Heroes and abilities

[Seravy]

Yeah but stacking + To Def has the exact same effect as stacking armor. Each +1 To Def adds as much reduction as 5 armor, if the unit already has 15 or higher armor, and if you are trying to stack armor, you have that much or more.
So it would be one less source of +5 armor and then you still have
-all other +1 To Def (5 of them assuming you are correct)
-Iron Skin
-Invulnerability (tho this is about as good as 6 armor, sometimes more)
-Invisibility (-1 To Hit on enemy is actually better than 5 armor against any high attack enemy unit)
-The item slots (3, not all can have 5 shields but some have more so it's a good approximation)
-Agility
-Lucky from the hero ability - item aren't the only way to get it.
-The starting armor on the hero is also at least 5.

All of these are worth 5 shields or more, and there are 13 of them - even if I ignore sources of smaller boosts, you can have the equivalent of 60+ armor just from these, note that "5" is the lowest you're getting from each of these, some will be worth (much) more. Of course having everything is unrealistic but get half and your hero is invincible to all but the very rare creatures and super-buffed units in the game. And half is easy - put on any 3 buffs, 3 items, the starting armor is free so there you have it, 7 of the 13 listed. If items were worse, you'd need 4 buffs from the same list.

[Nelphine]

Absolutely, but it's still major component, that is available to everyone through found items. I think it would be fine to remove it.

[Seravy]

Maybe it would be fine aside from me having less fun with the game which is not fine at all, but...unless I have a good reason to do something, I rather not - otherwise we could infinitely keep replacing things and never have a completed game, not to mention it frustrates players when they have to re-learn everything about the game the 12th time. Defense stacking is not a good enough reason because Divine Protection has minimal contribution in that (in fact literally zero on any Lucky heroes - guess which ones are most likely to get hired if you want to stack defense. You can get them way before Create Artifact or a good item from treasure that has this power.)

A good reason would be "we have 3 amazing, must have new item power ideas for the Chaos and Death realms - first we replace Magic Immunity then Flaming and we still need to remove something for the third - I guess it can be Divine Protection unless we have something else useless..." but we are nowhere near that at the moment. And honestly I don't think we need 3 new item powers.

[Nelphine]

As a note I think flaming is one of the best item powers. I've literally played chaos books just for it. Its COOL sounding. Not great balancewise mind you, but it's lots of fun. I'd much rather lose several other item powers before losing flaming.

[Arnuz]

Agreed on liking flaming - it's one of the few chaos things that works well with elves, normally a chaotic good race. Yes, in the game chaos is bad, but I like it that way

I also find endurance granting +to def to be strange. I'd be for removing that to make it slightly cheaper. I'd surely use it anyway! In any case, I like endurance for the logistics aspect of it, as speed is what wins lunatic games. I wouldn't reduce the price a lot from endurance even removing the def bonus despite the cost considerations. But it's a minor point all in all imho, there are more pressing matters for Seravy's limited time.

Less worried about lucky as it's rarer.

Agreed with Seravy - artificer is not lunatic level. I'm playing this test game with 3D where I've found a barbarian, I started it because I wanted to craft a vampiric item, but it's pointless. It's better to have one more focus-magic ghoul. And, once the stack is full, and I'd consider crafting the item, the easy lairs and neutral cities are already gone, and it's time to do some more useful stuff. The hero can die, he hasn't exchanged many blows anyway, and against other AIs a barbarian is nothing but a liability. Better to keep a giant spider in the stack.

[Seravy]

Yea Flame Blade the spell is good, but the item power...you can't equip that on an elf bowmen.
All it means is Chaos wizards can have 3 more Attack in their weapons than others (which isn't bad but not that good either).
I agree with flaming weapons being cool though which is why it's still in the game.

[zitro1987]

I find soul linker rather overpowered - or specifically its early guaranteed access with 'beastmaster' early hero.

I'm playing a nature game with well-experienced beastmaster hero and an army of summons wrecking everything in their path. With survival instinct and iron skin, having 20attack/17armor stone giants with +5tohit/+2defend later on is quite ridiculous, even more so with behemoth. My hero has obviously good armor, high hp (more with lionheart), casts a bit of magic, and hits rather well for such a support hero.

Maybe suggest a different formula? using armor and resistance instead of 'to defend'? topping at +2 to hit, +4 defense + 2 resistance?

[Nelphine]

If it matters I find soul linker is one of the few things that can match mega buff city troops. So it allows people other than sorcery to have SOMETHING that can hurt your megabuffs. (I've also had plenty of games I've never seen the beastmaster.)

[Seravy]

The AI relies very heavily on the Soul Linker to defend their fortress so I'm not changing that.
It's certainly a very powerful ability, so is Agility, Lucky or Blademaster among others.

[Soviet elf]

Illusions immunity mentions "to illusion-resistance spells" - very useless description. My suggestion: change to "to confusion, vertigo and mind storm (sorcery spells)."
Cold immunity mentions "cold attacks" - there are no cold attacks in the game, only cold spells - change to "cold spells".