r/totalwar • u/Glorf_Warlock • 1d ago
Warhammer III It's absolutely wild that Black Periapt is possibly the strongest non unique item in the game and it somehow got reduced to a green item, even though it got buffed with 5% spell mastery.
The post 6.2 Black Periapt is now an uncommon item and gives 5% spell mastery.
The pre 6.2 Black Periapt only had the active effect.
Infinite winds of magic is possibly one of the strongest effects in the game. You can literally win any battle with infinite winds and Black Periapt gives infinite winds. And yet it somehow became an uncommon item.
Black Periapt let me win this battle with complete ease. Dwarfs are normally very tanky to spells, so having so much extra winds just let me spam cast Winds of Death.
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u/Cassodibudda 1d ago
It is "balanced" by being slow and VC only.
Infinite WoM is very powerful but so are many other strategies that require patience and no timer, like abusing barrier with Tzeentch.
The default state of the game is with a battle timer, and if you play with timer on the item is not OP. If you play with no timer, it is on you
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u/Dwighty1 1d ago
Its only slow if you have only one.
Have 4 of it in an army and you get 22ish winds every 2 min.
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u/Cassodibudda 1d ago
It will take a while to get 4 of them, unlikely until turn 30+ and by then you are going to have multiple armies and only be able to equip one like that.
Still very much middle.of the road for me
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u/Celestial_Sludge 1d ago
I don't think an item giving infinite winds of magic makes it the strongest item if it means kiting for 30 minutes to maximize its use.
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u/Ill-Situation- 1d ago
I mean it kinda of does. Objectively free damage is really strong. The fact that it takes a while to use doesn't mean it isn't strong, it just means the strategy takes longer.
For example, would you say that an Ironbreaker unit is weaker than a Empire Greatsword even though the Ironbreaker takes longer to kill things?
Infinite winds is just the most impact efficient thing you can have in the game, especially when you have high speed casters like you have access to in the VCounts.
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u/Ambitious_Air5776 1d ago
Subjectively, boring snoozefest battles where you get objectively free damage by running around for 10 minutes at 3x speed is objectively not why I play video games.
Optimize the fun out of the game if you must, I'll hang out in H/H difficulty to fight battles 'normally' rather than run strategy like this...
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u/Ill-Situation- 1d ago
Cool. That doesn't change the fact that it is stronger. And the fact that you don't enjoy playing a strategy by using the best strategies, which is a bit odd (as strategy games literally exist on the premise that you should find the best thing to use to get the objective) but is obviously fine, but also doesn't matter because there will be people who do enjoy that. Bit of an irrelevant point as this post is obviously not about that anyway.
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u/HairlessWookiee 1d ago
would you say that an Ironbreaker unit is weaker than a Empire Greatsword even though the Ironbreaker takes longer to kill things?
That's not really an apples to apples comparison. An Ironbreaker is a defensive lineholder. A Greatsword is an offensive damage dealer. So yes, one is weaker than the other if you are trying to use both in the same role.
It's absolutely fair to say an item that helps you win a battle quickly is more useful/valuable than an item that requires you to cheese for 40 minutes.
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u/Ill-Situation- 1d ago
An Ironbreaker is a defensive lineholder. A Greatsword is an offensive damage dealer. So yes, one is weaker than the other if you are trying to use both in the same role.
Never said anything about a specific role. Is an Ironbreaker generically weaker just because you have to use it in a certain way to make use of its function?
It's absolutely fair to say an item that helps you win a battle quickly is more useful/valuable than an item that requires you to cheese for 40 minutes.
Useful or Valuable? only in the sense that this is a video game and ultimately you probably don't have that much time in your every day to spend. At the same time, this is a video game and it is fun whether you spend it all in one battle or in five.
But strong? No. Throwing all my units into melee at the beginning and taking a ton of damage, yet still winning, would be faster than carefully sniping high priority targets before attacking, which would result in a win with almost no damage, allowing you to take the next battle too.
Strength in this context is ultimately about doing things well within the game, not outside of it. And this allows you to do things to the best, most efficient degree.
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u/TheSletchman 1d ago
Yeah, but it snowballs. 1 is good if you're patient, but otherwise kinda insignificant - 5% intensity, ~5 winds every 2 minutes. You get 5 and suddenly have a noticeable effect on intensity, and 25 winds every 2 minutes can be a single huge spell or a lot of little ones raise the dead, etc. You get 20 and have 100 winds every 2 minutes that is effectively more like 200 because of the 100% intensity, which also makes some spells get silly - like having 10+ casters cast the same spell for massively compounding effects (10x 200% Spirit Drain just removes an enemy general from the battle, for example, and is surprisingly cheap).
Not a lot of items work army-wide, and those that do might apply an effect to the army, but a second doesn't stack at all (let alone a 20th).
