u/AnemoneMeer

While Magic Arrow is a good skill in either tree, it is vitally important to Early-Midgame Thaumaturgy, but not particularly important to Early-Midgame Sorcery.

Currently, the first set of Thaumaturgy upgrades are "Enemy spells cost +4 Mana, Learn all 1st Tier Spells, and Heroic Strike does +10 Damage."

Sorcery likewise gets Magic Arrow as well as "All Unit Cooldowns are reduced by 1 (This isn't a real skill, as FP, not cooldowns are what gates ability use)" and "+10% Magic Damage Dealt".

Switching Magic Arrow and potentially also Cooldown Reduction for Thaumaturgy's Heroic Strike Damage and potentially Enemy Spells Cost More Mana would further cement them as "Cast Many Spells" and "Do More Damage", instead of having the spam spell in Sorcery and a HS damage amp in Thaumaturgy.

Title says it all. This is going to be going over a lot of relatively awkward decisions in Schism's roster and general affinities.

Some of these are going to be petty. You have been warned.

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1. Why Arcane?

Schism gets a bonus to Arcane casting in Otherworldly Magic. It also gets a bonus to Spell Power through Ice Power, and a bonus to Summoning. They also get a large number of different ways to increase their mana and mana regeneration. Additionally, a number of their effects rely on having a dead ally.

Arcane Magic does not possess a true summoning spell, and only gets a pseudo summon in Mirror Copy at Rank 4. Arcane Magic has the highest concentration of "Not Affected by Spell Power" spells, with only one spell on their T2 spell list even using Spell Power (and that is a lie, because it's Carapace and will almost never last beyond 2 turns, therefore capping at 7 Spellpower). Tier 1 has one unaffected. Tier 3 has 2 unaffected.

Most of the Arcane spells that are modified by Spell Power modify Duration, not effect. These spells tend to cap out at about 28 Spellpower, or 5 rounds of combat. Arcane also has multiple spells that scale with Focus Points, while having almost no way to generate them in quantity, and no way that isn't extremely degenerate gameplay.

However, among the list of Arcane spells that do scale potency with Spellpower.... it's reviving heal. Arcane gets resurrection. On a faction that has a buffer of free units in every battle and actively needs summons to die to generate more bodies for ramping up.

Arcane also gets a spell to do something Schism can do already. Reinforcements and Involuntary Summons.

There is no synergy here. Arcane is flavorful, but Arcane's current spell list does not benefit Schism as much as going Primal (Blasting, T5 summon) or Nightshade (Less Blasting, T4 summon, better debuffs). It feels like it was just picked because Blue, and not because it actually syncs up with how Schism wants to play. Arcane does better on Grove and Dungeon.

Also Impending Fate is a meme spell.

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2. The Week 1 Dilemma

Schism's starting 3 units for most heroes has no ranged unit. They also cannot build a non-upgraded ranged unit on day 1, having to wait for Day 2 to recruit Concubus stacks.

This means you have to do clearing on day 1 with the Ra'Shoth, Cultist and Aga'Shoth. Individually, two of these three units aren't terrible, and the other is the Ra'Shoth, but this creates a problem. On higher difficulties, trading hits in melee isn't a good idea, particularly early on, because your units will get mangled and often oneshot. But you outright do not possess a ranged unit to start.

The Aga'Shoth Rider is a great unit, with Piercing Cold being... quite frankly rather overpowered. 50% bonus magic damage, what the hell. Icy Breath is also +100% or more damage. Amazing unit. But you have 20 mana and maybe one offensive spell based on your starting hero on day 1. And are expected to make a raw attack against a unit first, then follow up with a spell. You do that clearing on high map difficulties and you no longer have any Aga'Shoth Riders as they get onetapped on the retaliation strike.

Cultists have a solid 1-cost ability in Glance of the Abyss. But it costs a focus point and is a DoT. Which means you have to already be engaged in melee combat, and then wait multiple turns for it to do more damage than just basic attacking with the Cultist. Also it doesn't work on Magic Creatures, Undead or Constructs, so uh... have fun clearing?

