The last upgrade on Essence of Evil and Trick or Treat is currently weakening the weapon tremendously. It’s supposed to have a 10% chance to transform the first card into a Toad, and it’s triggering on the 1st turn at what seems like between 50-75%. I don’t know if it’s some game mechanic that the AI uses to artificially raise the difficulty/challenge through some sort of programmed computer assist, but it seems to happen all the time the AI is in trouble to lose the troop or to smash you with skulls. It’s frustrating when this happens 3-4 times in a row when you’re trying to entangle them to prevent from smashing you with skulls, and it’s triply worse when they are getting a cleanse and a full heal. This happens when you trigger the Toad transformation (which happens about 5 times more often than the lycanthropy transformation which is also on the spell) and lycanthropy transformation. Please lower the odds to what they are supposed to be and change it that it isn’t causing an auto cleanse and fully healing the troop. They should maintain the stats that they had prior to the transformation.
That’s the first problem…what seems. Everybody going on these rants should be required to sit their butts down and actually count the numbers. None of them do, they just ramble on and on - Ancient Horror summon broken, Toad transform broken, this broken, that broken with not a single shred of usable information whatsoever (in case something is actually broken).
Here, I did it for you just now - Essence of Evil cast 100 times, Toad transform triggered 12 times. For such a small sample pool, looks pretty much in line with advertised 10% value.
Also, Toad transform is weapon affix - it either triggers on the cast or not at all, so that “triggering on 1st turn” insertion is quite absurd, do not mix it with Lycanthropy that is a status effect and involves turns.
About toad transform in general - I find horror stories of detrimental effect greatly exaggerated. I’ve had Essence fully upgraded since forever and cannot recall a single time turning enemy into a toad has cost me the game. A few seconds longer to win - yes; but that’s all, just a minor nuisance not worth fretting about. I can imagine it causing problems for an absolute beginner, but otherwise it’s extremely unlikely.
Glad to see you simping for a game that clearly has issues that need to be fixed. I’ve been watching this thing closely for the last couple of months, and whenever the AI realizes that you’re purposefully casting on the top card to neutralize it instantly transforms 1/3 of the time, 1/2 by the time on the next turn, and 75% of the time by the 3rd time. Also, the transform first enemy to toad doesn’t trigger only at cast or not at all. If they let me post vids on here instead of a screenshot, which can’t prove anything in this case, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Unless you want me to say that I cast it 2,000 times and had the toad transformation occur immediately and had it occur 651 times, 1032 by the second turn, and 1532 by the 3rd turn. Now we got two conflicting hearsay statements that no one can prove.
Please post screenshots after your cast and the turn after that where the enemy transforms.
You seem to be confused between toad affix and lycanthropy
Upload them to YouTube or something similar and link them here.
I would like to see the stupid toad affix gone though I’m not sure if what you say happens. It’s still and annoying effect that I wish I wouldn’t have unlocked. 
Little more using Essence (100/8) just for the sake of it. Concluding results (with previous 100/12):
200 casts/20 transforms - just like it should be;
All Toad transforms happening right away on cast - just like it should be;
I even dragged the games out for as long as I could waiting for 2nd/3rd or whatever turn Toad transform - none took place, just like it should be. (There were a few lycanthropy cases, no toads, unfortunately.)
So, yeah, call me whatever name you like, but without real video evidence I don’t believe a single word you say. And boys who cry wolf irk me because we all know how that story ended.
How come that in years of using Essence I haven’t experienced this thing that happens all the time? How come nobody (and there are some very obnoxious, in this particular respect, persons lurking forums) else has brought up this thing that happens all the time already?
Maybe the problem is specific to your account and not a general gamewide issue…but, again, without backing evidence (which should be piece of cake easy to produce as the bug is happening all the time) there nothing that could possibly be done.
Well, I like when I cast Essence of Evil and it turns an annoying troop into something else, but I hate it when that something else is a bigger annoying troop. The AI changing when it’s about to die makes me take my pencil and stab myself in the thigh all the time. The AI isn’t a human man; it has no mercy.
When casting Essence of Evil, the percentage to transform the first troop into a Giant Toad is more like 100% when the AI feels like it has had enough of you kicking its behind. It doesn’t do this a lot, but it does it from time to time, and that’s just from casting only once. I’ve noticed this for weeks now but didn’t care because we’re talking about a game that has random foolishness that makes you wanna throw your cat at the TV screen, it pulls random 
out of its behind to the point I just grip my controller hard like a mad man and continue playing (damn RNG I hate you! Die! 
)
I’ve read this thread and because of it, I recorded my gameplay of when the Essence of Evil was only cast once, and then the first troop was turned into a damn Toad resulting in me losing the match. 10%? If this is normal OK, whatever, but I feel even if they made it 1% this wouldn’t change a thing because we’re dealing with an AI that has a mind of its own.
My proof of this nonsense is on my PS4, and it will sit there until it takes up space and then I’ll delete it 
I’d say its more detrimental in a Delve scenario where an EoE is casted, turns the enemy into a Toad and the Toad ends up moving your team out of order to the point where it falls apart (like moving Zuul or Tesla to the 1st slot in a late floor Delve). I can’t say it happens a lot, mainly because I’ve stopped using EoE in Delves because I’ve had it happen.
I’d like to see the ability to craft an Orb of un-Ingots, that allows the player to remove one level of tempering. A prerequisite for this would be that the player has already crafted Dark Smith Drenza, because this is clearly in her line of work. That would fix Essence of Evil from my point of view.
That would just mess up various progression mechanics. The proper way to fix the weapon affix design atrocity is to allow players to toggle unlocked upgrades on/off, somewhat similar to how class talents work.
This has been raised before. How would it impact kingdom power levels that require x number of fully upgraded weapons?
As it does with troops, like when the small window of opportunity to remove Bandit’s third trait, Stealthy, was made available. Players with a kingdom leveled due to the 3rd trait still retained that kingdom level when the trait was removed.
Don’t forget that the removal comes at an extra cost to the player, and if the weapon was required again in the future to further level up the kingdom then there is the additional upgrade and downgrade costs to the player.
I agree with you in principle, but I imagine the work involved to achieve that outweighs the quicker win of adding one more recipe to the Forge, and one more orb to the pile, that comes with a potentially recurring cost to the player. Which would 505 prefer?
the needlessly hard version of reinventing the wheel
Telling us for years they want to avoid band-aid fixes and rather work on a proper solution, then end up doing nothing at all.
I agree - it is long over due for them to enable a feature for you to toggle individual traits like this one or the bandit’s stealthy trait.