Lets talk about the Flaming Angel in the room

[Clement]

One of my local players loves Kaeris and is really successful with her.  Flaming Angel did a LOT to open up her play style since it's a totally unresistable source of burning on enemy models to set up immolate/heat wave or friendly models for easy Truth in Flames on early turns.

[Flippin' Wyrd George]

5 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Have you ever played around with Well Rehearsed on either Howard or Johan when playing them in a crew with Grab and Drop Kaeris? The two inch push at the end of their activation seems like it could come in handy.

Nah only I just started playing around with well rehearsed with the addition of Cojo & using slate ridge mailers and Medical automaton, so I haven't looked into it it with Kaeris yet. I'm sure it's good, but the 5" in-activation threat range on Langston is so much pressure for the opponent. On Johanna it may be useful. 

[Adran]

12 hours ago, KingCrow said:

She does have a lot of abilities she brings to the table but it all requires set up.  To get most of those abilities to work, you or you opponents models need to be on fire. To draw cards, she has to use one of her many 0 actions to draw those cards and models have to be on fire.  The debuffing (from Heat Wave) requires the enemy to be on fire. Her healing requires friendly models to be on fire. The ability for your models to fly and place scheme markers requires your models to be on fire.  Almost all of her abilities require someone to be on fire. lol.  And unfortuntely, Zipp has a better enemy reposition than Kaeris.  Not saying her's isn't bad, just that Zipp got a better one. 

All of this would be SOOOO much better if she had the aura I mentioned to not remove burning the end of the turn. So maybe not rewrite her whole card, just give her or Fire Gamin that aura.  It "fixes" her and would make her amazingly fun to play. 

The trick to her is plan what you want to do. She can require set up, but it depends on what you want her to achieve. I enjoy playing her, but don't really focus on the burning mechanic. If I want to make use of the flying (or the healing), then I pick another model to offer up the burning. I normally only want to use 1 of her (0) actions a turn. Sure, it would be nice to set several models on fire and then turn that all into cards, but that is not worth spending 10 stones on the Emissary for, you can do it in less stones if thats all you are after. (Child can easily get 2 models on fire. Union miners easily set 2 models on fire). 

 

Ever burning flame would be too strong for her. Much too strong I think. If you aren't sure try just letting her take the Sonnia upgrade and see how much she can abuse it. Her abilities based on burning are, I think, more powerful than abilities based on poison, because of the set up required. 

In my opinion, what you are doing is seeing all the possibilities and trying to do them all at once. What she is actually good at is having lots of possibilities but you need to only focus on a few of them each turn. 

 

[KingCrow]

4 hours ago, Adran said:

The trick to her is plan what you want to do. She can require set up, but it depends on what you want her to achieve. I enjoy playing her, but don't really focus on the burning mechanic. If I want to make use of the flying (or the healing), then I pick another model to offer up the burning. I normally only want to use 1 of her (0) actions a turn. Sure, it would be nice to set several models on fire and then turn that all into cards, but that is not worth spending 10 stones on the Emissary for, you can do it in less stones if thats all you are after. (Child can easily get 2 models on fire. Union miners easily set 2 models on fire). 

 

Ever burning flame would be too strong for her. Much too strong I think. If you aren't sure try just letting her take the Sonnia upgrade and see how much she can abuse it. Her abilities based on burning are, I think, more powerful than abilities based on poison, because of the set up required. 

In my opinion, what you are doing is seeing all the possibilities and trying to do them all at once. What she is actually good at is having lots of possibilities but you need to only focus on a few of them each turn. 

 

The major downside to Kaeris is that to do anything, you have to spend 1 (or 2 if they resist) AP just to set up any chance of using her abilities. As soon as models (either friendly or enemy) receive the burning condition, a large amount of her possibilities open up. It is like any master that has lots of options (such as Sandeep, Marcus, any Master that isn't a beater really), you need to decide what you want to do but Kaeris is almost fully restricted from doing anything effective unless something is on fire.  As I previously stated, I recognize that Burning is a very strong condition but for a Master that specializes in using the Burning condition, it doesn't make sense that she has to effectively waste one of her AP's to apply Burning to 1 or 2 models or spend her 0 to hopefully get it on models around her.  It is this fact alone that stops her from reaching a top tiered status.  

