OP Items

[white-haired-uncle]

Breaking out discussion which began #715 on items that are perhaps way too powerful and "need" to be broken up, nerfed, made into super items, etc.

Adding Holy Sword. Other than the fact that 90% of all units have Legacy of Light so some of this is redundant, wow. For example, illuminates and align=lawful together seems about right for a single item, perhaps with a low level resistance bump or something, but in this case they are just a small part.

[Dugy]

Yeah, I can agree that it has a bunch of abilities that are all quite powerful even individually. Does it feel so powerful that it needs to be weakened, either turned into an item set or just by removing some properties, or it could just be made super rare?

Other than the fact that 90% of all units have Legacy of Light

What do you mean by that? Is the random assignment of legacies broken and Legacy of Light is the most common one?

[Dugy]

I changed murderlust to work only on offence. The old murderlust is now called supreme murderlust and is obtainable only as AMLA (Werewolf Rider and Abomination).

[white-haired-uncle]

Yeah, I can agree that it has a bunch of abilities that are all quite powerful even individually. Does it feel so powerful that it needs to be weakened, either turned into an item set or just by removing some properties, or it could just be made super rare?

I would weaken it. My problem with making it super rare is that when you get enough super rare items, you're going to end up with a small collection of them. I tend to focus on a core of about 10-12 units in my army and make them as powerful as possible. So even if HS was super rare, I'll probably find at least one, and of 10-12 units I only need 3 or 4 super rare swords to ensure that every unit that relies on, if not just carries, a sword has a super rare one.

I should note, when I say super rare I mean there's a very small chance of a boss drop or rare item find. If super rare meant there was only one way to get it, like killing Abbadon in VS (great fight, and totally optional) then I wouldn't have such a problem with it the way it is.

Making it a set? In general I'm a fan of sets, but there's plenty of other ways to get illumination (for example).

I think what really bothers me about HS is the combos. It sets align=lawful and illuminates, which not only work together, but also setting lawful alleviates a potential downside of carrying HS (it illuminates, so if you're not lawful that could be a detriment). It also sets damage type to arcane and gives arcane penetration.

I would probably give it unholybane (either the ability or the weapon special), a weapon special lawful, and then pick one of the four other benefits, probably one involving arcane. I say weapon special lawful because it's the best way I can think of to make it so that you only want to give this to a lawful (probably illuminating) unit. It would be cool if there were a weapon special that focused on the alignment of the holder and not time of day (better yet if there were item specials that did focused on alignment, and this weapon special was just one instance). It could have one more beneficial property, if it was offset by a negative one like slows (can't use poison since so many chaotic units are undead) all adjacent chaotic (easy/normal) or non-lawful (hard) ALLIES.

Hmm, there's a thought. A weapon special that slows/poisons/incinerates/something the user if they don't have the proper alignment. Slow is probably a bad choice since it will wear off so quickly. Or a chaotic armor that hits a lawful wearer for -4MP. Or whatever.

Other than the fact that 90% of all units have Legacy of Light

What do you mean by that? Is the random assignment of legacies broken and Legacy of Light is the most common one?

I don't think it's any more common, it just seems that way because it's so annoying:

1. It's arguably one of the most powerful legacies, so it's extra annoying when it's wasted.
2. It's wasted on two of my favorite units, Prophet and Cel Mess.
3. It's wasted on anything chaotic if you want to keep them chaotic. Like my Nightprowler with nightstalk and a darkens item. Side note: there's an enemy with daystalk, but it's not available to the player.
4. The overall balance between light and dark seems decidedly shifted toward light, to the point where it is almost not worth having chaotic units. This is unfortunate because they have different talents that would be interesting to explore, but with so much of my army lawful/illuminating, chaotic/darkens just kind of get in the way.

I changed murderlust to work only on offence.

Cool.

supreme murderlust and is obtainable only as AMLA (Werewolf Rider and Abomination).

Very cool. Abomination needed some help. I'd never even heard of WWR until now. I usually advance wolf riders to pillager for the slow attack, and I can't seem to keep them alive long enough to get to L4 anyway.

[Dugy]

From your descriptions, it sounds like if Legacy of Light was making lawful units more powerful overall than chaotic units, which could be the root of the problem. It seems really powerful - exceptional illumination + lawful + healing. Maybe some of these upgrades could be removed, like the exceptional illumination.

