Auras/Bonuses (Creature Boost, Skill Drain, Vitality Drain, Freeze & Antifreeze) & Tokens: Availability, Order & Opportunity Value

[Burns]

 

Yes that's what I understand so far, yet this is only case for defender, attacker can still get frozen.

 

That's not how i read that, as it would only turn attackers advantage into defenders advantage on the freeze front. When he said 'all freeze' and 'all antifreeze' i read it as all freeze of both parties apply before all anti-freezes, and anti-freeze still works even when frozen.

 

As for wasted space, 2 hollows and 3 angiens makes 3 unfrezeeable angiens, and that's a certain goodbye to whatever you wanted to add to our little skirmish. And then another hollow, just to humiliate your corpses.

 

Even a system that heavily favors the attacker is a lot better than disabled freeze.

[Ary Endleg]

Oh you were talking about his idea, rather than the current situation? Sorry I misunderstood it at first.

[Rophs]

The 2 hollows and 3 angiens ritual would be quite powerful in the system I described, and with my limited general knowledge of how angiens work etc I'm not sure what the potential counter to this is if such a counter exists. Is there a counter?

 

Does anybody have any potential revisions to the system I described to prevent 2 hollows and 3 angiens from being overpowered?

 

Also... that system needs a name

Freeze

Related

Auras

Simultaneously

Cancelling

 

FRAC :D

Edited September 18, 2014 by Rophs

[Ary Endleg]

Still stats would prevail in such situation that Burns describes, only difference is that you could then steamroll with angiens too rather than just drachs.

[Ackshan Bemunah]

[SIGSEGV]

Edited November 12, 2014 by Ackshan Bemunah

[Azthor]

@DarkDemon: I suspected that to be the case, from my own experience with other auras and Frozen creatures. While I will wait for another confirming test before updating the first post, we should, by now, mostly work on the assumption that Frozen creatures cannot proc Antifreeze.

 

Of course, if that is true, and given the current order for the tokens, the attacker can potentially freeze every single creature of the opponent's with no resistance at all; note, however, that, all things considered, all of six creatures being Frozen is overwhelmingly unlikely, and hence the defender is still the primary beneficiary, despite the possibility of a hopeless defeat.

Edited September 18, 2014 by Azthor

[DARK DEMON]

@DarkDemon: I suspected that to be the case, from my own experience with other auras and Frozen creatures. While I will wait for another confirming test before updating the first post, we should, by now, mostly work on the assumption that Frozen creatures cannot proc Antifreeze.

 

Of course, if that is true, and given the current order for the tokens, the attacker can potentially freeze every single creature of the opponent's with no resistance at all; note, however, that, all things considered, all of six creatures being Frozen is overwhelmingly unlikely, and hence the defender is still the primary beneficiary, despite the possibility of a hopeless defeat.

 

This will be tested today.

 

And yes you are right, the defender can have all his creatures frozen with no chance of antifreeze except tokens. The chances are not "thaaat" small if you have 2 double-freeze creatures and 4 single freeze.

Edited September 19, 2014 by DARK DEMON

[Ackshan Bemunah]

[SIGSEGV]

Edited November 12, 2014 by Ackshan Bemunah

[Ary Endleg]

Oh my how I hate this freeze mechanics, so much weirdness. Here are preliminary news.

 

According to performed tests, indeed it's true that frozen creature won't use it's auras. This means attacker has advantage since his auras go first. Antifreeze advantages of defender are thus questionable. In test reindrach froze the one of 6 priests in defense. Only 5 priest auras were applied. This does not fare well for antifreezes. It could still be possible that antifreezes could act as exception to the frozen aura rule, so we will test that just in case. So far things point out that I'll be agreeing with No one that freeze mechanics suck!

 

New question, can freeze be applied to already frozen creature like it can be applied on empty slot? Basically doing a "miss"?

Edited September 19, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[DARK DEMON]

New question, can freeze be applied to already frozen creature like it can be applied on empty slot? Basically doing a "miss"?

 

YES. Any freeze can land on any slot regardless of all other factors. This is why I was ranting earlier.

 

It makes combat based more and more on luck and not on skill. In other words, you can attack a person with the same ritual 4 times but it will fail, but the 5th time with the same def it may succeed because of freeze landing on the right areas and not repeating/missing.

 

This ruins all the "skill" part of it. That's what I've noticed this BHC, really.

Edited September 19, 2014 by DARK DEMON

[Ary Endleg]

Yeah combat is currently, lucky vs stats.

 

Lets finish testing first :p

[Ary Endleg]

Indeed, freeze can hit creature that is already frozen. Also frozen creature's antifreeze aura won't proc.

