Does harm touch need a change?

[Adicto]

I have voted for the last option

[Jolly Joker]

If thats the case,why did you vote the first option?

Because I don't think it's necessary. I have no difficulty to accept that special the way it is: giving any number of Wraiths, no matter how many there are a chance to kill at least one creature and dispell all positive spells. Note that you will much more often have a handful of them than a couple dozens or even scores.

[okrane]

But in some maps you will have more of them... then why not scale... if it is a small map there won't be any difference... but it would be much more useful on larger ones

[Jolly Joker]

I cannot accept the point. That special is not the only thing that changes in effect or priority depending on the scale of things (mostly: scale of armies). Each Light and Dark Magic spell, for example, changes in relevance, depending on army size without the effect being altered.
On bigger maps (meaning: with bigger armies) the game as a whole changes pace completely.
Incidentally, it looks like the bigger the armies, the bigger the Skeleton growth as well: if people are happy with Shadow Matriarchs because the rest of the army is ok, why are people so unhappy with a special that shines when skeleton hordes are not so big and diminishes in importance when they are?

[DaemianLucifer]

if people are happy with Shadow Matriarchs because the rest of the army is ok, why are people so unhappy with a special that shines when skeleton hordes are not so big and diminishes in importance when they are?

You have answered that question already:The spells matriarchs use scale with army growth(they affect more creatures).Harm touch,on the other hand,doesnt scale at all,directly or indirectly.

[Jolly Joker]

So what? A few Druids in the beginning of the game will make much more of an impression with their Lightning bolt than a couple hundreds later on.
If you have really large armies there's certainly more to worry about than the Wraiths special. That game wasn't designed with big armies in mind on any regular map, that much should be clear.

[okrane]

well... this part I don't like... how come the game was not designed for big armies... why... from all previous heroes experience there were maps with huge armies on it, and equally small maps with small armies... and the games and abilities for designed for both approaches...
why isn't this game?

and a scale in wraiths' harm touch would just improve imo... it wouldn't hurt in any case...

[Jolly Joker]

Now here you are plain wrong.
While you are able to play all Homms with very big armies it never made much sense. The main reason for this is simple. Hero power growth is non-linear while creature growth is. Put any level 20 or even level 25 hero of any heroes game in chatge of a "normal" army (something like 6-10 full weekly growths of ONE town) and then put him or her in command of a very big army, for example 3 months productions of 4 towns.
The mechanics will change massively. Spell power gets irrelevant Other spells become decisive - stack-influencing ones like a simple Bloodlust will do a lot more damage than a simple damage spell. In a word, the balance of game mechanics is warped.
This has always been so. Heroes of Might and Magic never was a game of epic battles and mass destruction. Sure, there ARE maps who made that possible, but those are maps of people who know about that and specifically designed those maps with those flaws in mind.
As I said, look at a Wraith in H 3. Regeneration for a creature with 18 HPs.
Inevitably the attack and defense stats of a hero plus their ability to maybe cast good light spells in combination with solid magic resistance will win the battle the more creatures take part.
That's the short version.

[okrane]

I never said that the game was identical when dealing with large armies or when dealing with small ones... and the best example here are destructive spells which become more and more weak at large armies... but that implies some sort of strategy... I mean should you know a game will be long and you will have big armies, you should take suitable skills...
this is the case for eagle eye, mana cost reduction feats, taking schools of magic that are not in your mage guild ... etc...

Nevertheless, while all these things become not so effective, they are still hero skills which you may or may not choose depending on what you foresee... creatures on the other hand always had abilities that scaled...
till heroes 5... the nonlinear growth of creatures' spell damage, and harm touch, become nearly useless when the armies grow too much.... if that's the way it was meant to be... fine by me... but I don't like it very much...

I mean... as an analogy... druids are more feared in small stacks than in large ones... i.e. if you have a small army facing a small number of druids... you will think twice before doing it... but it you have a big army... a huge number of druids is not that strong...

Back to wraiths... a hero with only 1 or 2 dragons in his army will lose against a hero with 1 or 2 wraiths, but a hero with 100 dragons will surely win against one with 100 wraiths...

Enfin... I think nothing will change anyway... so why argue...

[Jolly Joker]

I'm not arguing because I'm fine with the way it is.
Demanding changes normally means that a change is perceived as desperately necessary; otherwise you can make a case for changing just about everything - the Vorpal Sword effect for Pit Lords is for example the same case here.
I don't think that a change for Wraiths (and Pit Lords) is desperately necessary. If they WOULD scale it, I wouldn't make a fuss out of it, however I don't want a special that is a no-brainer to use as soon as there are level 7 creatures involved. If that was the case you could simply add the old Slayer spell as ability (deals double damage against level 7) or something.
No, this special is a low-number special.
What about Hydras Regeneration? That gets useless as well with growing numbers since the percentage of regenerated HPS as a ratio of the total number of HPs in the Hydra stack gets smaller all the time.

