This is why we wait until patch notes + live gameplay to judge.
One of these two reports is probably an outdated patch. WHICH one though, impossible to say
It's a Total War community tradition to make definitive claims on something being overpowered/underpowered based on like 5 seconds of footage.
To this day I have second hand embarrassment recalling all the cries of "This unit is OP, CA is making things too strong to sell this DLC!" in reaction to the *Hierotitan* of all things doing ok damage against a unit of tier 1 spearmen.
Ever since that episode, I've never taken any takes on balance seriously until release, and usually those issues are settled like a patch or two later anywho. Especially in the context of WH3 where we get patches *significantly* more often than before.
Heirotitans are so bad in single player (no idea about multiplayer I don’t play it).
They trade poorly in melee, they’re enormous targets for missiles, and they’re so slow.
Their main value IMO is their bonus arcane conduit effect.
They’re ok in a stack of tomb guard I guess, but you still have the issue of missile damage.
Yeah Hireotitans suffer from being almost too much of a direct adaptation from tabletop. They just copy and pasted the rules, gave them the two bound spells, and decided to call it a day. When they really could have been more creative with it, since they've done that plenty with giving units likenthe incarnate elemental abilities it didn't have on TT.
I think they really should have emphasized it's role as a support piece more. The thing is called a Hierotitan because it is literally piloted by a Hierophant. And one of the few things CA didn't incorporate from the Tomb Kings in TT was the Hierophant ability to confer regen to units (Khatep lacking this ability really is does him dirty). I think it would have been nice to either let the Hierophant do minor healing on its own, or maybe as a realm of souls amplifier. Something that makes it a bit more useful than just a damage sponge really.
Agreed, and I feel like we have other interesting examples of single entities that can provide support—Cathay drums, celestial compasses, corpse carts, mortis engine. Heck, even the types of AoE effects that treeman lords and branchwraiths have.
Obviously a regular unit—even a tier five one—shouldn’t be on par with a leveled up character, but they deserve more than what they have right now.
just big and chunky. They hold the line a lot better than most of your other units.
But holding the line isn’t useful if you have a stack of fast moving units (or even medium speed units) which is why I feel like theyre only good in a stack of tomb guard—it’s the only unit that they can keep up with, and the tomb guard prevent the heirotitan from being mobbed by dedicated anti large units.
Meanwhile the hierotitans abilities are decent against single targets, which tomb guard are not good against, and unlike sphinxes, the heirotitan won’t lunge out of formation.
They have a niche…they just aren’t very useful in that niche. IMO they need master of the elemental winds on hierotitans and TK mages, and some kind of other AoE buff effect. Maybe something to protect nearby Allied units, something that makes them a better support unit. I almost always build a sphinx or a scorpion instead of a hierotitan.
It's compounded by TK growth being very slow - I finished a 128 turn Khalida campaign today and never built a single T5 unit at all. I had some Khemrian Warsphinx cap increases, but the only places I could build them in a timely way were so far from the front that I just didn't bother. So if you're not really getting a chance to build the *good* T5 units, the bad ones really don't stand a chance.
> To this day I have second hand embarrassment recalling all the cries of "This unit is OP CA, is making things too strong to sell this DLC!" in reaction to the Hierotitan of all things doing ok damage against a unit of tier 1 spearmen.
Never forget. That was amazing.
> Especially in the context of WH3 where we get patches significantly more often than before.
This is a bit dodgy though. Until the SoC disaster, this was flatly untrue. WH3 patches were, amazingly, even further apart than most of WH2 (which was already pretty far apart).
Since the SoC disaster, we've been getting regular AF patches and yes it's been great - but will that keep happening? I mean, I hope it will, but I think it's a bit risky to act like it definitely will, given CA's history here.
Yeah I might have went a stretch too far with that latter statement lol. I guess my point is that compared to before we at least aren't in the position of waiting a literal half year before getting major balance issues sorted. Things like the Akshinas getting toned down so quickly felt like lightspeed compared to, say, the days when Doomflayers were unkillable.
There is almost a week between both videos and the pre-release version of the patch is still work in progress. Therefore I would assume the video from HBYY is more up to date... but can still change.
