Nerf Ubastet - he is overpowered

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
302

I guess in the end I don’t think it’s fair to point at troops released years ago, say “Ubastet is stronger than those”, and expect to see Ubastet rebalanced to match them or vice versa.

The game is in flux. Old troops get upgraded or obsoleted when new troops come in. That’s not wrong, that’s how a game with perpetual content works.

If we picked some current troop and said “this is the ceiling of power level, no card should be stronger than this”, we have two boring futures ahead of us. Either:

  • No card ever approaches that power level again, and it’s the strongest card in the game for eternity.
  • Every powerful card shoots for that power level, flattening the curve and making everyone fight with the same mechanics.

Both are unhealthy expressions of having a power chasm. So maybe a better choice is to try and rebalance old troops to match the new power level. But then we have 3 Ubastets instead of 1. And since this approach adds work to creating new, powerful troops, it means the devs will shy away from raising the power level and we’re right back at the “don’t exceed this ceiling” case.

I have always argued the answer to broken troops is not a nerf, but hard counters. Imagine traits like this on an otherwise vanilla troop:

  • Reflect 50% of magic damage if the source is Divine.
  • Convert magic damage to attack and split it between all allies if the source is Divine.
  • Resist 50% of magic damage if the source is Divine.
  • When I take damage, silence the source if it is Divine.

See what’s happening here? These are exceptionally powerful abilities if they have a broad scope, but I’ve narrowed them to point directly at Divines. All of them make Ubastet and Infernus very unattractive. They are strong on both offense and defense vs. Divines, and punish an opponent whose only win condition is Infernus or Ubastet. The defense meta will shift. That will cause the offense meta to shift.

This is, more or less, how superhero plotlines work and many of the films of the last decade have at least tongue-in-cheek touched on it. You have normal bad guys, and if they cause enough trouble they attract stronger good guys. Then the bad guys get worse. Then a superhero shows up. Then a supervillain shows up, each stronger than the last. The question is raised: “If the superhero had not shown up, would the villain exist?” Often, in the comic stories, it turns out the superhero was vital to the villain’s decision to become a villain. It’s compelling.

That’s how a meta should be. Strong questions should have strong answers. Those answers ask questions that should also be answered. We saw this with Psion teams: they were dominant and not fun, then many useful troops gained more mana immunity. Now Psion teams are a footnote, and I know the substitutions on every GW day I need to make them a joke.

Divines do not have a multicolor solution. I think if we nerf Divines, we end up with a less interesting game. I think if we haphazardly respond with strong troops, we end up with a dumb meta. I think if we make sure every exceptionally powerful troop has at least 4 hard counters spread across the colors, we have an interesting game.

Ubastet is an example, not a problem.

2 Likes
303

And yet, Suna and “Arach-whathever” are miles away from being as good as Ubastet. How can we not point out a CLEAR discrepancy in power level?

2 Likes
304

Not every troop has to be more powerful than the current most powerful troop in the game. That’d be as dumb as never exceeding a particular power level.

305

Then we should settle that Ubastet will be the pinnacle of power and just accept that weak and poorly designed troops are acceptable until the devs decide it’s time to increase the power level to an even more absurd point?

Everytime we request balance (nerfs/buffs) for troops it may or may not come with a reasonable argumentation, some people will also always try to argue against it, specially if the balance is a nerf to maintain the new troop or mechanic not so above everything else released until now.

Ubastet, as it was explained at lenght, has too much value in every pixel of him, and yet every other mythic released since was a poor excuse of keys/gems sink. Arach-whatever doesn’t even have a Mythic trait at all. And should this be fine because not every troop must be at least decent based on their rarity?

Honestly, how can you think this is fine? It’s almost the same situation of facing Dawnbringer in the Arena, it’s power is so huge that it clearly generates a situation of “Have vs Have not”.

