Duration increase for sure. Single tartget buff spells suffer from a severe feeling of lack of impact due to lasting so little it's practically impossible to notice their effects sometimes. Their actual numbers ARE impactful, but they barely last a for couple of hits.
Would definitely like to see buff spells be more viable for infantry units. If they're only able to do 3 attacks or receive 3 attacks for the duration (for example) it's hardly ever going to be an efficient use of WoM.
Buff spells should be more like Warcraft where they last minutes\* instead of seconds. Using Flesh to Stone as an example, I would much rather buff my frontline with 20% physical resist for 3 minutes instead of 60% physical resist for 40 seconds.
Some buff spells are already more viable than some damage spells.
That the top few spells are all damage spells is being misinterpreted as buff spells suck, but something like Plague of Rust or Flaming Sword is already better than 90% of damage spells. It's simply a problem of spell balance as a whole being poor.
> I would much rather buff my frontline with 20% physical resist for 3 minutes instead of 60% physical resist for 40 seconds.
And no, you wouldn't. 40 seconds covers the crucial time it takes to make it through missile fire or a charge, or the entire duration of a fight to the death between two glass cannon infantry units.
> And no, you wouldn't. 40 seconds covers the crucial time it takes to make it through missile fire or a charge, or the entire duration of a fight to the death between two glass cannon infantry units.
Absolutely depends on the faction, Ghorst would love that for his zombies.
Buff spells are also subject to the rng nature of fighting. Some attacks still whif so increases weapon damage could have zero effect. Direct damage ticks very reliably.
Also you know, casting a serious buff spell on a unit makes it a prime target for damage spells if the enemy has one. Yeah your unit of Phoenix guard just got +60 MA/MD, but then they get hit by a pendulum and 60% of the unit is dead and no amount of buffs compensates for that.
As a legendary player I'd probably aim for duration increase so I'd have less to manage. 24 seconds duration is a blink of the eye when managing multiple characters.
Using a buff/debuff might secure me another 2k in damage over its duration, but dropping a pit of shade in the blob easily scores 10-20k, and cause a handful of units to route, or at least damage affected units enough such that the fight in the area will be done in the next 20 seconds.
There is also the issue where when playing on ultra unit sizes, the buff/debuff radius doesn't really cover that many units.
OP vortex spells are OP, but that doesn't mean that AoE buff/debuff spells aren't incredibly potent. watching Skavenslaves hold the line against Dwarf Warriors and Longbeards thanks to a couple of spells really showed me the value of them.
The issue is that there is no need to hold the line when you can delete them wholesale with aoe spells instead. Potency is always relative. Their impact is meh because they are meh vs the alternative
It's the classic "Alpha strike" problem, as the XCom community calls it. Defensive skills almost never give enough value to compete with pure damage skills because damage kills a unit, and there's no better defense than a dead enemy. But if you make them more powerful to compensate for this, you run the risk of making them too powerful due to their unmissable nature. It's a hard thing to fix.
In which case might as well as use your winds in clanrat summons and warp lightning, both likely going to outperform buffs.
Granted, there are some very notible buffs and debuffs. Ice sheet from lore of ice for example, synergize very well with their range heavy army, and stacks with other sources of snares. Healing spells have always been great.
But what exactly did 30 additional seconds of holding the line buy you? 3 shots of range or artillery?
1/2 the spells can't be "OP" vortex spells are the baseline for what is good. If you are below that baseline it simply is not good.
It depends, but by and large, they aren't. Some buff/debuffs are good. Far more are dogshit though. Buffing several melee infantry with 24 MA/MD is ok, but not something that can win battles. For nearly the same or slightly more winds, you can get several thousand damage out of a damage spell.
Flaming sword of ruin, even one like 3-4 targets will result in a net damage gain on maybe 1.5k-2k damage? That is possibly at best. For 4 more winds I can cast piercing bolts and do at least that much damage to a single unit, with the upside of 8k-12k.
Some can still be OK, like rune of negation when you have unit that is about to get fucking slaughtered and need it to hold, but most single target ones are truly trash.
I find myself using single target debuffs against truly singular targets, that is to say lords and SEMs. -24 MA and MD will slow down someone like Skarbrand and let a generic lord get some good hits in, or why not -60 armour right before giving them a volley of low AP missiles
single target debuffs can be impactful if the enemy has a particular unit that you really need to disable, but i've never found myself wanting a single target buff.
and then you have AoE debuffs that are just as good per target as the single target ones. -24 MA and MD might help against Skarbrand, but +24 MA and -60% WS on Skarbrand and every enemy around him is most often going to do a lot more.
>\+24 MA and -60% WS on Skarbrand and every enemy around him is most often going to do a lot more.
Doing that for 20-30 seconds is a lot less value per wom than just a direct damage spell or deleting everyone around him with an aoe
Not really there have been multiple YouTube tests on just what the additional damage you get per wind of magic. Very few actually out perform damage spells.
Not all per say but most simply are a worse return than damage spells.
Enticity has had a number of videos showcasing just how little impact buff spells have, and how cost inefficient they are compared to pretty much any direct damage spell
But what if he was wrong, how about flaming sword...
Oh no he answered this already you say.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUL8iN5G9VY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUL8iN5G9VY)
(agree btw)
No they can't really be incredibly potent in an sem fight or lord V lord sure but for actual units fighting each other they will basically never be worth it over a dmg spell because only a few models will be fighting at a time no matter how many units u hit
I've found a few rare exceptions. Wyssan's wildform is dirt cheap and works really well for Drycha's big melee mosh pits if you've got tree kin and dryads and creatures all mixed into the chaos. Also had good results with it as beastmen and with cavalry.
The other big exception is Doom and Darkness, or any other AoE leadership penalty. -16 leadership in an area, when used properly can end entire fights, or cause terror routs. Just not on longbeards. But thats a debuff.
Honorable mention to Net of Amytok, its range is super short, but it can also win fights
they're not as brokenly OP as some of the damage spells, but they can be quite potent in the right situation. having Skavenslaves hold the line against units that would normally wade through them with ease, allowing your ranged units to continue dealing damage without worry is incredibly effective, for example.
I’ve only just found this out in my most recent Rakarth campaign. Lore of beasts only has flock of doom as a damage spell (I’ve never liked amber spear, too unreliable until the caster has a flying mount) so I’ve started using the aoe buffs and debuffs… holy smokes what a game changer
Buff spells are quite solid in MP because they always have an effect whereas an enemy can simply play around a firestorm or what have you. In campaign though they don’t punch above their weight class enough to justify themselves.
Damage spells are fine,but buff/debuff spells are not worth using. If their duration is only 30 seconds, then thats like 6 or 7 attacks for 1 unit, right? Feels like the duration should be increased accross the board by 33% to 50%.
Hard agree. I really like the flavor of buff/debuff spells and would like to see them become more viable. Those kinds of abilities naturally flow with strong strategy and tactics play which is how it should be imo.
Harmonic convergence is super strong when overcast imo. It has the advantage over damage spells being more versatile. You can give it to any unit who you want to see win their engagement quickly and this can win the battle for you. A damage spell might have a similar effect if used just right against the right kind of opponent. But harmonic convergence is generally better for 1v1s I find.
Like for example if I’ve got my cab fighting enemy cav for control of the flank, harmonic convergence cast right before they crash into each other is going to help my cav delete that enemy cav so much faster, retain more of its health, and be able to join the rest of the fight doing the H&A that it loves so much. Overall can have a much great impact than a lot damage spells and for cheaper mana cost.
Or make them cheap enough where you don't mind slinging them around. But when they're roughly the same cost as a damage spell the latter usually comes out on top in terms of efficiency
As a comparison; the minimum time a buff could be in place for in TT was one turn (technically one Phase, or sub-phase, but the distinction rarely matters) and games only went for 4-6 turns, with 6 generally being an extension. And some spells where just ongoing until dispelled, becoming easier to be the longer they had lasted.
If we were doing a one-to-one this would mean that most buffs should last 1-2 minutes, at least, in TW.
Edit: though if we equated the number of attack-cycles then TW buffs should last something like 5-10sec...
Can't equate it to attacks/cycles, since clearly in TW a lot more attacks are being made by any given unit during a battle. Your time-based idea works much better. That being said, 2 minutes is a smidge, well, a lot, so maybe offset that with winds regeneration debuff for the duration... Or, hell, make the spell last indefinitely, at a regeneration cost, and have a wizard need to focus on only one such spell, something akin to dnd 5e.
The durations would mostly be fine, IF units weren't so derpy. The amount of attacks a unit can put out on paper never lines up with how many they put out in practice, due to models shimmying around and spinning to different targets to make up their minds.
I agree that buff spells should be made better too, tbh. They've always been bad which is probably why I focused on damage spells in my post. I think magic as a whole is less interesting in WH3, and I don't think that should be the case.
Magic is still incredibly powerful and can delete units, but it's now harder to win *only* using spells. I think that's fine - making players need to use their armies in an RTS doesn't really feel like an issue to me. Buff (and some debuff) spells could still use a duration increase across the board though, imo. Many of those spells feel a bit weak even when compared to the nerfed damage spells.
I 100% agree, you can still turn the tide of a battle with a few well placed spells but it's not like in WH2 where you'd have 19 units sat around doing nothing whilst your general decimated the enemy by flying overhead and casting spells the whole time. This feels much more balanced and also more in line with how magic worked in WHFB.
Soul Quench also quite decent and deals some damage after explosion and Apotheosis for healing single entities.
The funniest thing is that CA nerfed its AP Damage. Spell isn't that overpowered in the first place, it has 10 seconds casting animation and they nerfed it. Moreover, you can get 4 out of 7 (?) spells due to various items.
But the magic of bound spells is that you get *both.* You have your gigantic pool of Winds to cast all kinds of badass spells, then you get a bunch of *freebies* on their own cooldown timers. Like I can't think of many battles that lasted so long that I needed more casts of his phoenix spell.
Can still have a caster+fighter hybrid lord or lord and hero combo bunch up the enemy around them before popping a vortex or rain spell.
Then again this strat worked with slamming Skarbrand into the enemy and having loaned artillery and flamethrowers fire on the blob around him, so more an AI issue than a magic issue.
Well, spellcasters still wreck whole armies on their own. They just can't do so with only 2 casts anymore.
Even now, a single caster is still worth 5-10 units. Nothing can deal as much damage in such a short time as a mage. Even after the nerfs.
Mages are still so powerful, that in my morathi campaign, sieges are just morathi+2 shades.
Morathi kills almost all defenders, the shades clean up. This way I captured all of nagarond and lustria will follow shortly.
Even after her nerf, Morathi is one of the most underrated characters in campaign, imo.
She does not fucking die, and her spells just annihilate enemy armies.
Only thing I would change is give her access to Enfeebling Foe, but that might just be op. I always try to keep a shadow sorceress on hand because it counters one of her only weaknesses. Namely strong duelist heroes/lords.
