I've done the same thing you did, that is save crystals to craft in the new patch. I've done more weapon crafting this patch than last patch already, but still a few items from last patch are untouched. Due to the way FM put a "tighter" range on the RNG system, I've been able to observe all of the possible stat combinations from most weapons. A few of them haven't come close to what I've got from before the patch (double sword, epic axe, magic bow). As a whole, runes are much easier this versions. Armors and shields were noticeably better last patch (as in, odds to get supercharged stats). Ruling's still out on weapons. I found some stuff I'd never even thought possible as well. 92/15/22 scythe for example. The weapon system is a lot more polished and robust now.
Bug report When your hero is equipped with -% unit cost and dies, then the next hero in the same battle won't see updated unit cost in the most recently used units list unless he tries to buy something from that list. The normal unit list (button at the bottom) is not affected.
@FM - In coop, certain enemy units such as goblin warriors got ridiculous attack speed and can destroy walls almost instantly. Bug? Intended? Unexpected behaviours? Other than that, way funnier than before!
Giant's pants are not animated (like Paladin Hero cape). And, it may be obvious, Paladin Unit cape has the same bug, About the new map missions difficulty: There was a skirmish mission, 17/20. At first, several orc riders appeared. So I built elven archers. Then some skeletons appeared, so I built some footmen, and a healer. It looked like this was an easy win, but the skeletons just kept spawning, plus mass trolls and more. Things got out of hand quickly. The game is definitely way more exciting now. During some missions I got the message "The enemies are getting stronger" several times. Is that new? Never noticed it before.
I want to say wall units are the reason levels 32, 33, and 35 are even possible. If these levels were a skirmish level, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Ground troops for the most part are there to distract them while snipers/mages do the heavy lifting in terms of dps. Game's pretty nuts. Footmen are actually EXTREMELY relevant now.
Losing feels so amazing in this game. I went into wave 33 thinking 'oh it'll be easy' then the giant spiders came and I just got absolutely destroyed. Matrix could only do so much. There is no more soloing levels with a hero in these waves. Nothing like fighting with your lion guard as your lines get decimated. I think in endless maybe Black Guard is relevant since your walls will probably fall then
I think even more than that, there's finally a distinction between the classes. Elves actually feel mobile and fragile now. Dwarves actually feel slow (stamina's actually a huge problem) but hit like a truck. All in all though, I'd still like to see some buffs to ranged heroes. The melee races are pretty good as is imo, but the ranged ones feel lack luster. I've got a gun dwarf, projectile staff human (worst shit ever, this was a mistake), and bow elf to compare with and they're all a bit lackluster.
Yeah, footmen are are really useful to me now... Not because they can kill or trade with enemy units, but because they can get the attention of enemies and keep them busy while amassing damage dealers or dealing the damage yourself. They arent effective against AOE enemies (unless you have a way of protecting them), but they are essential against ghouls, skeletons goblins, even riflemen, although they die one by one, but it would take ages for one rifleman to get rid of 2 footmen which is what i want. Thing is, you can be overwhelmed too early now without a lot of resources yet, so they are really good early deterrents.
I think endless mode could use a few changes. A big issue is.. you just lose on a certain wave and it doesn't matter what you do. I'm all for having some sort of hard wall for "endless mode", but I think it needs to be a gradual process, rather then "ok you've gone this far but you lose now". I think the game should ramp up to the point where the waves are still beatable, but they start doing irreparable damage to your economy and/or defenses. That is, you can still clear the monsters, but you cannot repair your walls and rebuild your units in time to "reset" by the time the next wave arrives. If you're spending an extra 200 CP each wave to maintain and reset each time, then EVENTUALLY you'll lose. This is perfect. If waves are perfectly scaled in terms of difficulty, you don't need to ramp them up anymore past that. Then it's a gradual process of watching your defenses fall apart. You might go into the first of these waves with 999 gold, but during the fight, you're forced to consume an extra 500-600 CP that you can't generate in time, or one of your walls falls so you summoned a dwarf repairman for the wall, which means weaker wall defense for the next wave. Then gradually, the fight shifts from you having infinite economy and fighting outside your base, to watching your defenses crumble as you're replacing your high level knights and mages with footman and shield knights, to you fighting for your life near your crystal with your last remaining CP. Then finally it falls. That would be satisfying. Ramping up infinitely in terms of increasing enemy stats is a rather shameless "hack" to end endless mode. I'm certain there's some combination of orcs + snipers that become impossible to deal with without committing a lot of resources. The inevitable loss is much better than a "hard wall" of current. Having multiple high priority enemies make strategizing fun and difficult (orcs, goblin snipers, catapults, necromancers are key examples I think). Losing to pure swarm wouldn't be fun to play against either (ie old level 30).
