1.20 balance change for Core Eras and Units made by the Balance Team

[shevegen]

The voting results so far is quite interesting (to me); not giving away too many spoilers, but it seems people are rather conservative in regards to the question here, or rather, the three possible answers (I was too, in my voting, by the way). Perhaps it has to do with those specific three options asked, because from those three, the conservative answer seemed best to me. But I am not at all against balance-related changes here. One problem I had was to understand the implications of the changes. Perhaps explaining the options may be helpful; and, as another suggestion, perhaps to make any changes small-ish (at the least I think I would prefer smaller changes or upgrades) and then focusing just on a 1:1 parity, e. g. present the conservative option, and the changed/upgraded one. I had a very hard time choosing between the two different variants, because I really was not sure which one would be better suited. That was also one partial reason why I opted for the conservative answer (and was a bit surprised to see most others also were).

Footpad can be quite useful in some scenarios; I remember one map specifically where you were kind of required to use the footpad because you could "soak" up damage indirectly, by not getting hit. So that's kind of nice to have. Perhaps a fourth option, for increasing that dodge-factor ... but I don't want to make this more complicated, even more so after I suggested to have only one alternative to the "keep it as it is" option.

[sine_nomine]

Some level 3 units units don't match the most recent stats (e.g. elvish outrider, elvish marshal, elvish avenger, human huntsman, human ranger)
but I assume that's unintentional so I will post some comments on the lvl3 stat changes between 1.16 and https://units.wesnoth.org/trunk/mainlin ... nline.html
(not going to bother looking at gold costs)

>Elvish outrider: ranged 8x3->9x3
Seems good, a minor change to an underpowered unit shouldn't cause problems. I like how damage of each bow shot no longer decreases when going from lvl2 to lvl3.

>Elvish marshal: mp 5->6, hp 62->60
I thought the elvish marshal & champion were fine in 1.16 (and the prior 15 years). Of the two, marshal is an essential unit in singleplayer campaigns so I'm surprised to see him get a major buff. In most campaigns I try to get a marshal as soon as possible because leadership has a massive impact on my army. As I go through the campaign I continually recruit new disposable lvl1s so my marshals never fall out of use. Compared to the alternate promotion, the lvl2 elvish captain's leadership essentially costs 4hp, 4 melee, and 3 ranged. When promoting to lvl3 the next level of leadership only costs an additional 4hp and 1 melee. So I'm puzzled as to why the marshal was made even better.

Another thing to consider is that you can recruit a quick elvish fighter and promote to marshal, just like you can recruit a quick drake burner. But human sergeant and orcish leader are usually not available to recruit so you almost never see a quick sergeant or orcish leader. With the buff to the elvish marshal, many campaigns will now have seven movement leadership units. Plus better melee, ranged, and forest movement/evasion than human general.

I would prefer to see the elvish marshal return to his old stats, but if he must get increased movement then he ought to be given a nerf in another area. At the very least a decrease in attack. Even if his melee attack fell to 9x4, a strong 1.20 elvish marshal would be outright superior to a quick 1.16 elvish marshal. And a quick 1.20 elvish marshal is of course even better.

>Elvish champion: hp 70->72, melee 9x5->8x5+10% accuracy
Although the marshal is more valuable, there's nothing wrong with the 1.16 version of the champion. He exists as a stronger alternative to the marshal and has the highest hp of all elves. If you gradually train up champions during a campaign you can deploy them all in a scenario where upkeep doesn't matter. And there are some players who prefer to use mostly level 3 units when they play singleplayer campaigns, those players will naturally prefer the champion.

The 1.18 champion changes his damage to 8x5 and has a new weapon special: +10% accuracy. It's very unusual but is comparable to switching his damage to 8x6 in terms of damage breakpoints and increased reliability. One difference is that the max damage is lower so my units don't need as much hp to guarantee survival when attacked by an enemy elvish champion. Another major difference is that this weapon special has a bigger effect when attacking high evasion targets compared to low evasion targets. While you get a boost whether it's from 30%->40% or 60%->70%, the former increases average damage by twice as much as the latter. It's like how marksman and magical provide more of a boost when attacking evasive targets, but less significant. This puts the champion in a weird spot where it gains the most from attacking evasive targets but feels bad because your attacks are still inaccurate after the boost.

Personally I don't like the idea of having another similar weapon special on a core unit. Also I wonder why this weapon special was given to the elvish champion of all units. Other factions have multiple unit lines dedicated to melee attacks, but the elvish champion isn't competing with anyone for his role. If for some reason there must be an elf with a melee weapon special it would be better to give the elvish hero a branching promotion and create a new unit with marksman on his melee attack (maybe a unit similar to a deathblade). But the elves already have many units that are good at attacking evasive targets and the elvish race's specialty is related to their ranged attacks so I don't think they need a melee weapon special.

