Bad Arena Teams Challenge

[igniteice]

On your marks, get set, go! Fire up Arena, draft the worst possible team, and see how far you can get.

Too powerful, it can loop itself. Skip.

Too powerful , it can deal double damage to poisoned enemies. Skip.

Perfect.

Decreases a random skill on all enemies by 2. That’s a low number, but it’s an AoE effect, and he summons a Darkstorm. Seems pretty powerful. Skip.

Scatter damage boosted by fey allies (including itself), and scatter damage gets better the fewer enemies there are. Too powerful. Skip.

Deals no damage. Gains some life. Perfect.

Can heal itself to FULL and gain attack! Skip.

Creates 8 skulls and give 6 attack to an ally?That could end up killing an enemy. Skip.

If there’s only one enemy left, it literally does nothing. Perfect.

Steals armor? Deals true damage? Drains mana and gains half of it? Get out. Might as well be a mythic. Next.

Oh boy… I’ve got a run off here.

On the one hand, this guy doesn’t really do anything. He does make it harder for the enemy to kill me with spells though, which benefits me, and I just can’t have that. I don’t need hand outs. I can win this on my OWN.

This guy also does nothing though. He makes brown gems – which is perfect because I have no troops that use brown mana – but he also makes blue gems, which my snow sprite uses. That could be problematic, because it’s enabling her to cast more often.

They both have 21 total health/life and 8 attack. Keeper of Lore costs more mana, but I feel like he gives more of a benefit because of his magic halving ability. Ice Troll’s ability on the other hand is a bit “better” for me because only half his ability even does something for me. I’ll take him.

I’ve arranged my troops in order from lowest attack to highest, so I don’t have any unfair advantage when it comes to skull damage. However, I will put my Snow Sprite behind Lamia so it is color blocked. That only seems fair. It’s only a 1 attack difference anyway.

Off we go!

This is an exceptionally strong opening for me. I will play the board honestly though. I’m not going to purposefully ignore skull matches and 4+ matches and such. I only DRAFTED to lose. I’m PLAYING to win. We’ll see how I do! Updates after the run!

[igniteice]

End of the first game.

Edit: Lost my second game. Enemy had Emperina in first slot and kept healing itself to full. It ended with 29 health. I ALMOST killed it with Charm, but my Charm charmed the wrong targets… sigh.

Edit: Won my third game. Although it had a Treasure Gnome in it, so I’ll never really know if I was meant to lose that one…

Fourth game was exceptionally hard because I lost my first troop immediately to skull cascades… but their last troop does no skull damage and does… absolutely nothing. One of the worst troops you could draft. I would have loved it.

Fifth game:

The dreaded “Charm does nothing” scenario. Now I can only win with skull damage and 4 damage Snow Sprite, but I have to kill two enemies with that lol.

Gulp. This is bad.

Their Sand Shark just devoured my last troop. If their Roc gets cast off too it will gain 13 Attack and Life and possibly kill one of my troops (if it targets my Snow Sprite, it deals 13 damage).

Okay now just what is going on…

It devoured my last troop AGAIN.

Well. My run has come to an end.

I blame Sand Shark. I’m pretty sure that troop is bugged. It doesn’t say it’s “boosted” by anything, but…

It was a good run. I probably would have won that if not for Sand Shark getting two devours back to back on my strongest troops (attack/health wise anyway).

[anon88626343]

That was a good read, I laughed. Thank you!

[Sytro]

Now you made me want to join the fun with “worst team”.
I’ll publish mine today (maybe not so detailed - will limit myself to 5 screenshots maybe)
OK,
First pick:

Goblin has extra turn and is cheapest.
Crab hits 2 enemies and swaps them.
Bone Scorpion destroys row and poisons enemies.

Took Scorpion although was wondering about Crab too. No simple winner to “worst” troop.
2nd pick (screenshot was lost )

Man-at-Arms → Gives attack and armor and barrier to ally.
Netherhound → Deals damage and creates purple gems.
Summer Knight → Destory Row, Gain atack, armor and Barrier.

Summer Knight i crossed out from begining. Was realy struggling between Man-at-Arms and Netherhound as both as pretty good. Decided that buffing my own troops is weaker than dealing damage to a potentialy strong enemy in back. So Man-at-Arms it was.

