Ok, there is a big majority of us that are really struggling with too many specials in battles, I know you are monitoring and RNG, and apparently nothing changed, and all that, but our own experience on a day to day basis says otherwise.

Some suggested to remove specials all together, I get that some people don't want that. Personally I hate specials, anything that is just based on blind dumb luck is not fun for me whether it works in my favor or not, but ok we don't want to remove specials, how about we balance them or add some restrictions.

I think the major source of frustration for many of us is getting hit by specials back to back and or on first turn. To eliminate that frustration 3 simple restrictions can be added:

• A monster should never get a special on first turn

• A monster should never get a special back to back: more details: if it gets a special once, it can not get another till 6 more turns for example.

• Stamina removal or cooldowns activated should not trigger specials more than usual, they really seem like they do.

Once these restrictions are applied, 2 mechanics can be used to get a special:

• Charging up mechanic: Before a monster gets to use its special, the special needs to be charged up:
  The suggestion on discord was the more moves it uses the more the meter fills up.

My suggestion is:
have a meter that fills up slowly, when the monster takes damage, or after each turn it gets. Once meter is filled a special can be used.

The more it takes damage: If you are getting beat up by a voltaik or prince charmless or zyla for example, your monster is losing health but on the upside it is charging its special a bit more.
The more rounds it gets/survives: if your monster is getting denied for example but still surviving, it is more likely to get a special.

In my opinion specials are supposed to be something that turn the tide for the underdogs, something that is like a last saving grace, with this, the monsters who are getting damage or enduring are more likely to get a special to help them out, than the strong hitters which are already having the advantage and don't need the special.

• Chance increase mechanic: as suggested on discord, the monster starts out with 0% on first turn, each turn the % increases to reach a max of 5%. and once used, the % chance resets to 0. this ensures no specials on first turn and no back to back specials.

This can be modified to ensure that 2 teammates monsters don't get consecutive specials either, the chance can be for the entire team and resets for all once used by one.

Another mechanic:

• One special for all team but only once per battle: My suggestion is once a monster gets a special, it can be used by any monster on the team on their turn, (giving u the freedom to use the best special for any of ur surviving monsters depending on the situation rather than just rely on luck of the draw) but once used, it can not be used again by anyone through out the battle, this is coupled with either the charging up mechanic or the chance increase mechanic. This adds an element of strategy (use the special for support or denial or damage or revival for example) but still makes sure it is not too overpowered, give the freedom to choose who uses it but in exchange it becomes limited to only one.

@carlos @fox hope you consider these.

@sam said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Ok, there is a big majority of us that are really struggling with too many specials in battles

The big majority cannot stand losing. Specials tend to cause that, so get the blame. I have no problems with the specials as they are. Every game/sport has, and should have, some random element. It's how unexpected losses and wins can occur.

In the ML case part of strategy in every combat should be risk reduction of getting specialled. Obviously this is easier in some rules than in others, and also depends on your monster roster, but dismissing specials as 'mere dumb luck' as some do is far too simplistic.

I think the major source of frustration for many of us is getting hit by specials back to back and or on first turn. To eliminate that frustration 3 simple restrictions can be added:

• A monster should never get a special on first turn

This I can live with.

• A monster should never get a special back to back: more details: if it gets a special once, it can not get another till 6 more turns for example.

Interesting suggestion. Guess I can live with that as well. 6 turns though .. may as well say a monster will never get 2 specials in one battle.

sidenote: I am wondering if specials can stack. If that is the case, and for example a monster is denied the first three turns and then gets 2 consecutive specials, it may have been caused by 5 chances to get 2 specials in total, instead of by four chances to get one special and then another chance to get one special. The likelihood of the first is far greater than the second and could explain the for some people 'inexplicabale' back to back specials.

• Stamina removal or cooldowns activated should not trigger specials more than usual, they really seem like they do.

As a teacher I am sure you know you should provide actual evidence for such a statement. Anyone who has ever tested this came out with normal 'special behaviour'. Unsubstantiated claims make it easier to dismiss your entire post.

Once these restrictions are applied, 2 mechanics can be used to get a special:

• Charging up mechanic: Before a monster gets to use its special, the special needs to be charged up:
  The suggestion on discord was the more moves it uses the more the meter fills up.

That's a bad suggestion and caters far too much to the mega fast deniers. Anyone wants to give Thalassa an even bigger unfair advantage? Not to mention all of the (other) extra turners.

