Please someone tell me he’s actually kidding. No one can be THAT thick. To not understand the meaning behind my line, and he did the math too …
Well that burns. 12y old? What’d I do wrong to make you go that high? Also I will stick around even if only to make sure you don’t lower the average IQ of the lot too much without any counterweight. On top of that we’re all forced to continue playing and reading your nonsense, so why’d I make it easy on you eh?
That. It was pointed out to me by my guildmate earlier that despite us both having won same amount of pvp battles, I was over 2k pvp points behind (5xxx vs 7xxx, so that does make a difference). And the only reason for this is me playing highest trophy targets without a manticore in it. If it was 2-3 (not to mention 5) troops I have to avoid, well…
BECAUSE MANTICORE IS OVERPOWERED - there, maybe capslock will get through your thick skull already. How can you be that …
If they didn’t want this, they would make the AI much stronger. Don’t try to say the AI can’t be stronger, Artificial Intelligence is way beyond out nice fun “dumb” AI.
They do, mostly, want these very high win rates, because people want to win. They want to retain players. If the win rate on this game was only 30%, they player base would disappear. You can even see some of this in the special under level 50(?) AI, that misses lots of moves.
I think they would like people to see more diversity in matches, but the current trophy system pushes top players to always play the 3x trophy matches. Most of those matches have other high activity endgame players that put up a strong or annoying defense to try and get some wins, skips, or to slow down the attacker.
It would be an interesting option, if we could see in the future another game mode (or maybe additional difficulty? or something separate to difficulty you can toggle on or off), that would allow playing vs that higher grade AI. The matter of extra rewards obviously is a separate subject, they’d have to be balanced (compared to the regular pvp), so that the “mode” wouldn’t turn into a must-play-because-optimal-rewards (or the opposite, no1 playing it because despite the fact it’s fun and challenging, normal pvp is a lot more profitable).
Whether it would be in any way related to the pvp ladder (or have it’s own), no idea, I just think a mode like that would be a great twist. Having the AI use the skill because it will kill you, rather than the skulls you tried to feed to it … mmm… that’d be fun, sooo savage too!
I’m curious if Sirrian ever shared any sort of data on how many people use the CASUAL mode in pvp. Personally I believe I did less than 10 games there, since it exists. As far as I’m concerned this mode could be turned into the Higher_AI version, and as long as it’d give trophies and gold comparable to normal pvp, I’d be glad to skip the pvp points entirely for those fights (but that’s just me). Or we could just have another game mode, whichever is easier I guess.
So… The case is that they, the developers, messed up by introducing troops that allowed us to play faster that now they are pushing unbalanced troops with the sole purppose to beat the unbalanced/fast teams they allowed to exist in the first place?
On the variety thing i must say that it is really better to have more teams assembled, but let’s review a few facts that the crowd have been missing, on purppose i think:
The previous metas were currently reworked, now Impervious stops Devour and Mana Burn. Manticore has this Trait.
Empowered is the main engine that allows us to start some loops using Mercy, namely, but it’s not always reliable to cast her spell at first. Mana Drain can stop her, and curiously Manticore has it paired with Stun, and Empowered. All of that gaining Attack, that can’t be prevented by Entangled because of Impervious and with a low cost of mana…
How are we supposed to have diversity, or use variety, if one troop have such high value/cost-benefit as Manticore? It would be better to just use it as a counter to itself because it would take less resources to upgrade and using it would be reliable against any other team mostly. How is this not unbalanced???
[quote=“Ivar, post:125, topic:11469, full:true”]How are we supposed to have diversity, or use variety, if one troop have such high value/cost-benefit as Manticore? It would be better to just use it as a counter to itself because it would take less resources to upgrade and using it would be reliable against any other team mostly. How is this not unbalanced???
[/quote]
You make many great points but I keep coming back to what Sirrian posted - in spite of all of his seeming synergistic traits, he’s not being used that much overall. I think the next logical question then is why? The concern obviously is the one you stated previously. If people aren’t using Manticore solely because of traitstones, will he BECOME ubiquitously OP? It seems to me we should know the answer relatively soon since yellow/green Arcanes were available this week…
Yeah the data is probably being collected, but meanwhile i really think it’s… curious… thinking about a “hidden agenda” to slow battles using a new troop with high value or cost/benefit in detriment to teams using three or more troops fully upgraded that “ruined” the spirit of strategy in this game…
And it’s curious that assembling a faster and more reliable team is not a “valid strategy” since it’s seems to be so despised…
I’m not sure anybody “despises” faster, more reliable teams, certainly not me.
