SORCERY Realm

[Seravy]

Oh and one final question :
What about DW removing city enchantments in combat? (fairly useful against Wall of Darkness and Flying Fortress, also works on Firewall and Heavenly Light, don't think it's good vs anything else.)

[Nelphine]

For combat: I think I agree.
For overland: so, small buffs don't affect the AI chance to use it in the first place; but once it decides it cares about using it, those small buffs affect its priority to use it instead of something else? Oh, no they dont never mind. And do the small buffs apply for targeting purposes? Does orihilacron count for targeting purposes?

[Nelphine]

I would rather not see dispelling wave removing city enchantments during combat. I can see why that could work so I won't argue either way, just my opinion.

[Nelphine]

Also, heroism and focus magic should count for triggering dispelling wave. Those two are easily some of the best buffs (magic immunity is better for its cost.. I don't think anything else is.)

[Seravy]

Btw a fairly important thing we should also consider but haven't yet.

Dispel Magic hits one unit with 50 power for 50 mana. That's a rate of 1.
DW hits 9 units with 15 power for 125 mana. Total effectiveness of 1.08

Unfortunately, DM can target the single unit with the most enchantments, maximizing effectiveness, while DW has to hit everything : +1 for DM here.
On the other hand, 5 shots at 10 each is more effective than one shot at 50. So DW wins that one by far as it hits 9 times while DM would only do two and a half. It also wins the "number of turns needed" comparison - In takes only 1 turn to get as much power as DM needs 2.5 for.

However, AEther Binding adds 66% to DW but 100% to DM. That means DM gets actually stronger than DW - 100 for 50 instead of 225 for 125. (ratio of 2 vs 1.8).

On the other hand, additional power has diminishing returns in this formula, so the +50 on DM is worth much less than the +10 on the DW relatively in percentage of dispel chance gained. So here DW is the winner.

Overall, it's 4:2 to DW, which is I guess fine but I would have preferred a more decisive advantage on DW's size - it's a specialized uncommon spell vs a common arcane.

...actually there is one more. Spell Lock. DW should have a reasonable rate to remove that - as long as it's in play, the whole "against many buffs" part of the effect isn't applied. With 15 power, the chance to remove Spell Lock is a mere 9%, even with AB it's only 14%, so one per DW on a full 9 stack. I think that might be too low.
Ideally, I would want at least 2-3 Spell Locks to disappear from a full power DW. That means a removal rate of 22-33%. That means Spell Lock should have a resistance of 53, which puts the removal rate at 22% without and 32% with AB. However, that means Spell Lock has less resistance than its own cost instead of more. (considering it protects many buffs from the dispel effect, it still negates a lot of extra dispelling power, but idk, I think it would sound weird for a player to see a spell specifically meant to prevent dispelling is...weak to dispelling.)

(for reference the current Dispelling Wave removes Spell Lock at a 30.8% chance. So if we don't change resistance, it drops to less than a third of the current, and I believe the current is fairly balanced. It's not overpowered but gives some chance to fight Dispelling Waves on units with medium amount of buffs.)

Edit : an interesting alternative Spell Lock could be one that cannot be dispelled but granting double dispel resistance to all other buffs instead of making them unremovable, but I think that would be too weak and unreliable, so I rather not.

[Nelphine]

I see your point on spell lock, but due to previous discussions, anything else targeted by dispelling wave gets wiped without spell lock. Personally, I'd be OK with up to 6 spell locks going in one cast. Maybe just make spell lock cost less? Or put something in spell lock saying it is weak to dispels?

Or what if spell lock doesn't make other spells immune to dispels, bit instead adds the cost of spell lock to their own cost to determine dispel success? That way you wouldn't need to artificially dispel spell lock more often, it could stay at fairly rare, because you'd still occasionally dispel other spells on the target with spell lock?

[Nelphine]

And honestly, the whole comparison to dispel magic is moot - dispelling wave saves massive amount of time in combat, and works overland. For those alone its hugely better than dispel magic. If DW was rare it might matter, but its only uncommon.

[Seravy]

Agree on Dispel Magic.

Spell Lock doesn't use its cost for dispel resistance, it's hardcoded to use 150 instead so we can freely change it to any amount without messing with the actual casting cost.
What worries me is what players will think when they see "hey, this is an anti-dispel spell, why is it WEAK to dispelling?" I mean technically even at half resistance it saves you from hundreds of points of dispelling hitting the other spells, so balance-wise it's ok but...
Also, that would put it at a 50-50 shot from normal Dispel Magic so stacks of 9 magicians could get 4-5 of them off which is a bit...excessive? Idk.

[Nelphine]

Right. That's why I'm wondering if you can change the functionality of spell lock to not make the other spells immune, but instead just increase the other spells resistance - then spell lock could still have high resistance, while still being balanced.

[Seravy]

I could, even mentioned that in that edit but I don't think that's a good solution.
The whole point of Spell Lock is being sure your relevant spells are safe. If you lose a buff you need to keep the unit alive and it dies in combat then Spell Lock didn't do what it was supposed to. Which can be a big deal if the unit was a hero or very rare creature.

On the other hand, reduced resistance would be unfair if the Spell Lock is used to protect the unit from Banish effects, so I really don't know what to do now.