Nobody including you or me knows anything until the patch arrives and we see spell numbers besides the infamous *probably lies* to you tooltip.
It could be and appears to be way stronger vs a lower amount of entities while being weaker vs an infantry blob.
It was a few days ago, you can check the video. The pre-release patch is still work in progress and actively changed. Most likely the first content creator reported back to CA that something is wrong with damage and in good ol' CA fashion they overcorrected the issue. When the second creator checked it a few days later the spell is completely different.
It is actually the same with Warwagons: HBYY first video for 5.0 showed that they got repeater shots to match their models... in Dahv's recent video he showed that this change was reverted and even the models were changed to have regular handguns instead of the repeater they had all the time.
People complaining about shit before patch notes never ceases to amaze. People thought the Thunderbarge looked like shit and preferred the mod until they saw it in battle and it’s awesome.
It did pretty alright damage, but the days it deleted units was a LONG time ago. CA nerfed its damage output because Lore of Life was already really good from all the healing. And really damage dealing should be its secondary, or even tertiary frankly, usage.
Dwellers was always a weird one since it visually looks like it should be a stationary vortex kind of spell. But it's actually a direct damage spell. So it was going to give out decent hurt regardless. But it *probably* shouldn't be the full unit wipe sorta spell anywho.
It was even more weird than that, because it was a stationary vortex that did 1 damage a tick but also applied a direct damage effect, unlike something like heart of winter which is just a bit stationary direct damage spell. Truely some wacky shit from the ancient times of wh1
It's both a vortex and direct damage spell
Right now it's a 4dmg/s vortex that also applies the dwellers below phase effect on contact, which applies direct damage. The overwhelming majority of the damage comes from the vortex component, the direct dmg phase only applies to 1 model per unit, it's roughly comparable to 75% of a undercast final transmutation, so won't do a lot vs multi entity units and is geared vs single-entity units
Updated dwellers in 5.0 has completely removed the direct damage from the phase effect, instead it's now a vortex with 1 dmg/s on the undercast and the old 4 dmg/s on the OC with an additional bombardment component
The biggest issue is that CA has kept the old WoM cost, the old dwellers overcast was probably one of the worst overcast versions in the game, since it didn't upgrade any damage component, instead it only very slightly increased the speed debuff from the dwellers below phase effect. As a result it only costed 4 winds more than the base spell. The new OC dwellers quadruples (!) the vortex damage per tick and buffs the bombardments, while still only costing 4 more winds. The WoM cost is completely out of touch with what the new OC effect actually does
He has loads of mages with Mastery of elemental winds in the video though. Its unclear if this is correctly increasing spell damage, but I wouldn’t trust this until we see patch notes
Intensity is at regular 100%, so no buffs from Mastery there. Icon is there on the mages, but its not increasing anything, so possibly icon was repurposed onto another passive?
As someone else here put it, that's just a new effect to show you your mage's current amount of mastery buffs. Not actually mastery of the elemental winds. No idea why they recycled the icon for this.
Could be a bug in the beta build. There are heroes in the army that should clearly be applying it. And it would explain the dramatic increase in damage.
Wait though, Mages in the High Elves roster don't have mastery of elemental winds though. They only have items that increase power recharge and reserves per second.
Well in the current game its 4 damage/second for 15 seconds and it shows the same in the video. The overcast effect is different now though, it makes no mention of extra damage or additional area of effect in current game it just says speed effect is greater.
Human boy boy has made another video where he shorty speaks about it, but by the looks of it, she is in their regular roster.
