I cannot find where I posted it before but zombie should just have gear refunded so whales and ftp alike can make an informed decision if they want paper or steel zombie.
Maybe a new ability that reduces NSZ to 5% health, inflicts undispellable Deathmark on NSZ, and grant other NS allies some cool buff (offense up) or TM
I cannot find where I posted it before but zombie should just have gear refunded so whales and ftp alike can make an informed decision if they want paper or steel zombie.
What about new players? Everyone had the exact same info, and some of the players read forums/figured it out, while others fell for the trap of CG. How do you guarantee this does not happen to new players?
A suggestion for the paper zombie issue. To encourage higher level zombie, but to leave the nightsisters mechanisms intact, and not to over nerf. A formula for the amount to be stacked based on gear level could be introduced. Eg: stacking amount /144 x gear level squared. I'm running a g11 zombie, and can still get a decent score, between 10% & 20% of Nihilus depending on rng (and whether I make a mistake), in p4 HSTR. I'd hate to see that score nerfed too much, especially considering they're supposed to be encouraging higher geared zombie. My other NS are all g12 by the way, zzAV, zDaka, Talzin, Talia. I've stopped adding zetas, waiting to see what the nerf looks like.
Not sure if it has been mentioned before, but here is an idea:
Give Zombie a new ability, CLS style, that allows her to switch between a "Tank Stance" and a "Paper Stance"
Have the Tank stance be as strong as the gear and mods you have on her, and the paper stances with fixed stat equivalent to a low geared one.
This way you can get benefit from gearing her up when you need a Tank, but you can also haver her become fragile to make use of Daka's Zeta.
I think it's a simple solution that would create an incentive for gearing her up, instead of punishing for not doing so.
i like it. being able to pick between a g2 and g12 zombie with the push of an ability button would make her even cooler than she already is. Something like this:
Call to the Dirt (Special): Dispel all debuffs on Nightsister Zombie. Nightsister Zombie gains 100% Turn Meter. If Nightsister Zombie doesn't have the Decay unique buff, she gains it until the next time this ability is used.
Decay: Nightsister Zombie takes bonus damage equal to her max protection. Can't be dispelled or prevented.
Since we all know a change is coming to Nightsister Zombie.
I don’t usually start discussions like this, but I haven’t seen this before, and it just came to me today. I thought it was a good enough idea I would throw it out into the wild and see what kind of feedback it garnered in regards to overall utility, design balance, and the good old fashioned Law of Unintended Consequences for interactions I might have missed. (And hopefully get the attention of some designer types if it is worthy!)
Now, I am not a coding guy, so I don’t know what kind of challenge it presents that way, but the idea presents a new mechanic in character skill leveling - though not wildly out of line with existing in-game mechanics as some skills are locked until a certain gear level is achieved, and this idea actually mirrors the mechanic on ships where certain skill upgrades are gated behind the crew member gear level. Anyways...
New Nightsister Zombie Unique ability, “Thinning The Horde” (pardon the pun, sometimes I just can’t help myself...)
Lvl 1 - (unlocked at Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 1) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -20% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 2 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 6) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -17% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 3 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 7) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -14% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 4 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 8) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -11% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 5 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 9) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -8% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 6 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 10) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -5% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 7 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 11) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -2% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 8 (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 12 - which, as always, also requires 7 stars) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain +2% Offense (stacking) (Omega ability. This could be increased to +5% Offense (stacking) as a Zeta ability instead)
Design notes:
I wanted to respect the game designers stated intentions of reducing the utility of Nightsister Zombie at low gear levels without too much detrimental impact on player investments in other Nightsister abilities - both of Assajj Ventress’ and Old Daka’s Zeta abilities in particular. (As they both retain the health gain from Character defeats, and Assajj continues to gain the Critical Chance increase even at low levels of this ability).
The initial very high negative percentage to Offense is there to offset Assajj’s Rampage Zeta out of the gate and encourage the player base to gear the character up quickly and avoid having her defeated a multitude of times, but still allowing her the endless revives. But as I also wanted to respect the Zeta investment in Rampage, I have it beginning to see a net return with Nightsister Zombie at Gear Level 7 (albeit only a 1% gain at that point, while all other allies are still heavily negative). Which, from my experience, most players could achieve with only a day or two of dedicated ability material farming (although if they chose to implement a version of this, hopefully we would get some notice to start gearing Zombie in advance).
