The Bard class

There is a fantasy archetype that we are totally missing in our ten classes. I would propose adding an 11th hero class (along with a bevy of TC20 heroes) to address this lack.

The Bard

The bard is above all a singer, poet, loremaster, and entertainer. In fantasy literature, they are typically jacks of all trades, surprising with their obscure knowledge or skills at precisely the right moment. Thom Merrilin in the Wheel of Fire series would be a prime example. But there are a lot of historical (and non-copyrighted) possibilities to fill up this class with members.

As noted in Healers needed at each * and color, there are some colors that have more members than others in the different star levels. I am suggesting members and colors partly in answer to this.

Some example heroes

When bards are released, there should be approximately 2 5*, 2-3 4*, 3 3*, and one each in 1* and 2*.

Because of the current distributions of TC20 heroes, the four-stars should be blue, purple and yellow, suggesting green and red for the five-stars. 3-stars should be red, yellow and (blue or purple). The 1 and 2 stars can be any color but red. This distribution won’t completely perfect the balance of colors, but should still be a help.

Brigid - Irish deity connected with fire, poetry and war : RED 5* - Ability: Fiery Shield: Absorbs all damage inflicted on caster and nearby heroes for 4 turns. At the end of the four turns, 95% (scales with ability) of the absorbed damage is spread out across the enemy team. If the effect is dispelled, the absorption works only to 50% of damage inflicted. A second dispel removes the effect entirely.

Sheherezade - Poet of the Arabian Nights - GREEN 5* - Ability: Hold Time: Reduces all enemy mana to zero and reduces the “attack” ability by 95% (scales with ability) for 3 turns.

Semimaru - Japanese blind lute player - YELLOW 4* - Ability: Selfless healing - heals all allies except self for 45% (scales with ability). Cleanses all allies of debuffs. Character is blind, so misses on 30% of his own slash attacks.

Meret - Egyptian goddess of dancing - PURPLE 4* - Ability: Baleful dance - All enemies have attack reduced by 20% (scales) and lose some number of HP over four turns

Maîtresse Délai - Haitian loa of tambourine players - BLUE 4*

Will Scarlet (and/or Alan-a-Dale) - Members of Robin Hood’s merry men - RED 3* - Ability: Song of Inspiration - Increases attack of allies 25% (scales with ability) and increases mana generation by a small amount for 4 turns.

Arion - Greek Kitharode - BLUE 3*

Amergin - Irish Mythological bard - YELLOW 3*

Will - Looks something like Shakespeare - BLUE 2*

Walter - a minstrel - GREEN 1*

Some that I didn’t use:

Thoth - Egyptian god of learning -

Lono - Hawaiian god of music and fertility

Challenge Events

As the 5* offerings here were just beefed up, I am offering 4* bards to increase those offerings a little.

Taliesen - Bard of Avalon - PURPLE 4* - Curse Breaker - removes debuffs from allies and randomly distributes them on enemies

Mock Turtle - Wonderland

Guardian Anaconda - Guardians - Hypnotize: Target is silenced and his attack stat is reduced to 1 for 3 turns.

Smitty - Boatswain’s Mate of Corellia -

Pied Piper - Steals all minions from the enemy team (he only keeps the best three). Possibly give him a rather small hit all attack as well.

Seasonal events

While not necessary, a few bards would fit in well here.

Halloween: Banshee - Marks a character for death. (Death’s door status effect, which includes a scaling defense debuff that stacks with other debuffs) If the effect is not dispelled within 2 turns, the character dies.

Sand Empire: A harlequin figure with Chessboard motley

Future HotM

Orpheus - Revives all fallen allies with full hitpoints, but with the Death’s Door debuff (defense penalty, and if debuff is not removed in x turns, the character dies again)

Apollo

Season 3

Mime - 4 or 5 * blue (dwarf) - CRAFTSMAN OF THE GODS - Speed will depend on the number of stars. Essentially, this power “creates” a battle item that you can immediately use. I suggest that a selection comes up, with say one healing item, one antidote item, one banner, one attack item, and one miscellaneous item selected from those that the player has constructed the proper buildings to be able to craft. Healing, antidotes and attacks would probably always offer the highest one you can craft, while the others would have some randomization involved.

Bragi - Norse god of poetry

Emblems

My idea here is a little bit radical, and could of course be changed. Fitting in with the “jack of all trades” archetype, I wanted to make the “bard” nodes in the middle into the ones that increase abilities, and this always in a “balanced” way (say +6 attack, +5 defense, +10 hits). The branched options (at least some of them) would give the option to gain the special for other classes, though at a reduced percentage of success. Here the classes are probably somehow grouped related to the trials (first node, you can go down “Strength” - Fighter and Barbarian; or “Fortitude” - Cleric and Druid). As a result, a fully emblemed bard could have 0, 1 or 2 nodes of each other class. As an example, “revive” might give only a 2% chance, “evade” might give 4%, etc. Thus a Bard who has two nodes open has the ability only slightly better than the actual class with two open nodes. Of course, there would be choices for critical chance and mana bonus and the like at other points in the tree.