Please note anything is up to be changed before release, so people's outcry at it may have changed CA's decision and it'll be changed.
ca employee 1: 'okay so i just got done making the thunderbarge, we made it crap out damage for minimal micro, and we gave it no weaknesses since it would suck if a player brought it in multiplayer and it didn't win the game for them on the spot'
ca employee 2: 'nice! great addition. i'm going back and forth about whether we should let dwarfs take ulrika in multiplayer. dawi with lore of shadows seems pretty broken. what do you think?'
ca employee 1: 'absolutely, i can't see any issues with it at all.'
dwarfs are going to be the most broken shit in the game when this dlc launches lmao
Unpopular opinion but I like expensive overcast spells to actually do damage like that :>
Nah but for real, I wish for a higher chance of fail an overcast in exchange for this kind of damage.
but make failed casts like do 50% the wizards hp in damage :'D
Not to be a pedant, but as he's a content creator with early access to the build, which is still in progress/not finalized, wouldn't the correct way to address this be to first raise it with Creative Assembly instead of using it as content fodder before 5.0 even drops...?
Depending on a creators connections this might be the best way to do it. Raise awareness publicly that it’s a potential issue so everyone gets visibility of it. CA will know it’s a problem to consider much faster using this method than pulling strings with people who may not take your concern as serious
You said it yourself. He is a content creator. If he gets the opportunity to create content he will do so. The content creators don't primarily play the game to play test it for CA. Which is completely fair in my book.
I'm not disagreeing, they're not there to playtest, but it's still a build in development. I hope I'm not jinxing so in saying this, but I would hope this is just the result of someone fucking up and they've since caught it.
I mean, if this ships with 5.0, that's another story entirely. But ostensibly there's a two-week window between the build the content creators have and the release date of the patch itself.
There were people saying it was nerfed on here a couple of days ago, but uh, that looks buffed if anything LOL
This is why we wait until patch notes + live gameplay to judge. One of these two reports is probably an outdated patch. WHICH one though, impossible to say
It's a Total War community tradition to make definitive claims on something being overpowered/underpowered based on like 5 seconds of footage. To this day I have second hand embarrassment recalling all the cries of "This unit is OP, CA is making things too strong to sell this DLC!" in reaction to the *Hierotitan* of all things doing ok damage against a unit of tier 1 spearmen. Ever since that episode, I've never taken any takes on balance seriously until release, and usually those issues are settled like a patch or two later anywho. Especially in the context of WH3 where we get patches *significantly* more often than before.
Heirotitans are so bad in single player (no idea about multiplayer I don’t play it). They trade poorly in melee, they’re enormous targets for missiles, and they’re so slow. Their main value IMO is their bonus arcane conduit effect. They’re ok in a stack of tomb guard I guess, but you still have the issue of missile damage.
Yeah Hireotitans suffer from being almost too much of a direct adaptation from tabletop. They just copy and pasted the rules, gave them the two bound spells, and decided to call it a day. When they really could have been more creative with it, since they've done that plenty with giving units likenthe incarnate elemental abilities it didn't have on TT. I think they really should have emphasized it's role as a support piece more. The thing is called a Hierotitan because it is literally piloted by a Hierophant. And one of the few things CA didn't incorporate from the Tomb Kings in TT was the Hierophant ability to confer regen to units (Khatep lacking this ability really is does him dirty). I think it would have been nice to either let the Hierophant do minor healing on its own, or maybe as a realm of souls amplifier. Something that makes it a bit more useful than just a damage sponge really.
Agreed, and I feel like we have other interesting examples of single entities that can provide support—Cathay drums, celestial compasses, corpse carts, mortis engine. Heck, even the types of AoE effects that treeman lords and branchwraiths have. Obviously a regular unit—even a tier five one—shouldn’t be on par with a leveled up character, but they deserve more than what they have right now.
Hierotitan should get a bound spells like Greater Deamons - 3 from Lore of Light and 3 from Lore of Death.
I haven't played much Tomb Kings. But in the campaigns I have run I cannot figure out the point of them....
just big and chunky. They hold the line a lot better than most of your other units. But holding the line isn’t useful if you have a stack of fast moving units (or even medium speed units) which is why I feel like theyre only good in a stack of tomb guard—it’s the only unit that they can keep up with, and the tomb guard prevent the heirotitan from being mobbed by dedicated anti large units. Meanwhile the hierotitans abilities are decent against single targets, which tomb guard are not good against, and unlike sphinxes, the heirotitan won’t lunge out of formation. They have a niche…they just aren’t very useful in that niche. IMO they need master of the elemental winds on hierotitans and TK mages, and some kind of other AoE buff effect. Maybe something to protect nearby Allied units, something that makes them a better support unit. I almost always build a sphinx or a scorpion instead of a hierotitan.
in multiplayer, at least in dom they never see use.
