Let’s see a whole week how many sigils/member are required to close the last portal (yeah leaderboard is out of discussion as Sirrian said that it’s a P2W feature).
It depends of your guild rank in GW leaderboard. Most guilds didn’t get any gems. And stat bonus for 340 gems have always been a “maybe these bonus make you win”. But only a maybe. For 250 gems, you get a new troop and a new weapon (both meh) and other stuffs.
The deviation is apparently super low (if there is no bug 
).
QFT
I’m personally ok with raids since I can ignore the pay 2 win raid leaderboard. However, if I was a new player, I would have instantly deleted this game when I found out it had a p2w aspect. I always try to avoid getting involved with games that have even a hint of p2w.
If I like and play again, I always support it with money “willingly”. I reached VIP 9 in this game buying items I just liked or thought were useful. I really wish the devs would have added more items like that to the shop instead of resorting to a typical p2w energy system.
It’s a shame that NOBODY has EVER suggested that before… 
…
…
…
EVER!
I am enjoying Raids, it is the first real challenge I have had in a while. As an end game player, it caters to me (as others have said). I do agree than the gem count is way too high (especially when you get to the last few tiers), but don’t forget that we will only be seeing this game mode every three weeks so it gives you time to save up.
For me, getting to tier 3 isn’t that hard, so essentially I can get all the troops/weapons without feeling the need to pay. I have never paid for anything in this game, and have practically every card, give or take a few Mythics. Pay to play, to me, means that you can’t get all required items/troops to complete a game; this doesn’t seem like pay to play to me. Sure, if you want to get higher on the leader boards then, yes, you’ll have to rake out a lot of gems. But do people really care that much about being on the leader boards? For a week? Because, I know I don’t.
I think this game mode is more about working together to see what you can accomplish. We have all levels in my guild, from 20-1200, and it has been fun sharing what has worked and hasn’t worked with everyone. I do agree that the game mode needs tweaks, but for me at least it has been one of the nicer and more enjoyable changes the game has received.
The raids get more difficult. Once you reach Zuul’Goth, you have to fight him over and over again and in each fight, the enemies have higher stats.
The damage dealt to the boss counts towards your guild’s total damage to the boss and that unlocks rewards in the “Rewards” tab, so it’s not completely useless to the guild (though the rewards aren’t that great). And you do get 5 seals per battle win, as normal…
And yeah, boring. Especially the early levels.
Except that in the other two weeks, we have GW (with a variable gem cost depending on your Guild’s sentinel requirement and only the top 3-5 guilds able to make any kind of reasonable profit in terms of gems) and Invasions (which also have a tiered shop which will presumably have comparable gem costs to the Raid shop). Oh, and the Bounty events also have a shop where the currency will be gems. And did anyone else notice in the spoilers that there is a legendary troop being released in every GW week for the foreseeable future, where many of us will need to dip into gems to buy event keys to fish for those third and fourth kingdom legendaries?
The days of saving gems are over.
I still think you should be able to see raven outside of raid boss at a lower rate and if someone want to get sigils quicker then he pay to get them
You know what would be nice and not game/economy-breaking to be added into such purchases?
Something some of us would instantly desire: Alternative arts for troops and spells.
If all Raid Shop Tiers would unlock new arts for every troop in Shentang, or another kingdom, i would honestly buy every single one of them at the current prices even risking my chances at the new Mythic…
Omg portal 10 is done, my guys are crazy lol
I would love to know how many of your players bought tons of sigils for that to happen. I’m really curious to know whether a guild that spends modestly in the raid shop can do it if they play well.
I can’t tell you bro probably alot lol i did myself only buyed tier 2
In my 2 run i only saw 6 raven
You make very valid points. I am bad at saving gems in general though, so maybe it will work out for me haha 
. I never use more than 40 gems on GW, but it will be interesting to see how many gems Invasion requires.
Only thing I do not like, the leaderboard is pay to win. Fair enough if you want to make game itself pay to win, more chances for money…but leaderboards should be for fun, for bragging rights. For skill, or at least for how much time you devoted to the game. Not for “hey, look how much I spent!”.
It WOULD be nice if you now reverse gem nerf for guild tasks (not legendaries, just regular tasks), as you have given us SO many more ways to spend gems. Putting back a few wouldn’t even make a dent in the number we now could spend.
YES! YES! YES! YES!
Are we banging that drum again? Sigh. Poor thing has taken a beating already.
But… I like drums… 
Bang Bang 
Bang Bang 
Bang 
You bang those thunderous drums
I’ll need to get another, it’s too worn out.
Quick background for me:
I only started playing GoW again for real in the last 3 months. I was about level 150 when I re-started with no mythics, now I’m around 750ish w/ 14 (6 base)
The P2W aspect of leaderboards is irrelevant for me, much like the insane PvP farming that happens. I’m transitioning off a match-3 that was nothing but competition.
The biggest draw for me to start up GoW again was the variety. PvP/Explore/Arena/Treasure/Dungeon… it’s hard to get bored of the whole game (so far), there’s always a change of pace.
So that said:
I’m probably the real minority, but I like the raids. I like that the rosters are restricted, which forces more variety and gets people out of the FT/Nyx/Dawnbringer/Mab ad nauseum mode. I like the guild cooperation needed to complete. There’s a good base here.
There’s room for improvement too.
So yeah. They didn’t hit a home run here, but they’re safely on base to me.
This is how I feel, same as above post, except I do enjoy leaderboards, so I was hoping, make them separate from pay to win mechanics. Otherwise, is fun, nice change of pace.
The raids would be fine (even as p2w) if the battles didn’t drag as much. I did around 12k damage and it’s a real pain to match those gems for so long. Especially if you kill the boss and then try to dispose of his pumped up minions using the godslayer. Which is nice troop while fighting Zuul Goth, but sucks mightily against Tomes of Evil and such. I can’t even imagine what people who bought tier 7 (or 6, for that matter) may feel 
.