I have him (and for the matter i have every troop but Zuul’Goth and the Pet gnome) and i can see the clear inbalance he represents, i use him and Divines because there is no better team all things considered. It’s not a question of asking for nerf because i don’t have/can’t beat it, just like i don’t defend such overpowered meta simply because i have all the troops to abuse it.

But well, maybe it’s just me (and others)…

3 Likes
306

Meta counter troop suggestion :heart_eyes:

2ffyjd

2ffysw

Oh and Empowered should be its 3rd trait :wink:

3 Likes
307

It needs extra 50% chance if the target is a Divine.
image
I would settle for a Super Devil.

308

That would be OP and you’ll get nerf call outs! :joy:

1 Like
309

I agree he is “too powerful”. I strongly disagree with how to handle that.

I don’t want to see Ubastet get the Kraken treatment, and have it watered down gradually until no one wants to use it anymore. That is a quick and easy way to handle a powerful troop, but then it means the landscape of mythics is back to “Infernus and Pharos-Ra are the only two that matter”.

I instead want to see Ubastet get the Psion treatment. Divinia is one of my favorite Psion counters. She’s a decent troop on her own, but she completely shuts down the Psion team. There are a lot of other “you bet too much on mana abilities” counters. That was a good answer to Psion/Famine.

That doesn’t mean “more mythics at Ubastet’s power level”. I do want that, but it has nothing to do with “fixing” Ubastet, and without the fixes I want it makes the problem worse. Eventually the game outside of the highest-level scaling events would be the same as fast-explore, “Find the team that one-shots the opponent”. Do not want.

The answers to powerful mythics should be Legendary or lower. It makes sense. You shouldn’t have to be a god to threaten a god: we like to see stories where powerful beings ascend to godhood after slaying one. Ubastet and Infernus should be answered by a handful of Legendaries that are extremely powerful vs. their talents yet mediocre vs. the rest of the field. This is the discussion I’d like to have.

But we’re not having that discussion, because I think you’re too invested in “nerf Ubastet” or “buff these particular troops” as an answer. This isn’t a black and white problem.

That also opens another can of worms: while the meta adjusts, you’d have to keep 2 PvP teams around: one for vs. Divines and another for vs. everything else. A lot of people want PvP to be a mindless grindfest. Ubastet is very good for that as-is. Nerfing him, buffing other troops, or even my solution threatens that status quo.

310

And i think you seem too invested in defending one troop dominating an entire game regardless of how it’s too powerful compared to old and new troops alike. You want to make it a grey are when it’s really not.

For people interested in grinding PVP they have Ubastet as one of the perfect solutions, the team can generally only lose to itself, even the troops that could counter Divines are barely a threat at all because the player have more advantages as we already know. We had a somewhat diverse meta prior to Divines, and that was achieved tonning down some troops like Psion and at a different pace by buffing other troops and traits in the past. Just like you said:

Divinia, and every other troop with Mana Shield, have now a decent trait because in the past me and others voiced our opinions regarding balance. On this matter i’m really glad the devs considered this particular suggestion of mine regarding Mana Shield, they were even further and added immunity to mana steal:

So you are welcome.

To the point: The devs clearly dug up a nice hole to be stuck inside, Ubastet is so powerfull that the next jump in power level would blow our minds, but if they don’t make anything nearly as good, and so far they didn’t, it just reinforces how wrong they were in the first place when designing Ubs. Also any troop rework that doesn’t meets “Ubs standards” reinforces such mistake.

Having hard counters would not solve the issue, it could reduce the preceptions around it, but Ubastet would still be overpowered, it’s just a slightly less poor solution than “to beat Ubastet use Ubastet”.

5 Likes
311

What if it was single-cast a la scorpius?
Ubastet feels like a knee-jerk reaction to summon spam coming with hero class, as dying troops are replaced by rogues and golems, so they give us troop that insta kill fast.
Bad.

2 Likes
312

If you loose two troops in the second turn this being a single-cast doesn´t help you much.

