I just need to remember to keep this fact in mind then.

I still find many of these changes perplexing, but at least I can understand why now.

I will admit to having pulled the trigger too early here then. Knowing they still repair buildings is enough to ease what issues I had made up in my own mind.

Such is life with deadlines I suppose. At least a potential Minotaur Runemaster character of mine will serve a fine purpose until the next patch then.

Much appreciated.

Another sign of me being trigger-happy then. Just checked it out a bit and saw the Undead got a black-skinned Dark Elf lady avatar. Perhaps it would be fit to add a recolored portrait of the existing Female Dark Elf portrait available to the Undead, to match their black-skinned version? Hardly important, least of all to me, but it would fit I think.

That is a great addition as far as I am concerned, many thanks for making it possible. Additions like this I can very much enjoy, even if I will simply have to live with other ones.

Glad to be of assistance, amidst all my rambling and complaining.

Sartek bless ya, just what I wanted. I guess I am just allergic to change, but The Protectors is too good overall to pass up on.

Keep up the good work.

Edit: If it wouldn't be too much trouble, may I hear the thoughts behind the changes made to the Pyromancy school? Particularly why Soul Flame and Berserk was replaced? I have a hunch, but it can be eye-opening to have things explained at times.

Gotta say Archery/Throwing/Magery is a sweet addition though, much kudos there.

Edit 2: Noticed a buncha stuff, along with Berserk being moved to Chaos magic rather than removed entirely. I will miss whenever I use Pyromancy. The abundance of range 2 units still perplex and confuse me. But it is what it is.

How difficult would it be to modify the skills of races/classes, by the by? Or how it is done, rather? I find it a bit disappointing how Poison/Contagion/Necromancy mages get a bunch of variations, but for the rest of the schools it tend to be single-school only. Some more dual-school classes would be nice to have, but if it is easy to tweak or add classes I can fix that for myself.

Is it time-consuming to add more avatar options for the races? After chargenning a few times there definitely felt like there could be a few extra options for some of the races. Like a Scorpion Priest for The Swarm, maybe a Lizard Rider for Ssrathi, or a Doom Knight for Undead or the like. Or a redhead woman for the Barbarians, to match one of their new portraits. Just wishful dreaming I suppose.

Though speaking of class/race skills again, if there is one thing in particular I find bothersome it is when a race or class or combination thereof ends up with 2 or more 'slayer' skills, as in bonus damage against specific targets. Deathknight and Paladin are two prime examples there. But then I don't really like any of the 'slayer' skills, so that might just be a case of personal distaste. Though I do have a question about them. Can't remember if it was The Protectors, or some unofficial patch, but I think one of them had 'slayer' skills also apply a lesser bonus to your units, and not just for your hero? If that was/is the case, I think I can see some use in them, but if that's a thing it would be great if the tooltips reflected it.

Rambling again, as I often do, might edit in some more rambling after some more playing. Again, just me airing my thoughts about things, feel free to disregard it.

No worries, we might be seeing that avatar edited in 0.8.8. It doesn't really deviate in looks enough from the standard Dark Elf. As for portraits we always try to find anything we can add every patch, rest assured that there will be something you'll like or something that'll fit if not in the current patch then in future ones.

In TPC Pyromancy is more of an offensive spell sphere that focuses on damage and destruction. It was decided that the vanilla spell list had one buff spell too many and Soul Flame got kicked and replaced with Rites of Dawn. As for Berserk we felt that as it sacrificed the user's own units, it fitted Chaos Magic more in general and got shifted there (We thought Firebreath was enough in the offensive buff department. As an unfortunate sidenote, Firebreath got a bug in 0.8.7 where it deals +50% damage instead of 50% of the unit's base damage. This will be fixed in 0.8.8). The Pyromancy spell slot was then replaced with Conflagration, which burns away literally everything over time (even buildings!). It has a higher damage output than normal damage spells but takes more time to do the damage.

