I’m with Jainus. It was originally on three troops, one of which had to be traited up. Are people all of a sudden going to start using those troops? I saw less people playing with the Agile troops when it had/has the bug on it… and so you Scout and avoid or deny them the mana/kill them fast(er).
I’m with both you guys.
No it had nothing to do with having to think, it had to do with the core mechanics of the game being altered by a teamwide buff. Barrier doesn’t change anything about the match-3 mechanic of the game, it simply makes a troop temporarily immune. It is basically a one time 100% agile. It can be predicted and worked around and the gameplay remains the same. It will actually end up being less annoying than agile because of its predictability. Frozen was a lasting teamwide debuff that changed the core match-3 mechanics of the game. Barrier you smack the troop with some splash and then drop your huge bomb, frozen you flop around like a fish out of water for a few turns while your opponent runs amok. The concept really isn’t difficult and the two really have no comparison.
Not sure what level you play at, but well over half of the teams I face are centaur or glade warden front liners. Those troops were basically never played before. They are backed up by skeletons, also troops never seeing much play until kingdom bonuses made them skull generating tank machines. Changing a troops ability to a good ability absolutely makes it show up more. That point really should be obvious. Look at TSO, he was used when he was awesome and not when he wasn’t. Agile troops, same way, true shot troops, same thing. In general cards are not used because someone is like… man that Hag, I have to put her in the team! They are used because their abilities, stats, or perks offer them a useful place in a lineup. If you change those things you change the use of the card and it will be used more or less as appropriate from there.
This buff is a good addition to the game, it offers a predictable, counterable agile. Frankly the concept should pretty much replace agile in some form. Will it be used to devastating effect by some people? Probably, someone already put together a concept team that seems pretty vicious on paper. Will it change the “fill the board with skulls and hope for the best” strats? Maybe, though I would expect peeps will just pack some small cheap direct damage in there somewhere, or let the big explosion kill the barrier and the cascades kill the troop. Since many times those blast through two troops anyway, I think that barrier troop is still toast against skull-splosions.
This buff makes you think and alter your strat (albeit slightly overall), frozen made you play worse than the AI with no choice in the matter for several turns. The changes to frozen put it back where it belongs although still IMO at a compromise point. It still messes with the core mechanics of the game and removes intelligent player control which I think is wrong. But it now does it in a predictable manner which can be worked around, so I take that as an acceptable compromise.
-Razlath
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The build I mentioned already works to a decent degree now without having all traits, nor frozen, nor barrier. It is going to be ridiculously OP with the 2 new effects and all traits.
I’m calling it now, Dryad will need a nerf. If you check the card real quick, the devs seemed to buff it even more to 5 HP gain (up from 3). The 10+ heal, 9 green gems, AND barrier just add on to make the card seem like a legendary with how much it does. That is at least a 11 mana cost spell for only 8 mana. A different fix could be to remove the HP gain and just leave it as a heal like it was previously.
3 Likes
Currently level 175, when playing PvP to rank 1 I play up to +50 of my level, after that I play whoever.
As I have continually noted in various goblin threads when that was the “team of the day/week”, I rarely saw goblin teams during PvP, maybe 5 out of 21 matches when going to rank 1. It’s the same with Centaur/Glade Warden, I see them maybe 1/4 to 1/5 of the time (and that’d being generous since my memory is bad from when 1.09 was released until now). And the same with Skeletons or Rockwurms. I only notice the teams because they keep getting mentioned in the forums - I actually see the Valkyrie teams ALOT more, I’d say up to 50%. Full legendary teams of some shape or form are next.
So yes, especially facing the Centaur/Glade Warden teams, I Scout and move on because I don’t need that “hassle” of the bug when trying to get down to PvP 1 in my limited time. But the point being is that since I rarely come across them, I don’t see them as a wide part of the meta.
So that’s my view. Is it representative of the game overall? Beats me. All I can see for now is that apparently is opposes what you’re seeing in PvP at whatever level you’re at and facing. And playing gobbos, you’d think I’d fear the effects of the original Frozen more than most… but what I’m saying is, my impression is that the (your) pre-analysis is overhyped and to wait and see since it’s only THREE troops, all easily avoidable and there are loads of other teams to face.
I’m around 120 and have a very similar experience. See Goblins, Rock Worms, Skeles, Glade/Centaur teams, etc., but none that frequently. Honestly still probably Gobs more than anything else. I think not having all Kingdoms at level 10 is a big part of this since it limits the effectiveness of some teams (like True Shot teams that use multiple copies of the same troop and so don’t give kingdom bonuses).
I think the copy-pasta teams only become a problem when you get super high level and everyone is resource rich, and thus folks can afford to go with what’s best as opposed to what’s available based on luck of the draw.
