While grinding out this ludicrously busy week, it’s become apparent that ALL gem exploder troops have had their mana generation reduced from 70% to 50%!!! Firstly, and correctly IMO the divine meta suffered a minor downgrade to level the pvp playing field and then the devs effectively buffed that team again by implementing this ludicrous change. I have 44 Exploder troops, some of which are regulars in my wars play list; at least until now. My soul farm team is way slower, and the likes of abynissia and world breaker are massively affected, particularly when you consider WBs huge mana cost. Why oh why oh why? The risk of an unknown board justifies the 70% yield but it’s very difficult to make a case for that now. My entire wars line up needs tweaked and there is no time to do do it because of the event orgy that was unleashed upon us. This should at the very least have been delayed until after wars, or better still scrapped as soon as it became an idea. I would really like some developer input as to why this has been implemented. 20%??? Come on guys.
I agree that 20% was a little too much to nerf it with. 10% should have been tried out - From 70% to 60%. Also quite a few troops that only explodes a gem or a few gems in their spells got more or less affected by this explosion nerf.
They do need to fix this crap, I agree 100%.
It’s funny to me that the nerf left notorious, explode-powerhouses like Infernus, Divinia, Gorgotha, Mountain Crusher, The Dragon Soul, Ragnagord, Fizzbang and Nobend, and several others left only slightly less effective. It would be pushing it to say that I can’t notice a change, but they are still extremely useful troops, and therefore have not lost their places on my teams, and by extension unaffected by the patch per say.
However, any single, double, or quad exploding troop lacking a storm summon lost nearly all viability, in my opinion. Even Firebomb/Sunbird teams took a bit of a hit to speed while farming.
I heard reasons like, “It’s much easier to do the math with 50% Mana gained than 70% Mana gained,” and also excuses such as, “We can all agree exploders were too powerful.” It was comments like this that led to the nerf, and that’s fine. Even with my passion (and near only reason I still play the game) for exploders is unprecedented, I can agree that there were a fair amount of key exploders out there that could be considered “nerf-worthy”, and while that’s debatable, it is not my point of discussion.
I find that the nerf was intended for the above-mentioned type of troop, but the only troops to really take a hit, and lost nearly all effectiveness, were all of the troops EXCEPT the troops who brought about the nerf.
I’d like to re-draw attention to @Razzagor 's idea, here.
Explode effect equals 50% Mana gain, and leaves any huge number/ storm summoning explode troops how they are.
Blast, Implode, Ka-Boom, or whatever you want to call it, can be used to help bolster the “non-offenders” back up to being useful, with the original 70% (or even 75) Mana generated.
I would keep troops that can explode rows and columns as “exploders”, and reserve the Imploder status for small number explode troops, like Golem, Ice Goblin, Gluttony, etc.
There would also be the issue if whether or not to reclassify some of the hero weapon’s explode a random/specific gem as Explode or Implode, based on the desired amount of preferred mana-generation; EX: Explode for Mountain Crushers perks, Implode for Spark Rocket perks.
The main issue of late has been the overuse of the divine meta as defense teams in pvp etc. The reduction by 10% of ishbalas divine boost and slight increases in mana cost to uba and infernus were sensible adjustments to give players that DO NOT have that team a fighting chance at success. To then counteract that fighting chance with a double value reduction in explode spell potency is crazy by any stretch of the imagination and almost boosts the divine team even further. 20% is very noticeable in team performance and synergy and bracket 1 GW will require some careful team adjustments to gain success. Some troops have been placed on the scrapheap as a result. How can that be good for the game?
I was wondering why it takes way longer than it should for my trooos to get to full mana…why keep breaking things that should just be left alone. Anyone on the game can obtain exploders so I’m not sure why it needed to be nerfed especially when the a.i. Just cascades it’s way to full mana almost every match in the first turn anyway…if anything it needed to be buffed
I don’t know what, precisely, has done it, but if I completely ignore the 75% of PvP that is Fire Bomb teams I am seeing far more variety than I’ve seen in a while. So something is right.
Some people are testing megavore combos, but I’m seeing a lot of other troops I wouldn’t normally see, too. People are testing. That makes PvP more fun.
Then I end up meeting 8 Fire Bomb teams in a row. Sigh.
I feel like something simple such as “it’s now 50%, but we round up” might be enough to restore the viability of small explosions without rebalancing the giant ones.
Indeed.
A case in point, is when you need 1 gem to gain full mana. A recent game, my Rock Troll is 11/12, there’s a 3 gem skull match with 1 doomskull in it and 1 purple next to doomskull. Enemy tank is stunned and I’ve enough to take him out. Great, can match and fill, but no, it didn’t despite the purple gem being exploded.
I’m assuming because it is rounded down. I don’t know if that would be problematic coding, but maybe making it 51% would allow 1 gem exploders etc to gain the mana they need, and then there wouldn’t be too many cries of it boosting back up.
The issue with big explosion (ie more than 5 gems) is the cascade. And now, it seems that it became the main mana income: you explode the screen, you get small mana and then if you’re lucky you can get lots of mana thanks to the cascade…
Why not nerfing the cascade after the explosion? Put back 100% mana from explosion and then ignore maan from the cascade following the explosion. Let’s remove this RNG…
Yeah, it’s not really 50%. It’s 49.9%. I faced a Firebomb team that had a Treasure Gnome it. After the first two Firebombs exploded a total of 8 reds the Treasure Gnome had only collected a total of 2 red mana. If there are not at least 2 of a color exploded in the specific explosions you get nothing.
The problem with big exploders is that it can all backfire in the cascade. So the risk/reward associated should reflect that. Exploders are nowhere near as efficient as good looping teams that provide board control. For me, 70pc was worth the risk but 50 is too big a drop unless you have a storm running when you cast. Titan class gem explode on a 4 match can help but that’s a random gem which could leave you exposed for armageddon also. Exploder troops are now mostly ornamental for me. In high bracket guild wars, they just aren’t worth the risk unless they have another aspect to their spell that merits their inclusion.