Holy Sword could have some of its properties removed, I would start with those that are easily available from other sources.

I will think about the rest of things you've said, I have to dash to work now.

[white-haired-uncle]

From your descriptions, it sounds like if Legacy of Light was making lawful units more powerful overall than chaotic units, which could be the root of the problem. It seems really powerful - exceptional illumination + lawful + healing. Maybe some of these upgrades could be removed, like the exceptional illumination.

I suspect a few causes for the light/dark balance thing.

1. Personal preference. I like Prophets and CMs.
2. I don't think there's really a counter to LoL. Undead comes to mind, but it seems weak to me and with all of its negative resistance/HP I never really use it
3. Items. In particular, Purity seems to be a lot cheaper (common) to craft than Deflector of Light.
4. Enemies seem to tend more toward chaotic. Illumination is a weapon against them.
5. ToD. I bet if you were to count all the turns spent in day/night, between underground and long dark/etc, it would come out with a lot more dark. This might seem like a reason to focus on chaotic units, but given all the other factors it's probably more of a reason to focus on a lot of illumination.
6. Units. Seems like there are more lawful units available to recruit than chaotic, and the balance is almost certainly heavier on lawful early which means that they have a lot longer to advance. And undead are mostly pretty weak/fragile, at least at first, so they're harder to level.
7. There was a 7. I was just thinking of it.

Coming back to items, Hatred and Chaos just seem like they should be tailored for chaotic units based on the names. And I think one could argue that poison is kind of a "bad" thing to do, in the same vein as necromancy, so probably Intoxicator.

[Dugy]

Celestial Messenger and Prophet are generally highly popular units that are probably OP by themselves. I wanted to make them slightly weaker, most likely just by reducing some numbers. Celestial Messenger was recently made even better by making conviction more important.

I could revise the sources of illumination, there really may be many of them and giving stronger versions of illumination. Meanwhile, it's true that darkens usually makes enemies stronger (except for demons). Maybe they could be paired with despair?

I am aware of the unpopularity of undead, I even have a concrete list of extra abilities they could get to be more attractive. Previously, I added a few new undead unit types one Halloween a few years ago, but it didn't do much.

The item Chaos intentionally has a bunch of unrelated mods. I created it out of curiosity if it will be useful somewhere, but it seems that its +1 attacks is the main reason to use it. Or maybe skirmisher.

[Dugy]

I have changed Holy Sword in 836f8c8.

[white-haired-uncle]

Celestial Messenger and Prophet are generally highly popular units that are probably OP by themselves. I wanted to make them slightly weaker, most likely just by reducing some numbers. Celestial Messenger was recently made even better by making conviction more important.

They are way OP, IMO. One easy thing I was thinking about was changing the AMLA order so you couldn't take the great stuff so early.

I am aware of the unpopularity of undead, I even have a concrete list of extra abilities they could get to be more attractive. Previously, I added a few new undead unit types one Halloween a few years ago, but it didn't do much.

I am quite interested in the undead, probably because I've never done much with them. I only recently learned about advancing soulless to interesting things like Abomination and Monstrosity (which may need some attention). I had a thought that might make them even better, soulless advance based on their variation. So the only way to get a new Wose Lich (whatever) is to advance a soulless with a wose variation. Nice side effect is that would put a lot more emphasis on plague, so instead of your leaders slaughtering everything in sight you end up using them as support (softening up/slowing enemies, providing leadership, etc).

My problem is not so much the units (though they do need some work), but mainly that when close to half of my army is lawful and I have a lot of illumination, the chaotic units and lawful/illum don't play well and it becomes a bother to keep them separate. The undead lines are interesting, just too much hassle at the moment IMO. Perhaps more scenarios that are undead-only/mostly so you have to build some up.

[Dugy]

They are way OP, IMO. One easy thing I was thinking about was changing the AMLA order so you couldn't take the great stuff so early.

Yeah, requiring some boring AMLAs before the exceptional ones could contribute to making them less overpowered.

I had a thought that might make them even better, soulless advance based on their variation. So the only way to get a new Wose Lich (whatever) is to advance a soulless with a wose variation.

I mean, the idea is okay, but I have already learned that adding more variety doesn't help. This might be done later, but not with the goal of making undead more used.

