Yeah, I would like them to be winnable, but if you are an expert player with a full set of cards, and perhaps a few upgraded cards as well (coming soon!)
Iāve been playing on Hard as the default for a while now. These new changes are going to force me to go to normal.
ā¦and thats not a bad thing. Hard should be hard. Nightmare should be just this side of unwinnable.
Thatās a good point. I guess they are maybe different enough, and I guess JK is specifically heroes and MoC is all units.
But side by side MoC seems like it will have a way bigger impact on gameplay. Jester king is just (maybe) a big scary dude, which is fine, but doesnāt require and special strategy to deal with.
Bouncing units back to your hand sounds like a unique and terrifying ability. Iām curious of bouncing all heroes would be too powerful, but Iām sure something along those lines would be awesome.
Maybe it would also double their cost for redeployment, otherwise people might use the ability to their advantage to sort of Marsh Prince their units around the mapā¦
Maybe it just bounces 1 hero every 12-24 hours in 3 leagues?
Weāve been discussing an idea for the Jester King that will make the surrounding zombies behave less predictably, with a Puppet Master kind of feel ā¦
Every X hours, the Jester King will randomly choose one of the following orders for all Immortals within Y leagues to follow for Z hours:
- Move towards the Jester King
- Flee from the Jester King
- Split into 2 armies and move in a random direction
- Move faster
What do you think?
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Seems like it could generate a lot of situations that were good for the player. Especially if it went from options 1 to option 2 you might just end up having zombies walking back and forth and kind of stalled for a while.
Maybe itās just me, but especially with exponential combat, splitting into two armies rarely seems like an advantage to the immortals. It makes them more vulnerable from what Iāve noticed.
I like the idea of random abilities but I think they should all be buffs. Something like:
Every X hours, the Jester King will activate one of the following:
- All Immortals gain a bonus of y strength for x hours
- A mortal hero within z leagues is returned to itās owners hand
- All immortals move faster for x hours
- The Jester king gains 100 str
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Iād really like to test this out ā I think it plays to the character type nicely and could create some real problems (āfunā problems")
On the face of it, though, I like the idea.
Overall I like all the boss changes I have played with. The one exception is the Dread Kniggt and I am wondering what other people think. I like the concept that he and his guys canāt be pinned. But especially with the three hour cool down my concern is that he draws zombies away all the time in small groups so a lot of the the time he is actually not scary at all because you can follow the settlements he has blighted and burn the bodies with minimal resistance (because the undead are busy following the Boss but never catching him) and it creates a huge number of small zombie groups that you can pick off or use area of effect powers on. Maybe he has more force, canāt be pinned himself, and draws all nearby zombies to a common location when he spawns but then just goes and canāt be pinned. What do other people think?
Agree.
If youāve got a few dark forest witches, a Dread Knight is great.
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I think this is the real problem. lots of small groups of zombies are almost always good for the player because theyāre super vulnerable to ranged attacks, and can easily be killed by larger units who can gain TONS of combat bonuses by cleaning them up.
Maybe he only draws units over x STR? That way he wouldnāt pull 1 or two bodies from a freshly blighted town?
Maybe he doesnāt even pull troops so much as dispelling all compulsion effects every 3 hours to all units within rangeā¦
Yes. The zombies are dumb so they always go where the Dread Knight is versus where he is going to be, which considering that only goblins and elves are faster than him mostly means they end up following him instead of ever āassembling the hordeā. I like your idea about just preventing compulsion for units in three leagues. What if he did that, had more force himself, and maybe also buffed the zombies in three leagues (like Mighty General but with a range effect). I think that would be pretty scary. Lots of big stacks that you have to engage directly.
You know what would be a challenge? What if one of the bosses made zombies that are within one league explode after melee (like a mini version of the blighted dragon)?
This exactly. This was the first new Dread Knight I encountered, and while it was reasonably strong up-front, I was later able to send a couple armies through his ātailā and collect 10-15 combat experience on each of them. If Iād had a DFW, obviously I would have been in Mana Heaven.
I love what he does in concept; itās just the presumably unintended side effect of creating a swarm of easily-dispatched followers thatās problematic. I spent a few minutes coming up with a couple tweaks that might improve the behavior:
- Only pull units with at least 300-500 base Strength. [This feels more like a stopgap than a real fix; in my mind it just reduces the severity of the problem without really addressing it.]
- Donāt pull units standing on Graveyards. [This one would actually work, but it reduces his initial effectiveness for sure.]
- In addition to the current ability, any zombies within 1 League are teleported into the Dread Knightās army. [This doesnāt fix the long tail problem, but it does make the DN himself a lot more threatening. Rather than killing a modest boss stack followed by a long train of nothing units, players would have to kill a much more threatening boss stack, and the ātailā starts far enough back that they might have time to gather into legitimate armies before the players get to them.]
- In addition to the current ability, affected Immortals over halfway to their next waypoint teleport to their next vertex. [This is a somewhat crazier version of the one above, basically giving his train a mechanic for combining into fewer, stronger armies, as well as potentially allowing slower Immortals to catch up with the main group. This is my personal favorite.]
- In addition to his current ability, affected Immortals have their speed increased depending on how far away they are, with further units getting a larger speed boost. [Again, a way to help his followers group up with him and with each other].
That would be pretty cool. Like a blighted fire elemental or something.
I agree he sux right now, and I think we need to take a step back rethink him entirely.
@DrBwaa I like your idea of a teleport to him, and sure it makes him strong, but at the expense of the surrounding area.
He is a General right, he commands armies, what about if he made the zombies nearby smarter or more aggressive.
Zombies with his buff dont just move mindlessly to the nearest settlement, what about they charge at your armies if they are stronger and retreat if they are weaker. Perhaps they could just attack no matter how strong they are.
Would that make him scarier to face?
Teleport nearby units to him when he spawns. Increases the force of everyone in his army. He and his army are immune to move compulsions. Huge unit who canāt be pushed around coming at you.
Oh yeah, I do like the immunity to move compulsions but I think I want to do it properly rather than simply getting him to redo his every 3 hours. Needs to be a special trait like Elusive or the new Lurker
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āUnstoppableā
Juggernaut.
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