Rune Mages ruin my game :(

[Alexgvf]

they are so OP!

I dont mind overpowerd spells like turn time back spells because they are random and it adds some flavor to the game, and i can turn a blind eye on them. But in all my games rune mages are available, and i dont like to use self imposed rules, at least in the units i choose! (like NO rune mages in my armies xD)

Can somebody make a mod from them? at least dont make available that ugly skill that gives more charges?

English is not my best language :grin:

[saroumana]

You should look here (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=475285#post475285), each use of phantom decrease his effeciency by one third.

[Alexgvf]

Thanks :grin:

[gunnyhighway]

I use them and I love them but the only one of their skills I use is the crit and use em as a ranged dps since the other ranged dps in this game suck. Problem fixed.

[zjazd18]

Yes I use them as dmg dealers aswell, coz i like to see big numbers on the screen and laser is sick with max might runes. Maidens spear also can crit for insane dmg. But the idea of 3rd skill being able to cast on rune mages itself is plain dumb. Should be fixed number of charges.

[Karlos]

True, they're way OP but I've never used them, not in CW, not in WoTN. I simply hate the idea of spells/abilites getting stronger with unspent runes. Dunno why, just seems stupid. Always hoarding those runes and not spending them on those interesting abilities and all because of those stupid mages. Nah, I'll pass. Gimme some Rangers, Demonologists, Soothsayers, Royal Thorns and Black Dragons and watch the dance :)

[Xargon]

Yes I use them as dmg dealers aswell, coz i like to see big numbers on the screen and laser is sick with max might runes. Maidens spear also can crit for insane dmg. But the idea of 3rd skill being able to cast on rune mages itself is plain dumb. Should be fixed number of charges.

Actually, some maximum of charges in addition to the rune requirement might be a good thing. Simply removing the third ability won't solve the problem since runic word can provide all the runes they need. (Like maximum 1 charge of phantom, 2 charges of laser and maybe some changed third ability)
And I do think the laser is overpowered as well - its damage just scales too high.

[namad]

the third ability is really not that powerful at all! the third ability is basically just runic word, which is a ~5mana spell

the real problem is the 2nd ability which has the effect of a 20+ mana spell and it can be used again and again and again...


if the phantom ability becomes super duper weak after a couple uses that might a fine fix?


anyways I wanna use this mod but is it compatible with this one? http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=35494&page=16 because I need to use that one too

[zjazd18]

Just runic word shoudnt affect amount of charges, it shouldnt replenish them. It's fine that they scale with runes into oblivion, but what it's not fine is that 40 is the max. I have 80 unspend mind runes at lvl 55 and no good skills to take so it's like i don't take any sacrifice. I think it should have scaling to 100+, numbers could stay the same. So 60% phantom if u have 100+ unspend runes, not sure about exact number.

[Alexgvf]

i think i could live with a phantom with 20% to 40% health if was only one charge. it could be really strong, but not cheesy.

all battles are just extra easy with paladins. phantom --> secondwind -->phantom --> second wind (...) gigantic army with resurrect ability! -.-

just make them with one charge on each skill, or make them like in AP ;)

[Aleksandar777]

I'm disappointed cause they weakened rune mages so much and change the ability which ressurect, i loved that it
now rune mages are useless

[namad]

I'm disappointed cause they weakened rune mages so much and change the ability which ressurect, i loved that it
now rune mages are useless

huh? rune mages are like 1000 times more powerful in warriors of the north than in crossworlds...

[saroumana]

if the phantom ability becomes super duper weak after a couple uses that might a fine fix?


anyways I wanna use this mod but is it compatible with this one? http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=35494&page=16 because I need to use that one too

Yes they are comptatible ( aka you'll not encounter any bug). But you'll may be don't get the benefice of calm_rage and blizzard fix.

