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[and I think that switching the 0 and 10 valor abilities wouldn't unbalance things]

2012: Ross

Change the order of Relentless and Augment Superior (or Flash).

2009: Iamsock

The way that I see the Fighter Mage right now and with his current abilities, he benefits more from the spells that are not augmentation based. Particularly, manipulation and destruction spells (maybe even summon as well, as they tend to be just as deadly as some destruction spells).

It's fairly easy to get into a position (teleport or flash) to either set up a turn with a high probability to kill an opposing mage with destruction/summons or wound him enough to imprison/sleep/ice shards and set up a kill next turn (provided he isn't also a fighter mage). God help the poor mage if you have a mana surge in there as well.

None of the above are augmentation spells, but in my mind they are the usual MO of the Fighter Mage. What I think would help the situation, without actually hurting the Fighter Mage significantly would be to switch the 0 valor and 10 valor abilities.

Think about how willing you'd be to be to put your Fighter Mage in danger early on in the game if you were just as able to be beat upon, time walked (stunned) and then beat upon again.

I think this would promote a more natural growth of the Fighter Mage over time/valor. Sending in buffed guardians to earn valor, growing into a major physical attack threat. All of the other mages have a 0 valor passive that adds something to their respective magic, and I think that switching the 0 and 10 valor abilities wouldn't unbalance things at all. Personally, I would rather have to face a majorly buffed end game hero than one that can jump a mage and easily live to talk about it right off the bat.

What about the spells we talked about years ago having characters move backwards in a straight line into the nearest wall? Also, isn't there already a spell that removes a chunk of wall?

Easy fix: make any healing spell roll die (more die that the gaurenteed as of now) vs. the armor of your unit trying to be healed, having successes heal a point of damage. I would exclude the paladin from this, since it would pretty much obselete her ability.

Edit: having a restoration mage that heals would be god-awful. Having a restoration mage that modifies defense, add/remove buffs, causes resoration spells affect all friendlies in range, or something based upon the restoration cards (like every mages speciality) perhaps choosing to flip the top card of the deck until you are assured a restoration spell.

I worked with Ross a long time ago on the story, but I don't think he even really looked at or got the story line. A semi-professional writer and I came up with a great background if anyone's interested in checking it out.

What does rank have to do with it? Especially 10 points. Move to cover?

After reading the changes posted, I have to say that it seems like everything is getting nerfed. The way that MMORPGS and games have had success is making things balanced is through buffing the underused classes or abilities and bringing everyone up to a higher level of awesomeness. Bringing everything down, hindering abilities, making them less die, chance of failure sounds like it would dilute the game experience.

I do agree with the more life and lower defense, that's either a break even or a slight buff to everyone, but taxing spells or character's abilities isn't the way to go. If you kept on this path, then every new character that comes out would have these severe limitations to be 'meh'.

I would boost abilities or characters instead of nerfing. Instead of making spells weaker in abstract, make mages defense versus them better? If mages are getting one-shotted, give them some sort of way to stop that...such as maybe a defensive 5 valor ability. So far the summoner has the only defensive valor ability, and one flesh golem spell in the entire deck. These are just ideas, but I know I would rather play with uber powerful spells/guardians/mages than people who fail 30% of the time or roll over to getting hit with spitballs.

Added from a thread I posted a long time ago

Fallen Angel
0 Str
14 Def
6/6 HP

0 Valor -  (Passive) Unholy Motivation: Recovery spells cost 1 more mana to cast. Fallen Angel recieves  +1 Str for each space moved until end of turn.
5 Valor - (Cost 1 Card and 1 Valor) Edict: Inflict 2 damage on target visible ally, Fallen Angel recieves +1 Str, Def, or HP permanently
10 Valor - (Cost 2 Cards) Eclipse: All characters recieve -1 str and -2 def until the start of your turn.
15 Valor - (Passive) Dark Ascension: Fallen Angel's movement increases to 8 and may move over, but not land on, walls and other characters.

It would be pretty sweet if at 15 valor the character model changed to have wings and some sort of darker look.

