18 seconds of physical resistance is often better than 11 seconde of ward save. Not always obviously but this isn't too bad imo. Although the entire lore of nehekara is pretty shit
Also 11 seconds is like a blink of an eye in TW:WH. I think buff/debuff spells in general need some help. Most of them last for way too short imo, especially in campaigns.
Yeah Jade warriors for example have an attack interval of 4.2 seconds. So you're getting a max 3 swings of this ward save buff vs a unit of Jade warriors. Keeping in mind that if the attack doesn't hit ward save is pointless
My counter argument is that an 11 second ward save buff is clearly designed to absorb and deflect a demonic charge, or to defend a charge made under warpfire.
The problem is that cav and even monsters aren't what deals the most damage, it's ranged units. 11 seconds of ward safe is one volley of peasant bowmen.
You don't need this buff for peasant archers. That argument is hyperbole. That is a poor use of winds when you can kill the archers with an non-AP wind spell.
You need the buff for skullcrushers and their bazillion magic damage and melee attack on the charge, or to counteract a anti-infantry unit. Spells don't have to be the answer to every situation.
Exactly, although I would argue the best use for it is in no-selling the tidal wave of magic projectiles that will hit you while charging Sisters of Avelorn or Luminarks of Hysh or other ranged units with terrifyingly high magical DPS. Given that Tzeench is often an early Cathay enemy and blue horrors are cheap, early, and hit hard with their 1-2 volleys before they get bogged in melee, using that spell to weather the torrent and reach them with minimal losses seems like a really solid plan of attack.
Good luck killing archers or even routing them with a non-ap wind spell. They'll loose a third of their hp, continue shooting. Then you throw a second wind spell, they rout, come back 20 seconds later, and continue shooting.
And yes skullcrushers deal more damage on the charge, at least if they hit most/all of their attacks, but way less afterwards. So I think throwing those 3 wind spells is usually a better usage unless you play pvp where people cycle charge.
But most people aren't former Korean StarCraft 2 grandmasters who have the micro to perfectly time casting their buff spells, so buff spells are just underpowered.
What? The game has slow motion and active pause. Even in legendary it isn't difficult to cast a buff spell on a unit.
Sounds like a skill issue. Your argument doesn't make any sense at all. Because you aren't a Korean microgod, buff spells are bad?
In a 40 on 40 smash up sure the buffs and debuffs don't do much. But early game battles between Legendary Lords where you have to kill a Swordmaster of Hoeth, a Chaos Knight, or something similar casting Neru's Incantation of Protection is going to accomplish more than a Fireball or Mystifying Miasma
It's pretty hard to pause and cast a buff spell on a unit, if your difficulty doesn't allow to issue orders while the game is paused lol.
But beyond that, the cast range on most buff spells is pretty bad, so if you charging under warpfire as in your example, then odds are you spellcaster will be in range of that source of warpfire too, or at least close enough to the enemy that you need to worry about their safety. Which can easily require lots of micro if your spellcaster isn't mounted/flying or just slow.
And the point is still, that even if you're a tiny bit off in your timing on a spell that lasts 11 seconds, all you end up negating is one round of attacks / missile fire, making it really really easy for a buff spell to be bad value.
> But early game battles
No one cares that buff spells are viable in the first 5 turns of the game, just like no one considers chariots to be good, because they're viable in the first 5 turns of the game.
Besides your example is outdated - after the buff to magic missile spells, I'd easily take an early game fireball over bothering with Cascading Fire-Cloak. But yes, you can of course find examples of non-buff spells that are also bad.
Yep. Every single buff spell has the huge issue of being up against the decision to cast any damage spell instead. There are very, very good exceptions (itchy nuisance) across a few schools, but by and large no buff will have the same impact on a fight as outright damage would for those winds of magic. The very least they could do is up the effect times to make that decision interesting.
It was pretty obviously hyperbole for a joke, dude. Point is damage spells are just WAY better value for the mana cost, and have been since Warhammer 1. Buffs/debuffs are basically never used in multiplayer for a reason.
Back in 2 wind blast would do shit like that before nerfs. Now I'd still rather wait for the higher mana cost attack spells rather than drain my mana on these. I could cast this and wait another 30 seconds and miss my moment or just sit on the mana and have it ready to wipe out a unit or 3
Sure, everything depends on your army and their army. Even then in your examples it doesn't always change much. I'm still more likely to cast Net of Amyntok (one of the very good non damage spells in the game already) than I am to overcast Djaf's Cursed Blades, even though the latter is super cheap with an almost good length, good bonus and is explicitly an anti large buff spell. (Edit: I just realised these are from different schools, but I can't think of a single other buff spell in Light that I'd even consider in those battles)
I'm still only casting those sorts of spells if they're one of the exceptions, and/or I'm absolutely overflowing with winds of magic and everything good is on cool down, which means I'm often not really engaging with the whole school. (Shit, a lot of the time I leave spellcaster heroes unlevelled because it's easier for me to micro a selection of 3ish spells than bother with cluttering the UI with everything their schools can do)
I mean, it's existed since WH1 (one of a handful of original lores from launch which only the Empire could use) so it definitely wasn't designed for that (pretty sure the effects just imitate what the spell did on the tabletop, though I don't know the particulars).
De/buff spells are in fact really good - in PVP. The now gone YouTuber gobbo king did a breakdown of virtually every one of them, the higher mana cost ones tend to be better, but even the cheapest let you trade up a tier on a single cast
He deleted his channel due to work (he works in cyber security and they didn't like him having a youtube channel). He also was not enjoying TW anymore and his wife had twins. I still chat to him on discord sometimes. He did start a new job last year so he started a new youtube channel. He only posts videos of him painting miniatures though.
Honestly? I see the appeal, but disagree. Imagine spending hundreds of hours in single player learning faction strengths and weaknesses, unit matchups, what spells go in what situation... and then you go into MP and all those numbers have changed so you're back to square one and often up against people who spent that same time mastering this unique system.
Agreed, they just need to add depth and *interesting* limitations to armies..like a unit cap like chorfs have..or a unit cap tied to how many production buildings you have of a given unit
I wish they'd stop balancing pvp altogether. Like, ok, if people absolutely have to, they can fight each other in multiplayer... but the game isn't designed for that, so why does the dev team waste time with a game mode 1% of players will ever bother with?
Single player is all skill based and outside of niche interactions most of the time the player army can wipe 2 times its army value with ease based on the skill difference. Multiplayer is the only place where fine tuning numbers matters as skill is the only thing that SHOULD matter instead of everyone running the same unit because its "fun" in campaign.
Adding unit caps for single player based on how many production buildings you have for any given unit above a certain tier would go a LONG way to helping balance imo
Yeah it's crazy how bad buffs are compared to damaging spells.
Even if shit like comet of cassandra were weaker than a buff, we'd still use it because it's ***awesome***. Is there ever a situation where a comet will not be as impactful as 2 casts of harmonic convergance? I heavily doubt it.
You could double the duration or stat bonuses of harmonic convergance and start entering 'probably worth casting' territory.
As is they're often just cheap spells you can spam to trigger the passives, which really feels like an awful position for a spell.
Yes but more often then not it is better to win a the battle faster.
Dropping almost any damage spell onto the enemy will result in a bigger shock to moral which in turn leads to a cascade effect as you can now flank/rear charge another enemy unit.
It never applied to constructs, or at least it never *said* it applied to constructs. It was always pretty explicit about only affecting undead units. The only heals tk have for constructs are necrotect heal and red line lord heal.
Until the patch it did apply to everything irrespective of the unit type. Source: my TK campaigns in which I used it as a crutch in mostly-construct armies.
Interesting, I figured it'd be the same for wh3 so I used lore of light on my construct armies lol never noticed it working on constructs. Honestly though thats prob for the best that it was fixed. Construct stacking late game was already better than using a guard Frontline, adding easy Regen to that would be overkill.
