A New Mythic Approaches - Libara

Official News
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Originally published at: https://gemsofwar.com/a-new-mythic-approaches-libara/

New Mythic Troop: Libara Libara will be the only Mythic Troop available in Glory, Gem, Guild & VIP Chests for the next 7 days.

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[No snark] @Jeto. Can you please direct some feedback → the troop designers?

Like the vast majority of mythics released in the past 3 years, this one’s a dud. You guys have been on a very long roll of releasing mythics that are 100% filler, 0% killer. Both the usefulness and creativity behind troop design keep going down.

No, this is not a problem of power or feature creep, it’s a problem of laziness.

Please. Many of us would really like for you to start releasing at least 2-3 useful mythics per year. Mythics that aren’t necessarily better, but mythics that one could happily drop into a team without horribly gimping one’s team. Mythics that don’t make me feel like ‘Wow, I hate that this thing exists’.

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But the devs already issued Piscea and jewel dragons this year. So all other Mythics can be anything.

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Piscea is decent. I’m not counting the dragons as those are effectively 2023/2024 releases.

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You should probably explain why you consider this one to be a dud. The devs don’t play the game, they probably believe this is the very best mythic released so far, same as the previous months.

Personal take:
When I play battles I want to either deal damage or heal, based very specifically on the current situation. A troop that spontaneously decides to heal when I need to deal damage or that deals damage when I need to heal isn’t just useless, it’s a negative contributor. The team is better by just leaving the spot empty.

For comparison, the epic rarity Faunessa costs 12 mana instead of 22, starts out at full mana, usually heals more than Libara while also doing some damage on top.

Salvaging the train wreck:

  • Change the spell from (dealing damage or healing) to (dealing damage and healing). The sign of Libra is the scale (balance), not the die (randomness).
  • Change the spell to destroy a selected gem, red/brown/purple deals damage, yellow/green/blue heals. That way players can pick the effect they want, while also adding an extra layer of strategy (board manipulation).
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image

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I kinda like Piscea. Self filling devourer. What’s not to like? Not great, but not bad either.

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Piscea is definitely decent. I used her for a bit in E12 before shelving her and going back to Slayer/Zuul. Not a bad choice if you’re okay with the occasional 4 misfires in a row.

Looking at my own teams, not much has changed ‘recently’. There’s Archdeva (5 Mar 21), which I sometimes use on yellow day. That was 1 1/2 years ago. More useful mythics please.

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Incidentally, “Show full post” on this is broken.

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One of the lessons I wish the troop designers would learn/internalize is that most players don’t like “random”. Including myself. I want some level of predictability in what’s going to happen when I cast a spell. Within reason, of course, but it’s not like these unpredictable troops have spell effects that are so amazingly powerful and unique to outweight that – and that’s something that isn’t going to happen in light of the volume of troops that are already incredibly powerful without the random.

Which is an aggravation I’m dealing with now more than usual because I’m still trying to finish Pure Faction Lyrasza’s Lair at the moment.

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So far this year we’ve received Consort of Darkness, Piscea, Ahries, Tauraeus, The Gemini, The Wild King, Leio, Tourmaline, and now Libara. Of those, the only ones I actively use are Piscea and Ahries.

Leio is somewhat interesting due to its boost, although enemy magic isn’t something that scales as much as any other stat, so the damage and armor isn’t something amazing, I give it a C. Tourmaline is straight up F tier. So extraordinarily bad because of its 10:1 boost ratio.

Wild King is interesting, but it’s also just… unnecessary. I’d give it also a C. It’s clearly a counterpart to Wild Queen, but it doesn’t do anything that Wild Queen can’t do. It’s the same mix of a specific color and skulls. You get a bonestorm at the start of the battle instead of when an enemy dies. You give magic instead of attack at the start of the turn. You give attack to allies instead of stealing attack and giving it to one ally. It’s just… meh. Also, you rarely ever want to START the battle with a bonestorm, because it doesn’t help you get any mana to even cast his spell, whereas Wild Queen can get a bonestorm going at least 3 times after each enemy death.

Consort of Darkness of Darkness is one of those incredible mana scalers. Like, if you have 99 magic, it’s a 100% chance to kill the enemy – just like Archduke. Then you get 12 skulls. Sweet. Okay, so it’s like Zuul except you need tons of magic (potions) to make it work, and he’s not impervious, and it uses brown instead of blue. The elimination of just 10 from all their skills is really sad though. It’s basically nothing, and I would have liked to see that scale with magic. D tier. If it doesn’t kill the enemy, it’s useless.

I love the Gemini, but I wouldn’t necessarily ever use it, because The Gray King and Draakulis exist.However, I suppose on a purple only team, it could be useful since you can’t run Draakulis. Unfortunately, Xathenos is still better than Gemini – but to be fair, it’s probably easier to get Gemini than it is for some people to craft Xathenos. I’d give Gemini a B tier. It’s definitely a fun troop in the right conditions.

