[1.02] A to Z of Spell Balancing

I have read through this, and i strongly disagree with some of your suggestions and in general I think this kind of thing needs some descriptive rationale rather than just suggestions.   Still, you obviously put some thought into this.  Anyways, here's my comments:

A number of the spells you listed I have no opinion on, because I have not used them enough.

I have never understood the confusion spell

I got the idea that shadow world would release a ravaging horde of monsters hostile to everyone, I am not sure where you got the idea that "destroying everything in its path" would not include you if you were in its path.

I think heal is strong enough already.  It's enough to turn a lost battle into a safe win, so making it stronger seems cheesy to me.

I was expecting the "annointed by ___" line of spells to have a sustained mana cost and be dispellable.  But since turning a character into an effective caster needs a lot of work (reducing mana costs, increasing spell mastery, and for real effectiveness: building up initiative) I am not too worried about this one.

I think blindess is fine right now, but I think there should be a remove blindness spell (which must overcome the resistance of the caster, if the caster is still alive).  Turning it into a spell that's only good for short battles seems like a bad move. If you can't end the battle quickly, yourself, you should expect to get owned by the magic users (assuming they have the power to keep casting).

I think destiny's gift is too cheap - I think it should have a higher cost than celerity, but your suggestions might also work.  It should also have a cooldown.  Without a cooldown you can hold off using it until a particular champion needs it for a particular battle - you can just spam it until you get the effects you need.  With a cooldown you have to plan ahead (or only use it on a single target) and with a higher mana cost you'll have to be giving up significant capability.  

I think burning hands is fine - I think it's mostly for use against inflammable creatures (like trolls) when flame dart is on cooldown and a few other narrow niches like that.

Pandemonium seems to be bugged, in that after a few casts it just gives a visual effect and does not do anything but gives you no messages about this issue.  I am not sure what its tactical value is supposed to be.

I disagree with time limits for any spell that can be cast on the strategic map (like cloak of thorns).

I think that nerfing cloud walk without also nerfing call of the titans is silly (call of the titans has a 10 turn cooldown but every champion can cast it without needing any spell casting ability, so if you have 10 champions you can cast it 10 times in one turn though, granted, you will need to wait 10 turns before you do that again). Anyways, if you want to nerf cloud walk I would just increase the mana cost.  But I would rather see it only work on the caster than any of your suggestions.

Since shadow bolt does about the same damage that a flame dart does when flame dart gets resisted, I think it's fine.

I think they intended sunder to work like it does - it's removing the connection that keeps the elementals anchored to this plane of existence, and that's all it does - it needs to be powerful since it is so specialized.  Have you played the scenario, there's some text in it that refers to sunder.

Spell Leech needs AI fixes -- the problem right now is that the monster keeps trying to cast, it should go off and do a real attack if you leech it.

I see nothing wrong with thunderstrike - it's a fun spell - why do you want to change it?

Hey Dihir, I wanted to encourage talk so I'm glad you don't agree with everything. I agree that the suggestions could use more information to explain reasonings where it isn't too obvious. Although mostly it's just a case of buff when it hasn't been too tempting to use a particular spell, nerf when it felt too cheap/easy/powerful and also a general buff to some Kingdom spells to counter powerful Death magic combos. Lastly, I'd like Rank V to give some bonus to spellcasting from that element, so dedicated mages are actually better than adepts who have only just learned their cantrips.

