Board Thread:Development/@comment-26393217-20170201131119/@comment-26393217-20171129200347

Well Rohan Reznor, I tried your idea of giving the Black Mage a cold attack.

After all, we can't add a new unit like in TPC, and the Black Mage is very centred on this element.

Moreover, I was eager to see a lightning bolt doing cold damage and freeze critical. I think it fits well a draining mage (cold damage may be seen as a life drain). Alas, I get large blue flakes on top of the attack animation. I changed only the damage type, and hoped that the missile definition in army.cfg would be kept unchanged (e.g. black lightning, blue lightning...), and this is no the case! Still, I believe that those ice flakes that miss their target are wasted as if they were a lightning attack. Perhaps, the army.cfg data is only used for targeting purpose (and what happens when it misses)? The animation proper is linked to the damage type. There is a fire lightning effect, or hard-coded effect for the Wildfire spell, but no cold lightning effect.

That said, we have to balance the pros and the cons:
 * The Empire gets a cold damage type for their towers (without counting for a mercenary Goblin Shaman, Ice Maiden, or Pixie). Now, the Black Mage comes late in game (and competes with other generals in the production queue), so it's not really a concern, is it?
 * The Black Mage already had a cold damage spell and looses some versatility (not being able anymore to exploit two elementary weaknesses).
 * The Empire now lacks a long-range electrical attack and becomes less efficient against advanced golems, advanced Knight units, and some Daemons on the field. Again, the Black Mage comes very late in game anyways (and competes with other generals).

So, it's a yes, I guess?

A question remains, that of the attack sound. Do we fully turn the Black Mage into an Ice Maiden, or do we keep the "Zapping" sound? For the moment, it's doesn't... sound horrific.