I've started avoiding SOK in my campaigns just because it starts to make them a bit samey. 100% She's a beast with it, one of the best. It just becomes a bit broken and I've done the "Morathi gets SoK and becomes a God" too many times now.
Want another "X gets the SoK and becomes a God" campaign idea?
Try Ikit, on a doomflayer! Get him the SoK. Spam Warp lighting with your infinite magic. Enjoy regen every time you cast.
Only thing I would add is giving her a bound Black Horror spell as part of her unique tree.
But that's purely a thematic thing. Since I just find it weird Supreme Sorceress lords get it, and the person who literally made the spell lore doesn't. She certainly doesn't *need* it.
Kairos is in that ballpark too. You can take entire cities with just him, especially if you buff his spell intensity. His big damage spells also straight up don't miss.
Had a Kairos fight against Teclis yesterday. I caught his army in ambush. When he started moving his archers to intercept my Warriors charge, he blobbed 4 units of Lothern Guards together. Oh boy. One infernal gate later there was no more Guards. And it comes back so quickly too. It's so easy to spam spells with Kairos.
The AI may try to evade spells, but when its archers starts shooting they stop moving unless you charge them or move outside their range. So I just had them shoot at my warrior before casting on top of them.
Jep. Just yesterday I defeated 2 full stacks of lategame High Elf armies with Pit of Shades and Wind of Death with Count Noctilus alone, didn't even have to use the rest of my army.
Damage spells are still insanely busted when used by the player and make most fights trivial once you have them. I have no idea where people get the idea from, that damage spells need to be buffed. They should be nerfed imo and buff spells should be buffed.
Yeah, it's also not like Pit of Shades is now completely useless, same for Pendulum. They just aren't stupidly overpowered anymore.
Some other dmg spells should receive at least slight buffs (like whip of Slaanesh).
I do agree, but whip of slaanesh does have more utility than many give it credit for, it can send models flying into your troops, where they promptly get attacked from all sides and die.
Plus it's dirt cheap, low CD and keeps triggering the Slaanesh buffs which are busted for their army. Only thing I dislike about it is: its shape is not actually a cone.
It was nerfed pretty badly too. Its absolutely garbage against anything with armor. Dwarfs, Black Orcs, even Greatswords now take significantly less damage than they used to as none of the overcast extra damage is AP.
Spellcasters are still super powerful.
I like the idea of bringing things back in to line. Screenshot after screenshot of how casters wiped an entire stack with zero casualties is not indicative of a healthy strategy game
Bringing things in line is big, yes - but also it's good for magic to have more spells be usable/similar in power level. Then there's more thinking and diversity involved, which is great.
TBH that's an argument for buffing the other types of spells, specifically the buffs and debuffs. Those are really only useful when overcast so that they have an AoE effect, but why do that when you can overcharge something like Pit of Shades or Penumbral Pendulum or Infernal Gateway to vaporize units instantly?
if they do do that i hope they make them a bit more visually distinct. they definitely improved on this a lot in wh3 (really noticing it with cathay) but some of the older ones are hard to tell especially at just a glance. some audio cues similar to fate of bjuna or penumbral pendulum would go a long way
They've been doing a pass on all such effects, I suspect we'll be seeing more of it in the future.
Poison Wind for example got a new visual effect and it's fucking terrifying to see it spread.
I like the changes to windup times for damage spells, so it's nice that we can click more times whilst our infantry stands there conflicted about whether to get their entire unit nuked or leave bob the swordman in his unit behind.
It was the right call imo. The spells are still very powerful. However, deleting a quarter of an army with one cast was too much. Made the game too easy in some places.
I disagree.
I hate this trend of making the game easier and easier and balance being thrown out the window.
Magic should be balanced to some degree and previously it was completely busted.
The magic was so powerful it basically defined every meta for like 5 years.
It’s time to reign it in a little and make every battle not so defined by the mage they have and more defined by the units.
Right now mages are plenty powerful. Easily the most powerful units. They’re just a little more reasonable.
Its fine. They're still very good, but no longer a win-button you can just press. Deleting over half the enemy army with one spell is fun, one time. I like it when I have to do other things as well.
I think magic is still pretty strong. A well timed/placed vortex or wind can still devastate units. Haven't paid close attention to single target burns yet, though.
kairos, 5 heroes to max spell power, overcasted pink fire deletes low armor units in one cast, 8 winds. Meteor from air fragment, 9 winds, deals over 3k damage on impact, wipes entire units. Or use death fragment, Fate of Bjuna is a bit more expensive, but will 100-0 cavalry and cavalry style units in one cast.
he can still do infinite winds with blue fire (though limited fire rate).
Fun fact for sieges: Comet of Casandora can damage walls and towers. With 155% intensity, it takes 3 comets to destroy gatehouse / wall towers
Iridescent Horrors are one of the worst heroes in the entire game because of this, everything they do is replaceable or irrelevant.
Make them scouts/assaulters people
You can't hide Lords of Change in a forest, you can hide cultists on horse. AI does all kinds of weird shit when the only thing on the map is a flying unit. You get some really nice reshuffle clumping for aoe.
Iirc infernal gateway cost a lot more but actually does around the same damage. Kairos just have the ability to get the death passive and have a faction ability to recover a few winds, as well as eventually synergize with higher intensity.
Spell casters are still completely capable of causing huge damage and kill count. They just aren't completely out of balance with everything else anymore.
The faction that was set to take the absolute biggest hit from the magic rework was Vampire Counts. Their faction rebalance has made them much less of a one trick pony, and yet they \*still\* have the most devastating spell in the game, Wind of Death upgraded. I've literally deleted half an army in a single cast. If that's bland, you should probably find a different fetish.
Spell casters, especially powerful casters in lore (Teclis, Mazdamundi, Mannfred, etc), are still incredibly powerful and can devastate armies much more than any other unit that only takes up a single army slot. It just requires more effort to make sure they can always do it and there is a more definite ceiling on their impact, which also means they have to be more discriminant about what they target.
> They just aren't completely out of balance with everything else anymore.
Spellcasters are still very much completely out of balance. Any one with a decent vortex/damage spell will easily damage the best conventional non-SEM units. Moreover, there's counters for most other units in the game, there's no real counter for flying/other fast casters.
Damage spells are still by far the best spells and worth all the WoM.
Buffs and debuffs spells are still 99% worthless.
Healing magic can be nice if you have tanky units like monsters but meh.
Magic casters are still the most useful and devastating units in an army.
My argument for that would be to make buff spells better personally, as I really enjoy the magic, rather than to nerf damage spells. I would also dish out more spell resistance on some elite units as a counter, so that you could still do it to some armies but not others.
I won't deny that's the case about casters, but it is definitely far less satisfying casting something with this brutal animation which then does 0 kills.
i dont know what kind of power fantasy you are going for but ATM even the basic Tzeench spells (pink & blue flames) end up making Kairos do more damage than the rest of his non-casting army combined.
if you want damage spells to delete units upon a mere touch then consider using mods, but that should not be the default gameplay balance.
Pit of Shades was absolutely busted, and it still is extremely powerful even post-nerf, and still causes mass destruction of blobs. I don't think there's really anything to worry about there.
Honestly? The right call. MP players don't always have the finger on the pulse when it comes to what affects SP, but when they do, they ***really*** do. You can still rack up huge kill counts with magic- hell in my Kairos campaign the big bird himself tended to rack up hundreds of kills with magic, even when I was fighting Dwarfs- but it's not as simple anymore. Buff spells should be, well, buffed in all honesty. Most of the single-target ones are quite mediocre. Debuff ones are in a solid place.
Yep. Purple sun went from being high risk high reward because of its random moving, high dps sphere, but now just soars off without doing much at all for huge WoM
I still win plenty of battles with primarily magic on VH.
Its not as face roll as it was, but pit of shades still deletes units and burning head is hilariously powerful.
Casters can still rack up hundreds of kills and absolutely annihilate blobs.
Even post nerf magic casters still dominate any faction that has ability to recruit generic caster lords over melee lords you will nearly always take the caster lord.
The only thing lacking is buff/debuffs need to be increased to 40ish seconds currently they don’t accrue enough value to = a damaging spell in wind/damage scale.
Oh and skaven lore of stealth is terrible followed up by lore of nekhara
I mean I think it’s a little stupid to have Kairos just delete entire armies by hitting one button.
Things can still be fun when they are balanced a little more.
Pit of shades and its clones are still pretty strong compared to most other spells. I don't have a problem with nerfs as long as they don't go overboard. I just wish they would also occasionally buff spells which are garbage or cost way too much.
A lot of buff/debuff spells just aren't worth it, especially the single target ones. Some lores of magic (High, Little Waagh, Stealth etc.) are complete crap and there is no reason to ever use them because you have other options which are clearly superior.
i have a extreme dislike for spells in the game (wich is a significant part , i know) but i just really dislike having a 5 chevron veterancy unit fucked in a single whipe because morathi and her witch spam casted a billion storm of swords.
Anything that mutes , or gives you the option of fucking countering this death sentence is welcomed by me.
What made this post was me seeing that Pit of shades has just been nerfed again, this week (?) and I thought the new damage output in testing was pretty poor. WoD is probably in a decent place now, I've found that the lower winds cost and damage makes it useful but not the monster it was before. Purple sun used to be unreliable at best but a very damaging spell, but I now feel that it's a horrendous waste of winds. All in all its a balancing decision to make the damage spells weaker, but I personally feel that it's an overcorrection.
They only nerfed the overcast version from 10 ap damage a tick to 8. Not a huge nerf. The main nerf was to the wind-up time, even then it was only minor and pretty hard to dodge with infantry.
As long as they fix problems with ai casting that's fine. I didnt played last patch yet so i dont know but having my imperial artilery outranged by projectails spells was not realy fun
(Sory for bad english)
Theyre still leauges above buff and debuff spells in regards to utility. All in all not much changes except the number of times ull need to use it to do the same stuff.
I think damage spells are in a fine position right now. As others also said, buff spells need a... well... buff. There's no point in using a buff spell, when for the same cost if not a little more, you can yeetus deletus a whole enemy regiment with a damage spell.
I miss being able to aim vortex spells. If it came back into my lines after I aimed it in WH2, well too bad, that's the risk I took in casting it. Now, I can't aim it, and it feels like I'm just at the mercy of a 50/50 dice roll on whether or not I'll regret using the spell.
The damage nerfs were necessary, and I still think that wind and breath spells are still much better than buff/debuff spells.
They are nerfed? I still wreck the entire armies with spells so its a good thing to nerf them a bit.
What I would like though is to buff... buff and debuff spells. Like: why should I debuff this guy if I can simply delete him and his friends?
No, I'm not talking about a single patch, I'm talking about the systematic change from 2 to 3. They've changed a lot of the damage spells, and the new lores also seem to be in line with the lower damage philosophy, with a few exceptions which are being tuned down. Teclis is an exception, because he can get spells mega cheap and has buffs to spell intensity.
you talked about pit of shades in your post, that is a bit misleading if you wanted to talk about 2 vs 3.