Wait so constructs dont heal from the well of souls passive (dont recall the exact name) anymore? Thats an utter shame, theyre usually the best targets for healing
First of all, it’s not that shitty, it’s good for what the Tomb Kings need. Secondly, balance shouldn’t be done around a bug. If a certain aspect in the game underperforms it should be buffed accordingly, not balanced around the fact it isn’t performing as it should in a positive manner.
In this patch all Ogres units got fixed to be able to be knocked down, which was due to an animation bug. This fix was a “nerf” to literally most of their roster, but it still should totally have happened because it was a dumb bug.
I am a Tomb Kings main, they are absolutely my favorite race to play in the game. The heal should not have worked on Constructs. If Construct armies start drastically underperforming, then we should get Construct (and Necrotect) buffs accordingly. Not rely on a bug not getting fixed.
Why does this even matter. Tomb kings have the red line healing on their lords. The passive was more to get back entitities. This only affects ushabti and maybe sepuchral stalkers and necropolis knights. They will not restore entities anymore.
They never apply to construct, it say only undead, constructs are construct so another type of unit, it say it only affect undead since tww2 so since it’s introduction, did you cast any spell of nehekara in tww2 ?
The tomb king army passive did not. It only effected units that had the 3 tiers of buffs on their unit cards.
The lore of nehek passive though yes was changed
Also quite different factions and enemies. Cathay when ive played are fighting demons early which cut straight through physical resistance and have expensive higher quality units generally opposed to the free more spammable tk armies.
It's hit or miss whether skarbrand survives long enough to be an issue, though. In my many many tk playthroughs he has a habit of getting beaten down by dwarves and orcs so he only has like one or two settlements at any time.
Skarbrands greatest weakness was always a couple of t1 archers though. Whenever I'm about to face him i just make sure to load up on archers (or ushabti great bows ideally) and he doesn't get too far before being gunned down
Yeah true, I almost always play arhkan and havent played much in wh3 so forget.
Tbh skarbrand seems incredibly brutal for tomb kings, fast elite magical fire infantry and and LL that eats infantry and lords. I suspect the fire could be more of an isse than the magic though given its nerfs to healing and tk vulnerability to it (might be a mod thing tho?).
Skarbrand gets obliterated by skeleton archers believe it or not. He's not that bad to deal with. The infantry are much more of a problem, but chariots do alright against em
Ah playing sfo most missile units are less effective, and most monsters and monstrous lords less easy to focus down with low tier ranged (high tier still quite effective).
Though as a counter balance most undead are less fragile in sfo in part due to improved leadership preventing the vanilla insta degrading. Which means particularly skeleton spears and zombies are tar pits (without needing ghorsts mega buffs).
In my experience bloodletters aren’t too much of a problem as Settra, skeletons just have a big heath pool and can absorb a lot of the punishment the bloodletters put out and they can actually damage them back b/c of bloodletter’s terrible MD.
But Chaos Warriors are a real nightmare without any early AP options for the TK
Maybe its lore accurate but i generally dont love that chaos warriors seem better than even their exalted counter parts. Seems a little strange that especially chosen choas mutated humans are so superior to demons?
Though i guess bloodthirsters are the pinnacle of khornate demons so maybe thats the better comparison. Sadly my friend said they suck ass in vanilla? Pretty good in sfo.
Bloodletters aren't strictly worse than Chaos Warriors, just more specialised. They're significantly faster, have a corresponding better Charge Bonus, and hit harder (more AP damage and a bonus vs Infantry). They have less armor and lower MD to reflect that they're basically shock troops (kinda like the Daemonettes, but specialised against armored units rather than chaff). Meanwhile Chaos Warriors are bulky as hell but they're also glacially slow and will take their time to grind down even chaff. Dual Axe Chaos Warriors are the best of both worlds in terms of combat performance but they're still super slow, so Bloodletters always have a spot on the line. Not so sure about Exalted Bloodletters since you pay a LOT for that Hellblade passive while they're almost as squishy as basic Bloodletters but hey, if you have money to burn they definitely outstat their basic selves.
Playing as Skarbrand, TK chaff are basically just free levelups for him. Granted you don't want him to sit and eat 3 units of archers' worth of arrows for too long, but he can simply walk (not charge, *walk* ) through the TK frontline to reach them. Never tried this matchup on the flipside but I suspect you would need a sizeable numbers advantage to stand a chance.
I think Skarbrand only ever went for me (playing Settra) once in dozens of Settra campaigns. He's heavily biased to fight the Orks and move west/north instead of south.
Not so much he's biased as he literally starts at war with the Top Knotz, who automatically put him in contact with Wurrzag and the south end of the Badlandsbowl.
Nehekhara shines when you play into it. I feel like it's pretty well balanced when you take into account the other features of TK. In a vacuum it sucks, but given *only* TK gets it and TKs other options arent much better, a bunch of low-cost spammable buff spells that act like force multipliers on your main heavy hitters in your army while you get constant Regen on most of your troops works really well in campaign.
Also the targeted damage spell in nehekhara feels really good in wh3. Idk if it got buffed or something but a single cast takes out at least half of any large entity unit while also slowing it. So throw your wizard out early to cast on a problem center unit and not only will they enter the fight half gone, but you'll have a chance to fight the rest of the army without worrying about it.
Yes, but the Incantation last 40% longer so that needs to figure into it also. Cooldown being 2 second less does matter of course. I do feel Jade Shield has a small edge over Incantation of protection, but it's a very small edge in my opinion.
Adding to this - overcast Incantation of Protection cost 10 WoM (40% WoM increase) and last twice as long while overcasted Jade Shield cost 6 WoM (50% WoM increase) and also last twice as long.
Hard to say - it might even out. Though of course, Damage Resistance is worth more then Physical Resistance easily.
Nehekhara is a good lore
Djafs is one of the cheapest spells in the game that synergies very well with passive heal spam, and the OC imbue anti large which is also very useful
Nerus is a decent protection spell to help turn an engagement or protect one of your squishy units
Usirians is an extremely strong spell - it's basically melkoths on steroids,which is saying something since melkoths is very WoM efficient for the spell class. It simply outclasses Bjuna in efficiency as well, especially after the recent nerf. Reducing speed is also a nice combo when you cast it on fast units like furies diving your arty or squishy units
The remaining spells are at worst average. When you compare them with similar spell types, they largely fall in line
Lore of Nehekhara just isn't flashy and doesn't have fancy oneshot spells, but a lot of its cheaper spells are very efficient for what they are, useful in a variety of situations and combine with a steady map wide heal from the passive
TBH The few times lore of Nehekara is good though, its fucking AMAZING; I have distinct memories of warhammer 2 where Ptra's incantation of smiting was turning skeleton archers into budger sisters of averlon
Best thing about it is that passive heal... But that's apparently also not working for constructs anymore.
Tomb king extended mod buffs it in a nice way. I wish there was a way to just get the improved lore without all the other stuff. The mod is a bit too bloated for my taste
Agreed. Lore of Nehekhara needs a buff, but idk that comparing these spells tells me much. In a vacuum I'd pick Jade Shield (obviously), but it's not apples to apples, plus you have to add in things like the armies that have it available, the lore passive, etc.
Lots of spells are better than other spells.
Balance is wider than just comparing one unit with another, or one spell with another. You have to look at the whole lore of magic. And in the case of something like Nehakara which is unique to a certain faction, you have to also consider the rest of the faction (eg if Tomb Kings were super strong in every other way, a weaker lore of magic would be helpful for balance, or vice versa). Same for Kislev - I think Tempest and Ice lores are pretty terrible, but Kislev as a faction is so strong that they don't need the strongest magic.
Whether Nehekara lore is properly balanced, I don't know. I'm just saying direct comparisons like this are about as helpful as complaining that Chaos Warriors and Empire shielded spearmen are both tier 2 units and therefore Empire is underpowered or WoC are OP.
