Oathbreaker Preview: Avatars

**Virrago**

Oathbreaker Avatars
By Chuck Kallenbach

Now that we’ve increased the limit on your custom avatars due to popular demand, you’ll have lots of room to experiment with all the new avatar texts for Oathbreaker! We’re adding two new races to bring the total to 12 different races, 24 images and 36 kinds of game text! As we continue to add the player races from EverQuest and EverQuest II, the new ones are Froglok and Erudite.

At long last, the mighty Frogloks, striving to purge villainy and corruption from Norrath, are now available for you to use as avatars. One of the Froglok game texts helps you gain power, and another heals damage on a unit.

This one is designed to help your AvA (avatar-versus-avatar) deck designs. It’s easy to pack a deck with lots of ways to begin combat against an opposing avatar, but the problem comes with subsequent combats on the same turn. When both your avatars are exerted, the combat totals are tied and you both take damage. Here’s a way to boost your attack and make sure you’re dishing out damage without taking any.

You’ll also find as new avatar selections the magical Erudites, accumulating arcane knowledge and mystical power. The Erudite game texts have one that helps your questing decks and another that exerts opposing units.

The third text features a “Whirlwind Attack” kind of effect, with a couple of important differences. Of course, because the game text is on your avatar, it’s always available and reusable. Unlike the Fighter ability, you can’t choose whether you want to use it or not. You’ll have to develop a deck strategy that either doesn’t play any friendly units (like an aggressive quester), or plays units that you don’t mind destroying (like ones that get attack boosts when you play them).

With six new avatar texts in Oathbreaker, you’ll find lots of new possibilities to boost your current decks and maybe even find a few ideas for new ones!

Qutsemnie

Dervish so death machine!

leto

I don't really like these, at least the latter one.

The latter one might as well say win game against opponent unit rush. This game needs to be more about strategy/tactics and not the rock/paper/scissors element of the luck of matchups that decide lots of games.

Eckish

My no unit war quest deck will have to try out that new Erudite for sure =)

polynomialp

Ugh. I thought ogres were bad. Now we have to deal with that dervish. Bad move in my opinion.

davekipp

Dervish seems little over powered.

Rinkadink

That Erudite avatar is so broken, it's silly. Even with the penalty of having only one atk/def mod point, this guy will make questers completely unafraid of charging your built up unit wall.

I suppose there could be units in Oathbreaker that answer this problem, however - units that have no defense, but go spectral during an opponent's quest phase or whenever defending? Maybe items or abilities that neutralize avatar innates?

I could hope for that, but there are no guarantees until we see the set Friday. I'm hopeful, but I still think that ability is way too powerful without some sort of additional penalty.

Leafweir

The erudite probably should have been an 8hp ability like the dark elf that self heals. The dark elf ability isn't even that strong, I haven't seen anyone use it all that effectively. This on the other hand is hugely game altering, that avatar should be fragile for that power level.

Controlor

I like the frog one. Gonna make an interesting ava avatar. Def throw 1 atk 2 def 10 health on it so when it ava's its 3 2 10.

With the erudite i am sceptical. It is going to hurt unit rush thats for sure. However they have to constantly throw up a unit to block any poss rush against it. Otherwise rushers still will just eat them alive. More power from questing + slippers = more units played in a turn. If anything else you can throw up protectors and just let them run into your units and take dmg from that. I dont know about it may be to powerful may not be that effective.

Cerivel

Wonderful, even more arbitrary unit destruction - I thought you guys wanted us to play more legends and other high cost units, putting this sort of avatar power in just discourages people from using any unit based strategy besides rushing with cheap units.

Tahlin

so the new raid with lots of units... going to be pretty easy then?

Sylvan

instead of overkilling all the time that could either say "deal 2 damage to every unit at the quest" or "kill every unit at the quest that has 2 or less hitpoints". i miss this kind of flair in this game. a sorcerer can kill 2 units (maybe 2 bad big dragons) and this avatar can kill even more. so maybe there are dragons and legends at one quest and this little erudite strikes them all down with one single blow - that's just silly.

Maynot

About the only way to stop your units from getting destroyed is to block up quests with Protectors and beat them to the quest completion. But that can be tough especially if they use the FBSS, cloak of flames, and units and abilities that give quest tokens on certain conditions. The Dervish needs to be toned down a bit like you need to destroy one of your units to destroy two of your opponents. Just a suggestion.

Dorafu

Has it occured to you guys that unit rush decks are to strong? I would venture to say that there hasnt been a questing deck that has won a single tournament in a long time. I applaud SoE for trying to change up the game a little which is what expansions are spose to do. My guess is there trying to level out the playing field by giving the quester a chance. Right now a quester has zero chance against a unit rush deck.

The people complaining are the ones that are really good at the game, you guys will be just fine and will adjust your play styles without any problems. How about you let the expansion come out and test the stuff first. Changes will be made like every expansion after the realease, relax...

Dorafu

Leafweir

Dorafu wrote:

Has it occured to you guys that unit rush decks are to strong? I would venture to say that there hasnt been a questing deck that has won a single tournament in a long time. I applaud SoE for trying to change up the game a little which is what expansions are spose to do. My guess is there trying to level out the playing field by giving the quester a chance. Right now a quester has zero chance against a unit rush deck.

The people complaining are the ones that are really good at the game, you guys will be just fine and will adjust your play styles without any problems. How about you let the expansion come out and test the stuff first. Changes will be made like every expansion after the realease, relax...

Dorafu

Making questing more competitive is fine, but this comes at the expense of *all* unit based strategies, not just rushes.