3rd pick:

Swamp Rat - Deal True damage, with a chance of hitting extra troop with additional true damage
Dragonian Monk - Destroys gems and barriers his allies based on gems destroyed.
Fell Dragon Egg - Summon Fell Roost troops.

Swamp Rat - strongest on in my opninion. Dragonian Monk → these barriers can be realy strong.
Summons in arena are weaklings, so definately Egg.

Last pick:

Ironkbark - Deals Damage
Herald of Woe - Destroys rows, Gains attack and armor
Desert Troll - Creates yellow gems.

Picked troll, as worst spell. Also yellow gems will only benefit Fell Dragon Egg.

Sorted by attack(low to top):

Ended up after 7 battles:

What could have been done better:
Should have probably swapped man-at-arms with scorpion- that way, he would be 1st man to get killed and wouldn’t be able to buff summoned eggs. He would also mana block bone scorpion. But i fear that without scorpion blocking brown on him, he would gain mana fast enough to be barriered all-the-time and as such would grow up some insane +attack on himself.
Maybe more luck next time, with worse and more obvious picks

[Magnusimus]

Bone Scorpion is one of my favorite common choices. The ability to manipulate the board by destroying a row AND poisoning up to the entire enemy team is very, very strong.

So maybe crab would have been worse? Or netherhound (man-at-arms is a real tank)? Or both, and I’d agree that the team would have been pretty hard to win with

[Sytro]

2nd attempt:

1st pick:

Giant Toad - deals damage and pulls enemy up to front
Snowy Owl - destroys purple + creates gems
Chupacabra - deals damage, deals double vs beasts, has 10% devour chance vs beasts

From the 3 above, only Snowy Owl doesn’t deal direct damage. It’s has quite good utility, especialy if you got purple troops in team and a bit higher attack than Toad, but still seems like the weakest choice of those 3. So Snowy Owl.

2nd pick:

Thaumataur - deals damage to purple enemies and drains mana from them
Templar - boosts armor of all troops and transforms red to green
Deck Hand - creates few purple and transforms all of purple into blue

Thaumatuar is kind of usefull if enemy has purple troops. Templar will give all your troops lots of armor and will help will green. Deck Hand will turn purple into blue (which kind of makes Snowy Owl spell half-useless and/or Snowy Owl will make Deck Hand cast half-usefull) - which in best scenario will lead to deck hand self loop or filling other troops. Decided to pick Deck Hand.

3rd pick:

Clockwork Knight - gains 10 armor and converts random collor into yellow
Arachnaean Knight - gains life and gives all alies 25% mana
Jaguar Warrior - deals damage, has potential of self heal and attack increase

Jaguar definately not. Strongest of those 3. Pick between Clockwork and Arachnaean. Decided Arachnaean will be stronger, as he gained life instead of armor (better survival vs true damage/poison) and Clockwork would be mana blocked/mana blocking my other troops. So picked up Clockwork Knight.

4th pick:

Caprinicus- deals damage, also steals enemy attack and shifts it into his own magic
Waverider- give armor, barrier and submerge to an ally
Umbraxis - deals damage and silences 2 adjacent enemies

It was easy pick. Both silence from Umbraxis and magic stacking from Caprinicus on top of their damage would be better than few points of armor and barrier on my troops. Plus Waverider will share mana with all 3 other troops. Perfect!

Ordered troops by their attack and i’ve put Waverider in front to mana block the Owl. Also put Deck Hand in front of Clockwork Knight to mana block him even more. Desided that if thing go crappy i’ll end up fighting something that’s also stacking life/armor and it will either be undecided or i will just retreat from battle if it takes like 30 minutes or longer without hope for either of parties winning.
So went off.

1st battle - got wrecked quite fast as enemies had some good. I though: it’s going to be a quick one.
2nd battle - i belive i won only because enemy had Mummified King (deathmark random ally, deal damage) who deathmarked their whole team to death…
3rd battle and few next ones → managed to won them somehow…
got to a point where it was 5 wins, 1 loss and battle screen looked like this:

My 1st toughs → if goblins take down my attack i wont be ale to hit back…
And so we started…
Enemies were always 1 kill ahead of me - took my waverider before i took goblins. Took my Owl before I’ve killed Serpent and took my Deck Hand before i dealt with Swordsman. On top of that my Clockwork Knight was poisioned:

So 5 hp and poisoned. Enemies rather wont brake that armor, but will I manage to kill them in 5 rounds (maybe 6-7 if RNG wont take my life) ?