My problem is not so much the units (though they do need some work), but mainly that when close to half of my army is lawful and I have a lot of illumination, the chaotic units and lawful/illum don't play well and it becomes a bother to keep them separate.

That's why it's important to make them more worth the investment. Especially other units than Ancient Lich.

[white-haired-uncle]

Just crafted a Soul Hunter staff for my prophet. Pretty cheap, a little resistance, waste of good weapon damage, but it has murderlust. This lead me to wonder if murderlust would not be better as a weapon special than an ability (probably with a different name, murderlust sounds like an ability). I wouldn't advocate for changing anything now since it was just updated, just a thought I wanted to get down -- maybe it applies to something else.

Another idea to restrict murderlust or something similar is to combine it with an attack type like backstab or charge, maybe even berserk.

[Dugy]

I think it would compete too much with drain-like weapon specials if it was a weapon specials, and there are already quite a few drain-like weapon specials that are too similar to each other.

[white-haired-uncle]

Brightslash is pretty useful. Combine it with high HP/resist, and you have a healer who can defend from the front as well.

heals/absorb(2)/damage+20% would be a pretty good item, above average I think. regenerates(16) is just way too much on top of that IMO.

[Dugy]

Maybe I could reduce the absorb to 1, as absorb 2 is a rather strong an rare ability.

[white-haired-uncle]

Wrathful Combat Tech. Furious5 + wrath!

I gave it to a Dwarf with the Blue Orb and Anger. The axe can get a ton of hits, but the mace has magical and still gets a lot this way. Either way, he's a mean little fella. I guess I could craft anger for the axe and use that anger mace too.

This time I'm looking to combine WCT with Blue Orb and Stormrend. I can't find a unit with inherent marksman for sword (odd), but with 40-50 trickery hits per turn, sooner or later I won't need it. Good thing the lightning gets overridden by fire.

[Dugy]

Furious 5 seems like something that may have an extreme potential for exploitation. Maybe I could remove it for all units maybe except the Berserker line.

[white-haired-uncle]

Marrowrend looks a little troubling. Lot of good stuff, no drawbacks (assuming you're not scared of anger).

The thing that jumps out at me, anger and +30% attacks? Anger (craft) does this too.

[white-haired-uncle]

Warheart depends on Warguard, which means once I have one WG I can craft 3 WH and get +3 attacks. If WG depended on WH instead it would seriously degrade my ability to abuse things like WCT and Anger.

[Dugy]

Marrowrend requires a black pearl to craft, Anger is far cheaper and both are quite strong otherwise. Maybe making Marrowrend a little weaker and changing Anger to something else could help here?

Warheart depends on Warguard, which means once I have one WG I can craft 3 WH and get +3 attacks. If WG depended on WH instead it would seriously degrade my ability to abuse things like WCT and Anger.

And the increase damage aura from Warheart will stack multiplicatively from the three copies, right? My idea was that stacking it three times would get you needless duplicate properties, but that's not the case, these stack multiplicatively. I could achieve something by requiring some other conflicting item to have the increase damage aura, but moving the set effect to gauntlets should work as well.

[white-haired-uncle]

Same issue with Soul Thrash (wrath, non-craftable) and Hatred (+1 attack, craftable). You may want to consider swapping wrath and +1 attack, since crafting multiple wrath does nothing for you while +1 attack stacks.

Or not, some exploits make things interesting. But it's worth thinking about to make sure it works the way you intend.

EDIT: Oh, Soul Thrash has -40% damage. Maybe you wouldn't want more than one of those.

[Dugy]

Are you able to get enough Black Pearls for having multiple instances of Hatred?

[white-haired-uncle]

Yeah. My Predator has two and I have a BP left. That's playing with reduced drops, particularly in ch5.

Not sure if you can buy them, but if so I could have picked up one or two more in Bitter Swamps, where I always have way too much gold.

[Dugy]

A black pearl should allow you to make something very nice. Your supply of black pearls is clearly limited, you can equip one unit with them and then you're out. Or is Hatred the obvious choice of the ones you can make with them?

I am a little surprised you are using a Predator, my notes say that Predator isn't a very popular choice to develop.