Overall I prefer the 1.16 elvish champion because I dislike unnecessary complexity.
Not sure about the +2hp, it sounds reasonable I just don't want to think about 2hp on a lvl3.

>Elvish enchantress
>Elvish sylph
I'll wait for arcane resistance to be determined before commenting on these

>Elvish shyde: hp 46->51, melee 6x2->7x2, ranged slow 6x3->7x3, ranged magic 8x3->10x3
I never had an issue with the 1.16 version. Healers are very important and the shyde is a highly mobile healer with the ability to slow enemies or to use magic attacks for reliable attacks. It's understandable for her damage to be below average.

The 1.18 version of the shyde was crazy (14x3), so the current version looks more reasonable. But it's still a considerable buff from 1.16. Ultimately it's a question of whether you want the shyde to be dedicated to support or to have similar damage to a lvl2 elvish marksman.
Currently the druid has 5 less HP than the sorceress but the shyde has 1 more than the enchantress. I think the lvl2 promotion option with less HP should have lower HP at level 3.

>Paladin: hp 65->77, arcane 8x5->9x5, charge 15x2->16x2
This attack boost plus 1.18 arcane resistance makes the paladin effective against everything. The HP boost gives the paladin high durability and closes the gap with the grand knight (especially if the grand knight is quick). The paladin's arcane attack even lets him bypass the blade resistance of enemies like heavy infantry. And of course he still has high movement, heals+4, and extra damage against races weak to arcane. He seems a bit too good so I expect something will be changed after arcane resistance is fixed.

>Grand knight: hp 78->84, charge 17x2->19x2
Grand knights were good in 1.16 and they are now even better, but now that paladins are buffed the grand knight's main niche has become charge damage.
By the way, lancers are easily the strongest lvl2 units in the game and are viable in campaigns even without a lvl3 promotion so there's no need for a charge-focused grand knight.
First fix arcane damage, then fix paladin, then adjust grand knight if needed.

>Arch mage: exp 220->150
>Grand mage: fire 16x4->17x4
good

>Mage of light: not changed
I wouldn't mind seeing mages of light lose a point of damage. Healing and illuminate are extremely useful support abilities and they boost their own damage with illuminate.

>General: hp 50->55
>Grand marshal: hp 60->68
Seems fine

>Huntsman: hp 57->53, ranged marksman 9x4->10x4, swamp lurk
Damage is probably ok
I don't know what sort of impact swamp lurk will have. Will need to test.

>Ranger: hp 60->64, ranged 7x4->8x4, improved evasion on some terrain but castle->50%
The evasion buffs make sense
I understand the decrease in castle evasion fits the lore description but I don't like it because it's a decrease from poacher and trapper
The ranged damage increase is reasonable because the huntsman's also increased, and the HP changes make them more distinct. I think this makes ranger the obvious promotion choice in most instances. There would still be niche uses for huntsman, so I don't know if this is an issue

>Trapper
it's odd how poacher deals 3x2 melee damage and that jumps to 5x4 at lvl2

>Fugitive: hp 62->68
At first glance HP seems high
If the lvl2 is reverted to 1.16 stats there will be a 26 hp difference between lvl2 & lvl3

>Saurian flanker: hp 47->54
I see the the new lvl2 saurian spearthrower has more hp than the lvl2 ambusher while the lvl3 javelineer has less hp than the (buffed) flanker

>Necromancer
In the current version, necromancers have 76hp and get +10 impact resistance at lvl3. While a tanky mage could be a reasonable unit, it doesn't fit the lore of a necromancer at all. I'd much rather see necromancers be focused on plague.
The 1.18 necromancer also got a cold damage buff which is good, now it does more damage than a lich
And it got an arcane buff so it no longer deals ~70% of its cold damage. This might be adjusted when arcane resistance is fixed, so I'm not going to try to understand why this happened

>Ghast
Ghast and necrophage got damage buffs in 1.18, so if necrophage is reverted to 1.16 damage then ghast damage should fall. Though 11x3 is probably ok.
If there needs to be a lvl3 undead unit with increased impact resistance I think ghast makes more sense than necromancer. It wouldn't seem out of place visually given the unit's bloated appearance. However they might be annoying to fight against if they resist everything. A more radical idea would be to give all ghouls impact resistance in exchange for losing pierce resistance, but it's probably unreasonable to make such a big change to a lvl1 unit.

