re Goblin Shaman - not true - he’s always been noted as being a bit over-powered, and with recent balance changes and team bonuses it’s far more noticeable. Gem production for the other spammers reduced more - and his granting an extra turn makes it an extremely powerful move, and under-costed - let alone the HP buff being added…
Hardly a reasoned or mature response, please… Just let the devs work on it.
I’ve tried a couple versions. If I use just 1 slime and the other team kills it before I get going, I’m just lost. If I try putting slime in 2nd place, using another troop as a buffer, I lose skull damage while cycling and then have to wait for opponent to kill it once I’m set. If I use 2 slimes I have just 2 slots for “other”. One must be a shaman in order to cycle, leaving the 4th spot as an option. I can use a skeleton to make skulls to try and speed it up, but sacrifice stability since there is no guarantee a single shaman will make enough green mana to fire the slime again.
2x Slime, 2x Shaman - very stable, but ungodly slow. You have no choice but to cycle until your lead unit attack is high enough to one shot opponent troops. Making skulls while cycling is rare as they get replaced by green just like others.
2x Slime, Shaman, Skeleton - faster because you can force more skull matches during cycle, but bad luck can easily leave your opponent with a heavy green or heavy purple board
1x Slime, 2x Shaman, Skeleton - Extra skulls make it faster, extra shaman keeps engine running, but a single slime means a slow start can doom you if opponent kills it.
1 Slime, Shaman, 2x Skeleton - Fastest killer, but very fragile.
Overall, I prefer my Hero w/ Flame, Alchemist, Banshee, Valkyrie. Matches are faster, gains extra souls/gold, and I can still win if opponent kills my first troop (just harder to cycle without flame to make reds)
PS. I don’t have a seer to try with slimes
Only thing I can think of to change would be the Goblin Shaman. I don’t know that it needs to be a Marauder, and the heal wasn’t a big issue until this slime came out because the Shaman didn’t go very often. If the Shaman lost its healing edge or dropped it down to heal less, that wouldn’t upset me one bit.
My stance is still rather than nerfing a current unit (especially nerfing a unit just because an unbalanced new unit came out that works really well in combination with it), we should just focus on getting more cards in the future that fight well against what’s out there.
My suggestion would be a blue card that deals (0+magic) damage and silences enemy unit, converts all green to blue to boost damage (2:1). That would be devastating to goblin teams. “Monsoon” would be a good name for that ability.
Also, as someone who has been running a goblin team since the Rocket Goblin came out, let me say that those Worm/Acolyte combo teams are my bane. I never have any luck when I try to run them, but they tear me apart half the time I come across them. Another good recommendation for beating goblins is to silence them. Their power comes from their abilities, not their attack.
I’m sorry you don’t have a seer, it makes 1 slime 1 seer 2 Skelton work very well!
I agree that as more cards are added the balance will generally shift, this is unavoidable. I also like the “Monsoon” idea, quite creative.
But the Shaman still has an advantage over other Gem Spammers that makes it difficult to overlook. It’s guaranteed extra turn means it can never miss a 4 or 5 match unlike other gem spammers, even in the AI’s hands. To tie it all together, the troop is Rare, no other gem spammer holds a candle to what is guaranteed to appear in any iron chest, it just seems a little silly and low cost for such a powerful support troop.
I will say a better choice of silencing troops in the future would be nice. There’s only three. The first can only target the front troop, the second is random, and the third silences all but also itself. I do hope more silence selection comes up later in development, but isn’t too low of cost to warrant complaint.
I do agree about balance changes for certain troops. But for Goblin Sheman and Slime, I feel like one more fun part of the game is taken away after this weekend. Why not create and release more counter part of unique troops instead balancing down existing troops.
I like this as a principle, but because of how GoW works as a turn-based game, it could only be part of the solution. Having an effective counter to the goblin/slime combo only helps if you can consistently fire it before the turn-looping combo sets off. Once a long/infinite chain is under way, having good counters is irrelevant if you don’t get a turn.
Caution needed! That ability idea (which I like as a mechanic and flavour, and Monsoon is a great name!) would potentially be devastating to all opponents, and worse for those that gather green, like goblins. Note that taking greens out doesn’t necessarily stop the Goblin Shaman, who charges on different colours… But… a targeted silence with a gem-change that could recharge itself / trigger extra turn on itself? that sounds risky. I agree that in general, buffing cards and adding variety may be a better plan than nerfing cards that are unbalanced, but in practice, it could only make matters worse. The solution to there being ‘broken’ or unfair combos isn’t to create more different ‘broken’ combos.
Sadly not true in the end game. With high team and kingdom bonuses, and board control with extra turns (Gob Shaman, Boar Rider), they’ll often get gifted skull matches, and have high attack power too.
Hey, @outlander - see my above point - creating counter troops doesn’t easily solve the problem…
I’m in the “make more units to combat problem units” camp, only problem with that however is that units are released so slowly that nerfing becomes the only solution that fits in a reasonable timetable.
