Many of my guildmates have expressed annoyance over the frequency of the Empowered troop/skull-doomskull spam teams. We all know them - plug in Ishbaala, Qilin, Glaycion etc. with Moon Rabbit, Gimlet, Mercy etc. Throw in a 50% mana startup Hero with a Doomed weapon and off you go.
It got me to thinking that implementing a trait that would give these teams a pause might be interesting. Something like the reverse of the final Archer or Assassin trait. 15% to insta kill the first enemy when you are skull hit or 10% to insta kill the last enemy when you are skull hit.
I know this would not be popular with many players who like to blitz through the game with skull-o-rama teams but I would find it intriguing. I use my own Empowered troop/skull spam teams on occasion but it would definitely give me pause if I knew my troops have a chance of being insta killed as they gleefully skull bashed my enemies.
I can see that as more Empowered troops are released, skull spamming teams will only potentially get more prevalent. I would like to see a novel foil of sorts implemented instead of “just Entangle or Freeze them”.
There are some troops with reflect and some with silence
Not to mention traits like Infernal Armor; the counters are present in the game, they just need to be more prevalent before skull spam stops reigning supreme.
I have a strong gut feeling that after Mirrored Halls and a few other reflect troops are released, it’s going to be a premium status effect. It’s already made Divinia even more insanely useful—especially because she can heal, so if your opponent can’t, and you have reflect, he or she will inevitably eventually kill him/herself…
…or just wait for an empowered mana drain
Actually the game has had those for a long time (ie Spirit Fox), partial mana-drainers anyways.
I still feel that the game would be better off if the empowered trait had never existed.
Infernal armor + reflect = the death of skull teams.
Once we’ll start getting troops that reliably grant reflect, skull teams are done.
I could be wrong but thought Reflect would only work on the first skull hit but not on subsequent strikes. If so, I am not sure how it would really stop the skull spam teams since they often provide multiple, looping skull strikes. The first hit would reflect some damage back but the following hits would not. I suppose if you had multiple troops with Reflect…
Regardless, I agree with Magnusimus that counter traits need to be more prevalent. That is why I thought of the insta kill counter traits I posted. I also strongly agree with Macawi - I kind of wish Empowered did not exist. If they could just swap Empowered out for Swift…
Gloom Leaf with Reflect will be the new meta skull defense. Gloom Leaf FTW!! 
Reflect + infernal armor will probably kill the skull troop in the first cascade.
If I’m not wrong, the total inflicted damage is counted by both reflect and infernal armor, so if matching 25 doomskulls, it will reflect 20% of the total damage.
Plus 25% from infernal armor…
So if matching 300 damage (not an unusual number with doomskull spawners), almost 150 will be reflected. Thus probably killing the attacker as well.
With team wide reflect granters, or with traits like reflect on match 4/5’s, it will be a harsh match for doomskull teams. Lose one troop by killing an opponent troop. And if both your last and the opponents last troop die in same round, the match ends with a lose.
I see your point with Doomskulls. I guess I was thinking more of standard skull spammers like Ishbaala and Qilin!
To be fair, Entangle basically ruins them most of the time.
Me, personally, doomskulls never should’ve been added. LOL
Are you sure? It’s been awhile so maybe it’s changed, but I had Sacricial Priest kill himself and didn’t spawn Abhorath, and the dmg killed last enemy troop. I got the win, but ties are so infrequent, that was 2 years ago. (I did take a nine month break)
@ChunkyMono: I think it’s that ties resolve by having the turn-taker take the loss—if you kill yourself on your opponent’s Infernal Armor, you lose. If s/he does the same to you, s/he loses.
For the Horde 