That moment when you realize that a global match 3 purple gems to death mark a random enemy applicable by either side might actually go over better with the player base then Lycanthropy is currently.
The other heroic gems seem actually decent, if not a bit too swingy for normal gameplay. Why start with this one, which is an utter disaster of a first impression?
I’m not minding lycanthropy much so far, but: it feels like there are already a lot of lyco gems appearing in battles, we’re only in week 1 of the campaign, and the lyco gem drop rate is supposedly going to increase throughout the campaign?
Is the final week going to be every-purple-gem-is-a-lyco-gem week?
I have to actively avoid matching lycanthropy gems in high level world event battles. They give opposing troops a full heal, which is devastating when using an underpowered team. Unfortunately, exploding the board triggers the effect, so it’s unavoidable.
I can’t imagine how frustrating faction team runs are going to be.
These 10 weeks are the worst time to play the game since launch. I really hope that the dev team is aware of how unhappy the player base is with this unavoidable mechanic. I’m not sure how much clearer the feedback can be.
The good thing is I’ve finally learned how to write the word lycanthropy, because I’ve seen it a few times…
to be precise: first ones were Uber Doomskulls… and they were received rather positively 
So can we assume, there will be an update to Lycanthropy that will make new troops spawned by its trigger to be half-level and traitless ?
Agree with all of the above.
DON’T state that it’s like the other transform when it OBVIOUSLY NOT, at least in the current state.
It’s not easy to not trigger lycan when random gems spawn on table and every explode/destroy triggers them; that’s NOT strategic, it’s gambling (once more).
If there is a plan to update lycan to work as other transform, all fine but at the moment
this statement is plain FALSE.
Edit: really appreciate the opening of thread for explanation though; if this could be done more often things will be more clear and people (hopefully) less upset.
Thank you very much
Not wrong, just incomplete.
Lycanthropy is anti-players. All of us.
Match lycan gem, you lose, dont match you lose too.
If lycan is not negative status, does reflection of good apply it on ally?
Can we assume fixing Lycanthropy to be in line with the other transform effects is the ‘moving forward’ part?
This is not incorrect, but Sirrian’s actual response in the dev Q&A was something like “maybe stop spamming EoE lol”
People shouldn’t have to watch an hour long stream to get this info, but it hasn’t been mentioned in game or in any official news posts
Nah…it’s called pouring gasoline on fire, or blatantly lying.
the only targeted lycan i’m aware of is EoE and wereverine somehow (next week), but it is still no strategic tool.
in general i fully agree with your statement.
over the years i’m really getting tired of all these statements from Salty/devs saying “to keep the game fresh” or “to keep the game healthy” or “to balance the economy”.
i’m already also too tired to list here every little thing to prove the devs they just lied.
So sorry to hear about your rage quit… I probably pick the best time to retire before this campaign.
I’m curious, sifting a bit through the data it seems Lycanthrophy was originally intended to be an instant effect like Devour. As far as I can tell it wasn’t even supposed to just transform, it had it’s own special handling. At some point it got changed to the status effect we currently see, introducing side effects in other areas (e.g. Lycanthrophy showing up whenever something causes random/all status effects). Any chance you could let us know what the original design was and why this apparently got changed rather hastily?
Moving forward it is our intention to have Lycanthropy behave more like “transform” so a few changes will be coming to it with our next major update. Our post talking about Lycanthropy let that out of the bag a little early, and we apologise for any confusion.
This means that in the future Lycanthropy will behave like transform and when the troop lycanthropes (yes that’s what we are going with) they will be at the same level as a troop that was transformed, which is half of the original troop. Also, the issue where lycanthroped Valravens and Gnomes don’t give sigils or loot will be rectified at the same time.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and before anyone asks no, I can’t tell you the date of the next update. 
This change will be some time coming, but it is coming.
Happy matching!
Thank you for coming back to post this on your Friday evening, rather than letting it sit till Monday Australia time!
And there you go, just when I got the hang of it she throws a harder word at me, lys… lycn… lycantrophes, oh man… But hey, great news, now people can spend a relaxed weekend 
Don’t get too excited, though. It’ll be over a month for this change to happen, by my estimation.
Next major update as in 5.6? That is too long to wait, considering that major updates generally release once every 2-3 months. Any chance we could get a 5.5.5 update with this fix included in it? Please?
You just need to abbreviate it properly. If you go with the middle part of “lycanthroped” you end up with “canned”. 