Well, it went well (knight had 2 or 3 hp left on him, but haven’t made a screenshot before last blow to Varguoile) and all ended up with this:

Final note: Whole run (since 1st screenshot to last one) took 23 minutes. Fighting alone: 21 minutes ~3 minutes per fight.

[Jonathan]

Would be interesting if you could get some crazy reward multipliers for picking terrible troops . More of a challenge/unlikely to succeed, better rewards.

[Sytro]

@Jonathan

Would be interesting if you could get some crazy reward multipliers for picking terrible troops . More of a challenge/unlikely to succeed, better rewards.

Each troops would have to have hidden or visible parameter “arena capability” which could range from -5 to +5. Your team would have a total score between -20 to +20.
Rewards could be affected by your team score:

score between	bonus
<-20 ; -11>	+20% rewards
<-10; -1>	+10% rewards
<0 ; 10>	no change
<11 ; 20>	-10% rewards

The troops stats could be counted automaticaly and changing dynamically-> by the percentage of wins with teams using these troops.

[Jonathan]

Not bad, but I’d prefer more dramatic and individualised bonuses (for this particular mode) (obviously wishful thinking, but a fun thought experiment). E.g.

• Zephyros? 0.2x reward multiplier. Way too easy.
• Snow Sprite? 2x. Definitely a slower pick.

Weighting the reward bonuses more heavily towards the terrible troops would encourage picking them even over the much better troops that make it faster, e.g. Zephyros.

A bad Epic or Ultra-Rare could also be worth more than a bad Common, since their potential to make or break a team is greater. E.g. Peasant isn’t that great (please forgive me), but if you have good other picks, it doesn’t really matter. Heavily penalising any of the Troops in the “Troops that actually break the Arena” thread would hopefully be enough to disincentive them (again, only for this suggested mode).

With a really bad team, you could end up with say a 5.2x reward multiplier, or similar (esp. applied to Keys, Gold, Souls, or even a chance for better things). Chaos Shards would be a smart inclusion for newer players to help them break into the Underworld.

[Magnusimus]

@Jonathan

Peasant isn’t that great

A troop that can target any doomskull you want basically whenever thanks to his low, low mana cost?

Shooot…

[Fourdottwoone]

@Jonathan

Not bad, but I’d prefer more dramatic and individualised bonuses (for this particular mode) (obviously wishful thinking, but a fun thought experiment). E.g.

• Zephyros? 0.2x reward multiplier. Way too easy.
• Snow Sprite? 2x. Definitely a slower pick.

Weighting the reward bonuses more heavily towards the terrible troops would encourage picking them even over the much better troops that make it faster, e.g. Zephyros.

That would require the devs to reach a far better understanding of the game mechanics than they do now. I still remember how they celebrated Shade of Zorn to be one of the strongest mythics released, so it’s probably a lost cause. Besides, the weighs would have to be updated every once in a while, Doomed Blade and Doomed Axe have taught us they wouldn’t even be able (or willing) to spend five minutes in two years.

A self-adjusting mechanism that would work is to count globally how often each troop has been drafted throughout a week. For the next week, provide some bonus for troops with below average counter, some penalty for troops with above average counter.

[jdk]

This is my new favorite way to play thank you for coming up with such a hilarious idea !

My first worst team went 4-2

1. Nightmare. Only creates red gems. No damage, no summons.

2. Thaumataur. I am frustrated to choose a red troop that might make Nightmare useful, but chaos hound is too dangerous and sabretooth is like a runic blade. At least, since she only damages purple enemies, maybe I can face teams with no purple troops!

3. Nyx! Another gem creator who does no damage.

4. Monster Muncher. I forgot the screenshot here but the other choices were Zephyros and Sylfrostenath. Both too good with AOE damage, and both use blue which would synergize with Nyx, doublenope.

So I have one single target damage dealer and one purple-only AOE damage dealer. And nobody uses Nyx’s blue gems! This is looking promising!

