I just played against a team in Tournament that had Alfrike as center hero, and I was reminded just how massively OP her Special is.
It’s got THREE abilities - the first is that it deals 200% damage to all enemies, which by itself is not a lot, but add that to the second ability, which ALSO reduces max health by 224, and the combined health loss is far greater than any other AoE Hero capable of hitting all enemies. And, on the off-chance that all five cubes hits only one Hero, it’s an insta-kill at a combined 1000% damage. But that, while unfair, is not why I feel she is so OP -
It’s the third ability that makes her OP. Each cube ALSO causes Mindless Attack. And since there’s 5 cubes, it is entirely possible that all five of your heroes gets hit with that (in fact, that just happened to me twice in a row, which is the reason I got fed up and decided to make this post), and suddenly your entire team is locked down and powerless.
Given that you cannot counter or dispel that (or do anything else) without being able to use a Special, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, besides matching shields to advance turns. Which means that you’re only powering up Alfrike’s Special again with every shield that hits her, so by the time that the Mindless Attack finally wears off of your Heroes, she’s ready to cast her Special AGAIN, and lock down most or all of your team - AGAIN. Rinse and repeat until you you lose the match. There really isn’t another outcome, more often than not.
No single Hero should ever be powerful enough to win matches single-handedly. Even with her Special set to “Very Slow.” And especially so with one of the Tournament rules being “All Speeds set to Very Fast,” which makes Alfrike basically unbeatable.
Here are my proposals to properly nerf Alfrike, without stripping too much of her power:
1.) Take away the Mindless Attack ability entirely. The damage she causes between regular damage and max-health loss still easily makes her a very powerful Hero, even without the Mindless Attack ability.
2.) Alternately, you could drop the number of Dark Cubes down from 5 to 3. That way, even if you’re really unlucky, only three of your Heroes can have Mindless Attack cast on them, and you still have two left to try to counter with.