Dawnbringer unbalances Arena

Not sure why so many replies here are centered around whether Dawnbringer can be beaten, or whether it’s something that’s accessible to all players. As it stands, Dawnbringer is used so often that for me personally, Arena is just not a fun format to play anymore. So unfortunately I don’t play it. If I did have Dawnbringer, I’m still not sure I would have much fun playing the format, because the weapon is so much better than any troops you can draw that the entire game is focused on the weapon regardless of the team. When deciding if something is overpowered, the first measure you can look at is how often a person uses a weapon/troop if they have it. Dawnbringer certainly fits that description.

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This, really. I know what I need to do to have a fighting chance of beating DB in Arena. But its presence and the rarity of going a run without facing it means there’s such a large set of “won’t make it” teams that I don’t bother with arena unless I’m really, really bored anymore.

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I’ve got my first set of numbers from 20 Arena runs done last week-- that’s way more than I usually do, I’ll keep adding to this list but probably not at the same rate:

A few notes:

• DB appeared in about 30% of the matches I played, about the same % I’m seeing from other reports. That’s 2 or 3 in an 8 match run, on average.

• Sorry to be a dissenting opinion, but have a look at the results I got. I won 96.6% of all matches that didn’t involve DB. But I also won 87.5% of matches against DB teams! I’m a pretty good player, but I’m not some kind of match-3 savant. If I can post numbers like this, then most people can, if they try.

• What am I doing differently? I don’t know! The only thing I can really point to is that I use Summer’s Fury as my hero weapon in Arena. I think it’s much, much better than Runic Blade, especially vs DB teams, but no one agrees with me. Maybe I pick better troops? I’m keeping track of the ones I use, but didn’t include them here as 20 runs is too small a sample size to start puzzling that one out.

• My win % vs DB was higher than I expected. I had estimated that I lost 25% of matches vs DB… the actual loss rate was exactly half that. I have an intuition that everyone is overestimating DB’s appearance and win rates. It’s simple human nature-- our brains are wired to overvalue the exceptions. You have to actually document the numbers to get a true assessment.

CONCLUSION: DawnBringer is NOT particularly OP and does NOT ‘unbalance’ Arena. It just puts some challenge back in the game.

Instead of posting 500 comments in the Forums whining at the devs to make the game easier, if people devoted their time to figuring out how to beat DB, the issue would disappear. Just my opinion, YMMV…

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Dawnbringer doesn’t effect my win loss much either, but I sympathize with people because they are so vocal, the change is technically easy, and Dawnbringer really is kinda overpowered.

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Well, it’s hard to argue with numbers. For clarity: these are “I never retreated because I knew the team stinks” runs?

If so, what the heck do you do with Summer’s Fury that’s so effective? Its base damage is the same as Dawnbringer, but that extra damage for yellow troops on DB is important, too, right?

Maybe I just did a bad job my test run of Summer’s Fury.

That said, “29% of the field is a single weapon” and “there are very few viable counters” don’t go well together. I’d be happier if we could name 5 or 6 weapons with these kinds of statistics vs. Dawnbringer.

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I mostly agree, and it wouldn’t matter much to me if DB were removed from Arena defenses. It’s just that in general I feel like the Forums are way too preoccupied with this kind of complaint.

Nerf DawnBringer!
Nerf Psion!
Nerf all the Goblins!
etc, etc forever…

My suspicion is that many of the most vocal players asking for these changes are objecting not because the troop in question truly unbalances the game but because the troop in question adds 7 seconds/match to their grind.

I don’t see why the devs should cater to players who are grinding 1000 matches a week to make some leaderboard. That’s not how the vast majority play the game.

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I tracked my retreats too, I just left them out of the image for simplicity’s sake.

It took me 25 ‘draws’ to complete 20 Arena runs, in other words I reject my drawn team about 20% of the time. I always do this before I play the first match, so I felt it wasn’t relevant to the data presented.

Re: Summer’s Fury, I think the fact that it damages all opponents is a big plus vs DB. One shot removes all barriers should DB get an attack off before I kill it.

Summer’s Fury also generates red mana, so if you use it judiciously, it’s not uncommon to immediately have a 2nd or even 3rd attack immediately after the first one.

Finally, it’s a red weapon. I never cared about Hero classes, so I’m still the same one I was when I started playing-- Warlord, fully ascended and traited of course. This last is mostly relevant when it comes to troop choices.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but this isn’t the case for me. I’ve never been a big arena player and generally only venture in there when I have Arena in my daily tasks. Once in a while, I would jump in for a change of pace or if I was sick of PVP but needed some trophies. I’m in a casual guild, so I don’t have a lot of pressure to generate trophies or grind for anything other than the improvement of my collection.

However, since the introduction of DB, I can honestly say that it has entirely sucked the fun out of that mode for me. For someone that doesn’t have Dawnbringer, it feels like too much of a handicap and adds a ton of stress to a mode which shouldn’t be inherently stressful. My success rates are similar to yours in an even smaller sample. I haven’t failed to complete an arena run yet, but that doesn’t change my feelings on the matter.

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Yeah, my comment about the grinders was mostly colored by the other thread where I’m defending Psion from the torches-and-pitchforks mob. :roll_eyes:

It’s less relevant in the DawnBreaker discussion, although I don’t agree w you that Arena is meant to be an easy, relaxing diversion from PVP (that’s what Treasure Hunt is for!)

