February 2, 2015 September 30, 2018

Revitalizing Minions in the High Level Meta

As the game has shifted to a high intensity, faster meta, many cards that were once in use have fallen to the wayside. One such key card is each school’s minions. Once prominent in everything from Magus to Grandmaster PvP, they see very limited use in PvP and PvE at the higher levels. This lack of use is due to their fragility. Most minions cannot survive long enough at the higher levels to be worth the cost. While one solution to this dilemma is to improve their durability, this could easily be executed incorrectly, leading to power imbalances caused by over buffed minions. Instead my proposal focuses on taking advantage of minion’s fragility.

The Proposal

My idea is to have minions grant bonuses to their summoner at the time of their death. What do I mean? Well under my proposal, when a minion dies, it would provide tangible benefit to the caster. This would improve several aspects of the game.

Minions killed during PvE would still provide a benefit to the caster.
The ability for minions to provide benefits to the caster would increase their survivability in PvP as opponents would have to choose whether to kill the minion(providing the caster with benefits) or leave it in play.
Players would be able to activate benefits themselves by utilizing the minion sacrifice spells, bringing these spells into play.
The myth school would gain a well deserved buff to it’s minion aspect.

School Specific Benefits

(Applies to both minion: traditional and No PvP minions)

Fire Minions

If killed by opponent – add 3 smoke mantles to opponent who killed it.
If killed by caster – Detonate all DoTs on opponent.

Ice Minions

If killed by opponent – Cast katabatic wind and add ice blade to caster.
If killed by caster – Add 3 tower shields to caster

Storm Minions

If killed by opponent – Heals caster for 1400
If killed by caster – Casts a Dot that does 100+600 storm damage over 3 rounds.

Life minions

If killed by opponent – Cast Sanctuary and add Guiding light to caster
If killed by caster – Add 2 life dispels and stun opponent.

Death minions

If taking damage from opponent – Cast bad juju on opponent
If taking damage from caster – Cast doom and gloom and add 2 deathblades to caster.

Balance minions

Helpful Mander

If killed by opponent – opponent loses 2 pips and deals 80 damage per pip.
If killed by caster – gains 2 pips and casts powerplay

Elemental Minion

Summons a random elemental minion with that minion’s effects.

Myth

Golem minion

If killed by opponent – stun opponent who destroyed minion
If killed by caster – Heal caster 800 health.

Troll minion

If killed by opponent – Add 3 weakness to opponent who killed minion
If killed by caster – Add +40% blade and -70% shield to caster.

Cyclops minion

If killed by opponent – Remove all charms and wards from opponent
If killed by caster – Remove all lingering effects from opponent(stun shields, auras, guardian spirit)

Talos (and Myth’s Level 75 Minion)

If killed by opponent – summon random myth school minion
If killed by caster – summon opponents school specific minion.

Implementation

Minions are currently balanced for the lower levels only needing these buffs at the higher levels. As such my plan for implementation of these buffs would follow a questline that’s already in place. The minions would gain their first ability(the benefit when opponents kill them) at the time we gain our first shadow pip. They would gain their second benefit(when the caster kills them) at the time we gain our second shadow pip.

This works well to ensure that minions are only as powerful as we need them and fits the storyline(as we are enhanced by shadow so are our minions). Best of all it requires very little tweaking to the questlines in place.