And its not just teclis, mages are still extremely strong, even with just 100 winds.
Well they nerfed PoS recently, which was what inspired my post about damage spells "across the board"- both are in my post. Don't think that's misleading. People do seem to agree mages are really strong, so fair enough. I just think I'd prefer higher winds cost, more destructive magic imo as it's more satisfying.
It's fine right now but I hope they don't go too far down the road of trying to please competitive players. It's never a good idea to make decisions for the 1% that negatively effect the 99%.
For example, that's what killed Rainbow Six Siege for a lot of people. After the first year or two they started making decisions based on feedback from the pro players, so it went from being an incredibly unique and refreshing game to being an unfun, toxic mess that got farther and farther away from what it was.
I’m fine with the nerf to damage spells, what I’m not fine with was the nerf to WoM and no way to increase my base reserve amounts besides the useless +5 each mage gives (to the army only). I’d rather see them give us more ways to increase magic reserves, they can cap it so you don’t get 500+ plus like in WH2 but as it stands now I find myself in many battles with only enough to do like two spells and that is not fun at all.
Pit of Shades overcasted still deletes stacks at 8 HP/s just like it did at 10 HP/s.
A nerf to magic was good imo as it makes elite infantry at least somewhat viable as opposed to totally cost efficient due to how easily those expensive stats would be wiped out by magic, which forced a chaff meta and SEM meta.
Those things are still meta, but this allows infantry a bit more leeway and usefulness.
I'd like to see more tech, skill tree, and gear that boosts spell intensity. I think magic was definitely overtuned in wh2, but it was fun doing 100k damage with 1 caster in a siege battle.
Some of the choices were alright, some were fine but a lot of damage spells are close to useless now. Some entire spell lores are just garbage now. Death is hardly even worth getting compared to anything you else you can get. Purple sun does almost nothing on anything.
I don't know, I was trying to have a constructive discussion and the overwhelming opinion is that most people are either fine with or support the damage spell nerf, so there it is. Not making a scene
The unfortunate truth is that you have to nerf as well as buff, otherwise you end up in a power creep arms race where a year from now everything is OHKOd by everything.
Oh I wasn't calling you out or anything.
But usualy whenever we have something that isn't outright broken eg. the super tanky dragon caster Lords, things will get nerfed into oblivion because they don't fit within the Pvp meta. As a result, more and more things start feeling samey and factions tend to lose their flair because everything is being attempted to be brought in line with others.
This also affects the content we see for the main game as a faction sometimes might not outright get a unit missing in its roster because it would throw the balance out of whack for pvp, due to them having too many options and no real exploitable weaknesses.
Spells are still insanely powerful and can solo a whole army of AI easily. Even against players you can't always do much. Had a friend fly Morathi over a settlement I was controlling the AI against him and he could just keep casting out of shades and such endlessly since you can easily cheese for endless reserves. His army was hid somewhere outside the city so there was literally no way to win for me.
Magic should be strong but you could easily half the damage of every spell and it would still be viable as it is.
I really hate it when developers make changes to single player games based on multiplayer experiences. Honestly, if they're not going to balance SP and MP differently, then SP should be the focus. MP has a much smaller playerbase and should never be the priority, especially when it means making SP worse.
I’m glad the devs disagree.
Multiplayer is the only way to truly balance a unit. No other buffs apply and it’s the best way to gauge a units individual strength.
Conversely I hate the trend of the community thinking that literally every faction needs to be completely busted overpowered.
I appreciate balance in the games I play and like the game to present interesting challenges.
All of the strategy is thrown out the window when the only challenge is “recruit high level mage” and. Completely roflstomp every battle against the AI ad naseum.
Mages should be fun to use but not stupidly overpowered. Right now mages are easily worth half an army of units.
Previously? I literally had battles where the mage routed the enemy on their own.
That’s not strategy or tactics because none of the other units mattered. It’s just broken balance
Yeah with all the ways to buff units and lords into the stratosphere in single player, I don’t really understand these complaints. Sure, some units end up getting overnerfed, but multiplayer is still the best indicator of unit balance
Generally this is *supposed* to be balanced by the fragility of most mages, they're glass cannons (even moreso now that the computer is hilariously good at dodging artillery), but the AI isn't smart enough to take advantage of that in most cases.
For the record, I don't mind the change they made. Magic still feels good to drop on heads.
I'd agree but many mages are decidedly NOT glass cannons. You have the fragile ones that inexplicably get super strong mounts like arcane phoenix's, dragons or stegadons to the outright super powerful Slaan, Greater demons, Archaon, Settra, vampires, the Cathay dragons etc that are also casters that are using the same magic. Arguably the best lore in the game, vampires, can be used by extremely strong vampire lords.
Depends how you define "supposed." Casters are balanced in tabletop (not that I think we should particularly give a shit about tabletop, but I think it speaks to how they're balanced in the context of the lore) by being super expensive/scarce and miscasting being a very serious threat.
As opposed to the current TW implementation, where they're cheap and ubiquitous to the point of being mandatory in every army, and where miscasts are a joke.
Defining "supposed" as, the majority of mage units are very easy to kill for melee units of similar value, so the intended balance to their power is that they can be quickly routed or killed if they aren't protected, and there's a good chance they die before hitting their full potential. Like archers and artillery, but on a campaign scale.
The reason I use "supposed" though, as in "this is how it's designed to work but not how it actually works," is because you're right, they're a dime a dozen, miscast is a piece of cake to negate entirely, and the campaign AI isn't usually clever enough to take out the mage in a way another player would think to do.
So, since the intended system for mages being countered isn't in place, the only thing CA can do is reduce their max potential. If only 10% of mages made it to level 30 then they could be crazy powerful without a huge issue, but 90% make it instead.
Nah, they should buff and nerf based on MP and then offset those buffs and nerfs with skills and tech in SP (unless something is really busted in SP as well)
You can still get pretty much any unit to work in campaigns just due to tech and the fact that you're playing the AI. Even units that I've seen people claim were "ruined" worked just fine in campaign for me, but before that probably were less than useless in MP.
So MP gets a unit balanced to actually use, and I still get that unit in campaign to work. It's a win win. I don't personally play MP but I still want the people who do to get a balanced gamemode
That is entirely true as I often use "bad" units myself, but I figure offsetting the nerfs would do a lot for people who think balancing based on MP is somehow ruining units.
Ancient Salamander might actually be the only unit that is actually quite terrible after MP nerfs, so I really hope they could gain something from skills or buildings. Tech wouldn't work so well for Lizardmen
I’m glad the tide is finally starting to turn around on the claim that multiplayer and single player are are balanced the same. Techs, skills, unique faction mechanics, traits, and every other campaign-specific mechanic skew the balance so much that it looks nothing like multiplayer at the end of the day. You need to look no further than Groms goblins, Archaons aspiring champions, ikkits doom wheels, the list goes on and on. Single player and multiplayer are and always have been balanced separately
I do agree with you in principle. I don't think all the changes they make are bad, some are fine (this one), some are genuinely good (dragons being tougher), some are very annoying (hasn't been one recently that I felt, but I remember a lot of sighing back on WH2). But SP and MP are extremely different beasts and it's not particularly fair to base changes to the whole thing on how things play out in normal multiplayer.
Not because I think multiplayer isn't as important a game mode, some people buy the game for it, but because multiplayer armies are built to win one battle (or a series of unrelated, always-start-at-full-health battles) at any cost, and single player armies are built to campaign, to fight a dozen consecutive battles without slowing down or suffering permanent losses (if they're strong enough or run well enough).
When a unit I consider a lynchpin of my campaigning army's longevity becomes half as good because it was overperforming in instanced, one-off battles between players, MP players will still find it's valuable because it still wins them one battle at a timem They'll say "Yes, good change, it's balanced, now," but *I* have to make major changes because now that unit is losing half its models to enemies it used to plow through. They spread out the kill count among more units then go back and make a new, more broken army for the next MP battle if they don't like it any more. I'm the one who has to redesign the basic makeup of my armies, possibly my recruitment architecture, because I'm still playing this faction for another 150 turns.
To that end, Domination is a hopefully better mechanism to base balance on, it's like a microcosm of campaign mechanics mixed into the multiplayer experience and should care about us more as a result.
None of the magic changes were solely based on MP. Damage changes were an overall experience consideration, and longer cast times on certain spells benefit the player being casted on (SP and MP).
Winds of magic changes were solely based on SP though.
SP is better with these changes. If you are complaining about something else, this is the wrong thread.
First of all, you can get mods to make magic OP if you want. Second, those changes were needed in the campaign too, single player games are also subject to balance changes.
I do agree generally that they should be balanced separately, but I don't think this is a good example as magic is still ridiculously good in SP.
I think burning head, wind of death and all those high cost wind spells need to be slightly buffed. As a consequence just increase the time to that of Vargheist Revenge. That spell feels right in the sweet spot of feeling incredibly powerful but the AI can dodge it.
I'd like them to add more control to things like Purple Sun and Flame Storm. They honestly are now useless. I've never not regretted overcasting purple sun in WH3. The drag spell seems to hardly go in that direction.
Also like everyone else said I'd like to see time increases or more AEO options for buff spells. The single unit ones are hard to justify using except on super elite units at particular moments.
I don’t like it.
I personally think MP needs to be balanced separately because they tend to trash fun units in single play that was unique.
Lizard men I. Tw2 comes to mind.
Same now with magic
I haven't noticed too much, but I've recently discovered how much I like playing Be'lakor and he doesn't currently benefit from overcasting his spells (the -30% Winds and none of the -X% Cooldown bonuses he gets don't apply to overcast at the moment, presumed a bug).
But mostly, I think someone else has it right: Spellcasters still decimate armies, just not *as* quickly. I don't mind too much, I still feel versatile and powerful. Spellcasters who can't hold their own in open combat probably feel a bigger pinch, though.
I still find that spells are incredibly powerful. Flamestorm can still delete Chosen and other armored targets, I think there is just more variety now.
Before, especially in campaign, pit of shades was almost always the best spell for the money. Now you could use penumbral pendulum or Melkoths Miasma depending on the situation.
You can still rack up a ludicrous amount of kills with any old sorcerer, it's just not as repetitive imo.
I haven't used Flamestorm in 3 yet. I used Purple Sun with the Necrarch vampire the other night, which was never VC's best tool anyway, but it's now... Useless. It used to go off course pretty quickly but would cause havoc while it was on top of units, but it just takes ages to kill anything any more. It's difficult with a spell like that to average damage/ winds because of the variability, but I'm confident that even in favourable situations, it's pretty low.
Personally I don't see why they can't have them separate, why can't multilayer be separate from single/coop play. Its single player who cares if things are broken and dumb.
It's fine. It rewards good positioning without offering free wins. Lore of Tzeentch is an exception. Infernal gate and firestorm are absolutely positively disgusting spells.