Having the ability to keep burning on models would make her AP efficiency extremely better.  Honestly, maybe the  could be something to the effect of when the turn starts, all models within so many inches (~4?) of Kaeris and/or Fire Gamin (~2?) receive the Burning +1 condition. Even this little bit allows her an incredible amount of flexibility with her actions (both 1 and 0 AP). This also give the opponent a chance to remove the burning condition with interacts and such. Wyrd could even errata her Fire Gamin summoning upgrade to give this ability and it would actually be worth the 2 SS cost to take it. 

In my opinion, Kaeris will always be a sub-par master when she requires an AP or two just to set up her actions for anything else. I guess if you just want to focus on Grab and Drop though... that's ok, but for a Master that draws people in because of her ability to Burn things, she falls short in that aspect. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Which is why she shouldn’t have been built on the current burning mechanics in the way she was because they aren’t conducive to interaction the way poison is.

[Clockwork_Fish]

8 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Which is why she shouldn’t have been built on the current burning mechanics in the way she was because they aren’t conducive to interaction the way poison is.

Leaving Kaeris more or less alone and instead tweaking the burning condition sounds like the better return on investment.  It's a condition that's wormed its way into every faction.  In fact, I'd say I'm more concerned for odd duck models like Iggy or the Freikorp Specialist than I am for Kaeris.  Arcanists at least have synergies that make burning something you want.  Poor Iggy's all alone on the Neverborn side of things.

[KingCrow]

1 hour ago, Clockwork_Fish said:

Leaving Kaeris more or less alone and instead tweaking the burning condition sounds like the better return on investment.  It's a condition that's wormed its way into every faction.  In fact, I'd say I'm more concerned for odd duck models like Iggy or the Freikorp Specialist than I am for Kaeris.  Arcanists at least have synergies that make burning something you want.  Poor Iggy's all alone on the Neverborn side of things.

How else could we tweak the burning condition? What's something new that it could be changed to that would not overly effect the game but still have a decent impact? Having to change an entire condition would take a lot of work to balance it out.  I would almost say allow burning to inflict 1/2 of a -1 to skills or something so that it takes at least burning +2 to give a minus -1 but Kaeris has that ability on an entire upgrade.  Not to mention that it is incredibly strong. 

[Fluffaluffacus]

I think thats a problem. I'm seeing people say "Yeah. I play Kaeris perfectly fine. I just ignore all the burning synergy and she is decent." So...The arcanist burning master, who is all about burning...You just ignore burning and basically dont bring any....That upsets me. That would be like saying. "Yeah...The best way to play marcus is to basically bring no beasts." I know its not a direct comparison but like....christ that sounds terrible.

[Tahsarith]

About aura, maybe not like on Mei's totem, but something like just 1 burning stays after resolving?

About burning change, maybe at the end of the turn resolve only half of burning?

[retnab]

5 hours ago, Tahsarith said:

About aura, maybe not like on Mei's totem, but something like just 1 burning stays after resolving?

About burning change, maybe at the end of the turn resolve only half of burning?

Or maybe make it a Condition on one of Kaeris' attacks/triggers, make it so the opponent takes the Burning damage but only reduces it by (to?) 1 once.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Burning is too integrated into the rules to change burning. The solution is to change Kaeris so if she is supposed to be a burning master so that she interacts with burning the way it is and not in the way it would work if it worked like poison.

You’d also need to look at what role she is supposed to serve as well. Is she supposed to be another Rasputia, only fire based? Is she supposed do do dmg, support, scheme run? What is her point?

