A guide to buffing

[FrankTrollman]

I would like to point out that I personally play multiplayer without Zen's Mods. I agree and disagree with Zen's choices and rebalances in roughly equal measure, thereby making the addition of that mod a complete waste of time on my part.

-Frank

[ioticus]

FrankTrollman said:
I would like to point out that I personally play multiplayer without Zen's Mods. I agree and disagree with Zen's choices and rebalances in roughly equal measure, thereby making the addition of that mod a complete waste of time on my part.

-Frank

I would guess most people are in the same boat. Why on earth he increased the power of the Vine Ogre, for example, is beyond me.

[quantum_mechani]

ioticus said:

I would guess most people are in the same boat. Why on earth he increased the power of the Vine Ogre, for example, is beyond me.

I would say everyone seems to be in thier own boat.

Among multiplayers I would say most enjoy the pretender mod, the other mods vary in popularity.

As for the vine ogres, the changes were for thematic, rather than balance reasons. And with the improvement of other ways of spending nature gems, they are probably used less than in the base game.

[Chazar]

I would use Zen's mod more often if there would only be an updated version of Zen's Quick Reference Guides for summons and items...I wonder why Zen is incompatible with himself?

[Graeme Dice]

ioticus said:
I would guess most people are in the same boat. Why on earth he increased the power of the Vine Ogre, for example, is beyond me.

He did that because they are usable only as meat shields, and not particularly effective ones in the standard game. A high protection unit with a charcoal shield can kill dozens to hundreds of vine ogres without suffering for it at all.

[PDF]

Graeme Dice said:

He did that because they are usable only as meat shields, and not particularly effective ones in the standard game. A high protection unit with a charcoal shield can kill dozens to hundreds of vine ogres without suffering for it at all.

That's a weird rationale : using VO as meat shield is a means to allow other, hard-hitting units (mages mostly) to slaughter the enemies caught in the VO mass.
And vanilla VO are already unbeatable in terms of cost effectiveness...
And tell me how any non-lifeless unit can stand hundreds of VO without succumbing to fatigue.

[Oversway]

Reinvigoration?

But I agree that VO are fine in their role as just meat shields...

[The Panther]

One of the reasons VOs work so well as meat shields is the 50 Morale. They fight to the death every time, which makes them far better than they really are.

They also have so many HPs that they are difficult to kill with Murdering Winter and Fire Storm. And they take a while to die under Wraithful Skies.

It is probably the Ivy King which makes them unbalanced, as level 3 Nature mages are quite good even without getting 4 VOs for 1 gem while waiting for a war or battle to begin!

Don't forget that the Thug with the Charcoal Shield will be quickly killed by enemy mage spells while he is trying to fight through all the VOs to get at the mage snug in the back with his Staff of Storms.

[Graeme Dice]

PDF said:
And tell me how any non-lifeless unit can stand hundreds of VO without succumbing to fatigue.

It only needs to be able to last long enough to have the vine ogres kill themselves on the fire shield. Just about anything with protection over 20 can do it.

[Reverend Zombie]

FrankTrollman said:
I would like to point out that I personally play multiplayer without Zen's Mods. I agree and disagree with Zen's choices and rebalances in roughly equal measure, thereby making the addition of that mod a complete waste of time on my part.

-Frank

It is perhaps time, then, for a Frank's Zen's Conceptual Rebalance Rebalance Mod.