>arcane resistance
I'm in favor of arcane being a specialized damage type that does high damage to skeletons but low damage to humans

[tsutsukakushi]

As a player the list changes sine_nomine posted seems to have two big problems. First there are multiple changes at once on a single unit and there are non-minimal changes (i.e. 2 hp instead of 1). Second there are too many units that have been changed at once. It is nigh impossible to actually judge individual effects of any unit's changes on the balance in this situation. Having big changes between versions is very jarring and surprising from the player perspective.

[Roge_Tebnelok]

>Elvish marshal: mp 5->6, hp 62->60
I thought the elvish marshal & champion were fine in 1.16 (and the prior 15 years). Of the two, marshal is an essential unit in singleplayer campaigns so I'm surprised to see him get a major buff. In most campaigns I try to get a marshal as soon as possible because leadership has a massive impact on my army. As I go through the campaign I continually recruit new disposable lvl1s so my marshals never fall out of use. Compared to the alternate promotion, the lvl2 elvish captain's leadership essentially costs 4hp, 4 melee, and 3 ranged. When promoting to lvl3 the next level of leadership only costs an additional 4hp and 1 melee. So I'm puzzled as to why the marshal was made even better.

Well, 1.18-20 Marshal is that good partly because 1.18-20 Champion is in worse shape than before. 1.16 advancement cost was 8 hp, 5 (6 with both of them being strong) melee and 3 ranged (to correct you, current difference isn't in sword but bow per hit, e.g. 3, but it's universal among the versions and doesn't really affect that much). Without primary damage buff, which allowed Champion to be equal to other melee focused level 3 units, he's now is weaker side and almost inferior to Marshal. The problem with mp 5->6 is that the improvement is one-sided and mp-oriented.

Another thing to consider is that you can recruit a quick elvish fighter and promote to marshal, just like you can recruit a quick drake burner. But human sergeant and orcish leader are usually not available to recruit so you almost never see a quick sergeant or orcish leader. With the buff to the elvish marshal, many campaigns will now have seven movement leadership units. Plus better melee, ranged, and forest movement/evasion than human general.

Human general is the weakest level 3 leadership (not counting Dunefolk Warmaster here) unit, so it's not a fair comparison but I agree, Marshal can be as fast as other leaders without movement buff. And his combat weakness before Sovereign, Death Knight and Flameheart is compensated with cheapness of Fighter, though the difference between Captain's and Flare's gp isn't that big. Only Elves and Drakes have recruitable leaders, and they should be somewhat weaker than specialized leadership unit lines. It would make more sense thematically if Captain also was faster, but when I suggested that it was turned down, though, one advancement getting faster but over staying slow without that being a focus of the alt-grade isn't much logical, same applies to Saurian Soothsayer/Seer, who don;t even benefit from it's higher speed as leaders do.

I would prefer to see the elvish marshal return to his old stats, but if he must get increased movement then he ought to be given a nerf in another area. At the very least a decrease in attack. Even if his melee attack fell to 9x4, a strong 1.20 elvish marshal would be outright superior to a quick 1.16 elvish marshal. And a quick 1.20 elvish marshal is of course even better.

Pretty much agree, but I wouldn't debuff damage or hp, Captain's xp and cost would probably be better, though Marshal shouldn't be weak on his level, leadership isn't limitless, and sometimes he has to fight himself.

>Elvish champion: hp 70->72, melee 9x5->8x5+10% accuracy
Although the marshal is more valuable, there's nothing wrong with the 1.16 version of the champion. He exists as a stronger alternative to the marshal and has the highest hp of all elves. If you gradually train up champions during a campaign you can deploy them all in a scenario where upkeep doesn't matter. And there are some players who prefer to use mostly level 3 units when they play singleplayer campaigns, those players will naturally prefer the champion.

The 1.18 champion changes his damage to 8x5 and has a new weapon special: +10% accuracy. It's very unusual but is comparable to switching his damage to 8x6 in terms of damage breakpoints and increased reliability. One difference is that the max damage is lower so my units don't need as much hp to guarantee survival when attacked by an enemy elvish champion. Another major difference is that this weapon special has a bigger effect when attacking high evasion targets compared to low evasion targets. While you get a boost whether it's from 30%->40% or 60%->70%, the former increases average damage by twice as much as the latter. It's like how marksman and magical provide more of a boost when attacking evasive targets, but less significant. This puts the champion in a weird spot where it gains the most from attacking evasive targets but feels bad because your attacks are still inaccurate after the boost.

Exactly. +10% looks confusing in UI, but that wouldn't be that bad if it came in addition to unit's strength, not as alternative. What good is from his accuracy if he doesn't have the power behind it.

