Lions Rampant

Originally published at: http://gemsofwar.com/lions-rampant/
Welcome to the Leonis Empire!

New Troop: Pride Guard

Many centuries ago, the Leonine Emperor and his Ambassadors struck a deal with the Raksha of the Pridelands. In exchange for shipments of their finest weapons and armor every year, the Raksha would provide a contingent of warriors to act as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. Over the years, the Pride Guard have endured, and have become a noble, strong, and honorable contingent of warriors.

New Troop: Sand Cobra

Like the nearby Drifting Sands, the deserts of the Leonis Empire are filled with terrible beasts such as the Sand Cobra. These creatures can spit their venom up to 10 paces, incapacitating all but the most hardy of creatures. That’s just as well for the poor Sand Cobra though, since not only is its skin highly-prized due to its strength and suppleness, but their venom is also sought after by many less reputable types.

Troop Changes

The Great Maw

This was a long time coming…
His 3rd trait Hunger has been rewritten.
Turns out, although it’s thematically a lot of fun to have 2 potential devours on a creature, in practice the meta just can’t get past it! So we’ve tried to preserve both the theme and power of the Great Maw while making his 3rd trait not so annoying and random to play against:

  • * Trait Change: Hunger now adds +2 to all of the Great Maw's Skills whenever his team matches skulls (yes, even when he's not in first place).
In a lot of teams (particularly involving skull spammers) this turns out to work pretty well. He still gets nice and large, but he just doesn't randomly eat an enemy troop in the process!

Astral Spirit

We’re not sure how Astral Spirit snuck out there in her current state. Our mistake.
She’s doing too much TRUE damage compared to other troops in the game, and that needs to be pared back before 4x Astral Spirit takes over the meta game!
We’re going to attempt to gently reduce her power by changing three things:

  • * Trait Change: Air Spirit changes to Centaur Bond
  • * Spell Boost Ratio reduced from 2:1 to 3:1
  • * No longer gives Magic at level 17 and 19
She still feels nice and fast for end game players, which was always the intention, but we think that she fits better in team compositions now that have some support, rather than cheesey 4xAstral Spirit teams. Empowered troops are fun, but they continue to be the trickiest ones for us to balance!

Pride Guard

He’s a new release this week, but you might have seen him as an enemy in some Leonis Empire battles last week.
It turns out that due to some particularly high value end-game Armor scores we had to reduce his spell to have a 4:1 Boost Ration for armor, not 3:1 and drop his Magic slightly.
On the plus side, we also changed his trait Thick Headed (not particularly useful for him) to Alert (niche, but still a little more useful).

  • * Spell Boost Ratio reduced from 3:1 to 4:1
  • * No longer gives Magic at levels 16 and 18

Sand Cobra

He’s another new release this week whom you might have seen in Leonis Empire as an enemy.
His spell wasn’t working correctly, so now he’s seen a significant change to swap Charm for Disease, and reduce the spell cost from 16 to 6
He’s also traded the Fast trait for Agile (since being Fast with 6 mana is kind of pointless).

  • * Trait Change: Fast to Agile
  • * Spell no longer Charms an enemy, instead it now Diseases an enemy (as well as Poison and Stun).
  • * Mana Cost reduced from 16 to 6

Hag

With the introduction of more status effects, the Hag’s effectiveness is reduced a little (especially in Arena), so we altered her spell cost to reflect that.

  • * Mana Cost reduced from 9 to 8
Chest Changes The following troops are have been added to chests: * Hellcat * Creeper * Dwarven Slayer * Northrender * Tal'Rae * Spider Knight * Astral Spirit * Moa * Rock Troll
Refunds We've fixed the problem with refund from a few weeks ago, and they can now be turned back on.

We have refunds available on:

  • Great Maw
  • Astral Spirit
  • Troops whose refunds were turned off prematurely

There is now a small change to way refunds work with VIP levels. If you have VIP level 8 or higher, your refund will only drop the troop to level 10.
Similarly, if you have VIP level 5-7, a refund will only drop the troop to level 5.
This is to stop a small exploit where players would refund extra souls on a troop then disenchant it and gain another to get those souls back for free.

Please note this Event only applies to Steam, iOS and Android versions of the game.

Join the Forum!

17 Likes

Bravo re Maw’s 3rd trait

2 Likes

So refund would only give back the traitstones, right? With Astral Spirit getting a bit nerfed, there’s really no need for her to be traited (for me anyway) anymore, though I still want to keep the card obviously. Sadly there’s not a good green/red card other then maybe gloomleaf and marilith (hobgoblin if you’re still running goblins).

I’m interested to see how the meta shifts with maw nerfed (if it truly turns out to be a nerf). I imagine we’re going to be seeing quite a bit more of Khorvash now, since his ability is quite powerful along with having stoneskin.

About an two hours ago I ended grinding 1200 glory to get 4x Astral Spirit. Sadly now I won’t use them.

Can I get glory refund as well, in exchange for losing those troops? Please :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Nice to see Great Maw finally get addressed, this ought to change up the Meta a bit! As for Sand Cobra, I kind of liked to see the Charm ability in his spell, not too many troops use that and it would be a way to get past Impervious.

Maw already has the Huge trait as well.

Behemoth is sad…

3 Likes

I did the same thing earlier in the week. Would they be able to tell that is how glory was used on someone’s account?

Thumbs up for the Maw change.

3 Likes

I couldnt agree more, I doubt I will ever have to change my avatar pic. :wink:

3 Likes

You could always keep the Arcane Blade traitstones, so many good troops use them. I wound up buying around 20 of them to trait out Silent One and others.

So far you are not able to own those troops without spending glory on reward chests, so there is not an option to lie I guess :unamused:

I think glory refund would be fair, because people bought a new troop directly for certain set of abilities, not from a random drop.

1 Like

I can see the complains when getting that board full of skulls and getting only +2 skills on Maw. :wink:

5 Likes

I am so glad to see the hunger nerf! He will still get huge! But I don’t need to fear losing my troops along the way.

Smart play, i.e. strategy, has won the day over RNG today!!!

You made the right choice devs! :wink:

Thank you!!!

4 Likes

I fully expect to run into tons of impervious now lol. Carnex and Behemoth especially.

1 Like

Wow, that neutered Astral Spirit pretty hard, losing 6 magic off the top (assuming full yellow team) and another 1 or 2 because of poorer ratio, dropping it from 25ish to 19ish per cast. might still work as a Explore farming unit if you go on normal. But you’re certainly going to need more casts per match.

I’d +1 on glory refund XD

I spent like 4.5k glory and 50 event chests to get 4x myth astral.

Though the nerf is good. She has changed this game from gem-matching game to fire-and-forget game. At least for me last couple days. XD

Whohoo for less rage quitting also I thought @Sirrian was going to link @Lyya’s troop site for a second :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Although from the player side this really doesn’t weaken the line up at all, the Mawgra King will still reign and now the annoying cancelation of skull damage on hunger activating on impervious troops goes away. I am voting win win.

2 Likes

Triple nerf! :worried:

2 Likes

This is worse! This is far worse that devour! Thematic or not! Now people are going to run infinite maw teams! Then again the infinite maw will not work on defence but on offence it will.[quote=“Sirrian, post:1, topic:10542”]
4x Astral Spirit takes over the meta game!
[/quote]

Too late. No fun @Sirrian

1 Like