I am aware there is a dedicated Guild Wars Reforged feedback thread, but I would like more of a focused discussion on this since I feel it is the #1 issue keeping this game mode from being truly enjoyable at the moment.
So, my claim: Takshaka needs to be removed from GW defense teams, or at the very least limited to one per team.
I don’t think this is an insanely controversial statement. I was a strong B1 player back in old Guild Wars, I have been paragon of my top guild several times in the past few wars in the current iteration of the game mode, and I think this is the most consistently toxic game element I’ve seen across all that. Life & Death was annoying, Doomed Books were certainly a challenge to deal with, but Takshaka defenses in GWR feel more inherently mean-spirited than any of those to me at least. What is otherwise a fun mode that encourages creativity through team building with limited resources is dragged down immensely by the constant looming threat of getting helplessly wiped in a turn by a team with 3 Takshaka and usually an Essence of Evil or some other exploding weapon. The troop is so centralizing in the defense zones it’s allowed in (Divine and Naga restrictions + the Palace) that early players often prefer to take paths to the Palace that don’t include them, which can interfere with the overall tactics of going for full sets.
Now don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely beat Tak teams. Just like you’re not always going to be caught in a loop by goblin teams, you often have ways to win against a triple Tak as well. But I don’t think I’m alone in feeling like I’m rolling a die every time I boot up a battle against one of these teams no matter how well prepared I am. A bad starting board can absolutely end a battle immediately in these cases regardless of any Snap Freezing, and especially in particularly difficult restrictions like the current Urskaya one, it just leads to so much unnecessary frustration. The worst feeling in this game is when you felt like you played as well as you possibly could and still lost, and I think that happens too often against these teams compared to every other common defense setup. Again, it’s not that it’s impossible to beat, it’s that it’s so much more consistently overpowered than any of the other popular defenses, including Maelstrom Dagonath and Crysantherax teams.
Lastly I am well aware of how rare direct balancing action against specific troops is in this game. However, considering we already had Stellarix (admittedly a much more broken troop) and Wand of Stars see automatic replacements on defense teams, I don’t see why we can’t at least have a conversation about this one. Have a good day!
I agree. I think that restricting repeat troops would help eliminate most issues. That was core in the original GW. That was across all the days too. It’s not like the offense team can pick the most op troops every GW. Honestly, this GW seems the worst so far. Tripple Takas with essence of evil should be banned. May EE should also be banned.
I would say Guild Wars needs to be redone. But last time I did they took years to make this, worse version of Guild Wars.
So since I would have better luck getting a date with Keira Knightley than a dev playing this event. I will just say, nothing because though I can’t comprehend guild wars being worse. I have no doubts that the devs will find a way.
I agree. Most of these attack restrictions are just flat out unfair against the easy top tier defenses. Urskaya has good teams, but they’re slow to get going vs 3x Takshaka defenses that can fully charge and wipe your team after one or two turns. Chrysanterax is also another issue when we have these slow ass attack teams. Unless there’s a perfect starting board there’s hardly any chance to have a chance.
And that’s the main problem. They do not understand and see things from our perspective. I lost the first time against triple Taks and EoE, but I did get them the second time.
And when I did finally manage to pull off that miracle, I did not even learn anything. Everyone except for my Enraged Kurandara was riddled with status effects. My poor Urska Druid died to deathmark. Torbern got transformed into a chicken. My Hero was barely alive with about 10 life. Good times.
Everyone’s on an equal footing. The opponent is also struggling. But having to play Guild Wars every day is stressful. In the old games, you could play all the battles in one day.
And a request to bring back the Star Rod and Stellarix for defense.
I think limiting all troops to one copy per team would be very easy to implement, and would stop troops with OP traits from dominating. If any troop needs further restrictions, that could be addressed when necessary.
To me, the biggest issue has been the dev’s obsession with RNG over strategy. We have all these troops now that push random chance with no counterplay available. Enemy team has 3x takshaka, maybe they’ll fill their mana and kill you in one turn, maybe they’ll whiff and you win. That’s not fun, that’s just luck. Might as well roll a dice and hope for a 6.
And for the record, while I enjoy the colour restrictions more, because at least I can make teams that can actually counter the most powerful enemy teams, I still think the whole mode is bad. Guild wars should be the most skill based mode in the game, not the most luck based.
And (as I’ve said before, several times) the whole system of rewards is stupid. We get rewards based on the numbers of wins, which pushes some players to do the easiest battles to guarantee those rewards. We also get rewards for highest points, pushing other players to do the hardest battles to try and outdo the other guild.
One of the biggest changes they need to do to make the mode work is to have the rewards given for wins become given for battles played. Then everyone in the guild can pick whatever battles they want, strategically, to try for the best points, and not worry as much about losing against risky tough enemy teams.
Or better still - just let us use whatever troops we like for base score and award extra score for each troop that complies with the suggested restriction. Everybody gets to decide for themselves the level of risk they’re comfortable with instead of it being forced from the outside.