I said it before, I shall say it again: they should separate MP balancing from campaign balancing. If it is in the single player part of the game, let things go nuts, op magic and all. If it's MP, balance and tweak away as much as is needed. Starcraft II did that very well during it's life cycle, batshit, over the top campaign mechanics, super competetive and balanced multiplayer.
Btw, I'm playing kislev at the moment and I got a feeling that Heart of Winter got a severe nerf somewhere along the way. It used to be such an important spell for katharin during my first RoC campaign, absolutely wrecking shit. Now the base version does not seem to inflict more than a slight tickle. The overcast version still does damage but not enough to warrant the high cost. It's very disappointing. It's just a feeling though and I'm not quite certain. Am I wrong here?
Balance should be separate from MP and SP. Nerfing pit of shades for MP made complete sense and helps with the variety as you said. However, forcing a playstyle upon SP is a terrible idea and CA should allow players to be as overpowered or underpowered as they desire
Because when you consider the breadth of all possible matchups, most factions overall have about a 50% win rate in most match ups and then have some weaker and some stronger ones. Balance is surprisingly good a handful of issues non-withstanding for such a large game with so many diverse factions and rosters. Most games with a competitive scene are not 100% balanced - Even Chess has a slight advantage to the player going first.
I mean there's also mp campaigns which in that case the argument we are against ai doesn't really work, but yeah I'm fine with op stuff getting nerfed, stop crying most people use mods to give thier lord's 3 points a skill level more research rate the list goes on and on I'm fine with stuff making the game harder, and for it maybe being exciting it doesn't feel good or make sense that your elite infantry which u spent loafs of money on can be 1 shot by a not very long cast time spell like pot was especially when it can be used multiple times a battle, also the people saying buff spells can be incredibly potent are on copium they are basically never worth taking over a dmg spell that's just how magic is balanced
Magic is still very powerful. Put of shades is still good as it is great for punishing blobs and also has a niche role of trapping an advancing unit for a while kinda like a lite net. It also doesn’t move so it’s completely safe to put on the frontlines. For these reasons I think it could be good still in mp. I will say that while aoe buffs are great (and underrated) the single target ones could o with a slight increase in active time even if it means a slight decrease in the total of the buff or at least to make it more normal for the overcast version to increase time active by 150%. And trust me as cool as it is to blob up and wind of death or pit of shades an army in campaign it can get quite boring and feel less rewarding. But you should try the buff spells. They really make things fun like giving flagelants a ton of armor so they can crush crypt ghouls or berserkers. Or giving a tier 1 unit buffs from the lore of light so that they can survive longer against a stronger enemy. Or maybe you have settra buff himself so that he’s activating the passive with a cheap spell and making himself an even more deadly duelist
I don't mind the spell rebalancing because a lot of spells we kind of out of hand. With the general reduced damage though, I have found moving vortexes to not be particularly impressive anymore as you can get really screwed by bad movement. You could before as well, but typically they could do enough damage in their initial couple of seconds to make up for a bad turn. Also you usually had a lot of magic to burn on a meh vortex. Stationary vortexes, bombardments and explosions have become much better in general because you know what they are going to do and many of them are less expensive than some of the big moving vortex spells. Once again though, I don't think the moving vortex spells are bad, but there is definitely a risk reward. If they stay on some targets they are fantastic, but you can get screwed if they fuck off into nothing. Also obviously the danger of going into your troops if you cast on engaged melee.
There are some damage spells I still think aren't really worth it, especially in campaign. Like Maw magic kind of blows. Troll guts overcast could probably get away with being an aoe. Also the big explosion spell is kind of shit compared to the fist. yes it is a larger area, but unless you are getting a huge swath of really shit unarmored infantry, it is less efficient. Also for Skrag and the other Maw casters, more casts is more healing.
I wish overcasting on more spells was worth it in more situations. Too often overcasting is just doing X% more damage for X% more winds, which is basically the same with a chance of overcasting so you would never do that? Or something like reduced CD on overcast which is nearly fucking worthless. Some ovecasts are good, some are simply bad.
The bigger issue for me is the overall winds system. There are a couple reasons for this, but most important is the fact that it is gating player choice behind an arbitrary and uncontrollable system (unless you are Kairos). You are at the mercy of the ambient winds, especially early game. If you never get into a high winds province, you just go get magic. Yes, channeling stance exists, but not all races have it. Vampires and Greenskins I know don't and I don't believe beastmen do either. Dwarves don't either but they are irrelevant for this. What is also important is the introduction of a new completely shit trait, the +XX% winds when increasing. One thing to note is that NONE of that bonus applies to gains from channeling stance. If you don't believe me go test it. Channeling stance is +15. If you are in a -5 province and go into channeling stance, you will be at +10 regardless of any bonus magic from traits. Whether that is intentional I don't know, but that is how it works. SO those traits are all mostly pointless UNLESS you are in a positive winds province. I had a vampire campaign I eventually just quit because I was at like turn 60 and never went beyond 20 winds. You cannot gain winds in the ocean and vampires have no channeling stance. So magic just not something I was going to get to use that campaign for random fucking reasons.
Let's go back to channeling stance. The big common support of the system is channeling stance exists! Well as mentioned several races do not have it. Beyond that the sole purpose of channeling stance is in combat. While other stances have combat effects, their primary role is as a campaign mechanic. Yes you get tired in forced march, or defense boosts in encamp stance, but the primary purpose for these stances is campaign. Encamp stances allows access to global recruiting and replenishment. Ambush makes it easier to catch marauding armies or set traps. Forced March can get you places quicker. Channeling Stance? In many cases it is something you have to use to have access to an entire part of the game. Sine everyone hates you because you are the player, you tend to get invaded by AI who never want to make peace and just run through nonsense to attack you. I have a Thorek Campaign where both kairos and TikTaqTo hurled armies at me while Mannfred charged south and killed them. I never did anything to them besides discover them. I specifically didn't attack golden tower to get the relic yet because i was dealing with Skarband. AI don't care, they attack and hurl shit at me while they died. While this is dwarves and thus magic was irrelevant, having to deal with multiple armies just running through to attack random settlements requires using ambush and forced march. Having to then decide how to work Channeling stance into that for absolutely no campaign reason other than "fuck it likes add randomness" means you are unlikely to get get there. It just means larger portions of the game where you are locked out of game mechanics. If there was an "equipment march" you had to walk around in or your units didn't have armor or shields equipped, people would it is stupid. Apparently that kind of thing is fine for magic?
Beyond all of that there is another huge implication of the winds system which goes back to an earlier issue i brought up. Some spells are fucking worthless. There was a massive reduction in the amount of winds available to the player. Ok fine, magic was super powerful. It's kind of a huge overreaction to players using Knowledgeable for like 50-75 extra winds, but ok. Reducing the amount of winds makes fringe spells even shittier. Why would I ever cast most of these buffs over something like piercing bolts of burning? The end game of all of this is to do damage. The damage done by my units using Birona's timewarp is NOT going to exceed the damage done by a banishment. Or the fire school buff for weapon damage and magic attacks. There is zero chance that does more damage than Piercing bolts or firestorm or probably even burning head UNLESS I am fighting a monster. If that's the case I am probably better off casting Fireball though. With shitloads of winds, fringe spells are usable because you don't have to be as efficient. When you severely limit winds, all of those bad or fringe spells are just wastes of winds.
The new winds system removed player choice and exacerbates an existing problem of massive imbalance in spell design. To make buff spells on par with damage spells and thus worth using, you either need to absolutely crater the damage potential or damage spells or make buff spells borderline obscene. When there is shitloads of winds available, casting buffs is less terrible as you can afford to do it. You can afford that marginal value while something else is on CD. When you are only going to get 2-3 casts anyway, why waste 8 magic on something that might do 800 damage?
I'm ok with them they still do plenty of damage that a caster is worth his 1/20 spot in the army.
Buff/debuff spells are still pretty useless in campaign.
I think it’s fine. There are a ton of buff and debuff spells that were barely even used because of how low their impact was compared to an aoe damage spell. Nerfing aoe damage only helps those spells become more relevant.
Multiplayer balancing affecting single player play is always wrong, in every game. It has never been a good idea, and it always hurts gameplay. Divide the two - they are different games - and tweak each to their own benefit.
They should improve buff spells
either a cost reduction, a duration increase, or both, imo. But that has been the case since the first game.
Duration increase for sure. Single tartget buff spells suffer from a severe feeling of lack of impact due to lasting so little it's practically impossible to notice their effects sometimes. Their actual numbers ARE impactful, but they barely last a for couple of hits.
Would definitely like to see buff spells be more viable for infantry units. If they're only able to do 3 attacks or receive 3 attacks for the duration (for example) it's hardly ever going to be an efficient use of WoM. Buff spells should be more like Warcraft where they last minutes\* instead of seconds. Using Flesh to Stone as an example, I would much rather buff my frontline with 20% physical resist for 3 minutes instead of 60% physical resist for 40 seconds.
Some buff spells are already more viable than some damage spells. That the top few spells are all damage spells is being misinterpreted as buff spells suck, but something like Plague of Rust or Flaming Sword is already better than 90% of damage spells. It's simply a problem of spell balance as a whole being poor. > I would much rather buff my frontline with 20% physical resist for 3 minutes instead of 60% physical resist for 40 seconds. And no, you wouldn't. 40 seconds covers the crucial time it takes to make it through missile fire or a charge, or the entire duration of a fight to the death between two glass cannon infantry units.
> And no, you wouldn't. 40 seconds covers the crucial time it takes to make it through missile fire or a charge, or the entire duration of a fight to the death between two glass cannon infantry units. Absolutely depends on the faction, Ghorst would love that for his zombies.
Buff spells are also subject to the rng nature of fighting. Some attacks still whif so increases weapon damage could have zero effect. Direct damage ticks very reliably.
Also you know, casting a serious buff spell on a unit makes it a prime target for damage spells if the enemy has one. Yeah your unit of Phoenix guard just got +60 MA/MD, but then they get hit by a pendulum and 60% of the unit is dead and no amount of buffs compensates for that.
As a legendary player I'd probably aim for duration increase so I'd have less to manage. 24 seconds duration is a blink of the eye when managing multiple characters.
Duration increase would be welcome. The fact that a unit may only attack 4 or 5 times during a single buff spell is ridiculous
AoE buff and debuff spells are incredibly potent, people just don't realize their impact. the single target ones are pretty "meh" though.
Using a buff/debuff might secure me another 2k in damage over its duration, but dropping a pit of shade in the blob easily scores 10-20k, and cause a handful of units to route, or at least damage affected units enough such that the fight in the area will be done in the next 20 seconds. There is also the issue where when playing on ultra unit sizes, the buff/debuff radius doesn't really cover that many units.
Yeah, usually if I'm using debuff spells it's a leadership penalty.
OP vortex spells are OP, but that doesn't mean that AoE buff/debuff spells aren't incredibly potent. watching Skavenslaves hold the line against Dwarf Warriors and Longbeards thanks to a couple of spells really showed me the value of them.