The loss of Offense continues to quickly drop as Nightsister Zombie is Geared up, and the Offense gain for Rampage likewise continues to increase quickly to near it’s pre-adjusted levels until it ultimately culminates in a positive gain for all allies for taking out the much more robust Nightsister Zombie with a max level Ability. This should help offset the decreased number of times a tougher high Gear Level Zombie would be defeated and hopefully leave the Nightsister faction as a whole at similar levels of utility that they are now in regards to PVE/raid damage output, and should actually slightly improve the faction in a PVP environment. All this while requiring us as players to invest additional resources into another character - which while we may not enjoy it overmuch, is also ultimately a goal the game designers also have to meet to appease the ‘bean counters’.
Final thoughts:
I am sure the percentages could be adjusted for balance with playtesting if required, I tried a couple different scales on paper before settling on this batch. While I think I have avoided any gamebreaking interactions, I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or feedback on possible issues I may have missed, and if you think that this is a workable solution please feel free to comment and keep this thread visible where it might get some attention from the designers.
I like the core of this concept, but I feel the numbers need tweaking. A gear 12 zombie isn't going to die nearly as much as a paper zombie. 2, or even 5, percent isn't going to make up for the lost Rampage offense.
I’m still holding out hope the devs don’t change it. The money aspect of this is just disgusting. When zombie was p2p the devs were specifically asked about the paper zombie strategy and the devs OFFICIALLY stated it was a valid strategy they didnt plan on changing (there is a post from the devs about it). Now that zombie is F2P and farmable, suddenly it doesn’t match their concept or view or whatever. In other words, it was a fine strategy when people were buying zombie, but now that it’s free, they want us to spend resources to gear it to 12 for that second bite of the apple.
Not saying your idea is bad or anything, but this whole thing leaves a really sour taste in my mouth considering the fact that for months they said the paper zombie was an acceptable strategy and then suddenly did a 180, like no one was going to notice. The entire nightsister fiasco has been handled about as poorly as it possibly could be.
They have to change asajj not zombie, if they wanna keep the intentions for NS zombie. Maybe remove her stacking offense completely
Lol no, that has to be the worst idea regarding Nightsisters that I've ever heard. If you take away Asajj's stacking offense then you'd absolutely neuter the effectiveness of NS in the sith raid. Assaj has a really fun kit that works great, don't mess it up.
How about if zombie ends her turn with a debuff she is instantly defeated and revived at 100% health, this can’t occur whilst she has taunt.
At the end of zombies turn she gains taunt, if another ns ally suffers damage zombie gains taunt.
This way it doesn’t matter if zombie is geared or not you still get the advantage of her dieing to help the team but geared zombies are rewarded more as they will be tanking more.
Given what they just did to acolyte, and still called that massive nerf "virtually unchanged", I have no faith that Zombie will be even usable after whatever "fix" they impose on her.
She is a lynchpin to nearly every NS team. The entire team synergizes around around her and her unique ability. It's already been claimed to be "working as intended", even paper zombie, by the devs themselves.
I have full confidence that the devs will find a way to completely ruin her and claim "minimal impact".
The main problem with Zombie is its now free to play. By a general rule anything free to play should be nerfed and destroyed so that Whales can keep their advantage. Whales already used Zombie to get a 7* Traya so now if Zombie is nerfed and it takes free to play an extra 6 months to catch up that's PERFECT!!! good job EA!!!
Think likely has already been suggested but come on, the easiest solution if you want to gimp paper zombie in raids is to require all toons used for the heroic Sith Raid to be at least lvl 85, gear 9 or some other minimal requirement.
The solution to add a CLS-like skill that turns the strong zombie into a weak one is a clean solution that makes it possible to use it any way you want. To scale well, the skill could just invert protection, health and defense stats on mods. It could probably affect the offensive ones as well, just rather not tenacity and speed. I think we ought to have some way of making this skill work as Han's shoot first though, so we can set the mode before the opponents move to make it really useful.
The other obvious solution to the zombie problem is to cap Asajj Rampage stacks at a level at around 100K damage or so. It will have very little effect, if any, in arena, and will tone down the damage a fair bit in the raids without making it useless.
I've had to edit a couple of posts in this thread for language, I'd just like to remind people that your language should be appropriate for a modern PG movie at the worst. Thanks.
I have zero confidence in CG after the Acolyte Nerf. She no longer act like she did prior and NS is suffering. zombie is going to go the same way... and NS will be back to being worthless... and with all the gear and zeta's we've put into them.
