Shieldwall is overpowered.

from Elemental Forums

See title. For those who are unaware, shieldwall is an ability under Path of the Defender, which gives +5 defense to each group in the army (including the one who has the ability.

This is a pretty big thing. as anyone who's played the game much will realise, defense is an incredibly important aspect of this game. I'm not sure about the math behind it (i'd love to see formulas) but my intuition from the numbers i've seen tells me it probably works, to some degree, on flat reduction. If so that would make every point of it incredibly powerful.

The crazy thing about shieldwall is that it grants that defense to anyone, including people who have no armour, no shields, no magic trinkets, etc. nothing. Or perhaps it's crazier still that it apples to people who already have all that stuff, pushing their defense to new heights. It's certainly a good reason to pick the path of the defender, if nothing else.

But it has farther problems. The first and most important of which, is that it's stackable. If multiple people in an army have the shieldwall ability, then everyone in the army recieves bonuse defense of 5x the number of instances of the ability. Theoretically up to 9 of them. Personally i think this is pretty absurd, in fact it's a general problem that throughout this game many things are stackable which really ought not to be, and our beloved developers need to take a slightly closer look at limiting a few things. :(

The worst problem of all, the problem that ironically stacks with the previous problem and compounds things, concerns the Altarian Kingdom. They have the ability to train "Henchmen", mini champions who can wear equipment and select skills on levelling up like normal champions, but are designed like normal units, including the ability to pick three starting traits, like any normally trained unit. Henchmen units have access to the same pool of offensive and defensive abilities as normal units, but they also have three special abilities. Bard, which gives +10% xp to the army, Cook which gives +1 healing per season, and Shieldwall, which is previously described. If that's not clear, the altarians have the ability to train a unit which has shieldwall by default, and thus can reach an army of 9 shieldwall units with relative ease. So it takes 450 influence, big deal. Who actually uses influence for anything else anyway? I find myself with tons of the stuff in every game, and nothing to spend it on.

I think being able to have an army with 45 free defense each, on top of whatever armor and accessories they might be wearing, is a bit much. even the +15 that i have in my current game feels a bit much, i'm laughing off physical attacks from dragons already and i'm not even 100 turns in. Shieldwall needs some nerfing.

 

The clearest and simplest way to fix it that i can see, is to make it non stackable. make it a unique, exclusive bonus. One unit with shieldwall in the party gives +5 defense. two units give +5 defense. nine units give +5 defense even. Make only the first one count, and the rest do nothing. it would also be helpful to mention this in it's tooltip :p

10,193 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

If you are fielding an army of 9 decently leveled champions (henchmens/scions included)... then you'll pretty much mow everything anyways. Try 9 Assassins... they can ignore armor and crit for 100s of damage. There are a lot of OP things in the game, and stacking auras is one of them. However that doesn't mean it can't be countered...

The problem with shieldwall is not that IT is op, but that the AI don't know how to effectively COUNTER def (like elemental damage), or at least they don't have enough time to do so. For example... if you run your shield wall army against a bunch of well designed mages... it won't be pretty.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I think A lot of the Defender's stuff is OP.  Particularly that there's huge bonuses to resistances making them completely immune PLUS there are complete immunities to Counterattacks and Crit Hits. 

In comparison to Warrior who's selections are pretty meh, and incremental in its bonuses.  I say Defender is WoW, and amazing. There's several that need to get toned down to still  be useful and "incremental" like warrior. 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kalin, reply 1

The problem with shieldwall is not that IT is op, but that the AI don't know how to effectively COUNTER def (like elemental damage), or at least they don't have enough time to do so. For example... if you run your shield wall army against a bunch of well designed mages... it won't be pretty.

 

Well, mages are another matter entirely. I think that as we have a generic "defense" as well as individual values for piercing, blunt and cutting defense, so too should magic resist act as a generic defense against nonphysical attacks. The problem with magic is that most magic danage is only reduced by its specific elemental defense (if it even has one) and "magic resist" only affects a few particular spells, mostly status affecting ones, and mostly not at all affecting damage spells. I see an easy fix there too :p

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Supreme, reply 2
I think A lot of the Defender's stuff is OP.  Particularly that there's huge bonuses to resistances making them completely immune PLUS there are complete immunities to Counterattacks and Crit Hits. 

I don't agree. Resistances are easily maxable even without anything in the defender's path. Athican leather cuirass, plus the fire ring and fire cape, gives you 100% fire resistance without too much trouble. Or you can toss in the slightly too powerful nature's cloak spell to replace any of those. The problem there is that resistances HAVE to be easily attainable, because they have to be attained individually. Since, as explained in my last post, magic resistance doesn't block elemental damage in the slightest.

Defender does have some other nice things, most notable being their massive HP bonuses. The armywide dodge bonus is also good, but consider that it's counteracted by the armywide accuracy bonus in Path of the Warrior. I don't think that the defender path is particularly overpowered, or really that any path is. just the stackability of shieldwall is the problem. 

As for crits and counterattacks, i think that having to pick a path for them, and spend a level on them, is enough to balance them. Both are fairly minor aspects of the game. i'm trying to build a crit-based character just now, and even with vital strike III, a whetstone, and the Heartseeker, i'm still finding crits to be only an occasional supplement to my damage. I'm more than capable of fighting things which are immune to crits. Against the AI both of these traits are virtually worthless, as they tend to overwhelmingly favour spears or axes. I'd argue that crits and counterattacks are such a relatively minor part of the game, that anything LESS than complete immunity would be a waste of a skillpoint.

