Healing

[magian]

I was playing with a ranger hero the other day and thinking about the warding ability. Sure, it is nice that it gives some defense against the dreaded ambush, but if your opponent has no ambush then it does nothing at all. I would prefer an ability that gives some protection against ambush, but that isn't irrelevant otherwise.

What I came up with is an ability I call 'healing' (it seems like a good fit). Healing is a percent chance of stopping a killing blow against one of your units. I use the term killing blow to encompass both insta-death from ambush and a unit losing its final pip of life in normal combat. Each unit could only be healed once per battle.

I'm not sure If I stated that very clearly. But 100% healing would essentially add an additional pip of life to every unit in that hero's army and be complete protection from ambush (essentially causing a successful ambush to take that additional wound). Of course 100% healing should be impossible to attain. So, perhaps 50% healing would be a more sensible figure to look at. With 50% healing a unit could be protected from ambush half of the time, OR have a 50% chance to survive having its final point of life taken in combat. One of these outcomes could occur once per unit in each battle.

[Molotov]

great idea
i would like to see this in the game

[Chazar]

Healing sounds quite interesting and powerful. The power can easily be limited by lowering the % score.

However, I believe that warding should be useless against non-ambush units, in the same way that negate heroism/aura/terrain is useless against non-leadership, non-morale, non-terrain units is. Game balance comes from everything having a down-side or a weak spot, that a good player can exploit. Or simply put, a Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanism.

That said, healing could still find a place in the current game, since we do not have a hitpoint booster yet.

[magian]

Well, healing would be less powerful than an equal amount of ambush. They would essentially cancel each other out head to head, but in a normal battle a %chance to kill an opponent outright is better than a % chance to avoid one wound.

I don't really see the current bonus and cancellation system as very similar to rock-paper-scissors. Does warding beat ambush? No, it just reduces the likelihood of instant death. It gives no advantage versus ambushing units unless units with warding are inherently stronger than those with ambush. Likewise with the various negates, they provide no advantage over units with stack bonuses, they only serve to level the playing field. So, overall it is more of a rock beats scissors, but paper only beats rock on a coin-flip sort of system.

[KGB]

Magican,

Your skill isn't really healing. It's more a 'saving throw vs death' skill or an 'deathblow avoidance' skill. A healing skill would be something like a percentage chance to gain back 1 hit when facing the next unit (assuming you are wounded).

And your skill is actually more powerful than ambush because it functions against any killing hit, not just an ambush one. So in reality it's in play all the time in every battle not just when facing ambush. If you think Barbarians are hard to kill now...

As for Warding, right now it's not even worth taking unless you get offered a Ranger at L3+ and only when facing a high level Assassin. So it's very limited in scope like an Archon. When you need it, it's great but otherwise it's totally useless. Warding in DLR was much more useful because it functioned against other skills as well (acid, lightning). If more skills are added to the game then having Warding help against them would help Warding have more value.

KGB

[magian]

How can you say that healing would be stronger than ambush? Yes it would have a chance of activating in every combat, but so does ambush. One give you a chance to have an extra would the other gives a chance to flat out kill the opponent. I know which power I would rather have.

To be honest, I'm not that taken with this idea anymore anyway . The current incarnation of warding isn't great, but I don't see healing as a solution.

[smursh]

I agree with KGB about the warding skill. If I take a ranger it is for the quick ruin hunting skill, or because the map has a lot of swamp/forest, or my opponent is heavily invested with flying units. I only put points into warding if my ranger gets very high in level.

As for healing, a group healing skill that gives units a % chance to recover 1 hp after killing an enemy might be interesting. But this should be added for a new hero if one is created. Perhaps a priest hero?

[magian]

Smursh & KGB, your version of healing sounds like a good foundation for a cleric/priest type hero. It seems potentially more powerful than the version I suggested, since (as I understand it) it could heal one unit multiple times in a battle. That could be balanced by keeping the % chance fairly low. What about adding this as an additional skill for the paladin (with a low maximum value)?

A unit specific healing power could be called 'regeneration'. I'd like to see some trolls lumbering around warbarons. Maybe give them a bridge bonus too.

[smursh]

The skill might revive the paladin, as long as it starts at 0 and requires a fair amount of points to increase. Perhaps 10 pnts for a 5% group revive, max out at say 20%. Added to his other skills he is once more a viable hero. If added to him it can't get much stronger than this without imbalancing him compared to other heroes.

[Zaque]

I don't really like such a max low % chance because then the whole games can come down to a few lucky rolls, as I see this diminishing the need for good strategy/tactics.