[white-haired-uncle]

I had a loyal[1] Poacher, so I advanced him. And really, he's not a bad unit. So far I've only take Ice Dragon AMLAs. With nightstalk and his 38x6 + lurk bow he'd make a fine assassin here in the tunnels. But he kills pretty much anything in one turn anyway.

Chaos, Hatred, and Marrowrend are pretty much all I use BPs for. I probably already had Soul Thrash (and daggers usually suck, so this is/was a good choice for the damage penalty) and/or I had the other gems to go Hatred vs Chaos. [also, I haven't synced in at least a week, so I may be making choices based on older weapons/specials).

[1] In ch5, "loyal" is basically worthless. Need to fix that somehow. I have some "interesting" ideas.

[Dugy]

Okay, so it looks like Predator doesn't deserve being as underused as he is now.

Chaos, Hatred, and Marrowrend are pretty much all I use BPs for.

Chaos and Hatred are the only two crafts that take 1 black pearl. So it looks they are worth their cost. On the other hand, Marrowrend seems to be much better than the other weapon crafts for 1 black pearl. Maybe it's time to nerf it a little?

In ch5, "loyal" is basically worthless. Need to fix that somehow. I have some "interesting" ideas.

Yeah. What ideas do you have? Something like a free autorecall?

[white-haired-uncle]

Chaos and Hatred are the only two crafts that take 1 black pearl. So it looks they are worth their cost. On the other hand, Marrowrend seems to be much better than the other weapon crafts for 1 black pearl. Maybe it's time to nerf it a little?

I would start with the +30% attacks. In theory, 2x attacks for attacker and defender is a wash (perhaps slight advantage to attacker who gets to pick the attack), so if there weren't other bonuses there would be little reason to desire this. In practice, the human intelligence factor makes 2x att/def a huge bonus (e.g. we humans can pick which unit/attack it applies to and which unit(s) to use it against). Therefore, adding even more attacks seems counterproductive.

In ch5, "loyal" is basically worthless. Need to fix that somehow. I have some "interesting" ideas.

Yeah. What ideas do you have? Something like a free autorecall?

I'm nowhere near even a theory yet, but a few key points are:

1. Early finish seems silly/arbitrary as implemented in wesnoth. A more logical scheme would be that you get whatever gold the enemy has left when you defeat them, adjusted for the spoils of victory. And supporting your army should be a constant net drain so that's encouragement to finish early as well.
2. I don't like negative gold, particularly when you know you'll end a scenario with negative gold you then just recruit/recall everything at the beginning. Basically, -1,000,000 and -1 are the same at the end. Also, why are your units following you if you can't pay them? Maybe they stay with you during the scenario, real armies have been known to accept slow/late payment, but eventually there should be desertion (like if you end a scenario with negative gold, meaning you couldn't eventually make up the missing wages).
3. There's a lot I don't like about recalls, but a big one: why are they following you with no upkeep? I guess you could say the carryover_percentage loss includes paying off your recalls, but that seems more like an excuse after the fact than an explanation. Units on the recall list shouldn't cost as much as units on the map (hazard pay?), but they should cost.
4. A particular problem with ch5 is XP farming. Once the enemy leaders are taken care of, you can pretty much hang out at the spawn points and pick off individual units forever.
5. Throughout the campaign, you've probably taken some care to protect/promote loyal units. For example, you might stick with loyal chaotic unit with LoL instead of just starting over with a new recruit. Ch5 pretty much throw all that out the window.

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm pretty sure upkeep/turn is key to most/all of these. That would need to be offset by ways to acquire gold of course (selling items to the traders comes to mind), but ways that make more sense than the classic wesnoth model. The free-roaming world map nature of ch5 makes this an interesting challenge.

Upkeep also provides an encouragement to utilize certain units, like undead (who also should have cheaper upkeep since they have more available food sources / less food need). Walking corpses, soulless, etc certainly could/should be loyal as they have no need for gold, should be thankful for keeping them alive (such as it is), etc.

With all that said, I like the free autorecall /100% carryover model of ch5. But XP farming has to go, and I think gold is the primary tool to do that.

[white-haired-uncle]

Violent Staff: Attached, my elf overlord has taken faster at combat twice, and hold searing ice. So his violent beatdown gives him 18 attacks (I wonder if I can put furious on that with WCT).