Doomsayer
3 Str
14 Def
6/6 HP

Temporary Insanity - (Cost 1 Card) Target enemy character performs an attack on a surrounding character.
Incite Fear - (Passive) Doomsayer's Str becomes the distance between the target and its nearest ally. (Stays at 3 if no other allies present)

This one is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. You won't place your characters next to each other since that will leave you open for the first ability, and if you move too far apart, the doomsayer's passive will...hurt.

Forgotten Knight
3 Str
13 Def
5/5 HP

Incorporeal - (Passive) Only odd numbered rolls can damage the Forgotten Knight.
Phantom Strike - (Cost 2 Cards) Until end of turn, characters hit by the Forgotten Knight may no longer recover HP for the remainder of the game.

Here's my take on a new hybrid hero mage and some potential guardians:

Fallen Angel
0 Str
14 Def
6/6 HP

0 Valor -  (Passive) Unholy Motivation: Recovery spells cost 1 more mana to cast. Fallen Angel recieves  +1 Str for each space moved until end of turn.
5 Valor - (Cost 1 Card and 1 Valor) Edict: Inflict 2 damage on target visible ally, Fallen Angel recieves +1 Str, Def, or HP permanently
10 Valor - (Cost 2 Cards) Eclipse: All characters recieve -1 str and -2 def until the start of your turn.
15 Valor - (Passive) Dark Ascension: Fallen Angel's movement increases to 8 and may move over, but not land on, walls and other characters.

It would be pretty sweet if at 15 valor the character model changed to have wings and some sort of darker look.

Doomsayer
3 Str
14 Def
6/6 HP

Temporary Insanity - (Cost 1 Card) Target enemy character performs an attack on a surrounding character.
Incite Fear - (Passive) Doomsayer's Str becomes the distance between the target and its nearest ally. (Stays at 3 if no other allies present)

This one is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. You won't place your characters next to each other since that will leave you open for the first ability, and if you move too far apart, the doomsayer's passive will...hurt.

Forgotten Knight
3 Str
13 Def
5/5 HP

Incorporeal - (Passive) Only odd numbered rolls can damage the Forgotten Knight.
Phantom Strike - (Cost 2 Cards) Until end of turn, characters hit by the Forgotten Knight may no longer recover HP for the remainder of the game.

I agree with diesbudt, I don't think i've ever heard of the Summoner's skeleton being a problem. The LOS argument doesn't really hold up, as you could do the same with your own summoning cards.

I think that the problem people have with the +3 heal is that if your mage is gone and you only have guardians left, opposing 15 point summoners become neigh impossible to kill. But the same if pretty much true for all other hero mages as well, but just in a different way. With a mage and any kind of stun or imprisonment, you'll have two free turns of wailing on on the summoner before she can heal, usually not a problem.

There are plenty of cards that also hurt the summoner more than other mages, namely unsummon, meteor swarm, fireball, and blizzard. Certain characters also put a huge cramp in the summoner's play style, number 1 being the barbarian...for obvious reasons. Samurai can dispatch a skeleton for a costly 2 cards, but i've done that more than once. Maybe the warrior is a stretch, but being able to dispatch two summons, or one and wound something else.

No, it's the $25 that I still have in my pocket.  You know... since we can't all be best friends with the developer and such.
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I think that I've more than paid for my hero packs with years of purchasing Sparks and Svedka Vodka for testing sessions.

While teleport does need to be addressed, I still believe that the Fighter Mage needs to be addressed as well. If everyone is hurt by the teleport change, the net effect is no balance change really? (well maybe a little since FM abuses it the best).

Note the top mages on the leaderboard, lets see....FM, FM, FM, FM, FM... Something must be tipping the scales in the Fighter Mage's balance?

There's a thread going around about the optimal team being Psionist, Barbarian, Fighter Mage. What do all of these have in common? Ability to manipulate movement (flash/charge/mind control). It doesn't really matter how much damage/strength somoene has if they can't attack before opposition closes distance and wipes the target out. Add the fact that stunning is another method of closing/making distance, and the fighter mage happens to be immune to this as well.

I'd like to ask why people enjoy using the fighter mage over any other mage? Is it the 4Str and 15Def? Unstunnability? What kind of powers on other mages are better than the fighter mages?

