Sponges should have multiple uses before breaking

Currently a sponge in your inventory breaks after being hit by a water bomb/arrow once. Considering that water arrows cost ten coins apiece and sponges cost fifteen coins apiece while not even fully stopping the stun, it's no secret that sponges in their current state are absolute garbage. I suggest giving sponges five or more uses if the stun reduction time is to remain the same, or one to two uses if the stun reduction were changed to 100%.

Spoiler: Bonus Suggestion

gatu please increase the price of water arrows nobody thinks they're balanced

 

Sponges still wouldn't be worth buying if they had two uses with the current stun reduction time. You pay fifteen gold to negate just half (even less?) of the stun duration of two water arrows, which cost a paltry twenty gold? No, thanks.

 

Sponges are very efficient against rats. Those can prevent an underground tunnel to be destroyed (happened to me twice in a row yesterday).

 

i rather take a burger as archer lol

 

5 uses would be far too many. I think 3/2 would be perfect. Even making it 2 would be big change since its duble of what we had before. Few days ago I actually used sponges against ultimate archer waterarrow spam that was happening and it worked surprisingly well, since none of archer didnt expect me to be ready to slash their faces that fast after being hit by water. I say change it by to 2 for now. It won't be op for sure but it might be really usefull sometimes.

 

I'm just reiterating what I said earlier, but I think doing that would just take sponges from garbage-tier to bad. I think this is something that needs to be tried in a test build and tweaked until appropriately balanced.

 

Thing with sponges is that noone even tries to use them. For me now they are bad but usefull when whole enemy team is archers with water. They were on garbage-tier before last change. Canceling 5 water arrows (50 coins) with 15 coins seems really fucking good. Even too good if you ask me. I agree that testing it would be good idea. Then we wouldn't need all these speculations.

 

i use sponges as a archer, and they are kinda crap. but there isnt anything else against waterspam.

 

HEH.

I love the idea, defiantly think this would make the water arrow counter play a lot more interesting than the current "run the hell away" strategy

One thing to not overlook I feel is the opportunity cost of having a sponge in your inventory slot compared to literally anything else.

I'm actually not adverse to say 3 uses considering its value against a bomb for example, but I agree that 5 may be too much as then it becomes a strong water arrow nerf rather than a sponge buff.

 

Just to clarify, my proposal was to have five uses with the current stun reduction, not to cancel out the full duration of five stuns. This is more like cancelling twenty-five coins using fifteen coins, which makes up for the opportunity cost of having one or more sponges in your inventory when you could have had bombs, mines, water bombs, etc. in that inventory space instead.

 

I feel t3 has made many good points here, contrary to what some of you may think sponges at this point definitely need an anti water buff. I tested out sponges myself when they first came out and was very disappointed by how lackluster of a fix they put in to remedy the issue surrounding water. more often then not you end up getting hit by multiple water bombs/arrows and that one sponge you bought just does nothing in the long run. I think if the devs wont increase the cost of water arrows then they should at the very least increase the amount of hits each sponge can absorb to at least 3. I think that this still wont really solve the issue but it will put a band-aid on it at least. I just want to see if anyone here actually thinks water arrows are totally fine the way they are and need no change, and why. If no one can confidently make a post here defending water with a rock solid and hard to counter argument then i think that its pretty obvious that something should be done about water.

 

Too long; didn't read. Sponges have 4 frames and therefore it'd only make sense with 3 uses. Each frame will be an indicator of the amount of hits it has absorbed. This will be harmonious with absorption of water tiles. I can even implement it if a conclusion is reached (a conclusion I agree with).

As a side note: Water is not imbalanced. It's an effective method to kill exposed enemies. It requires teamwork and skill. It can be avoided - easily. I'm often left impressed when someone kills me while I'm stunned by water. It's one of the few methods the less skilled can use to surprise & kill the skilled ("semi-skilled" fits better) - notice who it is that complains.

 

For archer it would mean spending 40 coins on water to stun an opponent which leaves little room for other options. It could reduce the versatility of archer but 3 uses is a good idea.

