Normal difficulty. AI gets a lucky purple five match right off the rip, charging his skeleton. Skeleton casts. The 3 matches he makes take out my first card due to his 21 attack centaur scout doing true damage. The skull 5-match his skeleton left allowed the centaur scout to quickly dispatch my second troop.
I was left with jack crap on the board for my turn, and his second skeleton was already charged from cascades. The writing was on the wall, so I just plain quit.
Traits add nothing to the game. No strategy, no depth, no fun. They’re just plain old buffs that happen to be extremely expensive whether your currency is cash or time. At absolute best, they’re a minor annoyance on the opposing team. Worst case scenario, as I experienced here, is they’re completely and utterly broken, allowing an AI controlled team of commons to completely steamroll a player in a few turns even at the lowest difficulty.
I tried to like 1.0.8. I’ve tried unbelievably hard to find the silver lining. I’ve taken a wait-and-see approach to traits, but the longer I wait, the worse it seems. Being a relatively casual end-game player means I have to sit and watch as I fall further and further behind my opponents, which means fights take longer and win percentage drops drastically, which only serves to widen the gap.
It creates a positive feedback loop of difficulty with the inevitable result being an overwhelming sensation of hopelessness with an accompanying lack of desire to play.
I don’t even know why I felt the need to write this for all the good it will do. I’m not even mad. Just extremely disappointed.
There are a few traits that are WAY over the top. True Shot is one, especially in conjunction with the massive boosts to skull damage from level 20. Agile is another. Seeing their top troop dodge 7 consecutive matches, equal to over 100 damage, is beyond frustrating.
Mana links are great, they are synergy.
Targeted boosts are cool (like anti-knight on skeletons), they provide meta matches.
Armor/Life gain mechanics are nice, like Paladin regaining armor or Spider gaining life on 4 or 5 matches.
Resource gainers are good, but should go over cap.
Really hope they balance the others. True Shot should make the troops Spell to true damage, not skulls. Agile should be limited to one dodge per turn, or it should mean the 2nd troop takes damage if 1st dodged.
My entangle team is getting more and more potent as 1.08 unravels.
Having all quests, challenges, and troops, I was beginning to become bored with the game before 1.08. I was hoping traits would revitalize my interest, but they haven’t really changed much. Traits have only added more grind to the game, and not much else. What the endgame seems to lack the most to me is variety, e.g. game modes.
There are only two game modes outside of the main game, and their rewards aren’t even worth playing them. I love both Arena and Treasure Hunt, but I don’t play them much because the rewards are almost nothing compared to PVP and farming challenges. More game modes have already been confirmed, but I don’t have much hope if there is no incentive to play them.
If ya hate True Damage on Centaurs, wait until you hit Stoneskin on Gloomleaf or Treant (you essentially NEED True Shot to kill them in any meaningful time frame) …
To the point I am skipping Stoneskin matches for now
Unless it was a cascade that made the 5-chain, you should not make a match that has a potential to make a 4 or 5 match.
The 3/2 skele team has been a tossup as to if I win it with my normal team and if my Ghoul can evade some attacks. Or else I just retreat. So I looked to find a team to counter it. Got cockatrice to entangle, archon statue to do 2x skull damage to undead (-50% skull damage once I unlock third trait) and his spell should not finish off the top troop that will be entangled. Other 2 slots I’m still deciding, right now I got Aziris to make a skull match and Acolyte to make brown gems to feed cockatrice and statue and dose not feed the skeles.
I would fill cockatrice up first to entangle, then refill it up before it wears off, if enemy is based all on skull damage, it should be easy at that point. Might be other troops with traits that match up well to defeat teams with skeles. I will test the team as I find these types of teams.
Good in theory, until you realize the Attack buff of the Skeleton breaks Entangle just before it does the majority of it’s damage via created skulls
What I find useful against undead teams is Avina as the tank (Undead Slayer, Agile, True shot) - she literally one shots any undead …
What I find useful against goblin teams is Glade Warden as the tank (Elf Bond, Agile, True Shot) - his ability removes green gems and recharges extremely fast to keep pace with even two Goblin Shaman …
Any other time that I don’t have a mana pump in the team, I get Centaur to tank … his ability helps to top up mana on troops that are missing 1-3 mana with no gem matches in sight!