Personally I don't like the idea of having another similar weapon special on a core unit. Also I wonder why this weapon special was given to the elvish champion of all units. Other factions have multiple unit lines dedicated to melee attacks, but the elvish champion isn't competing with anyone for his role. If for some reason there must be an elf with a melee weapon special it would be better to give the elvish hero a branching promotion and create a new unit with marksman on his melee attack (maybe a unit similar to a deathblade). But the elves already have many units that are good at attacking evasive targets and the elvish race's specialty is related to their ranged attacks so I don't think they need a melee weapon special.

Overall I prefer the 1.16 elvish champion because I dislike unnecessary complexity.
Not sure about the +2hp, it sounds reasonable I just don't want to think about 2hp on a lvl3.

I agree. In a race/faction as filled with abilities and weapon specials as Elves, a simple unit is needed. There's an open PR on Champion, feel free to comment on it, that way the team will have a better chance of noticing. Here's the link: https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/pull/9557

>Elvish enchantress
>Elvish sylph
I'll wait for arcane resistance to be determined before commenting on these

There's a PR for it too. https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/pull ... 2501625160

>Elvish shyde: hp 46->51, melee 6x2->7x2, ranged slow 6x3->7x3, ranged magic 8x3->10x3
I never had an issue with the 1.16 version. Healers are very important and the shyde is a highly mobile healer with the ability to slow enemies or to use magic attacks for reliable attacks. It's understandable for her damage to be below average.

The 1.18 version of the shyde was crazy (14x3), so the current version looks more reasonable. But it's still a considerable buff from 1.16. Ultimately it's a question of whether you want the shyde to be dedicated to support or to have similar damage to a lvl2 elvish marksman.
Currently the druid has 5 less HP than the sorceress but the shyde has 1 more than the enchantress. I think the lvl2 promotion option with less HP should have lower HP at level 3.

With Shyde the problem is the difference between slow and magical damage, better thorns means that she is gonna be used as damage dealer more than as support, I suggested making them equal, but that also was turned down. The hp comparison with Enchantress could be mentioned in a separate PR as the one existing is already merged, or it could wait until arcane rework resolution to be added to changes.

>Arch mage: exp 220->150
>Grand mage: fire 16x4->17x4
good

>Mage of light: not changed
I wouldn't mind seeing mages of light lose a point of damage. Healing and illuminate are extremely useful support abilities and they boost their own damage with illuminate.

Here's where I disagree. 150 is rather small xp cost for a power of the Grand Mage, which is hard to rival. Neutral 16x4 fire magical, e.g. 64 per attack, is similar to what tod-dependant dps focused level 3 units deal at their favorable time, and only a few can surpass. IIRC his damage was increased to 17x4 because Elvish Sylph got a damage overbuff, IDR if there were other reasons. I expect him changing again soon, either back to 1.16 if arcane rework gets reverted, or to 18x4, IIRC not connected to anything in particular. You mean reducing both melee and ranged damage of MoL, or only one of them? Why?

>General: hp 50->55
>Grand marshal: hp 60->68
Seems fine

Still too weak, but it's better than 50/60 hp.

>Huntsman: hp 57->53, ranged marksman 9x4->10x4, swamp lurk
Damage is probably ok
I don't know what sort of impact swamp lurk will have. Will need to test.

>Ranger: hp 60->64, ranged 7x4->8x4, improved evasion on some terrain but castle->50%
The evasion buffs make sense
I understand the decrease in castle evasion fits the lore description but I don't like it because it's a decrease from poacher and trapper
The ranged damage increase is reasonable because the huntsman's also increased, and the HP changes make them more distinct. I think this makes ranger the obvious promotion choice in most instances. There would still be niche uses for huntsman, so I don't know if this is an issue

>Trapper
it's odd how poacher deals 3x2 melee damage and that jumps to 5x4 at lvl2

Agreed. Trapper gets too much melee damage at once, and Ranger getting less defense on castles than his lower levels doesn't make much sense. Ranged damage increase, on the other hand, is reasonable.

>Fugitive: hp 62->68
At first glance HP seems high
If the lvl2 is reverted to 1.16 stats there will be a 26 hp difference between lvl2 & lvl3

>Saurian flanker: hp 47->54
I see the the new lvl2 saurian spearthrower has more hp than the lvl2 ambusher while the lvl3 javelineer has less hp than the (buffed) flanker

Strange, will need to look in the PR for that.