[Aleksandar777]

huh? rune mages are like 1000 times more powerful in warriors of the north than in crossworlds...

i mean, there is leadership 2000 and here is 180, and proportionally higher, at first energy which is more important
and why they replaced revive ability with this usless one

[Aleksandar777]

Why they change things if they use the same unit in this KB

[camelotcrusade]

Seems to me the real problem is with Phantom letting you use the units abilities. Unit talents compete with spells more than ever for similar effects -- so if you play your cards right the Phantom spell is like a Gift + Summon spell rolled into one. I can get extra resurrections, blinding bombs, even more summons, etc. Being able to access those talents on the fly and without using up your spell action is a huge tactical advantage. Plus, once you've used the trick you wanted you still have a 2-round distraction.

Now if the Phantoms didn't have any talents they would still be useful as a summon for distortion mages -- but not nearly so abusable. And the rune mage wouldn't seem OP, imo.

[namad]

i mean, there is leadership 2000 and here is 180, and proportionally higher, at first energy which is more important
and why they replaced revive ability with this usless one

except for the fact that the new rune mages are actually 1000 times stronger, the new abilities are insanely powerful, moreso than the old abilities :-p

by using the 3rd ability and the spell chargers you can regain infinite mana at the end of a battle, by using the 2nd spell and either runic word or the 3rd ability you can target another create like say paladins to generate infinite revives, as a result you can manage in a single battle, if you are very patient to do weird things like cast sacrifice 50times :-p this combination of powers makes the entire game almost pointless to play because it's too powerful. (these combos work better with 40mind and 40magic runes unspent)



whereas in crossworlds rune mages were a mediocre well rounded unit with a few interesting gimmicks and strong positive synergies in a level 5 unit based army.

[Zechnophobe]

except for the fact that the new rune mages are actually 1000 times stronger, the new abilities are insanely powerful, moreso than the old abilities :-p

by using the 3rd ability and the spell chargers you can regain infinite mana at the end of a battle, by using the 2nd spell and either runic word or the 3rd ability you can target another create like say paladins to generate infinite revives, as a result you can manage in a single battle, if you are very patient to do weird things like cast sacrifice 50times :-p this combination of powers makes the entire game almost pointless to play because it's too powerful. (these combos work better with 40mind and 40magic runes unspent)



whereas in crossworlds rune mages were a mediocre well rounded unit with a few interesting gimmicks and strong positive synergies in a level 5 unit based army.

This is pretty true. I actually would have preferred the KB:CW Rune mages, simply because they are a more balanced unit.

I don't recruit them in KBWOTN since they do, in fact, ruin the game.

[Dragnipurake]

Is it possible to make a mod which adds a Reload timer to each of the Runic Mage's skills?

[Xargon]

This is pretty true. I actually would have preferred the KB:CW Rune mages, simply because they are a more balanced unit.

I don't recruit them in KBWOTN since they do, in fact, ruin the game.

Same here. I played around a bit with them when I got access to runemages in Greenwort, but couldn't really find a way (even with self-imposed restrictions) to make it fun, so I dropped them altogether (phantom is overpowered, laser gets overpowered with many might runes, and using them almost exlusively as a shooter is no fun at all).

[namad]

even with 40 might runes laser wouldn't be overpowered if it had like reload 4 or 1charge per battle (It would be strong but no stronger than those dragon line attacks)

really the OP thing is the whole interaction with runes and the 3rd ability and runic word, the first two abilities with 1 or 2 uses max per battle would make a reasonable unit, possibly even a weaker one than kb:cw if you limited each to only 1 use

[tiberiu]

I don't recruit them in KBWOTN since they do, in fact, ruin the game.

There are many things that "ruin" the game , well, not the game, only the challanging part of it. I just don't understand why some see that Rune Mage is overpowered and ruins the game but deny that Droids, spells like Phantom and Sacrifice ruin the game. Or Magic Spring (=infinite mana) Why this selective observation?

