remember to join us on discord too! ^^ Cya!
Cheers
Frey
errm, the reason why I'm asking for her to be nerfed was actually coming from how she has too many utilities strapped into her skill set. And how she's actually good at all of them. This isn't supposed to be, right? If it is, it should be the valiants that are entitled to have something like this.
About the points I'm complaining in my previous post, I'd actually be contend if at least one of them is implemented.
As for her replacing Freya in player squad, it's of course all about choice, since some people (like me) may insist to do something weird outside the meta just because we love to do it. I for one, build my Leon's ATK long before talent is introduced, just because my Leon's faith is Ares, I don't want to change his faith, and that I don't want the only pretty boy on my hero collection to be reduced to mere 'aura slave'
Other than that, it's all about whether we can get the hero itself or not
And no, I rarely see any team with elf in it on lower rank.
But my guildsmate already tried her up, and most of the time, he (using an archer team with Rhea Gladi in it) is able to stun lock the whole members of enemy squad the turn after Rhea's CF activates. Encounter with another archer team, as usual, is a matter of luck of who goes first. But against any other team, the stunlock is usually what happened most of time, if they haven't died yet.
About Emillia, yes. That's one other advantage she have over Matilda that I forget to mention, in that she can still be damaging even outside of heal trigger team. However it is at the cost of less often healing.
Matilda may not deal as much on her own, but she has her pet to add some damage and help trigger her aura. As I said before, Emillia is more toward arena than pve content. Matilda has more utilities outside arena use. It all depend on what the player want of course.
As for Altima, if you build her HP high enough, even absorbing 30% of Kiera Elementalist' skill that hits all of her allies (while not getting hit herself), she'll still be alive and well, while the ally might not even survive it.. And when the return damage appear, poof, the damage won't even scratch Kiera because she has high MAG and usually guarded by Aden's aura which improve both of her DEF and MAG. This is actually what happen to me during the two week I was using her in my tank team to see if she can replace Faye
. While against a proper archer team, she isn't even had a chance to activate CF
In contrast, if Faye Paladin cast her shield, then a Kiera nuke her team, the Kiera might even ended up dead, while Faye and her team, will most likely survive due to HP shield and increase in MAG. it's because the reflect damage ignores DEF and MAG. More on that, Faye can typically cast her skill twice in a single arena battle, while Altima usually can only cast hers once.
About full talent attack guardian vs full talent def guardian, full talent ATK build has advantage in that they are also useful outside of arena, while full talent DEF build might not be worth it if used on pve, unless you are building a HD Darrion (whom receive a boost of fame after event bosses begun to throw debuff at us on the beginning of boss wave)
The highest DEF guardian I've seen (based on Munilet's Arathos world record) is 16k DEF (which translates to around 17-18k if he/she is a CK), while the highest ATK guardian I've seen is 17k ATK (maybe there is one higher out there). In long fight, the ATK guardian will still win because the weapon mastery makes their ATK to become 150% (meaning that 17k ATK is actually equal to a whooping 25k+ ATK). There is also extra 10% ATK from Enchantment Talent skill, based on that 150% ATK. So in the end, the DEF guardian will still fall after two or three hits from the ATK guardian.
Granted, maybe only a full talent Gladiator Freya/Vincent and ATK talent Guardian can put a dent on a DEF talent guardian. And the DEF buff from a DEF talented Darrion HD will be enormous and very beneficial for the party. He may even ended up tough enough to tank all of the previous persons I mentioned to be able to pierce through the tankiness of a DEF talent guardian.
Okay, back to the elf topic.
Why I'm suggesting for at least an elf to be able to lengthen the period of other elf's CF? It's because some elves has rather lame CF activation effect, but decent/good on-attack skill. For example, Thaegan Mind Warder, Raegar magebane, Emillia Archbishop, Altima Paladin, etc. All the while, those with decent/good effect on their CF activation sometimes also have similarly good effect on their on-attack skill, like Tess (both classes), Rhea Dragoon, Emillia Inquisitor, etc. I don't mean adding AP to them, just maybe a buff that prevent their AP to be spent for a few more turn(s). That's all!
(I know that kind of buff that prevents AP from being consumed will make Rhea Dragoon to be able to even stand up to SDD. But it will be quite a gambling since you'll have to pray for her on-attack skill to activates all the time, much like SDD but minus Kahuna and Matilda, and still have to wait for the buff skill cd before being able to unleash hell.)
If it's in the form of aura, can just give it two effects, first being the effect that will still useful to everyone, while the second is the one that affect heroes with AP. Something like:
When this hero/other hero in this hero's cast skill, 100% chance to:
-increase ATK of others in this hero's aura by 25% of this Hero's ATK/MAG/DEF
-increase AP of others in this hero's aura by 1 (does not affect hero without AP)
About how Tess and Thaegan having a definite theme on their skillset, it's that one of their class has aura that is triggered if others in their aura cast skill. Also, one of their classes both have skill that deal delayed damage.
Just like how all gladiators before Rhea always have persistent type aura, how Berserkers always been a risky huge damage dealer, how Chaos Knights is able to play around with enemy's positioning while offering some form of protection to allies while staying still, how all known Dark Disciples so far always has a class that is capable of healing everyone in their aura, how all Dragoons like to jump around a lot, etc. This is actually what I like about VF, because each of the class has distinct characteristic and theme. (one more reason why I find Rhea gladiator needs to be reworked a little)
I actually am not really familiar with Discord usage, which prevented me from actively joining thus far
I've sent you a friend request~