But, amen, CG wanna make more people f2p that's on them.
They need to add a speed penalty on her unique for if she's undergeared. We would understand why it's there. Asajj will need a buff to her lost damage though, as a lot of people invested into ns because they saw all the damage they could do, and paper zombie was a part of that in many guides and videos on youtube.
Wow. So many ideas here that totally nerf or totally make zambie overpowered..
Compromise.. Add a unique locked buff you can activate (similar to a cls) that simply reduces her max health by ~90% until the ability is triggered again?
Then you can have zambie both ways, and it's players choice. not sure how ai would run it tho, same issue with cls.. but it would solve the immediate problem, and still be an acceptable solution.
I mentioned this in another thread, I don't understand how they could not have foreseen zombie being used as a "paper" tank from the way they designed its kit mechanics. I mean it was kind of really obvious based on the way the character was made that it was meant to die a lot. If it was a strong and durable shield wall type tank like KRU, Gen Kenobi, or Shoretrooper and was still able to resurrect itself indefinitely so long as other NS were alive than NS teams would literally be unstoppable, especially with zetas. Ultimately whether it's a geared zombie or paper one is irrevlant as either way it is serving its purpose of taking hits & focus away from other NS teammates.
To whoever said that players who geared their zombie should be rewarded (sorry forgot to hit quote be4 i started typing) i have to respectfully disagree with you. Those who chose to use a paper zombie as opposed to a geared zombie saw a different use for a character and its unique mechanic. Meaning they thought outside the box and employed a strategy for a tank outside the norm. There's nothing wrong with that and they are simply employing a different player strategy. If the developers say that it was not intended to be used this way than they dropped the ball when developing the mechanic and i don't think players should be penalized for that. That of course is just my personal opinion.
I mentioned this in another thread, I don't understand how they could not have foreseen zombie being used as a "paper" tank from the way they designed its kit mechanics. I mean it was kind of really obvious based on the way the character was made that it was meant to die a lot. If it was a strong and durable shield wall type tank like KRU, Gen Kenobi, or Shoretrooper and was still able to resurrect itself indefinitely so long as other NS were alive than NS teams would literally be unstoppable, especially with zetas. Ultimately whether it's a geared zombie or paper one is irrevlant as either way it is serving its purpose of taking hits & focus away from other NS teammates.
To whoever said that players who geared their zombie should be rewarded (sorry forgot to hit quote be4 i started typing) i have to respectfully disagree with you. Those who chose to use a paper zombie as opposed to a geared zombie saw a different use for a character and its unique mechanic. Meaning they thought outside the box and employed a strategy for a tank outside the norm. There's nothing wrong with that and they are simply employing a different player strategy. If the developers say that it was not intended to be used this way than they dropped the ball when developing the mechanic and i don't think players should be penalized for that. That of course is just my personal opinion.
They did intend this to work this way though for 10 months it was working as intended per the devs so for them to change it now is ridiculous
To whoever said that players who geared their zombie should be rewarded (sorry forgot to hit quote be4 i started typing) i have to respectfully disagree with you. Those who chose to use a paper zombie as opposed to a geared zombie saw a different use for a character and its unique mechanic. Meaning they thought outside the box and employed a strategy for a tank outside the norm. There's nothing wrong with that and they are simply employing a different player strategy. If the developers say that it was not intended to be used this way than they dropped the ball when developing the mechanic and i don't think players should be penalized for that. That of course is just my personal opinion.
The problem is there is no going back once you gear, even though the game changes. I made the decision for arena that I wanted a strong zombie. I don’t regret it, it held better on defense, and I think it was the better choice.
But now I can’t run a weak zombie in P4 of the raid where she is better being low gear. Are you saying I should be penalized for not “thinking outside the box” when I made my choice before the raid even existed?
To whoever said that players who geared their zombie should be rewarded (sorry forgot to hit quote be4 i started typing) i have to respectfully disagree with you. Those who chose to use a paper zombie as opposed to a geared zombie saw a different use for a character and its unique mechanic. Meaning they thought outside the box and employed a strategy for a tank outside the norm. There's nothing wrong with that and they are simply employing a different player strategy. If the developers say that it was not intended to be used this way than they dropped the ball when developing the mechanic and i don't think players should be penalized for that. That of course is just my personal opinion.