My suggestion is:
have a meter that fills up slowly, when the monster takes damage, or after each turn it gets. Once meter is filled a special can be used.

Not fond of this either. In many battles monsters will never be able to get a special, except in the longer ones people are complaining about already now because they get specialled to death.

• Chance increase mechanic: as suggested on discord, the monster starts out with 0% on first turn, each turn the % increases to reach a max of 5%. and once used, the % chance resets to 0. this ensures no specials on first turn and no back to back specials.

I could live with this as well.

This can be modified to ensure that 2 teammates monsters don't get consecutive specials either, the chance can be for the entire team and resets for all once used by one.

Another mechanic:

• One special for all team but only once per battle: My suggestion is once a monster gets a special, it can be used by any monster on the team on their turn, (giving u the freedom to use the best special for any of ur surviving monsters depending on the situation rather than just rely on luck of the draw) but once used, it can not be used again by anyone through out the battle, this is coupled with either the charging up mechanic or the chance increase mechanic. This adds an element of strategy (use the special for support or denial or damage or revival for example) but still makes sure it is not too overpowered, give the freedom to choose who uses it but in exchange it becomes limited to only one.

Not happy with this either. If a Thetys gets her special but can give it to Ouros or Thalassa it will make monsters with already very powerful specials far too important.

@sam Great Post, honestly I'll take anything to deal with Specials.

@carlos for the love of God, please do something about this.
3 specials from the same monster in 1 battle SHOULD not be a thing! i failed to record the first one, but for example this baba got 3 specials in 1 battle. 1 on first turn and then 2 back to back as u see. video

This is a drop in an ocean. It happens more often than not.

with your "balanced" war matchmaking where we are often fighting an uphill battle, we do not need this extra disadvantage that we have no way of countering.

Monsters should not start with a special.
Monsters should not get back to back specials.
A limit to the number of specials per monster or per team should be in place

you are the forum's resident game mechanics genius, do you at least agree with these points? Is anything going to be done about this?

The game is becoming "hang a rabbit's foot around your neck and rub a three leafed clover before you attack! because luck is more a important factor than actual strategy or planning.

This is what we deal with on a day to day basis: Unlogical misses and back to back specials. Please, enough with the blind luck stuff, if i wanted to play a luck based game I'd play slots.

please, give me a good reason why moves should just miss out of nowhere when you have things like blind and daze and miniblind and hardened and tough and bulwark traits that already counter accuracy. Missing was introduced since the game started, it stopped being relevant with all these counters to accuracy now.
kihaku misses 2 ot of 3 completely

Give me a good reason on why it is ok, or fun, or a nice mechanic, that a monster gets back to back specials or starts with one.

We nagged for months about updating team shop, team war leagues, and race changes, till we finally got them changed, I hope we won't have to nag about this for a long time before someone finally takes notice.

@ekto-gamat

"As a teacher I am sure you know you should provide actual evidence for such a statement. Anyone who has ever tested this came out with normal 'special behaviour'. Unsubstantiated claims make it easier to dismiss your entire post."

you should too, i have yet to see these tests, mind providing them, and what methods were used exactly? and how recent these tests were?
as a player who has been playing this game forever ekto, u also know see how many complain about this. As I said in my post some of what i said is a continuation about what was on discord, this was a point there, not my own. Moreover, we are being told nothing has changed about specials, but our day to day experience show otherwise. I never feared a special just popping up and ruining my attack as much as i have recently, nor do i remember back to back specials from say a year ago.

"My suggestion is:
have a meter that fills up slowly, when the monster takes damage, or after each turn it gets. Once meter is filled a special can be used."
Not fond of this either. In many battles monsters will never be able to get a special, except in the longer ones people are complaining about already now because they get specialled to death."

Well exactly the point, imo specials should not be popping up except in long matches as a last saving grace, turn the tide thing, them appearing frequently and early should not be the norm at all.

@sam said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat

"As a teacher I am sure you know you should provide actual evidence for such a statement. Anyone who has ever tested this came out with normal 'special behaviour'. Unsubstantiated claims make it easier to dismiss your entire post."

you should too, i have yet to see these tests, mind providing them, and what methods were used exactly? and how recent these tests were?

I have not done them myself, but people I fully trust have.
@xargul recently, @C0ntr1v3d some time ago.
Others, that I cannot remember.

It basically was counting specials versus chances of specials for a couple of hundred instances.

