Rebalance Old Heroes

Hu Tao and Little John are often maligned because of their slow mana, but both can be extremely useful for events and quests. And I think Hu Tao is the more frequently maligned of the two, so I’m going to use LJ as a comparison to justify buffing Hu Tao a bit.

LJ is squishy but has the advantage of a high attack stat, so at least he’s also useful for titans and makes a difference when he goes off.

Comparatively, Hu Tao is a pile of blubber for defense and hp stats, but his attack stat and AoE percentage are low enough that he doesn’t do much damage when he hits. Blind is incredibly powerful in this game, but so is a mana debuff like LJ — which is also a guaranteed debuff, vs blindness that gives a chance to miss.

Comparatively, I don’t think Hu Tao being a meat shield makes him balanced with LJ as a benchmark for another slow Epic hero with a powerful special.

I think a little buff — nothing huge — to Hu Tao’s attack stat, or his AoE percentage, would make him a lot more usable, and more in keeping with the benchmark of Epic season 1 heroes.

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I agree, Zeph. Little John and Colen are excellent 4-star slow heroes; Hu Tao is not. A slight buff to his attack stat and a little nudge to his special damage will be a welcome addition.

Justice, similar to Hu Tao, is in need of a minor tweak. Held up to Hu Tao, she’s not distinctive enough, and put up against Drake Fong, she looks like a joke. Upping Justice’s damage a tad and her chance to miss from 35% to 45% would be enough to balance her out.

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Cyprian is kind of a odd ball hero to be getting the Paladin class, I think.

On the one hand, you can say his tank-like HP allows him to take some hits, and you’d generally want his defense not extremely spectacular because Riposte causes more damage to the opponent if he was hit harder (assuming he had enough HP to take it). On the first node upgrade, 5% chance doesn’t happen much, but if the final class update gets the Protect activated 30% of the time, it means the Riposte is not going to be as effective when it comes on if the Riposte is active during those 2 turns that Protect is on.

On the other hand, if going up against strong hitting monsters/Titans/heroes with talents who will hit harder than what you currently have, you would probably need to have that protection to prolong his survivability. Fortunately, that talent only applies to himself and not his flankers.

I hadn’t thought the rebalancing discussed here to concern classes, but you are right. Cyprian would make, like Boril, an excellent cleric.

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This is a matter close to my heart. I’m F2P and Aegir is my only 5*, and my only blue hero above 3*.

My only green above 3* is Skittleskull.

There are plenty of other threads for Aegir. I think boosting Skit’s attack or SS % damage a bit would help too

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This is quite a big list and I would actually disagree with some. E.g Kelile is imho perfectly fine. The generally agreed among many of general discussions threads are Thorne, Quintus, Boss Wolf, Rumpelstiltskin, Boomer.

But, what exactly do you suggest for them? I suggested that Thorne can get boost to his damage to 512% in the thread 1 post above (pity that thread didn’t have any follow up from SGG). What exactly do you suggest to do with each of these or each of those you suggested?

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It will definitely make a fully talented Cyprian more dangerous if he was a Cleric, means there is a 35% chance you can’t steal mana or seal his mana gain. Cleric class already made Rigard even more potent than he already is, had Rigard and Cyprian switched classes, Rigard will actually still be awesome with Paladin (he is a Cavalier by trade), but it will make both formidable, instead of a crippling effect on Cyprian.

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Something similar to the incremental changes SG used to implement regularly would work. Ten points in an attack stat here, a 5-10% damage increase there. Until they come in line with other, similar heroes.

Thoth’s minion could gain 5% attack and 5% HP and his overall attack damage could see a 5% boost.

Perseus’ damage could go from 355% to 365% (if not 375).

Horghall’s attack stat could see a 10-15 point boost and his damage-all go from 225 to 235%.

Elkanen could see a small bump in his damage and 10-15% increase in his life absorption.

Justice’s damage could go up 5% and her blind from a Hu Tao-level 35% to a legendary 45%.

Khagan’s damage could go up 15% to his target and 8% to those nearby. His defense buff could also probably see a 10% buff.

Domitia could see a damage increase, or her dispel could be changed to affect all enemies.

Saragossa could see his damage buffed another 5%, and Kestrel’s base damage another 10%.

And similarly with the heroes you recognize as subpar (Wolf, Thorne, Quintus, and Rump), give them a buff.

None of these changes would make any of these heroes OP (or more desirable than your Zelines and Panthers and Kages and Graves), but they would all make these heroes more desirable, and so incrementally work to balance the game.

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It seems to me that you are onto something fine here! These changes aren’t game changers, but would simply make mentioned hero’s more useful.

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Sounds really thought of! I would agree with all of these with caveat that they’d need to get through one month test stage.

I’d like to add: Rumpelstiltskin healing from 28% to 36% and also as I mentioned above quite a larger Thorn’s buff from 460% to 512%.