Shoud VB/anger double the bonus from searing ice? It's only one more attack, in this case, but it makes a point. Perhaps multiply should come before add (though this may have side effects if applied in the general case with items that give like 30% -- they may never give any additional hits).

Also, with the VB set you get firecast, which according to the description fires with each hit? So he could potentially get what is effectively an extra 18 attacks per turn?

While we're here, check out the FI next to him, who happens to be holding the full VM set. She is (will be) an incredible healer. With conviction(30). Add on the VM set and she can do some pretty serious damage. Her base HP are pretty decent, add a little resistance and you have a front line unit with massive healing and conviction. The one in the attached has only taken two AMLAs and she's already something of a brute. One thing I would consider is making her healing grow more slowly (like +4/AMLA) and her conviction much more slowly (like 5%/AMLA -- currently she needs just two AMLA to get 30!). [EDIT: just took next AMLA, conviction 40!]

LotI1-Southern Guardian Room-Auto-Save11.gz

[Dugy]

I would start with the +30% attacks.

Yeah.

the human intelligence factor makes 2x att/def a huge bonus (e.g. we humans can pick which unit/attack it applies to and which unit(s) to use it against).

The AI can do that too.

A more logical scheme would be that you get whatever gold the enemy has left when you defeat them, adjusted for the spoils of victory. And supporting your army should be a constant net drain so that's encouragement to finish early as well.

In a modern war, soldiers engaged in fighting take much more resources than soldiers who are just sitting around. Ammunition, repairing equipment, replacing short-lived components and such things are far more expensive than soldiers' wages. I assume it was similar in times of yore, swords and armour also needed repair.

So if soldiers are not geared for battle, the resources they take are much smaller.

A particular problem with ch5 is XP farming. Once the enemy leaders are taken care of, you can pretty much hang out at the spawn points and pick off individual units forever.

Maybe resume the upkeep once the objective is complete?

Upkeep also provides an encouragement to utilize certain units, like undead (who also should have cheaper upkeep since they have more available food sources / less food need).

You need to keep buying the Black Essence that keeps them in your control.

Shoud VB/anger double the bonus from searing ice? It's only one more attack, in this case, but it makes a point. Perhaps multiply should come before add (though this may have side effects if applied in the general case with items that give like 30% -- they may never give any additional hits).

These two things are stackable because of the way how the game works. The bonuses from items, like The Searing Ice, apply to the unit's attacks. The weapon special modifies it on the fly if given conditions apply.

If you think The Searing Ice is too powerful, it's possible to make it weaker.

Add on the VM set and she can do some pretty serious damage.

Violent Mage's set is meant to give good melee bonuses to mages, without doing much to their magical abilities. It's coincidentally useful to Faerie Incarnation because she doesn't have much damage with magical attacks in the first place.

But Faerie Incarnation is overused for rather obvious reasons and is on my list of units that need to be made weaker.

[white-haired-uncle]

the human intelligence factor makes 2x att/def a huge bonus (e.g. we humans can pick which unit/attack it applies to and which unit(s) to use it against).

The AI can do that too.

The AI gets an anger special where we decide, if it gets one at all. The player can do things like craft Anger for a scythe to be used with whirlwind, and only for the unit that has the Blue orb and Warheart/guard. So while it seems like anger (on a player weapon) applies to AI and human equally since it doubles the AIs defensive attacks as well, I'm convinced the extra AI attacks don't come anywhere near offsetting the advantage to the human.

A more logical scheme would be that you get whatever gold the enemy has left when you defeat them, adjusted for the spoils of victory. And supporting your army should be a constant net drain so that's encouragement to finish early as well.

In a modern war, soldiers engaged in fighting take much more resources than soldiers who are just sitting around. Ammunition, repairing equipment, replacing short-lived components and such things are far more expensive than soldiers' wages. I assume it was similar in times of yore, swords and armour also needed repair.

So if soldiers are not geared for battle, the resources they take are much smaller.

Smaller, maybe, but positive. Wesnoth treats them as free, which is all kinds of wrong. [I also don't like things like if I choose not to recall my mounted units on a mountainous map they can't cross, somehow they're magically available when we get to the other side].

As far as real world, I suspect you're way off. Setting aside multimillion dollar cruise missles and the like and looking only at person weaponry and armor, I'm sure food/clothing/shelter costs are vastly higher per soldier than gear. And that should hold even if you only consider days in actual combat. It was almost certainly more so in the old days, when "ammunition" was far less expendable/expensive and troops were more expendable.