OTOH I do agree that players’ subjective experiences are important.

My hope would be that, armed with the knowledge that DB can be beaten players would approach Arena as a challenge and enjoy learning to beat DawnBringer.

But if they don’t and if it really is stressing out the majority of players, that would be a good argument for removing it from Arena defenses, regardless of whether or not the argument that “DB is OP” is valid.

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As one of the top-10 posters in this thread, I felt like I was probably one of “the most vocal players”. There has been no shortage of ‘how to beat DB’ suggestions in these 510 posts, but to me, introducing an extremely exclusive weapon that is objectively overpowered (it is literally in a class by itself) to a game mode whose very purpose is to create a level playing field for all players (subject to difficulty adjustments) is inherently unfair, or “unbalanced”.

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I mostly agree with you too Lady-Porker. Dawn-bringer not a huge deal to me.
But so much community effort has gone into getting this fixed, it should be fixed, especially since it’s such an easy fix. And then this topic can die like the pharos support group one LOL

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I wanted to try and collect a small amount of data based on my own experience of facing DB.

Loaded up Arena, made my team. First two fights went by and I didn’t lose a troop. Don’t know what the Hero weapons were because they weren’t DB so I didn’t look.

Second two battles, both against DB. Great starting boards for me giving multiple extra turns. Lost them both, didn’t kill a single troop.

I’m not collecting data. :fu: it.

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OK, 20% doesn’t sound outside my experience for an insta-retire. The way the draft phase works doesn’t always lend itself to getting a winning team. Much higher than 20% and I’d say you’re cherry picking too much, but I bet when I’m playing I’m closer to 30%. It was “only relevant if you’re 0-0 retiring “too much””.

So far I don’t really know how I feel. I can’t get a DB opponent now that I want one. :wink: I fought 2, but:

  • The first was a very narrow win and I think I played poorly.
  • The second was the kind of game where you just lose, period. Too many gems that were either skulls or not my colors. Dawnbringer doesn’t cause those.

“Judicious use” is the feeling I get after about 10 matches. In Magic games I was familiar with a concept called “technical play”, the concept of ‘this person is good with any deck because they, in general, make good decisions’. Summer’s Fury feels more technical than Runic Blade or Dawnbringer. That “generate red gems” can also read “give your opponent a free turn”, and is particularly risky against a DB opponent.

I think I’ll get better with Summer’s Fury over time, and I don’t have a real opinion about it yet. I need to go at several more runs and this is the part of the week where I throw myself at PvP.

Also: do hero traits/perks work in Arena? I was under the impression they didn’t.

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I feel the need to point out that nobody asks for a nerf of Dawnbringer.
“Take Dawnbringer out of defense teams in Arena” is a nerf only if you use Dawnbringer to sabotage other players’ runs in Arena. Do you?

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Rofl! Because that’s exactly what goes through ever person’s mind when they use DB in arena! It’s all a plot by end-game players to ruin people’s day. My using DB is most certainly because I hate people and not because it’s overly useful & efficient. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

That’s the kind of whiney crap @Lardy-Porker was talking about! There are some legitimate arguments & concerns out there but this is most certainly not one of them and makes those legitimate concerns more difficult to take seriously.

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I wasn’t talking to you, you know. Anyway, I’d like to know how asking to take DB out of Arena defenses is a nerf. Whiny crappers want to know!

I think you’re right about that, but not entirely sure. FWIW, here are my Hero’s skill numbers, from within Arena so I think they are valid:

Magic: 8
Attack: 12
Armor: 18
Life: 24

Re: team picking/insta-retire-- it’s permitted and doesn’t cost much, so in principle I don’t think it should matter unless someone is doing 20 draws/Arena run just to get Rock Spirit or some other favored troop.

That said, the main reason I ever insta-retire is because I’ve drawn a team whose colors step all over each other. Part of the fun of Arena is discovering uses for troops you’ve never paid much attention to!

Example: last week I learned to love the Giant Crab, an excellent anti-DB troop! Prior to that I’d never spent 10 seconds considering its uses… :crab:

If you’re asking me, I obviously don’t, since for one thing I don’t yet even own DB!

I do agree w @vanyel that it’s a rather insulting question.

Last week on another thread I was accused of using Psion on my PVP defense team just because I like to make other players cry (no, I use Psion because the defense team he’s on has the best win % of the various defense teams I’ve tried out)!

I know that there are evil psychos out there who play games only to grief other people, but unless you have direct evidence that someone is like that I don’t think you should be tossing that accusation around so casually.

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Psion is a tough defense troop. Again, it’s not it, it’s the whole team that’s a pain in the behind.
And for the record I’m against nerfing Psion.
What I cannot understand is why those who use DB in Arena have any problem with not having DB in Arena’s defenses. If you call this a nerf you must have a reason.

As I stated in a previous post, it doesn’t matter that much to me whether DB is in Arena defenses or not.

However the 520 posts in this thread, 95% of which are asking, begging, or demanding that DB be removed just rub me the wrong way.

For me it’s a nerf in the sense that people are going to the devs and saying “This part of the game is too hard for me. Make it easier so I don’t have to think too much!”

I’m not saying everyone who favors this change shares that attitude, but that element is present and that’s what I’m responding to.