Has he been edited yet or is he still the same version he was before?
Raffaele hasnât been in Beta for almost a month, so there are no updates since his last testing.
Dang. How unfortunate (imo).
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After I get nothing from Grimforest, Iâll need to apologize to Thorne for waiting so long.
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So from first to second iteration, there has been done a complete re-do of his concept. And while the new concept does not work at all, the fact that the devs are willing to go in another direction gives hope to this hero (for now).
Raffaeleâs new concept does not work for a number of reasons:
So he is a Slow hero with Tank stats: 803def/1402hp, here below are some other heroes that are mostly used as tanks for comparasion:
Queen of H. 730/1545
Grazul 817/1405
Aegir 805/1446
C.Richard 862/1361
Heimdall 836/1402
M.North 819/1462
OPlluria 832/1425
Yunan 815/1437
C.Horgall 694/1669
Boss Wolf 826/1524
Kunchen 815/1437
Guardian Owl 795/1483
Guin 778/1347
Justice 775/1425
Looks to be average. Now the whole drawback of having a slow ult is, theoretically, compensated by the possibility to be a tank. And with his âAnyone that is below 50% hp gets top to 50% hpâ ability, he can survive for a long time. A pretty good synergie, on paper.
Green stacks against him that arent able to combo 8+tiles will end up with a tank back to 50% hp and an aoe heal/cleanse. Now while this can look impressive, unfortunatly itâs not because:
1_Stacking green does not only gives you the opportunity to bust the tank but most green counters him on their own (with the dispel ability). So an attacker is not going out of his/her way to prepare for him in any particular way. Just bring 3 greens, one of them will most likely have a dispel already.
2_ Why even bother to stack green against him?. Raffaeleâs main selling factor, for this iteration, is survivality. He will outlive all of your other heroes and be the last one to die, for sure. Because he is no threat, nobody is afraid of a passive ult like his. If Raffaeleâs does 3 ults before I start doing mine, I dont care, 3 cleanses and some healing that will negate my previous tile dmg. No punishment factor, I can relax charge 2/3 ults from my heavy hitters and pick 1 non Raffaele hero at a time.
A tankâs job is to buy enough time for his/her team to start doing stuff, his second job is to be the first one on the team to die. He doesnt do the second part at all, because he will be ignored as he is not a threat and he barely helps on the first one (with his heals and cleanses, which btw the best he will clean is probably a hex effect from a sorcer or a bleed).
Sure some VF hero will do a dot on your team, and he will cleanse it but that is not really usefull. Because anyobdy that uses a VF ult, before a cleanse is for 2 reasons only: they already have a gem matchup to bring back the VF ult to 100% mana or there is a big possibility of killing something with it, before the cleanse comes one turn later.
3_Cleanse is a wonderful ability as long as itâs not on a SLOW/VS hero. The whole point of cleanse is to mitigate harfull effects, if you canât afford to do it fast whatâs the point in blocking the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the damage?. By that point is just a consolation prize ability and instead of an useful one.
Well, thatâs for defense. On attack his elemental link can shine as ppl will be stacking 3+ blue heroes. But then the Defense against Special skills formula has some weird math behind. So if it says that 30% of a 900dmg attack is not 270blocked dmg. Is like 150 blocked dmg, so you may as well read this as:
And same issue as the Cleanse ability, itâs utility gets wasted on a Slow hero. By the time you have it ready to use, you are bound to have taken some ults from the enemy. So by that point, you are most likely slowing down the bleeding not preventing it.
I personaly, wouldnât mind having the hero the same as itâs now but with an extra ability that brings down his ult speed by 1 ârankâ every time he cast his ult that can not be dispelled (but it can be removed). So, he starts with SLOW after using his ult once he goes to AVERAGE speed. After doing it twice, he goes to FAST speed, and after the third one he stays at VF.
Now we have a very passive tank, that can still feel like a threat if I dont kill him fast. Which bring us back to our 2 point of âBeing a good tankâ (aka, dying first). He may not be the first one to die, as that spot is usually reserved for the most dangerous hero but he may end up being the second one to die. As having a VF cleanse, aoe healer that will bring ppl to 50% seems to be really annoying.
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Juste make him a 5* star Kiril with a cleanse and a hot instead of the direct heal at average speed and it would be okay.
Donât bother with the useless +50% Hp mecanichs if <50% no body cares about.
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Super Kiril would be wonderful and would give us a healer worth chasing!
Yes. Super Kiril would be wonderful.
Long time player. First time discussion user.
