[0980] Coal Stones: Overpowered?

A casting time of one or two turns is the only thing needed. The spell is otherwise fine as it is.

 

With respect, if my party is attacked by four or five units, their enemies are going to (in most cases) slowly advance in rank.  My sovereign can simply move to the back of the available space, and use the staff.  A turn or two later, the enemies are gone, without otherwise touching them.  That still seems to me overpowered.  Very few enemies can hit your ranks in one turn across a battlefield in the early game and even the mid game.  It's a one-shot killer spell on all attacking units, even with a two turn delay.

 

Finding the Staff of Furnace isn't something you can rely on each game. I had it only once during Beta 4 and not a single time since Beta 5 started. My only experience with Coal Stones is therefore based on my encounters with Wilding Shamans.

Now, let's look on the spell itself. The damage depends entirely on the level of the caster (caster level x 3), is halved if resisted and can be reduced even more with fire resistance. In addition, it has a cooldown of three turns, so it can't be spammed. This all means, that the caster needs a high level and Spell Mastery to be effective. If the enemy has high Spell and Fire Resistance (or Fire Immunity), you're is screwed.

Adding a casting time to Coal Stones will give the enemies a chance to kill the caster (preferably by ranged attack and spells) or use one of the counterspells, if they have one. That the AI isn't currently advancing properly is most likely a bug, that gets hopefully fixed soon. Still, if the enemy didn't manage to prevent the casting and survives the damage, they will have 5 turns (with a casting time of 2) to kill the caster before the spell is ready again. If they don't manage to do that, they would have died even if Coal Stones had not been used.

It may be bugged just like Despair is.  My party of 6 level 10 heroes got killed in one shot from a Despair spell from the Dark Sorcerer.  I think the damage done was 2x more than it said on the tin, and coal stones may be the same way.

You can't rely on a counterspell or ranged units to kill the caster before he casts the spell in 1-2 turns.  It would still be overpowered then.  Against most monsters, they won't have counter spell or ranged units, so coal stones/despair would just be a licence to power level at 4x the rate of your competitors, which = auto win.

The only way for the player to get Coal Stones is the Staff of Furnance, as far as I know, and like I sayed before, you can't expect to find it each game.

 

I found the staff of furnace after a battle with with a group of air shrills, and the damage it's been doing is completely out of line with that you describe.  So it would appear to be bugged.  Remains to be seen how well it works when it's properly functioning.

Yes even with it being a chance of finding the staff it is still ridiculously overpowered, my Magnar is now doing 200 damage to all enemies for free

200!

Even with Warlock, Path of the Mage and Evoker III you would still need to be about level 24 for this amount of damage. Have you any additional damage boosting gear? Otherwise, this is ridiculous!

I may have exaggerated the 200 I don't recall but I know it's over 100, but I think a better solution is nerfing spell damage bonus abilities

 

 

Actually, you can.  In use, by Wilding Shamans.  Just because we can't get it, doesn't mean it isn't in use.

 

And it's being shot off every three turns.  I took my level 2 sovereign, warrior champion, and summoned warg into battle against one.  Sovereign and warg went down by the second cast.  Then it was a matter of dodging until it could get off a third cast, and kill my wounded warrior.  This seems a bit excessive: the casts too frequent (every third turn), the distance too great to catch the shaman before usually dying.

 

Needs nerfing, somehow.  No matter who gets coal stones.

I meant, that you can't expect to find the Staff of Furnace every game.


I know. The five turns were meant in the case of a proposed casting time of two turns. I thought, that was clear.

 

I wasn't implying otherwise. I was merely setting the groundwork for the scenario I encountered that allowed one wilding shaman to destroy three units--not through superior strategy, but because it had a weapon which is overpowered for its tier in the early game.

But its go big or go home in this game. Let him have his power!

Ah, okay. I misunderstood you then.