[KingCrow]

I feel as though Kaeris was Wyrd's attempt the make a generalist master but it fell flat when basically all of her abilities resolved around Burning.  She's got some interesting and fun abilities but the fact that she has to expend AP and/or cards every turn just to set up her abilities is too much.  Especially now with Sandeep.  I alao think It would make more sense to have each of her upgrades improve and focus her upon a certain aspect of her abilities such as damaging or supporting or debuffing.

I still think that an aura of either applying burning +1 at the beginning of the turn or only allowing models to reduce burning to +1 at the end of the turn would allow her to do so much more. 

[bluepanther]

On ‎2‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 12:35 AM, Fluffaluffacus said:

I think thats a problem. I'm seeing people say "Yeah. I play Kaeris perfectly fine. I just ignore all the burning synergy and she is decent." So...The arcanist burning master, who is all about burning...You just ignore burning and basically dont bring any....That upsets me. That would be like saying. "Yeah...The best way to play marcus is to basically bring no beasts." I know its not a direct comparison but like....christ that sounds terrible.

I completely agree. I am new to Arcanist and I've been playing Marcus so far in GG18. I want to expand my options to Kaeris next and its crazy seeing these threads and how you essentially disregard the burning. I'm guessing I shouldn't have even bought any Gunsmiths.  

[WWHSD]

1 hour ago, bluepanther said:

I completely agree. I am new to Arcanist and I've been playing Marcus so far in GG18. I want to expand my options to Kaeris next and its crazy seeing these threads and how you essentially disregard the burning. I'm guessing I shouldn't have even bought any Gunsmiths.  

 I don’t think you need to stay away from models that add Burning or syngergize with it in a Kaeris crew. I think a lot of people fall into the trap of going all in on Burning in Kaeris crew. Add models to the crew that serve a purpose in scoring your schemes and strats and if they do something with Burning that’s a nice bonus. 

There’s some folks that love their Gunsmiths  and others that think that they are always the wrong model to bring in any crew. If you like the model and aren’t playing at higher levels of competition they’ll probably work just fine for you.

 

[Adran]

On 24/02/2018 at 5:35 AM, Fluffaluffacus said:

I think thats a problem. I'm seeing people say "Yeah. I play Kaeris perfectly fine. I just ignore all the burning synergy and she is decent." So...The arcanist burning master, who is all about burning...You just ignore burning and basically dont bring any....That upsets me. That would be like saying. "Yeah...The best way to play marcus is to basically bring no beasts." I know its not a direct comparison but like....christ that sounds terrible.

For what its worth, I think the best way to play Marcus is ignore the beasts keyword... (certainly after the hiring step anyway)

I understand the objection. People feel that she ought to be setting everything on fire and that is what she is about. Its similar to Tara, who struggled to begin with because everyone tried to focus on burying enemy models, and that way certainly wasn't her best way. 

I think you want some burning in the list, but you don't want to just put every model that has the word burning on  its card somewhere and think that it'll do well. Knowing when its worth the set up of applying burning is the trick. Setting an enemy big beater on fire might be useful some turns, but other times you might decide it isn't needed. 

 

So if you want Kaeris to be a master that is all about burning, then yes she does feel subpar and I could see why you might want a re-design. If you want Kaeris to be a master that can win games, she is already that and doesn't need to change. 

 

14 hours ago, KingCrow said:

I still think that an aura of either applying burning +1 at the beginning of the turn or only allowing models to reduce burning to +1 at the end of the turn would allow her to do so much more. 

It totally would make her so much better. I personally think it would make her possibly too strong, or seem too expensive to ever be worth it. I would probably need it to cost 4 or more ss for an upgrade that gave her that aura, and 2-3 ss for an upgrade that gave her that trigger on the attack to keep the burning from turn  to turn. 

 

[retnab]

3 hours ago, Adran said:

It totally would make her so much better. I personally think it would make her possibly too strong, or seem too expensive to ever be worth it. I would probably need it to cost 4 or more ss for an upgrade that gave her that aura, and 2-3 ss for an upgrade that gave her that trigger on the attack to keep the burning from turn  to turn. 

