Goblin up front as a meat shield with inconsequential mana blocking, Druid, Strigik, who cares at the bottom.
You’ll only need Strygik anyway — but you’ve got a guaranteed extra turn and Druid for cleanup
But I guess my point is that, in the Arena, I find mana blocking generally isn’t what makes or breaks a team. On that draft above, for instance, I’d still love to see Armored Boar as one of my Common choices, or Giant Crab. Orc would be less ideal than usual, but still worth it.
After being inspired by @awrayan I did this for a time being until got bored. Maybe I’ll continue tracking arena colors some other time. Make of it what you will.
This is one of the reasons why I was angry about removing weapons. Not the only reason but that’s another thread.
Anyway, the unrestrained (yet weirdly also restrained) nature of the draft means that to really make the most of arena you spend more time re rolling and/or retiring than playing. Yesterday, I (feeling the need to torture myself, and having time on my hands) decided to do a little arena. My first run I drafted the most perfect arena team you could ever hope for.
Tonight I thought I’d play a little again… it was an endless tedious pile of mana blocked garbage. I finally cried uncle and gave up. This is not fun and compelling game play. The weapons led to seeing the same handful of weapons in the AI. But at least it mitigated the random. Now we have to still deal with the sameness (troops instead of weapons) annnnnnnd have no real mitigation for the random.
So yes please, something to help mana blocking would be great.
If there would be 4 different base colors, one for each step, all visible to the player from the beginning, then the secondary color could be randomized and mana blocking evaded. The base colors would also be random, but one color would only appear in one of the steps.
Or then all 4 choosings should be visible at the same time, this would not take the pain away, but i’t could ease it…
Hope someone understands what I mean, I don’t
I’m surprised you rerolled that first draft when you still had 5 out of 6 colors and some great troops on that team. If I had that exact team, I would have kept it. I do agree though that mana blocking happens far too often in the Arena.
If my suggestion would have been implemented then I would have one Brown Mana troop as option for the Common rarity selection. Or at the very least, not duplicate Purple troops since I drafted the optimal team.
To transform brown (and take away green) for what? Lol.
(That’s not optimal. )
You keep pointing out that I’m selecting a good arena troop. I’m aware of this. The point of my feature request isn’t how to compliment the 10-20 actually good arena troops in a better way.
The point is to change the devs design belief that feels it’s better to seemingly Mana block teams on PURPOSE (I’m 80% sure) to slow down the arena experience as a whole.
Salty says they aren’t using Bots Accounts in the arena (as far as she knows). But she also said pet gnomes could be found in the arena when they couldn’t.
So the jury is still out in that regard. Point is… If players aren’t playing the arena… perhaps not Mana blocking them on purpose would help more than using bot accounts to make sure those that to do play arena have opponents.
(Bot Accounts being the abundance of guild none players in the arena
My posts are to point out that I don’t agree mana blocking does slow down the experience. And making a mechanic that disallowed mana-blocking would potentially yield worse options down the line — I want to be able to have Armored Boar after Midge Swarm, or Orc after Fire Lizard, even if my other troops also happen to be green or red, respectively.
And orc taking away green above can get you extra turns and enough board churn to make use of your enraged condition, probably, as the clearing away of an entire color makes skulls proliferate more. And taking away green doesn’t matter, as it’s not the focus unless there’s literally NO Blue or Yellow (and in these rare cases, one just wouldn’t cast Orc anyway).
So I’m not disagreeing just to be an Eggplant; I’m disagreeing to point out how I think you might be overthinking the Arena and making it harder on yourself. Keep it simple — most effective teams will have two troops that are meat shields, and most teams shouldn’t fill each troop before you’ve won the match. If you’re filling everyone, or planning/hoping to cast everyone, you’re making it harder on yourself for sure.
Arena is about cheese strategies, not skilled teambuilding, as far as I’m concerned. The only skill in the Arena is manipulating the board to avoid dying by skulls and maintain the turn as long as possible, like Wars
Why would they do this on purpose? and why would they want to slow down Arena play? These feel like extraordinary claims.
Surely the simpler explanation is that the three troops are selected from the pool at random; if you happen to get 3 mana blockers, well, that’s bad luck and that’s what the reroll button’s for.
I think what you really want is for the game to deliberately avoid presenting 3 mana-blocking choices. Certainly does seem possible (*), but that would be more of a deliberate design choice to help the player by shielding them from the more unfortunate RNG outcomes.
(* in most cases? unless you’ve picked bi-color troops in each of the first 3 tiers to cover all 6 colors, in which case the 4th pick must necessarily block at least 1 color.)
I don’t have much of an opinion on this topic as a whole, but there is plenty of reason to want to slow down Arena play. It’s the same reason Bounty teams are so slow. Players feel that they need to play Arena each day to stay ahead. Wasting more of their time for very little reward aside from possible gem offers helps out the company, as the player is not gaining resources, but rather spending both time and gems. It’s a net-win for the company.
In other words, rather than the player gaining resources by using their time in other modes, the player is actually losing those resources due to opportunity cost. In addition, they’re spending gems. Now the company is better able to target those players and get them to spend real $ to get these resources and gems.
My idea doesn’t eliminate that 66% chance from happening. Just guarantees that 1 of the 3 troops will not share a Mana color with what is already selected (if possible).
I do not agree with your strategy of sharing a color with any troop I’m trying to fill though. Then it becomes a Mana block in every sense of the phrase.
If you’re not picking what I’m picking and ordering them how I’m ordering them then we’re just thinking about the approach to the Arena differently. Which is why I’m posting — genuinely trying to be helpful (and not just to you, but to anyone else reading, too), not contrarian, by providing a different perspective.
Leech doesn’t “work” for me, so I mostly ignore it. Now, it “works” better than the other choices, of course, so it still gets picked. And it goes above Siren despite the (small) mana-blocking to act as a shield to keep her safe, since she’s potentially valuable as a mana generator for Zephyros, or even Orc if someone snipes my preferred ringer. And if he’s not up front, he does have some better chance of setting up (but - again - I’d hope to have won well before that could have ever happened).
Why doesn’t it work? Two reasons:
Doesn’t explode enough (plus, explosions are random and loss of board control is likely to get your face smashed in) to be useful for mana gen
Not sturdy enough to be frontline, and takes too much set-up to be useful for skull-bashing
But also I’ll admit I misunderstood the Feature Request if what you’re asking isn’t: “Don’t offer me troops of colors I’ve already got on my team,” but rather, “Make sure at each rarity level I do not have two troops of the exact same mana profile.”
I could definitely get behind the latter. I don’t think it would preclude me from getting some good mono-and/or-bi-colored drafts I’ve had in my past (my typical drafts often have at least 3 troops sharing the same color), and I’ll admit it often sucks anytime the “choice” at a given rarity is a non-choice of, say, Green/Brown, Green/Brown, Green/Brown (though being offered Lasher, Settite Warrior, Wyvern never really bothers me, because there’s no bad choice there).
I think that would be too much of an ask.
So instead. My request at the end, for the just the Common rarity selection. The ability to pick a Mana color that isn’t on my team. Or at the very least. Out of 3 unique colors.
I personally believe it does the exact opposite of what I want it to. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that it’s rolling based on what I’m drafting.
)