Great post. Although I do feel like perhaps being shot at a little bit for my snarky comments last night. To that all I will say is “Baby. Does. Not. Sleep.” and apologize, I usually try to be more thoughtful and less inflammatory.
To address some of your points:
Silent one - an actual nerf due to the extreme overpopularity. I didnt have him before the nerf hit so I cant really speak to it (he was one of my last troops to get). I WILL say that he was a problem when facing him yes, but not nearly as bad as webby.
Sheggra - As you mentioned, a bug not a nerf. This was really pretty fun to play with when it was live especially after the gloom leaf enhancement, but I didnt cry when the fun ended.
Webspinner Loop - This one was the big issue. It came at a point in time when the old guard all had many copies of her, and it became proof that only a fraction of the people that play comes to the forums. It might have been fun to play WITH, but was wretched to play AGAINST as anyone on here knows. This was a well needed nerfing. Webspinner was one of my all time favorite troops from way back when I first got her in the begining months of the game, but yes it was time for it to happen.
Gem Spammers - this was also a needed change, see; webspinner. It was a good idea to disconnect gem creation from the magic stat, but sadly, gone are the days of the “brian brian brian webspinner - change the whole board to green” ahhhhhh the good ole days. WHat this did was make it very risky to run gem spammers now as the change also made it so that the AI spawned with INTENTION of not instantly creating 4 of a kind extra turns. Of course it cant always do this especially when the board is covered in whatever color your adding, but it does it often enough now that you really have to be more strategic about when you pop off the power. This resulted in a HUGE decrease in gem creation units in the meta.
Goblin Shaman - This change came when the Green Slime was introduced, and it FELT like a way to curtail slime teams popularity even though the devs had been watching this troop for quite some time. By the time the change had come he had fallen out of my regular rotation in favor of green seer anyway, but in my goblin team he still feels powerful and a hug help. The major concern for him I felt however was not the gem creation but his unit type bonus, which we will talk about after.
Prismatic orb - The problem with this particular weapon is not necessarily in the weapon itself. As has been stated in other posts there is a big sacrifice in using the weapon; it does ONE thing gem creation, no added bonuses or attacks or anything pure gem creation which if your using a multi-color troop can be not as helpful as you want it to be. You also have to sacrifice having that 4th team bonus if applicable to use this weapon, so all those tasty 4x of the same troop type/color etc bonuses are significantly curtailed. The orb SHINES however when used in combination with single color teams, which honestly I feel like might have been it’s original intent. To allow for more diversity in team makeup.
Team bonuses : herein lies some of the issue.
Goblin teams were a perfect example, the city has the PERFECT synchronization of trrops to make amazing teams using only troops from that city, which ALSO happen to use mostly the same color and ALSO happen to be mostly the same type: Marauder.
Either this is the perfect example of what city troop make up should be, or its simply too powerful. Im HOPING that he former is true and not the latter, however for this to be the case MORE cities need to have troops either changed or introduced to make their team bonuses on par with the Goblins.
The other issue with team bonuses is allowing them to apply even for multiples of the exact same troop; leading into the burning pitchforks for the skeleton now. The troop was given an attack buff (tied to it’s magic) when it kicks off its power: Whats the problem with this? Well 3x khetar troops gives +1 magic, and 3x undead troops gives +1 magic. This gives the skeleton instead of a larger buff to attack then anticipated, coupled with the ability to create skulls and gain an extra turn. A very powerful combination of events.
Does this mean the skeleton should be changed now to make it weaker? Or should the conversation instead look at team bonuses? I just fought against a 4x hobgoblin team with 10 armor, 31 life and 17 attack. 17 attack right out of the gate.
With the meta shift to skull attacks over powers we are simply seeing the same thing that the meta in any similar game goes through, some decks get used more and have to have specific counters. This is nothing new.
Personally I LOVE the team bonuses and think they have breathed new life into the game by allowing for such a HUGE diversity of teams allowable. Did the pendulum swing a little too far? Maybe. I would hate to see a change that reduces this diversity though. On the other hand I hate to see us all pointing finger at individual troops or weapons and asking for changes to them when all that does is apply a bandaid to the whole of the situation.
tl;dr
Perhaps it’s not all the individual units or weapons we need to reconsider, but how team bonuses work. Lets consider ways to change that, without losing the new diversity of team makeups possible.