If you could theoretically add & remove up to 5 skills, which would you choose?

[Vaximillian]

Kill warp skills (Future Vision, too). There might already be more than five of them, might there not?

[Usana]

Of the fighter skills the only one that really bugs me is Bold Fighter. Once we get a QR 4 to equalize the HP thresholds I don't think Vengeful would be an issue and Special Fighter is mostly busted when combined with Garm. And that links to what makes Bold busted. It is the fact that QR is a seal and thus the armor is a dual phase badass. If QR wasn't a seal I don't think Bold Fighter would be quite as annoying as it is. Anyways, after Bold, I find Wary the most annoying. Then Special. And finally Vengeful. Still I wouldn't remove any of them. A restriction to keep Bold from Comboing with Quick Riposte or Desperation(assuming we ever get a seal or an armor that would prefer a desperation weapon over their normal choice) type effects would probably be more than enough to balance it.

As for new skills

@Jotari Flying boots would indeed be a nice addition. Though I don't like HP thresholds much when it comes to movement skills(despite loving armors I almost never use Armored boots except when using Amelia to push up my Arena score when there is no armored bonus unit).

As another Boot skill I would like to see Heavy Boots. Reduces movement by 1 but gives the unit +3 to all stats(including HP?) or +15HP or something. Basically the idea is you take the armor penalty but get an armor type boost to your stats. I would mostly like this to downgrade cav movement for mixed teams when the AI is in control. Or for the lone infantry mixed in with an armor team without march. This way the units don't get split stupidly. Would probably be less useful in player hands since players can really abuse the extra movement spaces. Still there are Enemy Phase Cavs that might be willing to trade 1 movement for extra stats even when in player hands. And I am sure the horse wears the boots. I am pretty sure the rider doesn't want to be wearing cement blocks as shoes. Makes swimming hard I hear.

[Junkhead]

Probably just Bullshit Fighter. What were they thinking? Doesn't have an HP limit. You could literally pick up Armour Boots Jakob or Effie with a Firesweep and have them work in literally any team, essentially killing the one real weakness they had as Armours, which is the lack of mobility.

I feel the rest of their skills wouldn't be so terrifying if they at least didn't have Armour March.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Usana said:

Of the fighter skills the only one that really bugs me is Bold Fighter. Once we get a QR 4 to equalize the HP thresholds I don't think Vengeful would be an issue and Special Fighter is mostly busted when combined with Garm. And that links to what makes Bold busted. It is the fact that QR is a seal and thus the armor is a dual phase badass. If QR wasn't a seal I don't think Bold Fighter would be quite as annoying as it is. Anyways, after Bold, I find Wary the most annoying. Then Special. And finally Vengeful. Still I wouldn't remove any of them. A restriction to keep Bold from Comboing with Quick Riposte or Desperation(assuming we ever get a seal or an armor that would prefer a desperation weapon over their normal choice) type effects would probably be more than enough to balance it.

As for new skills

@Jotari Flying boots would indeed be a nice addition. Though I don't like HP thresholds much when it comes to movement skills(despite loving armors I almost never use Armored boots except when using Amelia to push up my Arena score when there is no armored bonus unit).

As another Boot skill I would like to see Heavy Boots. Reduces movement by 1 but gives the unit +3 to all stats(including HP?) or +15HP or something. Basically the idea is you take the armor penalty but get an armor type boost to your stats. I would mostly like this to downgrade cav movement for mixed teams when the AI is in control. Or for the lone infantry mixed in with an armor team without march. This way the units don't get split stupidly. Would probably be less useful in player hands since players can really abuse the extra movement spaces. Still there are Enemy Phase Cavs that might be willing to trade 1 movement for extra stats even when in player hands. And I am sure the horse wears the boots. I am pretty sure the rider doesn't want to be wearing cement blocks as shoes. Makes swimming hard I hear.

The problem with removing the HO treshold is that it would makr other movement types almost completely redundant. Why would you field an infantry over an armour (or in this case a horse over a flier) if they have better stats and the same movement?

[Usana]

46 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The problem with removing the HO treshold is that it would makr other movement types almost completely redundant. Why would you field an infantry over an armour (or in this case a horse over a flier) if they have better stats and the same movement?