 

I mean, we already have that aura on an upgrade with Heat Wave.  It's start and end of the enemy's activation instead the start of the turn, but if someone charges her and doesn't kill her (and isn't Nihilist, Immune, etc...) she's already good to go for her Immolations and Accelerants.  You just can't do it and also G&D or PF (G&D and HW both being usable together would probably be a bit too good).

[Adran]

Just now, retnab said:

I mean, we already have that aura on an upgrade with Heat Wave.  It's start and end of the enemy's activation instead the start of the turn, but if someone charges her and doesn't kill her (and isn't Nihilist, Immune, etc...) she's already good to go for her Immolations and Accelerants.  You just can't do it and also G&D or PF (G&D and HW both being usable together would probably be a bit too good).

Cheers. Still can't remember all the new upgrades. 

Start of turn is stronger as it lets you act before them. 

In fact, it looks like heatwave a and flaming angel are largely the sort of upgrades that King Crow wants to make her burning more relevant/ easier to apply.  

[Fluffaluffacus]

41 minutes ago, Adran said:

Cheers. Still can't remember all the new upgrades. 

Start of turn is stronger as it lets you act before them. 

In fact, it looks like heatwave a and flaming angel are largely the sort of upgrades that King Crow wants to make her burning more relevant/ easier to apply.  

While yes. They are also 2ss, and hw competes with G&D...HW wants a large amount of burning and for it to work well Kaeris has to be in the middle of things, and she is not tanky nor does she want to be on the front lines really. It makes it really hard. She crumbles like soft paper. Armor 1 as a defensive tool is such a wave 1 defense, even more so now that you have so many models ignoring armor or reductions, she just dies. She wants to be back lines to support her crew, but her new upgrades make her want to be in the front. And she just cant. She is not meant to be. She needs to be much harder to kill for that, and not just more armor. More armor won't do anything.

[retnab]

29 minutes ago, Fluffaluffacus said:

While yes. They are also 2ss, and hw competes with G&D...HW wants a large amount of burning and for it to work well Kaeris has to be in the middle of things, and she is not tanky nor does she want to be on the front lines really. It makes it really hard. She crumbles like soft paper. Armor 1 as a defensive tool is such a wave 1 defense, even more so now that you have so many models ignoring armor or reductions, she just dies. She wants to be back lines to support her crew, but her new upgrades make her want to be in the front. And she just cant. She is not meant to be. She needs to be much harder to kill for that, and not just more armor. More armor won't do anything.

Yeah, agreed. I love HW but I don't think she's durable enough to *really* use it (although giving Heat Stroke to a summoner when they don't have condition removal is just the best). As it is, I feel like you need Imbued Protection on her with HW but even Df 7 is only going to help so much.

[WWHSD]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

In fact, it looks like heatwave a and flaming angel are largely the sort of upgrades that King Crow wants to make her burning more relevant/ easier to apply.  

It would be great if Heatwave wasn't limited. 

[Adran]

Her other 2 limited upgrades are largely about her setting fire to her own team. So you could certainly argue that if you are wanting to set your opponents on fire, you didn't want her other 2 limited anyway. 

EDIT

I don't want to be a nay sayer, but saying she should do more of this, and then saying but if I take that upgrade that lets her do more of this means I can't do other stuff seems to miss the point of customising her to match what you want from her. Letting her do more of 1 thing without stopping her doing something else is straight up making her more powerful which I don't think she needs. You might, which is fine but I've not been convinced on that by the discussion here.

She has a high DF stat and Armour with decent number of wounds, she isn't that vulnerable to death. She is one of the most durable Arcanist masters. Seriously what kills her that can't kill most other different masters? 

 

[Fluffaluffacus]

4 hours ago, Adran said:

She has a high DF stat and Armour with decent number of wounds, she isn't that vulnerable to death. She is one of the most durable Arcanist masters. Seriously what kills her that can't kill most other different masters? 

