WoE - Skill polishing - Aether

[Scaredgirl]

I disagree about the Doppelganger skill. I think that the fact that the cards are upped, is a big advantage over Mirror Image. Seems like we see the usefulness of Mirror Image very differently  Maybe someone else wants to give their opinion on the subject?

I'm unhappy with Doppelganger for a completely different reason: there aren't (m)any other skills that require you to either build your deck around them or ignore the fact that you have them.  Doppelganger is a slick idea, but forcing a choice between "use TU or waste the skill" is kind of lame.

How about taking it meta: "You may invoke this power at the beginning of any battle.  You fight with an exact copy of your opponent's deck.  If you win, salvage 2 additional cards."

That's a Doppelganger, WoE style.

I had a similar idea with some other skill, where you could switch decks with your opponent every other turn (or something like that). While deck copying would be pretty cool, the problem is that not everyone has all the cards or money to buy them. This would only lead to many players not being able to play the deck they are given because they don't have those cards on their Elements account. This would be bad because it would give the advantage to rich players, and there is no way around that.

(...)
My beef with the current Evasion is that it automatically evades Aggressive Charge. But what if I'm fortified and want my opponent to attack? Difficult to fix though.
(...)

How about adding a second line to the skill description: "Fortifying cancels this skill." It would make sense, I mean, when you just prepared yourself for battle why flee from it?

Does being Fortified automatically mean that you want to fight? I don't think so. Maybe there is a situation where you want to Evade one player, and be Fortified against someone else. If we did what you suggest, it would not be possible.

Then again.. what you suggest makes perfect sense thematically. Hm.. yea we might change it to that actually.

Thoughts and questions:

Tier 1:

Dimensional Walk - As Dict already mentioned, the wording's not very clear whether it needs to be in a straight line. Other then that, and assuming we will add terrain effects at some point, this skill is good.

Outworlder - Kind of loses it's usefulness the higher level you get, but it's only a t1, so while it's a good candidate to be replaced if we come up with something, it's also not a problem if we leave it as-is.

Bane of Time - The buff is appreciated. Looks good. Now Revenge is even more in need of a buff, but we can get to that later.

Mirror Image - This one is fairly awesome, just for adding a good bit of flexibility in the early game. The added flexibility in deckbuilding is almost OP for a t1, if we had something to replace it I'd consider moving it to the doppelganger spot.

Duplication - The theme is good, but ofc it needs to be balanced vs all the other electrum/card earning methods. Basically, I think we need to first figure out how much a typical "work" action will give, and then we can evaluate skills like crafting and this one to see how they compare. Duplicate has the significant advantage of being able to add cards without being in one of the specific cities that sell those cards. It synergizes very well with Ethereal Bond, allowing you to recover from a loss even more quickly, because you can recreate lost cards without visiting a merchant. Assuming a "typical" work action can generate a little over 1 average card cost in income, then I'd suggest we should make this at least a 3AP action (to prevent double usage) and then call it balanced.

Tier 2:

Evasion - I like the new version. looks good. Dict's suggestion about it not applying if you fortify seems like a good one.

Ethereal Bond - I like this skill. seems balanced and useful. The requirement to "use" the skill is a little confusing, since we don't normally think of using AP in the spirit world, so I would either:
1. Change it to something like "You may resurrect in the same hex you were defeated in, instead of your capital."
2. Note somewhere that AP can be spent in the spirit world. Random thought: In that case we might even consider also just making resurrecting a 4AP action, so that rather than having no actions for a turn, you are delayed in the spirit world by the fact that resurrecting takes your actions for that turn. That might make skills like Dimensional Travel or Chosen One more intuitive.

Energy Barrier - A fun skill, and very powerful in a siege environment. Looks good.

Doppelganger - The "Gain X copies of Y card upped during battle" abilities are not my favorites, but their balanced fine, so we could just leave them alone unless someone comes up with a better idea.

Tier 3:

Phantom Form - Interesting. Moving MORE due to battle seems kinda random though.