You know I should have proofread that. I meant to say 100% HP Thresholds. It is very annoying to take, say, one point of damage and completely lose the use of your seal slot, or really any slot. So I would have done it QR style with 90/80/70. Actually I should specify that further. I probably wouldn't mind so much if healer support could solve the issue. ATK/SPD push for example can easily be fixed up. Heal first and then attack and all is good. Armored Boots though won't work that way, so they need a bit more leeway HP wise for me to see them as usable other than letting Amelia keep herself away from battle while boosting my score for my normies. But I also prefer to play EP units so very rarely are anything of mine running around at full HP. Folks who run stuff like Rein or slow one shot blades who either never get touched or die horribly might not feel that limitation nearly as much. Though to be fair to Rein he is pretty tanky for a mounted mage.

Actually, even with a 100% HP threshold I almost feel a set of flying boots would need some kind of detriment. Fliers already are, arguably, the best movement type thanks to their absolute freedom. So it would only seem fair if they would lose a few points of something(like say 5 HP) to gain Horse move. Then again the fliers in my barracks that would be most broken with 3 move are my blade tomes, and none of them except Nowi stay at full HP for long.

[Jotari]

43 minutes ago, Usana said:

You know I should have proofread that. I meant to say 100% HP Thresholds. It is very annoying to take, say, one point of damage and completely lose the use of your seal slot, or really any slot. So I would have done it QR style with 90/80/70. Actually I should specify that further. I probably wouldn't mind so much if healer support could solve the issue. ATK/SPD push for example can easily be fixed up. Heal first and then attack and all is good. Armored Boots though won't work that way, so they need a bit more leeway HP wise for me to see them as usable other than letting Amelia keep herself away from battle while boosting my score for my normies. But I also prefer to play EP units so very rarely are anything of mine running around at full HP. Folks who run stuff like Rein or slow one shot blades who either never get touched or die horribly might not feel that limitation nearly as much. Though to be fair to Rein he is pretty tanky for a mounted mage.

Actually, even with a 100% HP threshold I almost feel a set of flying boots would need some kind of detriment. Fliers already are, arguably, the best movement type thanks to their absolute freedom. So it would only seem fair if they would lose a few points of something(like say 5 HP) to gain Horse move. Then again the fliers in my barracks that would be most broken with 3 move are my blade tomes, and none of them except Nowi stay at full HP for long.

Can't really argue with that. Although I'm not sure fliers would need any other drawback, they might, but I feel it's the sort of thing that would need to be tested. Three move sounds great, but we're looking at is as either A)Taking up a highly competitive A slot, or B) Being a seal that only one unit at a time can use. Maybe even with that it could make fliers too good, but I reckon it's something that would need to be playtested to really determine. And even if it does make fliers amazing, they have a natural weakness with bows, so an increase in flier focus can be counteracted by an increase in bows.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

they have a natural weakness with bows, so an increase in flier focus can be counteracted by an increase in bows.

Unless the whole map is filled with only or mostly archers, ranged fliers in the player's hand have no trouble facing against archers since Fury-Desperation and Firesweep Bow are available options. Outside of Relay Defense, PvE units are generally pretty easy to kill. In my opinion, 3 movement fliers are pretty overpowered, but I like the idea since it would make defense teams more obnoxious.

Edited September 23, 2018 by XRay

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

Unless the whole map is filled with only or mostly archers, ranged fliers in the player's hand have no trouble facing against archers since Fury-Desperation and Firesweep Bow are available options. Outside of Relay Defense, PvE units are generally pretty easy to kill. In my opinion, 3 movement fliers are pretty overpowered, but I like the idea since it would make defense teams more obnoxious.

Another thing to consider is the spread of terrain. Three range fliers (when they're at max HP) only have an advantage over ponys on maps with terrain, which are a lot of maps, but not all of them uniformally. Some maps don't have any terrain at all aside from walls/breakable walls that also affect fliers. So their advantage can range from massive to pretty much non existent based on circumstance.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Jotari

[Nowi's Husband]

Remove: Binding Shield, Dazzling Staff, Watersweep, Windsweep, and can't think of a 5th I want removed.  I just really despise skills negating enemy phase.  

Add: Dragon shield like Iote's, anti sweeping seal like how Hardy Bearing negates Desperation and Vantage, Dragon March for 3 movement, Bold Dragon to double on player phase though it can have an HP requirement so armors still have better version, Dragon formation to warp around.  

Edited September 23, 2018 by Nowi's Husband

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 9/22/2018 at 12:29 AM, Ice Dragon said:

That's precisely why they don't exist.

While true, it also isn't a good argument for them to not exist. It would not matter if 90% of the roster was infantry; you are still limited to only 4 per team (just like everything else) and there is currently little to no advantage to a non-dragon pure infantry team. In fact, the lack of basic field buffs and strong exclusive skills makes the high level meta "anything but pure infantry."