I wrote it lacking sleep (insomnia and whatnot... will sleep soon). But a few points:

Shadow world, I intended to cast it next to an enemy city... couldn't... tried casting on empty plains tiles... couldn't... clicked randomly until eventually I summoned it next to my city... didn't have an icon, clicked end turn (mistake), still no icon, moved army back from front lines to fight and die defending city... 2 autosaves have shadows next to my city or dead city... I felt silly messing up the game (dead champion somehow), but yeah, I did want to cast it on the enemy first. Hence, bug. (It was late and I didn't read description properly perhaps but still odd)

Some people have mentioned dodge/accuracy exploits, weakening blindness should help make that exploit less easy. But still requires looking into stackable dodge bonuses if it really is an issue, I've not tried cheesing things that much (e.g. fortify tile, dodge traits, dodge equipment, dodge spells, blindness on enemy) I've only really used it on creatures with maul or bosses. (dragons/elemental lords)

Talking about ways of resisting spells, I'd like it to be more complicated... with some spells being cast at higher mastery at rank V, some being easy or hard to resist based on other factors and partial and complete resistance (reduced effect, duration or negate entirely), some spell effects fading on the caster's death etc. but I don't know how tricky that would all be to impliment.

Burning hands, or any spell with a range of 1 could use a boost as there is a much higher risk in using it than with other spells, especially for frail mages wearing adepts robes and not full plate armour. (compare it with soul burning, fireball, flame dart etc.) Also, I'd like higher levels of spell mastery to have some effect on spells. (Heroes of might and magic had the spell effect listed for each spell mastery level, something like that)

Chaos and Pandemonium are a bit weird on my computer too, mostly the odd effect and resistance chance not matching reality or not being sure what happened. But the basic theory is that Kingdom players are more likely to have water magic and no cool death+fire soulburning or death+air contagion, perhaps no offensive magic at all... (other than annoited by fire, 50 mana fireballs) so this spell could really use a boost to be useful in a real battle, even if the results were unpredictable.

Cloak of thorns - doesn't really need a nerf or buff, I just think shards are more useful if they actually effect your spells and a buff on a spell that's fine feels like it deserves a matching nerf. But, to defend the possibility a strategic spell could be made to only last the first few turns of battle, or better yet x hits before fading. In this case hacking away the thorns until there is no protection left.

Haven't really used call of the titans, wasn't suggesting leaving all other spells unchanged just didn't want to mention unused spells (as you said yourself). Cloudwalk is part of the easy move problem, so yes other methods of super quick movement should all be considered together. (Horses, roads, cities as well)

Shadow bolt - It, horrific wail and sunder all do damage based on level and not shards... all a problem in different ways. Horrific wail has already been reduced 3 to 2/level, perhaps the others should follow. Shadow bolt did I think in 1.0 have less/more varied damage but now seems to always hit for max damage... making it less of a weakening spell and more rapidly kill giant monster without any fuss spell. (My bread and butter cheap killing spell). Also, someone like Ceresa could benefit from Death shards having an actual effect on her death spells... if two powerful spells, mass (horrific wail) and single target (shadow bolt) are shard independent then why bother with corrupting them all?

Sunder - not really a niche spell outside of the camp, half the scary enemies are elementals including the big wildlands bosses... 5/level when you're fighting them at level 20+ is extreme for the pathetically tiny cost. I can see it's one of the few earth spells so kinda nice that it's powerful but... does it need to be quite that strong? I started playing the camp but updated half way through and planned to start again but didn't get around to it. (Also, I'd say it was perfectly reasonable for camp spells to have different stats to sandbox spells, they are stories and don't need the same balance).

First, generally speaking, magic is extremely powerful, and it's not all about the tactical damage. I think that a general theme of your suggestions has been to try to balance spells for tactical damage, and I think you are missing out on how the spells are useful.  Water is about control spells and the tactical mana cost reduction from mantle of oceans is incredible - that alone is almost worth the entire spell tree.  Thinking about it, pandemonium is probably for meant for breaking up the coordination of massed armies.

Second, a part of the dodge stacking issues are that the AI is so stupid, and is not prepared to deal with a game that lasts that long.  This is a shame, but there's so many things going on there and "fixing it" would involve a massive set of changes to the game, including victory conditions fixes, and several iterations of AI rewrites and upgrades.  Still, if you really want to fix dodge stacking issues, I think I would place a limit on dodge stacking (perhaps based on the level of the unit in question).