The problem is there is no going back once you gear, even though the game changes. I made the decision for arena that I wanted a strong zombie. I don’t regret it, it held better on defense, and I think it was the better choice.
But now I can’t run a weak zombie in P4 of the raid where she is better being low gear. Are you saying I should be penalized for not “thinking outside the box” when I made my choice before the raid even existed?
I agree and no I don't think they should penalize you or anyone else. Honestly I think they need to fix the raid itself as it's riddled with issues. This is also the problem with an rpg that doesn't let you swap your gear around for different situations. Perhaps they should just offer to refund the gear to people who invested it or something. I'm not really sure what they should do tbh, I just know players shouldn't be penalized for the developers own shortsightedness. I mean did they not live test Sith raid with teams from each faction or anything? NS has been a super popular team for awhile now, kinda odd that the mechanics of the most common NS team weren't tested against the mechanics of the raid bosses.
Replies
I hope it’s not this.
What about new players? Everyone had the exact same info, and some of the players read forums/figured it out, while others fell for the trap of CG. How do you guarantee this does not happen to new players?
Give Zombie a new ability, CLS style, that allows her to switch between a "Tank Stance" and a "Paper Stance"
Have the Tank stance be as strong as the gear and mods you have on her, and the paper stances with fixed stat equivalent to a low geared one.
This way you can get benefit from gearing her up when you need a Tank, but you can also haver her become fragile to make use of Daka's Zeta.
I think it's a simple solution that would create an incentive for gearing her up, instead of punishing for not doing so.
i like it. being able to pick between a g2 and g12 zombie with the push of an ability button would make her even cooler than she already is. Something like this:
Call to the Dirt (Special): Dispel all debuffs on Nightsister Zombie. Nightsister Zombie gains 100% Turn Meter. If Nightsister Zombie doesn't have the Decay unique buff, she gains it until the next time this ability is used.
Decay: Nightsister Zombie takes bonus damage equal to her max protection. Can't be dispelled or prevented.
I don’t usually start discussions like this, but I haven’t seen this before, and it just came to me today. I thought it was a good enough idea I would throw it out into the wild and see what kind of feedback it garnered in regards to overall utility, design balance, and the good old fashioned Law of Unintended Consequences for interactions I might have missed. (And hopefully get the attention of some designer types if it is worthy!)
Now, I am not a coding guy, so I don’t know what kind of challenge it presents that way, but the idea presents a new mechanic in character skill leveling - though not wildly out of line with existing in-game mechanics as some skills are locked until a certain gear level is achieved, and this idea actually mirrors the mechanic on ships where certain skill upgrades are gated behind the crew member gear level. Anyways...
New Nightsister Zombie Unique ability, “Thinning The Horde” (pardon the pun, sometimes I just can’t help myself...)
Lvl 1 - (unlocked at Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 1) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -20% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 2 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 6) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -17% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 3 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 7) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -14% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 4 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 8) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -11% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 5 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 9) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -8% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 6 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 10) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -5% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 7 - (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 11) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain -2% Offense (stacking)
Lvl 8 (Requires Nightsister Zombie Gear Level 12 - which, as always, also requires 7 stars) Each time Nightsister Zombie is defeated, all allies gain +2% Offense (stacking) (Omega ability. This could be increased to +5% Offense (stacking) as a Zeta ability instead)
Design notes:
I wanted to respect the game designers stated intentions of reducing the utility of Nightsister Zombie at low gear levels without too much detrimental impact on player investments in other Nightsister abilities - both of Assajj Ventress’ and Old Daka’s Zeta abilities in particular. (As they both retain the health gain from Character defeats, and Assajj continues to gain the Critical Chance increase even at low levels of this ability).
The initial very high negative percentage to Offense is there to offset Assajj’s Rampage Zeta out of the gate and encourage the player base to gear the character up quickly and avoid having her defeated a multitude of times, but still allowing her the endless revives. But as I also wanted to respect the Zeta investment in Rampage, I have it beginning to see a net return with Nightsister Zombie at Gear Level 7 (albeit only a 1% gain at that point, while all other allies are still heavily negative). Which, from my experience, most players could achieve with only a day or two of dedicated ability material farming (although if they chose to implement a version of this, hopefully we would get some notice to start gearing Zombie in advance).
