Exactly. Mana Drain/Mana Burn’s priority is highest amount of accumulated Mana, not proximity to a full charge.
Example: 8/15 will be targeted over 7/9
This is what I usually do. I try to gain mana in a troop that won’t suffer too badly from the stun. Impervious doesn’t block the drain, so even if Manticore hits an Impervious troop, it’s not a complete waste (and Manticore gets Attack even if the target has zero mana), but that way I can take an early mana hit to allow me to protect my other troops instead. Afterward it’s a matter of denying Manticore’s colors, if possible, or a targeted nuke/counter-drain.
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and then every next two turns? 
because that’s how often on average manticore will be re-charged and ready to waste more of your time.
Can you beat manticore? Of course. Is it worth it? No. The troop is ultimate nuisance, the only thing it needs to be “perfectly broken” would be a devour chance on skull dmg, why don’t we add it too? then it’s all ready.
Are you aware of the Mana denial strategy?
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No need for that, i have two very reliable teams for invades, but the point of arguing over Manticore is not that i have trouble facing it. It’s that the troop itself is unbalanced by being too damn good, and it also is not something fun to face since it prevents you from using your spells. Someone said before, i think it was @Mithran, that it’s counter-intuitive to drain mana when, by design, the game revolves around gathering mana and unleashing spells. Also the other troops that can drain mana don’t have Empowered to start the game already frustrating your plans, but it would be ok except that the low cost to recharge the spell, that also increases attack, is too low as it was already stated before.
About the “spirit of the game” it’s something subjective since using strategy can also means combining troops to have faster victories. And as i believe i already said, not in the mood to search for it now, if the leaderboard/score system weren’t designed properly to deal with such high rate of faster battles then there are some other options to explore.
But considering your line of thought that maybe the devs are pushing for a hidden agenda to slow our games it sounds really nasty for me because it implies into a “Bait” tactic that provides powerfull troops that are always power creeping the game and later a single troop will be able to rewrite the meta.
Don’t get me wrong, a meta in flux is something quite positive, it can means that there are variety and new things keeping the game fresh. Also, refining the game is always a work in progress, but pushing Manticore into our faces just to slow down a few strategies is not fixing the biggest problem that can be the reward system and leaderboard in pvp.
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How is this about Rewards and the PvP leaderboard now? Are you complaining about Manticore in regards to the game speed specifically? Or is it that he’s primarily used as a Griefer?
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Sorry for not being clear: If the system structure rewards more the ones who can do battles faster, then the players have a tendency to look for faster teams. And having something as Manticore to slow down this progress seems like a weak atempt to fix the problem.
I had an experiende when i had two slow weeks at work and i was able to do so much pvp that my weekly contributions were 1 million.
So much gold being converted into keys and gems provided me an instant gratification, when i had to put more effort into soul farming, for kingdom stars, the gratification comes much slower because i need to level up nearly all the troops, so i need to do much more battles and after all that it’s just one kingdom reaching five starts when there are like twenty others…
Maybe that’s not the case for everyone, but for me doing PVP as fast as before was very rewarding, and i can guess that’s the case for others as well. That’s why the core problem could be the “faster gratification” system. So in this sense Manticore is more like a Griefer as you said.
Just for the record: It’s still possible for me to enjoy pvp at a slower pace, but if slowing the game would be the objective to recover the “spirit of the game” the devs could as well remove all gems transformation/conversion/creation effects and extra turns from troop and the game would be much more like some sort of chess…
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Mmmmm, chess. 
I think you’ll find I stated earlier I believe that it’s cheap mana cost is what is annoying, post 5 or 6 I think it is.
Mana denial as @TaliaParks stated works, but only to limited extent in my experience before its up again from board drops or because I needed to make a choice between giving it skulls (with its increased attack) or mana.
Bring Psion along if Manitcore is on first place does wonders.
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Manticore is indeed a fantastic troop and brings a lot to the table for low costs in rarity, stones, and mana. It’s definitely annoying to invade against and I would certainly prefer fighting against it with a mana cost of 11.
But honestly, I don’t understand the vitriol and fury. It can’t auto-win a match via a single unfortunate RNG hit, it can’t generate horrific numbers of extra turns in a row, and its spell can’t manadrain your entire team while one-shotting your best troop.
So I just don’t get the Ragequit-level frustration. Manticore hasn’t changed my invade team, significantly impacted my win rate, or made my average match time that much longer. Do I have to actually notice there’s an empowered troop with a good spell and plan my moves accordingly? Yes. If scouting shows a manticore on a defend team, do I choose a different fight or switch in a team with my own manticore? No, not that big a deal.
I guess if I were one of the 0.05% of players who can win 50 matches per hour for days on end, every second would count - but if that’s the demographic that’s upset, I have trouble working up a lot of sympathy. Dragging my 3 minute matches out to 3.5 minutes is not going to have me raging on the forums to demand a nerf.
If it’s just because it’s popular among end-game players and people find it impeding variety… there’s always going to be a new and popular troop you have to fight a lot. The fact that this month it’s a different one than last month (and I’m guessing next month) is good enough for me.
So yeah… I get the annoyance and could see bumping the mana cost - but I honestly don’t understand all the rage.
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I don’t understand all the rage of people defending a troop that by their standards, is not having an impact in the game. It’s nice how these arguments fits well for both sides.
Is that where we’re at on the forums now, stating your opinion is an argument?
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Maybe i used the wrong word, but why a troop that barely affects the gameplay, acording to some, needs to be defended so fiercily?
If someone has the opinion that we are being salty, or rage-quitting, because of it i can only guess that the same is true to all “defenders” if the said troop ends nerfed…
If TaliaParks put as much effort into Reddit as zhe does threadcrapping, /r/GemsOfWar might be worth visiting.
Honestly being brazilian makes me mostly immune to threadcrapping because that’s kind of a national thing for us, we didn’t included it on the Olympics because it would be really unfair to all other nations… 
Nobody with self respect puts in effort on Reddit, that site is pure cancer.
But if you want to start a troll war… I have an army, do you?
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I don’t need one.
Not really. The people you’d be able to influence via forums/chat would be such a small percentage of our Daily Active Users, that it’d be unlikely to cause much of a blip in the stats. Honestly though, he’s getting enough use at level 500+ to be on our radar anyway.
Increasing the mana cost affects him at ALL level ranges (moreso at lower levels though, since they have lower masteries), and since he’s not really a problem until level 500, that’s something we should consider carefully before doing since it’s going to primarily address a problem we don’t have. My suspicion is that increasing mana cost to say 11 will not really affect his use at all in higher levels anyway.
At the moment, if we’re addressing Manticore, I’d rather do it by decreasing the mana he drains, and giving a good flat attack buff. One idea that has some traction here at the moment is switching his drain with Spirit Fox, so it’s easier to recover from Manticore, and likely to see a few more Spirit Foxes, which is good for varierty./
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Also… let’s keep the trolling, attacks, and memes out of this thread please. I’m actually finding the discussion parts of this are useful feedback.
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