Prizes for winning a defense battle with the AI controlling your team as very low. You basically just win rank points, instead of losing them.
For most mortals, rank is irrelevant (I have 4k points and I’m not even close to top 10,000, much less top 1,000, which would result in a prize upgrade).
If I lose the battle, I get the chance to get revenge. Revenge rewards are nice.
Despite what the mail message with the revenge prizes says (ie, the mail you get is named “Defense Rewards”), you don’t get those for defending, only for getting revenge (in the PVP menu, they’re called Revenge Rewards).
So unless I’m missing something here, if you don’t plan on getting to top 1,000, having a weak team is more rewarding than having a strong one (especially after you got all Tier Rewards).
So I want a team with a high score, but a team that people can beat… right? I mean, if I put up a nice team with traited maws/mabs and people start losing, that wouldn’t be good for me, I guess? Not to mention some people would avoid fighting me.
Trust me, that’ll never happen. There’s no such thing as a winning defense team (at least in the upper tiers, don’t know how things are at lower levels).
There have been weeks where a top 100 defense team had a winning record. Not many. I think @Justakid had the best winning record of all. It easier to pull off with a sub-200 player though who has a very strong team.
that was only because i had one of the first sooth/valk/doublemab teams on defense when she first came out, while everyone was still running gobs i believe. now that im over level 200, im at about 30% win ratio
And when I had my run the next week, my team was similar. 1 Mab and 2 Soothsayer though. And likewise since then as I leveled up and more people got the troop, my win rate dropped too.
Also I preferred a stronger defense team cause most of the people who won would show up in the middle slot and not worth the fight in return for the revenge.
I’d still take the revenge because it would give more glory and count toward the soul/gold (and event key, ofc) bonuses as revenge rewards. Of course, that’s because I don’t care for rank points after I get past 1,900
Even the best defenses only win at about a 1:3 win:loss ratio, so you’ll still get plenty of revenge plays.
Maw/Mercy has the best “oops, I win” ratio for the AI I think. Gorgotha, the AI plays horribly. Looping teams, the AI plays horribly. Sooth/Mab teams just lose to anyone smart enough to leave skulls. Dragon or Goblin teams lose to Mab freezes.
Except for a few occasions when it almost doubles, the gold difference is usually around 20 gold for me, so I’d rather have the extra glory from revenge.
It doesn’t matter. You can’t have a high enough win rate on defense to make a difference in ranked anyway. Decent teams win 20-25%, the best win 33%. Either way you’ll lose enough to provide revenge matches.
But wouldn’t it be better to bait opponents into easier fights? For example, I usually don’t even fight teams with two fully-traited Maws. That is bound to get them less revenge opportunities.
EDIT: Note that a level 20 fully-traited Peasant is worth more score than a lv 19 legendary fully-traited Maw.