LIFE Realm

[Nelphine]

No, you have so many more buffs in life, you still need to get specialist. (Note, if you have a lot of sorcery buffs to compare to life, then you have spell lock, so you don't need specialist at all).

That means you only have 1, maybe 2 spells from each of your other realms, and unless you're super lucky with iron skin, they're all cheap Commons. So you can afford to recast then without losing much, so even on triple realm (usually 4-6 life, and 1-2 each of 2 other realms), you still need specialist to protect your life spells.

Sure runemaster lets you go for spell of mastery. I'll wager almost no one ever plans to play what will take a minimum of 20 years (and realistically more like 30 years) to come into effect. So it doesn't matter.

And dispel protection IS all about buffing units. Nothing else gets dispelled enough to matter, except very rare chaos Global's, and you can't get those, your dispel protection, and enough economy retorts to reliably see you through ever stage of the game - so, since the dispel protection doesn't matter till the latest part of the game, and it STILL only matters against aether binding or another runemaster, you just don't bother with dispel protrction. When only 1 in 7 AI require dispel protection, and it's only for late game, dispel protection isn't worth it.

[Nelphine]

Right now dispel strength and protection are too varied.

It goes something like this: 
Standard dispels (no boosters on either side), happen at a good pace, and succeed at a decent frequency. Playing a buff game is strong, but you have to rebuff regularly.

An ai with aether binding, dispels more often, and they work too often. Playing a buff game just means you spend a lot of mana for no reason. Don't play buffs.

So you take specialist. Now it's back to square 1 against aether binding, so the game is good again. But at most, 1 in 7 AI actually get it. Against the other 6 AI, they now don't dispel often enough. Against those 6 AI, playing a buff game is too strong, and you basically auto win.

AI takes runemaster, you have nothing. Even better than aether binding. Give up and cry. But only like 1 in 20 AI have this, so it doesn't matter. 

And you just kill them with extreme prejudice before you let them research dispel magic or disjunction. Unless they're the fourth ai, or you face 2 bad personalities on the other ai on your home plane, you just don't fight runenaster dispels.

Ai takes runemaster, you have specialist.. I don't know. It's been so long since I've ever seen this, and not been able to kill the runemster with extreme prejudice early, that I literally don't know. I WANT to say, it actually feels decent but I don't know.

Runemaster against runemaster, square 1, it's fine.

Aether binding vs runemaster, I've literally never seen this. (Whether I'm casting aether binding or the AI is)

AI with runenaster and aether binding vs me with specialist. Again, literally never seen this combo, but it's the same as runemaster against nothing, so cry.

[Seravy]

I believe Heavenly Light applies the +1 to hit magic weapons to summoned units as well. Don't think we wanted that?

[Nelphine]

What? It adds +1 melee. Unless the first post hasn't been updated.

[Seravy]

The first post hasn't been updated, yes.
We've made it enable magic weapons in the last version for... encouraging garrisons I think? It makes a big difference if you can build your garrison without requiring Alchemy or an Alchemist Guild.

[Nelphine]

Agreed. Any chance of updating all the spell posts? Things like this are hard to reference for discussion.

And I agree it shouldn't apply to summons, not should it stack with alchemy or magic weapons from alchemists guild.

[zitro1987]

I see that the healing spell is still considered an open problem (as in overpowered).

The boring solution I imagine is to have the spell heal only 4 hp (half of exaltation, but 1 more than heroic heart and cast anywhere)

A more interesting idea is to make it more multi-figure oriented: "Heals 1 hp per number of maximum figures"
*eliminates the overpowered nature of spell for heroes and advanced 1-figure summons.
*yet powerful early on as it heals 6 points for multi-figure units like berserkers or halberdiers, or even 8 for a few units.
*if wizard wants single-figure healing, obtain a rare 'Exaltation' (or Archangel)

[Nelphine]

I think the problem is more about the cost of the unit than the figures, particularly buffed units. The higher the cost, including buffs, generally the harder to hurt - being able to heal an archangel with endurance, or an adamantium (which has no cost of course, so cost is a bad basis) doom drake with holy armor, gives you FAR more effective healing than the same healing spell on a level 1 swordsmen.

[zitro1987]

I can see how it is a complex problem. A balanced solution that is also intuitive is hard to find.

If intuition goes out the window, a balanced approach is basing it on unit's armor rating: "Target unit is healed 3-8 HP based on armor rating. Best effectiveness for low-armored units"
*very low armor units (0-2) heal 8
*low armor units (3-6) heal 6 or 7
*Medium armor units (7-9) heal 5
*High armor units (10-12) heal 4
*Very high armor units (13+) heal 3
or a formula
*Heal (8 - X/3) where X is armor (min=3)

[Bahgtru]

It's very powerful also because it's a fixed 5. Make it random - and perhaps include some worsening effect of armor - and it'd be less dependable, and even if potentially more powerul on average, worse.