Naughty & Nice: Troop Balance

[Asmodous]

I came here to basically write what you did. Excellently put, I completely agree with every point you made.

[Fourdottwoone]

@Saltypatra

We have fixed Domovoi’s spell so he will give positive status effects to Allies.

“Fixed”? Domovoi was intentionally designed to give a random “status effect” (the game term for a negative buff, the good ones are called “positive status effect”) to balance out the huge life gain for the whole team. Reasoning back then was that the spell would otherwise be way too powerful for a rare troop. This is similar to how The Silent One has a negative component to the spell, will this get “fixed” too?

[Sytro]

@Angellore

King Gobtruffle
Yes, Gobtruffle was way too good, so this nerf is justified for sure. My question is, why Beetrix was untouched in this update? Beetrix is very similar unit to Gobtruffle, and now Beetrix costs 14 mana , while Gobtruffle 18 mana . Beetrix spawn 18 gems (always - without any additional conditions!), Gobtruffle 14 gems (which can be boosted). Beetrix can gain half mana back when casting, Gobtruffle can’t. And traits are much better on Beetrix. Touching Gobtruffle without touching Beetrix seems like very strange way of balancing things.

+1 for this one

@Angellore

The thing with Bandit is, it is mainly used in teams as random summon option, when your ally dies. If your hero has Stealthy trait and Bandit has not, you can’t target hero directly and therefore you can spawn a lot of bandits! If both hero and summoned Bandits have stealthy, people can kill hero directly and get rid of it’s summoning trait. So this update will put every single player, who don’t use Refund option right now in big disadvantage in the future . In current form, you can call this update biggest buff ever for Bandit, but only to players, who will use Refund option for limited time ! In this situation, I think it would make more sense to just replace 3rd trait of Bandit with other trait, to make it fair for everyone.

and another +1 for this one

@Angellore

Life and Death
Increasing mana cost from 15 to 18 is a good change for sure.[…]. And what about other “broken” weapons, like Rope Dart, which still has very low 14 mana cost?

And agree with this part also.

@Angellore

In fact, as new player I loved this weapon, it kept me playing some guild related events easier.

Thing is, much has changed with early game since release of Thief class, and as such SK is no longer an early game weapon… Obtaining it requires doing full quest missions in like 27 of 34 kingdoms…
And that’s only to unlock Thief… by that time guildless player will get enough viable troops from chests, not mentioning player in a guild that makes weekly all basic tasks… this is probably biggest change to meta-gold-farming, also i might see as SK teams still are pretty potent def team in lower levels → it doesn’t require any stats (only gold, which can be generated quite fast, even without cederick) to deal significant ammount of damage - (basicaly could 1-shot half of enemy team on lower level pvp)
I will be on other side than most of community, but this change is realy good. It helps with balance on low lvl pvp, it brakes gold-farming-meta for endgame. Will make people use their brains a bit more (at least until new meta shows up)

[Angellore]

People will just use Plunder and Peril in gold farming team though. Some time ago, I made speed test of Skeleton Key vs Plunder and Peril, and the latter wasn’t really that much slower than Skeleton Key.
So I personally don’t see this nerf as some kind of huge nerf to gold farming. Just Skeleton Key won’t be primary gold farming weapon from now on. From my point of view, this update killed Skeleton Key completely.

[Emos]

Umm…has anyone thought how the prospect of facing non-stealthy bandit spam is gonna make Thief even more powerful? Let me tell you I’m going to really look forward to next GW! Oh and the Bandit still gets to keep their gold medal too!

[xolid99]

@Fourdottwoone

Fixed”? Domovoi was intentionally designed to give a random “status effect” (the game term for a negative buff, the good ones are called “positive status effect”) to balance out the huge life gain for the whole team. Reasoning back then was that the spell would otherwise be way too powerful for a rare troop. This is similar to how The Silent One has a negative component to the spell, will this get “fixed” too?

Dev logic - it’s inconspicuous but if you know their patterns and you look closely at when these things occur, that buffs like this exist to make faction runs harder.

Domovoi and Venoxia just got harder to deal with in factions.

There’s no other possible benefit - particularly Venoxia scaling off magic - where I wonder does that gain the most…

[sls]

Thank you for the buffs and nerfs! I think they’re mostly on point.

Bandit’s real problem is the ‘Stealthy’ trait in combination with a ‘Stealthy’ class, though. Refunding is going to make the Bandit-balance problem worse now

Are you going to raise the mana cost on similar explode-and-summon weapons too? Or was the issue the attached storm here?

[Sytro]

@sls

Are you going to raise the mana cost on similar explode-and-summon weapons too? Or was the issue the attached storm here?

I’d say there will be no Balance Changes at least until Easter
People need to play with them, need to adapt, need to observe what made game even more bugged, abusive… and need to complain about it

[Shimrra]

I literally started playing on my phone earlier and went “wait when did this cost 18? … oh I see, as soon as I use it for the rest time ever because of an Orbweaver requirement, that’s when it gets nerfed, awesome. And why did Tian-Yi just one-hit me?!”

True story. Moving on.

L&D should be nerfed in other ways too, it is still an abomination. I actually took a pretty long time to even notice the change (partly because phone screen size but still) since the weapon remains absolutely ghastly. If you have an empowered start, its gonna fill and cast and then the game may as well be over already. If they have an empowered start and you fail to stop it connecting, same thing.

