[BUG REPORT] The Arena is Broken Again - Seemingly Random Hero Stat Bonuses

Support
1

Hi there,

So, remember during patch 1.09, when the Hero Class bonuses were active in The Arena, and it made it unplayable? Well, we have a similar bug now (on top of the Transform mechanic bug which brings troops with active Traits to the Arena - often Legendaries, to boot).

What you were expecting to happen…

Playing a normal Arena run, on a level playing field as the saying goes. =)

…and what actually happened?

Well, my Hero has 11 attack, 23 HP, 18 Armor, and 8 Magic, which is all much more than it usually should in Arena.

It’s not the Hero Class bonuses, as I’ve switched from Necro to Meca during a run just to test it, and the bonuses were the same, regardless of the Class Perk activated, and the color synergy.

Here, you can see that weapons of any color will get at least +2 Magic compared to what I normally have in Arena: St Astra gives +8 Life rather than +6, etc.

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I’ve faced a level 800 something whose Hero had 12 attack, 26 HP, and his War and Peace dealt 8 dmg to all enemies. Now a Level 200 something with 11 attack, 25 HP, and a Crescendo which starts at 5 dmg…

Here, look at this level 261’s stats:

<img src=“//cdck-file-uploads-us1.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/flex019/uploads/gemsofwar/original/2X/e/e868b79a7dd3bea2810ae77ce099e444926edb75.png” width="690"height=“398”>

And here’s Archenassa, Level 1025, in her current run:

Not quite sure what the exact issue is, here, or why it affects players differently, and some not at all, but in any case, this is broken and completely disrupting the Arena gameplay.

Could you please look into it so Arena is playable again soon? Thanks in advance.

One more for the road (see how my opponent’s Hero has completely normal stats compared to mine?)…

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2

Hi, they put out a small buff to heroes which might be what you’re seeing. In that case it is simply more attribute points at certain levels, and a similar levelled hero ought to have the same as you (they were all added to levels < 200).
Ow and for those over level 200, the bonus only applies once you have levelled once.
So Archenassa probably hasn’t levelled since the buff?

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For people over level 250 it totals 5 armor, 5 life, 3 attack, and 2 magic.

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Okay, thanks for the info, guys. Was there any official thread or post on the main website or anything you could please link here where this was officially announced? I didn’t find anything.

Having said that, it helps identify the source of the bug, but the fact that these bonuses are active in Arena is still a major issue, and it requires fixing. So this BUG REPORT is still relevant.

Against your 70/70/70 PVP troops with Traits, this may seem like a “small buff” to you, but in the Arena meta where the strongest troops have 9 attack and the sturdiest troops have around 20 HP with Armor and Life combined, this is actually game-breaking.

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Thanks for the link. =)

I posted there as well. Hopefully this will get @Sirrian’s attention.

PS: It also doesn’t fully add up. For instance, my Hero has almost 400 levels on josie’s, and they clearly both received buffs, but hers got 2 more hit points than mine (25 vs 23 - see screenshots above). So they might also be a bug in the attribution of those extra stats.

7

Heroes got buffed slightly, the values you are seeing are the ones that are supposed show up within the arena (and elsewhere, boosted by various bonuses). Heroes still showing old values need to level up once for the improved stats to show up. Seems to work as intended to me.

8

Except that heroes become a bigger powerhouse compared to the other units in the arena.
I remember the time that the class magic bonus applied in arena. That wasn’t fun. It made me stop playing Arena and I haven’t since.

So in that sense I actually am curious if @Sirrian considered the impact on Arena when deciding on the hero buff

1 Like
9

@Kharybdys Exactly. As I pointed out above, a few +2 or +5 here and there might not be a big deal in PVP where most troops (Heroes included) have 40+ to all stats (often way more than that), but in the Arena, such a buff makes the Hero strong enough to wipe the entire opposing line-up by himself, which is completely imbalanced.

I know that the devs do care for the Arena and for us Arena players, even if our issues are often low on their to-do list due to the PVP community being much more pressing, so I’m sure these buffs applying to Arena just cannot be working “as intended”.