And I absolutely don´t want other Mythics on or near his sneeze-to-win powerlevel.
The card ridiculous. Either lower the damage to allies attack value only or get it out of Divines.

313

Eh, I don’t care to keep going.

I like the power level of Ubastet. But I like it better when there are hard counters so that using it 100% of the time isn’t a safe bet. If those aren’t coming, a nerf is definitely in order.

But taking away Ubastet doesn’t really fix “Divines”. Personally, I think Divines was already a good meta when the forums were fixated on Nyxbringer. I didn’t even understand the clamoring for a vs. Psion meta because I was already using Divines and didn’t see Psion as a threat. Some newer configurations are potent enough I like the security of a troop like Divinia in GW, but for PvP Psion’s always been a tier 2 solution.

I don’t know. I think I’m going to step back and live with that we probably both agree the solution to Ubastet will involve a large body of work. There are a lot of workable solutions. My suspicion is the devs are simply married to a cycle where they design troops months in advance, and won’t break it even to handle a runaway troop. That means the clock should be ticking on Ubastet.

I kind of hope so, because currently +9 Divine Protector plus a 100 Titan hero is oppressive. It’s much worse than Nyxbringer was. If we treat it like Nyxbringer we’ll nerf, in this order: Diviner, Diviner, Diviner, Infernus, Infernus, 4-matches, 5-matches, red mana, gem rewards, Ishbaala.

314

I understand your position, but simply don´t see a card counter to 180 damage-double-kill-action in first/second KI turn that wouldn´t ruin the meta even more.
How should it look like? 100 Extralife in first turn? Instabarrier? No-U-Instakill?
There is a minimum of strategy needed to keep the game funny and this minimum of strategy needs a minimum of turns to unfold.
Ishbaala/Ubastet-Combo is simply too fast and too strong and one of both - fast OR strong - has to be turned down.
If there wasn´t Isbaala there would be enough time to simply counter Ubastet bolstering up some life. Divinia/ Yasmine’s Pride are perfectly fine to do it - but not in first turn and they shouldn´t be.

4 Likes
315

I am here to add my own name to the request to fix Ubastet. But I am also going to add that I am done with Gems of War. I will finish my GW for the week but then I am done until this is resolved. Between all of these new things that are just TERRIBLE, and now this Ubastet crap I can’t handle it anymore.

The Boss and Invasion fights are AWFUL. The Guild War is AWFUL. The fact you are forced to play awful teams that are not FUN to play the devs have made the game a chore! It used to be FUN. This game is no longer fun. The fundamentals are decent but a lot of things aren’t working anymore and it is no longer fun to play.

How about to build incentive and fun to play you make it so we can play with ANY card in the game during Boss/Invasion types of events. Even ones we don’t own. So we can see how the game would be if we actually had them in game.

How about during Guild Wars you make defense and offense a random color that we have to play against each month. So one day it is Blue vs Brown. Another day and another month it is Red vs Green.

The game has a number of things going for it, but these new modes are garbage and not fun. Then this Ubastet crap that hasn’t been resolved. I am done. I’ll idle and see if these things get resolved, otherwise I’ll find a new game to sink days a week into.

-Malifestro

316

It took 11 months to resolve the Justice League on console and that was FAR worse than this Divine Meta. Unastet has only been out for ~2 months, buckle up.

I’m not saying facing the same team over and over isn’t a problem, or that developers decided to circumvent troop mana balance by making most Mythics Divine isn’t a problem. Just that you need to set your expectation of troop changes in terms of months, not days or hours.

And at the end of the road the will be a new imbalance, the only question is: How bad will it be?

317

Implementing something like Ubastet was a clear violation of all the balance the game had. It’s wave is so immense the card should have been removed immediately or tweaked. The developers clearly didn’t test this card well enough and it points to the lack of ability this company has at testing. It is so bad IMO that heads should have rolled. It has completely fubared the game.