 

Fuzzle from what your saying it seems you think that water is ok as is and needs no changes. You say that water is an easy thing to avoid and requires skill to use. I disagree with all of these things as they are clearly incorrect. My reasoning for thinking this is as follows, Water is definitely not easy to avoid if your on the battle field, the fact that they are an aoe, long range accurate stun that is extremely cheap and goes through shields and up to two solid blocks is absurd in my eyes, and is precisely the reason why water is indeed not easy to avoid at all, even just 2 rounds of water most of the time kills at least one knight and can even lead to multiple knights dying because of it. The only way to truly avoid water is if you are inside your own base, and most of the time your in a bad spot if your being forced to hide in your base because of the knights outside with archers behind them that have water arrows. The amount of skill required to even use water is at an absolute minimum, of course someone who just started archer 5 minutes ago cant really use it correctly but they probobly could in about another 10 minutes. How could you possibly ever say that your confused if you died while stunned via water, most of the time when i see someone get stunned by water and there's a knight right there ready to kill him he actually ends up dying. I would say that only about 30 percent of the time does someone stunned by water actually make it out alive. The only thing you mention deals with giving less skilled players a way to kill more skilled players, my argument against this, being that is it really fair letting something like water exist? Something that completely rips control away from whoever gets hit and makes them stay there for so long, while able to be stunned again VERY easily. I just don't understand why such a thing was implemented the way it was, just about everything else in kag has a counter play, but water..... water literally has no counter play at all, you just get hit by it and then you get obliterated, simple as that. If there was to be something implemented to give lesser skilled players an easier time, it should be something that gives them an edge over players around mid tier, but not against all tiers. No matter how good you are, if you get hit by water, your as good as dead, and this is the main crux of the problem right here. I understand if in the end i failed to convince you anything different about water, but i at least am able to convey exactly why water is such an issue to everyone else.

 

What an absurd and pretentious post.

The number of uses a sponge has should be tweaked without regard for the number of frames it has. Saying the number of uses would "only make sense" at three because there's currently no visual way to show damage beyond three uses is beyond ridiculous. As for the I'm-so-good-that-water-is-bad part of your post, sure water arrows require some coordination, but it's such a small amount that a couple of cavemen could coordinate kills with water. If you're focusing on chain slashing there's no way you're going to dodge incoming water arrow spam. You get hit, you die (unless your archer backs you up with water spam at the same time). Water arrow spam is not counterable and is definitely not balanced.

 

I would say it's ~26.23%. I'm an expert - trust me. Even if it is 30% (I don't agree; it is ~26.23%) it's a rather weak weapon, innit? Most of the time 100% of the user's coins are paid. There's no snowball effect: The user can't continuously restock on water ammunition (at least not on their own). For archers, ~20/30 coins spent on water will be wasted team-wise. The rest (~10/30 coins) will be successful investments as someone is killed. A kill is worth <= 30 coins, ~10 seconds of this person's time, and a heart. That's a rather balanced scenario.

That's not true. I often see semi-skilled uncreative / non-innovative plebians say that.

It's simple: They outsmarted me.

How is it ridiculous, if I may ask? Consistency is a key factor in game development.

That's the reason most water ammunition is wasted? Please.

Read the response I gave @kedram.

Also, don't take the insults too seriously.

 

Fuzzle, everything i have said IS accurate. I don't understand why your trying to make everything Ive said look incorrect, as if i didn't know what i was talking about. Right now your actually acting exactly like Maltager, he loves water because he knows how broken it is, and he loves abusing it to no end, when people say anything about water being broken around him he has a little mental breakdown in his head and then he starts in on this personal attack towards the person who is just saying what everyone else thinks. When i say that water has no counter play, i mean that the only real way to avoid water is to stay inside your base, and apparently 2 block thick walls isn't even enough to stop water from affecting people behind the wall, hell i don't think water should penetrate through walls at all, its already broken enough as is. The instant you even attempt to go outside your base your basically fucked if the enemy archer has water. Please don't tell me im wrong because i know im right about this. I suppose the other technical way you could avoid water would be to have another archer on your team also use water but that really shows you how fucking broken it is, the only other way around it is to use the exact same tactic against it. Something like that just feels very off to me and extremely uninteresting, and in the end your not even really avoiding the water, the fight at that point just becomes WHO BOUGHT 20 WATER ARROWS AND WHO DIDN'T. I guess the last thing i can really say to you is this, have you by chance observed what happens in mlk recently? basically every match is just people throwing water at each other over and over again. Could you possibly imagine why that would be fuzzle? Oh no it couldn't possibly be that water is so absurdly overpowered in its current state that it almost makes no sense using anything else other than water, no that couldn't be it at all... in all of my posts i never actually insulted you either, so i dont understand why you would do that here, suggesting that im a non inventive and semi skilled is outrageous.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 14, 2017, Original Post Date: Apr 14, 2017 ---

On a side note you lose allot more than 10 seconds of a persons time, plus gaining 30 coins and a heart. If the fight results in killing everyone that means that you can just move forward with no opposition, in clan wars its a horrible thing to lose all your knights close to your own base, because that means you most certainly have lost, if the enemy builder is good he will termite into the flag room then its gg at that point. and that was all possible because of water, hence another reason why its absurdly broken right now.