I ran a true damage team yesterday. My score was the same as a regular damage team.
Plus while devour was mentioned, I never saw anything about 1 hit kills like Dracos or Archer trait (which wording says deal lethal skull damage and has killed the archer when it proc-ed against Gloom Leaf)
I asked for clarification and was basically ignored.
I haven’t really changed up how I play, but on some days (and always against Justice) I use true damage. It just felt a little unfair that I was being punished in a way for bypassing the enemy armor, though killing them quickly reduces my overall action count, still counts as damage and prevents them from doing any damage at all, so it should still work out OK in that ratio.
About Archer, I assumed when Sirrian said “Devour & Death Mark (insta-kill skills) do not count as damage”, that it would include Archer, Assassin, Disintegrate and anything else that would instantly kill a troop.
However, I’ve never heard of that result with Gloom Leaf and it makes me wonder how that actually calculates. Gloom Leaf’s trait says it reflects 50% of skull damage, so it doesn’t seem like Archer/Assassin should trigger any kind of reflection. If it is somehow being counted as skull damage, that could throw a wrench into things. I use an Assassin build against a lot of Psion/Silent One/Famine teams and this would dramatically affect the damage ratio if it counts or not when that instakill trait pops.
Someone posted it here. Easy to test.
AFAIK bullseye, assassination, disintegration still apply damage toward the calculation. I am unsure about poison/burn and whether or not armor is even part of the formula at all. I haven’t tested any true damage teams as yet.
Basically the DM/devour change imposed was a way of addressing the stale meta and the two most complained about mechanics, and I think it was quite an intelligent way to go about it. So far people haven’t realised just how much of a negative impact playing these on defenses have to aiding their opposition, but they will at some point.
I understand the preface of rewarding efficient time use, but it does seem clearing the board and maybe even cascades act contrary to this.
We still haven’t seen how the amendments to unique defenses will play into the event. I’m hoping it outweighs the points that would surely be lost over the course of a week.
The margin between a bad match and a good match is too close IMO, it creates parody but really takes any incentive from placing a defense that isn’t a consistent winner and lessens the reward of actually dominating a match.
I really don’t have many issues with the scoring. Its a bit more complicated yet well rounded and overall I would call it an improvement.
Rewards system is another story as their is very little incentive aside from bracket 1 and none for personal performance or placement within brackets.
Btw if anyone cares…
10 moves… Computer got 1 turn in between… Got 16 mana and hit my barriers on 2 different targets so no damage.
4 Archer procs to basically kill the whole team off 5 skull matches.
1470
Interesting, but that still doesn’t tell us if Archer kills are counting as damage, since the AI did none to you and you did at least a little on your skull matches. I like that it is still a viable strategy as Assassin is my go-to for certain defence teams.
Just tested it. Archer proc-ed on Gloom Leaf, both died. I bet you it’s the same vs War who reflects 1/4 of the damage. In any case, I’d say it’s damage at this point.
That is very interesting. They might have just programmed it to do 2001 damage or something to guarantee a kill, in which case reflecting 25 or 50% would almost certainly be fatal unless you had ultra-buffed before it proc’d.
Any reflection results in both dying regardless of any other variable. I.E. 1% or 25% of lethality still results in lethality.
I really like this idea that @arturo came up with. I think it’s a nice compromise:
Yes, but how did they code that? If it is an instakill mechanic, that isn’t “skull damage” per se, and shouldn’t be reflected back based on the strict wording of Gloom Leaf’s trait. Spell damage, mana burn, Kraken tentacle damage, burn damage and all kinds of other things aren’t reflected. This seems like a bug to me, or at least poor choice of wording in describing either the Archer/Assassin trait or the reflect traits.
It might be coded as a specific counter to archer, I’m not aware if assassination behaves the same way.
I think 1470 might be the max, I got two of them.
Would make sense Sirrian would stick in a max point clause after the day one high score bugs.
I think the battles against paragons should be worth more than against a troop. Maybe a compromise value what it was (100,200,300,400,500) and the present 300 per battles would be best. Maybe 200, 250, 300, 350 and 400.
Also if there is going to be a speed bonus it should be based on turns, not actions. The reasoning is basically this. The turns are usually extended by 4 or 5 gem matches. If you don’t take them the AI certainly will so why should you be punished for taking them?
On unity, I think Archer’s bullseye is coded it so that the damage is increased to (10 * (health+armour)). By contrast, rather than “applying damage” I think Assassin’s assassinate is coded to simply reduce the health of the target by (4 * (health+armour)).
Interesting. So Archer would give maximum benefit for GW score and Assassin would give none.
How do you know this?
Lucky guess 
This is why Sirrian is keeping the exact formula secret, so people stop stressing out on how to tweak some theoretical maximum. It’s capped I think at 1470 a battle anyways.
Can you lock please? I’ll be opening a new topic. New week, new tweek 