 

To answer Ackshan, it's hard to do such test and to prove it, chances of doublefreeze hitting same slot both times is very small, hard to test. How many times you would have to test it in order to confirm that it never hits same slot twice?

Furthermore since vampiric aura and antifreeze aura of frozen creature failed to work, it's safe to say all auras would fail to proc, including freeze aura of frozen creature. There are no indications that any aura would be exception to this rule.

 

In ideal scenario one can field 8 freezes, which (can) come together with 9 antifreezes, this is freeze maxed ritual. Antifreeze maxed ritual brings in 15 antifreezes and 3 freezes.

 

Since attacker can't unfreeze his creatures, he has no business in stackin antifreezes. Defender's choice is debatable. It's hard to say if it's better for him to have more freezes or antifreezes. If he has more freezes he will have greater chance to  disable (some of) attacker's creatures, yet still having possibility of antifreeze. While with antifreezes, he would have less chances of disabling attacker's creature's thus attacker would be safer that way. With really good chances to unfreeze your his own creatures, defender doesn't necessarily benefit much, it depends on luck and how much stronger attacker is. It all depends on luck, what will attacker manage to freeze, it's totally unpredictable outcome to both sides. I'm not sure if this unpredictability is good or bad, but doesn't really fall into MD spirit of combat I think, where if you know how things work you are (should be) able to foresee the outcome. But how it works currently, freezes really affect the combat by even further removing tactics from it. Getting lucky with freezes is the most powerful thing in game and highly favors attacker. That is because you can in extreme circumstance freeze all 6 creatures of enemy thus fighting doesn't even happen.

 

Another phenomena that should be noted, just like order of tokens then auras, where attacker's go first. Creats also seem to have order. If lets say one of defender's creature's avoids freeze and has antifreeze which manages to unfreeze one of other creatures. Of this newly unfrozen creature has auras, they might or might not work depending on order (or so I speculate). If unfrozen creature unfreezes creature that is ("should be", frozen creatures auras aren't displayed in logs) listed before the one that unfroze it, his aura's won't apply, if it was listed, later it probably would work. This needs to get tested, but ultimately changes very little regardless of outcome.

 

One more thing to note here. That this affects a lot when it comes to skillvampire auras of SW. You need all 3 of them to gain the needed edge over stronger enemy. Basically if you can't field all 3 then they are pointless. If one of them gets frozen, same story. Your skillvampire tactic just became totally useless, it can't really be used against drachs, unless you get to add 5 freezes in such ritual and get very lucky.

 

So this all started out by thinking how antifreezes were OP, now it turns out freezes are OP. I don't have any possible solutions to suggest at this moment.

[DARK DEMON]

Freezes are not OP. They can get extremely unlucky and annoying if many of 'em hit the same creatures. Its a do or die situation, really. If your freeze hits correctly, the defender can't do anything back. If your freeze does not hit correctly, the defender will freeze your crits and you can't do anything during the attack.

 

The problem in my opinion is the fact that freeze completely neglects skill and is only based on luck. You can see this when the SAME rituals of attacker and defender show different outcomes due to different freeze hits. We should look for a solution for that, rather than trying to nerf freeze or antifreeze.

Edited September 19, 2014 by DARK DEMON

[Ary Endleg]

Okay I worded it badly, they are potentially the most OP. Sounds better? Afterall they can freeze all 6 creatures with no remedy to it if it happens. This is equally extreme situation to all of them hitting same creature. Freezes are prioritized since they can give the the biggest and hardest to counter edge. But yes it's all luck.

[DARK DEMON]

Oh, and double freeze can indeed hit the same slot twice, I've seen it happen, though obviously not much...

Oh look, it just happened TWICE now, in a row:

 

http://storenow.net/my/?f=fe33ecf12880c8146031934f39963193

http://storenow.net/my/?f=54e16bf565ee7c8ebaa2b513a62ed5ed

[Ary Endleg]

That's too high of coincidence. Does it maybe always hit same slot, making it bugged?

[powle]

what if the amount of freezes and antifreezes would be lowerd? to something like 3 freezes and 4-5 antifreezes (or whatever numbers are found to be appropriate) having 8 freezes (or 15 antifreezes) in a ritual seems kinda absurd to me since you can only have 6 creatures in a ritual. with a limit like that freeze and antifreeze would still be very random, but you eliminate that option to completly freeze an oponent.

[DARK DEMON]

That's too high of coincidence. Does it maybe always hit same slot, making it bugged?