It's hard-coded I'm afraid, but I do sympathize. There have been many times where I too have wanted to combine certain spells with others but the game presents no way to do so. The spell researches will help a lot I think as they slowly give access to certain other spell spheres. Perhaps there could either be a class which can choose its spell spheres or classes which have their own spell lists rather than just a single element? Regardless, in future I'm certain the way spell spheres and their spells are attained will likely be changed in future.

It varies from very easy all the way to diabolically hard. Some units share colours over multiple parts, some have desaturated grey colours which are hard to alter whilst others are a simple colour shift / filter. More avatars are planned though, including a Scorpion Priest.

That change was supposedly made in one of the unofficial patches, but never worked. I think it could be interesting to see this change working in the protectors. I'll upload the idea into the dev doc.

Thanks for your input, it's very much appreciated!

I am content with the current selection, but seeing new additions would be great all the same, which makes me happy to hear there are no plans of stopping in that regard. As far as I recall, the model in question needs to have a 'casting' animation in order to work as a Hero? If that is the only requirement of note, I'm sure you folks have already thought of most of the following:

Rune Priest for Dwarf/Dark Dwarf?
Summoner, that Daemon General, for Daemon/Dark Elf/Undead? Perhaps with a black robe and white or grey headwear?
Spider Priestess, obviously for Dark Elf, but can likely work for Undead and some others too?
Ice Maiden for High Elf, maybe a green-robed one for Wood Elf/Fey?
Naga for Ssrathi, possibly Plague as well?
Goblin Shaman for Orc?
Moonlord for all Elves, Fey, Knights and Empire? A little paint and the guy can go in a lot of races I think
Minotaur Shaman for Minotaurs, I for one would greatly appreciate this one, as 'Minotaur Battlemage' is one of my favorite things to play as.

I'm just horking up as many ideas that came to mind, didn't really consider how difficult any of them might be to implement, though I did try to pick ones that could fit into multiple races rather than one-offs.

I am sad to see Soul Flame go, but given the past decisions to tone down things like the Training research, I guess I can see one reason to axe quick XP gains for multiplayer reasons. I think. Not a dealbreaker for me at least.

I am however slightly fanny-flustered about Berserk being moved away from Pyromancy and over to Chaos. But then, I really liked Pyromancy because of its mixture of damage and support spells. And I'd say nothing quite says 'damage and destruction' like setting your own dudes on fire to make them fight harder, as far as I'm concerned. To see Berserk removed only for a, from my point of view at least, extremely gimmicky spell such as 'Rites of Dawn' is a bit frustrating. But then, Berserk was one of my favorite spells ever, and I've never really been a huge fan of Chaos magic, so I am quite biased in this matter.

I'll deal, but I will probably not make Pyromancers as often as I once did. Though on a more positive note, I got to say you managed to redeem Ice Magic in my eyes all because of a single spell. Ice Magic have, to me anyways, always felt incredibly lackluster and I've never wanted to play around with it due to its spell selection. Frostblades, or whatever the +Armor/+Cold Damage buff was called, was a big enough thing for me to consider picking up an Ice Mage. Or at least give Elementalist a try. I like buffs.

Though speaking of buffs, I notice that Stoneskin give +20 Armor at level 1, while the tooltip says +10 I believe? It is an incredibly powerful spell, and it makes Defense Lore from Divination feel weak in comparison. I assume this is an oversight of some sort, either the value of the buff or the description itself. My Minotaur Runemaster certainly ain't complaining, but it does feel a bit off all the same.

Likewise, I noticed a sharp decline in the +Level gains for spells like Group Heal. I could understand 50 base and +50 per level was too strong, but I feel torn about getting my usual White Mage retinue after the change. If it was 50 base and +25 or +20 per level, or 60 base and +20 per level, that'd be decent enough in my book. Admittedly, this is a very specific case, and more for singleplayer than multiplayer purposes, so I'll deal if no changes will be made in that regard.