Third, I think it's good that some spells are level based and others are shard based, since this opens up different styles of game play. And in particular, I am disappointed in the entire player base for not properly investigating oracle ceresa's spell to corrupt shards.  Seriously, that's an awesome ability which is ruined by a game breaking bug.

It's awesome not just for offensive reasons, but for defensive reasons, and it's one of the big counters for dodge stacked archers. Wither, and Blood Sigil *reduce the attack* of enemy units.  You know how awesome a +1 attack is, with stacking?  Well these spells reduce the attack of those units. With stacked death shards you can mostly ignore enemy soldiers.  But almost nobody has even tried.

The thing is, there's a game breaking bug in blood sigil, in 1.02.  When the battle starts, it wants you to target an enemy unit (which is bogus since it is supposed to hit all enemy units), furthermore, targeting an enemy unit does nothing (which makes sense, since it's not a targetable spell) and the only way out is autoplay.  But even with autoplay another problem occurs - after some amount of game play the wither effect just stops happening at all (for me this was about when I hit level 10).

So, anyways, since almost nobody has even tried stacked death shards, I think that it's silly to talk about balancing death magic. Balancing needs to be based on the voice of experience, and this bug tells me that our player base does not have that experience.

Anyways...

The top level spells are mostly strategic in character, and help the magic heavy player own the map.  The damage spells, in particular, are another alternative for dealing with dodge stacked units.

Burning hands is an offensive spell with a cooldown independent of flame dart. Yes, it's close range, but that's ok, because it's a lower level spell.  If you get some fire shards and stack some spell mastery it does plenty of damage.

And, yes, roads with stables and a mounted army can get you a an effective move of 32 tiles. If you add the +1 move boots and a single champion with tireless march, this becomes a move of 48.  Granted, this is sticking to the roads, but those roads lead to the places you want to defend.  So cloud walk seems balanced with that (especially since it's only on the unit which contains the caster).

See above for my discussion on death shards and level based spells.  When they fix the UI bug with blood sigil, you really ought to try it with stacked death shards... I am sure there will then be cries of "stacked death shards are overpowered", but really it's just another strategy.  "Overpowered" typically seems to mean "beats my boring strategy and beats the lame AI". I really want the AI to get some massive improvements before any changes to skills get implemented to compensate for its failings.

And for sunder, it changes the battle field, nerfing summoned elementals in opponent armies and making clearing some wildlands easier. But that by itslf is not justification for a nerf. Nerfs are supposed to make the game fun, not remove magic specialization as a viable strategy.  I could maybe see increasing its mana cost, but I see nothing thematically wrong with a high level mage being able to dispel the magical bosses and (if they can survive long enough) assassin demons - if this is a problem at all I think it's a problem because we need additional end game content.  Those magical bosses are designed to look impressive but be beatable, they do relatively low damage and have low initiative and so on.

Strategic spells are useful. I agree. Wither is great against trained troops and non-mages (Kingdom) as it has no counter whatsoever. Also it's used three times so everyone has felt it's power. Strategically either directly, through blood sigil or cast tactically.
If either courage, death ward or a similar spell provided some protection it would be possible to defend against it.
If it was nerf to duration you could outlast the attackers by fighting defensively.
That, or a 'cleansing' spell (Life/water).

Other strategic spells are also useful. Freezing an army in place is indeed a powerful control spell... but one useful spell doesn't make the other 4 ranks worthwhile. Hence an interesting and significant boost to choas/pandemonium.

Some spells being based on level, some shards, some fixed power is great, but it demands balance between the three.
Based on level is obviously the best, since it's the only one that increases indefinitely.
Then shards, Death shards are best (because you can make more), then the rest.
then set power. (Unless it's amazingly powerful)

Lastly I'd like for there to be some spells that are effected by spell Rank (As has been done well in HOMM), either a higher set power. e.g. a 3xRank damage or a chance for: Stun on air, DoT on fire, Chaos on water, sunder on earth... 'cleansing' on life... or whatever. Burning hands was just the weakest fire spell to add that to, fireball is already powerful and you'd need to give it a big nerf first, before adding a damage over time buff, should rank be added as a variable.