Energy Strike - I'm not a huge fan of skills that force other players to discard cards as their main effect. For one, the effect becomes less and less potent as the game progresses, because forcing a player to discard their 3 least useful cards won't matter unless the target is so poor that they can't spare anything. Secondly, it doesn't have much benefit to the user of the skill. What would the player be trying to accomplish by using this ability? I suppose it could work as a way to drive off unwanted players that for some reason you don't want to battle and are confident they won't just attack you, but that's too limited an appeal for a t3. That's my opinion at least.
What if we gave it a "lobotomizing" effect? Something that stops a target player from using a designated t3 or lower skill for x turns? possibly keep the discarding effect too, or perhaps not, but either way it would be a more useful ability to it's owner. Thoughts?

Tier 4:

Dimensional Travel - Presumably this allows you to resurrect instantly (possibly at the cost of a move action), and also to move to the spirit world without having to lose a duel (useful for avoiding other players). Should we word the ethereal bond power so that you can return to the Normal world in the same place you left? Or would using this ability to move to the spirit world mean you return to your capital? Either one works, just need to clarify. This is a good capstone power.
EDIT: oh now it's changed to a summoning power I see. A cool idea certainly. Only one dimensional horror per champion or total on the map? How long does the NPC last? Of course, the big question is what sort of stats does the horror possess? I'll try to think of some suggestion for the horror's stats.

Doppelganger will be changed, just like all the other similar skills. They basically were just placeholders in the first place.

I changed Energy Strike closer to what it was originally (Debilitate). The problem I had with that skill was that instead of giving any direct benefit to the player who has it, it gave a debuff to the the losing player. This is kind of lame because when I beat someone in WoE, it won't give me much satisfaction to know that the person cannot use skills AFTER the battle. Sure it helps the element as a whole by making enemies weaker, but I think all skills should have a direct benefit to the player who has them, otherwise players don't want to take those skills. I think that the current Debilitating Beam is a step to the right direction.

For Dimensional Gate, I was thinking that we would have 13 Dimensional Horrors, one for each element and one BIG one. Each Horror would have their own unique and secret deck with lots of upped cards. Player using the skill would then randomly summon one on these Horrors.

Horrors would have 2 Action Points per turn, and you could basically use them as a regular character, only they couldn't enter Cities or Towns.

Horrors would disappear only when beaten in PvP or when their controller dies. Player could then summon a new Horror.

Something like that.

[YoungSot]

I changed Energy Strike closer to what it was originally (Debilitate). The problem I had with that skill was that instead of giving any direct benefit to the player who has it, it gave a debuff to the the losing player. This is kind of lame because when I beat someone in WoE, it won't give me much satisfaction to know that the person cannot use skills AFTER the battle. Sure it helps the element as a whole by making enemies weaker, but I think all skills should have a direct benefit to the player who has them, otherwise players don't want to take those skills. I think that the current Debilitating Beam is a step to the right direction.

A definite improvement. I very much agree with the idea that skills should have a direct benefit to the player. As for Debilitating Beam, I suggest it be changed so that instead of affecting all t1 and t2 skills, it would target a single chosen skill up to t3. I know you've been following some general rule that counters should be higher tier than what they are countering, but I think if a player is going to devote a t3 skill to nothing but temporarily countering, it should be able to counter other t3 skills. I think that would be much more appealing.

[ak65ala]

My thoughts on changed skills:

Evasion: Make it 'turn off' when you fortify, like was suggested and I think we are at a good spot. Question: If I aggressive charge a person with evasion, do I move and not attack, or does my movement AND attack fail?

Energy Barrier: Consuming a relic seems a bit high for what it does.  You have to preemptively use it, assuming your town will be seiged... and if it is not, you are out a relic and 2 AP. I think this all depends on my understanding of relics.  aside!

Relics!! Here is my understanding of these little guys.  They cost about 1/4 of a card and can buy them in any (?) city.  You can carry 5 items total, these count within that # and do not stack.  They are used for abilities and nothing else.  Is that about right?

So.... if you are in a city defending it, I guess it is not that bad to use a relic... and after 4 days of defending, buy a whole bunch more.  If these assumptions are correct, then... yea, it's good now.  One person blocks two people's siege. 

Random suggestion as I write this!  We should have an ability or town improvement, etc, that allows when seiging a town to cut off their source of cards or relics.  A blockade ability.  This way the town you are hitting can't use the above ability to, you know, stay behind a forever powerful wall.

