Rune Mages ruin my game :(

[namad]

even with 40 might runes laser wouldn't be overpowered if it had like reload 4 or 1charge per battle (It would be strong but no stronger than those dragon line attacks)

really the OP thing is the whole interaction with runes and the 3rd ability and runic word, the first two abilities with 1 or 2 uses max per battle would make a reasonable unit, possibly even a weaker one than kb:cw if you limited each to only 1 use

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

I don't recruit them in KBWOTN since they do, in fact, ruin the game.

There are many things that "ruin" the game , well, not the game, only the challanging part of it. I just don't understand why some see that Rune Mage is overpowered and ruins the game but deny that Droids, spells like Phantom and Sacrifice ruin the game. Or Magic Spring (=infinite mana) Why this selective observation?

I don't think Rune Mages are any more overpowered then Droids with their absolutely Imba ressurection (44/unit if I'm correct with Reload compared to puny inquisitor with 7/unit and 1 Charge)

[zjazd18]

Originally Posted by tiberiu

There are many things that "ruin" the game , well, not the game, only the challanging part of it. I just don't understand why some see that Rune Mage is overpowered and ruins the game but deny that Droids, spells like Phantom and Sacrifice ruin the game. Or Magic Spring (=infinite mana) Why this selective observation?

I don't think Rune Mages are any more overpowered then Droids with their absolutely Imba ressurection (44/unit if I'm correct with Reload compared to puny inquisitor with 7/unit and 1 Charge)

Ye i don't get it why they havent changed them yet. Droids are infact bigger joke than rune mages, as long as 1 remain in each stack u can ressurect to full.

[namad]

actually this is where you're incorrect.


droids can revive an infinitely large number of droids, and via sacrifice create a quite large amount of non-droid revives as well, however eventually you'll run out of mana, unless maybe you're enemy has a stack of non-retaliation units you can set up an infinite mana combo via mana spring with.

in balance for this the droids are otherwise fairly mediocre units without a lot else going for them.



rune mages: can in tandem with another unit generate an infinite number of revives of ANYTHING that can ever be revived by it's tandem partners. although the revival of non-droids as you pointed out is far far slower! however you don't have to cast sacrifice constantly, and so you don't have to spend mana, or rely on managing to proc magic spring repeatedly (which you cannot always do)

that's only one of the rune mages abilities though, the other two abilities are also bonkers! the laser is basically as powerful as any offensive ability any unit has, comparing to the droids which have quite poor offense. then the final ability generates infinite uses of the other two abilities, but if you have 40magic runes (or possibly fewer magic runes in the latest steam patch) it can also generate runes fast enough for quite a lot of casts of the spell chargers which can generate endless mana and endless rage!


the fact that the rune mage requires a tandem isn't really a drawback compared to droids because droids have to work in tandem as well. where the rune mage really shines though is in the things like phantom'ing royal thorns or royal griffins, or ANYTHING, that's the biggest drawback of droids, they can't use their stupidly OP healing until AFTER SOMETHING DIES, whereas the rune mage's ability can be used to heal things after things die, OR simply to increase the size of the army on turn 1 before anything has died, it can PREHEAL! and it can do it every turn instead of every 3 turns, so while the healing power is lower, you can use it more times per battle and on more targets....


the final point though is that you could just run BOTH and go rune mage:droid:droid:inquistor/or/paladin:royal thorn/or/royal griffin


now if it were possibly to run 5types of droids all at once, OR to run two stacks of the same type of unit at full leadership (the way enemies can) then yeah an all droid army would be stronger than an army with rune mages... but since you have to run 3non-droids in every army, and the droids can only heal those units via sacrifice, and sacrifice is very expensive it starts to limit the power of the absurdly powerful healing the repair droids have. also you can run a rune mage in a stack of 1, you could let's say run this army: royal griffins:rune mage:rune mage:rune mage:rune mage and after the first turn have 340% of your leadership in griffins all of whom have created celestial guardians and then the following turn have 580% of your leadership in celestial guardians and royal griffins ...


repair droids are a powerful option that's not that poorly balanced, magic spring might be unbalanced but at least it's unbalanced in a way that takes forever and is really quite boring and people might not do? rune mages can literally do ANYTHING you can think of better than any other unit in the game (provided you are willing to save 40 runes of whatever type applies to what you want to do)...


although yes i think repair droids could stand to receive a reduction either in power of their ability, or be moved to charges?

tl;dr; rune mages are broken in every single imaginable way, we need a mod to put the rune mages from kb:cw in place of kb:wotn rune mages

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by namad

actually this is where you're incorrect.
droids can revive an infinitely large number of droids, and via sacrifice create a quite large amount of non-droid revives as well, however eventually you'll run out of mana, unless maybe you're enemy has a stack of non-retaliation units you can set up an infinite mana combo via mana spring with.
in balance for this the droids are otherwise fairly mediocre units without a lot else going for them.