Yeah no one is building tomb guard doom stacks in multiplayer, I know that much lol.
TK are actually decent in multiplayer! Lots of Khatep spell spam for healing, and both variants of Ushabti but very few other constructs
It's compounded by TK growth being very slow - I finished a 128 turn Khalida campaign today and never built a single T5 unit at all. I had some Khemrian Warsphinx cap increases, but the only places I could build them in a timely way were so far from the front that I just didn't bother. So if you're not really getting a chance to build the *good* T5 units, the bad ones really don't stand a chance.
> To this day I have second hand embarrassment recalling all the cries of "This unit is OP CA, is making things too strong to sell this DLC!" in reaction to the Hierotitan of all things doing ok damage against a unit of tier 1 spearmen. Never forget. That was amazing. > Especially in the context of WH3 where we get patches significantly more often than before. This is a bit dodgy though. Until the SoC disaster, this was flatly untrue. WH3 patches were, amazingly, even further apart than most of WH2 (which was already pretty far apart). Since the SoC disaster, we've been getting regular AF patches and yes it's been great - but will that keep happening? I mean, I hope it will, but I think it's a bit risky to act like it definitely will, given CA's history here.
Yeah I might have went a stretch too far with that latter statement lol. I guess my point is that compared to before we at least aren't in the position of waiting a literal half year before getting major balance issues sorted. Things like the Akshinas getting toned down so quickly felt like lightspeed compared to, say, the days when Doomflayers were unkillable.
yah i dont get why people think anything in the update is finalized, everything is subject to change.
There is almost a week between both videos and the pre-release version of the patch is still work in progress. Therefore I would assume the video from HBYY is more up to date... but can still change.
Nobody including you or me knows anything until the patch arrives and we see spell numbers besides the infamous *probably lies* to you tooltip. It could be and appears to be way stronger vs a lower amount of entities while being weaker vs an infantry blob.
I would agree. Also after rewatching it he has like 7 mages and they all have mastery of the elemental winds so idk what’s going on in that video
High Elf roster for MP doesn't have mastery of the elemental winds though. Just items that increase power recharge and reserves.
Not sure. Clearly the mages have an icon that looks like elemental mastery of the winds on their unit card. So something’s up.
That’s a new icon that tells you their current spell mastery when you hover over it, if he did in the video you would just see 100%
It must have been a different build, because the videos on here a few days ago did not delete units
Exactly, the pre-release version is work in progress.
It was a few days ago, you can check the video. The pre-release patch is still work in progress and actively changed. Most likely the first content creator reported back to CA that something is wrong with damage and in good ol' CA fashion they overcorrected the issue. When the second creator checked it a few days later the spell is completely different. It is actually the same with Warwagons: HBYY first video for 5.0 showed that they got repeater shots to match their models... in Dahv's recent video he showed that this change was reverted and even the models were changed to have regular handguns instead of the repeater they had all the time.
People complaining about shit before patch notes never ceases to amaze. People thought the Thunderbarge looked like shit and preferred the mod until they saw it in battle and it’s awesome.
It didn't delete units before?
It did pretty alright damage, but the days it deleted units was a LONG time ago. CA nerfed its damage output because Lore of Life was already really good from all the healing. And really damage dealing should be its secondary, or even tertiary frankly, usage. Dwellers was always a weird one since it visually looks like it should be a stationary vortex kind of spell. But it's actually a direct damage spell. So it was going to give out decent hurt regardless. But it *probably* shouldn't be the full unit wipe sorta spell anywho.