That’s the main issue as far as I’m concerned: those Hero buffs should not apply to the Arena, at all.

There also appears to be a secondary issue, which is that the buffs weren’t applied equally to all players. @Fourdottwoone, please have a look at my screenshots and my previous posts. I have leveled up since the update, and I did receive some buffs to my Hero. That is not the issue (it was the case for @Archenassa, though, for instance).

The buffs I received don’t make any sense compared to various other player’s Heroes. It doesn’t add up.

See this?

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Now compare it to that:

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I’m at almost twice their Level, yet they have +1 Attack and +2 Life on me… It doesn’t add up.

For the record, before this update, my Hero’s stats were 8 Attack, 18 HP, 13 Armor, and 6 Magic. A Level 300 something like this one would have had about 1 point less to each stat.

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The buffs are only applying after a hero has levelled up (since they’re awarded through the levelling system). So perhaps a few of the odd totals today are the result of heroes who haven’t leveled yet.

We were aware that there might be some imbalance in higher-level arena play… it’s actually one of our very smallest segments of players. That doesn’t mean we will ignore it, but we did want to fix the stat problem for the larger population first before moving to the arena.

One option we have at the moment, we’re considering, is locking hero levels/stats for arena to say level 100 (or somesuch - maybe it’s 80, or 120, or 150…) so they’re not unbalanced against the troops. But we wanted to gather a little bit of data on that first.

8 Likes
11

Thanks a lot for your reply. =)

This is still weird, as it would appear the level-up system either applied some missing buffs but not all, or perhaps it applied the same buff twice to one player, and only once to another? I would have expected to have no buff until my next level-up, then to receive them all at once. If this fixes itself within a few level-ups, great. But I’d keep an eye on it just in case it doesn’t.

That solution would sound great to me! Besides this update making the Hero currently too strong compared to troops, the stats of Heroes have always been an area in which the core concept of a level playing field for Arena didn’t hold. I think having all Heroes capped at the same stats would make perfect sense.

In most match-ups, the discrepancies didn’t have a huge impact, but it wasn’t insignificant either. In particular, the 6 Magic of players Level 500 and above, and the 9 Attack of players Level 1000 and above made quite a difference. Of course, a Level 100 vs a Level 1000 would be at a clear disadvantage (7 attack vs 9 attack, and so on). This somewhat contradicted the philosophy of the Arena, as troops are all equal, whichever player picks them (or summons them; Transform bug aside ^^).

With the new stat boosts being received at various points below Level 300, I’m not entirely sure which cap would be best, but I’d like to mention a few Arena cornerstones that hopefully should help.

In my experience and humble opinion, to keep the Arena balanced, the Hero should have:

  • No more than 9 Attack (at most); 8 would be probably be the logical and safest value. An 11 Attack Hero makes the Ogre completely irrelevant, for instance. On the flipside, it shouldn’t have less than 7 attack either, which is just above average compared to most troops.

  • No more than 20 Life; 18 was a good value: higher than most troops, but slightly lower or just about on par with Berserker, the post-spell Roc, or the Mad Prophet (all troops whose exceptional tankiness is a defining aspect in Arena). It shouldn’t be too weak either (no less than 16 Life, I’d say), especially considering all the imbalanced one-turn-kill RNG spells like Jackalope, Spirit Fox, Mist Stalker, or especially Lava Elemental out there. They shouldn’t be able to one-shot the Hero by default.

  • No more than 6 Magic; 5 would be okay still. 8 Magic (let alone 9) makes it so that most AOE Weapons can basically wipe the opponent’s board in one cast, which isn’t far removed from the one-spell-kill meta we experienced during the +5 Magic bonus bug in 1.0.9.

These would be the main points of concern for me. Whichever level cap results in stats within that range would do just fine. Armor is generally less relevant, with exceptions, but it’d be on par with Life whichever level you cap the Hero at, so it’s not a deciding factor.

