So I was playing around with Jotnar. He’s a really weird troop. He’s a good troop but the only decent troop who works with him is Humility. And that too is not very decent, because of his randomness of stat boost. So I think a buff like War would be good for Jotnar. Giving him a extra turn after a confirmed kill
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id also like a buff to him coz i got 2 jotnars (by a miracle) and they are still not good enough together 
but there is a lot of other units that need the buff much more 
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I know. But for 22 mana he’s kinda weak
Well, his magic is more or less a one shot kill; pair him with a fully traited titan hero and two other good giants, and I think he can become really dangerous
kraken is very dangerous alone
jotnar needs 3 weak units that will slow down the fight and make team weaker just to become potentially dangerous
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Disagree. And I strongly disagree with Beowulf when he calls him “stupidly useless”. But this is probably more related to each person’s playstyle.
Make a team that can make tons of 4/5 matches and you’ll get your team fully barriered. That alone would be very powerful, but it also ensures +25 TD (about 50 TD total, depending on your boosts). I usually have no trouble filling him with these teams (including my all-yellow and my all-red GW teams).
Also, you could add another giant that’s not useless at all for +5 TD – Hero Titan, with a good weapon. Jotnar will even start with 11 mana (provided Titan is traited), giving you a chance to snipe a nasty troop earlier in the fight. He might not be the fastest, but he’s a very nice troop to play safe.
Kraken is only dangerous because of how easy it is for it to devour. I personally hate devour (except for Maw’s, that one seems fair), DM (which at least can be avoided more easily with troops like Jotnar, without forcing you to use Impervious/Warded troops), and all those chancy things in GoW.
But, yeah, 40-50% chance to devour on a spell that doesn’t cost over 20 mana (and Kerberos can even start with half the mana if you have Forest Guardian) is not just powerful, it’s OP, broken, and unfair (especially since RNGesus hates me hehe).
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My main problem, Mako, is i have to waste a full turn sniping a troop. And i play Jotnar with one Giant always. Either Jarl or hero on Titan. When RNGesus is not in your corner firing anything that boosts mana of the opponent is risky which is a pain as the troop I’ve seen gel with it is Humility. And another thing. I don’t have my Jotnar traited. I looked at it from a perspective of those who don’t have traited. (I’m actually grinding to get stormshield making him my first fully traited mythic). The only thing I’m thinking for him is a extra turn after he’s got a kill like War. Makes him slightly more usable in other teams as well
Edit:- Explained fully the change i think will benefit him
This has saved my ass during GW red days. Barrier can protect your troops from dying if deathmark proc. Your troop will only lose armor and barrier, but won’t die. Deathmark still linger though, but I’ve never experienced it proc again 2nd time on same troop.
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This is a thing? (Just checked - yep, its a thing). Thank you so much for this - it means I can add Forest Guardian to the list of things I can reliably counter deathknight in normal PvP with without having to severely pull my punches.
Is this intended to be a thing, though? It seems kind of odd that it takes armor. I’m not advocating removing it by any means but this interaction seems a bit… odd. Kind of seems like it should either block death mark activation and have it cleanse right there or not at all.
Now if only Jotnar’s barriers were a bit more consistent about how they spread out, then he might actually be reliable to block some damage (or deathmark activation). If anything, thats the buff he needs - have his trait focus putting barrier on troops that don’t already have it.
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Yes it’s a thing. It’s kind of funny though that poison tick 1 damage will remove Barrier, but instakill mechanic like Deathmark won’t. 
Another inconsistency(?) or weirdness regarding barrier is:
- Burn won’t remove barrier since it hits on armor instead of life.
- Kraken tentacles will remove it. Even though it says “damage”, it will hit on armor first. But…
- Aspect of Plague won’t remove it if it hits on armor. It will remove barrier if it hits on life.
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Maybe at early to mid game with most of his damage coming from a static boost, but at endgame pvp he can’t oneshot that many troops even with maxed giant/barrier boost (which is incredibly unpractical to achieve to begin with).
Add event-bonuses and GW-stat bonuses and he doesn’t dream of oneshoting anything.
There are no other two good Giants, there is Jarl Godking Firemantle and then there is the weak pathetic rest of the bunch. Jarl is also the only Giant reasonably teaming up with Jotnar because he can kinda feed him mana, but even between those two there is no further synergy, with Jotnar dealing true damage, the only Giant at all that does, and Jarl not.
Anyways having more than 2 Giants makes the team clunky, slow and makes it bothersome to spread his traits barriers around.
That is really the problem with many of the people that say he is fine, they just assume so cause “omg look at that theoretically big true damage number!”. They don’t actually spent hours building teams with him and feeling how much of a clunky slow mess those teams become when you try to optimize the giant-based part of his spells boost, or how little use one relatively big true damage nuke is when there are no other true damage dealers in the team to finish the job.
Which is not remotely good for the manacost and far from oneshotting any troop in competitive play.
Spirit Fox, an UR troop, does that amount of true damage for less mana while also draining 14 mana in addition. If you account for Empowered Spirit Fox even does that damage with less than half the mana Jotnar needs for it, that is awefully inefficient for a base mythic.
If you actually build a balanced team around him that has a good manaflow to feed him, and enough 4-match opportunity to spread barriers that means leaving at least 5-10 of his damage boost behind, making his spell quite meh, effectively dealing less damage per mana and time than troops like Spirit Fox, who also has the massive added utility of manadrain.