On 9/22/2018 at 12:22 AM, Landmaster said:

All the Armor Skills and Regnal Astra are a nuisance but without them, Armors would suck ass.

We don't know that. When armors sucked, they lacked any kind of versatility. They didn't have tomes. They didn't have bows. They didn't have any of these broken skills. They didn't really have high spd offensive units. They didn't have Armor March. Seals did not exist. We don't know exactly how much of this they needed to be competitive.

The fact is, armored units weren't slowly and meticulously buffed from the worst units in the game to the best. They received all of these things in quick succession. They suddenly went from melee-physical-only, slow tanks to versatile, two-movement, terrain ignoring powerhouses with grotesquely overpowered exclusive skills over the course of roughly half a year (practically overnight in online gaming terms). We don't know how much they actually needed to be viable because we didn't get to see them slowly evolve.

(And of course instead of allowing other team compositions to catch up, they've only worsened things with units like Brave Ephraim and Brave Hector).

Edited September 23, 2018 by Etheus

[XRay]

5 hours ago, Etheus said:

We don't know exactly how much of this they needed to be competitive.

If they drop the BST and SP scoring criteria, in my opinion, armor units need all the help they can get. With the BST and SP scoring bullcrap, non armor units like ranged ponies are more likely to run performance-neutering SP skills sets rather than regular performance-optimized skill sets when facing armor units. It is not a huge problem in the player's hand to remove a few armor exclusive skills, but the AI needs every bit of bullshit it can fling at the player to win.

As a ranged Player Phase player, from my perspective, armor units are absolute crap on defense teams. On mixed defense teams, they do nothing to help their allies since they cannot keep up without mobility buffs and Assists, which reduces the performance of their teammates if they run those skills, and even with that level of support, their mobility is still crap enough that I can basically ignore them until they are the last one alive. If there are Dancers/Singers on the enemy team, if they Dance/Sing an armor unit, it would be a huge waste of their turn since armor units move so fucking so slow. Pure armor defense are the worst defense teams since it means there are no enemy units who can threaten my team at all on Enemy Phase and I can Dance/Sing-Reposition to my heart's content until I got the best positioning.

Edited September 23, 2018 by XRay

[Hilda]

6 hours ago, Nowi's Husband said:

Remove: Binding Shield, Dazzling Staff, Watersweep, Windsweep, and can't think of a 5th I want removed.  I just really despise skills negating enemy phase.  

Add: Dragon shield like Iote's, anti sweeping seal like how Hardy Bearing negates Desperation and Vantage, Dragon March for 3 movement, Bold Dragon to double on player phase though it can have an HP requirement so armors still have better version, Dragon formation to warp around.  

in that case remove adaptiv breath damage and remove lightning breath. there you standing on equal footing like everyone else... you actually have to run Distant counter on your A slot.

[Ice Dragon]

6 hours ago, Etheus said:

We don't know that. When armors sucked, they lacked any kind of versatility. They didn't have tomes. They didn't have bows. They didn't have any of these broken skills. They didn't really have high spd offensive units. They didn't have Armor March. Seals did not exist. We don't know exactly how much of this they needed to be competitive.

Actually, we do. Arena defense teams at the very top of the Arena respond almost overnight (actually overnight, as opposed to the "practically overnight in gaming terms" that you attribute to "half a year") to the addition of new toys, which allow you to see very clean breaks in enemy difficulty (or the lack of one) when new skills are introduced. In fact, new game-changing skills are virtually guaranteed to not only appear, but be rampant, in Arena defense teams at the top of the Arena before the end of the week, typically within only two or three days.

The point at which armors stopped being complete pushovers was when Armor March was implemented, though their lack of player-phase options still made them easy to deal with. Ranged armors hardly made a change at all, and Jakob was not actually broken without the tools he has available to him today (certainly not as broken as Brave Lyn was at the time).

In terms of both player-controlled and AI-controlled units, I would say that the minimum to keep of what we have today to allow armors to remain viable are the skills

• Armor March: This gives armors access to real mobility and enables fast armors to be used as player-phase units.
• Bold Fighter: This gives a universal good player phase to armors and actually allows them to be dangerous, as well as giving them an actual answer against skills that shut down the enemy phase.
• Quick Riposte Sacred Seal: This frees up the B skill for armors, who previously universally ran Quick Riposte in their B slot (excluding specialized Arena defense builds), and was one of the biggest problems for all enemy-phase units, not just armors.

