When we consider nerfs/buffs, we take 3 things into account in equal measure:
- Player feedback (forums & social media & game chat)
- Data recently accumulated from millions of games over many different level ranges
- Our feeling/vision/experience as designers
When 2 of those things clearly agree, we’ll make a change.
So, having said that, here’s our current thinking on Manticore…
-
His Mana Cost is a bit low. When we were creating him, our gut feeling was 11 points. However, he had 3 things which generally were regarded as not-so-great… Impervious (folks were nervous about it pre-2.0.1, but post 2.0.1 it still wasn’t seeing much use) Empowered Mana Drain (Spirit Fox wasn’t seeing much use), and self-buffing (Tau, anyone?). So we knocked a couple of points off his cost to make him a little more attractive.
-
Overall, he’s the 15th most popular troop for defense, doesn’t even rate in the top 50 for offense. On defense, he’s not at ALL popular until you hit level 200, and not really common until level 500. Still not used nearly as much as Maw was though. Anyway, this data indicates a mana-cost change is NOT the correct response… since it hits ALL levels. More likely a change to trait 2 or 3 might make more sense for higher level play, but that’s a tricky one… it has a fair chance to remove him from play altogether, which is NOT what we want. Something like Empowered to Fast would be worth considering perhaps.
We DO also need to take into account that he’s still a relatively new toy… troops in the high level ranges always have a bit of an upswing in popularity for a month or two after release. -
Feedback so far has been mixed, but slightly more on the negative side, mainly from high levels, and mainly due to him slowing down play.
So we’re currently in a situation where our data points are suggesting that a small nerf or counter is good for end-game, but we’re not yet getting a clear picture of what that change should be.