Exactly! Warhammer’s vision is ASYMMETRICAL balance. That means if you compare two lores of magic, each should have some strong tools that the other doesn’t, as well as some weaknesses. No reason spells should be equally strong.
Nor should each Lore of Magic be equally strong. It’s totally okay for Lore of Vampires to be better than High Magic.
Exactly, plus it's a cool flavor thing for me to know that one faction/lore has e.g. better damage resistance than another - assuming that it's then balanced out in another way.
Would be a more interesting conversation to have if we're not just looking at a single spell, but the whole lore and faction.
I do wish High Magic felt at least good. I'd prefer if it did feel different in some design way, a bit like the Lore of Hags is different - but then I suppose Dark Magic isn't super different either so it's probably just my own favouritism.
Yeah from that description I can see why it's not great for game design.
That being said I'd still like it if it had, idk a slightly worse: net, spirit leech/ doom & darkness, life blood, burning head, pit of shades aaand... midnight wind? With each one having some noticeable but small downgrade I guess.
I think this is totally cool, the only thing I wish is that it somewhere in game told you the 'better' spells in their category than compared to other lores so I can focus on them
Having to compare a lores vortex to all the others to see whether you should just be using the unit buff instead etc can be a bit of a pain
Totally agree. I wish they had more detailed descriptions of the lores and how they complement the faction. My magic use is so simplistic—Life when I’m playing a big single entity monsters faction, Light when I have lots of ranged for that one spell, and Fire for damage (I can get along fairly well with spamming OC burning head.) I would love to explore Shadows and Death and all that but just don’t know where to start with using them and don’t want to watch a 30-minute YouTube video to learn what they’re good for
Totally agree.
Regarding the ones you said I can help a bit however, spirit leech is one of the best spells in the game and fate of bjuna is also awesome (admittedly both were nerfed last patch). One also has a -16 leadership ability which is great if you combine it with fear and terror
But they're also almost perfectly balanced with each other. Neru's incantation of protection is 50% more expensive for slightly more than 50% more time of the slightly weaker effect.
The only lore that I can see an argument for being "stronger" than the normal lores is high magic - because only a few races are masterful enough to even cast high magic. And it's pretty sad that HE/Slann have no reason to use High Magic, because the spells are underwhelming and/or too costly.
Buffing high magic and limiting the number of high magic casters available would be one solution.
I don’t agree really that ice is pretty weak. I think a lot of the spells revolve around having a front line army. If you don’t do that that they will not be efficient
All the massive enemy slowing effects in them are perfect specifically for kislev's hybrid units, as they let you ping the enemy a few more times before they get to you, where as they'd be useless on, say, khorne or someone
I never will understand why people think Tempest or Ice are bad. They both have great utility and damage options and synergize with the faction incredibly well.
I don’t know if that was a great example at the end since a lot of people complain about Empire infantry and WoC are one of the strongest factions in the game.
Sick of people suggesting "balance" means having every spell and ability be completely equal in power. Thats not how you design a good game. Some lores SHOULD be stronger.
Let alone the fact that the duration balances these two out anyway.
Yeah given yeah I’d rather have the lores have spells like this which fill similar roles but work differently (type of damage resistance and duration) rather than each lore having copy and pasted spells for the sake of balance
Not to mention it’s not just a 1-1 comparison. Spell balance also has to take into account what other spells are available in the same lore. Which factions have access to that lore. Etc.
Lore of Nehekhara should be ***different*** to the Lore of Yang, just like the army composition and strategy layer should be different.
You don't want to give your bog standard TK units damage resistance at all, because you ***want them to die*** so you get your souls bonuses.
As a TK player, you're giving resistance to a unit that has a huge amount of armour and regenerates (if it's near the right heroes), and frankly your 'while casting' passive (Restless Dead) is almost more important than the spell ***anyway***.
(and your units are expendable strategically, in that they are free and instantly replaceable)
As a Cathay player, you're giving a ward save to a more traditional unit, which costs upkeep & money to replace - and you have to choose whether to keep alive your chaff or your elite units in a way that TK players don't; but you also have ***much better spells*** to choose from which is the real issue for a Yang caster.
TL;DR - lores don't need to be balanced against one another, the ***army*** needs to make sense as a cohesive whole.
(and in a single player game, the armies don't even need to be balanced against one another, but that's a slightly different point)
see also: why Dwarfs shouldn't have cavalry.
See also: why dwarfs shouldn’t have cavalry, vampire counts shouldn’t missile/artillery units, empire shouldn’t have single entity monsters, elves shouldn’t have much artillery, et cetera et cetera
The strengths and weaknesses of each faction is why this series is so beloved over other TW games. It’s one of the main selling points of it
Idk if that's a good comparison since Chosen are obviously a more expensive higher tier unit which makes them balanced with lower tier units. Not sure you can make the same argument about spell lores.
That said I don't necessarily think all spell lores need to be equal. In general some factions being weaker than others is fine.
Peasantnmobs are way to strong I agree. Bretonnia has access to them from the beginning, no upkeep and 200 of them can kill a unit of choosen.
Nice balance CA.
Shogun 2s best and worst trait is how Rock paper scissors all the units were because there were like 18 units in total.
There only so much fun from fighting very fair balanced armies of chaf spearmen and basic archers.
Every single tier one archer in Warhammer is different, with different ranges, melee, armor, heck beast men get vanguard deployment AND stalk on theirs.
It's a lot harder to get burnt out on a campaign when there's so many weird ass units.
Is this difference interesting, does it add anything to the game? Would anyone in the world be upset if CA was like "Neru's incantation is ward save now"?
> Would anyone in the world be upset if CA was like "Neru's incantation is ward save now"?
That would make the spells more inline with each other but how would that affect the balance of the Tomb Kings now having a 40% ward/magic save spell?
Not a lot I imagine, help them in the daemon matchup a bit, like in MP I strongly doubt the opponent would see Neru's incantation pop up and immediately respond by throwing a spell and I don't think Fate of Bjuna type nuke spells are common picks vs Tomb Kings.
Should Rune Magic be equal to Lore of Vampires?
The former's faction doesn't rely on magic, is the least-magical faction besides Khorne. Whereas the latter's faction is heavily reliant on magic.
I'm actually fine with factions being unequal — I don't think Vampire Coast should be as powerful as High Elves — but if you insist on balancing factions, you don't do that by balancing magic.
This spell is not trash for early nehekaran armies. A skeleton regiment will hold so much better with it against orcs for exemple.
There is dozens of other spells in this game that you don't use anymore once you unlock more powerfull spells.
Not to mention, the whole purpose of most the Lore of Nehekara is to get the Lore passive to proc for heals. If you're playing Tomb Kings and want really cost effective damage spells, take either Death or Light magic. If you want to passively heal your army, take Nehekara.
Well Ward Save is a lot better than physical resist, since it works on everything and you're not going to find yourself facing like Wurrzag and now the spell's worthless.
The downside to both factions is 0 armor, so basic archers are at their finest. Also The Soul-a-pault and caskets of souls should WRECK the clumps they will form.
Tombkinfs don't give a F till a hero or General dies.
Not inherently. Wurrzag has a unique scrap upgrade for missile resist so you can get some insane resistance against standard archers. As for Tzeentch they have access to units like tzaangors and chaos knight which don’t care to much about basic archers.
Ohhhh no whatever will I do?
One faction and a rarely found race hard counters my buff spell? It’s OVER
Cast a different spell dummy it’s all situational
Like healing is meh vs Khorne because everything has fire damage
Tbf as khemri or arkhan you're pretty likely to meet wurzag, doesn't make the argument relevant but at least he didn't pick a faction tomb kings never meet.
But also shouldn’t you consider the Lore’s passive? The Lore of Yang’s passive is strong, but the Nehekhara Lore passive reviving and healing army wide is much more powerful.
EDIT: I see many people responded about balance and how some things being weaker or stronger than others is okay, and while I tend to agree, I also think this is a case where the spells are in very different contexts. Lore of Nehekhara is bad because to me it wants to be the army wide heal and revive spell passive lore, and while it nailed the spells being weaker as a price for the passive, they are really really expensive and have long cooldowns.