I also wholeheartedly agree that something needs to be done to keep specials in check!

@sam said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Chance increase mechanic: as suggested on discord, the monster starts out with 0% on first turn, each turn the % increases to reach a max of 5%. and once used, the % chance resets to 0. this ensures no specials on first turn and no back to back specials.

This is what I suggested in an earlier thread and I think it would work well to reduce the impact of specials. Each monster has a 0% chance of special on first turn which increases to 2%, 4% and finally 5% on the fourth turn and this chance resets to 0% after a special occurs. This will ensure that you never get hit with a special as opening move and prevents back to back specials whilst not completely eliminating specials from the game.

I have also posted this on the ideas channel in Discord yet it hasn't been picked up yet @Fox can you please get this added for consideration - thanks!

@david-ml It's a good idea but SP will never consider it since it will allow most players to actually complete the Nemesis dungeons and other survival dungeons. They need to keep rewards low and luck based so you know that if that monster with 2 str runes get a turn, or gets its CDA or stam drained you will get a special to wipe your team

@carlos as a game designer and a player yourself, please watch this and tell me if you feel that is a fair AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5azSRSDiY

When we are facing someone that outranks us, they already have an advantage, they don't need 3 specials in 1 battle.

An example in the video here: the plan was my dungeon master keeps them cooldown activated which would have worked well, if the AI did not decide to give their Igursus his special on first turn and then give their Xiron 2 specials. Again this is just a mere example, not a rare occurrence. I am not saying I should win every battle, but at least I don't want to lose on first turn due to a special I couldn't have possibly prevented.

Please consider these balances: A monster should never get a special on first turn, same monster should not get 2 specials except after a specific number of turns. (Basically increase cooldowns on specials? then cooldowns activated won't be so useless?) These won't take specials out of the equation but at least they won't feel so frustrating and unfair.

There is a plethora of methods that can be applied to fix this, but please again do something about it because this is sucking the fun out of playing and making any strategy worthless because it all comes down to dumb blind luck more than anything.

@sam said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@carlos as a game designer and a player yourself, please watch this and tell me if you feel that is a fair AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5azSRSDiY

When we are facing someone that outranks us, they already have an advantage, they don't need 3 specials in 1 battle.

Interesting video, but not really helping your cause.

The Igursus special hardly hurt you. It triggered some healing relics and DM cleared the debuffs, so game on after that.

The real problems started when Xiron came out of her Cooldowns and denied Dungeon Master, clearing the path for Igursus to kill the Fox, she only started specialling after that.

So in this case specials only decided a battle that could have gone either way already.

@ekto-gamat completely missing the point aren't we?
The point is not whether that particular battle was salvageable. The point is THERE ARE TOO MANY SPECIALS.

I know it will please a lot of people , but I am really thinking of following Haka Taka's footsteps out the door. The only thing fun for me in this game was the battles, now they are ruined by these crazy frequent specials and misses. I know I have bad luck but I can't be THAT unlucky.

Here is another SAMPLE, of many.

2 battles in same war, back to back battles, total AI specials = 5 specials.

1st one:
Samael starts with his special
1 turn later he gets his SPECIAL again.
Then their igursus gets his special right after samael. failed to record igursus because by the time Samael got his 2nd special, i was almost breaking my phone. But the screenshot shows the burning and quicksand from his special.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh4TgUi_6ls

2nd one:
"Luckily" Thetys starts with "frosting.." rather than Sd, frosting is supposed to be 50% chance to freeze, but somehow lands on all 3 monsters freezing all, including a bulwark, (yet often when i get a special with 100% accuracy it fails to stun a simple hardened monster), but I digress, same magical thetys then got 2 specials one round part...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3eLZw6-N64

so, here we go 3 specials in a battle is now the common thing, I can't remember a battle I had where I haven't had a special or 2 or 3 thrown at my face often back to back or from same monster, and that is among 2 accounts I am running, and back to back wars! supposed to be 5% ??! more like 50% !

Please @Carlos @Fox address this, or if you don't plan to, at least say so, so I stop wasting money, time and effort on a dead end game. I know I am not top team lead or "representative", but I am also one of the players who have been with the game since its launch, I hope that accounts for something and you can honor me with a response about this because currently this game has become unplayable for me.

Again simple suggestions that I hope I can be considered and modified or balanced as you please:
-A monster should never start with a special
-Same monster should never get back to back specials and they should be separated by a certain number of rounds or limited to 1 special per monster.
-Put some limits to the number of specials per team per battle.