Quoting Supreme, reply 2
In comparison to Warrior who's selections are pretty meh, and incremental in its bonuses.  I say Defender is WoW, and amazing. There's several that need to get toned down to still  be useful and "incremental" like warrior.  

i don't think that path of the warrior is that weak. although it is perhaps the weakest of the paths (aside from governor which doesn't really count). It could do with slightly higher values on all its abilities, and more bonuses to initiative, and maybe passive counterattacks, would be nice..

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NanakoAC, reply 3
"magic resist" only affects a few particular spells, mostly status affecting ones, and mostly not at all affecting damage spells.

Spell Resistance does affect damage spells. It reduces the damage by half, if the spell fails.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 6

Quoting NanakoAC, reply 3"magic resist" only affects a few particular spells, mostly status affecting ones, and mostly not at all affecting damage spells.

Spell Resistance does affect damage spells. It reduces the damage by half, if the spell fails.

 

It doesn't affect any death, air, and I don't believe it affects water on those damage spells. The only damage spells you can resist for partial damage are fire bolt and fireball iirc. Maybe a few of the combo spells. Dirge and contagion can be resisted completely but have a lot of damage potential.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

+5 def, or even +10,+15, is not that powerful..Overall Defense is not powerful, Dodge is better.

Against a 30 Attack, if you've 20 def, the attack is x 30/50, that is 60%, so 9-18 damage.

With 30 def, that gives x 30/60= 50%,  7-15 damage. So attack damage is reduced by 2-3 hp only with these +10def!

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ShadeDragonIncarnate, reply 7
It doesn't affect any death, air, and I don't believe it affects water on those damage spells. The only damage spells you can resist for partial damage are fire bolt and fireball iirc. Maybe a few of the combo spells. Dirge and contagion can be resisted completely but have a lot of damage potential.

No. Drain Life, Touch of Entropy, Kill (all Death), Storm (Air), Shockwave (Earth), the damage effect of Chaos and Pandemonium, and Blizzard (all Water) are all resistible. I'm not going into the Fire, combo, and Monster/Champion-only spells, because that would take too long. Yes, there are exceptions, but this is besides the point. NanakoAC made a statement that none of the damage spells are affected by Spell Resistance, and this is clearly wrong.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

To be fair, sometimes you can resist, take half damage and die anyway.  Blizzard is especially devastating in tactical combat, you have maybe an Assassin Demon and a Guardian Statue left on the field when using it in city assaults.

Don't even get me started on all the lovely strategic straight damage spells.  You can pretty much wipe out a city's defences with Tidal Wave or that meteor spell that I can't remember the name of.

Then there's the Birth of Summer spell which (wait for it) lets you terraform all that barren wasteland into places you can build more cities on.  For 300 Mana it's a bargain.  Not that I needed the extra settlements, they're just there to make my lead seem all the more obscene.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top


Shieldwall has been nurfed in 1.01, mostlike due to this thread.

It will be +3 instead of the +5.

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NanakoAC, reply 3

Quoting Kalin, reply 1
The problem with shieldwall is not that IT is op, but that the AI don't know how to effectively COUNTER def (like elemental damage), or at least they don't have enough time to do so. For example... if you run your shield wall army against a bunch of well designed mages... it won't be pretty.

 

Well, mages are another matter entirely. I think that as we have a generic "defense" as well as individual values for piercing, blunt and cutting defense, so too should magic resist act as a generic defense against nonphysical attacks. The problem with magic is that most magic danage is only reduced by its specific elemental defense (if it even has one) and "magic resist" only affects a few particular spells, mostly status affecting ones, and mostly not at all affecting damage spells. I see an easy fix there too

 

 

Hmm ... I think I've noticed most if not all magical attacks (at least of fire element) giving reduced damage if its resisted. Sure status effecting spells are 'completely' resisted because they are binary in nature, but resisted damage spells give half damage iirc ... so it is effecting it, just not in a binary way. But regular, physical defense doesn't work in a binary way either.

(I can see how it is still somewhat binary ... as far as Full damage or Half damage, rather than Full damage or No damage ...)

^

^--- so should our lesson be to make spell resist more like defense? Or should we just accept that magical attacks are of a different nature. After all ... beyond the "spell resist" halving the magical damage if successful, you also have elemental resist, which is COMPLETELY non-binary.

Personally I think its fine. All damage spells give out half damage if resisted, and either way (whether half or full damage), the damage then given is further modified by your elemental resistance (or weakness)

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 11

Shieldwall has been nurfed in 1.01, mostlike due to this thread.

It will be +3 instead of the +5.

 

 

we will see.

Personally I think the better option would have been to remove shield wall from the unit "design" ... but meh. +3 def is good enough that Altar will still use it, but not so Obscene when you start stacking it. ^_^

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 11

Shieldwall has been nurfed in 1.01, mostlike due to this thread.

It will be +3 instead of the +5.

 

Another one bites the dust..

I mean why is everything looking nerfed - traits, spells ? +1 here, +3 there means no real difference..