[vicheron]

I think that Harm touch should only kill 1 creature at a time but the initiative use for the ability should decrease depending on the number of Wraiths in the stack. For example, for every Wraith in the stack, initiative useage for Harm touch would reduce by 1% to a maximum of 50%.

The mechanics of the Heroes series really hasn't improved throughout the different games. Pretty much everything still works the same as in Heroes 1. The series probably has the biggest problem with scaling. Righteous Might adds the same amount of attack and lasts the same duration no matter how many creatures are in the stack or how powerful the creatures are. They really should make it so that the duration and effect of buffs and debuffs depends on the spell power of the caster. For example, a hero with 10 spell power casting Righeous Might should give something like +10 attack to a stack of 50 peasants for 50 turns but he should only give something like +2 attack increase to a stack of 50 Angels for 5 turns. You should also be able to choose to spend more spell points on a spell in order to reduce the amount of initiative you spend on a spell, up to a certain point of course. They should do the same with attack and defense.

[okrane]

Maybe it would just complicate things too much...

[DaemianLucifer]

So what? A few Druids in the beginning of the game will make much more of an impression with their Lightning bolt than a couple hundreds later on.

Say that something bad is ok because something else is bad too isnt really a justifiable argument.

If you have really large armies there's certainly more to worry about than the Wraiths special. That game wasn't designed with big armies in mind on any regular map, that much should be clear.

Really?It wasnt?Care to explain some of the campaign maps then?Specifically the last maps of necro,dungeon and sylvan.~100 archangels is big army to me.

Now here you are plain wrong.
While you are able to play all Homms with very big armies it never made much sense. The main reason for this is simple. Hero power growth is non-linear while creature growth is. Put any level 20 or even level 25 hero of any heroes game in chatge of a "normal" army (something like 6-10 full weekly growths of ONE town) and then put him or her in command of a very big army, for example 3 months productions of 4 towns.

Thats why I proposed this.

As I said, look at a Wraith in H 3. Regeneration for a creature with 18 HPs.
Inevitably the attack and defense stats of a hero plus their ability to maybe cast good light spells in combination with solid magic resistance will win the battle the more creatures take part.
That's the short version.

Again,saying that something bad is ok because something other is bad too is not a justifiable argument.

I'm not arguing because I'm fine with the way it is.
Demanding changes normally means that a change is perceived as desperately necessary; otherwise you can make a case for changing just about everything - the Vorpal Sword effect for Pit Lords is for example the same case here.

Big difference:Vorpal sword works always,you dont have to activate it.

What about Hydras Regeneration? That gets useless as well with growing numbers since the percentage of regenerated HPS as a ratio of the total number of HPs in the Hydra stack gets smaller all the time.

Again,same as for vorpal sword,its instantenious and doesnt need activation.You receive it for free.

As for discusion about usefullness of spells,you can continue that one here.

[Jolly Joker]

Say that something bad is ok because something else is bad too isnt really a justifiable argument.

If you have really large armies there's certainly more to worry about than the Wraiths special. That game wasn't designed with big armies in mind on any regular map, that much should be clear.

Really?It wasnt?Care to explain some of the campaign maps then?Specifically the last maps of necro,dungeon and sylvan.~100 archangels is big army to me.

The Druid thing isn't bad. As isn't the Wraith thing.
We are talking about standard play here. "Standard" play for me refers to a random multiplayer map. Campaign maps don't count for several reasons. They are scripted and they are "controlled". Since you know what's happening there you can set up the map. So if you would set things up for a map like that you would set it up with all the warping factors already in mind.

[Gaidal Cain]

Mod note: Discussion about casters have been split off here.

[okrane]

Even if I agreed in a certain way about the druid thing... I still don't agree about wraiths... simply because while druid spell damage increases with the stack(even if the fuction is logarithmic... but it increases) Wraith ability doesn't. I would be satisfied if it would also scale...even if very slowly...

[Arqane]

I voted that it's perfectly fine as it already is.

The main power of Harm Touch is usually NOT that it kills something. That's a side effect, and I'm not sure I ever used the ability just because of that.

That dispel has been VERY useful in some cases. With 2-3 good buffs on a tough stack, I've used the ability frequently. Often my hero can't/doesn't want to spend the time dispelling those buffs. I've used the ability often on Master Hunter stacks that the enemy likes to buff to dispel them, block them, and not take a hit back until one of my other units can soak the damage.

And finally, remember it's still a special activated ability. That means that it's not meant to be used on every attack. There will be reasons to use it, and reasons not to use it.