@sam said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat completely missing the point aren't we?
The point is not whether that particular battle was salvageable. The point is THERE ARE TOO MANY SPECIALS.

The point should be if specials 'ruin' the game and therefore should be balanced.

Ruining would be completely destroying an otherwise won battle on a regular basis. In your example battle they did not.

Ruining a won battle is the time a Cryotan with a sliver of life left and no stamina had back to back specials and took out first 2 of my monsters and then the last. But since this does not happen every day and unlike some I also remember the battles where the enemy monsters do not get specials, I can shrug it off.

There are five battles in every war. Unless you can completely reduce any risk with precision and OHK's you are bound to get unlucky in at least one of them on average.

Give Ultimates a 1 CD. Simple.

@c0ntr1v3d lol maybe even 2 for very strong one's I think thats a very good solution btw, and so simple

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Give Ultimates a 1 CD. Simple.

This has also been suggested by others. Ultimately, I don't care what the mechanism is but two things should be prevented 1) special as opening move 2) consecutive specials (and here I mean by consecutive not just the same monster but monsters on the same team!).

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Give Ultimates a 1 CD. Simple.

This has also been suggested by others. Ultimately, I don't care what the mechanism is but two things should be prevented 1) special as opening move 2) consecutive specials (and here I mean by consecutive not just the same monster but monsters on the same team!).

How about 1 turn warm up then?

And here we are: https://forums.socialpointgames.com/topic/11126/special-skills-update

Good thing is it nerfs monsters with stupidly over powered specials like Thalassa.

Not sure how 3% can possibly be justified though. This means a chance of 1/33 instead of 1/20 and therefore a decrease of approximately 65%, and this only after a few rounds. In the old situation you should strategize around the possibility of specials. If in the new situation you lose to a special then you definitely are unlucky, since they should hardly occur at all. This is an undesirable dumbing down of the game.

Also, this brings back power to the speed monsters. I thought we were passed that stage.

That calls also for a real definition of an extra turner: is it any monster with an extra turn skill (samael, timerion...etc)? only the obvious ones such as zyla, voltaik, charmless? everything in between that can perform more than 1 extra turn skill but can't fully cycle trhough them (gaianova, beledig...etc)?

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Not sure how 3% can possibly be justified though.

Admittedly, I am also surprised by this reduction. However, I have never been a big fan of specials as they are just pot luck and I completely disagree with you that you can strategise around them. The only way to strategise around them is to never allow the enemy to get a turn - completely unrealistic, in particular now with shields, armour, evasion, etc....

....so I am very pleasantly surprised by this announcement

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Also, this brings back power to the speed monsters.

No idea why that would be if anything, then the other way around as you now don't have to fear to get hit by a special on first turn if you are slower than the enemy!!!

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Also, this brings back power to the speed monsters.

No idea why that would be if anything, then the other way around as you now don't have to fear to get hit by a special on first turn if you are slower than the enemy!!!

Very simple: fast monsters get to 3% chance of getting a special faster than slow monsters.

I wonder if this change to specials will affect monsters in dungeons who have had their special chance tweaked to use them more often?

Honestly. Specials were fine as they were, apart from Thalassa's. Diluting a core game mechanic just through lack of resolve to rebalance Thalassa's ultimate is not a good way forward, imo.

There was an announcement made today about it . . . Check it out

@testcyp said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

I wonder if this change to specials will affect monsters in dungeons who have had their special chance tweaked to use them more often?

And your evidence that the chances were tweaked is something else than your frustration of getting wiped in the Nemesis Dungeons?

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Specials were fine as they were

Maybe for someone who has a bunch of fully ranked Tenacity Shields and mostly fights with fully rank Nemesis and other top monsters as you can more easily take a few specials and fights are generally over a lot quicker. However, with matches being A LOT closer now and therefore tougher (which I do like!), players at our level are forced to fight much tougher war battles. In such battles it is more often than not that specials decide which side win. As I have said in another thread, entering a battle sometimes feels like opening a chest - you never know what you get and this is just as wrong as those chests!!!

So, does this now elevates Cooldowns activated (all versions), as you can always guarantee no special will hit you...I don't agree with the changes. Players who purchase tenacity shields & play with nemeses & war masters etc, lol, they're only purchasing the best & playing the game as it should be... don't deserve to be castigated for doing so. These changes have been harped on by players wanting to win against better monsters or higher ranked monsters. Rethink, this one, the purpose is to choose wisely & rank your monsters, no reason to do so, if you can win without making the effort to rank.

