The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Codyksp]

The most recent example I have on offer is a T3 Spellbreaker dealing 102 damage to a Hero with at least 30% RES mitigation.

Yes, there's 2x weakness from Wet, but also Fire RES. The unit has baseline damage of 6/8/4 from enchantments, before bonuses.
The other things active on this unit are Star Blades: Astral and Materium (both 3x iirc). So that makes it 9/8/4/3 base damage.
To be clear, this Spellbreaker is only buffed with 3x Strengthened due to a mod imposed limit. Rather than vanilla's 50% increase.
It's also before the 50% crit chance is included in the end result. I can tell you he did indeed one-shot this hero from full HP.

What excuse is there for unit damage to be increased by such an insane magnitude (200-300%)? This is a 9 tome match.
I even stopped adding enchantments to this unit after my 7th tome. My 8th tome was Astral Mirror and my 9th was Creator.

Why is Crucible there? Because I made Meteor Arrows (now Projectiles) apply to Battle Mages too. Basically Calamity for Materium.
Tentacle being T2 has no consequences here, as the enchantment adds no damage. It's merely an actual usable tome like this.

 

[Kitschy]

So, it's not a one-shot?

Nah you just need to debuff stuff and buff yourself. This is early game Spawnkin + Zeal in to Chant + Marked = Snake goes boom in one shot. (and btw no medals)

that's normal stuff and not cancer that Cody is posting, so you don't even need to try hard.

 

[Codyksp]

Nah you just need to debuff stuff and buff yourself. This is early game Spawnkin + Zeal in to Chant + Marked = Snake goes boom in one shot. (and btw no medals)

that's normal stuff and not cancer that Cody is posting, so you don't even need to try hard.

Not sure if this unit has 5x Strengthened or if the target has 5x Marked. In theory you could have +145% here.
34 base damage +4 from Zeal with 145% bonus becomes 84+10, so 94 damage before any reductions apply.

That's without any other bonus damage channels or crits or the 10% bonus damage from the hero skill tree.

 

[Kitschy]

Not sure if this unit has 5x Strengthened or if the target has 5x Marked. In theory you could have +145% here.
34 base damage +4 from Zeal with 145% bonus becomes 84+10, so 94 damage before any reductions apply.

That's without any other bonus damage channels or crits or the 10% bonus damage from the hero skill tree.

Unit has x2 Strengthened from Inspiring Chant, target has x4 Marked (you get x2 from Designate Target reaver spell or x1 from Observer or from melee attacks), unit has Strong form trait + as mentioned before Spawnkin + Zeal, that's it.
You can get to the same result in multiple ways, like hero skill Offensive Formation as you mentioned or Pack Tactics trait or Mark as Prey spell and probably in more other ways that I can't think of atm. I am just pointing out that saying units aren't one-shotting things be it late or early game is not true, they can and they do if player want to do it that is.

 

[Codyksp]

Unit has x2 Strengthened from Inspiring Chant, target has x4 Marked (you get x2 from Designate Target reaver spell or x1 from Observer or from melee attacks), unit has Strong form trait + as mentioned before Spawnkin + Zeal, that's it.
You can get to the same result in multiple ways, like hero skill Offensive Formation as you mentioned or Pack Tactics trait or Mark as Prey spell and probably in more other ways that I can't think of atm. I am just pointing out that saying units aren't one-shotting things be it late or early game is not true, they can and they do if player want to do it that is.

I also forgot to mention... This is a unit dealing purely Physical damage (albeit with Piercing/Breaching but vs a low defense opponent).

Now take a look at all the unit types and the absolute shit show that is negative resistances such as -4 to Lightning on Construct units.
Then remember that a T1 tome offers -3 to Lightning and Wet (Stormborne) offers another -4 to Lightning AND Frost together.

Damage against units skyrockets way too hard. Even with these things cut down by 50%, as it is in my mod, it's still too much damage.

 

[Kitschy]

I also forgot to mention... This is a unit dealing purely Physical damage (albeit with Piercing/Breaching but vs a low defense opponent).

Now take a look at all the unit types and the absolute shit show that is negative resistances such as -4 to Lightning on Construct units.
Then remember that a T1 tome offers -3 to Lightning and Wet (Stormborne) offers another -4 to Lightning AND Frost together.

Damage against units skyrockets way too hard. Even with these things cut down by 50%, as it is in my mod, it's still too much damage.

Yeap, I agree game has a big damage creep that gets progressively more out of hand as the game goes on. I find it kinda strange that devs didn't see it coming or saw it but thought it would not cause problems, 'cause with other mechanics like upkeep reduction they clearly understood that it need to be stopped at a certain point but not with damage.


Ou
and that's btw why I want Battle Seeker Training and Hero of the Meek back in some form. (with inclusion of T2s)
Those were removed for no good reason, probably even without any thought. It should probably come back as a passive hero skill near Endurance Training on the tree.

Avoxel, give me back my Battle Seeker Training! (pleeeeeeeeeease)

 

[seperamos]

Yeap, I agree game has a big damage creep that gets progressively more out of hand as the game goes on. I find it kinda strange that devs didn't see it coming or saw it but thought it would not cause problems, 'cause with other mechanics like upkeep reduction they clearly understood that it need to be stopped at a certain point but not with damage.


Ou
and that's btw why I want Battle Seeker Training and Hero of the Meek back in some form. (with inclusion of T2s)
Those were removed for no good reason, probably even without any thought. It should probably come back as a passive hero skill near Endurance Training on the tree.