I don't think Rune Mages are any more overpowered then Droids with their absolutely Imba ressurection (44/unit if I'm correct with Reload compared to puny inquisitor with 7/unit and 1 Charge)

[zjazd18]

There are many things that "ruin" the game , well, not the game, only the challanging part of it. I just don't understand why some see that Rune Mage is overpowered and ruins the game but deny that Droids, spells like Phantom and Sacrifice ruin the game. Or Magic Spring (=infinite mana) Why this selective observation?

I don't think Rune Mages are any more overpowered then Droids with their absolutely Imba ressurection (44/unit if I'm correct with Reload compared to puny inquisitor with 7/unit and 1 Charge)

Ye i don't get it why they havent changed them yet. Droids are infact bigger joke than rune mages, as long as 1 remain in each stack u can ressurect to full.

[namad]

actually this is where you're incorrect.


droids can revive an infinitely large number of droids, and via sacrifice create a quite large amount of non-droid revives as well, however eventually you'll run out of mana, unless maybe you're enemy has a stack of non-retaliation units you can set up an infinite mana combo via mana spring with.

in balance for this the droids are otherwise fairly mediocre units without a lot else going for them.



rune mages: can in tandem with another unit generate an infinite number of revives of ANYTHING that can ever be revived by it's tandem partners. although the revival of non-droids as you pointed out is far far slower! however you don't have to cast sacrifice constantly, and so you don't have to spend mana, or rely on managing to proc magic spring repeatedly (which you cannot always do)

that's only one of the rune mages abilities though, the other two abilities are also bonkers! the laser is basically as powerful as any offensive ability any unit has, comparing to the droids which have quite poor offense. then the final ability generates infinite uses of the other two abilities, but if you have 40magic runes (or possibly fewer magic runes in the latest steam patch) it can also generate runes fast enough for quite a lot of casts of the spell chargers which can generate endless mana and endless rage!


the fact that the rune mage requires a tandem isn't really a drawback compared to droids because droids have to work in tandem as well. where the rune mage really shines though is in the things like phantom'ing royal thorns or royal griffins, or ANYTHING, that's the biggest drawback of droids, they can't use their stupidly OP healing until AFTER SOMETHING DIES, whereas the rune mage's ability can be used to heal things after things die, OR simply to increase the size of the army on turn 1 before anything has died, it can PREHEAL! and it can do it every turn instead of every 3 turns, so while the healing power is lower, you can use it more times per battle and on more targets....


the final point though is that you could just run BOTH and go rune mage:droid:droid:inquistor/or/paladin:royal thorn/or/royal griffin


now if it were possibly to run 5types of droids all at once, OR to run two stacks of the same type of unit at full leadership (the way enemies can) then yeah an all droid army would be stronger than an army with rune mages... but since you have to run 3non-droids in every army, and the droids can only heal those units via sacrifice, and sacrifice is very expensive it starts to limit the power of the absurdly powerful healing the repair droids have. also you can run a rune mage in a stack of 1, you could let's say run this army: royal griffins:rune mage:rune mage:rune mage:rune mage and after the first turn have 340% of your leadership in griffins all of whom have created celestial guardians and then the following turn have 580% of your leadership in celestial guardians and royal griffins ...


repair droids are a powerful option that's not that poorly balanced, magic spring might be unbalanced but at least it's unbalanced in a way that takes forever and is really quite boring and people might not do? rune mages can literally do ANYTHING you can think of better than any other unit in the game (provided you are willing to save 40 runes of whatever type applies to what you want to do)...


although yes i think repair droids could stand to receive a reduction either in power of their ability, or be moved to charges?

tl;dr; rune mages are broken in every single imaginable way, we need a mod to put the rune mages from kb:cw in place of kb:wotn rune mages

[tiberiu]

actually this is where you're incorrect.
droids can revive an infinitely large number of droids, and via sacrifice create a quite large amount of non-droid revives as well, however eventually you'll run out of mana, unless maybe you're enemy has a stack of non-retaliation units you can set up an infinite mana combo via mana spring with.
in balance for this the droids are otherwise fairly mediocre units without a lot else going for them.