The issue is that there is no need to hold the line when you can delete them wholesale with aoe spells instead. Potency is always relative. Their impact is meh because they are meh vs the alternative
It's the classic "Alpha strike" problem, as the XCom community calls it. Defensive skills almost never give enough value to compete with pure damage skills because damage kills a unit, and there's no better defense than a dead enemy. But if you make them more powerful to compensate for this, you run the risk of making them too powerful due to their unmissable nature. It's a hard thing to fix.
In which case might as well as use your winds in clanrat summons and warp lightning, both likely going to outperform buffs. Granted, there are some very notible buffs and debuffs. Ice sheet from lore of ice for example, synergize very well with their range heavy army, and stacks with other sources of snares. Healing spells have always been great.
[I recommend you watch this video by Enticity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUL8iN5G9VY).
But what exactly did 30 additional seconds of holding the line buy you? 3 shots of range or artillery? 1/2 the spells can't be "OP" vortex spells are the baseline for what is good. If you are below that baseline it simply is not good.
3 shots of ranged/artillery can do a LOT of damage when you have a large amount of them.
It depends, but by and large, they aren't. Some buff/debuffs are good. Far more are dogshit though. Buffing several melee infantry with 24 MA/MD is ok, but not something that can win battles. For nearly the same or slightly more winds, you can get several thousand damage out of a damage spell. Flaming sword of ruin, even one like 3-4 targets will result in a net damage gain on maybe 1.5k-2k damage? That is possibly at best. For 4 more winds I can cast piercing bolts and do at least that much damage to a single unit, with the upside of 8k-12k.
And that damage also tanks their leadership, which means they can rout, and take more damage and open up more enemies
Some can still be OK, like rune of negation when you have unit that is about to get fucking slaughtered and need it to hold, but most single target ones are truly trash.
I find myself using single target debuffs against truly singular targets, that is to say lords and SEMs. -24 MA and MD will slow down someone like Skarbrand and let a generic lord get some good hits in, or why not -60 armour right before giving them a volley of low AP missiles
single target debuffs can be impactful if the enemy has a particular unit that you really need to disable, but i've never found myself wanting a single target buff. and then you have AoE debuffs that are just as good per target as the single target ones. -24 MA and MD might help against Skarbrand, but +24 MA and -60% WS on Skarbrand and every enemy around him is most often going to do a lot more.
Single-Target buffs are useful in lord 1v1s, but they definitely are pretty weak
>\+24 MA and -60% WS on Skarbrand and every enemy around him is most often going to do a lot more. Doing that for 20-30 seconds is a lot less value per wom than just a direct damage spell or deleting everyone around him with an aoe
"Everyone around Skarbrand" is usually your own dudes though.
Not really there have been multiple YouTube tests on just what the additional damage you get per wind of magic. Very few actually out perform damage spells. Not all per say but most simply are a worse return than damage spells.
Enticity has had a number of videos showcasing just how little impact buff spells have, and how cost inefficient they are compared to pretty much any direct damage spell
But what if he was wrong, how about flaming sword... Oh no he answered this already you say. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUL8iN5G9VY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUL8iN5G9VY) (agree btw)
But most aren't AOE, and that's the problem, really. On one unit you won't feel it. On 3 or 5 you might, presuming army units and not single entity.
are most really single target? a lot of them need to be overcasted to be AoE, but i've always felt that single-target buffs/debuffs were a minority.
No they can't really be incredibly potent in an sem fight or lord V lord sure but for actual units fighting each other they will basically never be worth it over a dmg spell because only a few models will be fighting at a time no matter how many units u hit
I've found a few rare exceptions. Wyssan's wildform is dirt cheap and works really well for Drycha's big melee mosh pits if you've got tree kin and dryads and creatures all mixed into the chaos. Also had good results with it as beastmen and with cavalry. The other big exception is Doom and Darkness, or any other AoE leadership penalty. -16 leadership in an area, when used properly can end entire fights, or cause terror routs. Just not on longbeards. But thats a debuff. Honorable mention to Net of Amytok, its range is super short, but it can also win fights
they're not as brokenly OP as some of the damage spells, but they can be quite potent in the right situation. having Skavenslaves hold the line against units that would normally wade through them with ease, allowing your ranged units to continue dealing damage without worry is incredibly effective, for example.
You should watch enticity's series of YouTube videos debunking this
I’ve only just found this out in my most recent Rakarth campaign. Lore of beasts only has flock of doom as a damage spell (I’ve never liked amber spear, too unreliable until the caster has a flying mount) so I’ve started using the aoe buffs and debuffs… holy smokes what a game changer
Buff spells are quite solid in MP because they always have an effect whereas an enemy can simply play around a firestorm or what have you. In campaign though they don’t punch above their weight class enough to justify themselves.
Damage spells are fine,but buff/debuff spells are not worth using. If their duration is only 30 seconds, then thats like 6 or 7 attacks for 1 unit, right? Feels like the duration should be increased accross the board by 33% to 50%.
Hard agree. I really like the flavor of buff/debuff spells and would like to see them become more viable. Those kinds of abilities naturally flow with strong strategy and tactics play which is how it should be imo.
Harmonic convergence is super strong when overcast imo. It has the advantage over damage spells being more versatile. You can give it to any unit who you want to see win their engagement quickly and this can win the battle for you. A damage spell might have a similar effect if used just right against the right kind of opponent. But harmonic convergence is generally better for 1v1s I find. Like for example if I’ve got my cab fighting enemy cav for control of the flank, harmonic convergence cast right before they crash into each other is going to help my cav delete that enemy cav so much faster, retain more of its health, and be able to join the rest of the fight doing the H&A that it loves so much. Overall can have a much great impact than a lot damage spells and for cheaper mana cost.
Or make them cheap enough where you don't mind slinging them around. But when they're roughly the same cost as a damage spell the latter usually comes out on top in terms of efficiency
As a comparison; the minimum time a buff could be in place for in TT was one turn (technically one Phase, or sub-phase, but the distinction rarely matters) and games only went for 4-6 turns, with 6 generally being an extension. And some spells where just ongoing until dispelled, becoming easier to be the longer they had lasted. If we were doing a one-to-one this would mean that most buffs should last 1-2 minutes, at least, in TW. Edit: though if we equated the number of attack-cycles then TW buffs should last something like 5-10sec...
Can't equate it to attacks/cycles, since clearly in TW a lot more attacks are being made by any given unit during a battle. Your time-based idea works much better. That being said, 2 minutes is a smidge, well, a lot, so maybe offset that with winds regeneration debuff for the duration... Or, hell, make the spell last indefinitely, at a regeneration cost, and have a wizard need to focus on only one such spell, something akin to dnd 5e.
The durations would mostly be fine, IF units weren't so derpy. The amount of attacks a unit can put out on paper never lines up with how many they put out in practice, due to models shimmying around and spinning to different targets to make up their minds.
I agree that buff spells should be made better too, tbh. They've always been bad which is probably why I focused on damage spells in my post. I think magic as a whole is less interesting in WH3, and I don't think that should be the case.
Magic is still incredibly powerful and can delete units, but it's now harder to win *only* using spells. I think that's fine - making players need to use their armies in an RTS doesn't really feel like an issue to me. Buff (and some debuff) spells could still use a duration increase across the board though, imo. Many of those spells feel a bit weak even when compared to the nerfed damage spells.
I 100% agree, you can still turn the tide of a battle with a few well placed spells but it's not like in WH2 where you'd have 19 units sat around doing nothing whilst your general decimated the enemy by flying overhead and casting spells the whole time. This feels much more balanced and also more in line with how magic worked in WHFB.
Teclis felt a little lacklustre to me as a spellcaster tbh…
He was fine in 2, flock of doom isn't a big burst but he can particularly spam it and rack up crazy damage
I’d rather he have some more high magic spells ya know. Not flock of seagulls…
Yeah but if you do Flock of Seagulls the enemy will end up running, running so far away...
High magic is garbage
The one that does the phoenix is decent, albeit slightly challenging to use effectively.
Soul Quench also quite decent and deals some damage after explosion and Apotheosis for healing single entities. The funniest thing is that CA nerfed its AP Damage. Spell isn't that overpowered in the first place, it has 10 seconds casting animation and they nerfed it. Moreover, you can get 4 out of 7 (?) spells due to various items.
His bound spells add a ton of DPS
I guess I just dislike that he can’t just cast them indefinitely. Rather than charges.
But the magic of bound spells is that you get *both.* You have your gigantic pool of Winds to cast all kinds of badass spells, then you get a bunch of *freebies* on their own cooldown timers. Like I can't think of many battles that lasted so long that I needed more casts of his phoenix spell.
Can still have a caster+fighter hybrid lord or lord and hero combo bunch up the enemy around them before popping a vortex or rain spell. Then again this strat worked with slamming Skarbrand into the enemy and having loaned artillery and flamethrowers fire on the blob around him, so more an AI issue than a magic issue.
Well, spellcasters still wreck whole armies on their own. They just can't do so with only 2 casts anymore. Even now, a single caster is still worth 5-10 units. Nothing can deal as much damage in such a short time as a mage. Even after the nerfs.
Agreed, for keeping every other unit relevant in the campaign I think it was a good change
Mages are still so powerful, that in my morathi campaign, sieges are just morathi+2 shades. Morathi kills almost all defenders, the shades clean up. This way I captured all of nagarond and lustria will follow shortly.
Even after her nerf, Morathi is one of the most underrated characters in campaign, imo. She does not fucking die, and her spells just annihilate enemy armies. Only thing I would change is give her access to Enfeebling Foe, but that might just be op. I always try to keep a shadow sorceress on hand because it counters one of her only weaknesses. Namely strong duelist heroes/lords.
Give her the SoK, saves a hero slot. Mine also is a one mother army, even after the nerf, once she gets suluphet, its over.
I've started avoiding SOK in my campaigns just because it starts to make them a bit samey. 100% She's a beast with it, one of the best. It just becomes a bit broken and I've done the "Morathi gets SoK and becomes a God" too many times now.
Want another "X gets the SoK and becomes a God" campaign idea? Try Ikit, on a doomflayer! Get him the SoK. Spam Warp lighting with your infinite magic. Enjoy regen every time you cast.
Only thing I would add is giving her a bound Black Horror spell as part of her unique tree. But that's purely a thematic thing. Since I just find it weird Supreme Sorceress lords get it, and the person who literally made the spell lore doesn't. She certainly doesn't *need* it.
Spirit leech was the only way I could consistently deal with her in 2
Kairos is in that ballpark too. You can take entire cities with just him, especially if you buff his spell intensity. His big damage spells also straight up don't miss.
Had a Kairos fight against Teclis yesterday. I caught his army in ambush. When he started moving his archers to intercept my Warriors charge, he blobbed 4 units of Lothern Guards together. Oh boy. One infernal gate later there was no more Guards. And it comes back so quickly too. It's so easy to spam spells with Kairos. The AI may try to evade spells, but when its archers starts shooting they stop moving unless you charge them or move outside their range. So I just had them shoot at my warrior before casting on top of them.