Want to go easy? - Sure, no problem. Want to go hard? - Sure, no problem and then you, the serious one, can be even more dismissive and dunk crap upon crap upon crap on the others than you already do by showing every single one of those dumbs tear-soaked bumbles how your fourfold Ogre (or whatever the flavor of the week is) team outscores all and every steamrolling overpowered non-restricted line-ups they can come up with. Should be a win-win.
Yeah i think nerfing Taks would be a mistake, having all three paths for the point bonus should be difficult and the taks team aint easy, not even for the most experienced players, but you can more often not get a victory from 2 battles, sacrificing your palace battle for the point bonus. I say the Taks stay.
I’m fine with triple taks. There are tougher teams to face than that one. A large percentage of this game is rng driven now (but that’s a different topic), why focus on the one (x3) troop. Yeah, it can go off and you might lose to it occasionally. Ok. It can be beaten most of the time.
I’m fine with multiples of troops on gw defence. This new abomination of a game mode posing as guild wars at least has some challenge to it.
If the devs are going to spend any time working on gw, I’d rather see them get proper statistics actually working (including individual defence team performance!), than try to figure out how to implement ‘no duplicate troops’ (or any other gameplay change) without breaking 3 other things.
I’d also like to see the ‘replacement’ of WoS and Stella in PvP (and gw) end. It’s just silly. People are getting thousands of straight wins in PvP, and at warp speed. I know the VP requirements are ridiculous even at warp speed, but that’s a different topic.
For those that disagree, I can recommend a fantastic game that I’m sure you will enjoy. It’s called ‘My Name is Mayo’. It’s even got 2 sequels - you can’t lose!
Reminder that last time troops/weapons were blocked from PvP/GW (Stellarix and WoS), the block was said to be a temporary solution to prevent what were considered overpowered defense teams. Updates on the supposedly temporary block have not followed, nor have ideas for balancing been announced, nor have future meta troops been treated in similar ways.
In my opinion, additional troop blocks are just extra layers of band-aids. Blocked troops are controversial - who gets to decide what’s considered overpowered? Do we want IP2 themselves to decide that? The consensus of players in top brackets? The opinions of a few dozen active forum members?
I think blocking troops is a slippery slope, particularly when no long-term solution is being discussed. While it’s frustrating to lose to RNG at times, defending players earned those troops and built the team to be hard to beat. For end-game players, the vast majority of battles in this game are extremely likely to be won, including in PvP/GWs. I share the sentiment of others that a loss every now and again to some of the strongest troops in the game isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I also agree that having more ways to combat certain metas would be wonderful.
Limit the number of cards to be used in defense to one for every card. No dupes. No 3x Achrdruid. No 2x Emberclaw or Khafru. No 2-3 Taks. One Tak alone, will certainly make things easier and more fair.
Change Green Kingdom to NOT have two Tak buildings in the top-tier defense. There is a reason why everyone apparently picks Green for Defense and that reason was already very obvious a year ago. Either change Temple/Apothecary to god to a weaker position at the front, or scratch one of them completely and replace with whatever other “green” Defense we can put up there. Hell, we can change things around and put the Elemental Defense in one top spot instead and exchange that open position with a different “non-Tak” option. But seriously, one of six magic kingdoms has a heavy wall defense the others just have not. So go figure why so many people pick Green Defense every month.
As mentioned both solutions were already thrown around in the GW reforged feedback topic from the early start. So devs probably read it multiple times, and now in 2026 still nothing has changed because apparently Guild War is in such a good place, it does not need any work anymore.
Another attempt to “fix shit” without dissing Tak or the Green Kingdom, could simply be by bringing ALL ATTACK KINGDOMS on roughly a same level. It is ridiculous that some kingdoms are utter crap with no cleanse option, no mana generators, sucky cards/weapons or otehr obstacles. While some Kingdoms, like Mist of Scales with Takshaka as one of the most noteable IMBA cards, seriously have no problems to roflstomp through GW. Lets look at Urskaya: We do not even have an Immortal card here. While some Kingdoms have already two Immortals…does that really make sense? Not that an Immortal card is automaticly “to good to not take”, but nobody can deny that having a traited Immortal who is immune against everything, can make things in first slot a bit more easy. Some Kingdoms we have are just plain crap in attack. And those Kingdoms suffer the most, when going up against certain IMBA Defense teams, like 2-3 Taks, or Dag0 Palace defense, were one bad RNG start can already be the end for a match. But I guess the devs also do not really want to adress crappy Kingdoms with suddenly good cards either. And I can see the problem of dropping more A- or S-tier cards into the game. We have already seen how things went first with Diamantina and then it got even worse with Stellarix. Funnily enough Stellarix is still handicapped in GW and gets downgraded, while his successor Chrys keeps nuking teams in two casts. And don’t get me started with Dag0 looping around to insta kill 3 cards in a row.
all the power in the world doesn’t help you if you can’t fill. So in that lineup, you’re only worried about 1 Takshaka’s 3rd trait and that’s infinitely less scary.
Basically correct but I am just stating the facts. Some restrictions you do not have trouble with Tak. Restrictions are for all so we all face it. So I am fine with it.