Sorry I don't want to derail the discussion about Rune Mages, but what exactly I am incorrect in? You don't seem to understand that Droid use is completly separated from mana. It's not a combination of spells that make Droids grossly overpowered. I simply don't care about Sacrifice if all that you need to finish the game is 3 stacks of Droids.

Also about running out of mana,(which is moot in a Droid discussion anyway) with Chargers and Rune Word mana is virtually infinite. You don't need to resort to Magic Spring.

You say they are otherwise fairly mediocre units. I don't think so, they have good resist, good initiative, good speed. The melee one has a very useful ability to drag units while still attacking them, this can be used to drag them into traps. Also it casts area defenseless which is powerful in many situations.

[namad]

I suppose it's true that chargers+runic word is infinite mana, the reason I compared to magic spring was that a) magic spring was brought up by someone else and b) chargers+rune mage works as well or better in that it would allow a non-soothsayer to generate his infinite mana ~twice as fast it's true that basically everything a rune mage does can be done without a rune mage simply by casting lots of spells, but getting a 0mana cost additional powerful spell every turn is basically what the rune mage brings to the table with those spells being phantom/runic word/ and some sort of powerful attack spell for which laser isn't quite an exact spell.


the reason I brought up sacrifice is for if you plan to add non-droids to your droid army, in which case the only way to make use of the repair droids ability on all of your army is with sacrifice.


if you want to go with a pure droid army something like guard droid+repair droidx4 or something like that fine, go ahead, there might be some fights that army has trouble with, there might not be.


I guess the reason I'd say repair droids are less broken than rune mages is just that there is some drawback to using them, your proposed 3stacks of droids army definitely has trouble in the offense department. repair droids deal less damage than many other troops, and guard droids do as well, then of course you're only using 40% of your leadership so that particular army would have maybe ~70% less offensive ability than some other armies. the army may be indestructible, but it's got less offense, that's a drawback even if it's not a very big drawback, winning almost any fight, but you have to be bored to win them...

whereas basing things around rune mages you may be slightly less invincible, but your offense is quite high, it's hard to envision any scenario in which a rune mage isn't just flat out the best unit in the game in every single regard, because if any other unit were ever better, all you'd do would be use both, and then 60% phantom for 0mana on turn1 the better troop. the best troop in the game < rune mages + 60% of the best troop in the game (unless I suppose you think ice or black dragons are best in which case it doesn't work)..

that's what made rune mages in kb:cw fair, they're phantom ability was I believe based around leadership, not percent, and also targeted enemy units, meaning you could never ensure you'd get something good!

In a king's bounty game where there were 5 different troops that were mechanical that you could have in your army, then yeah, repair droids would be the stupidest most broken thing of all time for sure. I'm just saying the designers thought that as a compensation for having the ability to only heal 2 out of 100 possible troop types in our game we'll make it heal for bonkers insane amounts.


tl;dr; repair droids could be balanced fairly simply by a mod that just changes the amount of life healed on the ability to whatever is deemed appropriate, so if they're that bad, just do that if you want! as far as rune mages go, it's somewhat hard to even imagine a way to balance them, simple number changes probably aren't enough? the way they're designed is just sort of flawed through and through

[malcolmm]

No question Run Mages are vastly overpowered. I've completed all the previous KB games and I am now about half way through WotN.

I usually don't worry too much about no loss wins and in previous games I ended up with between 50 and 100 no loss. In WotN, because I am using Rune Mages with Paladins, I'm at around 150 no loss. Although battles are getting tougher I now always get a no loss, despite no having enough Rune Mages for my available leadership. This results in a boring game. Since I probably don't have the discipline to resist using them or using certain of their abilities, I will have to delete them from my army.