Class trials

If we look at the current trials, each one has a pair of classes. One of those determines the “symbol” of the class and one could argue that that class is the principal one for that trial. I am going to suggest that for two trials in a particular cycle, Bards “replace” the secondary class for the trial.

For example, in the first cycle, we might see the Trials of Strength (usually fighters and barbarians) permit fighters and bards, while in the Trials of Piety (monks and clerics) we have monks and bards. In the following cycle, the Trials of Mysticism (sorcerer and wizard) would have bards instead of wizards, while the Trials of Nature would be druids and bards this time around.

In each cycle, two classes miss one chance to get emblems. To offset this, at the end of the cycle I would suggest adding a “Rare” trial featuring the two who were left out. So in the first example above, we would see barbarians and clerics in the “Trials of Tribalism” (or something). A rare trial would have four levels, and be calculated to give a few more emblems than normal. Normally a trial gives 18 emblems, so the rare one might give 3-5-7-9 emblems for a total of 24. There would be room to play with offering extra trainer heroes as well.

When the whole cycle has run (that is 5 times through), we would have a cycle where bards are not included in any of the trials. This means that the bards have missed out on 36 emblems. So we would have the “Trials of Adaptability” at the end of this round, allowing ONLY bard characters. This is an “Epic” trial with 5 levels, giving 4-6-8-10-12 or 40 emblems, and probably a couple of trainers.

[size=26]Launch[/size]

Upon launch, there are suddenly a bunch of TC20 heroes that no-one has. Perfect excuse to add once a month “Class summons” in place of the elemental summons. This would give improved chances of getting a hero in a particular class. I was thinking they could be organized by the trials pairings - to commemorate the launch of bards, we would start with “Adaptability”, giving mostly bards. The following month, there could be a summon for “Strength” - fighters and barbarians, then in the following month clerics and druids, and so on. This is not a necessary part of the idea, but I suspect that there are many people who are “hurting” for one or more class. One could even go more radical and give a small chance of getting a featured past HotM of the featured class, to add further incentive to pull.

Imo, bad idea. And I must admit, I didn’t even read all of it; tldr. First of all, the other classes have almost a year ahead. The heroes are already emblemed, more or less. Every single hero has an assigned class. And over 1,5 million players spent time and resources for what they chose. You cannot come now and change a hero class. It would be ridiculous. Such idea will never be implemented, because it’s impossible in the first place. And for one, I’m fine with it.

P.S. Bad enough the upcoming costumes change classes and you are not even allowed to choose the new desired path. But at least, no one is forced to it. Your idea would mean changing dozens of hero class, by force. This would be the last drop in a glass full of SG bs.

Actually, I limited to only creating new heroes, no changing of classes at all.

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The only new heroes could be upcoming hotm and S3 heroes. We have already too many heroes and the trend is too make the old ones obsolete or totally useless. A new class only would complicate things. Beside, to balance the number of heroes with the other classes, would mean most of the new heroes to have the new class, which is again, out of line. This is only my opinion, of course, but I would bet my both accounts something like this won’t happen. At least in the next several years.

I like the idea.

AND I read the entire post.

That said, I doubt it will happen. Too much other content has been announced as coming soon(ish) so dev’s are busy with those directions. A new class introduction would be 1-2 yrs away at earliest, I’d guess.

And I don’t see it being monetized as much as season three and seasonal events can be.

I’d rather new heroes be introduced in seasonal events anyway. Give us Frankenstein and Wolfman and Mummy types for Morlovia, and the Abominable Snowman, or one of those Angry Xmas Trees or Krampus for Christmas, etc.

The game is getting bigger than the Developers planned at the start, obviously, and they’re tacking on parts here and there when they can.

Season three is the most logical and the one thing that may have been marginally considered when building the original game, or at least the idea of needing to build a season 3 may have been on the horizon.

But classes were a last year thing in development, and I doubt they’d revisit it for a single class.

And as much as it bothers me to agree with someone who chimes in after not reading a post, Scarecrow isn’t wrong about introducing a new class throwing off hero development due to emblems - the class would be behind other in development for a very long time. Your solution is novel, but more shoe-horning it into the game than an elegant transition. It works mechanically, but would feel forced and probably engender tons of complaints. WHY do we ~need~ Bards as their own class?, people would ask.

At the end of the day, Bards are a hybrid character. Rougish fighters - they could easily be introduced under the banner of other classes. Margarette could be considered a Bard type in her build and description and artwork - just add a pan-flute.

Still, as an old D&D roll player, I appreciate good character creation, and this was that kinda exercise. Very fun. Well thought out within it’s own context and well written up. Good job.

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I can honestly say I enjoyed reading your post and thought you did a great job with it. Would be nice to have a few more classes ( I’m not big on the costume bs ). Even if they introduced over a season3 with a pile of new tunes introduced through Atlantis or events.

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I only now noticed that the Bard heroes were an idea from the community many years before the developers put it in practice. Pity they don’t pay more attention to the community, they could make a great game

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