Faction troop synergy feels off

1

I’m looking at the troops now and I’m thinking: “they’re close, but how am I supposed to beat Delve 500 with these troops?”

Does anyone else feel that way from looking at these troops?

Hall of Guardians:

Ethereal Sentry seems like the build around me troop of the 4. Increase an ally’s Attack by their Armor. Create a Lightstorm.

Great, lots of attack based on armor! Then you look at the other 3 troops and none of them create armor so the spell becomes ineffective the longer the battle goes.

So what troops get payoffs from the attack buff? Gargoyle: Deal 27 splash damage to an enemy, boosted by all allies’ Attack. Explode 2 gems. At 3:1 boost ratio, its doing ok damage at an overcosted 14 mana.

Lets look at Silent Sentinel: Explode a column. Gain 22 life. If any enemy is Silenced, Enchant all other Allies.

It does nothing to help the synergy.

Lets look at Arcane Golem: Explode a gem. Stun a random enemy for every Yellow Gem destroyed. Gain attack. That helps Gargoyle indirectly?..

Recap:

Ethereal Sentry → Gargoyle
Arcane Golem → Gargoyle, barely
Silent Sentinel → nothing

At this point, it feels like Ethereal Sentinel should boost ally’s attack based on LIFE to make Silent Sentinel matter more or make Arcane Golem or Silent Sentinel gain ARMOR so ES’s skill has something to go with.

All-Seeing Eye

The go-to troop here is Xerodar maybe? It can transform Yellow Gems to Skulls which will amount to some respectable damage as well as some generic 2 target damage.

So… which troops best takes advantage of those skulls? … maybe Ocularen Leech?

I don’t think any of the other 3 really do much to work well together.

Ocularen turns Brown to Green to sort of self-loop and does generic damage to the 2 weakest. Its okay.

Watch Mother kinda just stares at the Green Ocularen makes and the skulls Xerodar makes, but doesn’t actually do anything with it except give life to all. The life doesn’t really mean anything besides stall.

Ocularen Leech does well with itself, and does a little with Xerodar, but does nothing with the other 2.

Xerodar → Ocularen Leech
Watch Mother
Ocularen → itself

The gist of it is that the 3 troops that are decent color block each other and the 1 non-green troop does nothing. They don’t actually do anything with each other in practice.

Watch Mother really should turn Green to Yellow or Green to Skulls as a synergy loop with the Legendary. Or Watch Mother should get Brown to Green that Ocularen has and Ocularen should get Green to Skull or Green to Yellow…

Spoiler Territory:

Summary

Crypt Keepers almost works, but the legendary troop doesn’t synergize well with the other 3. One does regular damage and one does true damage. Really doesn’t work together.

Sea of Sorrow doesn’t work, because the troops pop out of submerge after doing anything. The only way you can keep the synergy going is by doing nothing, but then how are you supposed to win that way?

I get that winning with 4 of a Factions troops isn’t supposed to be easy, but if they’re advertised to have synergy, then… shouldn’t they work together?

5 Likes
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I share your concerns, additionally I am worried that someone could position themselves by beating the delves to a high enough level that when they attempt it with the faction troops they will be unable to win, missing out on all the renown that could add. This is because you can only play a delve 10 levels lower than your best ever. With only 4 troops in each underworld faction most people won’t even get all 4 troops before they have played a bunch of delves. Are we supposed to just sit towards the beginning to artificially make the game easier for when we gain the 4 faction troops so that will be achievable?

An idea I had to make this a little more manageable is to make the class associated with the kingdom the faction is associated with to also make your hero count as a faction troop. That way you would only need 3 true faction troops and there are a lot more options with the hero weapons and class traits.

3 Likes
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I think that at first as well, until I try to leave one room undefeated to try fighting it after beating the Boss. Turned out I can’t, the game will just consider it finished. So easiest way to earn maximum renown for fraction team and no-dead team in level 500 is to just fight 3 battles (beginning/middle/Boss) to finished the Delve early to minimize casualties.

The problem is, you will always want to beat all rooms in any levels, so how ofen you should try these 2 challenge? Always running them to beat all rooms will be very hard in later levels. So it seems like reaching level 500 in the fastest way using your best team is the main goal, with backtracking those challenges once in a while when you’re stuck without Treasure Hoard’s stat help.

As for the OP, I agree that the synergies could be better. Those extra life gains are great for survival, but not much help in offense strategy. Although it should work well enough in the right team setup.

For Hall of Guardian, an ideal team would be Silent Sentinel/Ethereal Sentry/Gargoyle/Arcane Golem. Skull damage will be the main tactic, with Gargoyle as the main offense spell. Attack stats will be the main source of spell damage with Ethereal Golem’s assistance . Enchanting and multiple damage-reducing traits are great for long survival, with stun to disable those same traits when fighting boss.

For All Seeing Eye, it’s Ocularen Leech/Xerodar/Ocularen/Watch Mother. Their main tactic is stare the enemies down from the top with a mix of skull/spell damage. Top 2 are quite great main offender, with Ocularen to help looping them and take out slacking troops. Watch mother to help with survival, and bring back-up Ocularen Leech in case it died. They are not as bulky as the Guardians, so it’s great to have summoner.

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Maybe you’re not supposed to be able to beat each faction at level 500 before the feature is 48 hours old. Since we’re not getting new kingdoms for a year, I bet we’ll see new, useful faction troops get released sometime between now and “next year”.

5

As far as I know, it was never said that we will get more troops for Faction.

And I also remind that you can use duplicate of a faction troop and still get the achievement.

6

I am going to claim that mythic faction troops will be developed and released once we run out of overworld kingdoms without mythics. They might even appear in chests after the exclusive week.