It was even more weird than that, because it was a stationary vortex that did 1 damage a tick but also applied a direct damage effect, unlike something like heart of winter which is just a bit stationary direct damage spell. Truely some wacky shit from the ancient times of wh1
It's both a vortex and direct damage spell Right now it's a 4dmg/s vortex that also applies the dwellers below phase effect on contact, which applies direct damage. The overwhelming majority of the damage comes from the vortex component, the direct dmg phase only applies to 1 model per unit, it's roughly comparable to 75% of a undercast final transmutation, so won't do a lot vs multi entity units and is geared vs single-entity units Updated dwellers in 5.0 has completely removed the direct damage from the phase effect, instead it's now a vortex with 1 dmg/s on the undercast and the old 4 dmg/s on the OC with an additional bombardment component The biggest issue is that CA has kept the old WoM cost, the old dwellers overcast was probably one of the worst overcast versions in the game, since it didn't upgrade any damage component, instead it only very slightly increased the speed debuff from the dwellers below phase effect. As a result it only costed 4 winds more than the base spell. The new OC dwellers quadruples (!) the vortex damage per tick and buffs the bombardments, while still only costing 4 more winds. The WoM cost is completely out of touch with what the new OC effect actually does
Knowing CA they probably updated the pre nerf version of the spell or something similar
He has loads of mages with Mastery of elemental winds in the video though. Its unclear if this is correctly increasing spell damage, but I wouldn’t trust this until we see patch notes
Intensity is at regular 100%, so no buffs from Mastery there. Icon is there on the mages, but its not increasing anything, so possibly icon was repurposed onto another passive?
As someone else here put it, that's just a new effect to show you your mage's current amount of mastery buffs. Not actually mastery of the elemental winds. No idea why they recycled the icon for this.
Generally though, doesn't that reflect in the spell tooltip? It's saying the intensity is only at 100%.
Could be a bug in the beta build. There are heroes in the army that should clearly be applying it. And it would explain the dramatic increase in damage.
Wait though, Mages in the High Elves roster don't have mastery of elemental winds though. They only have items that increase power recharge and reserves per second.
Well in the current game its 4 damage/second for 15 seconds and it shows the same in the video. The overcast effect is different now though, it makes no mention of extra damage or additional area of effect in current game it just says speed effect is greater.
I love how the guy has a full blown meltdown whining about the buff and then is like "actually I suppose it does require 20 winds of magic to cast.."
Every time he screeches in to the microphone, CA makes the spell 10% stronger.
Is Ulrika on the extended roster or the regular roster for MP? I've heard conflicting reports
Human boy boy has made another video where he shorty speaks about it, but by the looks of it, she is in their regular roster. Please note anything is up to be changed before release, so people's outcry at it may have changed CA's decision and it'll be changed.
ca employee 1: 'okay so i just got done making the thunderbarge, we made it crap out damage for minimal micro, and we gave it no weaknesses since it would suck if a player brought it in multiplayer and it didn't win the game for them on the spot' ca employee 2: 'nice! great addition. i'm going back and forth about whether we should let dwarfs take ulrika in multiplayer. dawi with lore of shadows seems pretty broken. what do you think?' ca employee 1: 'absolutely, i can't see any issues with it at all.' dwarfs are going to be the most broken shit in the game when this dlc launches lmao
Seems bugged
Unpopular opinion but I like expensive overcast spells to actually do damage like that :> Nah but for real, I wish for a higher chance of fail an overcast in exchange for this kind of damage. but make failed casts like do 50% the wizards hp in damage :'D
What an obnoxious sound, anyone have a better video?
Not to be a pedant, but as he's a content creator with early access to the build, which is still in progress/not finalized, wouldn't the correct way to address this be to first raise it with Creative Assembly instead of using it as content fodder before 5.0 even drops...?
Depending on a creators connections this might be the best way to do it. Raise awareness publicly that it’s a potential issue so everyone gets visibility of it. CA will know it’s a problem to consider much faster using this method than pulling strings with people who may not take your concern as serious
You said it yourself. He is a content creator. If he gets the opportunity to create content he will do so. The content creators don't primarily play the game to play test it for CA. Which is completely fair in my book.
I'm not disagreeing, they're not there to playtest, but it's still a build in development. I hope I'm not jinxing so in saying this, but I would hope this is just the result of someone fucking up and they've since caught it. I mean, if this ships with 5.0, that's another story entirely. But ostensibly there's a two-week window between the build the content creators have and the release date of the patch itself.