Baby Dragon says:
Ishtarra, Elemaugrim, The Worldbreaker in the Arena??
Absolutely correct my good sir, except for a few key differences. In the relatively few instances where you come across a Baby Dragon in the pick phase, you can avoid the RNG by not picking it, and in the event of facing it in an opponents team, you can single it out or deny it mana. In delves, Baby Dragons are even more rare, and the occasional bad RNG in said game mode will to lesser extent than lycanthropy ruin your day, and in 0% of any of these scenarios will an enemy Baby Dragon transform any of your troops. Also, unlike the baby dragon, lycanthropy is a threat in every single game, and you have no control over it.
5 Likes
I definitely agree lycanthropy gems are annoying and basically shouldn’t be a thing from random skyfall (especially for as long as they’re automatically triggered regardless of how they’re taken off the board) 
I was just poking a bit of fun at the “limit mythics in Arena” idea, ‘cause I lubs me some baby dargons 
3 Likes
Think we need to separate out lycantrophy as an effect vs. lycantrophy gems. Lycantrophy as an effect is meh (tbf at the end game almost every effect is meh). Lycantrophy gems takes the ability of control out of the players hands and this is the difference. I can’t plan around lycantrophy if I’m only allowed very specific troop selections in pure faction, world event etc. I can still see some potential in the effect in specific situations (a specific delve/kingdom) but having it everywhere all the time is a completely different ballgame.
It also doesn’t help that when I’m mowing down enemies where lycantrophy is likely to hurt my speed of completion whether I get inflicted or I inflict it on an enemy which makes it uncontrollable. If gems randomly inflicted burn, enrage, deathmark, freeze, etc. i don’t think we would be this annoyed about it because it’s stands to only benefit the side who picked up the gem and triggered the effect.
5 Likes
I’m going to repeat my post again. @Saltypatra @OminousGMan @Jeto please take your forum moderation seriously and block Denthegod. Don’t lock the post, remove the offending troll!
Also, can you confirm that you have passed on our feedback that (a considerable proportion of the community) want to have lycanthropy removed altogether, notwithstanding the numerous bug fixes.
2 Likes
Please remove lycantrophy asap. It jeopardize the game, it’s too randomic, not fair, fully out of control. All members of my guild are fully agree with me. I think that is also unfair put this in some critical events like war and digs. Please, remove this function. We don’t like it. Members of my guild are top players, all over level 1200 and you’re spoiling the our game.
7 Likes
@Saltypatra
Please consider keeping Lycanthropy as it is. It’ll become completely out of sense if it halves the level and the beast troop doesn’t have traits nor elite level. It should reflect the player’s troop arsenal as it has always been intended.
About people complaining about it being in all game modes, remember that we’re in the middle of a freaking lycanthropy campaign. It’s supposed to be themed and temporary. Just avoid doing non potion pure faction at 500 until the campaign is over. But even then, a guildmate got Flame of Anu while doing his pure faction yesterday. This might be the opportunity we needed to get 2500 at those annoying and difficult factions.
Complaints are always louder than compliments. You should know that the most vocal members in this forum don’t represent Gems of War player base.
7 Likes
That’s quite a lot of rhetoric nonsense.
The level not being halved and not being untraited is really bad, especially in harder content where, if one of your troops gets transformed, you get (assuming you leveled and traited it) a level 20 troop that is unlikely to be helpful maybe even messing with your colors, while the enemy (lets say lvl 500) gets stuff like a level 500 beast at full health and traits, being able to one shot your troops with a skull hit.
Temporary … 'freaking is the right word, yea 10 freaking weeks, I get the Theme idea but for something to be annoying temporarily is 10 weeks far too long.
Yes I know there are a handful of people who lucked out in crucial battles, that’s hardly saying something.
Attempting to do the same is like gambling
- A lycan gem on the board will be triggered it’s inevitable → no control
- A lycan gem may be triggered by you or the AI, depending on board state and troops you may have some influence on that → limited control (at best)
- Lycantrophy may trigger or not, it may trigger earlier or later, the beast you get can be helpful or not → no control
I agree complaints are most often louder than compliments but ppl expressing what they think about something is not loud. You have to keep in mind many ppl don’t post in forums even if they are unhappy with something, also one member of a guild speaking, often representing the opinion of the majority of their guild, is not loud either.
I also have to admit a crowd is likely to get loud and with most of them being unhappy about the current mess it’s indeed representative, ofc to some extend.
And I am sure sometimes even the devs, moderators etc have a hard time to get an idea what the player base is like or what they want/need/enjoy so it’s unlikely you know the player base better.