Sorry I don't want to derail the discussion about Rune Mages, but what exactly I am incorrect in? You don't seem to understand that Droid use is completly separated from mana. It's not a combination of spells that make Droids grossly overpowered. I simply don't care about Sacrifice if all that you need to finish the game is 3 stacks of Droids.

Also about running out of mana,(which is moot in a Droid discussion anyway) with Chargers and Rune Word mana is virtually infinite. You don't need to resort to Magic Spring.

You say they are otherwise fairly mediocre units. I don't think so, they have good resist, good initiative, good speed. The melee one has a very useful ability to drag units while still attacking them, this can be used to drag them into traps. Also it casts area defenseless which is powerful in many situations.

[namad]

I suppose it's true that chargers+runic word is infinite mana, the reason I compared to magic spring was that a) magic spring was brought up by someone else and b) chargers+rune mage works as well or better in that it would allow a non-soothsayer to generate his infinite mana ~twice as fast it's true that basically everything a rune mage does can be done without a rune mage simply by casting lots of spells, but getting a 0mana cost additional powerful spell every turn is basically what the rune mage brings to the table with those spells being phantom/runic word/ and some sort of powerful attack spell for which laser isn't quite an exact spell.


the reason I brought up sacrifice is for if you plan to add non-droids to your droid army, in which case the only way to make use of the repair droids ability on all of your army is with sacrifice.


if you want to go with a pure droid army something like guard droid+repair droidx4 or something like that fine, go ahead, there might be some fights that army has trouble with, there might not be.


I guess the reason I'd say repair droids are less broken than rune mages is just that there is some drawback to using them, your proposed 3stacks of droids army definitely has trouble in the offense department. repair droids deal less damage than many other troops, and guard droids do as well, then of course you're only using 40% of your leadership so that particular army would have maybe ~70% less offensive ability than some other armies. the army may be indestructible, but it's got less offense, that's a drawback even if it's not a very big drawback, winning almost any fight, but you have to be bored to win them...

whereas basing things around rune mages you may be slightly less invincible, but your offense is quite high, it's hard to envision any scenario in which a rune mage isn't just flat out the best unit in the game in every single regard, because if any other unit were ever better, all you'd do would be use both, and then 60% phantom for 0mana on turn1 the better troop. the best troop in the game < rune mages + 60% of the best troop in the game (unless I suppose you think ice or black dragons are best in which case it doesn't work)..

that's what made rune mages in kb:cw fair, they're phantom ability was I believe based around leadership, not percent, and also targeted enemy units, meaning you could never ensure you'd get something good!

In a king's bounty game where there were 5 different troops that were mechanical that you could have in your army, then yeah, repair droids would be the stupidest most broken thing of all time for sure. I'm just saying the designers thought that as a compensation for having the ability to only heal 2 out of 100 possible troop types in our game we'll make it heal for bonkers insane amounts.


tl;dr; repair droids could be balanced fairly simply by a mod that just changes the amount of life healed on the ability to whatever is deemed appropriate, so if they're that bad, just do that if you want! as far as rune mages go, it's somewhat hard to even imagine a way to balance them, simple number changes probably aren't enough? the way they're designed is just sort of flawed through and through

[malcolmm]

No question Run Mages are vastly overpowered. I've completed all the previous KB games and I am now about half way through WotN.

I usually don't worry too much about no loss wins and in previous games I ended up with between 50 and 100 no loss. In WotN, because I am using Rune Mages with Paladins, I'm at around 150 no loss. Although battles are getting tougher I now always get a no loss, despite no having enough Rune Mages for my available leadership. This results in a boring game. Since I probably don't have the discipline to resist using them or using certain of their abilities, I will have to delete them from my army.