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Specials were fine as they were

Maybe for someone who has a bunch of fully ranked Tenacity Shields and mostly fights with fully rank Nemesis and other top monsters as you can more easily take a few specials and fights are generally over a lot quicker. However, with matches being A LOT closer now and therefore tougher (which I do like!), players at our level are forced to fight much tougher war battles. In such battles it is more often than not that specials decide which side win.

I am a player of your level, David.
I do not fight with fully levelled armour, nor do I have many usable Nemeses or Warmasters.

Last war we played was against Five Attacks, a team with generally better equipped players.

10 battles:

4 battles with a rank 5 Teamshop Monster, Rank 0 Warmaster, rank 3 Race Monster

4 battles with a rank 5 Teamshop Monster, rank 1 Warmaster, rank 5 breedable

2 battles with 2 rank 5 unbreedables and a rank 5 Teamshop Monster

Only one of these battles lasted longer than 2/3 rounds. None of them were decided by specials. If a special had occured in the battle that took a bit longer I probably would have lost, but that already was after plan A failed.

Obviously not possible with all rules, and not against a team that places a bit more out-of-the-box defences, but just to nuance your statement.

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Specials were fine as they were

Maybe for someone who has a bunch of fully ranked Tenacity Shields and mostly fights with fully rank Nemesis and other top monsters as you can more easily take a few specials and fights are generally over a lot quicker. However, with matches being A LOT closer now and therefore tougher (which I do like!), players at our level are forced to fight much tougher war battles. In such battles it is more often than not that specials decide which side win. As I have said in another thread, entering a battle sometimes feels like opening a chest - you never know what you get and this is just as wrong as those chests!!!

On the contrary. Specials give a lower resourced team a chance on defence in hard wars.

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Specials were fine as they were

Maybe for someone who has a bunch of fully ranked Tenacity Shields and mostly fights with fully rank Nemesis and other top monsters as you can more easily take a few specials and fights are generally over a lot quicker. However, with matches being A LOT closer now and therefore tougher (which I do like!), players at our level are forced to fight much tougher war battles. In such battles it is more often than not that specials decide which side win. As I have said in another thread, entering a battle sometimes feels like opening a chest - you never know what you get and this is just as wrong as those chests!!!

On the contrary. Specials give a lower resourced team a chance on defence in hard wars.

Must have been a crapload of specials that caused the defence below, since the attacker also had many high levelled diamond relics on their monsters, including Tenacity Shield and Uriel's Essence. I guess I will save this screenshot, since I will not be seeing them anymore in the future.

Bit off topic, but personally, I'd love to use rank 5 Team Shop monsters, IF they were available at a reasonable price... The way they are now, getting one to rank 5 will take so much time that they'll be absolutely outclassed by the new generation of monsters with better stats and battle mechanics, as the evolution of the game obviously demands. But I do agree with @David-ML - going into battle without the fear of being severly crippled or wiped out first turn is a welcome change. As for what @C0ntr1v3d said, weaker teams might lose some advantage in defending, but then, they might not have had the capacity to decide battles in the first place, and if they did so by virtue of multiple specials, I doubt the attacking player with a superior team and guranteed victory would feel very happy about it...

@ekto-gamat they have said in other announcements that they tweak the special chance for monsters in certain dungeons, Titan races being one of them. Also adventure islands the big bosses get specials more often and they are programmed that way.
i'm guessing that defense was more due to a crap load of misses by the attacker which happens often.

@testcyp With Sherazar, Ekto's attacker would not be able to miss even if he wanted to..

@xargul yup, looks like you're right. i didn't notice that.

@Fox it is past the beginning of January, have these (unfortunate) changes gone live yet? I did not get the impression they did.

I am sure that people are dying to know, before getting trashed to oblivion in the current Nemesis Dungeon.