But while I am at it speaking about Retinue and scaling spells, would it be possible for you folks to give the Ssrathi Naga a small upgrade? Replace her current 'Protect' ability, which to the best of my knowledge, that doesn't scale as she ranks up with 'Defense Lore' that does scale instead? Maybe consider a second spell for her too, though I have no idea what might fit in without causing balance issues.

But I am rambling at this point. Moving on!

Ah, a shame. I could've dealt with it easily enough had the existing Hero Editor actually worked with The Protectors heroes. I mean, I guess it does, but not without some issues, such as not being able to select certain skills or the like. Ah well.

Perhaps more 'multi-school' caster classes could be considered? Maybe not three like Elementalist and certainly not four like Archmage, but dual-school ones like Lichelord and Priest are pretty great in my opinion. Of course, if races still had racial spell schools that'd solve a lot of things for me, but I recall you folks had decided to purge those for a reason. Though as to not just sit here and ramble, I could throw up some hastily cobbled together ideas for 'dual-school caster classes'.

Conjurer: Some combination of Summoning, Illusion and Nature? Most likely with 'Gate' tacked on.
Inquisitor: Divination and Pyromancy, with one 'caster' skill such as Energy, along with Witch-Hunter plus another 'combat' skill perhaps?
Artificer: Alchemy and Geomancy, if there ever were two schools I could see working together, thematically speaking, it would be these two.
Auroramancer: Illusion and Ice Magic, for that 'aurora borealis' vibe?

Diabolist/Warlock: Summoning and Chaos Magic? The current 'Warlock' feels to me like it got an identity crisis in my eyes, especially with Witch-Hunter being in there while Summoning quite clearly is heretical. I'd personally rather see Warlock as a dual-caster than some sort of poorly named 'renegade inquisitor' as its current skills imply.

But I am rambling again. Onwards!

If it is possible to implement, I'd say it would finally make the 'slayer' skills feel useful in my book. The Protectors have already gone a long way in cutting out the useless chaff in regards to skills, and I for one would much appreciate seeing them either further restricted(max one per class, for instance) or made apply to a lesser degree to ones units. But again, I am quite heavily biased in this matter, so my apologies for that.

Honestly, I will probably keep on rambling every so often until you folks get tired of me and tell me to shut my gob. WLBC3 is one of those games I keep coming back to, and overall The Protectors just gives me so much more to toy around with. I can't quite help but to ramble on and smear my short-sighted opinions all over the place, unfortunately!

There will be some spellcaster styled models but not for every race. The problem with them is that they look weird in melee because they don't physically attack, they wave a staff. The only reason we got away with the Ssrathi Priest one is because it thrusts its staff out so it looks like a melee attack too. The only other unit like this to my knowledge is the Scartauri Priest. Units like the Runemaster and Minotaur Shaman have been thought of but may not make it due to that issue sadly.

We've designed Pyromancy to focus more on direct spell damage rather than self-sacrificial buffs. Chaos Magic is the spell sphere that has some of the most powerful self-sacrifice styled spells in it so Berserk satisfied that purpose rather well.

It's not in the least bit gimmicky. Controlling weather in The Protectors has quite a powerful effect and can give/take from 3-9 combat to units depending on race. Even if it doesn't give anything, it's still powerful just because it stops the enemy from having weather which benefits them more. For example, Dark Dwarves don't care about night storms which give humans -9 combat (-3 from night, -3 from rain and -3 from storm). With just a small amount of mana, humans can cast Rites of Dawn which changes the weather to day fine, changing that combat debuff from -9 to 0. There are absolutely loads of races out there that have actually been waiting for a spell like this, and combined with this spell sphere it has encouraged plenty of new hero-class combos to consider. Changing Soul Flame to Rites of Dawn was one of the most beneficial changes The Protectors made in 0.8.7.

