I actually stick Bloodstorm in front with lots of Dodge. Shayd keeps attempting to stun, and when she can't, Bloodstorm does his best to dodge what's incoming.
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My Shyad also has a lot of dodge and other defense runes. The reason I put her ahead some times is because when Bloodstorm is killed, then the stunning does not serve a lot of purpose if there is no one behind her to do the damage. With Bloodstorm behind her, when Shyad is killed he is still there dodging and doing damage.
Adamantine is too strong. Yes, you can load up on flintiness and dexterous runes on all your guys. Base stats have a larger offense base for the state then a defense base. I think that continues as stats increase, making the margin wider.
In addition, its a lot cheaper to increase your damage then it is to increase your defense. Offense improves by improving swords and spirits and the increase in defensive stats for the same level and type of equipment (Guardian, HP, Champion, etc) is far less then the offense adjustment. In addition, it only requires increasing your sword and spirit to maximize the increase to both your strength and skill attacks, to increase your defense against both requires increasing your breastplate, cloak, and helm. These are cheaper, individually, to increase, and again individually, in time. But taken as a total it takes as much coin and even more time. So you cannot match the offense increase of players by equipment with defensive increases in equipment. Take a look around your server and notice how many people will have lvl 40+ weapons, but not even lvl 30 armor.
Runes are dead even, except that when you look at the 100 shard runes you notice that there is one that increase both physical and skill damage. That alone will increase offense since there isn't a similar rune that increases physical and skill defense, or dodge and block, or even resilience and hp. That again, gives the increase to offense over defense.
Then we throw in that you get more increase in offense per credit for talents then you do for a similar for amount for defense. It becomes rapidly apparently the game is not designed for grinding your opponent down but for huge bursts of DPS in PvP. And even against bosses offense seems to be far, far more useful then defensive resistance runes. The only thing that really seems to help much is dodge, and sometime block runes.
The effect of this with Adam and his skill attack is he causes crushing damage which is very difficult to mitigate or resist (cannot be blocked, accuracy counters dodge, skill attacks are very high rating compared to skill defense) to the entire opponent's group. The only true defense is to try to stun or will break him, both of which are fairly easy to counter by positioning. If Adam didn't hit the entire grid, hit for less, had a higher base miss rate, or if skill attacks where blockable then he wouldn't be the problem he is.
Then we get into the entire mage issue. Shady's stun rate is fine, her miss rate is awful, making her unreliable for damage. Even so, she is vital for dealing with most bosses because of her stun. Smoulder is .... terrible. Too high a base miss rate (and with a base +hit stat) and a bit too low of damage. Again, since the game is completely weighted against a grind fights his AoE is just too weak. The fact that mages cannot crit just makes things worse, since they not only miss quite frequently, but don't have as much burst. That being said, mages do seem to hit harder then they should for their stats and equipment, which brings them a back from being completely useless outside of stunning.
That there are no rare mages and only Shayd and Smoulder as legends means you couldn't field a unit of mages even if you wanted too, because lack of sanctifies and the lower base stats on blues and whites makes them too weak. The lack of causing moral increase by magic attacks isn't sufficient reason to have made mages as weak as they are. The very low rate of leader cards also makes it more difficult to build up your main character as a tank.
Another problem with mages is their stats. They are heavily loaded into intelligence, which makes sense from a fluff perspective. But Intelligence only helps their own attacks and resistance to other magical attacks. It makes it very difficult to use them to tank opponents using mage characters with their lower base command and strength. Since they don't counterattack, don't perform physical attacks, and don't use skill except for defense, it would have been reason to give them much better strength and command stats to allow them to tank, or at least help resist all those powerful skill attacks and live to dish out their own damage.
We absolutely need new mages with hybrid attacks more like Dawnbringers and Rhizes but with normal hit rates. Modifying the existing code to allow mages to block and counterattack using a magic attack (even if its a hit with no special effects/area effects) would make them far more useful. Personally, if Smoulder's damage isn't increase I would like to see it apply a debuff to everyone it hits that reduces the character's magic resistance, allowing mages to hit far harder.
However, at this late date with the servers the game is basically over for mages. With all the new servers being opened to serve "new" clients maybe some of these changes would make mages more viable.
We need to have strong heroes in the game, like adamanti and bloodstorm to be able to beat these higher up bosses and get through the palace every weekend. Shayd, to me, is a great hero and I need an intensness rune on her asap, so if anyone wants to throw me one... lol. but in all seriousness, we do need a more accurate mage, that deals good damage, like a stronger mehividan, and I would like to see a hero that does a damaging blade skill attack.
Wild Abandon is a great skill attack (of the Pursuer Quest) It stuns and skill attacks and physical attacks!!!! When do we get a hero with that!!!!!
I guess we do need a new mage though.
It's the stun that makes it OP.
Having three stunners and two pure skill attackers is OP.
However, a piercing thrust from a mage each turn isn't that OP because:
- He's a mage, he doesn't crit.
- Since he's a mage, he'll have a miss rate.
- It's a magic attack. Magic defense is usually high with players.
It's better than Smoulder's powerful but ridiculously inaccurate Horns of Hell skill.