Skill Trees - Third Beta Version - PLEASE VOTE AGAIN!

[EvaRia]

  Cloudrider + Clockmaker + Teleport = ZOMGSUPERSPEED

*Votes those 3 as most fun*

[nilsieboy]

water has really interesting skills, they can freeze opponent for a turn if they win or lose after sometimes

[Korugar]

Darkness' champion ability is definitely OP.

Gravity, while I had enjoyed the previous version(since it's my favorite element), is much more balanced for this change.

[zygrot]

3 best:

Darkness - Teleport is too good, and a champion would actually destroy anyone they beat 2-0 with the champion skill and backstab... Made easier with sacrifice, mage hunter, summon creatures.

Entropy - Shapeshifter is actually ridiculous. So is the trickster tree.

Time - Time champions get there 3 levels earlier than other champions, probably faster too with quest bonuses, have 1 more AP, and Foresight is really good in the right hands.

3 worst (this should be a poll):

Air - There's no useful skills here. Depending on how many people there are, Calm~ could potentially be good, but that's it. You have nothing else to help you win so Rising Storm doesn't do anything, the champion skill doesn't help you at all (you'd hope that your cards are upgraded by then). And it's not like you're particularly good outside battle; you can move around, but that's it...

Death - Similar to air in that you have nothing that helps you. Blood of the Undead is arguably the only skill worth getting.

Fire - The majority of the skills don't do anything particularly useful - as a tier 1 skill, heretic is useless, destroy and fireguard are way too situational unlike the build skills, the discard skills don't even discourage attacks (unlike, say, the water skills), and the champion skill is weak by comparison to most others. I do like the tree though - it's the best overall in terms of design, but definitely needs developing.

[Xinef]

Cloudrider + Clockmaker + Teleport = ZOMGSUPERSPEED

*Votes those 3 as most fun*

Lol, move 7 hexes per turn :]

Let's keep looking for skill combos:

Summon Creatures + Duplication -> You can create 12 cards for each duel, so you can make a legal deck even if you have only 18 cards in your vault.

Chosen One + Stall -> Discard 12 less cards after a loss.
Chosen One + Stall + Low Point of Gravity + Champion of Gravity -> Discard 15 less cards after a loss.

Energy Barrier + Dust Cloud -> Use 2 relics and the town has a 40 hp force field.

Calm Before the Storm + Phase Shifter -> You can safely gather counters and return to finish the battle later.
Calm Before the Storm + Stealth -> Also helps to guarantee safety when you want to gather some counters.

Treasure Hunting + Research -> Use 5 AP to gain a Tier 1 skill for 6 turns.

Backstabbing II + Uncontrollable Rage + Critical Strike II + Heretic + a whole bunch of other skills -> A defeated 2-0 opponent has to discard 22 cards, a relic (and a lot of other nasty things happen)

A number of skills I'm not going to call by name -> You're gaining XP like mad.

Of course some of these combos would require such a high level (and taking other, weaker skills) that they are totally not worth aiming for. Still, it's fun to find the possibilities.


By the way, wouldn't it make more sense to change the skills that give you once 6 cards (ie. Doppelganger, Tremors, Stellar Radiation...), to work similar to Summon Creature?
For example, instead of
"After learning this skill, gain 6 copies of the Supernova card."
it could be
"During a duel, you can use up to 6 Supernova cards for free. They disappear after the battle."

This way it cannot be exploited through selling 6 upgraded cards and buying a dozen of unupgraded cards to gain quickly a big vault. On the other hand it would mean that if you lost those cards for some reason, the skill wouldn't be wasted. IMHO skills should reflect skills, abilities, spells the Elemental can cast etc. rather than reflecting the cards he has in his vault.

[Istari.]

This way it cannot be exploited through selling 6 upgraded cards and buying a dozen of unupgraded cards to gain quickly a big vault. On the other hand it would mean that if you lost those cards for some reason, the skill wouldn't be wasted. IMHO skills should reflect skills, abilities, spells the Elemental can cast etc. rather than reflecting the cards he has in his vault.

This so much, one thing I was really concerned about was that if you had any of those skills and lost 2-0 to a death champion, your character would really be hurt by that.

[Xinef]

If you ever plan to nerf Darkness's champion skill, I have 2 ideas:

Voodoo: If you win a duel, opponent suffers all the consequences you would suffer if you lost.

(eg. if opponent has Critical Strike II, and YOU win, he has to discard 4 additional cards. If he has Heretic skill, and YOU win, he has to discard a relic and you gain +1 XP. If he is a Champion of Death, and you win 2-0, all his upgraded cards become unupgraded.)

It's based on the fact that Darkness is using opponent's strength against him, and also on the fact that attacking Darkness can result in damage being returned back (using CC on opponent's Voodoo Dolls).



Vampirism: If you win a duel, in addition to salvage, you gain all the cards your opponent discarded.

This idea is similar to the current one, but limits the number of additional cards salvaged and their quality, while on the other hand it lets you strengthen it's effect by taking skills that cause opponent do discard more cards. (You can even 'drain' relics if you have the Heretic skill)

[Scaredgirl]

3RD BETA VERSION OF THE SKILL TREES IS UP!!!

Poll reset. Please vote again.


If you have any suggestions, please post them here. We are especially interested in hearing about ways to combine one or more skills to make yourself invincible. Thanks.

[Daxx]

More or less nailed it, except for Air. I still think Calm Before The Storm is too powerful and Rising Storm is now even more powerful (why would you do that?) - those two Tier 1 skills are going to mean that people are going to be using tons of upgraded cards all the time - but otherwise the trees are looking pretty even power-wise. We can only wait until testing shows further imbalances.

[Scaredgirl]

More or less nailed it, except for Air. I still think Calm Before The Storm is too powerful and Rising Storm is now even more powerful (why would you do that?) - those two Tier 1 skills are going to mean that people are going to be using tons of upgraded cards all the time - but otherwise the trees are looking pretty even power-wise. We can only wait until testing shows further imbalances.

Yes, those two skills are indeed a problem. What happened was that we just couldn't come up with any good simply Tier 1 skills that hadn't been used yet.

Rising Storm is not as powerful as you think though. What the description doesn't say is that the counters get reset after you fight someone from a different element. Se the skill is great when fighting only one other element, but no so great when fighting multiple. Power wise, it's still a Tier 2 skill (we moved it from Tier 2 to Tier 1 to get the damn skill tree finished ) .

I'm not a big fan having having "counter" skills in Tier 1 because human error is to probable. I'm more than happy to replace it with something else, but like I said, coming up with those skills is not easy if you want to keep the theme of "Thunderstorm".

[Korugar]

What about....

Sudden Wind: 1AP to knock all non-air players on a certain hex back into their default stance.

Would that be balanced, and fit enough with your theme?

[Kuroaitou]

What about....

Sudden Wind: 1AP to knock all non-air players on a certain hex back into their default stance.

Would that be balanced, and fit enough with your theme?

That's another issue we're trying to avoid.

Skills that:
-Moving other players into hexes/affect hexes
-Involve counters
-Deal environmental effects based on location
-Cause extra discarding
-Create new Siege moves
-Cost high amounts of AP/require Relic usage
etc.

...are too complicated for Tier 1. We've used up so many ideas already regarding the above and then some, so... yeah. ^^;