Elfs are the race that was nerfed the least. Dryads are better, GM/Ranger were largely untouched (except for barrage) when compared to humans, and especially dwarfs.
Mm grandmaster lost some nice things. Weapon master only increases AP by 10 at max, maybe 20 would be nicer. Heightened senses got a fair nerf but I don't understand why the cost for incapacitate had to increase :/ GM's DMG per armor also got halved which kinda sucks but oh well. It's 10 times more fun to play though.
Yeah all the points I put into weapon master feel like a waste now. And cutting the time slow to 17 seconds bites. If you're right that this was nerfed the LEAST, my interest in playing further is nil.
The more i play as Human the more i agree with 2hvy4grvty's claim that Elfs may be the least nerfed when it comes to ingame impact. Sure the nerf to Heightened senses is huge and changes the playstyle significantly, but everything else for him still works decently, and Elves still have Elven Arrows to clear the board and instawin you siege battles. And yeah the free dryads for 35 mana covers a huge part of the Elf's early game, while Humans and Dwarves are stuck with footmen. If anything needs buffs, i think it's the Engineer tree of Dwarves. They just seem too lackluster compared to each of the Dwarf trees (cross classing is a good idea for gunners) and even compared to other race's class trees.
ALL weapon specific damage+ passive skills have been balanced to add only +10... Gunners get only+6. That part is definitely huge in balance coz before the patch it is easy to get to overpowered status. Slow was definitely OP as it does EVERYTHING. Sieges, saving units, picking out targets, saving you from dying, etc. Plus, i bet you were playing with slow active at 99% of the time before the update. Take note slow is still pretty strong while active, as it does let you do everything still. As a catch, it's difficult to sustain now (which essentially acts as a pseudo cooldown) which makes it so that you have to be strategic and choose the right times to use Heightened Senses. IMO, that is balance. It may be possible you havent played the other races extensively yet, you should see how much they have changed. Dwarves just got more riskier, and Humans cut their outputs by half (give or take).
Eh, I think the 35 mana for dryads is still a poor investment. Those really don't do anything. Elven arrows are definitely bugged, I think that's the thing that puts elves just a bit over the top. Otherwise, he's very vulnerable, matrix mode is not too frequent, and bows on him are still overwhelmingly underpowered. This is despite being probably the best "ranged" race of the three. I do agree with the dwarf nerfs though, he was WAY too good pre-patch. He was just as mobile as elves, and did as much damage as sword strike per REGULAR attack. He's still pretty good and more comparable with elves, although he has SEVERE mana issues. I honestly think stuff like rage should be free. I haven't played with humans much lately, so I don't want to make any wild claims there. I know mages sucked pre-patch, and my "battle" mage with projectile staves were the worst of my 99s. I can't imagine it's any better now. The sword strike version is a bit less manageable. The support spells are incredibly expensive now, given the lack of "infinite mana". The damage spells from mage tree aren't any more useful... okay so the more I rant, humans are probably the worst (EDIT: NOPE THEY'RE NOT). Dryad, engineer, and mage: all three deserve more buffs. I don't think nerfing at this point is too viable, since if we were to be honest, heroes are quite a bit weaker now given how hard everything hits in 31+. Every class is extremely killable. Even with vampirism, you'll still have to make trips back. Making them worse would just make it more frustrating. I think dwarfs were nerfed hardest, followed by humans, then elves. I think that's the right idea though, given that pre-patch it was probably dwarves >> humans > elves. If you go ahead and replay the older levels though, they're still really easy. It's just 32-35 is just insanely hard by comparison. Balancing for 32-35 might not seem like the best idea in retrospect. EDIT: I want to retract my statement about humans being the worst. Sword strike is still totally viable, and you still have tons of mana to work with. With my new found love of footman, just summon these, stand next to them and arcane magic. A bit more effort perhaps, but it's still there. You're also still doing 1k-2k with sword strike in an AOE WITH disarm per hit with good equipment. Humans, at least sword striking ones, are easily on par with elves. So as a whole, the three races are relative balanced. It's the individual trees that need work. Namely dryad, engineer, and mages.
I know this probably won't happen but will we ever get a sandbox mode where we can test out troop combinations. Also does anyone with a Iphone know how to take out the app info on the top of the page, it's annoying having to scroll down just to see people's comments lol.
