Hello folks. I haven’t been posting on the official GoW boards much, but I’ve been very active in my guild, playing and talking GoW every day, for quite a few hours each day.
And I have some thoughts about doomskulls.
Overall? I like them. +5 skull damage is cool, and really gives attack damage teams a boost. I also like the explosion of doomskulls - turns attacks into small mana-building events. Neat.
BUT - I feel like doomskulls have had the unintentional consequence of making “exploders” (troops that explode some amount of gems) far too strong. Exploders generate quite a bit of mana, and deal a modest amount of skull damage - generally 3-7 - to the top troop. With the addition of doomskulls, consistent exploders like Gorgotha, Ragnagord, and others now generate huge mana AND deal huge damage in the 20-30+ range, because exploding doomskulls is so huge. And when you explode a doomskull - it also explodes, pushing the cascade of your explosion even further!
So here is my suggestion - when a doomskull is exploded treat it like a regular skull. Only give the doomskull bonuses (+5 damage, explode nearby gems) if the doomskull is matched for an attack.
That keeps all the cool doomskull buffs in place for attack damage teams, but removes the extra madness of doomskulls combined with exploders. It also seems easy to explain.
I think they should separate the two effects, have a +5 skull and an exploding skull… That way the over effectiveness of their current state should be halved.
I’m not calling for a doomskull nerf. However, if the devs do decide to nerf doomskulls, I think the OP’s idea is a good compromise that doesn’t totally cripple the mechanic.
That’s actually one of the reasons I like Doomskulls, because they do make Exploders more viable. For Instance King Mikhail has replaced my Gorgotha in most cases because Doom skulls make him hit so hard once he is Enraged.
BuT… Doomskulls do make the game more random and in turn, the slow methodical board control gameplay is dead, because at anytime a doom skulls can ruin your board set up not to mention the enemy’s exploders.
As long as doomskulls are the same for everyone I like them as is. This is making going undefeated in GW a little harder and makes for more competition. On xbox no one knew who was taking 1st til the last hour or so of the last day. There were like 5 guilds in contention so leave it alone.
I feel like, and have said many times, how much one hates Doomskulls is really related to where you are in the game and potentially your guild.
Doomskulls hurt new players the most, doubly so if they aren’t in large guilds. +5 damage doesn’t mean so much when you start with +24 HP and +20 armor from kingdoms. If I had more stars I could theoretically have +36 and +30. Then my guild adds +8 HP/armor. A mythic Gorgotha has about 15 more HP/Armor than a Legendary one. So a player with maxed out stuff can tank 25 more doomskulls than a new player can, and that’s just considering ONE of the many tanks available.
I think that part of Doomskulls is intended: as a player gains power, their threat is dramatically lowered. I just watched an opponent hit my Gorgotha with 12 skull cascades in a row before I obliterated them on the crack back. I’d have definitely lost if I had a weaker team. But I played for nearly a year to get these stats: it feels like I should get a reward.
I think if Doomskulls are nerfed in the way described above, we lose something nice that Doomskulls give us: games get longer. When I think back to the game a few months ago, it feels so slow. Some people liked that, I think. But considering how many thousands of games you have to play to get the resources to be “endgame”, I’ll take any change it takes to shave seconds off of each.
Glaycion and Bloodhammer are basically exploders. Cast those and the entire board goes, full mana recharged and an extra turn, for the remaining oh right nevermind doesn’t matter they’re all dead.
Yes, that’s the part I referred to as the game being faster. Bloodhammer probably should’ve been a mythic given his power, but that’s a different can of worms.
I think a lot of people hyperbolically understate how much mental work it takes to engineer the Doomskull cascade. If it were as easy as advertised, we’d be flooded by Doomskull teams. Instead I see the same old: turns out the CPU isn’t smart enough to use it. Because of that, I think if Doomskulls needs a nerf, so does the Ishbaala/Infernus team. It shouldn’t start with half mana, it just speeds the game up way too much.
I feel like @Slypenslyde is sort of shifting the discussion here.
I don’t hate doomskulls at all. That’s why I said that I like them!
Also, the idea that threats become smaller as you gain in power - that’s true for every aspect of the game, and not something that’s specifically applicable to doomskulls.
My motivation specifically is to prevent exploders from becoming a major source of damage, in addition to their other benefits. They were already excellent troops, and didn’t need that improvement. But because I like doomskulls, I’d like to make a change that preserves both - the benefits of doomskulls, AND relegating exploders to mana gain and board manipulation, without excessive built-in damage.
I don’t like Doomskulls for several reasons. When they’re on the board and you try to take an extra turn by dropping gems in a manner that would give you an extra turn they blow up,and ruin your extra turn,and board set up,so now there’s no skill involved. It’s all turning into luck based drops with overpowered mechanics. If you’re using a troop who creates Doomskulls you’re just as likely to pass the constant dropping of Doomskulls in their favor,and lose the match. I lost to a players full gnome team trying to use Doomskulls. It’s ridiculous,and way too overpowered.
I get what you’re saying now, but I still welcome the expansion of the meta.
Before Doomskulls, the meta was generators. It felt like at least 90% of my opponents were either Nyxbringer or Infernish. After Doomskulls, the meta is generators, but only 85% of my opponents are Nyxbringer or Infernish. Doomskulls don’t show up on defense much, but I see a LOT more of Psion / Rag / Famine / ???. That team can lock down Doomskulls well enough I switch teams when I see it now.
This week I feel like I faced a lot of Gorgotha teams, but they weren’t fielding Doomskulls. I think it was a response to Doomskulls, because it’s tough for a skull-focused team to deal with Gorgotha. It’s hard to fit Infernus on a Doomskull team, so we see a rise of the tank in meta. I never die to a Gorgotha if I lose to those teams: it’s really the Famine or something like Yao Guai it protects that’s the threat since Gorgotha extends the game. So you change teams.
But I think this is neat. After I got Infernus, I stopped thinking about PvP. Every match was Divines shredding whatever it was. Now I swap between two or three teams based on what I’m facing. PvP isn’t so brain off anymore. I can’t complain about that, and I think it was crucial to give the tanky exploders like Gorgotha something to do to get there.
I do agree that Doomskulls plus exploders are too powerful of combo (far greater than the sum of each game aspect). The proposal in the OP seems to be a very reasonable adjustment.
I don’t see doomskulls in PvP meta as often as I see Divines, Psion, and Nyxbringer. If they were a major flaw in the game that required nerfing, wouldn’t they be as prominent in meta as the team we’ve nerfed at least 6 times already?