You can remove all four ranged armor units, Vengeful Fighter, Special Fighter, Armored Boots, and even Black Luna and unique weapons, and you'd still end up with viable armor units with just these three skills available. They'd be weaker, but still viable.

 

5 hours ago, XRay said:

As a ranged Player Phase player, from my perspective, armor units absolute crap on defense teams.

In that case, I propose these new skills to fix this problem:

• LOL: Passive A. Armor only. Unit can counterattack regardless of distance. Grants Atk +8 and Def/Res +4 during combat.
• RIP: Passive B. Armor only. Unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. Grants Special cooldown charge +1. (Does not stack.)
• Goad Ward Everything March Boots: Passive C. Armor only. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res +4 to allies within 2 spaces during combat. At start of turn, unit and adjacent allies can move 1 extra space.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Hilda]

12 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Actually, we do. Arena defense teams at the very top of the Arena respond almost overnight (actually overnight, as opposed to the "practically overnight in gaming terms" that you attribute to "half a year") to the addition of new toys, which allow you to see very clean breaks in enemy difficulty (or the lack of one) when new skills are introduced. In fact, new game-changing skills are virtually guaranteed to not only appear, but be rampant, in Arena defense teams at the top of the Arena before the end of the week, typically within only two or three days.

The point at which armors stopped being complete pushovers was when Armor March was implemented, though their lack of player-phase options still made them easy to deal with. Ranged armors hardly made a change at all, and Jakob was not actually broken without the tools he has available to him today (certainly not as broken as Brave Lyn was at the time).

In terms of both player-controlled and AI-controlled units, I would say that the minimum to keep of what we have today to allow armors to remain viable are the skills

• Armor March: This gives armors access to real mobility and enables fast armors to be used as player-phase units.
• Bold Fighter: This gives a universal good player phase to armors and actually allows them to be dangerous, as well as giving them an actual answer against skills that shut down the enemy phase.
• Quick Riposte Sacred Seal: This frees up the B skill for armors, who previously universally ran Quick Riposte in their B slot (excluding specialized Arena defense builds), and was one of the biggest problems for all enemy-phase units, not just armors.

You can remove all four ranged armor units, Vengeful Fighter, Special Fighter, Armored Boots, and even Black Luna and unique weapons, and you'd still end up with viable armor units with just these three skills available. They'd be weaker, but still viable.

 

In that case, I propose these new skills to fix this problem:

• LOL: Passive A. Armor only. Unit can counterattack regardless of distance. Grants Atk +8 and Def/Res +4 during combat.
• RIP: Passive B. Armor only. Unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. Grants Special cooldown charge +1. (Does not stack.)
• Goad Ward Everything March: Passive C. Armor only. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res +4 to allies within 2 spaces during combat. At start of turn, unit and adjacent allies can move 1 extra space.

I am not saying to remove Bold fighter, i just think that the cool down reduction is overboard... thats all i want to have removed from bold and vengefull fighter, the stupid cool down charge... without it i think they would still be good and not overboard stupid how they are now, even though they allow armorers to essential ignore spd to a degree.

you want to have a special cool down effect on armor, you should be forced to run the same as everybody else: Steady Breath, Flashing/Heavy Blade seal/skill or Wrath. I dont see why a unit with higher BST should get a pass on the conditions everyone else has to meet to get special cooldown reduction (as in meet the spd or atk check in flashing/heavy blade or HP condition of wrath etc)

Edited September 23, 2018 by Hilda

[XRay]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

In that case, I propose these new skills to fix this problem:

• LOL: Passive A. Armor only. Unit can counterattack regardless of distance. Grants Atk +8 and Def/Res +4 during combat. Disables effect on foe's Weapon.
• RIP: Passive B. Armor only. Unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. Grants Special cooldown charge +1. (Does not stack.) (Stacks.)
• Goad Ward Everything March: Passive C. Armor only. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res +4 to allies within 2 spaces during combat. At start of turn, unit and adjacent allies can move 1 2 extra space.

Fixed that for you.

You do not want me to just Firesweep everything and just Dance/Sing-Reposition.

[Ice Dragon]

Just now, XRay said:

Fixed that for you.

You do not want me to just Firesweep everything and just Dance/Sing-Reposition.

No, see, that would be too broken. We have at least try to keep things balanced. Mhm.

[Nowi's Husband]

On 9/23/2018 at 3:56 PM, Hilda said:

in that case remove adaptiv breath damage and remove lightning breath. there you standing on equal footing like everyone else... you actually have to run Distant counter on your A slot.

I have DC inherited to Nowi already so that wouldn't be so bad.  Losing adaptive damage would be horrible though.