 
No, lol :))

what if the amount of freezes and antifreezes would be lowerd? to something like 3 freezes and 4-5 antifreezes (or whatever numbers are found to be appropriate) having 8 freezes (or 15 antifreezes) in a ritual seems kinda absurd to me since you can only have 6 creatures in a ritual. with a limit like that freeze and antifreeze would still be very random, but you eliminate that option to completly freeze an oponent.

This is interesting Edited September 19, 2014 by DARK DEMON

[Ary Endleg]

what if the amount of freezes and antifreezes would be lowerd? to something like 3 freezes and 4-5 antifreezes (or whatever numbers are found to be appropriate) having 8 freezes (or 15 antifreezes) in a ritual seems kinda absurd to me since you can only have 6 creatures in a ritual. with a limit like that freeze and antifreeze would still be very random, but you eliminate that option to completly freeze an oponent.

 

That practically translates into remove freeze aura from drachs :))

 

Since Bird is pretty much all about single freeze coupled with some boosting and Snowman is all about doublefreeze, the only one to go lose it is drach :P yet it would only lower amount of freezes from 8 to 7. However, snowman and bird have no antifreeze and they also are unable to do damage, meaning if 6th creature in such ritual gets frozen it ends up as lost fight. But I doubt people would go maximazing freezes inside ritual if it means lowering the amount of drachs, so this might work.

 

Any other ideas how to lower amount of freezes or how to rework this?

Edited September 19, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[powle]

i wouldn't remove freezes or antifreezes from any creature just make a limit above which aditional freeze/antifreeze auras wouldn't apply. this would allow you to still use any of the creatures with such auras in rituals that are not based solely on freeze/antifreeze, but prevent one from making a max freeze ritual that is purely luck dependant.

[Rophs]

There is a new version of Freeze and Antifreeze and some other auras floating around in my head that the reworked Drachs in one of my other recent posts would use so that a Drach is weak on its own but has considerable synergy with other Drachs. I'll post some incomplete ideas here:

 

• A freeze aura that changes targets depending on how many other creatures from the same family are used in the ritual.
• An antifreeze aura that changes targets depending on how many other creatures from the same family are used in the ritual.
• A creatureboost aura that changes in power depending on how many other creatures from the same family are used in the ritual.
• An attackboost aura that changes in power depending on how many other creatures from the same family are used in the ritual.

So.. almost a ripoff of the Sliver creatures from MtG... :P

[Azthor]

I'd like to bring another two aspects into consideration, pertaining directly to the topic at hand. Again, I'd like to refrain from discussing more extensive redesigning until further discussion has taken place:

 

I - If creatures that were unfrozen by the defender can still miss their turn as a consequence thereof, the application of their own auras included, then we are dealing with a notably less pro-defender scenario; if anything, that all but guarantees any complex strategy involving the initiative order is null from the defender's perspective. Can anyone confirm whether or not that is the case?

 

II - How well could Skill Drain  and Vitality Drain be said to function, as is, under their intended purpose? That is to say, how much of a difference are they able to make against a more powerful player under the present system?

Edited September 23, 2014 by Azthor

[DARK DEMON]

II - How well could Skill Drain  and Vitality Drain be said to function, as is, under their intended purpose? That is to say, what is their ultimate opportunity value, against a more powerful player, under the present system?

 

I don't understand what exactly you are implying here, but I think you are asking how strong they are against a powerful player? Well, the only way I or anyone with similar weak stats can beat Eon-like players is with skill drain, maybe vitality drain, and of course freeze.

 

But skill drain plays a -huge- part in balancing strong fighters and the weak. (<--- if this is the intended purpose, then it is indeed fulfilling the purpose :) )

Edited September 23, 2014 by DARK DEMON

[Azthor]

I suppose how useful Vitality Drain is in such a scenario depends on the difference between the total amount of VE in the fight and the amount of damage being thrown around. For one, if the first one to attack ends the fight, Vitality Drain was entirely useless, other than whatever VE it may have sapped from the opponent if they didn't use a 0% slider. If, on the other hand, not enough damage was thrown around to wipe out either side, Vitality Drain might win the fight. Not that such is necessarily useful.

 

The aura is circumstantially more interesting against Energy Burn, I'd imagine.

 

As for Skill Drain, that is as expected; I haven't been able to test, personally, whether the percentage shifts according to some criteria, but, if I had to go with some parameter of usefulness, it'd be that it must be able to shift over more than 50% of the initiative and damage over. If it can do so, then it truly offers a counter to certain build ups based around superior stats; without being absolute, as the opponent is left three slots to wield before the initiative rolls, potentially freezing the source of the aura.

[Ary Endleg]

 if anything, that all but guarantees any complex strategy involving the initiative order is null from the defender's perspective. Can anyone confirm whether or not that is the case?

 

Rephrase?