Also, not sure if you’ve seen a thread where I logged a request for Aegir (with links to previous general discussions about his issue):

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Does anyone think these heroes don’t need to be buffed? Or have another idea regarding the best ways to fix them?

I think the best way to balance most of these heroes is incrementally, a little at a time, until they’re actually respectable, but I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to bolder improvements should SG decide to make them.

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Nevermind you mean special skills

Sure but i doubt they will be. Think for there to be good 5* we have to have bad ones. And some people use the tc 5s so guessin they’re somewhat usable

Well, there are a slew of TC legendaries that are perfectly viable (Kadilen, Leonidas, Vivica, Richard, Elena) and many who are among the best in the game (Azlar, Lianna, Magni, Joon, Marj, Sartana).

As rare as legendaries are, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they all be viable. They’re never going to be equal, but they can each have a role that they can play. With the implementation of the class system, I think it’s even more important that SG go ahead and try to balance these heroes.

I know it has been a concern for them in the past—I think they’ve just been consumed with other things recently (with wars, with the Season Two rollout, etc.) I’d love it if they could also try to test some of these rebalancing issues too.

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Yea think part of the issue is no one is sure just how much difference clases will make for the unpopular tc20 heros.

So far the only ones I’ve seen mentioned by beta and regular players are paywall heros and popular tc20 heros

Idk how to know how much they’re effected without actually using them once classed out or going against them on defenses. And on paper there’s no real way to tell either in my opinion. A lot of things look better/worse on paper than they are in actual gameplay(aegir prime example).

Doubt anyone fully upgraded horghall or quintus to see if their classes would make a difference for them.

@Elpis @Xero786 @Dante2377

Did you guys notice in change in viability for the unpopular tc20 heros in beta?(horghall, quintus, khagan, etc etc)

I think many on your list are just fine. I think there are others that need buffs that aren’t on the list. I do like the thought process on the buffs, and they seem to align with the multiple small buff strategy SG uses (which makes sense, don’t want to over buff and then have to nerf).

I’m just not sure they will make many changes until the impacts of the new class structure are felt. I think some “useless” heroes may become useful and other stars may not shine as brightly.

We will see.

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Beta is a terrible field for such things.
Defences are filled with brand new toys (aka, next hotms or atlantis) and incredibly powerful heroes.
What’s more, people tend to use the strangest combinations (for finding bugs or eventually gain knowledge).
Really hard to find Tc20 legendary in there, especially not really good defence heroes like Quintus, or really meh like Khagan.

I personally think that Quintus is switched from meh hero to really good after this class things.
He is not the only regular among sorcerers, but even the only that do a ton of direct damage among them. Not Rumpel can do that (umpredictable) nor Mitsuko (meh damage on 3), and all the others are DoT.
I’m sure many will opt for him in sorcerer class.

The torn minion is simply made for Horghall, both esthetically that functionally.
Druid is another good class for tanks, and he is a good tank.

Khagan and once more Elkanen for me picked the short stick. Maybe Khagan more then anyone.
Those two for me still need help.

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That is a pity. Then there are 2 options - either to setup Beta2 for different tests or do very very minor buffs directly in production once per blue moon and analyse everything after these changes - which would take Thorn to probably justified 512% in many years.

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Pretty much how SG has been doing it. Testing new heros and favorite heros in beta. Let the rest get ranted and joked about for awhile then small buff then rants and jokes some more then small buff then i think they just kind of gave up lol and figured it was easier to flood the game with new heros rather than improve some of the old ones

Think personally if it was me, i would have tried until succesful at fixing what was already here before adding a flood of new content aka new problems. But without that boost in sales, they probably wouldn’t have been as appealing to investors.

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I’ve been wondering if the new twists on old heroes—“Chef Boldtusk” and “Electro-Quintus”—are only cosmetic or if they’ll have any affect on gameplay.

It seems like SG does want to keep these heroes fresh and interesting, and with family buffs and type bonuses and passive resistances and indispellable affects and increasingly stacked heroes, I would think they would recognize that the old classics—particularly those who are so obviously undesirable—could use a little pick me up.

None of the types of changes so far discussed (outside of the massive boost to Thorne’s damage someone proposed) would need to go through extensive testing. They’re all very mild improvements.

I think those of us who have invested quite a bit in this game forget just how frustrating it can be for those who aren’t able to spend so much. To play for six months or a year, grinding day after day, maybe even spending a few dollars here and five or ten dollars there, eventually getting your TC to 20 and spending months making heroes—only to get, with your 1-in-100 roll, a hero everyone recognizes as worthless. Then to have to decide whether or not to invest a year or more of resources to level up that obviously inferior hero, or to wait another year or more in the hopes that you’ll get a better draw. I’ve seen too many players quit out of that frustration.

And it’s not like the designers made Horghall or Thorne or these others thinking they’d be junk. They wanted them to work. So let’s make them.

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