A particular problem with ch5 is XP farming. Once the enemy leaders are taken care of, you can pretty much hang out at the spawn points and pick off individual units forever.

Maybe resume the upkeep once the objective is complete?

I think that might be the answer right there. Do you happen to know where the DISABLE_UPKEEP changes get reverted?

If you think The Searing Ice is too powerful, it's possible to make it weaker.

It was just an example, the unit in question happened to be carrying it, but it is one of the more powerful weapons. I think it's a close second to Doombringer simply because of the varying damage types.

Add on the VM set and she can do some pretty serious damage.

Violent Mage's set is meant to give good melee bonuses to mages, without doing much to their magical abilities. It's coincidentally useful to Faerie Incarnation because she doesn't have much damage with magical attacks in the first place.

But Faerie Incarnation is overused for rather obvious reasons and is on my list of units that need to be made weaker.

I really only use Elder Mages (white become CMs), and they are already crazy powerful. Not having a powerful melee is almost necessary for them (and they do have a doom attack or something like that available).

And the +25% spell bonus with cloak and armor is certainly not chicken feed.

[white-haired-uncle]

Just figured out that Violent Mage works pretty well on a lich. Actually just crafting Anger for his touch attack works, but in my case the VB does about 50% more damage. This would be extremely cool if all my enemies weren't mechanical (undrainable).

I'm thinking the VM set, and then either Konrad's Might for marksman or Widowmaker for charge. I tried Anger + VB, but anger doesn't stack with itself. 50-60x12 with drains? Maybe Stormgrip for the lightning damage type.

If I create it from ToL, I should be able to pick up a spear (Corpsegrinder for evisceration of course) and a sword (something boring like Cuncators or Dominion for the resistances, murderlust is probably a waste, retribution would just be mean)

[Dugy]

The AI gets an anger special where we decide, if it gets one at all.

Aha, that is what you meant. I don't argue that.

What I meant is that AI can also choose which unit will it use anger against.

Wesnoth treats them as free, which is all kinds of wrong.

They are significantly cheaper than battle ready units. Or they are around on their own expense for the case you wanted to fight with them again.

Setting aside multimillion dollar cruise missles and the like and looking only at person weaponry and armor, I'm sure food/clothing/shelter costs are vastly higher per soldier than gear.

Rifles and body armour are cheap, but tanks, IFVs and artillery aren't. Military vehicles are not designed to be able to survive a lot of kilometres, because they take much more damage in combat. They're not like civilian cars that can travel 100 000s of km only with basic maintenance. And ammunition for machine guns and artillery costs a lot, because typical tactics expect using large amounts of ammunition. Dropping lots of bombs and shooting lots of bullets anywhere the where enemies could be is a good tactic to avoid losses. Waiting is so much cheaper.

It was almost certainly more so in the old days, when "ammunition" was far less expendable/expensive and troops were more expendable.

Ammunition was less plentiful, but armour also needed fixing after battles, swords rusted if not properly stored, shields were often designed for enemy weapons to get stuck in them and were not really reusable.

Troops were maybe even less expendable, because it took years to master archery (in fact, firearms were initially spread not because they were better than arrows, but because they took much less training), swords are also very counter-intuitive to use. There were times where armies didn't engage because it wasn't worth the damage, they chose instead to attack villages instead to prevent the enemy to keep the army funded (the strategy was called chávauchéé).

I think that might be the answer right there. Do you happen to know where the DISABLE_UPKEEP changes get reverted?

If I recall correctly, the events it places have ids and you can use those ids to remove those events.

It was just an example, the unit in question happened to be carrying it, but it is one of the more powerful weapons. I think it's a close second to Doombringer simply because of the varying damage types.

I think I underestimated how good it is. I wanted to make it rather good because I spent the effort to make all those pictures, but I overdid it.

Maybe I could remove the suck property or something.

Not having a powerful melee is almost necessary for them (and they do have a doom attack or something like that available).

I don't understand what do you mean by this.

And the +25% spell bonus with cloak and armor is certainly not chicken feed.

I forgot about that. I suppose I could remove some of it.

Just figured out that Violent Mage works pretty well on a lich.