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I had the same experience pre-200. Once you break 200 you lose the below 200 matches except when pushing to rank 1 and the higher you climb the less of them you get then as well. I routinely get matched with 300+ opponents especially after rank 5 (I am now about 250, but that started the second I hit 200).
Above 300 it seems like people are only capable of fielding goblins (though those are waning and probably more the 200 tier), agile / true shot teams, or skeleton teams (or skeleton true shot teams mostly). I have literally hit skip before until I found one not fitting that bill. I spent 100 gold on skips and 550 gold on scouting before I found a team that didn’t consist of those. That is 10 skips. You know it is sad when you are excited to see a full legendary dragon lineup or a rockworm team again. Of those about 1/3 were goblins while the rest had true shot with some skull generator. Most consisted of at least 2 skull generators and the true shot was either centaur (most common) or glade warden.
People weren’t fielding those cards before they had powerful abilities, they are fielding them because of their powerful abilities. The same will be true when any new powerful ability is added to a card. It will get played more because of that. It seems like you think that just because no one plays a card today regardless of what happens to that card no one would play it. That really doesn’t make sense. People play abilities not cards, change the abilities, change the play.
-Razlath
Am I the only one that doesn’t skip? Well, I do but only to get higher gold amounts. I never look at the teams though, and unless it agile glitches or I get very unlucky don’t lose…
The annoying teams are far less annoying to me than scouting and skipping would be…
Razlath: When I get above 200+ (which will probably happen in about 3 months at the rate I’m going), I will see what my experience is with teams.
I’ll also see if I can remember these teams when I face them now before I move on. 
Are your Kingdoms mostly to all level 10 and is the team you’re using fully traited and ascended? Mine aren’t and isn’t so I don’t feel nearly as confident during a PvP rank 1 run. After, yes, I don’t mind losing, but during the run I want to keep the number of matches to a minimum.
My kingdoms are all 10, but only as of two weeks ago. I had 5 left to go.
Very few of my troops are traited, and very few are fully ascended and leveled. Well that’s not true, they ARE all ascended, I just haven’t leveled hardly any.
Regardless, I have never really skipped, even before. Only during the insane webspinner days because nobody likes watching the computer play for 15 turns.
I didn’t do a lot of skipping until recently. The test I mentioned above really was just a test. I never skip that much in a row routinely. I tend to skip those above the 300s tier unless I am feeling particularly spunky (high win streak, luck flowing my way). There are just too many kingdom bonuses up there to contend with. Even if I win, it just takes too long. The big exception is level 900 to 1000 as long as I have finished ranking. Those I almost always fight, just for the fun of it.
-Razlath
I only skip if they have <400 gold. Sometimes I get in there and see a super strong team and immediately close out the app, but that’s rare.
This is basically me. Although sometimes I’ll look and say ‘OK, the aggravation from Centaur + Glade Warden + Skeleton + Bone Dragon is not worth base 500g~, next please…’ Or the fifth goblin team in as many games. Or something else equally annoying… although those two are hard to equal right now.
I also noticed once I hit level 200, the difficulty of opponents increased. I next way more often as I’m coming up against rank 1000 mythical and fully traited teams. I will and have fought the level 1000 guys many times and usually win, but the amount of time it takes vs the reward seems worthless unless they are offering 1000+ gold.
I do usually skip a mythical goblin team or centuar/glade and bone dragon regardless of reward. its a coin toss if you win or lose.
Still so many many goblin teams…
But man, they are so easy to beat! I almost much cheer when I finally see one. The coin toss of true shot is what I could do without. Sometimes I think the only reason peeps get wins with goblins is because the other person is just quitting immediately.
-Razlath
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Oh yes, no argument here, they ARE very easy to beat!
Just gets so boring when more than half my run up to 1 is goblins!
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I’m approaching level 400 and yes I do encounter a lot of the True Shot teams and Goblins with agile Hobs. The question I keep asking myself is “why”? Since there’s no immense incentive to have Defense Wins why does almost everyone and their Mom post a Netdeck of the OP flavor of the month? I have the most fun when I encounter something out of the ordinary but challenging and like to reward that type of innovation by playing those people even if I have a chance to lose.
FWIW I never fielded a goblin or trueshot team on defense because they are reviled. My current defense team is Treant Stoneskin but I also experimented with Feys + Webspinner, Swamplash Entangle and such. Don’t get a huge amount of victories but they happen more often then I expect. Ran across the all Empowered team and that is fun but can be very challenging.
If you don’t explicitly set a defense team, doesn’t it revert to your Invasion team? If so, that’d probably why…