Have some free time while waiting for the patch, so figured I would write up my thoughts on the rest of the update.
First off, you all mentioned the length of this update in the reply to me. I agree and think it would have been better to split the patch notes into a part 1 with the new season and a part 2 with the non-seasonal stuff. Then you would have also had more room to address players’ concerns.
Gear
Fallen Quarterstaff
…That’s a quarterstaff? No way, that’s flat and sharp with a handle, like a blade. It would have been cool to have a quarterstaff weapon, but that’s not anywhere near round enough to be one. Ability seems decent? Better than some at least. But can a chance to freeze really compete with something like Esgaard Flail or Twinblade?
Fallen Mantle
Design is cool. Ehhh, an ability based on taking damage. Those always seem worse than other ones, because the entire idea is that you don’t want your enemy to damage you. And only 5%!? This one seems… really not great. I could be wrong, but that’s my first impression of it.
Fallen Gauntlets
Ooh, those look cool. I like the skull motif too, and the spiky glove ends. The ability only works if Freeze is inflicted on yourself? Ehh, the effect itself seems good, but I don’t like that you have to rely on the enemy statusing you. Seems very situational.
Fallen Shoulderguards
Another very cool design. And I missed the skull the first time! Neat. Ability relies on taking damage… that’s not quite so bad as some of these types of abilities, as it’s any type of damage, and then you gain some survivability after. As long as the enemy doing damage to your armor/resistance counts. Seems like it could be interesting. The question is if it will be enough to compete with other shoulder options.
Fallen Ring
Very spiky and looks painful to wear! But another cool design. That ability seems… not great in multiple ways. For one, it will encourage the T0 meta (without a starting mana cap). And if we have an ability like that intentionally, it could mean the devs are leaning into the T0 meta, which would make most of us players very, very unhappy. On the other hand, for normal use, that chance seems too low and unreliable to depend on, but also too high to just have it happen casually without it messing up your spell order or turn plan. You’re introducing so much RNG into your setup and build. I can’t really see any way this ability makes sense.
Fallen Belt
Impressed with the design yet again. And finally an ability that is a useful type (just straight up based on gems on the board rather than needing yourself to be damaged or statused). But… speed. Speed is kinda a dud effect. Most of us players can match fast enough where we don’t need speed bonuses. So ultimately, despite a bit of promise, it’s another subpar item.
Set Bonuses
Freezing the enemy, when matching skulls, nice. That seems useful.
Ooh, skull gem creation. I like that. That seems pretty useful as well.
Power for each skull on the board? That’s very useful as well.
All in all, these bonuses all seem useful, and far better than the ones on the individual pieces. The placement of the items seems nice as well, because it allows for things like Savior’s Helm and Royal Leggings to be used with it.
Legendary Item
Ooh, this seems to have a nice ability. I could see myself using it over the helms currently in the game. It’s certainly a much nicer ability than the belt (which I was rather disappointed in).
And the design is cool. Though I’m not sure it’s the type of helm I would want to be wearing all the time as a hero of light/goodness? It fits with the Fallen Order set very well, and is definitely a cool design, but personally wouldn’t be the helm I would design for an ultimate set for a good aligned hero.
(As a side note, why are all of these abilities worded so weirdly (in first person for example)? “At the beginning of my turn”? Why not “at the beginning of the hero’s turn”?)
Spells
I don’t have much to say about these without experimenting with them. Most seem to be interesting and potentially useful at the very least, which is good. And the spell icons seem fitting.
Minions
Minions currently don’t matter too much, except for opening chests, so I’m more interested to see their actual stats when they’re released. So nothing to say for now. I do quite like the designs though. They look very cute.
New Skins
Necromancer
I really like the ice effects, but I think those are mostly art, unfortunately. Other than that, at first I was rather disappointed by the design still featuring boob armor (one of my least favorite things) and a loincloth for the female. But I see that she actually is featuring full top armor now, and leggings/a body suit underneath her armor and loincloth, making her design far more covering than her original one, which I’m happy about (please don’t complain at me for this, real-life people have a right to wear what they want to, but as a female, looking at scantily clad females in games makes me, personally, feel uncomfortable). If this had been her starting design rather than her original one, I probably would have been okay playing with her. Though I do still really wish it didn’t feature boob armor still. (And the open-mouthed skull on her crotch is rather poorly placed. If it lacked that dangling jaw, it would be fine and up high enough, but as it is….)
Other than that, I wish the designs actually changed more. These ones are cool, but still seem rather close to the original. Most of the designs we’ve gotten have been the same outfit, even down to the same cut mostly, with just some of the details and perhaps what it’s made out of changed. More variety would be nice, especially if we have to actually pay for them.
Warlock
…Exactly the same with the colors changed, even down to the vines. Couldn’t there at least have been flames instead of vines? (And all the things I still hate about the female Warlock’s design) These designs seem to have even less things changed than usual. Necro’s second design, for the male, changed the facemask so that it was a full-covering one instead of a half-covering one and had a different design. Paladin’s second skin had a different helmet design. Berserker’s third skin gets rid of the fur bits and adds flowers to make it feel more tropical. I didn’t like the resulting design for all of these, but appreciated the effort and the changes made. It might be because of the time crunch, but these designs just seem like straight recolors, which is disappointing. I would rather wait longer and get something good then get a lot of designs that are just recolors.
So in conclusion, I’m not too excited for the new skins, unfortunately. The Necro designs are somewhat cool, but doesn’t go quite far enough in changes. And the Warlock skins really drop the ball, I think.
Conclusion
So yep, those were my thoughts on the seasonal stuff- good set bonus but disappointing gear. Good legendary item, which is exciting. And unexciting skins.
Much appreciated!