Except she really isn't.
Colette has all her defensive triggers to save her and the same 6/6 defenses and a free ss to use to protect herself every turn, only 4 less wounds.
Ramos has healing, armor 2, a defensive trigger to increase his df and push the attacker away, and rarely wants to be on front lines anyways, 2 less wds.
Raspy doesn't want to be on the front lines, has counter spell and subzero to defend against mi attacks.
Ironsides is now by far our tankiest master with all her ways to heal, hard to kill, and the good shot trigger.
Mei feng has the same stats with a better defensive trigger on a mask to push 5in.
Sandeep has 1 less df but Arcane shield (which is better and worse than armor), and impossible to wound with the same amount of wds.
Marcus has 1 less df, same wds, but has Defend me. 

[KingCrow]

56 minutes ago, Fluffaluffacus said:

Except she really isn't.
Colette has all her defensive triggers to save her and the same 6/6 defenses and a free ss to use to protect herself every turn, only 4 less wounds.
Ramos has healing, armor 2, a defensive trigger to increase his df and push the attacker away, and rarely wants to be on front lines anyways, 2 less wds.
Raspy doesn't want to be on the front lines, has counter spell and subzero to defend against mi attacks.
Ironsides is now by far our tankiest master with all her ways to heal, hard to kill, and the good shot trigger.
Mei feng has the same stats with a better defensive trigger on a mask to push 5in.
Sandeep has 1 less df but Arcane shield (which is better and worse than armor), and impossible to wound with the same amount of wds.
Marcus has 1 less df, same wds, but has Defend me. 

I just realized that Kaeris's Purifying Flame upgrade allows her to heal from Burning, not just models around her.  That's one way to keep her in the battle but she has no way of lighting herself on fire and, again, it's another ability of hers that requires set-up.  Although, using someone like the Firestarter to put Burning +3 on her in a single AP can be a huge swing.  Also, taking Purifying Flame means you now have a limited upgrade slot taken. 

8 hours ago, Adran said:

Cheers. Still can't remember all the new upgrades. 

Start of turn is stronger as it lets you act before them. 

In fact, it looks like heatwave a and flaming angel are largely the sort of upgrades that King Crow wants to make her burning more relevant/ easier to apply.  

While Heat Wave and Flaming Angel are nice, that is now 4 SS you are using for those abilities.  Flaming Angel is great for repositioning and, after rechecking the card, it appears that the trigger on it can actually synergize with Purifying Flame.  The trigger on her Immolate action gives all models within 3 inches of the target Burning +1, so if Kaeris is using Immolate in Ml, she will receive the burning.  Hmmm... not that great but a neat little trick.  Or if you have allied models that have not activated, they could then gain the benefit of flying from the other upgrade.

I would easily pay 2 SS for an upgrade that allowed her to keep burning on models around her and Fire Gamin, even if it was Burning +1.  I don't think it would make her too over powered because this upgrade would effectively give her a single AP to use instead of trying to put burning on something and would drastically broaden her choice of actions. Also, since it is an , that means there are models that are immune to it, models can also be pulled out of it and there are many ways to manipulate it.  All of the burning is still removable by condition removal, interactions, etc.  In my opinion, it would make her see much more play and she might actually move up a few tiers.

[WWHSD]

8 minutes ago, KingCrow said:

  The trigger on her Immolate action gives all models within 3 inches of the target Burning +1, so if Kaeris is using Immolate in Ml, she will receive the burning.  Hmmm... not that great but a neat little trick.  Or if you have allied models that have not activated, they could then gain the benefit of flying from the other upgrade.

Unless Kaeris takes Purifying Flame or Grab and Drop, she'll take damage from that Burning so you need to be careful with that trigger if you are running her with Heatwave.

[KingCrow]

3 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Unless Kaeris takes Purifying Flame or Grab and Drop, she'll take damage from that Burning so you need to be careful with that trigger if you are running her with Heatwave.

Right.  That's why I wrote that it has synergy with Purifying Flame before that part of the quote. Also the synergy with Grab and Drop as you pointed out.