His trait however is really good for Guild wars, it is his only redeeming factor, but a base mythic that has to sit in the back and spread barrier and shut up to never use his waste of a turn-ending spell is not my Definition of fine.
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Because he’s random. Jotnar is reliable, you can do math to know exactly what he’s going to do with his magic.
I don’t own jotnar nor jarl so I can’t test it, but I think this team should work with some tweaking:
- Jotnar
- Jarl
- Sea Troll
- Fully Traited titan + serve and protect
Any kind soul out there could test it?
I have no insight on what strategy you would follow with this team so my short test run of 5 ish games is just a subjective first Impression and might completely fail to capture this teams strengths.
Anyways i played a couple of games with it and focused on filling Sea Troll first and his cast gets Jotnar and the Hero ready quickly. After the Heros cast you have 3-4 barriers up for Jotnars first cast which is 56/61 damage for me (it would be 59/64 damage with all possible bonus magic).
You mostly fight event troops atm, so i had a hard time to find anything to oneshot with that.
And then the team pretty much breaks down. Incidental damage from poison, explosions and traits happen and you rarely have more than 2 barriers up at a time, Sea Troll doesn’t do a lot after his initial cast without another troop putting blue back on the board.
Jarl basically sabotages Sea Troll whenever he casts, and Jarl and Jotnar have to mostly tag team on single targets to chew their defense down, which makes Jotnars true damage properties kinda pointless as you’ll end up chipping away at most enemies armor anyways, but that is bound to be true for any giant based Jotnar team.
Mana flow isn’t great either after the quick start mostly because Sea Troll and Jarl are working against eachother (i ended up not bothering with Sea Troll anymore after his initial cast unless the opponent or lucky drop-ins put blue on the board) and Jarl can’t loop well in that constellation.
After a fast start it becomes a really slow team that is prone to get busted by devours and manadrains or other cheese, or simply by being outdamaged by the opponent.
But as i said, it was just a handfull of games, by no means enough to judge the team and i might have done it all wrong.
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i can do the math but after i finally manage to fill;l him mana and gt enough of shields up that turn the enemy can take these shields down (again single 4+ match with kraken for example) and my work starts again
edit: so no, i dont see it as reliable
I actually could see a buff on Jotnar, his mana cost could go down to 20.
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Imo, he needs to be changed in a more significant way than that. If you go down the mana cost reduction route, he will end up at a cost between 10 and 15 mana(not very mythicy) just to make him not be less efficient than UR true damage toops.
Either the hard scaling ceiling on his spell needs to be removed. He needs to have some kind of different scaling mechanic on his spell, something that doesn’t restrict him the way it does and something that isn’t hardcapped at a limit of +40, something that players can game around and that can grow during the course of a battle, similar to Ketras’ spell.
Or they add some additional effect on his spell, status effects, board manipulation, extra turn opportunity, drains whatever.
Don’t get confused by his long spell text, it is a very basic singletarget damage spell with a hard cap, one that is bound to severe restrictions for the troop and the team and that is significantly below what it would need to be justify the combined cost and restrictions Jotnar is subject to.
Unless ofcourse the Devs really just want him to be a silent barrier bot.
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I agree with this Gouki. I would probably still have him on the bench, if just his mana cost went down a little…
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@Gouki Wow, thank you for that ( really fast ) insight
It was just a blindfolded team I came up with, but your explanation is enough to point its weak spots.
So, assuming that it needs a buff, I would vote for column explosion just like Sylvanimora; fits the “lightning strike” theme and is a powerful but not-so-powerful efect so it doesn’t break the card.
In any case, I think the psicological effect of random things in this game is interesting. Going on with the kraken example, I have fought really powerful kraken teams ( with two krakens in some cases! ) and it has never, ever devoured one of my troops. I don’t have the exact figures, but I think we are talking about at least 20 or 30 battles ( I’ve been playing the game only for three months, so I still have most of my battle experience in my memory ). Sometimes I killed the kraken before it fired, sometimes it fired but didn’t devour … anyway, this experience may be the reason because I don’t see random effects like this as reliable.
Troops like Jotnar, on the other hand, have less powerful but more consistent magic. You can count on him to do his job, always, no percentages involved. At a price like the BIG mana cost, of course. Just look at Maw.
I guess it’s just a matter of tastes; some players prefer more powerful but unreliable effects ( percentage chance ), and others prefer lesser effects that are more consistent. Just remember, our human mind is biased by our expectations; if you want to believe that a random effect is consistent your mind will unconsciously discard most of the times that randomness failed.
I actually have Two Jotnars and I’ve been working with him. The only ‘good’ team that works with him is Jarl, Humility, Jotnar, Elven Bard. It works but it’s ridiculously clunky and horribly bad at anything to do with the board. Only way of board control is Jarl and humil or Otherwise the team just falls flat on it’s face. My main problem is he’s stupidly weak. Troops like Spirit Fox and Astral deal more damage than him. And offer board control and with Empowered it makes it even stronger. Early game he’s maybe good, big maybe here. But late game he’s horrible. I know this from personal experience as I have to fire Humility on Magic around 3 to 4 times till i get enough to oneshot a troop. If Jotnar is a troop of oneshot capabilities he’s going to need some love in that department.
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