And that’s because of the false belief that something’s either the best, or complete trash. Celestasia is still a good troop, but not good enough for people who want 100% guaranteed no-thought-required victory.
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Remember that our judgment is somewhat colored by what we can observe, which is to say, defense teams. Celestasia was nerfed to a point where you have to use her smartly, which the AI can’t do. The same goes for Sheggra. Sheggra is a fairly powerful attack team troop and can be used in a variety of comps if you wait for a “sure thing” before casting.
There are likely many troops that are still in active use that you just don’t see when scouting. Keeper of Souls, for instance, is still quite powerful, but no sane person would ever put him on a defense team.
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You’re only looking this one way. Having strong synergy bonuses (not necessarily tied to kingdom or type although that’s what we have now) makes low power troops worth using. I know people used to bitch about Goblins but how many other teams do you see on a regular basis that contains ZERO troops UR base rarity or higher?
Of course you don’t boost them so high that synergies become the new OP meta. But if you want to see non-Maw, non-Mab teams you’re going to have to give players an incentive not to use them.
Quite frankly the whole nerd business doesn’t even work. I still see Maw and Mab all the time, as much as before actually.
Just to be clear, I don’t think it should be handled by nerfs alone. I also want to see buffs. The real problem I have is that there’s too much of a power gap between the troops, which leads to only a couple of optimal builds and in turn flattens gameplay. Some troops are best handled with buffs, others with nerfs. There are basically 2 teams in early game, 3-4 in mid game, and 2 in late game. That just isn’t healthy.
I would bet $100 that all of the troops I listed are well above the average in terms of usage. Does anyone honestly believe Goblins, Maw, Mercy, and Mab don’t utterly dominate the game? I’m sure they’re followed by Valkyrie, Rock Worm, and Coronet. Basically 8-10 troops out of 200+…
@Sirrian, care to show us one of your fancy graphs on troop usage at various player levels so the data can speak for itself?
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Which goblin team meets this criterion? 
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I hope we one day every month get a team usage report based on player level.
I’m not sure where this binary thinking comes from that anybody who dislikes the idea of nerfs automatically wants guaranteed no-thought victories.
Quite the opposite actually - I want teams that I’ve put thought, effort, and even real money into to continue to be viable going forward. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m not interested in guaranteed wins or sub-2 minute matches at all.
Valkyrie and Mercy are going to be used - they’re converters. Moreover Valkyrie is currently to only way to efficiently farm souls.
They’re not OP at all. The presence of OP troops that use their color is the one and only problem. If Maw used purple, everybody would be bitching about Giant Spider.
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It comes from all the crying after something has been nerfed down to a reasonable power, and people claiming that the troop is now useless.
If a team depends on a single overpowered troop to function, then maybe the rest of the team needs a buff.
My mistake - Hob and Rocket are UR. Still there are two solid goblin teams that contain no Epic, Legendary, or Mythic base rarities. There should be more teams like that.
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That “crying” as you put it is about the suggestion that certain troops should be nerfed solely on the basis of guilt by association.
It all comes back to the original discussion about Mercy - people have a problem with Maw and their solution is to nerf MERCY.
I’m sorry but that’s just abso-****ing-lutely stupid. The problem was, and is, Maw. Period.
What about raksha team? what are their base rarities?
Pride hunter
Rakshanin
shadow hunter
Rex warrior
SH is base Epic.
The other ones are not however, right?
No they’re not, you’re right. Pride Hunter is a white card even. It’s a pretty decent team, actually.
When you deal with noobs, (my guild is used to raise players from level 1) so finding cheap teams that work. I always wondered why people never use 4xx teams.
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Keep in mind that Alchemist/Valkyrie/Banshee are all Rare, and can field a diverse range of lead troops that can be anything from Serpent (Common) upward.
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This really cuts to the crux of the problem. The AI is awful at even moderately complicated team compositions. Maw, Mab, Goblins, Rock Worm, every single troop everyone is complaining about in this thread… people use them on defense because they’re what the AI can pilot better than the rest. And that’s sad, because that’s still only 25% winrate, 33% for the very best defense teams.
If the AI were better, there would be more variety on defense. But imagine the whining about nerfs that would show up on these forums if the AI could play a looping team well…
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The problem with Maw, as far as I’m aware, has always been Hunger, which has been dealt with. The problem with Mercy is that an empowered transform effectively means giving empowered to every troop of that color. That presents a design problem that the devs will have to either solve or work around in the future. Mercy can be effectively countered either through board control or mana drain, but the devs are likely to avoid giving yellow troops powerful spells in the future, knowing that they can’t use high mana costs to balance them.
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That’s simply not true certainly not more than 20% of the time, at most. @Sirrian even said as much earlier in the Mercy discussion.