Running team in reverse attack order was:
Thaumataur
Nightmare
Monster Muncher
Nyx

A great order for several reasons: Thaumataur dies quickly, rendering Nightmares red gems useless. Monster munchers tanky life gain (or devour-gained stats) don’t matter in the 3rd slot. Thauma also mana blocks Muncher. I could have put him 4th to be even more blocked by Nyx but maybe next time

The teams I lost to both had good AOE troops, fey cap and enchantress.

10/10 will play bad area teams again. So funny

[Sytro]

@Fourdottwoone

A self-adjusting mechanism that would work is to count globally how often each troop has been drafted throughout a week. For the next week, provide some bonus for troops with below average counter, some penalty for troops with above average counter.

Just rank troops by numer of wins they had. Weaker troops are chosen less often, so their pick ratio is far less than those popular picks. Add higher bonuses to troops that have lowest win count.

Update bonuses each month or each camapaign start (2,5 month), so that the rates would be somewhat stable for longer periods.

[jdk]

4 troops. ZERO damage spells

this bad team will be tough to top! Went 3-2

1. frostling. No traits in arena = no extra skull damage. No damage spell.

2. Warhound. Minus attack may help me play defense, but again—no damage spell.

3. Nyx, again. Can help feed Frostling, but frostling not doing much anyway. 3 for 3 on no damage spells.

4. Grave Seer. Jackpot! 4 for 4 no damage spells! And with no traits, no empowered start, which would risk feeding my powerful Nyx-Frostling combo

Reverse attack order Is Frostling, Hound, Seer, Nyx. My only strategy is try to reduce enemy attack and outlast skull matches.

This one took a while as the zombie kept eating all the skulls, but I ended up winning eventually

My last loss had a nice Vault Weekend twist. A soul gnome showed up in last place to steal all my life

[Sytro]

These 2 aren’t worst picks, but rather "best what i could get’, but seeing as people tend to complain about this mode all the time, here’s an example of 2 quite fast teams I was able to create:

[Sytro]

Another two. These try to show off, that mana-blocked troops aren’t a real problem:

Especialy here: 4 troops, 3 colors only

[TheIdleOne]

@Sytro

Especialy here: 4 troops, 3 colors only

all you need there is Elwyn lol

[Sytro]

@TheIdleOne

all you need there is Elwyn lol

yeep, he’s prety strong in arena/early game - been using him quite a lot on low level delves, back when I didn’t have any mythics or good legendaries

but still… color blocked troops aren’t realy a big thing in arena…
and as for that team → Snowy Owl can basicaly fill up any troop with mana quite fast… so if you remove Elwyn and replace him with another green/brown/yellow team, that team still will be viable

[igniteice]

Arena of Valor weekend! I’ll play a Bad Arena Teams Challenge for it…

Sylfrostenath damages all enemies, so that’s right out. Fell Dragon does single target damage, and although its damage will never be boosted (burning+diseased enemies), it’s still too much. Stealing attack and transforming gems? That’s pretty solid. It’s stealing a minuscule amount of attack (3). Seems fair.

Grimcorn deals the last damage (9) but can deal double damage to cursed enemies and sets itself up for it (curses them after damage dealt). Dragon Turtle does the most damage (11) and submerges himself. Lamprey is middle (10) and has chance to devour blue enemies. The submerge could help Dragon Turtle survive, and I don’t want any freebies. Lamprey is just basic if I use it against non-blue enemies. I’ll go with that.

Revenant is super powerful in Arena (damage boosted by skulls on board and death marks). Nymph and Dark Dryad are basically the same. Dryad steals armor and converts it to random skill on first ally. Nymph removes armor and entangles. Dryad is useless once enemies are out of armor, whereas entangle is always powerful. So Dryad it is!

Ice Worm = Loopable damage. Armored Boar = Extremely powerful damage dealer (6 damage, PLUS 5 for every skull destroyed in a row) and mana generator for only 8 green. Baby Dragon? I gotta go with that then. And then I’ll put it behind Sylvasi so it’s color blocked.

Alright, first match done.

That’s enough Arena for me today!

Finished the run today for Campaign:

[NerdieBirdie]

Just saying, renaming this to Bad Arena Drafts would give you the acronym BAD

I also find it funny that this mode, likely intended to slow players down and waste their time for the hope of those daily gem offers, has been made even more slow and gruesome with this thread It’s hilarious, though, and I love the challenge.