New HotM Mana Generation Elemental Link – when would Mana Gain come into play?

Gameplay Help & Tactics
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I want to preface this by clarifying that this is not meant to say that the new heroes are weak, or bad, or underpowered (in fact several of them are quite the opposite). I mean only to bring up something that I found quite curious.

I went through the math with another member of my alliance the other day, and we could not come up with realistic raid situations where the 4% boost would become relevant. The only plausible one we could come up with (aside from the far fetched “if you don’t have the prerequisite mana troop level, it could cut the mana requirement the second time firing so long as you get enough tiles while the buff is active”) was using Nadnog so it activates at 6 tiles, then hitting Guin with three more tiles, but not killing her. At that point if Guin activates, instead of taking 5 tiles to reactivate or activate an accompanying GM it would only require a 4-match. Still pretty niche, and the tile breakpoints got even worse for Seshat and Kingston.

Can anyone else think of a realistic raid situation where a mana gain up elemental link would come into play? I had thought maybe they’d block opposite mana gain down effect from Alasie, but they stack for some reason so that doesn’t work either.

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This is useful for reference, so I just wanted to pop it in here:

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I’ll let you guess who my alliance mate was that I ran the numbers with…

Keep in mind though that this chart assumes that the buff is active, which necessitates the special already having been fired. If you’re stacking multiple purples into Guin and get a round of specials off, Guin shouldn’t be firing. If you’re not stacking purples, the mana cut doesn’t affect Sesh and 4% doesn’t hit any new breakpoints either.

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The only real benefit I can think of for the 4% from the elemental link is combined with Ariel. As I’m sure you know, with Ariel’s boost and sufficiently high mana troops, a fast hero can charge with 6 tiles/3 ghosted. If you don’t quite have a high enough mana troop, Ariel + mana elemental link could push you over the edge to get to this level.

But I agree with the general premise of your post as I haven’t seen a huge benefit in practice from this with Seshat.

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The situations that the mana elemental link becomes useful are rather limited which is why I reckon this next batch of HOTM (Seshat, Miki, Nandog, Kingston and fingers crossed that Holy one) other skills are rather good as the mana link isn’t a great selling point in itself. Whilst I would have preferred it to be a small mana regen (weaker version of Alby/Misandra effect) I suspect the rest of the hero specials would have had a significant downgrade to reflect that.

The biggest benefit I can see from it is in Very Fast Raid Tournaments in which combining the +4% with the +5% of a level 1 Mana Troop to shave a tile off there so you can trim the tiles required from a few more heroes besides those you’ve a power Mana Troop for - however conversely this comes with downsides firstly the benefit depends on you being able to make enough matches (6 tiles non-ghosted or 3 ghosted) within 4 turns of having charged your Mana Link hero which is not a given as you may have used last tiles to charge the hero and replacement tiles may not have been kind - and in a Very Fast tournament you wouldn’t want to hold back an offensive special until you can get those tiles given the risk an unhelpful tile cascade poses. Also generally speaking if I were running a Level 1 4* troop I would usually go Critical Troop as the higher defence and health boost makes the hero more likely to survive to use its special, mana speed means nothing if the hero is dead - double whammy if you’re unlucky enough to lose you Mana Link hero before it gets a special off and your remaining heroes all have Level 1 Mana Troops that won’t be getting the tile shaved off.

Considering the utility of the link depends on the tournament allowing 5* and being Very Fast more weeks than not you won’t get this benefit and when you do it comes with an element of risk with the strategy so people’s milage might vary on whether it is a bit meh or must have for those tournaments (I suspect the answer probably comes down to whether you’re lucky to land them with your budget as judging by the remaining special skills on each of the heroes I don’t think there would be much question on whether they would be powered up at all).

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Question for the folks far better at understanding the math behind game mechanics than I:

In a purple stack, what effect does a 4/80 Seshat have on the speed of mana generation for other purple heroes? Ie, does a slow hero become avg speed with her 4 turns of mana? I suspect not, but I also suspect the troop level to make that happen gets reduced. Same Avg-Fast.