318

I understand this point and that’s why i think that any general idea of buffing other troops would be unrealistic and take even longer because there is much to be done.

The whole Mab/Justice thing had a severe effect on the enjoiment of console players by the time, which only aggravates things when we see something like it happening again, this time on all plataforms.

319

Over a month ago simple fix:

  1. Change all the Mythics from the “Divine” race to Deity.
  2. Do NOT create a new troop with 50% Deity mana start.
  3. Let’s see where the meta is then.
320

Hmm, Ubastet without it’s Divine colleagues iseasy enough, match it with the team with DP and yes it is insane. However with some playing around Ketras - an old mythic is actually a better troop than Ubastet, or well if primed with Divinia is a better troop.

I personally find Infernus worse than Ubastet, because of RNG and going again and again. With the AI, if you take your team over Ubastet’s range, you will win 90% of the time, as Ubastet can’t go again straight away. Put any troop in and leave Infernus there and he can turn the tide with the insane loop on 5 random gems. Add all the red and yellow from DP and he will loop a lot (seems more for the AI!).

Ishbaala is capable of soloing 4 troops if it loops and a red gem falls in the right slots when it does. I have had full health bar one troop at 50% and lost to Ishbaala skull cascade after cascade.

The problem with everything is also magnified by factors we didn’t have before.

Doomskulls - more damage for Infernus, more chance to reloop and go again - more damage.
Bugs with turns, yes we didn’t have them before.
Ubastet insane damage, even a Gorgotha explosion and a couple of doomskulls with it and you can be in range.
Ishbaala and its whole garrison of power, not least 1/2 mana, enchant, skull damage, doomskull damage, cleanse.
Ketras, 125 damage with 2 Divinia casts
Hero Talents, FF, hunters marks, barriers, enchants on green gems, heals, cleanse, dispels, summons, archer and assassin talents, razor armour, titan talents, none of which we had before.
Colour schemes, red and yellow - red and yellow from the Divine Protector, damage scaling with Divine Protector hitting more than just about anything single target damage on first shot.

Synergy. There is so much synergy in that team, Ishbaala makes yellow, so have double yellow banner and a few yellow matches and Infernus is full, and going to explode in a sea of skulls.

For example today I webbed Infernus, he does 10 damage and 5 adajacent. No problem, but Ubastet has 2 magic and did 78 damage.

I think what we should get is touched upon by others, maybe reset who are Divines, or have counters. Like an enrage trait, but is a curse, like Medusa turn to stone for xx turns or reflect damage back like a spell barrier and anti Divine counters, transforms for example, curses, hexes, absorb heals, etc etc.

1 Like
321

Maybe he honestly needs the Kraken treatment. I get that you, on principle, do not want to see a major nerf to any troop, but it’s clear through math comparing him to other mythics, through testing him in pet battles where inflated stats still fail to keep him from mopping the floor with enemies, and through just a look at the meta where almost EVERY non-suicide team in rank 3, and most of Rank 2 is also using Uba that he is broken. The only defense teams that aren’t using him right now are those who choose not to on principle, those who are using suicide decks, and those who don’t have him.

There is just no way to fix this situation without a nerf. Uba has no weaknesses which could be exploited by a new mechanic without also severely crippling nearly every damage dealer in the game, nor can you really balance it by introducing more troops of a similar damage output without causing basically every card in the game to become obsolete at once.

Divines are not the problem with Uba. They exacerbate the problem by making it possible for him to turn 2 cast but even ignoring Ishbaala, Ubastet exceeds the power curve by a frankly DISGUSTING amount. It is no exaggeration to say that he is so powerful that you would be hard pressed to find any combination of 4 cards that would not see a win rate increase by replacing one of the cards in it with Uba.

He should never have been made this way, and it is wrong to say that he should be left this way simply because you have some fear of or distaste towards nerfing.

8 Likes