Libara… the latest one. It’s got two things going for it: 1) deals damage to all enemies 2) scales at 1.5 magic. Unfortunately, it also is subjected to RNG. Imagine wanting to do damage but always getting life. Ugh, annoying. That’s the problem with nearly every “random action” card. The “other than damage” option needs to be REALLY good to justify not getting the damage one. D tier.

Finally, the two good ones. Ahries… this thing hits LIKE A TRUCK. Deal (half)-[(Magic x 4) + 3] damage to the first Enemy. If they die, explode 8 Gems.

So with 39 magic, it deals ((39*4)+3)/2 = 79 minimum to 159 maximum damage. It’s got 50% skull damage reduction, it deals double damage to stunned enemies, AND it’s a construct so you can start it off with 50% mana running the awesome Geomancer class. Fantastic. If you can kill the first enemy, this thing loops really easily. A tier.

Then there is Piscea. Oh my god. S tier. I ran this in the last Tower of Doom and basically devoured my way up the tower. 30% devour chance might not seem like a lot, but you get two chances at it, AND it’s super easy to loop it, so you basically have four chances in a row. Godly.

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Other than Piscea, which ones do you think you’re actually gonna use outside of events that have very specific restrictions? As in, which ones aren’t filler content?

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The Wild King is amazing because Gargoyle exists. Pet rescue, E12, everywhere. Just try it. Hero class doesn’t really matter but 50% start is good.

[6622,7200,1416,6638,3023,1,3,2,3,1,1,1,14035]

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I see Piscea as a mana generator that also devours sometimes - like Centuragon.

So I build my teams with Piscea as support, and if used like that, it’s a really great troop.

Wild King is nice as well though I isn’t use him as often.

Libara on the other hand is kingdom star fodder. Probably worse than Tauraeus because of the random effect.

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Easily worst mythic of the year so far (maybe Gobmother can compete) - as mentioned above, it suffers from OR spell effect bane of “very unreliable, better don’t touch it”.

In general, if you insist of having a mythic with random (where player cannot choose) spell then
either make it do some set stuff AND then do either A or B,
or, at the very least, guaranteed extra turn should be added (although I prefer the first options).

For this specific instance, @Fourdottwoone gives very reasonable options few posts above.

I have E12 use for Piscea, Ahries, Gemini, Wild King, Sparkinator, lesser so for Consort of Darkness and Leio; but I enjoy the luxury of not belonging to “win me a game in under 30 seconds or you stink” camp, so most would find that use rubbish.

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outside of world events and delves, I only use four teams:

Explore 12 in Ghulvania:
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Higher level adventure board tasks, Pet Battles, Dungeons, lower tier explores (campaign requirements), PvP, etc.:
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Level 1 Explore (Vault Weekend) and for low level Adventure board tasks (deals 20 damage):
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Gnome-a-Palooza (because of Soul Gnome) (deals 25 damage with two casts, and you get more gold):
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For E12 I only use 2 teams:

Cedric
Centuragon
Zuulgoth
Leprechaun

Cedric
HKI (if attack is ~70)
Egg Thief
Greed

For low level adventure, I use a Rowanne team. For pets, I use Phoenicia/Magma Dragon/Maraji Queen/Leprechaun team

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Color me intrigued with all of these - please share?

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The Wild King is used in a slightly different way than The Wild Queen, which is probably why it comes across unnecessary to you.

King is used more in a demolition derby type skull rush down where as Queen is more used as a “safe” skull spammer, if that even makes much sense.:

  1. Atk Buffs your entire team instead of just the first troop. Pretty relevant in situations like vs Books where the top of the team may be looped to death. Queen’s buffs would be wasted, but TWK would persist. Also relevant for non-first slot High King Irongut, if anyone plays like that.

  2. Enrages. In the world of Slayer/Titan etc. it doesn’t seem as important, but it works very well with other non-Enrage skull buffs, like Hunter’s Mark or double damage skull atk.

  3. Compared to Queen, King’s ability works even when the entire enemy team is entangled.

  4. The Wild Queen’s Bonestorm when an ally dies is quite terrible when TWQ misfires/if you’re losing. Wild King’s Bonestorm at the start of Battle is a lot easier to overwrite from you or your opponent, which is probably a good thing.

Magical Christmas Land: You loop 2-3 times and win with Enrage + Skull.

The only downside compared to Queen, King tends to loop a lot less. You’d think with the same spell, it’d have the same result, but it just doesn’t FEEL like it. Anecdotal for sure. I use Queen for Guild Wars, but King doesn’t loop enough for me to use confidently. I’d gladly use it more if they could check the coding to make sure it plays the same like Queen.

Also the obligatory King doesn’t protect you like Queen’s attack reduction

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