I'm not sure if anyone feels the same way, but I strongly believe the mage's ability to heal other units is way too expensive to be worth it. It costs 300 to heal your units by 1 hit point, whereas 300 would easily reinforce most units to full health at a nearby captured village. I would like to propose reducing the cost of the Mage unit's ability to heal proportional to the amount of hit points it can increase, or increase the amount of healing a Mage can do for the cost. Even if it's not for full health, if you were to raise the HP to maybe 3 instead of 1, that might be sufficient. I hope you can take this into consideration and possibly implement it in the future patches to come.
If mages could heal 3hp for 300 gold, then Mercia would be very strong. Basically impossible to kill. Back her up with a bunch of mages and she'll never die. I don't think there's anything wrong with the mage's healing ability for the cost. 1hp can mean the difference between life and death of a unit sometimes. There was an instance where I made a judgement call with my CO by putting them in a risky position with 9hp, but I didn't use the mage heal, instead deciding to purchase a unit. Had I healed, I would have survived the attack with 1HP left and been able to move my CO after that to heal to full at a village.
The mage's heal ability is not a substitute to reinforcing. It is something that can be done from anywhere, with no health loss, for a set 20% health boost; whereas the reinforce can only be done next to a structure. The ability to do it anywhere is what makes it useful, but heavy duty healing is something that you should only be able to do from a structure.
Yeah I agree with Fadedsun and Sparkling. And to build off from it, I don't think you understand the full value of a mage heal. Like they said, it can save the match by saving a commander or making a line of defense or offense last just long enough to do what they need to do without having to move units to inconvenient locations (such as structures) in order to heal. What's more, mages actually become more efficient than structures if multiple high value units are around, much like a witch's hex. Mages do the same healing regardless of how, which is also useful, and are excellent anti air and against most ground units when they meet their crit condition, and they have solid movement range for a foot unit. If more power we're added to them, especially considering their low price of 400 gold, they would become far too powerful and a no brainer in practically every scenario. If mages could heal 3, or even 2 hp to every unit around them, you would never use a building except out of desperation, and lines of defense with trebuchets behind them would become imprenetrabl unless destroyed in a single turn or massively overwhelmed.
To sum it up mages have; Five move (pretty far compared to others.) A versatile critical. A reasonably cheap cost. The ability to heal at a slight distance. The ability to heal a grand total of five units at a time for 20% health. And they are more effective against air units than any other unit especially when they are in a well-protected space for that critical. I would go as far to say that the mage may be one of the most useful units you can have. PS @EnricoBarbarossa The name is "Spark-LINK" not "Sparkling".
You guys make fair points. The mage is very versatile unit, so I never discounted it's abilities; 300 gold just seemed a little steep.