This was another change that didn't make it in 0.8.7. Defense Lore will be combined with Elemental Lore and a new Divination spell will emerge in the spare slot.

They won't. Healing magic was one of the most broken, overpowered spell spheres in The Protectors. In vanilla WBC, healing spells would rarely manage to provide near the maximum value they could because HP in general was considerably lower. In TPC, HP increased, especially for 1UV melee units where it basically doubled. In vanilla healing was already very good with the right combo but in TPC ALL healing spells became completely broken (not just the ones in the healing sphere, but also Gemberry, Cauterize and even Cure). The result was that healing spells got nerfed, but that by no means resulted in healing magic becoming useless. It's still used very frequently and can still grant an incredible amount of value for a comparatively low amount of mana.

She does indeed need a bit more potency, thanks for the suggestion! It will be added to the dev log.

We had almost the exact same idea except Summoning + Necromancy + Nature all in one. The concept is still very much unfinished and any suggestions for skills and perks would be highly appreciated.

This is very similar to the Pyromancy/Healing class someone wanted over on The Protectors forums. Now that I know something like this is highly wanted, it shall be made! Any suggestions for unique skills and perks etc are always welcome.

Believe it or not this was also something that was on the drawing board!

Ice Magic may feel like it needs another class. I'm not 100% convinced by a merge with Illusion but who knows, anything is possible. Perhaps a spell sphere which combos more strongly with Ice Magic could make new class? Although what that would be idk. Ice Magic is tricky.

Uploaded on the dev doc, thanks again!

Don't worry about it, it's very helpful for us devs. With plenty of feedback we can make this great game even better!

There is a changelog which can be found here: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/changelog-087 but there are no documents which explain any of the changes. If wanted, I can help to explain the changes or answer any questions about them.

A cast/convert animation can easily be made for any unit. The main reason why we're keeping away from cavalry/flying avatars at the moment is because of balancing and a lack of models (using recolours isn't an option due to future plans). I imagine if this ever becomes a reality it will be a very late change (v1.0+).

Oh, that's nice
Mostly changes I'm not sure about are the changes to the three knights of the knight races, mostly the change to the knight lord's damage
Also, dark dwarves siege weapons range, the flame cannon and the hellbore, seem to have a really low range for a siege weapon, probably there's a reason for that, but I can't find it, sorry to be bothersome

The three knights received renames, vulnerability changes and in the case of the Knight Lord (now Paladin), a damage change as well to make them unique and to provide the Knights with more damage types (Knights are now vulnerable only to Cold instead of being strictly inferior to the Champion and Lord). Previously all Knights only had Slashing damage and the Lord was almost strictly better than the other two knights. Whilst that is still partially the case (Lords tend to yield more value than Champions and Champions than Knights), there are now circumstances in which using the less powerful and lower costing Knights is actually a better tactical option.

No worries. Almost all ranged units in the game have less range than in vanilla because they were instigating the Ranged>Melee clause. Flame Cannons and to a lesser extent Hellbores formed an impenetrable barrier that was able to out-range and destroy anything, including bases.

This is amazing. Keep up the good work.

And I find it silly that my Wood Elf Ranger uses his spear to fire arrows. Or that all of my mage Heroes swing a weapon around to fire off some elemental flavor of projectile. Sass aside, I for one would prefer the variety provided by 'caster' models regardless of the AI having moments of derp and choosing a High Elf Ice Maiden for their Warrior hero. I can agree with the arguement of it potentially being a lot of work to get the models refitted for Hero-purposes, but that they might aeshetically missmatch is the lessest of evils I'd say.

But I am biased and opinionated!

Pyromancy ought to be mostly about burning things up anyways, on that I can agree, and I can accept that vision for The Protectors. Thank you for taking the time to explain to me why Rite of Dawn is a big deal. I still find it gimmicky, but at least it is a gimmick with well-designed intent behind it.