The loss of Offense continues to quickly drop as Nightsister Zombie is Geared up, and the Offense gain for Rampage likewise continues to increase quickly to near it’s pre-adjusted levels until it ultimately culminates in a positive gain for all allies for taking out the much more robust Nightsister Zombie with a max level Ability. This should help offset the decreased number of times a tougher high Gear Level Zombie would be defeated and hopefully leave the Nightsister faction as a whole at similar levels of utility that they are now in regards to PVE/raid damage output, and should actually slightly improve the faction in a PVP environment. All this while requiring us as players to invest additional resources into another character - which while we may not enjoy it overmuch, is also ultimately a goal the game designers also have to meet to appease the ‘bean counters’.
Final thoughts:
I am sure the percentages could be adjusted for balance with playtesting if required, I tried a couple different scales on paper before settling on this batch. While I think I have avoided any gamebreaking interactions, I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or feedback on possible issues I may have missed, and if you think that this is a workable solution please feel free to comment and keep this thread visible where it might get some attention from the designers.
Thanks for reading!
http://swgoh.gg/u/Corrog/
http://swgoh.gg/u/Talshin/
Not saying your idea is bad or anything, but this whole thing leaves a really sour taste in my mouth considering the fact that for months they said the paper zombie was an acceptable strategy and then suddenly did a 180, like no one was going to notice. The entire nightsister fiasco has been handled about as poorly as it possibly could be.
Lol no, that has to be the worst idea regarding Nightsisters that I've ever heard. If you take away Asajj's stacking offense then you'd absolutely neuter the effectiveness of NS in the sith raid. Assaj has a really fun kit that works great, don't mess it up.
At the end of zombies turn she gains taunt, if another ns ally suffers damage zombie gains taunt.
This way it doesn’t matter if zombie is geared or not you still get the advantage of her dieing to help the team but geared zombies are rewarded more as they will be tanking more.
She is a lynchpin to nearly every NS team. The entire team synergizes around around her and her unique ability. It's already been claimed to be "working as intended", even paper zombie, by the devs themselves.
I have full confidence that the devs will find a way to completely ruin her and claim "minimal impact".
And we the customers are saying, “leave paper zombie alone”.
So why is this still being discussed? CG won’t do anything against paper zombie.
Edited for language. - EA_Cian
This leaves nightsisters alone for other modes.
Edited for language. - EA_Cian
The other obvious solution to the zombie problem is to cap Asajj Rampage stacks at a level at around 100K damage or so. It will have very little effect, if any, in arena, and will tone down the damage a fair bit in the raids without making it useless.
I've had to edit a couple of posts in this thread for language, I'd just like to remind people that your language should be appropriate for a modern PG movie at the worst. Thanks.
But, amen, CG wanna make more people f2p that's on them.
Compromise.. Add a unique locked buff you can activate (similar to a cls) that simply reduces her max health by ~90% until the ability is triggered again?
Then you can have zambie both ways, and it's players choice. not sure how ai would run it tho, same issue with cls.. but it would solve the immediate problem, and still be an acceptable solution.
To whoever said that players who geared their zombie should be rewarded (sorry forgot to hit quote be4 i started typing) i have to respectfully disagree with you. Those who chose to use a paper zombie as opposed to a geared zombie saw a different use for a character and its unique mechanic. Meaning they thought outside the box and employed a strategy for a tank outside the norm. There's nothing wrong with that and they are simply employing a different player strategy. If the developers say that it was not intended to be used this way than they dropped the ball when developing the mechanic and i don't think players should be penalized for that. That of course is just my personal opinion.
They did intend this to work this way though for 10 months it was working as intended per the devs so for them to change it now is ridiculous
The problem is there is no going back once you gear, even though the game changes. I made the decision for arena that I wanted a strong zombie. I don’t regret it, it held better on defense, and I think it was the better choice.
But now I can’t run a weak zombie in P4 of the raid where she is better being low gear. Are you saying I should be penalized for not “thinking outside the box” when I made my choice before the raid even existed?
I agree and no I don't think they should penalize you or anyone else. Honestly I think they need to fix the raid itself as it's riddled with issues. This is also the problem with an rpg that doesn't let you swap your gear around for different situations. Perhaps they should just offer to refund the gear to people who invested it or something. I'm not really sure what they should do tbh, I just know players shouldn't be penalized for the developers own shortsightedness. I mean did they not live test Sith raid with teams from each faction or anything? NS has been a super popular team for awhile now, kinda odd that the mechanics of the most common NS team weren't tested against the mechanics of the raid bosses.