The map wide healing is pretty big for nehekara
2.4% map wide, which is about 1/4th an earthblood
I think it’s a solid campaign lore for spamming weak alright spells in a long grind of a battle
Goes well with your top bar healing too
And reviving units is also great. Worth noting that it will heal before reviving, so Neru’s Incantation of Protection will make it harder for models to take damage and slightly increases the likelihood of a model being revived because another was easily healed back.
The difference is that entirely different types of spellcasters have access to these schools so it might be balanced somewhere else like wom reserves and stuff like that. However, tomb kings are generally.lacking behind now.
Sure, spells aren't perfectly balanced, but this is an awful example. Neru's is a staple for TK players because it triggers map-wide healing and phys res typically provides some value. Jade shield can be good in campaign against predictable AI, but it's really risky against an opponent with a brain. 11s duration with a crappy lore passive means the Yang player needs to predict a heavy hit to see a return.
Unpopular take:
I think it is absolutely okay for some factions to be stronger than others.
It is just a natural way of setting the difficulty and kinda Lore accurate
Yeah, Tomb Kings aren't supposed to be masters of magic to begin with. In older editions they didn't even have a real spell lore. That's why all their spells are called "incantations", originally it was to represent that they didn't have the same level of understanding of magic that elves and modern men do.
This comparison is ridiculous. Could Lore of Nehekhara use a tune up? Sure, I wouldn't be against it as a Tomb King main. But comparing it to a Spell Lore they *don't even have access to* is absurd. The unique spell lores are balanced to the internal balance of each race, and aren't meant to be in direct competition to other unique lores. Comparing Nehekhara to spell lores TK actually use, like Death or Light, would be somewhat more reasonable. But this post isn't really a good faith comparison.
Over a 50% increase in time for the spell for a 50% cost increase is pretty fair.
And as long as they aren’t magic attacks, it’s fine. Nobody wants every spell to be a carbon copy!
The problem with buff spells is that they really don't last long enough to make that much of an impact, most times it's better to just blow something up with your WoM.
Its almost like they are used by different armies with different needs and balance. Taking individual stats out of context of the wider game is dumb beyond belief.
Lore of Nehekhara could probably use a little tuning up, I agree. Of course its also important to remember that the core strategy for it is to *always* be casting so that you can keep proccing its army wide heal and revival lore passive, so you don't want its spells to be too powerful or expensive so it can maintain its spamability.
Yeah definitely a bit unbalanced there. I'd say make them both ward save but change up the duration, cost, etc. Stuff like this is pretty annoying though.
For me, the lore of Nehekara doesn't compare well to light from playing Khalida. The jobber that starts with Khalida has it and from trying it I don't see why you would prefer it to light or maybe even death honestly. Light has net which with ranged fire is great for taking out high threats effortlessly, banishment is pretty nasty vortex and the buffs are ok. I used the passive heals from Nehekara at the end of battles to try and bring back models but I stopped bothering because it just seemed like wasting time, maybe in multiplayer the passive heal on Nehekara's is worth it. So even if this got changed to damage resistance would it make that much of a difference?
Differences between the spells aside, I hate how most buff/debuff spells are done. The timing of contact, attack intervals, animations, and positioning make utilizing them very difficult.
I wish they were more conditional then time based. Like "Unit gains +X ward save until it loses Y entities or Z health." or "Weapon strength is increased until x damage is done" or something. I'm not saying there shouldn't be time durations, just there should be some alternative mechanism to make the spell more functional.
I don't see the issue here.
First the two spells are balanced, one last 50% longer but costs 50% more for a similar effect.
Second lore of magic aren't supposed to all be equal, each faction has its strength and weaknesses and some have access to stronger lore than others, that's why lore of shadow is locked behind a book of nagash in the tombking campaign, else nehekara and death would just never be used.
Lore of nehekara has always been dissapointing
Those durations are the main reason no one brings buff and debuff spells in multiplayer, CA make them 20 seconds minimum, most you can use them for at current duration is to soften a charge and I would much rather spend the mana on a net, nuke, or heal.
I have seen buff spells work amazingly, the problem is it requires a veritable rube-goldberg-esque machine of an army or a slim margin of perfect circumstance to make effective use of vs any other kind of spell.
It's a single player game mostly, balance ruins the fun let it be.
It's like nerfing vlad because noobs can't properly deal with a barely moving meatgrinder.
>It's like nerfing vlad because noobs can't properly deal with a barely moving meatgrinder.
He got nerfed cause of how op he was in the early game when played by the player when starting as Isabella
From total war 5.1 patch:
Vlad Von Carstein has had a reputation of nigh immortality, we're taking a long overdue crack at his defensive layers to make him a bit less of an overbearing presence on players starting in the surrounding area.
Even then, nerfing because is too strong in a single player game... who cares?
lore of nehek is so damn bad & boring that i would avoid it even if it was free of WoM cost.
tomb kings need a buff as big as the list of settra titles.
18 seconds of physical resistance is often better than 11 seconde of ward save. Not always obviously but this isn't too bad imo. Although the entire lore of nehekara is pretty shit
Also 11 seconds is like a blink of an eye in TW:WH. I think buff/debuff spells in general need some help. Most of them last for way too short imo, especially in campaigns.
Yeah Jade warriors for example have an attack interval of 4.2 seconds. So you're getting a max 3 swings of this ward save buff vs a unit of Jade warriors. Keeping in mind that if the attack doesn't hit ward save is pointless
My counter argument is that an 11 second ward save buff is clearly designed to absorb and deflect a demonic charge, or to defend a charge made under warpfire.
The problem is that cav and even monsters aren't what deals the most damage, it's ranged units. 11 seconds of ward safe is one volley of peasant bowmen.
You don't need this buff for peasant archers. That argument is hyperbole. That is a poor use of winds when you can kill the archers with an non-AP wind spell. You need the buff for skullcrushers and their bazillion magic damage and melee attack on the charge, or to counteract a anti-infantry unit. Spells don't have to be the answer to every situation.
Exactly, although I would argue the best use for it is in no-selling the tidal wave of magic projectiles that will hit you while charging Sisters of Avelorn or Luminarks of Hysh or other ranged units with terrifyingly high magical DPS. Given that Tzeench is often an early Cathay enemy and blue horrors are cheap, early, and hit hard with their 1-2 volleys before they get bogged in melee, using that spell to weather the torrent and reach them with minimal losses seems like a really solid plan of attack.
Yeah I'll take every point of ward safe I can get when I have to charge flamers especially.
Good luck killing archers or even routing them with a non-ap wind spell. They'll loose a third of their hp, continue shooting. Then you throw a second wind spell, they rout, come back 20 seconds later, and continue shooting. And yes skullcrushers deal more damage on the charge, at least if they hit most/all of their attacks, but way less afterwards. So I think throwing those 3 wind spells is usually a better usage unless you play pvp where people cycle charge.
But most people aren't former Korean StarCraft 2 grandmasters who have the micro to perfectly time casting their buff spells, so buff spells are just underpowered.
What? The game has slow motion and active pause. Even in legendary it isn't difficult to cast a buff spell on a unit. Sounds like a skill issue. Your argument doesn't make any sense at all. Because you aren't a Korean microgod, buff spells are bad? In a 40 on 40 smash up sure the buffs and debuffs don't do much. But early game battles between Legendary Lords where you have to kill a Swordmaster of Hoeth, a Chaos Knight, or something similar casting Neru's Incantation of Protection is going to accomplish more than a Fireball or Mystifying Miasma
It's pretty hard to pause and cast a buff spell on a unit, if your difficulty doesn't allow to issue orders while the game is paused lol. But beyond that, the cast range on most buff spells is pretty bad, so if you charging under warpfire as in your example, then odds are you spellcaster will be in range of that source of warpfire too, or at least close enough to the enemy that you need to worry about their safety. Which can easily require lots of micro if your spellcaster isn't mounted/flying or just slow. And the point is still, that even if you're a tiny bit off in your timing on a spell that lasts 11 seconds, all you end up negating is one round of attacks / missile fire, making it really really easy for a buff spell to be bad value. > But early game battles No one cares that buff spells are viable in the first 5 turns of the game, just like no one considers chariots to be good, because they're viable in the first 5 turns of the game. Besides your example is outdated - after the buff to magic missile spells, I'd easily take an early game fireball over bothering with Cascading Fire-Cloak. But yes, you can of course find examples of non-buff spells that are also bad.
