A lot of troops lose their usefulness because only half of them scales. This usually is a design choice with older troops. This makes them only really useful in highly restrictive situations (where you have to use them because of an event, or in Arena).
Example: Dragon Knight deals 4 + Magic damage to an enemy. If the enemy has a Dragon, it deals 6 damage to all enemies. That’s okay in Arena, because 6 to everything is pretty high compared to how much single target damage you’re doing. But for me, I have 20 base Magic on Dragon Knight, so he’s doing 24 damage to a single target, and no matter how much more Magic he gets from other sources, the 6 damage is always going to be only 6, so it scales terribly.
That’s okay on some Troops, like Warhawk, because the extra 10 damage if they have Hunter’s Mark is also accompanied by gaining an extra turn.
But on something like Ranger, which also does Magic + 4 to a single target and then a flat 8 damage split among enemies, boosted by 4 for each enemy alive, his Magic doesn’t affect the bonus damage, so the ability actually gets worse the more enemies die (well, kind of, the damage goes down by 4, but the damage is split by less targets). Still though, Ranger is a Wargare, and Wulfgarok Mythic gives 2 Attack and Magic to Allied Wargare on 4+ matches. It’s pretty unfortunate that this only affects the single target damage.
Other troops with similar scaling issues: Ser Cygnea. Gain Magic + 5 Life and Barrier, then deal 8 damage to an enemy.
Tauros: Deal Magic + 2 damage to first enemy, if I’m damaged, deal 8 to second enemy.
Couldn’t these all instead do like Magic/2? I understand that at low Magic levels, it’s nice to have damage that doesn’t rely on it, but it’s also fun to be able to use troops that scale with your Magic…
Archon Statue: Deal Magic+3 Damage to the strongest Enemy. If I’m wounded, deal 8 more damage.
The problem with this design is that the game encourages you to level your Hero through Kingdoms, Pets, etc. But as your Magic goes up, the percentage of the bonus damage goes down, which makes you less and less likely to use it.
If I only had 5 Magic, Archon Statue would deal 8 damage, and 16 total if he’s wounded. That’s 100% additional damage. But I’m at 25 Magic. So instead of a bonus 100% damage, I deal a bonus 28%, and that only decreases as my Magic increases.
That’s not only an issue for my stats, but also enemy stats. As I increase my stats, so do my enemies. But that bonus 8 damage slowly becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of their health/armor. It’s absolutely useless in Delves, for instance.