It’s the seeming sense of entitlement that we DESERVE faster, more reliable teams instead of having to necessarily put some thought into it.
PS. I should also add that if the INTENT is to slow things down and make matches last longer, don’t tie achievement, especially in PVP, almost solely to match/time ratio. The PVP mechanic encourages fast, auto-win matches.
Well someone had put some thought, maybe a lot of it, into some teams as the games goes.
But at least the Something/Mercy/Infernal King/Sheggra team is particularly very reliable with the high value/cost-benefit well distributed into at least two legendaries and one Epic that need to be mostly fully traited (ignoring the first slot that may or may not be Maw)…
While Manticore is great as a single troop mostly having ways to slow down the mentioned team that required much more resources to assemble, hence why it’s unbalanced, furthermore being an Ultra-rare i must add.
[quote=“Ivar, post:129, topic:11469, full:true”]While Manticore is great as a single troop mostly having ways to slow down the mentioned team that required much more resources to assemble, hence why it’s unbalanced, furthermore being an Ultra-rare i must add.
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Hence my original point. “OP” discussions in this game invariably have nothing to do with wins/losses. Team viability is almost solely based on how fast you can win. That’s honestly kind of sad to think about when we’re supposed to be playing a strategy game.
I’m guessing the above part of what Sirrian said is what you meant. So to actually hopefully see the CHANGE to this broken troop, me and other people like me, should actually stick the damn thing into my defense team, to bump the stats? I didn’t do it so far, because I don’t want to be a douchebag. I hate the guts of everyone who uses this broken thing in their defense teams, so I’m not doing it myself. But if by being a decent person I’m actually giving ammunition to the “oh noes lets not touch this poor troop” side, then maybe I should start using it, and every other person who thinks it’s broken should too?
It’d be actually nice to see Sirrian respond to this. Would mass-using the manticore in defense teams by people who want this damn thing BALANCED help? Then I’m game, and apologies to everyone who will attack me.
Also Sirrian, why do those stats say that increasing mana cost is not the way? If it’s not used in attack anyway, it won’t change that. Am I the only one who realises that the reason low lvls don’t use manticore in defense is the fact that they simply aren’t aware of the fact how broken it is? You need some experience with the game to notice certain things, and that takes time. If you want the most accurate picture of what is broken - you DO look at the HIGH levels, because that’s where the experience lies, and that’s who will use and abuse any broken thing the fastest, heh.
e/ Maw-hype spread like wildfire because it was THE HYPE. Everyone knew how broken MAW was. You asked in global “what’s the best troop in def?” and you got flooded by MAW replies. The Manticore problem simply didn’t fester to that degree yet, that’s all.
Sarcastic? Yes. A Jerk? No.
I don’t know if you will agree that this is possible…
But anyway, i’m being sarcastic mostly to your point about a “fast-meta” as somethig that needs to be “punished” in a sense. Maybe i’m even being a jerk for insinuating that it’s the developer’s fault, in some sense, for some broken compositions becoming too good to ignore. But as i explained previously it’s a strategy to assemble a faster and reliable team, if the troops composing such team should be looked into and maybe readjusted that’s a possibility as well. But going so far as elaborating a single Ultra-Rare troop to stop most of the current troops in the meta seems like a low blow…
Interestingly enough, today is the first day I’ve used Manti on defense. Just switched a little bit ago, to get some variety and test a couple of things.
So if Sirrian affirms your suspicion, I guess I’m contributing to the “cause” even though I don’t personally believe in it.
Punished isn’t the word for shifting the meta. Nobody is having anything taken away by forcing you to take longer to plan and win a match and, IMHO, play the game more true it’s original spirit.
EDIT: Seriously though, I’ll help you with strategy if you’d like.
There is no “planning” when facing manticore-included teams. You do exactly the same thing you’d do otherwise, but 3 times slower because of how it works.
The PEAK of “cunning and planning” you can achieve it using manticore yourself, wasting 1 spot in your team, to control the same broken troop in the opposing team.
e/ pardon my memory, I guess arguably alternatively the peak of planning might be skipping all of the manticore games.
You could use any Troop with Fast or Empowered to bait Manticore into targeting that Troop, turning the opponent’s Manticore into the “wasted spot” for them.
EDIT: or have an Impervious Troop gain Mana first turn. Manticore will target it and completely waste itself.