This seems like something very exploitable. On the other hand, the Lich setup takes so much preparation that it almost looks well deserved.

[white-haired-uncle]

Not having a powerful melee is almost necessary for them (and they do have a doom attack or something like that available).

I don't understand what do you mean by this.

The Elder Mage is so powerful that I usually only bother creating one of them. Once reasonably well advanced (half a dozen or so AMLAs) and geared, the explosive fire kills everything in sight. Not having much of a melee attack (to use in defense) means you have to pay at least a little attention to putting them in danger. Here's an example. I got lucky with Fire Dragon legacy, then added Shako and most of the Unthought set, giving huge fire penetration and resistance (to nullify reflect). While the damage doesn't look all that impressive, for some reason his explosive fire breath (which I'm pretty sure is just an alternative to advancing his fire blast, I know my elder mages always have a great explosive fire attack) normally kills several units every time it's used.

I didn't think explosive was supposed to "travel" more than one tile until it became a lot more powerful than just 37 damage (even with the bump from penetration), but it seems to.

Just figured out that Violent Mage works pretty well on a lich.

This seems like something very exploitable. On the other hand, the Lich setup takes so much preparation that it almost looks well deserved.

You get one from Journey South (I think that's it). Aside from that I think it's ToL, which I've never really played with because I'd want to put so much thought into it. And I'm pretty sure I'd want to kill off a prophet (for the sword and spear) to get it, and while I'm a huge fan of the lich, losing a prophet is hard for me to do.

I think you could create an nearly invincible lich, and the VM set would be a key piece, but I don't really see a problem. As you say, it's well deserved, and rare, and if the player feels it makes the game too easy they could always just not do it, or kill it and try to make an even better one.

[Dugy]

Elder Mage might be one of the units whose numbers need to be reduced a little. He had to be strong because he's a level 5 unit after all, but it was a little overdone. But, on the other hand, he has a rather obvious flaw, the vulnerability in melee.

The cutoff for larger area of explosive damage is 24 if I understand the code correctly, not 37.

[white-haired-uncle]

I don't find the weakness in melee to be a flaw, or even a weakness really. A not so obvious "strength" of melee weakness is it allows taking items with huge melee damage specials without incurring much of a penalty. For example, if I knew that explosive hits contributed to wrath I would seriously consider giving him Soul Thrash.

I was thinking his doom attack was melee, but it's ranged, which is probably why I never use it. But if it was melee, I'd be more inclined to take it because then by using it with its pathetic damage I'm not giving up as much as I would be if my normal melee damage was much greater. And I say that knowing how completely illogical it is.

BTW, for Anger/Marrowrend, I was thinking lose the +30% attacks, and then make the other increase based on difficulty (+100/+75/+50%). That way you're not taking much away from easy (and not the part that would be really noticable), but they aren't such beasts on hard (but still definitely worth taking/crafting).

Or weaken one, probably Marrowrend, and make the other a rare item (which would both limit its availability and remove the ability to choose the sort via crafting).

[Dugy]

I think I could just give a reduction in number of attacks to both items, based on difficulty. Right now, it's 30% in all difficulties for Marrowrend, it could be just 30% on easy, -10% on normal, -30% on hard. And something similar to Anger.

[white-haired-uncle]

With 100 hits per attack, I probably should drop stormgrip. Hate to give up lightning damage, but 100 hits with suck! I have a warheart to use in its place, if I craft 3 warheart for another +3 (x5 x2) attacks... Too bad I only have on potion of speed.

And she doesn't even have the blue orb this time.

[Dugy]

So do we change Marrowrend's attack count from 30% to -30%?

[white-haired-uncle]

I would or maybe {30,0, -30}.

I was also wondering if potion of speed (for example) should stack on itself, or perhaps if you should be able to have more than one potion active at a time. But that might be sucking the fun out of it. Other than healing potions, and the potion of authority at a couple key points (beginning of Army is Born, end of Gates of Hell), I never really use potions except when I want to screw around doing something like mixing multiple speed potions with anger and WCT, or beating Akula/Uria in one turn.

[Dugy]

I would or maybe {30,0, -30}.

Done.

I was also wondering if potion of speed (for example) should stack on itself [...]