I hope this helps, and again, thanks for your time and consideration. I know we hardcore Arena players are a small minority (and now it’s official ^^), but it’s important to know you’re not forgetting us. =)

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FYI, Archenassa just leveled up, and she received only a part of the missing buffs as well. She’s now Level 1026 and her Hero has 12 Attack and 24 Life. As seen above, there are Level 300 Heroes with as much Attack, and 25 Life…

Those discrepancies are looking more and more like a technical issue.

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If thinking of a cap, just fix the level at some value. Equal playing field regardless of level!

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Some classes have different stats, don’t they?
They are probably playing different classes there for different stats.

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No, that can’t be it, because Hero Class bonuses are not active in the Arena, and all those screenshots are from the Arena.

I double-checked that to make sure it wasn’t a new bug, but no. My hero has exactly the same stats in the Arena whichever class I activate in the Hero Class menu, so that’s still working as intended. And it can’t explain why some players received a bigger or smaller buff than others.

Not exactly. Just because all heroes have the same stats, doesn’t mean the Arena is balanced overall. There’s also the question of Hero vs Troops balance, remember? ^^ That’s why I brought up certain key thresholds for the main stats, to help pinpoint which level would make the most sense for the cap.

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Hmmm, this is kind of odd. Josie and Moe1910 both have one higher Attack than their level would allow for, and two higher Health. Any chance this is a group composition bonus that just gets applied to the hero? I don’t have access to the game from here, which bonus would you get when building the same team as Moe1910 (possibly taking a hero race perk into account)?

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None of that applies to Arena, where these screenshots were taken, so this can’t be it either. There are no team bonuses, town bonuses, or hero class bonuses in Arena. These are their Heroes’ base stats at this time, which suggests there’s an issue with the hero stat buff update.

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To clarify, don’t make arena harder for lower level players because they don’t yet have certain stats on their hero if you decide to implement a cap. Just treat everyone’s hero as equal level qua stats.
That level can then be determined by the relative strength you want hero to have compared to available troops.

1 Like
19

I think I see your point now. I’ve been using the term “cap” for the hero level restriction that Sirrian has mentioned as a possibility to fix the Arena balance, which could mean “level X or below”, where X is the cap. So your concern is that players who already reached level X would be at an advantage compared to lower level players?

I see where you’re coming from, but this would be a non-issue, honestly, for several reasons:

  • As mentioned, those discrepancies have always been a reality in Arena (and they’re still there now, uneven recent buff numbers aside). If you create an account right now and jump to the Arena, your Hero will have something like 10 stat points less than your average opponent’s Hero. If you did a few days ago before the update, it wasn’t as bad, but still pretty significant. So if they implement a level cap now, they won’t “make arena harder for lower level players”, they’ll make arena more balanced for all players. Only players whose level is below the cap would still have a slight disadvantage, but it would be a smaller one than ever before, for one, and temporary, for two. So everyone would be better off, actually.

  • With the recent update, the level it would make sense to fix the cap at would be fairly low. Most definitely below Level 200. Probably somewhere between Level 100 and 150, as Sirrian said. That’s a really close target for even a brand-new player to reach. So again, this would mean all players would end up on an equal footing in terms of Hero Stats very quickly. This would make the Arena much easier to get into for new players than it is now, or has ever been.

  • I’ve been speaking of a “level cap” because that was my initial interpretation, but Sirrian himself said they’re considering “locking” the hero levels/stats at a certain level, which could be similar to the restriction in place for Troops at Level 15. If that’s the case, then even the tiny inconveniences described above would be removed altogether: whether your actual Hero Level is 1 or 1500, as soon as you enter the Arena, it would become Level X, like every other participant.

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Biggest reason to do locking instead of cap imo is that it’s simpler to explain.

My husband actually also plays, and has done so for a while now (multiple months). His tempo is a lot slower though, and he hasn’t reached 150 yet. His collection is almost as complete as mine due to having been in the same guild for most of that time…

So your argument that a lowish level is easy enough to reach doesn’t fly for me.