Debilitating Beam: Much better.  I like YoungSot's suggestion to also targeting a T3 ability.  Or, it could also disable all T1, T2, including passives.  That could be fun, would lead to some good counter play against strong passives, and allow you to attack while they are 'disabled' and gain an advantage from people who gain upped cards with skills!  I find the 1 day too short as is, but that leads to another Question: Skills like this one and caltrops, does the de-buff happen to the opponent's next turn or current turn? Example: I use DB on YoungSot on day 15.  Does that cancel any of his Day 15 T1 and T2 planned actions or does it disallow him from using them on Day 16?

Champion of Aether: Very smooth. Super fun.  I'm assuming you can re-summon until you get the Horror you want? (some fun RNG here in play.) Do you duel with your guy's deck or do the NPC guys? Is it randomized each duel or when the lil' guy spawns? What if players use discarding abilities on the lil' guy? is he immune or does he die when he hits <30 cards?

[Scaredgirl]

I changed Energy Strike closer to what it was originally (Debilitate). The problem I had with that skill was that instead of giving any direct benefit to the player who has it, it gave a debuff to the the losing player. This is kind of lame because when I beat someone in WoE, it won't give me much satisfaction to know that the person cannot use skills AFTER the battle. Sure it helps the element as a whole by making enemies weaker, but I think all skills should have a direct benefit to the player who has them, otherwise players don't want to take those skills. I think that the current Debilitating Beam is a step to the right direction.

A definite improvement. I very much agree with the idea that skills should have a direct benefit to the player. As for Debilitating Beam, I suggest it be changed so that instead of affecting all t1 and t2 skills, it would target a single chosen skill up to t3. I know you've been following some general rule that counters should be higher tier than what they are countering, but I think if a player is going to devote a t3 skill to nothing but temporarily countering, it should be able to counter other t3 skills. I think that would be much more appealing.

If it targets only one skill, then it makes sense that it affects tier 3 as well, because if you use a tier 3 skill to cancel tier 3 skill of your opponent, it's even and nobody gets an advantage. What I talked about is a situation where my skill cancels your skill plus I get some benefit, for example you having a skill that makes Fortify as your default stance and me having a skill that ignores Fortify.

And now that I read the rest of your post, you said pretty much the same thing.

Problem with your suggestion though is the fact that you don't always know what skills your opponent has, making the choosing process impossible. I'm not all that convinced that tier 1-2 is a problem, but I was wondering if it should have area effect. We could call it.. Debilitating Visage or whatever and make the mechanic something like this:

Consume a Relic to to start Debilitating Visage in target hex. All players in that hex cannot use any Tier 1 or Tier 2 active skills. Lasts 3 Days.

I don't know..

My thoughts on changed skills:

Evasion: Make it 'turn off' when you fortify, like was suggested and I think we are at a good spot. Question: If I aggressive charge a person with evasion, do I move and not attack, or does my movement AND attack fail?

Energy Barrier: Consuming a relic seems a bit high for what it does.  You have to preemptively use it, assuming your town will be seiged... and if it is not, you are out a relic and 2 AP. I think this all depends on my understanding of relics.  aside!

Relics!! Here is my understanding of these little guys.  They cost about 1/4 of a card and can buy them in any (?) city.  You can carry 5 items total, these count within that # and do not stack.  They are used for abilities and nothing else.  Is that about right?

So.... if you are in a city defending it, I guess it is not that bad to use a relic... and after 4 days of defending, buy a whole bunch more.  If these assumptions are correct, then... yea, it's good now.  One person blocks two people's siege. 

Random suggestion as I write this!  We should have an ability or town improvement, etc, that allows when seiging a town to cut off their source of cards or relics.  A blockade ability.  This way the town you are hitting can't use the above ability to, you know, stay behind a forever powerful wall.

Debilitating Beam: Much better.  I like YoungSot's suggestion to also targeting a T3 ability.  Or, it could also disable all T1, T2, including passives.  That could be fun, would lead to some good counter play against strong passives, and allow you to attack while they are 'disabled' and gain an advantage from people who gain upped cards with skills!  I find the 1 day too short as is, but that leads to another Question: Skills like this one and caltrops, does the de-buff happen to the opponent's next turn or current turn? Example: I use DB on YoungSot on day 15.  Does that cancel any of his Day 15 T1 and T2 planned actions or does it disallow him from using them on Day 16?

