Heretic

[Drys]

So lots about races. I was wondering what folks think of the personality changes - esp. Heretic. Decent? Just a weakened mystic? Anything it naturally pairs with?

[MyNameIsMatija]

Halfling Heretic

[Drys]

was thinking elf/heretic as A/T. Could run ~5% towers and have plenty of runes still

Edit: Yes towers. 5% guilds will also net a lot of runes cuz you prob will have all that extra land in towers. :)

[Andurilas]

Assume you mean towers.

[FATstrat]

Orc and Avian can use it okay, undead can't do thief ops, elf/fae better taking rogue/mystic, human/dwarf need prefer warrior/tact/cleric, halfers get cheap theives anyways

[octobrev]

It was more a separation of duties thing to weaken magic. Note that neither elf nor fae have access to nightmares now without heretic :o

[Drys]

True. But does that make it a one-trick pony? I suppose better than having it be OP and 50% of server pick it.

[octobrev]

Tough to say! Its hard to picture a kd like FS proceeding without NM chains. The concept of moving it to the core is interesting since every prov that gets hit down would have a pretty great success rate, but at the cost of tact/warrior?

[neanderthal]

It's a Trojan horse.

[noobium]

Nightmares is situational.
It's a big sacrifice to pick Heretic just for nm, but it does have enough utility elsewhere in a warring kingdom.
Of course Heretic gives you very little outside of war... basically risk-free robbery, which can be a big deal, but it's nothing like warrior's OME (crucial for opening waves and maintaining offense in long wars) or tact speed (potentially the best bonus in the game for war, and really useful for growth).

I think for balance reasons Heretic should have been only -50% thief losses, rather than 0 loss. I don't think it's too late to make that tweak.

My first thought was Halfer, mostly because I want to actually succeed with those risk-free ops and Halfer's tpa/wpa bonuses make that happen. Halfer also has a turtle army and is capable of playing a high-offense hitter role... they're pretty versatile in how they can be built, even though offspec suck.

[StratOcastle]

I put heretic on humans(so far) in The Virtual Kingdom. It helps with their magical difficulties and has a passive economy effect. By Virtual Kingdom* logic it seems the most sensible move thus far.

Dwarves have a high balance elite that makes spec conversions beneficial. Their shortened build time and free build combine to make war spoils a realistic economy based tactic. CS, mystic aura and population efficient elites are a viable pitstop for honor accumulation. This offers a trigger for enemy t/ms to collect honor which I'm devising as a trap. Since humans already have an economy effect the dwarf materialized as the war hero no brainer.

The attacker races have been given traditional roles in the interest of nw reach. Therefor I've designated orcs as warriors, avians as cleric and undead as tacticians. Although orcs should be able to handle anything in war range I've contemplated the ability to strike above war range in the event of bottom feeding.

I'm still distributing t/m roles but I'm focusing on a balance of scope and reach. Reach refers to the t/m ability to break hardened targets and scope essentially the spread. My reach focus is the ability to cast Amnesia and Fools Gold on large aggressive opponents. These are the leverage points that the followup t/ms would work from: the t/ms capable of inflicting mass damage. We want our large opponents to walk away like Humungous wanted those damn fuel hoarders in The Road Warrior.

But yes; heretic human for the hybrid aggressor.

[citadela01]

Elf, if anything at all. Overall its pretty weak and its huge nerf to tm's in general, but some sort of KD wide setup could be tailored around elf/heretic (partial) core setup relying on nm's.

On thieves its just plain bad, borderline unusable. Thief oriented t/m will pick rogue any day of the week, and any aspiring a/t hybrids will fail cause no losses on failed ops does nothing to help against their inherent problems which is acre inflation/releasing tpa to overpop.

[Tadpole]

Nightmares is situational.

Doesnt need to be. Can be a spell to build both kd and warring setup around. Successfully. I'm a sucker for it myself. Not saying its optimal, but very much doable.

[StratOcastle]

As an elf cleric in disorganized kingdoms I've used NM to gain leverage by reducing both troops and thieves. By reducing thieves NM offers the followup ability to NS more easily. On several occasions I've seen my opponent online go afk because it's apparently a disheartening experience.

While I don't plan to load up on heretic in The Virtual Kingdom I think NM is underused because most only see it's utility en masse. It is unquestionably useful along with tornados and arson to loosen up WT.

[noobium]

Doesnt need to be. Can be a spell to build both kd and warring setup around. Successfully. I'm a sucker for it myself. Not saying its optimal, but very much doable.

I know NM is a pretty powerful spell, but it's use is primarily for deep land chains in war - which it does spectacularly, especially in the early stages of war. In longer wars, where even a deep chain will do little or nothing, NM may be meaningless or unnecessary (for instance, nm isn't usually needed if a target is already getting quadtapped by most attackers, and turtles can hit with just ns or no preparation at all). Of course, nm does very little out of war.
So while NM is really useful as it has been, it's still situational in where it can be used. In past, NM casters had a lot of utility and versatility elsewhere, whereas now they have to pick a personality that is pretty bad for pure t/ms.

That said Heretic's other perks are being undervalued. Risk-free thievery means that attackers have no concern whatsoever about a 30, 40% success rate on ops... I suppose stealth is a limitation and a massacred attacker has no success rate, but losing absolutely nothing is a big difference from an ordinary attacker risking 10-20% of their tpa on a failed op run.

Heretic's half rune cost is a pretty big deal in long wars, where the core is going to be throwing fb and ll if they're warring efficiently. Heavy massacre shuts this down too, but it's easier said than done to flatten an entire core's wpa, even with the advantages of warrior/tact and presumably picking races with better offense.

re: Elf/Heretic... it works but in the old system Elf got nm for free, and got to pick a better personality in other respects. It's a lot harder to run say a core of Elf/Heretic than Elf/Warheros, which get NM and a lot of military/econ perks to make them viable attackers. Heretic just gets nm and t/m benefits, which is something... but Elf also still gets its **** kicked in by landchains and thieves.

I'd probably prefer Heretics on races that don't need a personality to function as viable attackers, live with the hit of not being warrior or tact, and pay more attention to core opping and utilize massacre a lot more.

It's also worth noting that Heretics effectively lose no thieves on intel, so they have the equivalent of Tactician's accurate espionage bonus.