I beleive it is working but the way gem matches are handled are what is making it appear broken. This is not maw’s third traits fault but how gems are handled. As the mod confirms the problem.
Maw’s third trait is a ticking time bomb. Compared to every other trait in the game, his is extraordinarily powerful. Even without the multiple-devour issue, it’s too strong for what it is.
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I’m just wondering what would we replace Hunger with that would still feel like a legendary third trait?
I liked @TaliaParks 's suggestion of:
If a skull hit would kill an opponent, Devour them instead.
It would still have a snowballing effect, and would allow for moderate life gain as well as attack gain, but it wouldn’t be Russian Roulette with the match outcome.
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Plus you still have Sandstorm full that one-time super buff
oh, that is really smart. good solution.
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I fully agree that devour is way overpowered as an ability that either needs to nerfed severely or taken out of the game. It’s too much of a game-changer that is often pure luck. I avoid Great Maw coupled with a traited Mercy line-ups like the plague.
There are only a few troops that can take a out a reasonably strong troop in one blow and devourers can. The Bone Dragon used to be able to, but it appears to have been nerfed so you don’t get as many skulls when you take out somebody’s armor. Back to devouring, it would be a very powerful ability even if you only get a portion of one of the victim’s ability score let alone all four.
Maybe there needs to be an inherent immunity to being devoured if the troop has over a certain amount of armor and health combined. That way there is a natural defense to being devoured. That way there would need to be more strategy to effectively employ the devour tactic. You would have to pound an enemy troop down some before you devour it. That might bring more balance back into the game and make it more interesting to face such a line-up.
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It seems my post caused a bit of a storm. I will merely say that maybe I view this game in a different light to some. For me this game is there as something I can open up not think to much about and play in a quick spell of 20-30 mins and play dependent on the current meta. I know it will change and when it does so will what I use.
I just wonder in my own niave way that as I said in a game where the AI is generally a lame duck and where for some part we are told that defend is part of the game what team in the current meta state would actually beat a top player? For me I do not use Maw in my attack and after some messing trying to find a defend team that didn’t go something like 1 win in 10 I decided that to give the AI even a glimmer of “getting lucky” currently MAw has to be there. People talk of True damage 1.07 and again to give the AI a meager chance in that meta defend teams in general contained a super dodgy troop , a buffer and a skull generator. As in all games you use the tools provided and it seems to me that some people will only be happy when they can attack and win, win WIN!
For my part I try not to think to hard about it as this game is meant to be brain candy and light relief from the troubles of real life. Top players will always look for what is most effective and use it and it is sad to say that with current AI level we need a Maw type broken factor to at least add the chance of losing and even then it is so small I am amazed by the outcry.
If someone was to post about the lack of AI ability reducing this games lifespan for a dedicated player of games then that is something I would support and look for ways to improve it. Although in todays “i must win” generation I am not really sure a challenge to their limited abilities is what they really want.
Also not as often discussed are attack teams that are for the most part broken as these the player is happy to use. A case in point is the current runaway attack team of Goth, Mab, Valk and Mab. Unless your a dope or unlucky this fully traited lineup will beat most teams in 2-4 mins and you just wash and repeat…no need to scout an enemy this team will crush it around 97-98% of the time and higher for non-maw teams.
Anyways this post ended up to rambly and way to long.
P.S. Don’t hate me if you run into my Maw,Maw,Bone Dragon, Maw team…the AI made me do it 
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That actually sounds amazing. Stop random bs from happening, even give the player using Maw some greater degree of control… There are few downsides to this change.
@Sirrian, feast your eyes on this!
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If the devour attempt checks total damage and happens before any of the Skull damage is actually taken (eg., if you do enough damage to swallow them whole, you would still get their full life/armor), this would leave Maw nearly as powerful as he is now in combination with skull spammers, since linking enough for a kill would still give you a 100% devour, while removing the random element, so a single set of random skulls is less likely to decide the outcome of the match. Plus, it would allow Barrier, Entangle, and attack and skull reduction to be valid soft or hard counters to Hunger trait, as right now Hunger just ignores any of them. I’m against nerfing in general, but I would heartily approve of this change. Maw could keep being used pretty much how he is now, but there would be multiple counters. The lowly Cockatrice would be able to almost completely shut him down.
As for the original argument that devour in and of itself is broken, well, every single other form has a counter in the form of mana drain and/or silence. If you let them cast, well, there is no true counter to RNG… sometimes you are just really unlucky and have to take the loss.
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/agree, don’t like fighting Maw teams? Then don’t.
“I lost 1% of my total attacks this week, game is so broken”
We got to talking about this in global this morning…
There needs to be a Toxic trait of some sort in the game…
Toxic = harmful if eaten… there are analogs to this in nature to protect against predators…
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Interesting trait: toxic; kills the devourer. All heroes should have it automatically.
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Change devour to take any buffs/debuffs.
Like I said in another thread, the way I handle Maw is to limit the opponent’s moves. I run Templar / Valkyrie / Mercy / Paladin. I just cycle yellow blue green until my Paladin is buffed enough to take out Maw. He generally doesn’t have time to use his spell and if I’m careful I avoid his 3rd trait too because I’m matching for extra turns, not for damage.
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I think part of the problem also lies in the need for speed. So much of the gameplay centers around winning battles fast that even though there are plenty of counters to Maw, if they are slower, they don"t see the light of day.
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You misunderstand. My post was about calculating the total damage/mana gain. It had nothing to do with the multiple devour bug. Which is a bug, not anything to do with the calculation I was discussing.
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As your calculations are based on pc/mobile it does affect the same chances to occur. I cited it knowing that the bug mentioned was using the same code for skull crits as it was for devour chance. Seeing as Sirrian confirmed this to be the case when he posted that each skull was giving a seperate chance to trigger the 15% trait. [quote=“Mr.Strange, post:117, topic:8239”]
3 - for a huge mass of skulls, it is broken into the largest possible single match, and then every additional straight match is calculated separately
[/quote]
Like you said, calculated separately which led me to beleive that this includes the devour trait if the coding is the same for the two different versions. As there has not been a code update for gem matches on pc/mobile it leads me to beleive that both versions are using the same code.
The 5-match glitch isn’t on PC, so the two versions don’t have identical code
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The devour ability as it is with the Great Maw is way over-powered in that it combines an automatic kill (regardless of the strength of the troop devoured) and gaining all the attributes of the devoured troop. No other attack in the game will kill automatically (that I recall). There are some that will kill regardless of the strength, but there is only a chance it will like with the death mark. Some troops can do a lot of damage, but again it’s not an automatic kill.