SORCERY Realm

[teelaurila]

? Suppose things like blazing march, herb mastery, survival instinct, prayer can make phantoms outright ridiculous for their per-one cost? Or are you really buffing them individually?

[Nelphine]

Survival instinct, tactician, mass invisibility, high prayer. (And since usually defending a node, a lot of the time, sorcery node aura).

[Seravy]

Another thing I was wondering about - maybe Spell Binding should count as a global enchantment for the Runemaster effect of getting more globals. Not only does it actually allow you to cast globals, but Sorcery doesn't get that many globals at very rare so the retort isn't that great without this. Time Stop is amazing of course, but Suppress Magic is not that great for a human player to use, and there is nothing else. Sorcery has nothing at rares either.

[zitro1987]

Agreed.

[teelaurila]

Runemaster seems strong enough with just dispel wave and spell lock. Particularly the latter makes the ai waste combat casting on very ineffectual dispels.

[Seravy]

One thing we had on our "potentially overpowered" list for a while but haven't yet taken action : Invisibility.
I don't remember if we have any discussions on this in particular but I think we should.

In particular, the -1 To Hit in melee effect. This has all sorts of problems :
-Why is it limited to melee? If a ranged unit can see and attack, why are they not affected? Makes no sense.
-Why does it work even if the attacker has Illusion Immunity? Not even Blur does that.
-1 To Hit is a very significant penalty, in most cases higher than the current effect of Blur, or most notably, in most cases it's better than having a +1 To Def bonus as attacker swords typically exceed defender shields, usually significantly.
-Is it necessary? The spell is meant as a ranged/spell counter that makes the unit untargetable, as well as hidden from the enemy to surprise them. That's already a very powerful effect, do we really need it to ALSO be a major melee combat buff comparable to invulnerability in strength? (In fact, it's better than Invulnerability as long as the attacker is a serious threat...). One argument could be that Magic Immunity already deals with ranged threats and spells but it clearly has a different use (doesn't apply to missiles, doesn't make the unit untargetable, but offers better overall spell protection).
-It is currently the only BUFF that can offer protection against Supernatural, and a significant amount, too. Sure, curses that reduce enemy attack or can do the same but those are in a completely different school of magic, Death and Chaos, while the strong hero buffs are mostly in Sorcery and Life.
-It stacks multiplicatively with Blur. First we lower the To Hit which is generally a 25% reduction in damage but can be less, then roll for the amount of actual damage and then Blur reduces that result by an additional...what is it currently, 18%? So overall enemy damage output is reduced by up to 38.5% BEFORE shields, which is as good as boosting own shields by 62.6% !!!! (and this effect actually is multiplicative with shields as well as To Def, belonging to neither pile so boosting the overall effect the most)
-This effect is available on Mass Invisibility, which would probably be much less useful if we change the effect.

Overall, I probably wouldn't mind the effect if it was the two sorcery spells only - they are high rarity and come from the "strong late" realm. But it's clearly a problem due to hero artifacts.

I see several different paths we can take - we can replace the effect with a simple +1 To Def bonus, or we can completely remove it or maybe make it count as if Blur was in effect.

[zitro1987]

I wouldn't mind removing the effect completely and rebalancing a few things:
*nightblades, night stalkers, Air elemental being given +1 or +2 armor
*Invisibility spell cost could be slightly decreased, but not much

Sky Drakes and Melee-oriented Heroes would then be a bit less efficient with sorcery wizards. If that is undesirable, we could always:
*swap research cost of Haste with Spell Ward or Great Unsummoning (these spells are quite powerful).
*We could boost creature binding as -5 to resist with higher cost (60?) and swap research cost with Haste

[teelaurila]

As if blur would certainly be more flavorful. But invisibility is strong enough without.

[Nelphine]

I completely disagree. Invisibility (and magic immunity which is even worse) both suffer from being unbelievably overpowered (they make my life buffed units look silly weak), BUT when you counter them, they do nothing at all.

For invisibility this is particularly bad if you cast the spell on a melee unit - by being melee, you MUST go and cancel your own spell in order to attack.

That means there are only two reasons to ever cast invisibility on melee: a) your unit is so strong it will one shot it's target, thereby giving your invisibility back (as your opponent will no longer be adjacent). B) you have no intention of fighting, and you wish to win by exhausting the AI who doesn't know how to hunt for invisible units.

A) is the problem with heroes. But that isn't because invisibility buffs your hero, it's because heroes are already nigh invulnerable.

B) is abusive, AND b) is the real reason invisibility is on the potential problem list. My one spearmen can defend the city against AI armies over and over again.


Now back to the your discussion: you need to give melee SOME benefit from invisibility WHILE THEY ARE FIGHTING or its never worth it to cast invisibility on melee units, assuming you have any ranged units that could be targetted.

So agreed, it doesn't make a lot of sense that only melee is penalized not range, and the interactions with supernatural AND blur were unforseen, but blur is borderline problematic on its own, and you need to give melee something with the spell. and it should be something very strong, because ranged units get to unload all of their ammo (up to 10 shots!) which is crazy powerful.

Personally, I'd rather drastically weaken both invisibility and magic immunity, but that just makes blur and resist magic + resist elements. (Seriously, why is magic immunity the same tier as elemental armor? Even accounting for different realm focuses, magic immunity should be very rare.)

[teelaurila]

Invis melee units still cannot be targeted by ranged, so invis serves that purpose ... which I suppose is only rarely relevant since spells still can target. Fast melee units can also hit-and-run with invis. I am not seeing why invis must be useful for melee units fighting, when it has so many other uses.

Guess the -tohit works only on melee, because ranged you cannot attack in the first place. Not removing the melee effect when invisibility is countered is likely an oversight in the original game?