The base Ra'Shoth is terrible by any metric. They get utterly destroyed by the Temple Swordsman, with Swordsmen having 2 more HP, 1 more ATK, 1 more DEF, 1 less minimum damage, 30% ranged damage reduction and significantly higher Initiative. While the idea is supposed to be that you turn dead units into more Ra'Shoth... you need to lose more valuable units than one of the worst units in the entire game to make more Ra'Shoth. Or have summons. Which Arcane does not have.

This creates an utterly awful, and often impossible clearing situation for Schism heroes who do not start with a ranged unit. This gets rectified by their T5 and T6 units both being ranged, but they come with their own issues.

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3. Concubus Balance Is Deranged.

Let me just read one of their passives.

Earn Your Magic, Dear. Enemy Spells cost +1 Mana. This effect does not stack, only the strongest one is active.

1 mana. One. Singular. Mana. The Mistress of Chains upgrade changes this to two mana. Just two. Passive regeneration sources like Dungeon's stance swapping giving mana gives 3. The tax from hero upgrades gives a +4 mana cost.

This isn't a real effect and you cannot convince me otherwise. And yet, it's not even the craziest, because it at least does SOMETHING.

Bewitcher's Flog Idle Mind deals 66 damage per focus point in your possession, scaling from 66 to 198 damage. This is a Tier 5 Upgraded Unit. 66 damage for 1 Focus Point. This does not scale with model count, with stats, or anything. It's just 66 damage.

And the other Concubus ability? Bewitch into Passivity. Whch disables all focus point generation for the enemy for 1 FP. You put a Bewitcher with a Dungeon hero with the stance skill to generate one FP every turn and buff her initiative? Congrats you have permanently silenced all FP skills on the enemy. While this does have the limit of only affecting the living (and therefore sucking against Necro), this is an outright comedic effect for 1 FP.

Base Concubus can spend 1 FP and its turn to silence one unit from using its skills. Bewitcher can turn off focus point generation as a concept. What.

Finally, Mistress of Chains Earn Your Abilities, Dear, for some reason doesn't affect the enemy at all, and instead quadruples her Focus Point generation. Yes, stacking multiple stacks of one Mistress of Chains to machinegun focus points for Grove is real. Yes it is dumb.

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4. Where Summons? Why non-functional snowball mechanic?

Schism gets an absolute ton of summon synergy. It has laws that give you bonus summons. It has abilities that let you turn your own summon corpses into permanent units. And yet, it has no intrinsic way to summon anything.

Instead it gets abilities like Arbitrator doing 25 non-scaling damage to all enemies (what.) and no less than nine iterations of "Turn an ally corpse into another copy of this unit, you keep them after battle". Yes, nine, there's a different variation for each of the upgrades as well as the base form.

This is either an ability that actively doesn't help you win, instead just making your misplays less painful, or janky summon synergy that lets you kill your own summons in order to manufact units from them. Or uh... would, if the most readily available summon left a corpse. Because the Avatar line does not leave a corpse. And again, the summon spells that scale with Spell Power aren't in Arcane.

The core concept here is getting your own stacks wiped to transform them into other units. And while this works with Ra'Shoth (on account of them being hilariously bad), their better upgrade option makes them ranged, and also they're one of the units who actively wants to do this.

I can see the vision here, devs, but this isn't a good idea. If this does work, you are asking players to micromanage as many fights as possible to kill and resurrect their Ra'Shoth or Summons as Grand Shoth or Abyssal Envoys, which is a long and tedious process of friendly firing and reviving your own units alongside FP farming. Or it doesn't work (like currently) and that's nine largely dead skills.

Devs, do you want people suiciding their own summons to revive as more and more Grand Shoth to blob wildly out of control through extensive micromanagement of every fight? Does this sound like a fun multiplayer experience when a player spends several extra hours of their life to kill Starchildren for Shothblobbing?

Make these abilities actual summons instead of some weird on-death snowball thing. Don't let players keep them after battle, but instead let Ra'Shoth breed like rabbits in order to get that swarm experience they are so clearly trying to go for.