Avoxel, give me back my Battle Seeker Training! (pleeeeeeeeeease)

And they are excellent support/commands skills for certain classes and reknown types. Such heroes help strengthen low tier units to be cost effective against higher tier units, and enable swarms of t1s to be more effective with such heroes embedded into their stacks.

Triumph, please enable Champions to decide between strengthening t1/t2s, all units, or t3-4 units! Many strategies can be created with such decisions.

 

[Astronlmo]

For damage creep, reducing the initial resistance should work, imo.

Remember that those things were designed before hero rework. Now, 3 order signatures can give +3 resistance by default.

 

[KDubya]

One shot to me means killing an untouched enemy in one attack sequence from one dude. This is rare enough I'm not sure I've done it.

De-buffing first, or using multiple attackers to kill a target in the first round is not one-shotting. This I try and do in every battle. Killing the weak enemies will break the morale of the tough ones. Gold Golems are a lot easier to take when they have very low morale.

 

[GloatingSwine]

One shot to me means killing an untouched enemy in one attack sequence from one dude. This is rare enough I'm not sure I've done it.

De-buffing first, or using multiple attackers to kill a target in the first round is not one-shotting. This I try and do in every battle. Killing the weak enemies will break the morale of the tough ones. Gold Golems are a lot easier to take when they have very low morale.

Remember that a lot of the setup for ORKO attacks can be done with world map and combat casting, meaning it is extra to the action economy of your units.

And often when they have inherent AoE the first one sets up all the other ones.

The outcome is the same, a high ratio of units activated to enemies killed which leaves no room for countering with support via healing or CC.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Again, that's not because of the high damage, it's because of the inadequate supports. They could give supports all kind of useful abilities, like strengthening the Resistance on the strategic map (Support unit increases strategy map resistance of units in their stack by X) as a passive ability or give increased HPs (that is, +Y% temporary HPs) and so on.
That and the fact that there aren't enough enchantments that do something in terms of support (that is, improving the SUPPORT qualities of the unit, not the unit itself).

 

[Thiend]

Again, that's not because of the high damage, it's because of the inadequate supports. They could give supports all kind of useful abilities, like strengthening the Resistance on the strategic map (Support unit increases strategy map resistance of units in their stack by X) as a passive ability or give increased HPs (that is, +Y% temporary HPs) and so on.
That and the fact that there aren't enough enchantments that do something in terms of support (that is, improving the SUPPORT qualities of the unit, not the unit itself).

That's a solution other than lowering damage.

But your solution addresses the high damage. Kind of conclusively proves that the problem is, in fact, the high damage...

 

[Jolly Joker]

That's nonsense, because the "solution" (making supports better) would not decrease the high damage, but instead enable Supports to counteract it.

Don't forget, this is about monostacking and maximizing damage of a certain unit is clearly part of the game. So if you want to break up this spiral it makes sense to have units that "undo" at least part of that damage increase, and in a way that the bottom line is better than picking another high-damage unit.

One enchantment increasing damage of ALL units of a certain type. One UNIT decreasing damage and/or increasing HPs of their stack (support enchantment) would counter that, without actually reducing the ways to increase damage.

 

[Kitschy]

And they are excellent support/commands skills for certain classes and reknown types. Such heroes help strengthen low tier units to be cost effective against higher tier units, and enable swarms of t1s to be more effective with such heroes embedded into their stacks.

Triumph, please enable Champions to decide between strengthening t1/t2s, all units, or t3-4 units! Many strategies can be created with such decisions.

Yeah, I would also add two things.

• First, hero rework gave an opportunity of making Battle Seeker Training in to tome neutral skill and this opens up a lot of ways in making it work with different types of builds and tomes.
• Second, I would not mind if low tier (T1/T2) survivability skills would not be exclusionary to general such skills, similar to skills like Defensive Formation vs Offensive Formation were you can take one or the other but not both. I would argue that the reason why - is skill point as an investment is enough, especially keeping in mind that some of the classes are very SP heavy like Defender for example. (also from what I see peeps aren't particularly good at training heroes)

And I personally would just put BST after Foraging Training and near Endurance Training so if you want you can spend SP on both and just call it a day. (also would be nice to get a ruler ambition for low tiers too)

One shot to me means killing an untouched enemy in one attack sequence from one dude. This is rare enough I'm not sure I've done it.

De-buffing first, or using multiple attackers to kill a target in the first round is not one-shotting. This I try and do in every battle. Killing the weak enemies will break the morale of the tough ones. Gold Golems are a lot easier to take when they have very low morale.

Sure, altho Cody said Snake is low Defense it is still 2 with 70 HP, which is good enough in comparison to T1s that can have 0 and 50 HP.

So even if I take your interpretation (even tho I could argue that when you actually play you are probably buffing/debuffing stuff, but whatever).

1. It is an untouched enemy unit
2. Enemy dies in one attack sequence
3. From a one dude unit
4. That has literally one attack (that's why I took Magelock from the start)
5. There is no buffs or debuffs and only one transformation Spawnkin + Form Trait Strong (so you can add Pack Tactics to it for example or Hero skills and make it stronger without even going in to buffs/debuffs)

It is still possible and not that rare 'cause you can do that vs quite a few units, there is no need for low morale or other such shenanigans just pure damage.