Naughty & Nice: Troop Balance

I assumed the reason for the Bandit nerf was Arena. Bandit’s base damage is very high for its rarity there.

Where do you farm with that P&P team, and what sort of gold/hr numbers were you pulling?

I’m not farming gold since few months. I tested Plunder and Peril simply to compare this weapon to Skeleton Key some time ago (i’m a curious person!).

If you compare those two weapons, main difference you see is an extra turn on Skeleton Key. While everyone agrees, this is awesome, it only triggers when you kill an enemy. So let’s think a bit about this. At explore level 12, your first Skeleton Key cast won’t kill any enemy at all, so no extra turn here. Second cast will kill both enemies (extra turn). Third cast won’t kill anyone. And fourth cast will kill last two enemies. But the battle is already over, so you won’t take any advantage from extra turn anymore. This means, whole advantage of Skeleton Key extra turn is just first double-kill. That’s one extra turn per battle.

To be honest, biggest problem with Plunder and Peril is, it uses blue mana instead of brown. This means it will be blocked by Cedric, and this is what really slows you down (it is usually required to cast Egg Thief twice at the beginning to start rolling - but same time, it was happening also with Skeleton Key, just less likely).

What kingdoms have I farmed gold in? Those with low HP on units and no annoying mechanics. Kingdoms you farm depends from your stats of course. I have magic maxed and with my stats, far best farming place was Dhrak-Zum. The problem is, after this place got its delve, there are damage reduction troops nowadays, so it’s pretty bad choice to farm gold currently. But it was far best place in game to farm gold, when I was doing so.
From what I remember, other good places were Blackhawk, Divinion Fields, Glacial Peaks. You could also try Pridelands (but Pridelands has one unit, Finley, which can’t be killed from 2 casts, so it’s better to stick to other kingdoms!), Urskaya (pretty sure some units can survive 2 hits there, especially few new Urskaya troops were added to the game lately), Sin of Maraj (it is overal great kingdom with lowest durability on units, but due to enemies exploding gems at battle start, I rather avoided this place, but maybe it would be worth to farm there nowadays?), Wild Plains (one annoying unit, which switches your team’s order). I think I got all easiest listed here.
So there are choices, it’s mainly a question about your stats, which units you can kill from 2 hits. For weaker players, I can suggest going explore 11 instead of 12. It seems like a bad idea, but if you struggle on explore 12, it’s really better to have sure wins and gold at explore 11 instead of long fights and sometimes loses at explore 12. I was farming explore 11 long before I switched to explore 12, and it was working very nicely!

About gold per hours, it is again individual, depending from few factors, like VIP level and your magic stat. In explore 12, I could get about 400k gold per hour using Skeleton Key. Plunder and Peril was just slightly slower (sorry, don’t remember exact numbers now, but it really wasn’t that huge difference).
But yes, of course Plunder and Peril is worse than Skeleton Key - no doubt about that! The thing is, it was just slightly worse option. After update it became much better option, imo there is no point to use Skeleton Key anymore (killing enemies in 3 hits instead of 2 makes huge difference here). But I agree, latest update will surely slow down gold farming!

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I only use Land D in some events. I have faced it a zillion times in pvp and GW. It’s not hard to beat. It’s annoying to beat. For sure… yes. But hard? Nope.

no, we can still gold farm in E12. Try Cedric/Cedric/ET/Trickster’s Shot; red/green banner. Use a class w. Light Fingers talent, same as before. Same gold gathered, but TS can be used much earlier than TS bc it doesn’t depend on gold. If you don’t have TS, it’s coming up (maybe) in the Soulforge Jan 04.

In general the buffs seem good and reasonable to me, and it’s nice to see some older mythic troops upgraded a bit. Thumbs up to those.

I’m glad they tweaked Life and Death with the mana cost rather than completely destroying the weapon, as sometimes nerfs tend to go too far. This one seems appropriate and still leaves it as a very good weapon to use, so I like that too.

Skeleton Key on the other hand, I think a 50% decrease in the damage boost may have been a bit drastic. If the damage boost could have been just reduced to 2.5:1 rather than 3:1 then maybe that might have been ok. Otherwise I would have rather seen the damage boost left alone and maybe just increase the mana cost one more to 16 instead.

Jar of Eyes… was a problem? Who knew? I’m not sure why that was changed at all.

I agree with all the comments about the refund on Bandit being problematic. Everyone now having non-stealthy back-up summons is going to make it even worse to deal with when the flawed RNG goes on a summoning streak. Oh well, that ship has sailed I guess.

I also agree with the comments about being a little surprised Queen Beatrix also didn’t get a bit of a tweak, being another troop that can easily self-loop an entire team to death.

Lastly, I’m disappointed not to see Chief Stronghorn on the buff list. He still has a Legendary Trait that is extremely weak (+1 to 3 skills, no magic) when compared to what Ferocity does for Tauros troops (+4 to all skills) based on the same trigger. I was hoping to see a significant buff to that trait to make him usable on a Tauros team. Maybe next time…

Nah LnD just need’s removing entirely no matter what anyone says. Using the mechanic in the game to beat ourselves… with curse? Yeah probably can do that not when it’s straight back up due to how quick the computer get’s it’s mana. Ofc you’d only mention something guild wars related typical… war’s need’s removing it’s just as boring as PvP… same luck diff match.

OT: Liking all buff’s and nerf’s could’ve done with more nerfing to LnD because still going to be overused due to it’s sheer power of stealing life and being able to be protected by GS’s/WS’s.

