Magic Items under CBM

[Tollund]

You'd be better off in almost any real situation to just forge a standard of the damned over a wraith sword.

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Tollund

You'd be better off in almost any real situation to just forge a standard of the damned over a wraith sword.

In most cases you are probably correct, but I can certainly think of exceptions.

You are not really doing that much damage with the standard and the defence rating is very bad. For strong commanders the sword may be a better choice. You do not get as much life leech, but you will kill your opponents much faster and they will damage you less. Also, four-armed units can combine an attack with the sword with other weapons, while the standard cannot be used in such a fashion.

Originally Posted by Psycho

That's not true for the simple reason that you will be saving death gems throughout the game, so that you have enough available once you reach conj 9.

Aside from the thing about gem-flow, this presupposes that you are at liberty to wait for effective thugs and SCs. A Tartarian a couple of years in the future really does not help when you need something now.

[Mardagg]

Very nice discussion,keep it on guys.
I got several new/slightly altered ideas in my mind,but i will wait a bit befor posting them.

Just a few thoughts so far:

-Fire/frost brand should only nerfed for damage value,not making it more expensive.They should still be a very good choice after the nerf...say you make the fire brand from 12 damage,to 6 or 8.
Its still armor piercing,its still only 5/5 E/F gems,its still only cons 4 ,its still got ok att/def being 1-handed and its still got the main thing:Area of effect damage.
I think many people here are underestimating the Power of (a) armor piercing attack,which effectively doubles the damage vs every mid to high level opponent and (b) being 1 handed and cheap,you easiliy put on a shield for much better def/prot and more special effects/resistances.
Any 2 handed weapon therefore has to overcome the combined strength of a 1handed weapon and a shield or two 1handed weapons to be a viable choice.

-My idea for the shadow brand is to make it much better but much more expensive.AN damage is an idea,but for this to be balanced i would reduce the base damage.
I just think its thematic.I look at that sword and think it should bypass armor.Also its meant to be Cons 6 that could be a seen as a hindsight from the devs imo.

-Wraith sword and Regen/reinvig aspect is slightly flawed,since u need to hit first and you actually need to deal some damage at least for max partial life drain.
Now,if you look at the combat mechanics,a wraith sword with that pretty low At/def values has a tough time actually hitting a Shield+Sword kitted SC,not to mention its pretty hard to inflict damage with the abysmal low 9 normal damage vs say 24-30 Prot guys with shield...
I agree it should not be made that powerful again like it was in Dom2 ...but....at the moment we got it at least 2 times less effective for 2.5 times more the price compared to dom2.In addition,there are much better weapon choices in general that compete with it in DOM 3 and CBM did make some other weapons even more effective.

-really balancing the spell paths is very,very tough.
But e.g. its basically pretty easy to say nerf the frost brand just a bit,but then make the sword of swiftness slightly better if the majority is worried about Water magic after the slight nerf.No big problem there.

Basically i want to improve diversity,make more choices viable besides the like 90% standard kits of brand+shield.

-i agree with the fever fetish regarding more micro,therefore i no longer support making it non unique again.

[Sir_Dr_D]

In terms of gemgens is it possible to instead of making them unique, make them more expensive and add other abilites to them. They could raise stats such as magic resitance and protection, or auto cast some spell. The idea would be to make them expensive enough so they are only worthwhile for certain mages or SC's equipped for combat.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Sir_Dr_D

In terms of gemgens is it possible to instead of making them unique, make them more expensive and add other abilites to them. They could raise stats such as magic resitance and protection, or auto cast some spell. The idea would be to make them expensive enough so they are only worthwhile for certain mages or SC's equipped for combat.

No.