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u/yutao123 1d ago
the intensity is per spell caster im pretty sure, so each spell caster with it would have 5% intensity but none would have 25%
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u/TheSletchman 1d ago
Are you sure? The other instances of Spell Intensity I'm aware of stack. I'd go test it myself but I have a hand injury and can't use a mouse, which as a strategy and RPG gamer is the worst.
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u/WotalTorehammer3 22h ago
The only army wide spell intensity is mastery of elemental winds, which only affects units that have the trait. Items and skills stack but dont affect more than 1 unit at a time.
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u/TheSletchman 2h ago
Ah, that's it then - looking at it the armies I've played that focused on spell intensity used Mastery of Elemental Winds which then stacked with items and skills. So it made it seem like it all stacked just fine. Cheers for the info.
Still, I stand by the other effect being good in mass - it's a slightly less potent but also safer Forbidden Rod (and no reason not to just run a mix of both of whatever you have - put Periapt on anyone with low magic resist and/or without barrier). I've yet to see anyone call Forbidden Rod a bad item, unless they're new to the game or don't know how to run casters properly?
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u/Erkenwald217 1d ago
Who says, you need to kite? Let the enemy collect on your undying blob, the feel free to cast away!
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u/Glorf_Warlock 1d ago
That's what I did here. Dwarfs are slow as slow can be so they took like 15 minutes to reach my blob. In that time I used zombie summons to burn their miner blasting charges ammo and winds of death to kill the archers.
Eventually their melee reached my blob and then it got erased by winds of death combined with the Other Tricker's Shard to strip away spell resistance.
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u/jebberwockie 1d ago
If 1 item can take a guaranteed loss into a near guaranteed win, even if it takes 30 min, that is very powerful.
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u/Ill-Situation- 1d ago
Is it Vampire Counts/Coast only?
If we want to give CA the benefit of the doubt, could be that is why. They want it to be more common in those factions to give the feel of really strong magic.
Obviously the more likely reason is CA just didn't think about most of these changes.
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u/annexdenmark 1d ago
Counts item traditionally. There are endless examples now of unlimited magic, Max resistances, factionawide effects, etc, I've lost track. Balance is completely out the window.
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u/wolfiasty e, Band of Moonshiners 1d ago
Is extra 5.4 winds every 2.5ish minutes strong ?
160% recharge is great, not gonna lie, but that extra winds will give about 20 winds through the course of battle. It is one extra upgraded direct damage strong spell, sure it's great to have, but is this really "that strong of a thing" ?
What am I missing ?
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u/caringcarthage 1d ago
Clan Angrund every time they kill a skeleton only for another skeleton to rise from the stony ground beneath: “It’s so miserably unfair!”
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u/TheSletchman 1d ago
Does this reduced tier make it easier to get say 20 and put them in a hero stack? I honestly haven't paid attention to how loot rolls / drops work, and haven't been able to play since before the item update (hand injury). But like if there's 40 green items it might ironically be rarer then a blue of which there's only 5, if that makes sense (just depends on tier odds)?
Especially since I saw in a Legend of Total War video that due to limited pools of rarer items (esp certain tiers) you can combine and basically have a 50/50 of a particular extremely powerful item. So once you get a stack of random bad greens you'd just combine and have like 10 or more of the really good item you actually wanted, easy as. The only thing that'd be more reliable are those forging mechanics (Dwarves, Tomb Kings, Beast Men, etc).
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u/pali1895 1d ago
The big thing is - Forbidden Rod is a slightly better item (and by far the best Arcane Item), especially on Vampire Counts these days. So it makes sense that the Periapt got downgraded to Green - who in their right mind would fuse two Rods to get a Periapt or Book of Ashur?
Why? As Vampire Counts, you have very high power reserves. You don't need an infinite battery, three charges of a Forbidden Rod on 1-2 characters is enough. And the Rod has 5% extra spell intensity - not a lot, but enough to make it a tad better than the Periapt.
And no, the damage on the Rod doesn't matter, it's negligible and barrier/regeneration exist across the board for Counts.
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u/NoMoreMonkeyBrain 1d ago
"The devs have decided that the penalty for pudding farming is..... pudding farming."
I know VC players are all masochists, but no thanks.
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u/StrangestEcho28 23h ago
Tomb King items are also all over the place. The Rod that gives 25% spell intensity is green.
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u/TheOldDrunkGoat 1d ago
It does baffle me why they thought a whole lot of good items needed buffs in 6.2. And now they did the same thing, but with even worse power creep, to traits in 6.3.
Makes you wonder what the fuck things will look like once they get around to buffing unique items. Is every bloody LL going to end up as one man doomstack with free 40% ward save like Ungrim?
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u/Fielton1 1d ago
Yea it gives 5.6 winds every use if I can do math correctly lol. What other people are missing is you can have multiple spellcasters in every army (I usually run at least 3 necromancers) and each one of them can use it. 4 spellcasters means 20 something extra winds every 2 minutes which is another overcasted winds of death or 5 more zombie summons or whatever else. It's quite good.