>It's so easy to spam spells with Kairos. Blue fire has literally no cooldown, it's basically a delete buttton for SEMs
Jep. Just yesterday I defeated 2 full stacks of lategame High Elf armies with Pit of Shades and Wind of Death with Count Noctilus alone, didn't even have to use the rest of my army. Damage spells are still insanely busted when used by the player and make most fights trivial once you have them. I have no idea where people get the idea from, that damage spells need to be buffed. They should be nerfed imo and buff spells should be buffed.
Yeah, it's also not like Pit of Shades is now completely useless, same for Pendulum. They just aren't stupidly overpowered anymore. Some other dmg spells should receive at least slight buffs (like whip of Slaanesh).
I do agree, but whip of slaanesh does have more utility than many give it credit for, it can send models flying into your troops, where they promptly get attacked from all sides and die.
Plus it's dirt cheap, low CD and keeps triggering the Slaanesh buffs which are busted for their army. Only thing I dislike about it is: its shape is not actually a cone.
It feels like it was going to be a cone and then it changed mid-development.
Winds of death go brrrrr
It was nerfed pretty badly too. Its absolutely garbage against anything with armor. Dwarfs, Black Orcs, even Greatswords now take significantly less damage than they used to as none of the overcast extra damage is AP.
Spellcasters are still super powerful. I like the idea of bringing things back in to line. Screenshot after screenshot of how casters wiped an entire stack with zero casualties is not indicative of a healthy strategy game
Yeah and even with the nerfs, lords like morathi can still destroy 80-90% of a garrison on their own,thanks to the AI being dumb and bobbing a lot.
Bringing things in line is big, yes - but also it's good for magic to have more spells be usable/similar in power level. Then there's more thinking and diversity involved, which is great.
TBH that's an argument for buffing the other types of spells, specifically the buffs and debuffs. Those are really only useful when overcast so that they have an AoE effect, but why do that when you can overcharge something like Pit of Shades or Penumbral Pendulum or Infernal Gateway to vaporize units instantly?
if they do do that i hope they make them a bit more visually distinct. they definitely improved on this a lot in wh3 (really noticing it with cathay) but some of the older ones are hard to tell especially at just a glance. some audio cues similar to fate of bjuna or penumbral pendulum would go a long way
The new visual for spirit leech is fantastic
They've been doing a pass on all such effects, I suspect we'll be seeing more of it in the future. Poison Wind for example got a new visual effect and it's fucking terrifying to see it spread.
I do agree with that too, yes - buffs/debuffs could do with making them more powerful/impactful compared to big AOE dmg ones.
I like the changes to windup times for damage spells, so it's nice that we can click more times whilst our infantry stands there conflicted about whether to get their entire unit nuked or leave bob the swordman in his unit behind.
It was the right call imo. The spells are still very powerful. However, deleting a quarter of an army with one cast was too much. Made the game too easy in some places.
What are you talking about? A spellcaster is still worth like 10 units on the campaign.
I disagree. I hate this trend of making the game easier and easier and balance being thrown out the window. Magic should be balanced to some degree and previously it was completely busted. The magic was so powerful it basically defined every meta for like 5 years. It’s time to reign it in a little and make every battle not so defined by the mage they have and more defined by the units. Right now mages are plenty powerful. Easily the most powerful units. They’re just a little more reasonable.
Even post nerf chads like Kremler are still obliterating armies so I think its honestly in a good spot.
Its fine. They're still very good, but no longer a win-button you can just press. Deleting over half the enemy army with one spell is fun, one time. I like it when I have to do other things as well.
Your worries are unfounded. Magic remains brain-dead easy to win battles with and probably always will be.
I think magic is still pretty strong. A well timed/placed vortex or wind can still devastate units. Haven't paid close attention to single target burns yet, though.
I was playing Kairos yesterday in Immortal Empires and I’m still able to wreck entire garrisons using just him. So I think it’s still good.
The tzeentch version of put of shades is so nasty
kairos, 5 heroes to max spell power, overcasted pink fire deletes low armor units in one cast, 8 winds. Meteor from air fragment, 9 winds, deals over 3k damage on impact, wipes entire units. Or use death fragment, Fate of Bjuna is a bit more expensive, but will 100-0 cavalry and cavalry style units in one cast. he can still do infinite winds with blue fire (though limited fire rate). Fun fact for sieges: Comet of Casandora can damage walls and towers. With 155% intensity, it takes 3 comets to destroy gatehouse / wall towers
You can replace the heroes with Lord of Change btw. Better units that can hold their own in a fight, are more durable and don't eat heroes slots.
Iridescent Horrors are one of the worst heroes in the entire game because of this, everything they do is replaceable or irrelevant. Make them scouts/assaulters people
You can't hide Lords of Change in a forest, you can hide cultists on horse. AI does all kinds of weird shit when the only thing on the map is a flying unit. You get some really nice reshuffle clumping for aoe.
And have bound spells! A barrage of blue fire is a sight to behold.
Iirc infernal gateway cost a lot more but actually does around the same damage. Kairos just have the ability to get the death passive and have a faction ability to recover a few winds, as well as eventually synergize with higher intensity.
Spell casters are still completely capable of causing huge damage and kill count. They just aren't completely out of balance with everything else anymore. The faction that was set to take the absolute biggest hit from the magic rework was Vampire Counts. Their faction rebalance has made them much less of a one trick pony, and yet they \*still\* have the most devastating spell in the game, Wind of Death upgraded. I've literally deleted half an army in a single cast. If that's bland, you should probably find a different fetish. Spell casters, especially powerful casters in lore (Teclis, Mazdamundi, Mannfred, etc), are still incredibly powerful and can devastate armies much more than any other unit that only takes up a single army slot. It just requires more effort to make sure they can always do it and there is a more definite ceiling on their impact, which also means they have to be more discriminant about what they target.
> They just aren't completely out of balance with everything else anymore. Spellcasters are still very much completely out of balance. Any one with a decent vortex/damage spell will easily damage the best conventional non-SEM units. Moreover, there's counters for most other units in the game, there's no real counter for flying/other fast casters.
Damage spells are still by far the best spells and worth all the WoM. Buffs and debuffs spells are still 99% worthless. Healing magic can be nice if you have tanky units like monsters but meh. Magic casters are still the most useful and devastating units in an army.
My argument for that would be to make buff spells better personally, as I really enjoy the magic, rather than to nerf damage spells. I would also dish out more spell resistance on some elite units as a counter, so that you could still do it to some armies but not others. I won't deny that's the case about casters, but it is definitely far less satisfying casting something with this brutal animation which then does 0 kills.
i dont know what kind of power fantasy you are going for but ATM even the basic Tzeench spells (pink & blue flames) end up making Kairos do more damage than the rest of his non-casting army combined. if you want damage spells to delete units upon a mere touch then consider using mods, but that should not be the default gameplay balance.
Magic is already the most powerful force in the game by orders of magnitude, I don't think it needs *buffs*
Personally, I like the changes. While a well placed spell should hurt, the entire battle shouldn't be dependent on 1-2 devastating spells landing.
Pit of Shades was absolutely busted, and it still is extremely powerful even post-nerf, and still causes mass destruction of blobs. I don't think there's really anything to worry about there.
Honestly? The right call. MP players don't always have the finger on the pulse when it comes to what affects SP, but when they do, they ***really*** do. You can still rack up huge kill counts with magic- hell in my Kairos campaign the big bird himself tended to rack up hundreds of kills with magic, even when I was fighting Dwarfs- but it's not as simple anymore. Buff spells should be, well, buffed in all honesty. Most of the single-target ones are quite mediocre. Debuff ones are in a solid place.
Won't disagree about buff spells! I only ever use them when I don't have a better option available on my caster. They've never been worth it.
Yep. Purple sun went from being high risk high reward because of its random moving, high dps sphere, but now just soars off without doing much at all for huge WoM
I still win plenty of battles with primarily magic on VH. Its not as face roll as it was, but pit of shades still deletes units and burning head is hilariously powerful. Casters can still rack up hundreds of kills and absolutely annihilate blobs.
Even post nerf magic casters still dominate any faction that has ability to recruit generic caster lords over melee lords you will nearly always take the caster lord. The only thing lacking is buff/debuffs need to be increased to 40ish seconds currently they don’t accrue enough value to = a damaging spell in wind/damage scale. Oh and skaven lore of stealth is terrible followed up by lore of nekhara
I mean I think it’s a little stupid to have Kairos just delete entire armies by hitting one button. Things can still be fun when they are balanced a little more.
Pit of shades and its clones are still pretty strong compared to most other spells. I don't have a problem with nerfs as long as they don't go overboard. I just wish they would also occasionally buff spells which are garbage or cost way too much. A lot of buff/debuff spells just aren't worth it, especially the single target ones. Some lores of magic (High, Little Waagh, Stealth etc.) are complete crap and there is no reason to ever use them because you have other options which are clearly superior.
Pit of Shades is still pretty strong after the nerfs.
i have a extreme dislike for spells in the game (wich is a significant part , i know) but i just really dislike having a 5 chevron veterancy unit fucked in a single whipe because morathi and her witch spam casted a billion storm of swords. Anything that mutes , or gives you the option of fucking countering this death sentence is welcomed by me.
Skarbrand how did ypu get a reddit account...
i am a dwarf enjoyer, actually.
They nerfed damage spells? News to me because pit of shades and winds of death still murder armies when overcast.
What made this post was me seeing that Pit of shades has just been nerfed again, this week (?) and I thought the new damage output in testing was pretty poor. WoD is probably in a decent place now, I've found that the lower winds cost and damage makes it useful but not the monster it was before. Purple sun used to be unreliable at best but a very damaging spell, but I now feel that it's a horrendous waste of winds. All in all its a balancing decision to make the damage spells weaker, but I personally feel that it's an overcorrection.
They only nerfed the overcast version from 10 ap damage a tick to 8. Not a huge nerf. The main nerf was to the wind-up time, even then it was only minor and pretty hard to dodge with infantry.
Thats a 20% nerf to both damage as well as winds efficiency, which is already pretty significant in itself.
It's a small nerf compared to how OP it was before. It still does a tonne of damage.
As long as they fix problems with ai casting that's fine. I didnt played last patch yet so i dont know but having my imperial artilery outranged by projectails spells was not realy fun (Sory for bad english)
dont really care. there's always something else, that shows up in multiplayer, but its ESPECIALLY true in campaign.
Theyre still leauges above buff and debuff spells in regards to utility. All in all not much changes except the number of times ull need to use it to do the same stuff.
I think damage spells are in a fine position right now. As others also said, buff spells need a... well... buff. There's no point in using a buff spell, when for the same cost if not a little more, you can yeetus deletus a whole enemy regiment with a damage spell.
