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Fenraellis 8 years ago.
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Four of my last six casts of this have netted me a Carrion Bird, a clearly labeled Tier II unit. This thing costs 120 mana to summon and 18 mana to upkeep. WTF? Please for the love of all that is holy, either beef the everliving crap out of this unit and make it Tier III, or remove it from the pool of summons. Removing would be better, as Dedicated to Good or Evil units in the summoning pool to begin with is annoying as all getout.
That’s the random number generator. I sometmes have the feeling it is biased towards the most useless outcome though. I had an evil sorcerer and the random summoning would only get me dedicated to good griffons that had such low moral they dealt no damage.
I think the gargantuan summon spell getting you the T2 bird is to off set reed and shock serpent which are T4 creatures I believe. Tho I do agree that dedicated to good/evil animals should be taken out of all animal summons as it screws me over wasting all that mana ( which thanks to the next patch will actually need to be counted and better spent) to get a creature that pretty much hates me for my moral choice.
Not only that, but the carrion bird is labeled as “undead”… which seems like a pretty awkward choice to have for a druid.
Would Tombles be willing to grace us with his presence to comment on either of these two issues (T3 spell summoning T2, and Dedicated units in the summon pools)? Be nice to know if it’s “doubt we’re changing either”, “yeah needs to be fixed” or “some of us like it, some of us don’t, can’t say if either will ever change”.
The reason you can summon a tier II unit is to balance out the tier IV units that you are also able to summon for this cost. Compare this to the sorcerer options for the same amount of mana/CP and you’ll see why (120 mana for a T3 mana node serpent or a possible T4 serpent).
I can’t speak for the designers here but as big arch-druid player myself I think the carrion bird is not an ideal choice either. It is something I could maybe see changed in the future but for now it’s not a main priority.
How about making at least the upkeep cost depend on level of creature summoned ?
How about making at least the upkeep cost depend on level of creature summoned ?
I think that would be very good idea. Other changes I wouldn’t want to see made. It’s supposed to be a random spell, the effect of luck doesn’t need to be eliminated. There are enough spells with a fixed outcome as an alternative.
Morale doesn’t play a big role in the game, at least here it plays a role, I think that’s good.I do agree that 4 Carrion Birds in a row is a little too much, I would be annoyed as well, obviously.
I believe they should be in the pool, though, but maybe good or evil units could have a slightly less chance of appearing, or maybe the same unit can only appear a few times before it gets temporarily disabled.
Agree that this shouldn’t be a dev’s priority, nothing’s ‘broken’ here.Any response from Triumph?
I wonder if this will ever get fixed…
Any response from Triumph?
The reason you can summon a tier II unit is to balance out the tier IV units that you are also able to summon for this cost. Compare this to the sorcerer options for the same amount of mana/CP and you’ll see why (120 mana for a T3 mana node serpent or a possible T4 serpent).
I can’t speak for the designers here but as big arch-druid player myself I think the carrion bird is not an ideal choice either. It is something I could maybe see changed in the future but for now it’s not a main priority.
For what it’s worth, I imagine an opponent might be complaining in the opposite direction if one were to summon the equally(25%) likely Shock Serpent four times in a row on a 120 cost spell. While personally less favored than the Shock Serpent, Reed Serpents are still quite strong units(Fearsome alone is a powerful ability), and are also just as statistically likely.
For a T3 cost spell to have a 50% chance to summon T4 units, and on T4 upkeep, further reduced by 25% from a research unlock, well… That’s fairly powerful, if I do say so myself.
Look on the bright side! It used to be able to summon T1 Zephyr Birds at the same high upkeep as well, before it got shifted down to Eldritch Summon. YAY! I know I probably petitioned for the Zephyr Bird to be [re]moved from Gargantuan more than anybody else.
If Carrion Birds were just huge life-stealing birds, rather than being Undead huge life-stealing birds, they would probably be a fair bit more useful. If nothing else, vultures are kind of like Nature’s clean-up crew? Why not have living Carrion Birds? Even if all of their other stats remained the same aside from removing the various Undead Intrinsics, simply being able to regenerate health would make them more useful as ‘bruiser’ scouts. I wouldn’t mind having a few flying around quite as much in that case.
For a T3 cost spell to have a 50% chance to summon T4 units, and on T4 upkeep
Meant to say “on T3 upkeep”.
Living Carrion Birds (or Great Condors or whatever) would look pretty cool too. Did you notice they’re twice the size of Wyverns?
Literally the first thing I said when I got into a battle with BBB with one in my party during the Beta was “That is a HUGE bird.” “No, really, just compare it the Longbowmen next to it. It’s huge!”
Let’s just say that I most definitely noticed. =D
I first noticed while clearing Boneyards. A lot of boneyards (thankfully that particular quirk was fixed). 3 Carrion Birds and a Bone Wyvern.
“Hmm, 3 Carrion Birds…what’s that thing? Some kind of map object…that’s a Wyvern…what the hell were carrion birds before they died!?”
Where are you getting the percentage chance to summon units with these spells? For all I know it’s 50% chance of the Carrion Bird. It sure seems that way most games. Getting T4 units with this spell is nice, but I get them so rarely, I would be MORE than happy to make it so the spell only gave you T3 units – because at least then I’d know I wasn’t wasting so much mana (and FAR more importantly, SP).
I believe the summoning-pool spells(Fantastic/Wild/Eldritch/Gargantuan) are Dev-confirmed somewhere to be equal(possibly with a +/-1% deviation on such things as Wild Animal’s 3 creatures) chances between potential summons.
Personally, I most often get Serpents of either denomination. Honestly, I feel sad that I have statistically received Dread Spider Queens(you know, the ACTUAL TIER 3 summoned unit) closer to only 10% of the time over my personal history with the spell. There have of course, though, been games where I summoned Three Spiders and one Serpent out of my only four casts. Carrion Birds have probably remained fairly close to the predicted 25% percentage, with Serpents filling in the remaining roughly 65% of my summons.
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