>Necromancer
In the current version, necromancers have 76hp and get +10 impact resistance at lvl3. While a tanky mage could be a reasonable unit, it doesn't fit the lore of a necromancer at all. I'd much rather see necromancers be focused on plague.
The 1.18 necromancer also got a cold damage buff which is good, now it does more damage than a lich
And it got an arcane buff so it no longer deals ~70% of its cold damage. This might be adjusted when arcane resistance is fixed, so I'm not going to try to understand why this happened

The reasons are probably the same as with Archmage/Grandmage.

>Ghast
Ghast and necrophage got damage buffs in 1.18, so if necrophage is reverted to 1.16 damage then ghast damage should fall. Though 11x3 is probably ok.
If there needs to be a lvl3 undead unit with increased impact resistance I think ghast makes more sense than necromancer. It wouldn't seem out of place visually given the unit's bloated appearance. However they might be annoying to fight against if they resist everything. A more radical idea would be to give all ghouls impact resistance in exchange for losing pierce resistance, but it's probably unreasonable to make such a big change to a lvl1 unit.

What do you mean? From looking at units database and master, they are the same in 1.19 as in 1.18. Where is the change discussed?

>arcane resistance
I'm in favor of arcane being a specialized damage type that does high damage to skeletons but low damage to humans

Great! If anyone wants to participate in the discussion on arcane in the second link, but for some reason doesn't have GitHub account, ping me, I'll relate your points there.

[Roge_Tebnelok]

As a player the list changes sine_nomine posted seems to have two big problems. First there are multiple changes at once on a single unit and there are non-minimal changes (i.e. 2 hp instead of 1). Second there are too many units that have been changed at once. It is nigh impossible to actually judge individual effects of any unit's changes on the balance in this situation. Having big changes between versions is very jarring and surprising from the player perspective.

Yeah, that's not a best way to conduct the changes. Though, fixing them maybe be as jarring and surpising for those who already got used to the changes, that's why it's important for balance discussions to be noticable and open for the community to express their opinion and possibly affect the thought process, and no upcoming change should be left undisclosed.

[sine_nomine]

Mage of light: I think his ranged damage is too high. He deals 12x3 at night and 15x3 at other times of day. This is close to the arch mage because the arch mage does not benefit from time of day. The MoL has many other benefits so I think his ranged damage should be lower.
Mermaid diviner does 8x4, so MoL will be stronger even if reduced to 11x3.

Great mage: I rarely use arch mages because MoLs are so good. The 1.18 change makes me more willing to invest in leveling a great mage.
Currently elvish sylph does 13x5 arcane. Great mage deals slightly more damage but is worse in other ways: mp, movement costs, hp, defense, other attacks. So great mage should require lower exp.
Of course, my opinion will change if MoL and sylph are adjusted.

Ghast: 1.16 damage was 10x3, 1.18 is 12x3. Never mind about the other stuff.

I don't want to get involved in the github debates but just to clarify on the elvish champion: I dislike +10% accuracy. The main impact of this mechanic is that it makes calculations more confusing.

[Roge_Tebnelok]

Mage of light: I think his ranged damage is too high. He deals 12x3 at night and 15x3 at other times of day. This is close to the arch mage because the arch mage does not benefit from time of day. The MoL has many other benefits so I think his ranged damage should be lower.
Mermaid diviner does 8x4, so MoL will be stronger even if reduced to 11x3.

Great mage: I rarely use arch mages because MoLs are so good. The 1.18 change makes me more willing to invest in leveling a great mage.
Currently elvish sylph does 13x5 arcane. Great mage deals slightly more damage but is worse in other ways: mp, movement costs, hp, defense, other attacks. So great mage should require lower exp.
Of course, my opinion will change if MoL and sylph are adjusted.

Ghast: 1.16 damage was 10x3, 1.18 is 12x3. Never mind about the other stuff.

I don't want to get involved in the github debates but just to clarify on the elvish champion: I dislike +10% accuracy. The main impact of this mechanic is that it makes calculations more confusing.

Understood.

[matto]

Response to Revert Arcane post on github by ForestDragon

I posted late! (sorry xD it wasn't an easy argument)

Here the link: What is Arcane? for matto

(EDIT) Why did i post in another place? To use this place to easier track the topics and the other to discuss freely.

[Yomar]

Yeah about the Sylph, still a bit too strong, it has more hp than great mage (I thought that in general Elves are supposed to be more frail than humans), damage almost same as Great Mage (But more hits help), higher defenses almost everywhere, 70% in forest, slows if you try to range it with magic to displace her from forest, more mp, can fly, and unlike other Elves has Arcane resistance.
I can't think of any other unit that is even near that in term of overal performance.

Note, something to not understimate is that if Sylph gets Strong and Dexterous trait it will deal more damage than a strong great mage both in melee and ranged.