Champion of Aether: Very smooth. Super fun.  I'm assuming you can re-summon until you get the Horror you want? (some fun RNG here in play.) Do you duel with your guy's deck or do the NPC guys? Is it randomized each duel or when the lil' guy spawns? What if players use discarding abilities on the lil' guy? is he immune or does he die when he hits <30 cards?

You would still move but miss your target at the last minute (when in the same hex).

I agree about the Energy Barrier. I buffed it a bit by removing the Relic requirement, but it might still need some work. I'm a bit worried about 2-3 players camping and making a City/Town indestructible.

Yes, that is a pretty accurate description of Relics are, although there might be use quest use for them as well.

Blockade. I like it. Maybe we can manage to add it somewhere.

All debuffs happen during the next Day. It has to be like that for organizing reasons.

I think the player should do the duel of his or her Horror. Deck is randomized when the Horror is summoned. This naturally means that the more the Horror runs around attacking stuff, the easier it is to beat, which makes sense. About discarding abilities.. I think Dimensional Horrors should be immune to that.

[YoungSot]

Problem with your suggestion though is the fact that you don't always know what skills your opponent has, making the choosing process impossible. I'm not all that convinced that tier 1-2 is a problem, but I was wondering if it should have area effect. We could call it.. Debilitating Visage or whatever and make the mechanic something like this:

Consume a Relic to to start Debilitating Visage in target hex. All players in that hex cannot use any Tier 1 or Tier 2 active skills. Lasts 3 Days.

I don't know..

Yes, the potential for wasted actions weakens the power somewhat, but I think it's main use is when you DO suspect/know of a particular player's skill, and you consider that skill to be very dangerous to you or your teammate's goals. That's when you would use the power. If they don't have the skill, then fine. If they did have it, you're glad you neutralized it. But it might still need a minor buff, so perhaps change the duration to last 2 or 3 days instead of 1, so that you would have more time to take advantage of your target's temporary weakness.

[Kuroaitou]

Changing Debilitating Beam to Debilitating Visage is almost a cosmetic change at least; instead of affecting a player, you target a hex instead (with the exception that it doesn't affect ally/non-Aether players). Personally, I think that if it's made to target a single player that would affect them for MULTIPLE days (say, 3-4), it would become powerful in its own right, but not the end of the world, especially as it requires a relic (and possibly more AP to use).

Most of the Aether abilities (based on what I see now) are perfect in my opinion, with the exception of Static Charge (which I'm guessing is what's replacing Doppelganger at the moment). Seeing as we're trying to move away from the generic 'get 6 ups of this card!' type of skills, I also came up with a few skills that might follow the electrical theme (if not the energy concept):

Chain Lightning (2 AP):
All players in target adjacent hex must discard 1 card; players who are locked in battle must immediately discard 3 cards.

Lightning Rod (can be called 'conduction'):
When you are locked in battle, you may use two additional upgraded cards for every non-ally player in an adjacent or the same hex (no limit).

Fusion Power:
Whenever your element successfully completes an improvement, double the amount of cards salvaged from battles and electrum from Working for the next 3 days.

Just a small clarification; if you still lose the battle while having Phantom Form, you don't get to move where your Phantom is, correct? And does it 'stack' with Ethereal Bond? (I.e. - you move around to a different hex with Phantom Form, then upon death, ressurect at the location where your phantom is) Very unusual ability with some fun potential...

[Essence]

Here's an idea that seems to fit Aether well and is useful for everyone all the time (and fits with the Energy Shaper thingie):

2AP: Fractal Aetheric Power: Target one card you control. In your next fight, you may play 6 of that card in your deck regardless of how many you possess.

That's flexible and strong without being too powerful, I think, and it kind of fits the idea of the 'Doppelganger' theme.

[ak65ala]

2AP: Fractal Aetheric Power: Target one card you control. In your next fight, you may play 6 of that card in your deck regardless of how many you possess.

Thumbs up!  I think this is a wonderfully simple and useful ability.  Do it, do it!  How discard will work with abilities like this, I have no idea, but we had that problem anyway!

