Since there was another one like this, I really would like a class or boss troop that had a trait that drains 2 mana from all enemies at the start of battle.
It really would help the “Empowered converter” meta a LOT. The few troops that are immune (Malcandessa, Spider Throne, etc.) are fine enough and those can be dealt with on a 1-1 basis.
But I do think there needs to be a way to not open up a board and instantly lose because all enemies have a converter alignment that cannot be broken and you just die.
I don’t understand how the devs don’t start the board with 9 classic gems (color + classic skulls) and the rest random (with classic gems and classic skulls). Everything else can be brought by players (attacker or defender) and storms. This will result in more even and less “win or lose” boards. Especially in GW. I think (it remains my opinion) that it will make it less easy for teams with 2 empowered and allow players to use different troops than usual. Because having 1500 troops and regularly using that actually 200 doesn’t make sense either.
I’ve been anti-empowered troops for Guild Wars for a long time. Even to the point where I asked for a mulligan option and people were like nooo this game is perfect.
Any one of many solutions will work:
OP’s solution is a decent stop gap.
I’d throw in another drastic option: Takes a bit of effort, but impacts the least of the game… hopefully.
For the game mode Guild Wars only, the devs should program it so “Empowered” troops Start battles with 75% mana/“Swift” instead. It would be similar in concept to a Genie modifier/Dungeon Modifier, only mandatory.
People should be able to take one-two proper turns before losing the game.
Another nuclear option: just change the books completely. They’re basically solely designed to grief on GW defense as currently designed. Players don’t ever use it for anything else, because the chance of seeing 4 of the same color enemy is so unlikely vs the AI. Why the books don’t function to boost ratio based on Allied colors instead of Enemy colors is beyond me.
Now with the new mode where we can choose between 2 solutions, to not have a choice between the colors of the enemy and the colors of the allies. We could use it in attack too, and in the lower brackets the AI would inevitably make errors of choice. For me, the balanced starting board is a base, stop non-classic gems (we have troops to create them, it’s up to us to be resourceful to use them).
We technically have 4 brown bosses (3 dragons + diamantina) but they don’t solve the issue generally.
Red day, we can counter the two primary converters:
Child vs. Eldritch
First Mate vs. Herald
Purple day has a huge variety and doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Green was fine with Spirit Fox generally, but now we have to contend with Daughter of Yasmine and Natureborn hunter so we have to change those up.
Yellow in general is difficult to deal with, but Bane of Mercy and Inari really have helped this, though in bracket 1 I see more goblins now than anything.
Blue day has Bane of Mercy and some other things you can mess around with, but it’s generally in the middle.
Brown is difficult because of the sheer lack of brown empowered converters. We have daughter of ice which feeds into Moon Rabbit setups and Herald of Damnation which feeds into Mercy setups. Neither take care of Gimlet and nothing is an answer for Siren or Leprechaun on brown day, so it becomes “cross your fingers and hope your board is manageable”
Having something like the “Medal of Dau” that was suggested or a troop with brown that deletes some mana would be vastly beneficial.
As everyone who plays this game for Guild Wars – opening the game up, looking at the board and realizing you already lost is just awful.
Empowered, while we can use them, is just too strong.
We can talk about books, but I’ve actually stopped using books on 3/6 of my defenses, so that’s less of an issue than the general “Empowered troops are too powerful”
I don’t want to pile on the negativity (I do plenty of that already), but the medal system is so disappointing.
There’s so much design space to do literally anything with it and all we ever got was temporary Event Medals that don’t do anything outside of the event and Season Medals which somehow already powercrept Aranaea medals immediately.
They should have adjusted Aranaea medals since it was just released and already power crept and they could have easily made more medals.
They could be even more devious with medals and made Event medals work in Explore so people could pay gems for power for a week (and I’m sure there would be light pushback).
They have done literally nothing with the system.
They could literally just push an update out with 5-10 new medals and call it a day and it’d probably be one of the better updates in the last 2 years.
Alternate idea: Give us a Troop that serves as a direct counter to Empowered troops in that time-tested “rock / paper / scissors” fashion, something that’s brutally effective against an Empowered troop (or two) but not particularly effective in other scenarios. Or three of them in three different pairings that cover all six colors so that it’s available on all six days of Guild Wars.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with some proto-concepts leaning in that direction, but I’ve yet to come up with a paradigm that I’m satisfied enough with to share in these spaces.
That particular situation is tough. First thing comes to mind would be a start of battle thing (like hero freeze a random enemy at the start of battle), but somehow that just leads to more player griefing than anything.
There’s always the design space like Nyar’Mel: Stun a random Enemy when an Enemy casts a spell, but with Freeze. However… that’s always effective unless the enemy never casts.
How about an Empowered troop whose spell is “Curse and Mana Drain, one cast only” that has a truly nasty additional effect if used on an enemy at full mana?
It wouldn’t be a perfect solution for fighting against teams running two Empowered converters, because once in a while you simply run into a board so bad that letting either one cast is going to murder you, but it would be a start.
What we need is not a new trait but having the extra turn limited to one.
Or
We could limit the actions, 1 spell cast, or one gem match action. If your troop can do extra turn then you can do a spell cast and a gem match.
All this is again in a logic where we must use 2 empowereds in attack and defense. At the moment only the red day interests me when I see Tower/empowered/book/EK or I can use a team that starts at 50%. With a well distributed board the empowered would lose their effectiveness. Currently the AI has the choice between playing one or the other, in br1 the AI is not mistaken (exception for Siren, it is always her first), in br2 we may have a little more luck but the AI is still very strong. By having a board spread over classic gems, the number of extra-turn possibilities will be reduced (for the attacker and the defender) which will lower the effectiveness of empowered players who will regularly need to play both to find 1 extra-turn. Therefore will offer 2 turns (the first and a following) to the attacker. Elemantalist will be more difficult to give the advantage (without extra-turn) in both teams. Because clearly, elemantalist needs to be reviewed, this class buried all the others (still funny that this class freezes more than the class which is supposed to represent freezing). In short, I would like to be able to really use the troops of the game in GW, not simply 200 troops because it is these 200 troops which will allow me to have at least 55k (the GW has become easy, there is no more reflection, nor of choice, it’s just automatic)
I’m totally agree with your idea.
But need to work on the other classes like frostmage. If they up the possibility to freeze, with a real difference between elemantalist the players can come back on this class (or other)
I’m not too worried about it being on defense for two reasons. First, we know the AI is inept enough that it’ll only use the troop properly “by accident”. Second, because it would be a troop most effective being used on Turn 1 against an Empowered converter to prevent the defense from dictating the match.
As for colors? I’d do three of the troop, one in red/blue, one in green/brown, one in yellow/purple. I might even make it a Goblin troop, complete with Extra Turn, so that it could be cast against an Empowered converter and still leave the player free to do something else with his turn.