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I dont understand why this hero is constructed the way they are. Just having an initial heal+HoT+cleanse is not worthy of slow mana. Throw an additional buff or debuff in there and we are talking, but in this current form seems less than impressive.
Just bring one of 5 gazillion green dispellers.
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Looking at this just thinking âwow, after the outrage about Telluria SG got scared enough to even nerf the unwhelming heroes pre-releaseâ
If the HoT was reduced to 3 turns could make him annoying though⊠Just imagine you almost killed that GM flank, Raffaele fires and 2 rounds later GM is almost back to full health. Maybe also add a +34% mana recovery for all allies and people would finally shut up about Telluria. 
I suppose it would be too much to hope for a blue Ares with 25% less heal, the Clarissa treatment.
They are doing this because of Ariel. They donât want another blue 5* healer to compete with Atlantis summons (whether itâs the actual portal or the players who already pulled her) so they are trying to make a âpoor manâsâ Ariel. A hero that couldnât be compared/compete with her. Thatâs just my belief, but itâs the only rational explanation for this dumpster fire of a rollout.
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Thatâs pretty wildly speculative to say with such conviction. Theyâre in the business of selling heroes, so making a bad hero, for any reason, is just bad business and hurts their bottom line. That doesnât sound like a rational explanation to me. But an opinion? Sure.
To me, the hero card and the longer-than-normal list of revisions smells like them trying to create an innovative new card and just failing at figuring out how to balance it. I canât recall the last time Iâve seen so many huge changes to a HOTM. Theyâve held onto the unique mechanic of healing to 50%, which is sort of the core identity of this card, and then tried all kinds of things with it to create something that people will want but wonât be flamed for being OP.
Like any profitable company, Iâm sure they have limits on how many revisions/ how much time theyâll spend trying to balance a hero before they just cut their losses and move on, which to me, is a more rational explanation for this dumpster fire.
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âAttack: 650â
âResist: Attack Ailments â This Hero has innate resistance against status ailments that affect Attack.â
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The money they make off of Valhalla more than makes up for the HotM which they actually donât make much money off of since the HotM is often times complimentary. I pulled Malosi chasing after the wonderland heroes. I pulled Telluria chasing the first Valhalla portal. HotM are not designed to be better than event heroes, thatâs why many of them arenât.
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To be honest I think they just need better game designers who have a good sense of balance and design.
You can have all the beta testers in the world but if the lead designer thinks he or she is good then that personâs say will overrule everything else. Subject to board approval
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You have numbers on how much Valhalla earns compared to other things? You canât treat your speculations as empirical fact.
Yes, HOTM can be nothing more than a âBonus Pullâ to some people. But you also canât deny that a good HOTM entices people to pull more than they normally would. Once the buzz of Telluria was circulating I would bet anything that spending increased to try to snag her for full green tank war defenses. Additionally, plenty of people are hoarding gems for May to get Clarissa and passing on Malosi. So without a doubt, HOTM quality can dictate and drive spending behaviors.
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Thatâs certainly a possibility. I definitely agree that the concepts should be coming out of the design department strong and balanced and not relying on beta testers to be the designers. Itâs a little surprising how much they rely on this beta testing program for feedback.
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Balancing a game is incredibly hard. Like, super uber incredibly hard.
That said, I donât think theyâre depending on beta-testers for design. The most recent Clarissa nerf is proof of this; none of the beta testers asked for that.
I think theyâre releasing different versions of heroes to beta-testers to gauge player reactions in order to learn of boundaries of what the general playerbase might be excited about, what they might reject with pitchforks or welcome with open arms;
They want to see exactly how far they can go in each direction in order to maximize short term and long term profit.
Rather than a simple âletâs let the beta-testers balance this heroâ.
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Youâre seriously one of those? Itâs blatantly obvious that events make them more money than a single HotM. If these event heroes are outshined by HotM, who would pull for the event heroes? I shouldnât need empirical evidence to point out the obvious. We are all smart enough to recognize basic patterns, so donât discredit my intelligence.
With that being said, Raffaelle is a 5* blue healer and a direct threat to Arielâs existence. Iâm not saying itâs a fact, and quite frankly I distinctly said it was my opinion, but my opinion is based off of market strategies. SG would never (intentionally) cut off their nose to spite their face. If they were that dumb, Neith would have cut the same amount of mana as Guinevere, but the reason she did not (and they gave her the blind ability) is because they didnât want Guin to have the competition. Keep the HotM heroes less powerful than the event heroes (with some exceptions), thatâs what this is always going to be about.
Again, itâs my opinion, but makes a whole lot of sense, right? Release a hero thatâs good, but not better than one thatâs harder to obtain and will earn more money.
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