Death Spell Changes (and Spellement Paths)

[Torpzun26]

Puts an infection on if target has a Heal Over Time

Clears shields from yourself to put blades on yourself

Clears 2 blades from an enemy for a Weakness and an Infection

Gives a drain buff if the target has a Heal Over Time. Can't tell what kind of buff it is; haven't tested it

Clears 2 Heal Over Times (even if they're protected?) from the target for Traps

Puts a Weakness on target if you have a blade

Swapped pip costs with the Oni, has more damage than Oni did

Swapped pip costs with the Jinn, has more damage than the Jinn did

More damage



Lore spells:

No longer has a DoT, but instead puts a small Weakness on all enemies

Infection changed from a Negative Ward to a Negative Charm to better suit Death's identity as a Negative Charm school, think some damage numbers were nerfed?

Tier 5 has a slightly worse damage range

Now a 5-pip spell that places school-specific Weaknesses on the enemy according to their school






There were also changes made to some of the Shadow Spells, I think, but my Death isn't high enough level to see these for himself. Someone else'll have to do that.

[WarWeaver]

I like that the pip cost isn't higher for rank 1-2 spell paths anymore. I really hated when they did that. As for these changes, well, Deer Knight and Skeletal Pirate are the only ones that I actually like. Man, I'm really going to miss the negative charm on enemy conditional from the previous Wraith if they go through with this change.

A spell like Lord of Night is still as meh as ever I see. Speaking of Lord, does Queen Calypso still have a higher heal debuff than it? It wouldn't make much sense if it did considering storm doesn't specialize in negative charms and is just borrowing that specialty from it's good neighbor death.

[bluedreamer]

Mwah haha I came to gloat, I warned you.

*LAUGHS OUT LOUD*

Deer Knight utterly wrecked.... Not just Lore spells, wow, just wow! (I have 2 Death wiz, I am every school)

Who warned you about this "update" and the so called geniuses running the game, ruining PVE. you may hate it but you should have listened. too late NOW.

[Lightdragon]

Deer Knight utterly wrecked.... Not just Lore spells, wow, just wow! (I have 2 Death wiz, I am every school)

2 less pips. and has steady based damage. it's workable.

Who warned you about this "update" and the so called geniuses running the game, ruining PVE. you may hate it but you should have listened. too late NOW.

[/QUOTE]

[bluedreamer]

2 less pips. and has steady based damage. it's workable.

Bro you understand a school pip is a power pip but now it has to be a "death school pip". there's no LESS pips but harder to get "school" pips.


Regardless Deer Knight is ruined. Sad.

[Torpzun26]

Mwah haha I came to gloat, I warned you.

*LAUGHS OUT LOUD*

Deer Knight utterly wrecked.... Not just Lore spells, wow, just wow! (I have 2 Death wiz, I am every school)

Who warned you about this "update" and the so called geniuses running the game, ruining PVE. you may hate it but you should have listened. too late NOW.

Deer Knight no longer wastes half of an entire enchant on the DoT, making it deal better burst damage and you don't need to worry about it wasting Feints. The initial hit having +150 damage from Epic is way better than that DoT.

[Ravino.]

Well, the lore audit managed to surpass my expectations in how bad it would be - the thought they might want to make the spells less useful, in addition to more restrictive, was decidedly not in my mind.

However, I'm more confused by the changes to the effects added by spellements... they had already changed all these effects before which makes this the third revision, individual tweaks notwithstanding. The devs are making it clear they don't know what to do with these spells so I'm curious as to how Ratbeard will try to frame these changes - it's hard to sound reasonable when delivering the errata of the errata and there's only so many times you can claim you're "bringing spells in line" through such drastic changes.

~R

[Happy Fun Ball]

2 less pips. and has steady based damage. it's workable.

It's 3 pips plus 1 death pip (equal to a power pip), so it's still a total of 5 pips.

Deer Knight no longer wastes half of an entire enchant on the DoT, making it deal better burst damage and you don't need to worry about it wasting Feints. The initial hit having +150 damage from Epic is way better than that DoT.

It doesn't waste half of the damage on the enchantment because only half of the damage is left. It does less damage than a fully upgraded top path ship of fools. The plague isn't bad though.

Now what really hurts is that khrulhu has been nerfed YET AGAIN. In the beginning, it did 1100 damage to everyone. Then it was 830 damage. Then it's 675 damage. And now it does 675 damage but returns only 40% health back instead of the usual 50%.

[icourt]

Well, the lore audit managed to surpass my expectations in how bad it would be - the thought they might want to make the spells less useful, in addition to more restrictive, was decidedly not in my mind.