I assume running 2 Seshats gives little advantage as the specials would overwrite unless you cycled them - which if you did, does an extra turn, or two, make a huge difference?

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Slow takes 12 tiles to charge. To get to 10 tiles, you would need 25% mana generation bonus between mana troops and mana buffs.

Best seshat and a mana troop can do for a slow hero is 19%.

EDIT: think I did my math wrong. 20% gets slow to average, not 25%.

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Baseline here means “just mana troops, with no element link or talents.”

The 4% boost is the Element Link boost (so is only active for a few turns in the calculation).

The 2% boost is the “always on” talent, which gets added to the active-for-4-turns 4% boost.

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@Garanwyn

Looking at very slow with 4% and 2% boost for a lvl 29 mana, troop. That would be 21% mana bonus.

13.5 / 1.21 = 11.15 tiles, I believe.

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You don’t get the 4% boost forever. You only get it for a few turns :slight_smile:

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Based on the description of that section, I would expect it to be included in the calculation.

FALSE ADVERTISING.

:smiley:

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You’re miscalculating, because the 4% boost is only active for 4 turns.

But there was also an error in that section, because the 2% boost wasn’t getting applied right. I’ve updated.

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Also keep in mind that this was written with PRACTICAL application in mind. For the purposes of average, slow, and very slow heroes I don’t see any clear way to hit the breakpoints to drop a tile the first time around, and if you’re having a slow hero fire and then making enough matches to fire again without having already won the raid I’d argue that you’re doing it wrong.

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Has anymore thought been put into these useless hotm perks?

Kind of feel the latest hotms have been a bit of a rip off with inferior elemental links compared to past and future links

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The +4% Health elemental link and upcoming +10% critical chance seems IMO the most useful HoTM elemental links, +5% atk/def next. And these are all 6 turn effects!

The mana gain of only +4% is only situationally useful in combination with other mana boost effects and it’s only a 4 turn effect. This needs to be 6 turn just for internal consistency.

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Needs to just be scrapped and replaced with something useful in my opinion

The mana gain mechanic is such a pain that small boosts dont help. I mean your fast heroes need 15% just to shave 1 tile. So whoever thought the 4% for 4 turns would so beneficial that players would love to have it on these limited time paywall heroes was either drunk or found the best chronic supplier on the planet.

A temporary mana boost outside of a flat gain(alby) or a significant amount(ariel) is pretty useless.

And once a player(some already do) already has multiple mana troops to the tile breaks needed for their most used teams or even all their heroes in general, it makes it even more irrelevant.

I almost want to call it another marketing gimmick to decieve newer players but the hotms that have these links are pretty solid and have the interest of most players anyways so it cant be that. And it cant be a balancing effect to prevent these new heroes from being “op” if they had better links, considering past heroes with more useful links but similar stats and still considered some of the best heroes in the game(alasie, gm, drake, just to name a few)

Only possible reason for this link i can think of is that in the design process they ran out of ideas and someone spitballed this and everyone gave a nod without truly thinking it through since they had deadlines they needed to meet and just wanted to get the next set of hotm ready for the testing process so they could start on designs for the next projects

The devs themselves have yet to even comment on what purpose this link could possibly serve even though it’s been in question for months since the very first time it appeared in beta

I can hear the meeting going like this:

“So we need a new elemental link for the next set of hotm”

“Well we’re kind of outta ideas…”

“Oh! how about a small mana boost for a small amount of turns? Like 4% for 4 turns only applying when special is active and only to heroes in that color?”

“A small % in mana boost that is less than most troops and only lasts 4 turns and only beneficial if the board already has tiles to gain mana as it is and the other slower hero is already partially charged that it doesnt even shave a tile for what he/she needs to be full?!?! Our loyal players will be so thrilled about this, it’s the best dam elemental link we ever thought of, this is absolute genius!”

Yup i would be the guy facepalming the entire time I’m listening to that sale…

About the only way i can see this being useful is on defense, but then again situational as hell and who wants an elemental link that is mainly beneficial when they’re not actually using the hero…

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