It does mean it is less likely to fill from one match (from a 50% start and a surge etc). Only a little though.

Other changes… yeah those were certainly underused troops. I feel like it may have gone slightly too far with Venoxia (read: looks OP) but I’ve been saying that troop has a major identity crisis for AGES so I don’t mind.

[Fourdottwoone]

@xolid99

Dev logic - it’s inconspicuous but if you know their patterns and you look closely at when these things occur, that buffs like this exist to make faction runs harder.

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.

I believe this particular “fix” was done by someone who doesn’t really know the game. Probably stumbled over some ancient bug report where someone had ranted about getting Death Marked by their Domovoi, didn’t understand the design decisions involved and put the hammer to it, swinging blindly. A for Effort, I guess.

[Poisy]

Why on earth would you nerf Skeleton’s boost ratio??? It renders gold farming in E12 USELESS.
Who gave you this bright idea? Oh wait… I guess the game got so much SIMPLER that you needed to spice it up?

UN-NERF THE SK BACK!

[Poisy]

They are not exactly equal. With SK hitting the first and last troops AND Cedric changing the troop’s order, you were able to get rid of the most dangerous troop first AND get an extra turn on a kill. It’s all gone now. E12 gold farming is dead.

[Razzagor]

@Fourdottwoone

…didn’t understand the design decisions involved and put the hammer to it, swinging blindly.

You just know how it is:

Jokes aside I can appreciate they are AT LEAST AND FINALLY doing some balance changes. That alone is more relevant than the last (five to seven I think?) updates. It opens the ways for communication and engagement. Players can surely disagree with some balancing changes. They can then start new threads, discuss and provide feedback that can be considered for future changes.

[Fourdottwoone]

@Saltypatra

We have fixed an issue where the Familiar Trait and the Backup talent could trigger more than intended.

I’m really curious about this one. Familiar triggers on damage received, Backup triggers on ally dying. Both on hero, different conditions, all evaluated during opponent turn. What could cause them to trigger more often? Wild guess, hero triggers during opponent turns could get processed more than once. If that’s the case, this fix might also bleed into other parts of the games.

@Saltypatra Any chance we could get a bit more insight on this one?

[xolid99]

@Fourdottwoone

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.

I believe this particular “fix” was done by someone who doesn’t really know the game. Probably stumbled over some ancient bug report where someone had ranted about getting Death Marked by their Domovoi, didn’t understand the design decisions involved and put the hammer to it, swinging blindly. A for Effort, I guess.

They have form for it though…

Naga Queen was changed so it wasn’t mana blocked by Lamia’s. Nightshade had it’s mana cost lowered, much more beneficial for the AI in faction 500 runs, as it takes 2 less mana for Spectral Knight to 1 shot.

Just two troop changes that have more to them than meets the eye that I can think of right now.

[ats1080]

I feel very sad for new players. Skeleton key/Sparklesack was the first team I got that could actually complete most of the essential games modes like pet rescue, dungeon, and high level vaults. And that took months to get. It’s also one of the only worthwhile PvP teams there is. I really hope this gets a reversal like the Sunspear class because this is probably the worst change I have seen in the game yet…

And just to add insult to injury, a Gobtruffle nerf but no Beetrix nerf? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

[Snooj]

How has no one commented on the naughty and nice intro?! @Saltypatra thank you for the giggles.

Curious what exactly refund does? From the comments it sounds like a way to remove traits and traitstones back, is that right? But not medals?

I suggest refunding includes medals too to prevent the Bandit issue others have already talked about. People will refund his Stealthy trait but keep him medalled, which other than via refund isn’t possible.

I like assuming that when I see a medalled troop in PvP, I know it has all traits. The way refund works means that isn’t true.

Otherwise, I am neutral on the balance changes. Got some nerfs, got some buffs, the community asked for balance changes so all is good there.

Edit: Actually, surprised the troops with changes don’t have an exclamation mark…

[Starlite]

NOT happy about the boost reduction to Skeleton Key.

To me, the Skeleton Key team is a benchmark. If your team is better than Skeleton Key, you have a good team; if your team is beaten by Skeleton Key, it’s not such a good team.

Mostly, this change will affect early-mid game players who may have few or no Mythic options, and likely not have many Epic or Legendary troops at level 20.

That’s pretty harsh. Please revert, @Nimhain, @Saltypatra. (You can leave the increased mana cost.)

[igniteice]

I approve of all the changes – even Skeleton Key. There is a reason people used it over Plunder & Peril. The extra turn (which is untouched) is incredible.

@ats1080

And just to add insult to injury, a Gobtruffle nerf but no Beetrix nerf? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

I agree that Queen Beetrix is more powerful than Gobtruffle, however, she creates a static 9 green and 9 brown gems. That’s 18 gems. Gobtruffle on the other hand makes 14-22 gems, depending on how many enemies are poisoned and diseased (and he diseases on 4 matches himself). And his extra turn is guaranteed, whereas Beetrix’s is only a 40% chance.

[Goodly]

If you’ve ever tried to loop beetrix only in guild wars you’d realize it wasn’t totally broken like gobtruffle. Gobtruffle has the guaranteed extra turn which is what makes it way overpowered. Not that beetrix isn’t annoying but it’s not a guarantee and it can whiff once in awhile, it’s just defensively annoying.