[switch the 0 valor and 10 valor abilities]

The way that I see the Fighter Mage right now and with his current abilities, he benefits more from the spells that are not augmentation based. Particularly, manipulation and destruction spells (maybe even summon as well, as they tend to be just as deadly as some destruction spells).

It's fairly easy to get into a position (teleport or flash) to either set up a turn with a high probability to kill an opposing mage with destruction/summons or wound him enough to imprison/sleep/ice shards and set up a kill next turn (provided he isn't also a fighter mage). God help the poor mage if you have a mana surge in there as well.

None of the above are augmentation spells, but in my mind they are the usual MO of the Fighter Mage. What I think would help the situation, without actually hurting the Fighter Mage significantly would be to switch the 0 valor and 10 valor abilities.

Think about how willing you'd be to be to put your Fighter Mage in danger early on in the game if you were just as able to be beat upon, time walked (stunned) and then beat upon again.

I think this would promote a more natural growth of the Fighter Mage over time/valor. Sending in buffed guardians to earn valor, growing into a major physical attack threat. All of the other mages have a 0 valor passive that adds something to their respective magic, and I think that switching the 0 and 10 valor abilities wouldn't unbalance things at all. Personally, I would rather have to face a majorly buffed end game hero than one that can jump a mage and easily live to talk about it right off the bat.

If there is ever a moment in your life that you could go back in time and stop...it would be introducing tor to travian. God only knows how many hours that one 5 minute introduction consumed...

Centaur

1s 14d 6hp
3x 1 die attack.
(Flight?)
2x sprint distance

WOW, i hope that this was an intentional reference to my flying centaur of doom that pretty much broke one version of the very early board game. Centaur + Flight + Enrage = certain death to all.

Some other things that dies touched on but I wanted to say some more:

Line of sight

LOS is the most important part of this game, on opponents turns you should always be using the LOS tool (the eye button on the bottom of the screen) to figure out possible ways to attack your opponent's weak spots.

Movement

This goes along with line of sight as well, barring some defensive buffs, warrior protect/shield, you should have a very good reason for putting your mage within 5 movement spaces of multiple  enemy characters. This is more true in FFA games, where multiple people have turns to gang up on your mage.

Also, be aware of spells such as blizzard, meteor swarm, and especially fireball. It's generally a good idea to not put all of your characters next to each other, or if possible, not all in a position to get wrecked by aoe spells or ever lightning bolts.

Sprinting

You can always rely on sprinting giving you 1 space minimum, so try to use that to your advantage, either by keeping your mage out of enemy LOS, or closing that last 1 square to get in range for a devestating spell like touch of death or disentegrate.

Attacking With Your Mage

Never forget that you can add 2 extra dice from your mage's physical attack if you don't need to sprint away. This also goes along with the, attack before you move if possible with any character. Lots of people make this mistake, and you want to maximize the possibility of inflicting damage. Even if your opponent is shielded, if you don't need to sprint, attack anyways before moving.

Opening Hands

If you have a crummy opening hand, always remember you can discard cards and you will draw cards up to your remaining mana at the end of the turn. Forgo any casting of spells, discard 3 cards that you don't want and you'll look at 3 more cards at the end of the turn. I actually prefer this to casting a random summon/augmentation even with ok hands on the first turn.

Card Combos

Figure most of them out for yourself, but here are some of the best (i'm leaving out any combos that have to do with Mana Surge/Meditate as there are pretty ridiculous things you can do with that):

Teleport + demonic lash/ice shards/imprison/sleep: basically allows for a quick opposing mage kill or two turns of beating down on their mage out of nowhere. Particularily good with Fighter Mage.

Multiple 1 cost destruction spells: nuff' said

Gateway +fireball: Lots of maps will be vulnerable to this combination, potentially wrecking a whole team on the first turn

Iron golem +reposition: There's nothing like being able to unload your entire team's attacks on an enemy character while simultaneously positioning your summon to wreak havoc. It also doesn't put one of your characters in terrible danger.

Iron golem/Skeleton + Fireball: connect the dots with your own summon to extend the damage fireball will inflict.