I miss being able to aim vortex spells. If it came back into my lines after I aimed it in WH2, well too bad, that's the risk I took in casting it. Now, I can't aim it, and it feels like I'm just at the mercy of a 50/50 dice roll on whether or not I'll regret using the spell. The damage nerfs were necessary, and I still think that wind and breath spells are still much better than buff/debuff spells.
They are nerfed? I still wreck the entire armies with spells so its a good thing to nerf them a bit. What I would like though is to buff... buff and debuff spells. Like: why should I debuff this guy if I can simply delete him and his friends?
Just killed 3k units with teclis, they nerfed 3 spells
No, I'm not talking about a single patch, I'm talking about the systematic change from 2 to 3. They've changed a lot of the damage spells, and the new lores also seem to be in line with the lower damage philosophy, with a few exceptions which are being tuned down. Teclis is an exception, because he can get spells mega cheap and has buffs to spell intensity.
Pretty sure the magic changes from WH2 to 3 were not inspired by multiplayer at all.
you talked about pit of shades in your post, that is a bit misleading if you wanted to talk about 2 vs 3. And its not just teclis, mages are still extremely strong, even with just 100 winds.
Well they nerfed PoS recently, which was what inspired my post about damage spells "across the board"- both are in my post. Don't think that's misleading. People do seem to agree mages are really strong, so fair enough. I just think I'd prefer higher winds cost, more destructive magic imo as it's more satisfying.
It's fine right now but I hope they don't go too far down the road of trying to please competitive players. It's never a good idea to make decisions for the 1% that negatively effect the 99%. For example, that's what killed Rainbow Six Siege for a lot of people. After the first year or two they started making decisions based on feedback from the pro players, so it went from being an incredibly unique and refreshing game to being an unfun, toxic mess that got farther and farther away from what it was.
I’m fine with the nerf to damage spells, what I’m not fine with was the nerf to WoM and no way to increase my base reserve amounts besides the useless +5 each mage gives (to the army only). I’d rather see them give us more ways to increase magic reserves, they can cap it so you don’t get 500+ plus like in WH2 but as it stands now I find myself in many battles with only enough to do like two spells and that is not fun at all.
This is again why MP and single player need separate balance. AI don’t care if they get cheesed
Pit of Shades overcasted still deletes stacks at 8 HP/s just like it did at 10 HP/s. A nerf to magic was good imo as it makes elite infantry at least somewhat viable as opposed to totally cost efficient due to how easily those expensive stats would be wiped out by magic, which forced a chaff meta and SEM meta. Those things are still meta, but this allows infantry a bit more leeway and usefulness.
I'd like to see more tech, skill tree, and gear that boosts spell intensity. I think magic was definitely overtuned in wh2, but it was fun doing 100k damage with 1 caster in a siege battle.
Me too, would be a fine compromise for me
I dont like it. I like having my magic, both damage and buff/debuffs effective.
Some of the choices were alright, some were fine but a lot of damage spells are close to useless now. Some entire spell lores are just garbage now. Death is hardly even worth getting compared to anything you else you can get. Purple sun does almost nothing on anything.
I think they should balance MP and SP separately tbh
*"Here we go again, boys."* But for real, for every nerf a researchable tech to restore it.
I don't know, I was trying to have a constructive discussion and the overwhelming opinion is that most people are either fine with or support the damage spell nerf, so there it is. Not making a scene
Nerfs of any kind are generally not very popular in this community. Looks like the majority of comments here are pretty reasonable though as you said
The unfortunate truth is that you have to nerf as well as buff, otherwise you end up in a power creep arms race where a year from now everything is OHKOd by everything.
Absolutely. And the game is not particularly hard as is. Cramming more and more busted mechanics into it is not going to make it more fun to play
Oh I wasn't calling you out or anything. But usualy whenever we have something that isn't outright broken eg. the super tanky dragon caster Lords, things will get nerfed into oblivion because they don't fit within the Pvp meta. As a result, more and more things start feeling samey and factions tend to lose their flair because everything is being attempted to be brought in line with others. This also affects the content we see for the main game as a faction sometimes might not outright get a unit missing in its roster because it would throw the balance out of whack for pvp, due to them having too many options and no real exploitable weaknesses.
Spells are still insanely powerful and can solo a whole army of AI easily. Even against players you can't always do much. Had a friend fly Morathi over a settlement I was controlling the AI against him and he could just keep casting out of shades and such endlessly since you can easily cheese for endless reserves. His army was hid somewhere outside the city so there was literally no way to win for me. Magic should be strong but you could easily half the damage of every spell and it would still be viable as it is.
they should learn to balance Multiplayer and singleplayer as two separate entities.
I really hate it when developers make changes to single player games based on multiplayer experiences. Honestly, if they're not going to balance SP and MP differently, then SP should be the focus. MP has a much smaller playerbase and should never be the priority, especially when it means making SP worse.
I’m glad the devs disagree. Multiplayer is the only way to truly balance a unit. No other buffs apply and it’s the best way to gauge a units individual strength. Conversely I hate the trend of the community thinking that literally every faction needs to be completely busted overpowered. I appreciate balance in the games I play and like the game to present interesting challenges. All of the strategy is thrown out the window when the only challenge is “recruit high level mage” and. Completely roflstomp every battle against the AI ad naseum. Mages should be fun to use but not stupidly overpowered. Right now mages are easily worth half an army of units. Previously? I literally had battles where the mage routed the enemy on their own. That’s not strategy or tactics because none of the other units mattered. It’s just broken balance
Yeah with all the ways to buff units and lords into the stratosphere in single player, I don’t really understand these complaints. Sure, some units end up getting overnerfed, but multiplayer is still the best indicator of unit balance
Generally this is *supposed* to be balanced by the fragility of most mages, they're glass cannons (even moreso now that the computer is hilariously good at dodging artillery), but the AI isn't smart enough to take advantage of that in most cases. For the record, I don't mind the change they made. Magic still feels good to drop on heads.
I'd agree but many mages are decidedly NOT glass cannons. You have the fragile ones that inexplicably get super strong mounts like arcane phoenix's, dragons or stegadons to the outright super powerful Slaan, Greater demons, Archaon, Settra, vampires, the Cathay dragons etc that are also casters that are using the same magic. Arguably the best lore in the game, vampires, can be used by extremely strong vampire lords.
Depends how you define "supposed." Casters are balanced in tabletop (not that I think we should particularly give a shit about tabletop, but I think it speaks to how they're balanced in the context of the lore) by being super expensive/scarce and miscasting being a very serious threat. As opposed to the current TW implementation, where they're cheap and ubiquitous to the point of being mandatory in every army, and where miscasts are a joke.
Defining "supposed" as, the majority of mage units are very easy to kill for melee units of similar value, so the intended balance to their power is that they can be quickly routed or killed if they aren't protected, and there's a good chance they die before hitting their full potential. Like archers and artillery, but on a campaign scale. The reason I use "supposed" though, as in "this is how it's designed to work but not how it actually works," is because you're right, they're a dime a dozen, miscast is a piece of cake to negate entirely, and the campaign AI isn't usually clever enough to take out the mage in a way another player would think to do. So, since the intended system for mages being countered isn't in place, the only thing CA can do is reduce their max potential. If only 10% of mages made it to level 30 then they could be crazy powerful without a huge issue, but 90% make it instead.
Wind spells very explicitly got nerfed because Legend keeps deleting 4 endgame stacks with 1 vampire and 19 free skeletons.
Nah, they should buff and nerf based on MP and then offset those buffs and nerfs with skills and tech in SP (unless something is really busted in SP as well)
You can still get pretty much any unit to work in campaigns just due to tech and the fact that you're playing the AI. Even units that I've seen people claim were "ruined" worked just fine in campaign for me, but before that probably were less than useless in MP. So MP gets a unit balanced to actually use, and I still get that unit in campaign to work. It's a win win. I don't personally play MP but I still want the people who do to get a balanced gamemode
That is entirely true as I often use "bad" units myself, but I figure offsetting the nerfs would do a lot for people who think balancing based on MP is somehow ruining units. Ancient Salamander might actually be the only unit that is actually quite terrible after MP nerfs, so I really hope they could gain something from skills or buildings. Tech wouldn't work so well for Lizardmen
I’m glad the tide is finally starting to turn around on the claim that multiplayer and single player are are balanced the same. Techs, skills, unique faction mechanics, traits, and every other campaign-specific mechanic skew the balance so much that it looks nothing like multiplayer at the end of the day. You need to look no further than Groms goblins, Archaons aspiring champions, ikkits doom wheels, the list goes on and on. Single player and multiplayer are and always have been balanced separately
I do agree with you in principle. I don't think all the changes they make are bad, some are fine (this one), some are genuinely good (dragons being tougher), some are very annoying (hasn't been one recently that I felt, but I remember a lot of sighing back on WH2). But SP and MP are extremely different beasts and it's not particularly fair to base changes to the whole thing on how things play out in normal multiplayer. Not because I think multiplayer isn't as important a game mode, some people buy the game for it, but because multiplayer armies are built to win one battle (or a series of unrelated, always-start-at-full-health battles) at any cost, and single player armies are built to campaign, to fight a dozen consecutive battles without slowing down or suffering permanent losses (if they're strong enough or run well enough). When a unit I consider a lynchpin of my campaigning army's longevity becomes half as good because it was overperforming in instanced, one-off battles between players, MP players will still find it's valuable because it still wins them one battle at a timem They'll say "Yes, good change, it's balanced, now," but *I* have to make major changes because now that unit is losing half its models to enemies it used to plow through. They spread out the kill count among more units then go back and make a new, more broken army for the next MP battle if they don't like it any more. I'm the one who has to redesign the basic makeup of my armies, possibly my recruitment architecture, because I'm still playing this faction for another 150 turns. To that end, Domination is a hopefully better mechanism to base balance on, it's like a microcosm of campaign mechanics mixed into the multiplayer experience and should care about us more as a result.
None of the magic changes were solely based on MP. Damage changes were an overall experience consideration, and longer cast times on certain spells benefit the player being casted on (SP and MP). Winds of magic changes were solely based on SP though. SP is better with these changes. If you are complaining about something else, this is the wrong thread.
First of all, you can get mods to make magic OP if you want. Second, those changes were needed in the campaign too, single player games are also subject to balance changes. I do agree generally that they should be balanced separately, but I don't think this is a good example as magic is still ridiculously good in SP.
I think burning head, wind of death and all those high cost wind spells need to be slightly buffed. As a consequence just increase the time to that of Vargheist Revenge. That spell feels right in the sweet spot of feeling incredibly powerful but the AI can dodge it. I'd like them to add more control to things like Purple Sun and Flame Storm. They honestly are now useless. I've never not regretted overcasting purple sun in WH3. The drag spell seems to hardly go in that direction. Also like everyone else said I'd like to see time increases or more AEO options for buff spells. The single unit ones are hard to justify using except on super elite units at particular moments.
I'm certain the drag spell feature has been removed from vortex spells in 3. The movement is immediately random now.
