Hi all,
Coming from an MMORPG background (Guild Wars 2) it has been interesting to see various parallels in the games (one example is Taunt, which wasn’t in the original of either games, so made me think perhaps some of the SGG devs play GW2 lol). A big type of GW2 playstyle/build is based on Damage over Time (DoT, or “condi” as it is affectionally/hatefully known in GW2 lol).
The main difference in GW2 is that there are two stats (attributes) that effect condi damage. That is condition damage itself (like Attack in E&P), and expertise that affects the duration of applied conditions. And condition damage stacks, whether from the same source or different sources (iirc there are rules so that stronger condi isn’t overwritten by weaker condi, but it isn’t turn-based, each DoT hits each second.)
I would love to see stackable conditions in E&P. I know it has been questioned before, as in how it would work, and I’ve seen reasonable arguments for it not being stackable (comparing to att/def up/down, fair enough for those but they’re totally different things.) But what if condi across the board was all toned down, and then we allowed stackable conditions?
Example (Proteus and Chesire Cat on same team, numbers based on current cards, not scaled down):
Turn A: Proteus applies 327 poison damage for 3 turns (109 per turn)
Turn B1: Chesire Cat applies 276 poison damage for 4 turns (69 per turn)
Turn B2: Enemy takes 109 poison damage; remaining: Proteus 218 for 2 turns + CC 276 for 4 turns
Turn C: Enemy takes 178 (109 + 69) poison damage; remaining: Proteus 109 for 1 turn + CC 207 for 3 turns
Turn D: Enemy takes 178 (109 + 69) poison damage; remaining: Proteus finished + CC 138 for 2 turns
Turn E: Enemy takes 69 poison
Turn F: Enemy takes 69 poison, then finally cured!
It can allow for another variant of team build, one built around a condi focus.
While doing such a revamp, a new “ability” can be added to new/existing heroes that is similar to Critical Chance… that is Condition Duration. We already have Attack up/down, defense up/down, etc. Why not have a Condition up/down? Heroes that can buff Sartana, Natalya, etc, and heroes that can weaken them as well. This would obviously be added into special skills, as a stat would pretty much need a new engine/game written I imagine! But there could be a new type of troop perhaps…? (This could get SGG to take it seriously, a whole new type of troop for players to BUY and level up!)
Hmm is there a hero somewhere that increases duration of status effects or something like that? It rings a bell now I think about it.
Anyway I just find that Attack / Defense / Health kind of boring, and as we have DoT already in the game why not make it a bigger part? Yes, this would be a huge balancing task for the devs. But it opens up the doors to a lot more varied play and counterplay.
Finally, there is that new “stack” mechanism; I’ve not thought about it in this context until right now lol so not sure if it could be a new vehicle for condis…?
Cheers!