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Maybe a better option would be to remove yourself since you have no idea what you are talking about and no idea how the game is played. The only folks that can’t beat life death are the ones that refuse to change their team. I can beat it every single time but I do not want to change my team either so I skip those battles in pvp and in Wars a beat the living crap out of life death. Not sure where you are seeing life death if you hate wars and PVP. If you hate wars then join a guild that does not care about wars. If you hate PVP then do other stuff. You should not try to dictate what others like or dislike. You can hate wars and it still exist. There are parts of the game I do not like but I’m not here asking for there removal. I just can ignore those if I chose. I suggest you do the same.

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Wait… you protect Skeleton Key which is a no brain auto deck (you probably love simple farming) and yet want to nerf Life and Death even more which at least is a deck with some thought and playability behind it

I’d say most things were balanced until the medals came out that let people cleanse 30% of the time with no worries. That really allows the endless loop blow up decks to not worry about getting froze as much which is the only real way to defend against those stupid loops.

As much fun it is to figure out cheese decks like ET/Cedric/SkeleKey they need to be nerfed after a while so the game doesn’t get degenerate. There will always be more brainless autopilot decks for the players that need brainless autopilot decks whenever new cards get made.

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I agree with the medals unbalancing the game but the game is based around grinding, so autopilot desks are often going to be sought after.

I think the Phoenicia team might be the most used by # of battles won throughout all game modes across the server, ideally matching gems isn’t even required with that team.

I despise the L&D team because in PvP it’s more there to annoy other players than it is an effective defense. Thankfully I no longer play PvP so no need to put myself through that.

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Just reorder the troops so Cederick is last troop… simple… wont affect damage, will increase speed…

Cedric is up top because he’s there for his traits. Once he appears on the field, he’s meat shield to die and be replaced by dragon eggs. Putting P&P top doesn’t work for this reason.

I have to wonder, did you actually use the SK teams?

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READ more carefully. Nobody suggested moving P&P top… I only suggested moving Cederick after P&P, like in team below:

Leprechaun/Greed
Egg Thief
P&P
Cederick

Lep/ Greed can also work as “meatshield”, whole team design is about Egg Thief and Cederick.

If you want to go with double Cedericks, than you’re probably better with SK as weapon. Even if it will be a bit slower than it used to be.

Used to use a lot. Last few months (might be a year+ already) was using it only for Pet Rescue. Currently switched to P&P for Pet Events…

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I could be wrong, but I think peeps are/were using this team for e12 gold farming
Cedric
Cedric
Egg Thief
P&P or SK

This is why @cyberkiwi mentioned P&P would have to be in top spot in order to not be mana blocked

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They can still do it with SK… it wil be a bit slower, since SK wont do 150+ magic damage, but 100 + magic damage (per cast, full damage) OR can search for other teams/methods for farming gold…

Every balance change/new troops added to game, change meta-team, or at least have a potential to change meta-teams.
I’m always for it. That keeps game alive. Would be realy sad, if there was a fixed set of meta-teams, that wouldn’t change at all over months/years.
Such state usually indicates that game is dead or very close to dying…

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Ich finde es nicht Richtig bereits vorhandene Werte einfach herrabzusetzen. Das ist schlichtwegs Betrug am Kunden ! Wenn ich mir einen Ferrari kaufe und Monate später kommt dann der Hersteller und tauscht den Motor gegen ein schwächeres Aggregat, würde ich die Polizei rufen und Recht bekommen. So vergrault man sich die Kundschaft !!!

Okay so why is it exactly that you can make these balance changes, but could not have included the doomed weapons here?

I remember @Kafka saying in a post before that it’s bad design, a band-aid, to change the trait on the doomed weapons . Of course I’m talking about the trait on some of the weapons that create a random gem and get you killed because it replaced a 4 match.

Why is it exactly a bad design to address balance issues with doomed weapons, and it’s not bad design to fix the weapons/troops presented with this patch?

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I don’t understand how people are defending beetrix and saying gob truffle was a more needed nerf, even before the nerf I would never avoid gob fights because you just freeze it, beetrix you can’t even do that because it’ll just cleanse itself. Beetrix is the only card in the game I’ll go out of my way to avoid fights with because it 1 turn loop wins far too often.

The life and death nerf is basically unnoticeable, I’ve had 1 fight it’s made a difference on where I only just won but the rest I either win a long, drawn out fight or I lose a long drawn out fight. Life and death needed a trait nerf, not a mana nerf.

Positive thing is - at least some rebalancing took place and you didn’t simply nerf the life of out Life & Death - pun uninteded - as you did, for example, with Dragon’s Eye (not that I actively used any of those).
On the other hand - I’m curious to see (not that it will ever happen) the reasoning behind some of this stuff:

  • Skeleton Key - I haven’t used it in ages, so it doesn’t affect me personally, but still it would be interesting;
  • Bandit - why exactly would you do anything to this troop and why did you choose (as a nerf) something to make it more annoying? As others have mentioned, a possibility to make Bandit un-stealthy is actually a huge buff for any Thief build…well, at least, every time I see downgraded Bandit these days I can mentally throw bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep at anybody who uses it;
  • Domovoy - who didn’t read (or simply didn’t understand) the name of his spell - Trickster - and decided to remove the part that creates the trickster? Negative status effect on an ally in exchange for a team-wide life gain was the whole point of his spell.

EDIT:

  • as @Shifty (and possibly - too lazy to scroll all the way back - others have asked) - why is it a good design to touch some weapons (that could as well stay as is for the time being) but bad design to fix Doomed Blade and Doomed Club (that really needs updating)?
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Weapon affixes must be tremendously more difficult/expensive to recode than troops.

Hence the straight up stubbornness/resistance to touch the weapons that are embarrassments design wise.

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