@ekto-gamat Should be out with the next big version, which SP will submit hopefully next week

Honestly i absolutely despise having a great battle being trashed by a single attack that can easily wipe my team, so i basically agree with all of these and think they would greatly improve the current system. Also i have so many team wars horror stories, like : cryotan gettin 3 special attacks in a row, killing my monsters 1 by 1, leaving me in utter rage and hate to the point i would just turn off the phone to call down. Also completely obliterating an enemy team only for a monster to be on 400 hp and wipe your team like its nothing, just after my charmless missed 4 times in a row. So i think these changes would be nice

I have also been waiting with bated breath for this change to go life. In the meantime, I have tried to keep track of how many war battles I had were decided by specials @Ekto-Gamat

First war, one battle was over too quickly for a special to occur. Two battles were swiftly decide in my favour due to specials, another two were decided against my favour due to specials. Nobody will ever know which side would have won in those battles if no specials had occurred (I'd like to think my tactic would have played out but this will forever remain a mystery).

Next war, two fights lost due to bad attack choice. One battle, no specials (won), two battles specials decided in my favour.

Last war, one lost due to special, two won due to specials (one occurred on possessed enemy, though!) and two won without specials.

Not a huge data pool, but I'd say that each war anywhere between 2-4 fights are decided by specials. And as John ML pointed out above, I couldn't care less about getting a defence win due to specials - I am not playing my defence, so it does not provide any real life enjoyment.

And @C0ntr1v3d I have to say that I am really surprised at your opposition to this change. I have always thought that you would support any change to the game that will enhance tactical gameplay and this change will have a significant positive impact on tactics!!!

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Specials give a lower resourced team a chance on defence in hard wars.

Maybe you don't know that but specials make life infinitely harder for lower resourced teams on attack as they usually get wiped instantly by specials. Nothing is more frustrating than going against a superior team with a certain tactic in mind to potentially win the battle and then you get wiped by a special. Maybe you should try playing a lower resourced account for a while to get a different perspective

So @Fox when can we expect this change to go live?

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

I have also been waiting with bated breath for this change to go life. In the meantime, I have tried to keep track of how many war battles I had were decided by specials @Ekto-Gamat

Not a huge data pool, but I'd say that each war anywhere between 2-4 fights are decided by specials.

Interesting. I think none of my battles were decided by specials recently. Not that I have been able to war much thanks to current match making problems.

And as John ML pointed out above, I couldn't care less about getting a defence win due to specials - I am not playing my defence, so it does not provide any real life enjoyment.

It should. Defensive wins are as important to winning a war as offensive wins. Defending 5 and 4 coins in most recent POF war most certainly provides me real life enjoyment.

As a sidenote: In our current POF war I am highly unlikely to defend anything and also unlikely to get any coins, thanks to unfavourable rules. Specials will have nothing to do with that, but only speed things up.

And @C0ntr1v3d I have to say that I am really surprised at your opposition to this change. I have always thought that you would support any change to the game that will enhance tactical gameplay and this change will have a significant positive impact on tactics!!!

I already explained many times why I think the opposite is the case. So let me try again.

When setting a defence or planning an attack you take into account many different factors:

Likely ai behaviour, monster skillsets, runes, relics triggering, turn order, chance of missing, chance at ohk's, chance of resists, chance of getting specialled, et cetera.

Getting rid of one of these factors is NOT improving tactical gameplay, but dumbing it down. Of course as an inidividual a win MAY come down to being lucky or not in some wars, but I always assume that in an entire war of a total of 300 battles every team has approximately the same amount of luck or bad luck. In close wars the team that factors in the possibility of getting specialled best may turn the events to their favour.

Thinking that reducing specials improves tactical gameplay is not looking at the bigger picture of an entire war.

On a different note: just finished the Nemesis Dungeon without being on the receiving end of a special (did get 3 myself). Pure luck, or specials turned off for the defending team?

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

On a different note: just finished the Nemesis Dungeon without being on the receiving end of a special (did get 3 myself). Pure luck, or specials turned off for the defending team?

I got hit by 3 (three!) Thalassa's specials, so yeah, you're lucky.
I don't think that SP can make such a generous thing as removing specials from survival dungeon.

@siberity said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

On a different note: just finished the Nemesis Dungeon without being on the receiving end of a special (did get 3 myself). Pure luck, or specials turned off for the defending team?

I got hit by 3 (three!) Thalassa's specials, so yeah, you're lucky.
I don't think that SP can make such a generous thing as removing specials from survival dungeon.

Yikes! I guess you received all specials for me.