To be honest, I never thought much about the possibility to stack the same potion multiple times. They were meant to help you deal with scenarios that are more difficult than you can handle. But stacking the same potion several times can give a unit a single stat so powerful that it could do what wasn't expected at all, which is not exactly desired.

[white-haired-uncle]

Book of Fireballs. One of my favorites, as it gives a ranged attack to my scythemasters, destroyers, etc. That's pretty big thing IMO. Having the very first AMLA not only give a ranged attack, but incinerate? That's too much. Incinerate should come later, and perhaps be it's own very weak ranged attack so you have to choose between big damage and incinerate, and on defense you probably won't incinerate very often.

[Dugy]

Okay, I moved the incinerate into a bonus attack that is based on fireball but has -40% damage.

[nerffrog]

While I agree that items need rebalancing, I believe that most imbalance rather comes from stupidly strong units. To put things into perspective, I managed to beat part 2 of the campaign in an itemless run. Granted it was on easy mode, the fact that you can kill Lilith, or Abaddon, or Uria with just a duke, some faerie incarnations, some celestial messengers, and 2 snow hunters is ridiculous. Obviously their stats on their own are not what made it possible, but rather dragon legacies. It is not difficult at all to get a dragon legacy on something as easy to level up as a snow hunter, and pair it with a conviction (40) FI or conviction (33) CM. I was easily dealing 50-6 explosive damage with a single snow hunter, sometimes up to 71-6 (this much damage is dealt without items and after adjusting for enemy resistances). FI clearly needs a nerf to her conviction and possibly her health as well. Preventing resistance penetration from affecting all enemies was a step in the right direction, but I think penetration provided by dragon legacies should be reduced from 21% to 10-15%. There's absolutely no reason for a 21% penetration on an attack that deals 19-6 base damage. Also, it is possible to stack Legacy of Kings with abilities like Legacy of Kings (15) or whatever it was, as they're treated differently, might be worth checking that out. I know this thread is for discussing items, I just wanted to point out that defeating Uria itemless was possible, which says a lot about the state of units themselves.

[white-haired-uncle]

conviction (40) FI or conviction (33) CM. I was easily dealing 50-6 explosive damage with a single snow hunter, sometimes up to 71-6 (this much damage is dealt without items and after adjusting for enemy resistances). FI clearly needs a nerf to her conviction and possibly her health as well. Preventing resistance penetration from affecting all enemies was a step in the right direction, but I think penetration provided by dragon legacies should be reduced from 21% to 10-15%.

FWIW, conviction for a CM currently tops out at 20 (probably only in beta), and you now have to take a few other AMLAs before you can start down that path.

I raised the same case about FI the other day, in particular with the Violent Mage set (awesome healers shouldn't have great damage and high/cheap conviction, IMO).

[Dugy]

So not only Legacy of Light is OP, the dragon legacies could also be a little weakened.

Celestial Messenger and Faerie Incarnation are both on my list of units that need to be made weaker.

[white-haired-uncle]

Mystic Armor of the Untouchables. It's basically Godless, but with suck(1) and 15% defense. Even if the defense bonus will eventually be negated by every enemy having magical attacks, that's really powerful. There are other armors not nearly as powerful that have -2 or even -3MP. And based on the name, I wouldn't be surprised if it had antisocial or something similar.

[Dugy]

Yeah, definitely overpowered. I have given it the antisocial ability as you suggested.

[arobinson]

Even though it is fun, I find the potions are the most OP items. If you simply make sure to never level up on offense, potions become permanent. This means madman potion, speed potion, mundane potion, titanic strength, etc can be used throughout the entire game with one potion. For example, the unholy hunger potion (or whatever it's name is) has allowed my Efraim to have 1767 HP and growing.

[Dugy]

That is a bug. They were meant to be removed on levelup, even if it's during the enemy turn.

[white-haired-uncle]

That would be great for chapter 10. I always load the kids up with potions near the end of Gates of Hell. They lose their advances when you get to ch10, but the effects of potions remain. I wish I'd known not to level them up on offense, though it's difficult to get through those first few scenarios without doing so (I've actually toyed with the idea of a "smash all items in inventory" option so you could carry a ton of gems over to help gear your units in ch10).

And potions were a great exploit with doppelgangers, as the effects are cloned but not as potions so they don't go away on advancement. Of course, now they don't recall, it's just a clever trick.