Defense/Elemental Lore being combined is pretty good to hear, especially in conjunction with the Naga's Protect being potentially replaced with this new hybrid buff. Cutting out chaff spells and replacing them with better but not broken ones is good. I approve.

That is a pretty good case for why they were toned down. It makes sense to tone it down, but I find the collateral of retinued White Mages and Unicorns a bit saddening.

Personally I would vouch against Summoning + Necromancy in the same class, as the two are both nearly 100% summoning schools. Sure, different units, but there would be no variety in such a combination. Nature I can see working with Summoning or Necromancy because of it having some notable spells not of summoning flavor, such as Gemberry and Call Lightning which would provide at least a little spell variety.

That, and I find 'tri-school' caster classes more of a bother than it is worth it. Look at Elementalist as example; while I am fond of the combination of magic schools, just how many 'caster' skills does it have that actually helps with casting spells? Admittedly, a lack of skills supporting the casting of spells does help in keeping the hybrid caster 'wide but shallow' in terms of spells it can cast, so there is that.

Conjurer: Summoning, Nature, Gate, Lore, Energy or Ritual

As far as using the name 'Inquisitor' is concerned, I'd lean towards Pyromancy/Divination thematically, in order to locate(divine) and purify(with fire) heresy, and to make it more combat oriented. A Pyromancy/Healing magic class sounds more like a 'Purifier' and more magic-based than the combat-based Inquisitor, thematically speaking, in my opinion anyhow.

Looking forward to seeing the Artificer in the future then. I imagine it would have the aforementioned Alchemy/Geomancy schools, and while I am personally not a fan of Engeering it could fit, that or just go for the skill that gives mechanical/Golem units extra XP. Possibly with Smelting, to make it more of a caster/economy hybrid class? As for magic related support skills I'd lean towards Lore over Energy if a choice would have to be made.

I can imagine it being tricky to find something for Ice Magic to combine with, though there was a fairly simple reason why I chose those two to go together; they provide different things. Ice Magic is clearly more damage based of the two, and Illusion is more supportive, if anything I imagine 'hybrid' classes to be more flexible than specialist ones. At least as far as magic is concerned.

Looking forward to seeing what Warlock turns into.

I had two-thirds of this reply written up since over a month ago, but then procastrination hit. Haven't really touched The Protectors in a while either since last time, but I might sometime soon. If I get any more dumb ideas, I'll let you folks know.

We've yet got plans for the Elementalist. He will likely have a perk which will either allow him to be better with damage spells or with elemental summoning spells.

Sadly this may not be happening next patch. We're looking into some fundamental hero balancing and design issues which could result in a change to the entire hero system. Maybe the new Warlock will make it into 0.8.9.

I'd recommend checking out The Protectors Forums or our Discord channel if you want faster and immediate responses respectively. You'll always be up-to-date in our Discord channel with the latest TPC news and can also take part in multiplayer matches and polls! It's kind of like a real-time forum.

The Protectors version 0.8.8 has finally been released!

Download: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors
General Changelog: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/changelog-088
Quest Changelog: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/quest-changelog-088

Merry Xmas everyone! See you on our discord server: https://discord.gg/vqVqssE and on the battlefield, of course.

The Protectors version 0.8.8a patch has just been released!

Download: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/downloads/tpc-beta-v0-8-8a-patch
Changelog: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/changelog-088a

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.

The Protectors patch 0.8.8b has just been released!

Download: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/downloads/tpc-beta-v0-8-8b-patch
Changelog: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/changelog-088b

This hotfixes most multiplayer issues that were brought to our attention. Now, let's battle!

Our new article 'The Protectors: Why we did what we did' parts 1 and 2 are now available over on our ModDB page! If you were ever wondering why we made the changes we did, look no further, the answer you're seeking is there!
Part 1: https://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/the-protectors-why-we-did-what-we-did-part-1
Part 2: https://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/features/the-protectors-why-we-did-what-we-did-part-2