I think, unless something changes, things are going to devolve into two styles:
1 - Create an infinite turn cycle
2 - Damage fast enough to prevent cycle from going
That is part of the problem with the Slime, it fits into a cycle. So either the opponent is fast enough to kill the slime, or they lose. And once it gets going the opponent is irrelevant, could be dragons or goblins or worms or anything, the slime is still going to eat them the same. Likewise Alchemist/Valkyrie/Banshee doesn’t care about what troops the opponent has, it just does the same thing to everybody.
There are lots of nifty ideas and combinations that are unplayable because they aren’t fast enough to kill a cycle before you just lose. Granted, this is less of a concern vs an AI because the AI doesn’t have “strategy” to keep cycles going, but we saw what happened with Webspinners, brainless AI was still enough to use it.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing some kind of limiter, like you can’t cast more than 5 spells per turn. Give more troops the extra turn ability, but with the cap, so you get more strategy without letting either side be the only one making moves.
The problem I have with a cap on “spells per turn” or something similar is it is just another thing that people have to remember and keep track of, which seems to go against the devs thought on accessibility.
Caution needed! That ability idea (which I like as a mechanic and flavour, and Monsoon is a great name!) would potentially be devastating to all opponents, and worse for those that gather green, like goblins. Note that taking greens out doesn’t necessarily stop the Goblin Shaman, who charges on different colours… But… a targeted silence with a gem-change that could recharge itself / trigger extra turn on itself? that sounds risky. I agree that in general, buffing cards and adding variety may be a better plan than nerfing cards that are unbalanced, but in practice, it could only make matters worse. The solution to there being ‘broken’ or unfair combos isn’t to create more different ‘broken’ combos.
You’re absolutely right. This is why devs spend so long playtesting and balancing these cards, and yet there are still combinations of cards that are gamebreaking. I’ll be the first to admit that me spending 3 minutes thinking up a card idea is not going to be perfect on the first shot.
I can think of two ways to offset the OP potential of that card-
Another potentially awesome card would be a 6 to 8 Purple mana card that simply reads: Drain all mana from enemy. Gain 1 mana, boosted by mana drained (2:1). No damage, no board manipulation, no powerful effects… just mana drain that recharges itself. That would be more annoying than powerful, but it could stop combos from going off in the first place. A variant could be: Drain all mana from an enemy. Remove all gems of that enemy’s color from the board. That’s kinda a double-whammy, and would be able to recharge faster than the first. Finally, Drain all mana from an enemy and reduce than enemy’s Magic by (Magic). Kinda a discount Giant Slayer.
So yes, it’s apparent that the particular combo of Goblin Shaman + Green Slime is OP, but can we just admit that that’s the Slime’s fault and we don’t need to take it out on people who don’t even use said Slime card? And can we also agree that goblins are good, but that there are plenty of potential balanced cards out there that offset them? I mean, I know my team has been beaten plenty, even after the Shaman got the healing power. I’ve even been kind enough to write up a report on what types of teams and effects I’ve seen that can consistently beat my team. You don’t have to break the game to beat goblins, and I think I’ve demonstrated that well enough. But there are potential cards in the future that would help further in this.
I understand where you’re coming from, but if anything they both need a slight adjustment.
Whether Shaman keeps his health gain is neither here nor there, but his Gem Creation to Mana ratio should see change. 1 or 2 of either in the right direction is all it needs. Either 8 Gems for 12 Mana, or 7 Gems for 11 Mana, they both fix a lot of the issues with shaman.
While the slime only needs one real change, no gem spamming. Change green to purple? That’s fine. Gain X of a random stat? That works! But the gem spamming before transforming appears to be what’s causing the loop. It powers many of the green gem spammers (Shaman, Seer, Venoxia) while also filling the board with matches for easy looping.
These are the only real changes necessary to offset the loop, it could go once or twice tops with these changes in place.
well it looks like you guys all got your wish and both units received adjustments. Not going to call them nerfs until they have been plagued with a little bit. Let’s see what the feed back is…
Unrelated to the discussion, this has been the closest post towards reaching 100 replies since the magic key giveaway. The reader badge may be attainable after all. 
This is true. What I’m curious about though is if anyone has any feedback on the changes that have occurred.
My first reaction is these changes look helpful. Waiting until they hit later today and seeing the impact on the game before I judge if they fixed the bad combo…
Hey, it’s better than what I suggested in my last post. 
So be happy for that. 
This will still allow looping but without a guarantee, along with a risk. I’m personally all for these changes, though that’s likely because I use neither of them in any of my teams. ** shrugs* *
I only like seeing the nerf bat come out for something that is truly game breaking. I personally felt like webs was, and goblin shaman wasn’t.
Looks like a new balance changes are already in effect, I didn’t notice about Slime’s 5 gems as reduced from6, but Goblin Sheman is noticeable. Very disappointed about Goblin Sheman but still works. I just put three Goblin Sheman and Slime to keep loop going.
I could honestly care less ascot the marauder change, it makes sense. It’s the other changes that concern me. Gem creators have been shown to be pretty much more of a liability on a team than a help now when combined with the algorithm that reduces the chances of spawning a 4 match extra Turn.