@david-ml my reply to ekto was for the biggest part info from @Fox , now i know Im not fox but if i say something like that it is not something i make up so fox cant provide more info than I can, the new big version is due for next week so hopefully it will be so

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

When setting a defence or planning an attack you take into account many different factors:
Likely ai behaviour, monster skillsets, runes, relics triggering, turn order, chance of missing, chance at ohk's, chance of resists, chance of getting specialled, et cetera.
Getting rid of one of these factors is NOT improving tactical gameplay, but dumbing it down. Of course as an inidividual a win MAY come down to being lucky or not in some wars, but I always assume that in an entire war of a total of 300 battles every team has approximately the same amount of luck or bad luck. In close wars the team that factors in the possibility of getting specialled best may turn the events to their favour.

I agree with everything except for the part involving specials. You CANNOT plan for specials, it is impossible. They are a random factor based on pure luck (or bad luck). There is no planning involved, except maybe setting up a defence that is tanky enough to likely have a maximum number of turns as the more turns you have in a battle the higher the chance of a special. Unless you know some sort of secret of how to trigger them with certain defence combos

And as a side note: I just had an epic battle in our current war that lasted about 10 minutes. Many turns, many opportunities of specials, but only one insignificant one occurred (my Thetys, actually didn't even touch it for many turns!). I had sweaty palms at the end, I won by the skin of my teeth, but had a special occurred on the enemy Nishant's BG in particular or Remtar (all Lvl 130), the battle would probably have been over a lot quicker. I do hope that battles like this will happen more often without having multiple specials in most battles as this is what keeps me playing! Specials are not special these days, they happen all the time and rule most battles - it has to stop!!!

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

I agree with everything except for the part involving specials. You CANNOT plan for specials, it is impossible. They are a random factor based on pure luck (or bad luck). There is no planning involved, except maybe setting up a defence that is tanky enough to likely have a maximum number of turns as the more turns you have in a battle the higher the chance of a special.

That is one thing yes. But there are many other ways to plan around specials, both on offense and defense. To name a few for offense:

1. Always contain the monster with the freaky special first
2. Always kill him first and fast. Don't give him many opportunities
3. Device back up plans in case of a special
4. Use team life/armour/shields/resurrection to nullify the damage of a possible special

Of course this planning is increasingly difficult against a stronger opponent, but so are all the other factors you usually calculate in when planning an attack.

The only special that is nearly impossible to plan against is Thalassa's. So my solution would be to stop giving monsters dumb, over powered specials, instead of touching a core element of the game.

Hi @david-ml,

Most probably with the next big version.

@ekto-gamat said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

The only special that is nearly impossible to plan against is Thalassa's. So my solution would be to stop giving monsters dumb, over powered specials, instead of touching a core element of the game.

Agreed! The bane of my teams in last two Nemesis dungeons have been Tankerion's instant death special (50% chance of instant kill, like Cryotan), I think it's ridiculous, and one of the only ones that incites thoughts of breaking devices for me

I'm not particularly sad to see specials reduced though, but would have been fine with a climbing scale back up to 5% instead of reducing it to 3%.

@karryt said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Agreed!

Disagreed! There are heaps of battle deciding specials in the game and not just the instant death ones. Ingenica - trait disable + possess, Hackster - Megahack, Elvira - remove good effects + megastun, Nishant's BG - give extra turn to all allies + damage boost, any 90pt damage AoE special (eg. Shannara) on red runed attacker and there are more. Just because Thalassa's special is the ultimate ridiculousness of a special that doesn't mean there are no others that frequently end yet undecided battles!!! @Ekto-Gamat

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@karryt said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Agreed!

Disagreed! There are heaps of battle deciding specials in the game and not just the instant death ones. Ingenica - trait disable + possess, Hackster - Megahack, Elvira - remove good effects + megastun, Nishant's BG - give extra turn to all allies + damage boost, any 90pt damage AoE special (eg. Shannara) on red runed attacker and there are more. Just because Thalassa's special is the ultimate ridiculousness of a special that doesn't mean there are no others that frequently end yet undecided battles!!! @Ekto-Gamat

I cannot agree with some of your comments.

You say a special cannot be planned for. Of course it can be. The sort of attack plan routinely devised over many hours by elite teams in hard wars against other elite teams does just that. Every one of those plans assumes that every undenied defence monster will get a special and assesses how that will impact the attack, and fashions a way to counter that eventuality. That is partly why crunching all the possibilities to achieve a 100% certain attack plan takes so much time and effort and ingenuity.