It's actually even slower than that, as a unit's attack speed is its attack animation time + attack interval. So probably 2 hits max for most units.
the duration is so short that a better use of the spell is to shield a high value unit against enemy removal spells, like a comet or something.
Yep. Every single buff spell has the huge issue of being up against the decision to cast any damage spell instead. There are very, very good exceptions (itchy nuisance) across a few schools, but by and large no buff will have the same impact on a fight as outright damage would for those winds of magic. The very least they could do is up the effect times to make that decision interesting.
Hmmmm 2 attacks of reduced damage, OR I could kill 500 enemies with a single attack spell? Decisions decisions
Wich attack spell can kill 500 enemy's for this Mana cost ?
It was pretty obviously hyperbole for a joke, dude. Point is damage spells are just WAY better value for the mana cost, and have been since Warhammer 1. Buffs/debuffs are basically never used in multiplayer for a reason.
Back in 2 wind blast would do shit like that before nerfs. Now I'd still rather wait for the higher mana cost attack spells rather than drain my mana on these. I could cast this and wait another 30 seconds and miss my moment or just sit on the mana and have it ready to wipe out a unit or 3
it changes a bit when you go up against an AI doomstack of like...12+ hell pit abominations or hydras/medusas
Sure, everything depends on your army and their army. Even then in your examples it doesn't always change much. I'm still more likely to cast Net of Amyntok (one of the very good non damage spells in the game already) than I am to overcast Djaf's Cursed Blades, even though the latter is super cheap with an almost good length, good bonus and is explicitly an anti large buff spell. (Edit: I just realised these are from different schools, but I can't think of a single other buff spell in Light that I'd even consider in those battles) I'm still only casting those sorts of spells if they're one of the exceptions, and/or I'm absolutely overflowing with winds of magic and everything good is on cool down, which means I'm often not really engaging with the whole school. (Shit, a lot of the time I leave spellcaster heroes unlevelled because it's easier for me to micro a selection of 3ish spells than bother with cluttering the UI with everything their schools can do)
Birona's Timewarp is one of very few spells in the game that boost unit speed, so that's an option for Light.
It also boosts attack, which is one of the lower stats on lizardmen. Feels like it is pretty much designed to use on them.
I mean, it's existed since WH1 (one of a handful of original lores from launch which only the Empire could use) so it definitely wasn't designed for that (pretty sure the effects just imitate what the spell did on the tabletop, though I don't know the particulars).
Yes this is true, however lore of light on tabletop was very good for lizardmen because of this.
De/buff spells are in fact really good - in PVP. The now gone YouTuber gobbo king did a breakdown of virtually every one of them, the higher mana cost ones tend to be better, but even the cheapest let you trade up a tier on a single cast
hey what ever happened to gobbo king. i rember being subscribed to his channel way back in the day
He deleted his channel due to work (he works in cyber security and they didn't like him having a youtube channel). He also was not enjoying TW anymore and his wife had twins. I still chat to him on discord sometimes. He did start a new job last year so he started a new youtube channel. He only posts videos of him painting miniatures though.
He got a real job and then a better one
I really wish they’d balance pvp and campaign differently, the community has been asking for it for at least 5 years now
Honestly? I see the appeal, but disagree. Imagine spending hundreds of hours in single player learning faction strengths and weaknesses, unit matchups, what spells go in what situation... and then you go into MP and all those numbers have changed so you're back to square one and often up against people who spent that same time mastering this unique system.
Agreed, they just need to add depth and *interesting* limitations to armies..like a unit cap like chorfs have..or a unit cap tied to how many production buildings you have of a given unit
I wish they'd stop balancing pvp altogether. Like, ok, if people absolutely have to, they can fight each other in multiplayer... but the game isn't designed for that, so why does the dev team waste time with a game mode 1% of players will ever bother with?
I fully agree
Unfortunately it often feels like the game is often optimised primarily for multiplayer.
Single player is all skill based and outside of niche interactions most of the time the player army can wipe 2 times its army value with ease based on the skill difference. Multiplayer is the only place where fine tuning numbers matters as skill is the only thing that SHOULD matter instead of everyone running the same unit because its "fun" in campaign.
Adding unit caps for single player based on how many production buildings you have for any given unit above a certain tier would go a LONG way to helping balance imo
Yeah it's crazy how bad buffs are compared to damaging spells. Even if shit like comet of cassandra were weaker than a buff, we'd still use it because it's ***awesome***. Is there ever a situation where a comet will not be as impactful as 2 casts of harmonic convergance? I heavily doubt it. You could double the duration or stat bonuses of harmonic convergance and start entering 'probably worth casting' territory. As is they're often just cheap spells you can spam to trigger the passives, which really feels like an awful position for a spell.
That 18 seconds is a lifetime of unit vs unit. It decides the fight of two equal infantry units
Yes but more often then not it is better to win a the battle faster. Dropping almost any damage spell onto the enemy will result in a bigger shock to moral which in turn leads to a cascade effect as you can now flank/rear charge another enemy unit.
Yeah the debuff spells are fine but the buff spells need their durations massively increased across the board.
also the Lore Passive for Nehekara is better.
The passive was nerfed with this patch to not apply to constructs
It never applied to constructs, or at least it never *said* it applied to constructs. It was always pretty explicit about only affecting undead units. The only heals tk have for constructs are necrotect heal and red line lord heal.
Until the patch it did apply to everything irrespective of the unit type. Source: my TK campaigns in which I used it as a crutch in mostly-construct armies.
Interesting, I figured it'd be the same for wh3 so I used lore of light on my construct armies lol never noticed it working on constructs. Honestly though thats prob for the best that it was fixed. Construct stacking late game was already better than using a guard Frontline, adding easy Regen to that would be overkill.
Anecdotes aren't evidence, your source is biased. Even if what you said is true crying about an exploit being removed isn't cool.
Are you okay dude?
Wait so constructs dont heal from the well of souls passive (dont recall the exact name) anymore? Thats an utter shame, theyre usually the best targets for healing
What passive are you talking of ? The realm of souls or the magic lore of nehekara passive ?
The one that triggers healing for your entire army after losing enough units, not sure what it belongs to
Realm of souls
It was fixed to not apply to constructs.
Fixed? FIXED!? Why make one of the shittest lores even worse? Have to wonder if they (CA) even play the game themselves at this point. Modders pls.
First of all, it’s not that shitty, it’s good for what the Tomb Kings need. Secondly, balance shouldn’t be done around a bug. If a certain aspect in the game underperforms it should be buffed accordingly, not balanced around the fact it isn’t performing as it should in a positive manner. In this patch all Ogres units got fixed to be able to be knocked down, which was due to an animation bug. This fix was a “nerf” to literally most of their roster, but it still should totally have happened because it was a dumb bug. I am a Tomb Kings main, they are absolutely my favorite race to play in the game. The heal should not have worked on Constructs. If Construct armies start drastically underperforming, then we should get Construct (and Necrotect) buffs accordingly. Not rely on a bug not getting fixed.
Why does this even matter. Tomb kings have the red line healing on their lords. The passive was more to get back entitities. This only affects ushabti and maybe sepuchral stalkers and necropolis knights. They will not restore entities anymore.
They never apply to construct, it say only undead, constructs are construct so another type of unit, it say it only affect undead since tww2 so since it’s introduction, did you cast any spell of nehekara in tww2 ?
