[Valerius]

@Soy: I agree the D4 is a bigger issue but I'm also not a fan of the W4. With a W3 cap he can still perform on the battlefield while not having quite the same strength when it comes to ritual magic. Hmm, actually if I were giving someone W4 it would be the kokythiad since she's probably been overshadowed most by the wendigo.


I think there's two issues.

Calahan's proposal of increasing casting requirements and thus requiring more planning to make use of the various summons (especially the top tier) by having a higher barrier to entry. I think most people would agree with this.

Then there's the matter of increasing the cost of the summons. This has an ongoing effect and alters your gem usage pattern. I see two possibilities here:

1) Changing the balance between thugs/SCs and troop summons. This of course is not a new thing and people have different preferences regarding what balance they prefer between troops and thugs/SCs. Personally I've been pretty happy with how CBM has developed along these lines but if the EDM summons have overshadowed various troop summons I'd be ok with trying to make troop summons more appealing.

2) Changing the balance between SC alternatives. And here I'm talking tarts vs. everyone else. I have nothing against tarts; I'd like them to be a good alternative. But I don't want them to be the optimal one. To draw an extreme example: if you gave me a choice between tarts dominating or the EDM summons dominating I'll take the latter every time. I don't think I'm the only one who got really tired of the chalice/GoH --> tarts routine. And while I was as happy as anyone to see the formal removal of gem gens this made tarts the only game in town if you didn't have national SCs.

So if there's going to be an across-the-board increase in EDM prices (as opposed to targeted increases for some units) to accomplish point 1 then I'd like point 2 to be kept in mind.

And if tarts are currently not appealing, why is that? What can be done to promote them without making them "the best" as opposed to "a" choice? One thing that has occured to me is that I don't think having N gems be a bottleneck for effective tart usage does them any favors. Even if you plan on using tarts as casters as opposed to SCs that's still 15 N gems that could go towards gearing an alternative SC chassis. Sure, the stars like the lightning cyclops and titan are still worth GoRing but the others not nearly so much. What would be the effect of, for instance, increasing tart D cost by 4 gems and decreasing restore soul by 4 gems? With the addition of alternative SC options and combining the magic diversity of the EDM summons with the mage summons already in the game I think tart pricing can safely assume the tart summoner has the chalice/GoH (previously you had to consider that non-chalice/GoH owners would also need tarts since they were the only game in town). If you have one of those two things what price point would make tarts an appealing summon given the current EDM price points?