You say Thalassa's special is just one of many that may decide a battle. Not so. Every example you gave can be countered. Ingenica's does not bother a monster with a possession shield or evasion; ditto Hackster's. Elvira's does not bother a stun immune monster. Nishant's BG will be ruined if there is an Anticipation monster in play. High damage specials don't trouble anything behind evasion or space time or even a carefully placed life rune or relic. A couple of wars back Flamerion specialled with his awesome insane damage + bleed + burn + ignite and it would have been tickets except that I had thrown up a space time in case of exactly that. You have no doubt done the same.

Only Thalassa's special strips positive and disables trait before inflicting an unavoidable two turn denial. The only way to counter that is to ensure she does not get a turn, and that is exceedingly difficult due to her astonishing speed and high life.

I am saddened to see specials diluted because their capricious ability to change the battle in an instant added an extra element which is now all but gone, dumbing the combat down somewhat. Nerfing Thalassa's special is all that is needed, but those who could nerf it - and know it should be done - can't face the howling outrage that would follow.

@david-ml said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

@karryt said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

Agreed!

Disagreed! There are heaps of battle deciding specials in the game and not just the instant death ones. Ingenica - trait disable + possess, Hackster - Megahack, Elvira - remove good effects + megastun, Nishant's BG - give extra turn to all allies + damage boost, any 90pt damage AoE special (eg. Shannara) on red runed attacker and there are more. Just because Thalassa's special is the ultimate ridiculousness of a special that doesn't mean there are no others that frequently end yet undecided battles!!! @Ekto-Gamat

There are several answers to all those specials you mentioned, just not in every war rule. Inconvenient if they occur, sometimes deadly, but often I can deal with them. Especially if they don't occur in the first round.

Not to Thalassa's; if she starts specialling it is just end of the story. In 95% of my battles at least. Cannot take in the right immunities, cannot grant any immunities, it will just be stripped, leaving your monsters to freeze and drown to death. If anyone knows how to effectively counter that squid, other than killing her first, I would love to hear it.

I much more frequently lose to misses than to specials. I am not complaining. I can only hope SP will not decrease the chances of misses as well, since that would be a logical, but very unfortunate, next step to cater to the needs of players who never want to lose.

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

The sort of attack plan routinely devised over many hours by elite teams in hard wars against other elite teams does just that. Every one of those plans assumes that every undenied defence monster will get a special and assesses how that will impact the attack, and fashions a way to counter that eventuality. That is partly why crunching all the possibilities to achieve a 100% certain attack plan takes so much time and effort and ingenuity.

I think the operative word here is 'elite' - how many 'elite' teams exist that have a) the diversity of fully ranked monsters and b) the ongoing amount of gems to devise such ingenious attack plans? half a dozen? maybe a dozen? So to keep this tiny fraction of ML players happy to tinker around avoiding specials, the entire rest of the ML community is supposed to continue to put up with this???

I do not disagree with you that this can be done when you are playing at that level, but alas, unfortunately only very few can actually afford that. The current situation in the mid level to lower top level of teams is that players have between 1 and 3 R4-5 (R2-4 in mid range) monsters in most elements/books, so a very limited set of tools (and not all top of the range). We don't move runes around every war as we can't afford it as it's hard enough to keep up with the game as is. We have shield relics, healing relics, many monsters with various protection and healing skills and matches are now so that we don't have 7-8 walks in the park plus two complete annihilations and maybe one even match as it used to be. Now 4 out of 5 matches are fairly evenly matched, so we are pitching teams of monsters at each other that are of similar level and it is impossible to deny many turns to avoid specials and long battles with many turns give many more chances for them to occur and that they do! So currently, from my experience and those on my team that keep track of this, about half of all fights are decided by specials one way or the other....

....the chance of specials is from an era that we normally call pre-lab. Can you remember how long battles tended to last back then? Many would have been less than a minute with half a dozen turns if that! And what was the worst special at the time? Noctum and Ouros and ah yes, Cailech Look at ML now - it's bloody time that this gets adjusted to today's battle environments!!!

@c0ntr1v3d said in Suggestions to balance specials.:

I am saddened to see specials diluted because their capricious ability to change the battle in an instant added an extra element which is now all but gone, dumbing the combat down somewhat.

On the contrary, having 50% of battles decided by specials is dumbing down combat. What gives you a greater sense of achievement? Going through an epic battle without any specials that you win by the skin of your teeth because your plan works out or winning because 'yay I got a special' and obviously having your cunning plan smashed to smithereens by a special isn't fun either . Honestly, I am really surprised that your are so vehemently against this change