Sunder - it's use against high xp creatures to kill them with no tactics whatsoever is unfun. Doing higher damage to lower level creatures would be amazing, also it would make sense for them to be channeling abilities that take time and can be interrupted. At the moment it functions like the death spell only without a casting time and costing <20 mana not 200. The bosses otherwise have massive defence and require complex tactics and long battles... or just throw a few 100+ damage, even 200+ instant cheap spells... boring.

Movement is perhaps a pet peeve. I enjoy slower and more epic games, fewer and significantly more important shards and in that light instant travel is... ugly... in that context. I'd like cloudwalk to be a quest spell since it's so powerful... but that's not a very widely held view I think. Also I've posted before on road speed reductions, horse balancing and stacking of tireless march

First, in the tactical sense, wither has a counter, several actually.  It does nothing about damage mechanisms that are not based on attack (spells), and it's not much use against a single unit with a high attack.  You can also bring in summons after it takes effect (which can be important for city assault under blood sigil).  If you are desperate you might also be able to pull something off with high health and reflection.  But it's big weakness is its cooldown, if you have two armies in the field, only one of them can be withered, and three armies makes it even easier.  Blood Sigil is different but you can pull the army out into the field by taking down unprotected death shards, which also weakens the effect.

Chaos is useful when you are desperate and hoping to get lucky.  The dazed effect is great, and so are some of the other effects.  And I think the damage is not resistible (and the damage variant seems to become extra probable when you hit a severely damaged unit with it).  I am thinking Pandemonium is for when you are facing a large army and do not have any better options but if you have something that takes all your enemies down to low health and if pandemonium's odds are like those of chaos, it might be a great finisher also.  But the really powerful early water spells are slow and mantle of oceans.  Also, tidal wave can also be impressive in the right circumstances (you can hit enemy territory with it, if there's an ocean handy).  And blizzard is a nice late game combat, and Vetrar's Howl can be incredibly powerful if you choose the right moment to use it. Also ice elementals are nice crowd control when you are fighting magic immune monsters, since their freezing cold slow-on-hit effect still takes effect (assuming you can keep the elemental alive long enough to hit anything).  And, finally, stinking mud is amazing crowd control for a warlock/evoker type channeler.  And spell leech would be great fun if the AI was not so blindly persistent in retrying a failing approach.  And Gentle Rain can be incredible if you have cities with enough essences to support it (in my current game, the maximum I have seen is 1 essence in a tile that will support a city)

But also note that the game has different settings, and on the settings I play on the shard based spells can sometimes out-power the level based spells.

But I do not see the appeal of making spell rank a determining factor.  For that to be balanced, the spells would have to be almost useless without the last rank, and if you are going to do that, it seems like just making the spells only be available in the last rank would accomplish something similar.  

If the problem with sunder is the high exps you can get, I think the solution would be to nerf the exps, not the spell.

And for the speed issue, I think there you are describing a custom mod, but another way of achieving that end would be to play on something like the settings I am currently using:

Huge map, swamp, many wildlands, no champions, balanced quests, insane difficulty, dense monsters, epic pacing, moderate magic strength (I thought I had selected sparse, but when I went into a new game to see my settings I see that it's on moderate -- oh well...), sparse resources, more often random events, and four sovereigns (Emperor Karavox, Magnar, Oracle Ceresa, and Warlord Verga). I am playing Amarians with a tailored variant of Lady Procipinee. Victory conditions are military and diplomatic, not the other two.

I do not know if I will survive, but it's going to be fun finding out...

Anyways, if mana is hard to come by and opponents are many and powerful, sure you can cloud walk, but not often enough, and the mana costs are going to hurt if you are not exceptionally sparing with it.

Anyways, I also like epic scale games, and I have found that the game gets boring (too easy) after a while, so this is my way of addressing that issue.