There are players who like lycanthropy and/or the gems and they’re free to express it, some do that here and that is good and I wouldn’t dare to call them loud only because I don’t agree with them.
11 Likes
Hey @JuaitoR, just so you know that I am generally ok with the changes except for lycantrophy gems.
1 Like
The other heroic gems that are coming in the future seem to actually be a good addition to the game, it’s just lycanthropy that sucks balls.
If they would just remove it from the “negative status effects” category I would be fine with it and of course make it half the enemy level (which is already going to happen in next patch)
At least after this campaign we won’t see it again thankfully for over a year.
5 Likes
Well, your random lycanthrophy gems just cost me a GW match I should have won. No strategy involved. No perfectly picked counter team battling against a tough AI opponent. Just a random RNG gem popping up and ruining the match. So, yeah, sorry. It’s garbage.
14 Likes
“Just wait 10 weeks, and forget Warrens and Eldrazhor forever” then ?
Also I love your optimism, think the next campaign’s heroic gems won’t be a mess too ? I hope you’re right. But I wouldn’t bet a treasure map on it.
So are Vault events, yet I don’t see gnomes in delves.
10 Likes
The thing with Lycantrophy that those that like it are missing is when you explore, you are slowed down by exploding or destroyed gems landing Lyco. Do you honestly want your exploring to be slow and turgid, because it is just a handbrake to playing to accumulate, which the Devs have made just so.
Just 1 such gem on the board is at risk of changing your play. Unless you are not changing the board, its a nerf to gameplay before anything else. Simple as.
A simple solution to a lot of issues would be that only when converting such gems does any effect apply.
4 Likes
See that Hyena? That used to be my enemy’s Hero using Jar of Eyes with 600+ life. This is a Guild Wars match. It’s been going on for 14 minutes now. Of course, I’m using the superior Monk class with access to Fortitude (as if it needed to be any better), so I’m immune to Lycanthropy, but my opponent was not. I don’t think this match would have ended without him getting turned!
I’m not defending lycanthropy – I think it’s a horrible mechanic, and the fact that I triggered it on an enemy just by matching a gem is laughable. For every scenario like this, there’s an opposite one where it triggers on the player’s hero.
14 Likes
Absolutely agree. Because of the new Lycanthropy gems, I’m not enjoying E12 anymore. So frustrating when an enemy that is near death gets transformed into a perfectly healthy Beast troop. Until this campaign is over, I’ll be doing mostly E6 because the battles are so short that Lycanthropy won’t have time to activate. A lot less tokens that way, but it’s the only way I can enjoy Gems at this time because E12 just isn’t fun for me right now. 
10 Likes
I’d fully support lycanthropy gems and everything about the spell itself if it was used to the way the campaign has been set; by that I mean the moon storyline. I imagined it to be like a human transforming to a werewolf under a full moon and reverting back at dawn. So why can’t this be a solution to lycanthropy; once turned whether it’s upon the next spell cast or two you revert back to your original troop a level below. There is plenty of code in the game for this to be made possible as we have a multitude of troop that do this.
It’s just my opinion.
3 Likes
The more I try to think about Lycanthropy, the more it feels like even the devs themselves have hardly any vision and/or implementable plan as to what and how Lycanthropy is supposed to accomplish despite what any tidbits of official information given us would try to suggest otherwise. There is simply too much chaos and nonsense involved in how it works, how it’s implemented, bugs and whatnot.
Overall, my opinion is still the basically same as when I first saw Lycanthropy on beta - for ordinary context using a fast team it is a meh-whatever because most of the time the match is over too fast for it to matter, but Lycanthropy is a huge pain in the backside everywhere else - scaling content, slower teams and longer games (less advanced player accounts without options for building fast teams).
Others have already said numerous times - absurd as a status effect (should, if anything, be a mechanic in its own right), absurd as a strategic tool (currently it’s all randomly random), adds nothing constructive to the gameplay. Hopefully, it will never come back once the current campaign ends.
Some future adjustments have been promised? I have my doubts that there exit adjustments to make it even remotely enticing.
18 Likes
Probably for Pure Faction reasons.
They don’t want to accidentally make it easier for completion. And I don’t mean that as a criticism, in this case — factions should be difficult, and standard, in my opinion.
But 
The critical part of me also realizes that faction difficulty and “balance” skews wildly from one faction to the next. In an ideal world, all would be about as difficult as the original two, I think — no bull-spit like The Labyrinth or total pushovers like Illithia — but that ain’t the world we live in, not even close 
1 Like