Rune Mages: So ridiculous...

[camelotcrusade]

It sounds like this should be added to the bug thread if we want an official response. Everyone seens to agree the 20 initiative needs another look. Is there any consensus on how we'd like to decry the phantom ability?

Is this right? Preview:

Rune Mage is too fast and phantom ability too strong: The rune mage has 20 initiative which may have been left over from testing. What is the intended value? Also its phantom ability is the same strength regardless of the number of units. Should this be a scaling value?

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

@Zechnofobe
It doesnt work this way my friend : units play in order or initiative, so first play runemage then paladin OR jarl give them second wind and so on to lowest initiative unit, then second turns go in reverse order, from lower to high initiative so runemage will play last in that turn with second wind from pala/jarl. It`s still to much to 1 units cast 60% phantom of whole stack but it cant act more then 2 times/turn (only goblin is able to do that I`m not sure if things changed in WotN but in AP/CW it worked this way, order of units is decided on initiative from high to low, then in reverse and then turn ended, next turn same . . .

This isn't theory craft. Rune mage goes, phantoms paladins. It's turn is over. Paladin phantom goes, second winds rune mage, and then ends its turn. Rune mage goes, phantoms paladins, it's turn is over... repeat.

You aren't 'waiting' you are literally ending their turn with an action. I have done it, and it is glorious.

[gheorghe]

The big problem with Rune Mage is Runic Word ability. It can be cast indefinitely (if you dont use luck rune) that meaning infinite Phantom charges. And with paladins in army that means infinite ressurection.

[sethmage]

Man I love reading this board; some tricks players invent are just priceless.
I remember reading some article about the game developers who were amazed that the players invented ways of playing their game, that developers themselves didn’t know it was possible, maybe it’s the case here.

@ Zechnophobe, keep these tricks coming can’t wait to go home and try it now. lol

[namad]

I reckon the devs just aren't aware players would ever think to split troops, because for any unit besides a rune mage its basically pointless to waste your leadership on smaller stacks of units when you could have bigger stacks? so in their testing they never caught the rune mage problem whereby 1rune mage is as powerful as 30?


ya know what would be nice besides adding a leadership cap? if it were possible for the abilities to have BOTH CHARGES AND RELOAD, so you could phantom every 2turns if and only if you still have charges leftover or something? (basically just whenever 1phantom fades is when you can do a new one, but only so long as you keep the charges flowin? that'd prolly be still quite powerful yet balanced somwhat)

[Zechnophobe]

A single turn delay on the phantom would prevent the first turn phantom spam nicely.

You'd also need to make it so that the runic word ability can't give THEM luck runes. Since they can generate infinite runes this way, which is not a good idea.

[Dragnipurake]

Originally Posted by namad

I reckon the devs just aren't aware players would ever think to split troops, because for any unit besides a rune mage its basically pointless to waste your leadership on smaller stacks of units when you could have bigger stacks? so in their testing they never caught the rune mage problem whereby 1rune mage is as powerful as 30?

I used to split stacks of Inquisitors as well to take advantage of Holy Rage in order to spam Dragon abilities early on for AP. I also split Beholders to get more enemy units stunned. I'm sure there are other instances where splitting is optimal (basically to take advantage of abilities that don't scale with leadership). For instance I'm considering splitting Warrior Maidens since their Call of Vahalla ability seems to scale a little too well (Unit-based rather than HP-based) when it comes to ressing Lvl 4 creatures.

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by sethmage

Man I love reading this board; some tricks players invent are just priceless.

Players can't "invent" anything in a game. They can only discover, at best, very subtle possibilities that the games already offers.
For comparison, electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered.

dictionary.reference.com/browse/invent - to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity

[rekiem]

So I finally got to the part with rune mages, but mine have only 2 intiative, not 20, and my game is not modded...

EDIT: Not complaining, everything else is still working pretty much like described here, just the initiative that is different, and I found it odd.