However, I'm more confused by the changes to the effects added by spellements... they had already changed all these effects before which makes this the third revision, individual tweaks notwithstanding. The devs are making it clear they don't know what to do with these spells so I'm curious as to how Ratbeard will try to frame these changes - it's hard to sound reasonable when delivering the errata of the errata and there's only so many times you can claim you're "bringing spells in line" through such drastic changes.

~R

From what Artie has talked about, in the past there really hasn't been "rules" for what Spells should do. Most of the time, they just sort of calculated how much "value" a Spell has (via the Pip Cost), then added a secondary effect and made the rest Damage. It was pure randomness. So, in an attempt to create some more consistency in the game, the Design Team came up with "design rules".

Enter: Templates and the Roshambo!

These audits aim to follow a strict interpretation of the Roshambo graphic from Beastmoon (see above). According to the graphic, Death "soft counters" Storm (because the arrow goes near Storm, but not through it). So Deer Knight for example does the opposite of Blades, negative Charms, to counter.

It's the same idea with Lord of Night. Life is the healing school. Since Death "hard counters" Life (arrow through Life), Lord of the Night does the opposite of Healing, negative Charms that reduce Healing (not sure there's a word for that LOL) or "clears" Heals over Times. Or at least, these ideas are my interpretation of it. There's probably other people out there that understand this magic graphic a lot more than I do, haha.


Hope I could make sense of some of these changes. If you need more info, let me know. I'm happy to explain more.
Court
Wiki-Master

[Torpzun26]

It doesn't waste half of the damage on the enchantment because only half of the damage is left. It does less damage than a fully upgraded top path ship of fools. The plague isn't bad though.

Now what really hurts is that khrulhu has been nerfed YET AGAIN. In the beginning, it did 1100 damage to everyone. Then it was 830 damage. Then it's 675 damage. And now it does 675 damage but returns only 40% health back instead of the usual 50%.

It trades the DoT damage for being able to deal more damage on the turn it's cast. Currently, Deer Knight only does 450 damage if you're going second, or if you go first you also apply 140 DoT damage on that turn as well for a total of 590. With the base hit being able to receive the full enchantment from an Epic, it does 600 damage regardless of which side goes first (and is also slightly faster since you don't have to wait for the DoT damage).

As for Ship of Fools being better, it certainly is. I think that Deer Knight has the advantage of being easier to acquire, even if Ship of Fools has become much easier to get with the introduction of Drowned Dan. For Ship of Fools to take Deer Knight's spot, you need not only the 35 Spellements in order to unlock the spell but an additional 75 in order to change it into a damage-only AoE. Whereas Deer Knight is a damage AoE immediately.

From what Artie has talked about, in the past there really hasn't been "rules" for what Spells should do. Most of the time, they just sort of calculated how much "value" a Spell has (via the Pip Cost), then added a secondary effect and made the rest Damage. It was pure randomness. So, in an attempt to create some more consistency in the game, the Design Team came up with "design rules".

Enter: Templates and the Roshambo!

These audits aim to follow a strict interpretation of the Roshambo graphic from Beastmoon (see above). According to the graphic, Death "soft counters" Storm (because the arrow goes near Storm, but not through it). So Deer Knight for example does the opposite of Blades, negative Charms, to counter.

It's the same idea with Lord of Night. Life is the healing school. Since Death "hard counters" Life (arrow through Life), Lord of the Night does the opposite of Healing, negative Charms that reduce Healing (not sure there's a word for that LOL) or "clears" Heals over Times. Or at least, these ideas are my interpretation of it. There's probably other people out there that understand this magic graphic a lot more than I do, haha.


Hope I could make sense of some of these changes. If you need more info, let me know. I'm happy to explain more.
Court
Wiki-Master

To add on to this, each school's identity is built around three hanging effects, except for Balance which is a special case. Each school has their own primary hanging effect, which you can tell from the conditional on their PVP Scion. Then they also borrow the hanging effect from the school that soft-counters them, which is the conditional for their Oni spell. And finally they borrow the hanging effect from the school that they soft-counter, which is shown by the Jinn's conditional. Their "Jinn's X" spells which counter a certain effect and then give you that same effect.

So for Death, their identity is based off of Negative Charms (Death), Positive Wards (Ice), and Positive Charms (Storm). DoTs are no longer part of Death's identity since they're the primary part of Fire's identity. In fact, Fire and Death are on opposite sides of the Roshambo wheel.

In fact, because of this, I think that one particular thing that has been a core mechanic of Fire should be moved to Death, and that's negative accuracy charms. Stuff like Smokescreen or Black Mantle which are negative charms, and therefore should be part of Death's core identity. This would also help to mitigate one problem that Death constantly has, which is that they are often overprepared to counter healing to the point where they can barely do anything else. A ton of the Spellement paths available for these spells are anti-heal, when healing is a rare occurrence at best (and nonexistent at worst). Death has so many different options for countering heals that they scarcely have anything else going on for them.