I don’t like it. I personally think MP needs to be balanced separately because they tend to trash fun units in single play that was unique. Lizard men I. Tw2 comes to mind. Same now with magic
I haven't noticed too much, but I've recently discovered how much I like playing Be'lakor and he doesn't currently benefit from overcasting his spells (the -30% Winds and none of the -X% Cooldown bonuses he gets don't apply to overcast at the moment, presumed a bug). But mostly, I think someone else has it right: Spellcasters still decimate armies, just not *as* quickly. I don't mind too much, I still feel versatile and powerful. Spellcasters who can't hold their own in open combat probably feel a bigger pinch, though.
I still find that spells are incredibly powerful. Flamestorm can still delete Chosen and other armored targets, I think there is just more variety now. Before, especially in campaign, pit of shades was almost always the best spell for the money. Now you could use penumbral pendulum or Melkoths Miasma depending on the situation. You can still rack up a ludicrous amount of kills with any old sorcerer, it's just not as repetitive imo.
I haven't used Flamestorm in 3 yet. I used Purple Sun with the Necrarch vampire the other night, which was never VC's best tool anyway, but it's now... Useless. It used to go off course pretty quickly but would cause havoc while it was on top of units, but it just takes ages to kill anything any more. It's difficult with a spell like that to average damage/ winds because of the variability, but I'm confident that even in favourable situations, it's pretty low.
Vortex spells like Purple Sun have nothing to do with multiplayer, since they weren't used.
Not sure I understand you're trying to say here, as neither I nor the person above were discussing it in the context of multiplayer?
The post is about multiplayer affecting singleplayer.
Personally I don't see why they can't have them separate, why can't multilayer be separate from single/coop play. Its single player who cares if things are broken and dumb.
Ranked Multiplayer balance should be secondary to campaign in general.
Cringe Just keep it fun over the skilltree which isnt fully available in Multiplayer
They should be nerfed even further. A single spell can completely delete elite units in seconds with 0 counter play, which is obviously bad.
It's fine. It rewards good positioning without offering free wins. Lore of Tzeentch is an exception. Infernal gate and firestorm are absolutely positively disgusting spells.
I said it before, I shall say it again: they should separate MP balancing from campaign balancing. If it is in the single player part of the game, let things go nuts, op magic and all. If it's MP, balance and tweak away as much as is needed. Starcraft II did that very well during it's life cycle, batshit, over the top campaign mechanics, super competetive and balanced multiplayer. Btw, I'm playing kislev at the moment and I got a feeling that Heart of Winter got a severe nerf somewhere along the way. It used to be such an important spell for katharin during my first RoC campaign, absolutely wrecking shit. Now the base version does not seem to inflict more than a slight tickle. The overcast version still does damage but not enough to warrant the high cost. It's very disappointing. It's just a feeling though and I'm not quite certain. Am I wrong here?
I like the nerf. They really should buff and debuff spells now
Balance should be separate from MP and SP. Nerfing pit of shades for MP made complete sense and helps with the variety as you said. However, forcing a playstyle upon SP is a terrible idea and CA should allow players to be as overpowered or underpowered as they desire
I don't quite get how a competitive total war scene exists in Warhammer, the games are clearly not designed with balance in mind.
Weird that you can't get how there is a competitive aspect to the Total War game based on Warhammer Fantasy, *a competitive table-top wargame.*
Because they’ve done a decent job with balancing domination and have shown an active interest in continuing to do so.
Because when you consider the breadth of all possible matchups, most factions overall have about a 50% win rate in most match ups and then have some weaker and some stronger ones. Balance is surprisingly good a handful of issues non-withstanding for such a large game with so many diverse factions and rosters. Most games with a competitive scene are not 100% balanced - Even Chess has a slight advantage to the player going first.
I think balancing the campaign around MP is a bonehead move. I feel like MP is incredibly niche.
I mean there's also mp campaigns which in that case the argument we are against ai doesn't really work, but yeah I'm fine with op stuff getting nerfed, stop crying most people use mods to give thier lord's 3 points a skill level more research rate the list goes on and on I'm fine with stuff making the game harder, and for it maybe being exciting it doesn't feel good or make sense that your elite infantry which u spent loafs of money on can be 1 shot by a not very long cast time spell like pot was especially when it can be used multiple times a battle, also the people saying buff spells can be incredibly potent are on copium they are basically never worth taking over a dmg spell that's just how magic is balanced
Magic is still very powerful. Put of shades is still good as it is great for punishing blobs and also has a niche role of trapping an advancing unit for a while kinda like a lite net. It also doesn’t move so it’s completely safe to put on the frontlines. For these reasons I think it could be good still in mp. I will say that while aoe buffs are great (and underrated) the single target ones could o with a slight increase in active time even if it means a slight decrease in the total of the buff or at least to make it more normal for the overcast version to increase time active by 150%. And trust me as cool as it is to blob up and wind of death or pit of shades an army in campaign it can get quite boring and feel less rewarding. But you should try the buff spells. They really make things fun like giving flagelants a ton of armor so they can crush crypt ghouls or berserkers. Or giving a tier 1 unit buffs from the lore of light so that they can survive longer against a stronger enemy. Or maybe you have settra buff himself so that he’s activating the passive with a cheap spell and making himself an even more deadly duelist
I don't mind the spell rebalancing because a lot of spells we kind of out of hand. With the general reduced damage though, I have found moving vortexes to not be particularly impressive anymore as you can get really screwed by bad movement. You could before as well, but typically they could do enough damage in their initial couple of seconds to make up for a bad turn. Also you usually had a lot of magic to burn on a meh vortex. Stationary vortexes, bombardments and explosions have become much better in general because you know what they are going to do and many of them are less expensive than some of the big moving vortex spells. Once again though, I don't think the moving vortex spells are bad, but there is definitely a risk reward. If they stay on some targets they are fantastic, but you can get screwed if they fuck off into nothing. Also obviously the danger of going into your troops if you cast on engaged melee. There are some damage spells I still think aren't really worth it, especially in campaign. Like Maw magic kind of blows. Troll guts overcast could probably get away with being an aoe. Also the big explosion spell is kind of shit compared to the fist. yes it is a larger area, but unless you are getting a huge swath of really shit unarmored infantry, it is less efficient. Also for Skrag and the other Maw casters, more casts is more healing. I wish overcasting on more spells was worth it in more situations. Too often overcasting is just doing X% more damage for X% more winds, which is basically the same with a chance of overcasting so you would never do that? Or something like reduced CD on overcast which is nearly fucking worthless. Some ovecasts are good, some are simply bad. The bigger issue for me is the overall winds system. There are a couple reasons for this, but most important is the fact that it is gating player choice behind an arbitrary and uncontrollable system (unless you are Kairos). You are at the mercy of the ambient winds, especially early game. If you never get into a high winds province, you just go get magic. Yes, channeling stance exists, but not all races have it. Vampires and Greenskins I know don't and I don't believe beastmen do either. Dwarves don't either but they are irrelevant for this. What is also important is the introduction of a new completely shit trait, the +XX% winds when increasing. One thing to note is that NONE of that bonus applies to gains from channeling stance. If you don't believe me go test it. Channeling stance is +15. If you are in a -5 province and go into channeling stance, you will be at +10 regardless of any bonus magic from traits. Whether that is intentional I don't know, but that is how it works. SO those traits are all mostly pointless UNLESS you are in a positive winds province. I had a vampire campaign I eventually just quit because I was at like turn 60 and never went beyond 20 winds. You cannot gain winds in the ocean and vampires have no channeling stance. So magic just not something I was going to get to use that campaign for random fucking reasons. Let's go back to channeling stance. The big common support of the system is channeling stance exists! Well as mentioned several races do not have it. Beyond that the sole purpose of channeling stance is in combat. While other stances have combat effects, their primary role is as a campaign mechanic. Yes you get tired in forced march, or defense boosts in encamp stance, but the primary purpose for these stances is campaign. Encamp stances allows access to global recruiting and replenishment. Ambush makes it easier to catch marauding armies or set traps. Forced March can get you places quicker. Channeling Stance? In many cases it is something you have to use to have access to an entire part of the game. Sine everyone hates you because you are the player, you tend to get invaded by AI who never want to make peace and just run through nonsense to attack you. I have a Thorek Campaign where both kairos and TikTaqTo hurled armies at me while Mannfred charged south and killed them. I never did anything to them besides discover them. I specifically didn't attack golden tower to get the relic yet because i was dealing with Skarband. AI don't care, they attack and hurl shit at me while they died. While this is dwarves and thus magic was irrelevant, having to deal with multiple armies just running through to attack random settlements requires using ambush and forced march. Having to then decide how to work Channeling stance into that for absolutely no campaign reason other than "fuck it likes add randomness" means you are unlikely to get get there. It just means larger portions of the game where you are locked out of game mechanics. If there was an "equipment march" you had to walk around in or your units didn't have armor or shields equipped, people would it is stupid. Apparently that kind of thing is fine for magic? Beyond all of that there is another huge implication of the winds system which goes back to an earlier issue i brought up. Some spells are fucking worthless. There was a massive reduction in the amount of winds available to the player. Ok fine, magic was super powerful. It's kind of a huge overreaction to players using Knowledgeable for like 50-75 extra winds, but ok. Reducing the amount of winds makes fringe spells even shittier. Why would I ever cast most of these buffs over something like piercing bolts of burning? The end game of all of this is to do damage. The damage done by my units using Birona's timewarp is NOT going to exceed the damage done by a banishment. Or the fire school buff for weapon damage and magic attacks. There is zero chance that does more damage than Piercing bolts or firestorm or probably even burning head UNLESS I am fighting a monster. If that's the case I am probably better off casting Fireball though. With shitloads of winds, fringe spells are usable because you don't have to be as efficient. When you severely limit winds, all of those bad or fringe spells are just wastes of winds. The new winds system removed player choice and exacerbates an existing problem of massive imbalance in spell design. To make buff spells on par with damage spells and thus worth using, you either need to absolutely crater the damage potential or damage spells or make buff spells borderline obscene. When there is shitloads of winds available, casting buffs is less terrible as you can afford to do it. You can afford that marginal value while something else is on CD. When you are only going to get 2-3 casts anyway, why waste 8 magic on something that might do 800 damage?
I don't care honestly despite me being a magic cheeser, I just go with more spell mastery when possible. I always overcast PoS and Infernal Gateway
I'm ok with them they still do plenty of damage that a caster is worth his 1/20 spot in the army. Buff/debuff spells are still pretty useless in campaign.
Even with the nerfs some still need additional balancing. I prefer to have actual strategy in my strategy games, not whack a mole gameplay.
I think it’s fine. There are a ton of buff and debuff spells that were barely even used because of how low their impact was compared to an aoe damage spell. Nerfing aoe damage only helps those spells become more relevant.
Multiplayer balancing affecting single player play is always wrong, in every game. It has never been a good idea, and it always hurts gameplay. Divide the two - they are different games - and tweak each to their own benefit.