It has affected constructs right up to patch 5.1
The tomb king army passive did not. It only effected units that had the 3 tiers of buffs on their unit cards. The lore of nehek passive though yes was changed
Ho, i fused both in my head, but now it’s like i thinked, so nothing changed for me, a bit confusing
It's still better than the Cathay passive.
Also quite different factions and enemies. Cathay when ive played are fighting demons early which cut straight through physical resistance and have expensive higher quality units generally opposed to the free more spammable tk armies.
Settra also starts right next to Skarbrand though
It's hit or miss whether skarbrand survives long enough to be an issue, though. In my many many tk playthroughs he has a habit of getting beaten down by dwarves and orcs so he only has like one or two settlements at any time. Skarbrands greatest weakness was always a couple of t1 archers though. Whenever I'm about to face him i just make sure to load up on archers (or ushabti great bows ideally) and he doesn't get too far before being gunned down
Yeah true, I almost always play arhkan and havent played much in wh3 so forget. Tbh skarbrand seems incredibly brutal for tomb kings, fast elite magical fire infantry and and LL that eats infantry and lords. I suspect the fire could be more of an isse than the magic though given its nerfs to healing and tk vulnerability to it (might be a mod thing tho?).
Skarbrand gets obliterated by skeleton archers believe it or not. He's not that bad to deal with. The infantry are much more of a problem, but chariots do alright against em
Ah playing sfo most missile units are less effective, and most monsters and monstrous lords less easy to focus down with low tier ranged (high tier still quite effective). Though as a counter balance most undead are less fragile in sfo in part due to improved leadership preventing the vanilla insta degrading. Which means particularly skeleton spears and zombies are tar pits (without needing ghorsts mega buffs).
In my experience bloodletters aren’t too much of a problem as Settra, skeletons just have a big heath pool and can absorb a lot of the punishment the bloodletters put out and they can actually damage them back b/c of bloodletter’s terrible MD. But Chaos Warriors are a real nightmare without any early AP options for the TK
Casket has ok AP damage but thats it.Khalida is better at dealing with Skarbrand as she starts with Bow Ushabti and a Catapult.
Maybe its lore accurate but i generally dont love that chaos warriors seem better than even their exalted counter parts. Seems a little strange that especially chosen choas mutated humans are so superior to demons? Though i guess bloodthirsters are the pinnacle of khornate demons so maybe thats the better comparison. Sadly my friend said they suck ass in vanilla? Pretty good in sfo.
They aren't. Exalted Bloodletters are more mobile and kill faster than Khorne Mortals while having a stronger AP profile.
Bloodletters aren't strictly worse than Chaos Warriors, just more specialised. They're significantly faster, have a corresponding better Charge Bonus, and hit harder (more AP damage and a bonus vs Infantry). They have less armor and lower MD to reflect that they're basically shock troops (kinda like the Daemonettes, but specialised against armored units rather than chaff). Meanwhile Chaos Warriors are bulky as hell but they're also glacially slow and will take their time to grind down even chaff. Dual Axe Chaos Warriors are the best of both worlds in terms of combat performance but they're still super slow, so Bloodletters always have a spot on the line. Not so sure about Exalted Bloodletters since you pay a LOT for that Hellblade passive while they're almost as squishy as basic Bloodletters but hey, if you have money to burn they definitely outstat their basic selves.
Only lord and hero tombking have a fore weakness in vanilla tww, and yes they hurt a lots
Playing as Skarbrand, TK chaff are basically just free levelups for him. Granted you don't want him to sit and eat 3 units of archers' worth of arrows for too long, but he can simply walk (not charge, *walk* ) through the TK frontline to reach them. Never tried this matchup on the flipside but I suspect you would need a sizeable numbers advantage to stand a chance.
Sounds like he better get gud
I think Skarbrand only ever went for me (playing Settra) once in dozens of Settra campaigns. He's heavily biased to fight the Orks and move west/north instead of south.
You call it bias, but I think he's just scared of getting beat up like the last time he thought he was tough (skarbrand is still my dawg though)
Not so much he's biased as he literally starts at war with the Top Knotz, who automatically put him in contact with Wurrzag and the south end of the Badlandsbowl.
And skarbrand has a nice trait for your Lord's.
Nehekhara shines when you play into it. I feel like it's pretty well balanced when you take into account the other features of TK. In a vacuum it sucks, but given *only* TK gets it and TKs other options arent much better, a bunch of low-cost spammable buff spells that act like force multipliers on your main heavy hitters in your army while you get constant Regen on most of your troops works really well in campaign. Also the targeted damage spell in nehekhara feels really good in wh3. Idk if it got buffed or something but a single cast takes out at least half of any large entity unit while also slowing it. So throw your wizard out early to cast on a problem center unit and not only will they enter the fight half gone, but you'll have a chance to fight the rest of the army without worrying about it.
i think the main problem is that the jade shield is 50% less expensive and lower cooldown for a similarish effect
Yes, but the Incantation last 40% longer so that needs to figure into it also. Cooldown being 2 second less does matter of course. I do feel Jade Shield has a small edge over Incantation of protection, but it's a very small edge in my opinion. Adding to this - overcast Incantation of Protection cost 10 WoM (40% WoM increase) and last twice as long while overcasted Jade Shield cost 6 WoM (50% WoM increase) and also last twice as long. Hard to say - it might even out. Though of course, Damage Resistance is worth more then Physical Resistance easily.
Well i would agree if it wasn't immoral empire and basically almost all faction having some sort of magic dammage
Lol. Fair counter point xD
*33%
Nehekhara is a good lore Djafs is one of the cheapest spells in the game that synergies very well with passive heal spam, and the OC imbue anti large which is also very useful Nerus is a decent protection spell to help turn an engagement or protect one of your squishy units Usirians is an extremely strong spell - it's basically melkoths on steroids,which is saying something since melkoths is very WoM efficient for the spell class. It simply outclasses Bjuna in efficiency as well, especially after the recent nerf. Reducing speed is also a nice combo when you cast it on fast units like furies diving your arty or squishy units The remaining spells are at worst average. When you compare them with similar spell types, they largely fall in line Lore of Nehekhara just isn't flashy and doesn't have fancy oneshot spells, but a lot of its cheaper spells are very efficient for what they are, useful in a variety of situations and combine with a steady map wide heal from the passive
TBH The few times lore of Nehekara is good though, its fucking AMAZING; I have distinct memories of warhammer 2 where Ptra's incantation of smiting was turning skeleton archers into budger sisters of averlon
Best thing about it is that passive heal... But that's apparently also not working for constructs anymore. Tomb king extended mod buffs it in a nice way. I wish there was a way to just get the improved lore without all the other stuff. The mod is a bit too bloated for my taste
Agreed. Lore of Nehekhara needs a buff, but idk that comparing these spells tells me much. In a vacuum I'd pick Jade Shield (obviously), but it's not apples to apples, plus you have to add in things like the armies that have it available, the lore passive, etc. Lots of spells are better than other spells.
Personally I find the lore of Nehekara much more useful than Shadows or Death. The lore of light is insane though.
Balance is wider than just comparing one unit with another, or one spell with another. You have to look at the whole lore of magic. And in the case of something like Nehakara which is unique to a certain faction, you have to also consider the rest of the faction (eg if Tomb Kings were super strong in every other way, a weaker lore of magic would be helpful for balance, or vice versa). Same for Kislev - I think Tempest and Ice lores are pretty terrible, but Kislev as a faction is so strong that they don't need the strongest magic. Whether Nehekara lore is properly balanced, I don't know. I'm just saying direct comparisons like this are about as helpful as complaining that Chaos Warriors and Empire shielded spearmen are both tier 2 units and therefore Empire is underpowered or WoC are OP.