[Essence]

Simple; the user posts which card he has duplicated, and the person doing the discarding edits out all but one copy of that card from the decklist when they use the discarder tool thingy. Same thing they have to do with Doppelganger/Static Charge anyway, so it's not any more bother.

[Scaredgirl]

Changing Debilitating Beam to Debilitating Visage is almost a cosmetic change at least; instead of affecting a player, you target a hex instead (with the exception that it doesn't affect ally/non-Aether players). Personally, I think that if it's made to target a single player that would affect them for MULTIPLE days (say, 3-4), it would become powerful in its own right, but not the end of the world, especially as it requires a relic (and possibly more AP to use).

Most of the Aether abilities (based on what I see now) are perfect in my opinion, with the exception of Static Charge (which I'm guessing is what's replacing Doppelganger at the moment). Seeing as we're trying to move away from the generic 'get 6 ups of this card!' type of skills, I also came up with a few skills that might follow the electrical theme (if not the energy concept):

Chain Lightning (2 AP):
All players in target adjacent hex must discard 1 card; players who are locked in battle must immediately discard 3 cards.

Lightning Rod (can be called 'conduction'):
When you are locked in battle, you may use two additional upgraded cards for every non-ally player in an adjacent or the same hex (no limit).

Fusion Power:
Whenever your element successfully completes an improvement, double the amount of cards salvaged from battles and electrum from Working for the next 3 days.

Just a small clarification; if you still lose the battle while having Phantom Form, you don't get to move where your Phantom is, correct? And does it 'stack' with Ethereal Bond? (I.e. - you move around to a different hex with Phantom Form, then upon death, ressurect at the location where your phantom is) Very unusual ability with some fun potential...

I changed it to Debilitating Visage for now. The reason I like AoE instead of single-target is that it's easy to just add the graphics of Debilitating visage, and all players will see that that particular hex is effected. This removes the need for the extra communication and the possibity of user error when players forget they have that hex or whatever. But we'll see, maybe I'll change it back.

I think Static Charge works actually. The reason why I disliked most of the previous "take X cards" skills was they they had cards that cost a specific quanta. But with cards like Supernova and Ball of Lighting, you are not restricted to that one element.

The idea of a Chain Lightning is pretty cool actually, but I think it should travel from one hex to the next hitting only players from one element. This way if your enemies form a line (or ball up) on the map, you could do some serious damage.

When compared to Pack Hunter, Lightning Rod would be pretty insane. There will probably be these big battles where players ball up, and a skill like that would be nuts because you would get that 10-20 upped cards. Theme-wise, if we had a skill like that, I think it would be cooler to use a "Wounded Tiger" or "Against the Odds" type of a theme, where the character gets an adrenaline spike when being surrounded or at a disadvantage.

Fusion Power.. yea something like that could work, but I'm not sure if is the best element for it. I think an element like would fit better. I don't know..

I should start writing down these ideas somewhere.

Here's an idea that seems to fit Aether well and is useful for everyone all the time (and fits with the Energy Shaper thingie):

2AP: Fractal Aetheric Power: Target one card you control. In your next fight, you may play 6 of that card in your deck regardless of how many you possess.

That's flexible and strong without being too powerful, I think, and it kind of fits the idea of the 'Doppelganger' theme.

One issue with that skill is that if you meant it would create unupped cards, then it could become useless later in the game when you already have tons of cards. One basic design philosophy has been that all skills should be useful for the whole duration of the event, and wouldn't become obsolete after gaining some other skill or cards. If changed to upped cards.. it could maybe be OP, I don't know. I do like the concept though, and the flexibility.

[Essence]

Well, how about if you sacrifice a relic when activating it, it produces upped cards instead of unupped ones?

[Scaredgirl]

Well, how about if you sacrifice a relic when activating it, it produces upped cards instead of unupped ones?

I'd prefer if all skills either required a Relic, or didn't. Having two different effects kind of complicates things and might lead to errors. I wouldn't be against it if it made a lot of sense, but I feel that this would be just a cheap fix for a problem.

I also like the Ball of Lightning skill because it fits so perfectly for Energy Shaper theme. Maybe this Fractal Aetheric Power could be used in some other tree?