Valiant Force Forum

Hello, my name is Thiago Scher, I’m a Brazilian aspiring game designer/producer and I'm playing Valiant Force since CBT day 3. I really like this game as I see a lot of good ideas and it reminds me a little of Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre, two of my favorite of all time games.

So, I will be writing an extensive review and feedback of the game and I will post it within the day.

As a series of Lets Talk, may I start with the Guardian class.

Before the 1.0 balance update, the Guardian class was one of the least used classes. Why? Well, Valiant Force was designed with portability strategy in mind, so the quests have at max 3 stages (Aaria Event Heroic and Legendary had 4). That’s brilliant, because as a mobile game, we want to play for short times when we do have the time.

Guardians specializes in the taunt ability that provokes the enemy to attack him/her for some turns, bumping the user Def or casting a shield along the way to survive that. That’s useful, but! By design the game incentives quick battles so Guardians was not so useful because of that, by the time you have the skill ready you would probably be killing the boss or (if the stage is too difficult) be dead before that. So, as the difficulty scales way too much between normal, heroic and legendary difficulty, the first and more effective way to get past those quests was using the same old strategy: Attack is the best Defense. If you could end the battle quickly you would not need to defend yourself though the hard-hitting enemies.

One alternative would be charge the skill (against a single enemy) on the last stage before the boss to tank some of the damage. Even doing so, bringing a guardian your DPS would fall by a little and you may not be able to kill the boss before the taunt/shield effect fall of. To worst things even more, Guardians didn’t too much DEF status to stay alive too much. Even at legendary a 5* Darrion with 4* Equip Level 15 was not surviving more than three or four hits.

Post balance patch the Guardians gained a boost in status and are starting to be more useful, surviving a lot more, now they are even more useful in arena, indirectly because of the nerfed mechanics of the Mystics (AOE area skills changed to 3x3) and the boost on extra points in the central grids (so that by diverging your team, the Mystic Skill would not cause the death of everyone anymore.

In Quests with the boost in DEF the Guardians can now serve as the only front in a ranged focused squad, surviving a lot more than before.

So, share your thoughts and opinions on the Guardian Classes. I will make an analysis as soon as I can, breaking down all heroes and Valiants.

Imo guardian now can do guard things
the strategy is if they move to the center block we must hit them before it's too late right?
But the problem is
It's already too late and you can't kill the guardian
If you do, enemy damage dealer will shot your squad apart (for who following the old meta = attack is the best defense)
The one who play first have huge advantage on taking 2/3 score block
We have knock back, we have pull ofc but how long it's gonna take for us to build a team like that?
And don't tell me to chase the meta once more
Mystic is an example already ._.

Imo guardian now can do guard things
the strategy is if they move to the center block we must hit them before it's too late right?
But the problem is
It's already too late and you can't kill the guardian
If you do, enemy damage dealer will shot your squad apart (for who following the old meta = attack is the best defense)
The one who play first have huge advantage on taking 2/3 score block
We have knock back, we have pull ofc but how long it's gonna take for us to build a team like that?
And don't tell me to chase the meta once more
Mystic is an example already ._.

Mystics were a little OP, but the nerf hit them in too many ways, some of them were not necessary, so the balance is at stake at the moment. Some classes status got buffed, while other not so much, comparing the status of every hero will give us a lot more insight in the actual distance between them now, that's what I'm doing at the moment, will share the results and post Hero analysis from time to time.
About the meta, I don't think they will nerf status anymore, so as Guardians stands now, even if the damage calculation goes back to what it was before, it will still be a viable class, so don't worry about that at least.

0.72 = pray every time i go 2nd in Arena with Isabelle 
1.0 = pray every time i go 1st in Arena with Guardian

but 0.72 going 1st against Isabelle is almost 90% lose rate
but 1.0 going 2nd in Arena is still 50-50 

Every meta if players are able to lineup their party with 3x units that is so-called OP of course you are expected to win
Previously it was Isabelle + Kiera + Zedd etc now it is 3x Guardian/Champions. 

However, the most important thing that this patch bring is that it shifted from a near 100% win rate party in Arena to something like 75%

Guardians are more useful now, able to tank some bosses on heroic for about 3-4 hits (3* Scarlett) while before even 2 hits is a problem (4* Leon Zealot).
Still, due to the nature of the trials for quests, it makes it unlikely to bring guardians unless you are barely capable of beating the boss, so perhaps it would be useful to have some quests similar to the current horde event, where the mission objective is to stay alive for at least a set number of turns.