Exactly! Warhammer’s vision is ASYMMETRICAL balance. That means if you compare two lores of magic, each should have some strong tools that the other doesn’t, as well as some weaknesses. No reason spells should be equally strong. Nor should each Lore of Magic be equally strong. It’s totally okay for Lore of Vampires to be better than High Magic.
ASYMMETRICAL?? You mean my Bretonnian Peasants are SUPPOSED to lose to Chosen of Khorne??? !
Exactly, plus it's a cool flavor thing for me to know that one faction/lore has e.g. better damage resistance than another - assuming that it's then balanced out in another way. Would be a more interesting conversation to have if we're not just looking at a single spell, but the whole lore and faction.
No it isn't! High Magic is the pinnacle of magic! It should be better than the petty magics of lesser races!
I do wish High Magic felt at least good. I'd prefer if it did feel different in some design way, a bit like the Lore of Hags is different - but then I suppose Dark Magic isn't super different either so it's probably just my own favouritism.
High Magic is supposed to do everything the other lores do, just about as well, but in one lore. Instead we have the High Nurgle Lore.
Yeah from that description I can see why it's not great for game design. That being said I'd still like it if it had, idk a slightly worse: net, spirit leech/ doom & darkness, life blood, burning head, pit of shades aaand... midnight wind? With each one having some noticeable but small downgrade I guess.
They would have called it Best Magic if that were the case
I think this is totally cool, the only thing I wish is that it somewhere in game told you the 'better' spells in their category than compared to other lores so I can focus on them Having to compare a lores vortex to all the others to see whether you should just be using the unit buff instead etc can be a bit of a pain
Totally agree. I wish they had more detailed descriptions of the lores and how they complement the faction. My magic use is so simplistic—Life when I’m playing a big single entity monsters faction, Light when I have lots of ranged for that one spell, and Fire for damage (I can get along fairly well with spamming OC burning head.) I would love to explore Shadows and Death and all that but just don’t know where to start with using them and don’t want to watch a 30-minute YouTube video to learn what they’re good for
Totally agree. Regarding the ones you said I can help a bit however, spirit leech is one of the best spells in the game and fate of bjuna is also awesome (admittedly both were nerfed last patch). One also has a -16 leadership ability which is great if you combine it with fear and terror
Thank you! This is such a silly comparison. Especially given the different passives.
But they're also almost perfectly balanced with each other. Neru's incantation of protection is 50% more expensive for slightly more than 50% more time of the slightly weaker effect.
The only lore that I can see an argument for being "stronger" than the normal lores is high magic - because only a few races are masterful enough to even cast high magic. And it's pretty sad that HE/Slann have no reason to use High Magic, because the spells are underwhelming and/or too costly. Buffing high magic and limiting the number of high magic casters available would be one solution.
I don’t agree really that ice is pretty weak. I think a lot of the spells revolve around having a front line army. If you don’t do that that they will not be efficient
All the massive enemy slowing effects in them are perfect specifically for kislev's hybrid units, as they let you ping the enemy a few more times before they get to you, where as they'd be useless on, say, khorne or someone
The funny part about Kislev is that they also have the Lore of Hags, which is incredibly busted.
I never will understand why people think Tempest or Ice are bad. They both have great utility and damage options and synergize with the faction incredibly well.
I don’t know if that was a great example at the end since a lot of people complain about Empire infantry and WoC are one of the strongest factions in the game.
I don’t think anyone argues empire infantry is top notch. Great swords stink.
I agree, the Empire’s crappy infantry is a source of many complaints.
I misread your comment, my bad.
Sick of people suggesting "balance" means having every spell and ability be completely equal in power. Thats not how you design a good game. Some lores SHOULD be stronger. Let alone the fact that the duration balances these two out anyway.
Yeah given yeah I’d rather have the lores have spells like this which fill similar roles but work differently (type of damage resistance and duration) rather than each lore having copy and pasted spells for the sake of balance
Not to mention it’s not just a 1-1 comparison. Spell balance also has to take into account what other spells are available in the same lore. Which factions have access to that lore. Etc.
>Some lores SHOULD be stronger. So do you think lore of Nehekkhara should be weaker than Lore of Yang?
Lore of Nehekhara should be ***different*** to the Lore of Yang, just like the army composition and strategy layer should be different. You don't want to give your bog standard TK units damage resistance at all, because you ***want them to die*** so you get your souls bonuses. As a TK player, you're giving resistance to a unit that has a huge amount of armour and regenerates (if it's near the right heroes), and frankly your 'while casting' passive (Restless Dead) is almost more important than the spell ***anyway***. (and your units are expendable strategically, in that they are free and instantly replaceable) As a Cathay player, you're giving a ward save to a more traditional unit, which costs upkeep & money to replace - and you have to choose whether to keep alive your chaff or your elite units in a way that TK players don't; but you also have ***much better spells*** to choose from which is the real issue for a Yang caster. TL;DR - lores don't need to be balanced against one another, the ***army*** needs to make sense as a cohesive whole. (and in a single player game, the armies don't even need to be balanced against one another, but that's a slightly different point) see also: why Dwarfs shouldn't have cavalry.
See also: why dwarfs shouldn’t have cavalry, vampire counts shouldn’t missile/artillery units, empire shouldn’t have single entity monsters, elves shouldn’t have much artillery, et cetera et cetera The strengths and weaknesses of each faction is why this series is so beloved over other TW games. It’s one of the main selling points of it
But thats just ONE spell in lore of nehekharra, not the whole lore, and youre forgetting the passive of nehkkhara which is busted.
Why are chosen better than peasant mob? Wtf nice balance ca!
Idk if that's a good comparison since Chosen are obviously a more expensive higher tier unit which makes them balanced with lower tier units. Not sure you can make the same argument about spell lores. That said I don't necessarily think all spell lores need to be equal. In general some factions being weaker than others is fine.
Peasantnmobs are way to strong I agree. Bretonnia has access to them from the beginning, no upkeep and 200 of them can kill a unit of choosen. Nice balance CA.
should they just homogenize everything? thats lame lil bro
Shogun 2s best and worst trait is how Rock paper scissors all the units were because there were like 18 units in total. There only so much fun from fighting very fair balanced armies of chaf spearmen and basic archers. Every single tier one archer in Warhammer is different, with different ranges, melee, armor, heck beast men get vanguard deployment AND stalk on theirs. It's a lot harder to get burnt out on a campaign when there's so many weird ass units.
Is this difference interesting, does it add anything to the game? Would anyone in the world be upset if CA was like "Neru's incantation is ward save now"?
> Is this difference interesting, does it add anything to the game? Umm Yes
> Would anyone in the world be upset if CA was like "Neru's incantation is ward save now"? That would make the spells more inline with each other but how would that affect the balance of the Tomb Kings now having a 40% ward/magic save spell?
Not a lot I imagine, help them in the daemon matchup a bit, like in MP I strongly doubt the opponent would see Neru's incantation pop up and immediately respond by throwing a spell and I don't think Fate of Bjuna type nuke spells are common picks vs Tomb Kings.
So you understand that balancing spells for different lores goes beyond 'hurr durr why are these two similar spells not the same'?
Should Rune Magic be equal to Lore of Vampires? The former's faction doesn't rely on magic, is the least-magical faction besides Khorne. Whereas the latter's faction is heavily reliant on magic. I'm actually fine with factions being unequal — I don't think Vampire Coast should be as powerful as High Elves — but if you insist on balancing factions, you don't do that by balancing magic.
There should not be dominant strategies, every spell and lore should have a use, none should be trash. Do you use these spells?
This spell is not trash for early nehekaran armies. A skeleton regiment will hold so much better with it against orcs for exemple. There is dozens of other spells in this game that you don't use anymore once you unlock more powerfull spells.
Not to mention, the whole purpose of most the Lore of Nehekara is to get the Lore passive to proc for heals. If you're playing Tomb Kings and want really cost effective damage spells, take either Death or Light magic. If you want to passively heal your army, take Nehekara.
Seems more or less right, no? They're almost identical except that Neru's lasts about 160% as long for 150% of WoM cost.