In my incontrovertible–yet humble’ish–opinion, traits have added a lot to the game. I really enjoy them. I do get my [REDACTED] handed to me occasionally, but I am looking forward to traiting out my troops over time.
I do not use any of the so called overpowered mechanics mentioned in this thread and I have faced them all victoriously. However, sometimes you take the AI random number generator up the [REDACTED]–I mean tailpipe–and the matches go against you and you get roflstomped.
I have played games where Agile went off a bunch of times and I still won. In other games, I get True Shot to high heaven and still win. But there are times when the deck, as it were, is stacked against you and you are going to get bloodied.
I disagree that traits have ruined the game. Not yet.
They should (and will) add new tactical depth.
Agree that the variation in effect/value of traits is too wide - some utterly useless, some over-powered and almost broken. We’re in the test period for this cool new content so I’m expecting it’ll improve… Or hoping…
Traits are awesome. Why? Because useless troops like Centaur/Glade Warden become useful now. Just watch this topic about one true shooter, a ex-common troop. Who did a topic about Centaur before patch 1.0.8? Obviously, nobody.
Devs decided to boost all the troops and that all of them become mythic. That means for me that now Centaur must be as powerful than Sheggra. Of course, it’s not really the case (Peasant?) but I think that the gap between common and legendary troops is smaller now than before. That’s great because it means that we have more suitable troops to create our team and so more strategies ;-).
I really disagree with that, both logically and emotionally…
Logically - the rarer troops have to be better than the more common ones, in any TCG (usually) else why bother with the enormous stress and resource gathering of getting and levelling them…
Emotionally - no, it’s just wrong! (sorry) a common Centaur should not end up stronger than the legendary fire wyrm Sheggra that they wrote a quest story about…
We are rapidly heading into a meta where True Shot plus a Skeleton is the most effective team for anyone… It will take over the Goblageddon problems once enough players spot it and get enough resources… Personally I don’t want a game where most opponents run a variation on a team of common troops that can one-shot me with a lucky cast… that’s going to be boring and not fun…
This. Also, I think traits are too new a thing to make sweeping judgements. I fully expect them to receive a number of changes as time goes on. Right now not much is happening because of the holidays, so everything seems like it’s going nowhere. Just give it time.
Also they gave us something to do, collecting traitstones and trying a lot of new combinations thanks to traits. Weeks pre-patch were really sad for me, now I actually want to play and see all the new comps that traits made them viables.
Why you talk about a common Centaur? It’s now a mythic Centaur like a mythic Sheggra ;-). The maximum rarity is now the same for all the troops.
Rarer troops, yes but you forget the ascension system. You need 190 common troop copies compared to 6 only for legendaries (hopefully ). I don’t know which one will be the most difficult to obtain for new players… I have for example some issues for my rare-troops (need like 30 extra copies for leg2myth…). Nevertheless, I just mean here that it’s not obvious that it’s more easy to have a mythic ex-common troop than a mythic ex-leg troop.
There are also legendaries without story (Bone Dragon for example). But I understand your feelings. Sadly, I prefer less felling and a better choice for my team .
Yes, like Goblin team, Webspinner, and all the other troops that have been nerfed in the past. Maybe, tomorrow someone will post another OP team and we will all forget about this True Shot trait. Or else, True Shot can maybe be nerfed (take 50 or 75% of attack for the skull damage better than 100%, for example).
Devs will find a good solution as usual ;-).
Maybe a better use of difficulties with different parameters (with thick box) so we can choose “without combo breaker”, “with traits”, etc. And according to that you will have bonus. I will post a new topic about this ;-).
(Bone Dragon for example). But I understand your feelings. Sadly, I prefer less felling and a better choice for my team