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Schism is a fun idea both visually and conceptually. I love the broad concept of it. The visuals. The flavor. But it's gonna need balance tuning. +1 mana cost isn't a real passive.

But that's what Early Access is for. Balance tuning.

This isn't a knock on the concept of Focus Points, but rather on the cost being attached to every skill.

Focus Point skills need to compete with the unit's basic attack, with every other focus point skill in your roster, and with the free action that is Heroic Strike. To be worth using, it needs to be more valuable than a basic, more valuable than using it on another ability, and more valuable than just spamming Heroic Strike unless your generation is better than the cost of HS.

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Let's use Temple as an example. As one of the simpler factions, they're good at illustrating this.

Fine Bolts on the Crossbowman costs 2 FP and grants a +20% damage boost without ending his turn.

Valiant Cry on the Griffon costs 2 FP increases Attack by 5 and Initiative by 1 and does not end the turn.

Inner Glow on the Lightweaver costs 1 FP increases Attack by 5, Defense By 5, Speed and Initiative by 1 and does end the turn.

Infuse Armor on the Inquisitor costs 2 FP increases Defense by 5, Speed by 1, acts as a self dispel and does not end the turn.

Celestial Flail on the Inquisitor costs 1 FP and makes your attack hit multiple targets.

Refract and Reflect on the Angel costs 1 FP and copies all buffs on the Angel to another unit.

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Wow that is a lot of 2 FP abilities that do not end the turn. While on the surface the Lightweaver's buff is stronger, it consumes the Lightweaver's action, and their units already come with tailored buffs. Furthermore, many of the buffs are not as good as they seem.

The Griffon possesses a base Initiative of 9, placing it as one of the higher initiative units in the game. Dungeon only beats it with the Cave Dragon, and the Griffon's self buff is too weak to close that gap. Dread Knights in Necropolis are tied and Vampires beat it by too much to make up for. Qilin are tied and Phoenixes win by too much to contest (they are 14 lmao). Qilin also have their own initiative booster with much stronger effects. For hive, the buff lets it tie hornets. And for Schism, Abyssal Envoy is the only unit that matters.

For a buff that must compete against every other 2 FP buff on the list, is a combination of +5 Attack and beating exactly 3 units in Initiative worth it? Will this +5 Attack do more damage than two Heroic Strikes, +20% damage or two multi-target AoEs?

And moreover, does having every buff save one consume 2/3 of the Focus Points gauge make the game more or less interesting? I would wager less, because you are spending 2/3 of your Focus Point supply on effects that are small stat tweaks for a single unit. It significantly limits your decisions per turn, as you will typically only have one buff.

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Moving over to Schism, we have another similar situation. The Arbitrator has Command: Reposition and Command: Fear for 2 Focus Points. These are both very strong abilities that do not end the turn, letting you control the battlefield. This is excellent, fun and powerful, and Focus Points prevent you from spamming them. The player must make very real decisions on if moving an ally or an enemy is worth it.

The Concubus meanwhile has Handcuffs, spending one focus point and its turn (as a T5 ranged attacker that is a valuable turn), in order to prevent a unit from using Focus Point for two turns. Not an army, one single unit.

Consider what happens if you cast Handcuffs on Temple. Who do you target? So many of them have the exact same style of +5 to Stat + Extra effect buffs. You are spending the turn of a 14-20 damage ranged attacker and a Heroic Strike or half a Command in order to lock out a buff that will simply have them pick a different buff. It is extremely unlikely to outvalue a 14-20 ranged attack + spending that FP elsewhere.

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By putting every active ability behind Focus Points, decision making is heavily weighed against most abilities. Every ability must compete with every other ability on every other unit you bring + just basic attacking unless it does not end the turn + the potential dumping of points into Heroic Strike + any spells and effects that use FP.

And if everything is forced to compete against everything else for a very limited resource, there will be clearcut winners and losers, and most abilities aren't tempting to click because of the cost. Some abilities should just be cooldown based, so that they don't get overlooked and go unused.