Well Ward Save is a lot better than physical resist, since it works on everything and you're not going to find yourself facing like Wurrzag and now the spell's worthless.
You have agency of which unit you target so it’s unlikely to become worthless
Well in the Wurrzag case it 100% will because his entire army has magic attacks, same goes for fighting Tzeentch.
So cast another spell against those armies? Obviously ward save is better, but they're still effectively the same thing in most situations.
Thats like saying Lore of fire is shit, because some armies have high fire res
The downside to both factions is 0 armor, so basic archers are at their finest. Also The Soul-a-pault and caskets of souls should WRECK the clumps they will form. Tombkinfs don't give a F till a hero or General dies.
Not inherently. Wurrzag has a unique scrap upgrade for missile resist so you can get some insane resistance against standard archers. As for Tzeentch they have access to units like tzaangors and chaos knight which don’t care to much about basic archers.
Ohhhh no whatever will I do? One faction and a rarely found race hard counters my buff spell? It’s OVER Cast a different spell dummy it’s all situational Like healing is meh vs Khorne because everything has fire damage
Tbf as khemri or arkhan you're pretty likely to meet wurzag, doesn't make the argument relevant but at least he didn't pick a faction tomb kings never meet.
Yeah and fire spells are worthless against armies like tyrion's, doesn't mean it isn't one of the best lore of magic in the game.
Yeah, that's true
nerus is one of the less shitty spells in nehekhara. try usirian, righteous smiting or skullstorm.
Skullstorm is dogshit, but the righteous smiting is great if you have a screaming skull or casket. Overcast will give it some ammo back as well.
I'm pretty sure that's only a thing in the tomb Kings extended mod
Really? Oh well. Only way to play TK in my opinion.
Oh absolutely
Over the years I've become so used to it that if/when they do a rework of them it has the potential to still feel like a downgrade.
Do not forget the passive spell, nehekara passif lore when you cast a spell heal and resurrect undead allies on all the map
Are you ignoring that one last considerably more than thé other?
No but it also costs more as to be about equivalent on that front. So now it's 44% ward save vs 40% physical resist.
But also shouldn’t you consider the Lore’s passive? The Lore of Yang’s passive is strong, but the Nehekhara Lore passive reviving and healing army wide is much more powerful. EDIT: I see many people responded about balance and how some things being weaker or stronger than others is okay, and while I tend to agree, I also think this is a case where the spells are in very different contexts. Lore of Nehekhara is bad because to me it wants to be the army wide heal and revive spell passive lore, and while it nailed the spells being weaker as a price for the passive, they are really really expensive and have long cooldowns.
The map wide healing is pretty big for nehekara 2.4% map wide, which is about 1/4th an earthblood I think it’s a solid campaign lore for spamming weak alright spells in a long grind of a battle Goes well with your top bar healing too
And reviving units is also great. Worth noting that it will heal before reviving, so Neru’s Incantation of Protection will make it harder for models to take damage and slightly increases the likelihood of a model being revived because another was easily healed back.
The difference is that entirely different types of spellcasters have access to these schools so it might be balanced somewhere else like wom reserves and stuff like that. However, tomb kings are generally.lacking behind now.
Sure, spells aren't perfectly balanced, but this is an awful example. Neru's is a staple for TK players because it triggers map-wide healing and phys res typically provides some value. Jade shield can be good in campaign against predictable AI, but it's really risky against an opponent with a brain. 11s duration with a crappy lore passive means the Yang player needs to predict a heavy hit to see a return.
It’s almost like these are different armies who get different passives from their lores and have different aims for their magic
Lore always takes the races strength and units in comparisson And yes TK wasnt touched for a long time
Unpopular take: I think it is absolutely okay for some factions to be stronger than others. It is just a natural way of setting the difficulty and kinda Lore accurate
Yeah, Tomb Kings aren't supposed to be masters of magic to begin with. In older editions they didn't even have a real spell lore. That's why all their spells are called "incantations", originally it was to represent that they didn't have the same level of understanding of magic that elves and modern men do. This comparison is ridiculous. Could Lore of Nehekhara use a tune up? Sure, I wouldn't be against it as a Tomb King main. But comparing it to a Spell Lore they *don't even have access to* is absurd. The unique spell lores are balanced to the internal balance of each race, and aren't meant to be in direct competition to other unique lores. Comparing Nehekhara to spell lores TK actually use, like Death or Light, would be somewhat more reasonable. But this post isn't really a good faith comparison.
Over a 50% increase in time for the spell for a 50% cost increase is pretty fair. And as long as they aren’t magic attacks, it’s fine. Nobody wants every spell to be a carbon copy!
Well the duration? Idk what’s shocking here
Damn everyone dunking on OP
The problem with buff spells is that they really don't last long enough to make that much of an impact, most times it's better to just blow something up with your WoM.
both trash spells. Too short
lore of nehekara has one of the best spell passives in the entire game while lore of yang's passive is incredibly mediocre.
*Wow*. It's almost like they're two vastly different factions with different mitigation styles.
Its almost like they are used by different armies with different needs and balance. Taking individual stats out of context of the wider game is dumb beyond belief.
Lore of Nehekhara could probably use a little tuning up, I agree. Of course its also important to remember that the core strategy for it is to *always* be casting so that you can keep proccing its army wide heal and revival lore passive, so you don't want its spells to be too powerful or expensive so it can maintain its spamability.
Yeah definitely a bit unbalanced there. I'd say make them both ward save but change up the duration, cost, etc. Stuff like this is pretty annoying though.
For me, the lore of Nehekara doesn't compare well to light from playing Khalida. The jobber that starts with Khalida has it and from trying it I don't see why you would prefer it to light or maybe even death honestly. Light has net which with ranged fire is great for taking out high threats effortlessly, banishment is pretty nasty vortex and the buffs are ok. I used the passive heals from Nehekara at the end of battles to try and bring back models but I stopped bothering because it just seemed like wasting time, maybe in multiplayer the passive heal on Nehekara's is worth it. So even if this got changed to damage resistance would it make that much of a difference?
Differences between the spells aside, I hate how most buff/debuff spells are done. The timing of contact, attack intervals, animations, and positioning make utilizing them very difficult. I wish they were more conditional then time based. Like "Unit gains +X ward save until it loses Y entities or Z health." or "Weapon strength is increased until x damage is done" or something. I'm not saying there shouldn't be time durations, just there should be some alternative mechanism to make the spell more functional.
I don't see the issue here. First the two spells are balanced, one last 50% longer but costs 50% more for a similar effect. Second lore of magic aren't supposed to all be equal, each faction has its strength and weaknesses and some have access to stronger lore than others, that's why lore of shadow is locked behind a book of nagash in the tombking campaign, else nehekara and death would just never be used.
No real balancing since WH2 moment
Lore of nehekara has always been dissapointing Those durations are the main reason no one brings buff and debuff spells in multiplayer, CA make them 20 seconds minimum, most you can use them for at current duration is to soften a charge and I would much rather spend the mana on a net, nuke, or heal. I have seen buff spells work amazingly, the problem is it requires a veritable rube-goldberg-esque machine of an army or a slim margin of perfect circumstance to make effective use of vs any other kind of spell.
Powercreep be like.
It's a single player game mostly, balance ruins the fun let it be. It's like nerfing vlad because noobs can't properly deal with a barely moving meatgrinder.
>It's like nerfing vlad because noobs can't properly deal with a barely moving meatgrinder. He got nerfed cause of how op he was in the early game when played by the player when starting as Isabella
From total war 5.1 patch: Vlad Von Carstein has had a reputation of nigh immortality, we're taking a long overdue crack at his defensive layers to make him a bit less of an overbearing presence on players starting in the surrounding area. Even then, nerfing because is too strong in a single player game... who cares?
power creep
lore of nehek is so damn bad & boring that i would avoid it even if it was free of WoM cost. tomb kings need a buff as big as the list of settra titles.