I remember an arena fight massively gone wrong, with my enemy sitting on some tower unit without attack, while my attack had been depleted by spells, and no side in possession of any damage spells. However, I had a troop, that could transform something into skulls, so getting bonus damage from 4/5-matches was still an option, maybe even quicker than that stupid thing could heal.
Not quite what you asked for, but maybe close enough. 
2 Likes
First, a fix for the troop in the journey - add the gems created to be a âpurple numberâ (as well as its damage) so itâs affected by the magic stat (they can do the maths on the multiplier). Make it so itâs weak outside of the journey, so create, letâs say, 6 gems. But in the journey as the captain, create 12. I agree; seeing the pathfinder troops in guild wars and PvP is annoying. If you drop the ball or have a bad board, you end up just watching a video. I have affectionately started calling it âGems: The Movie.â
Then, a fix for the event: make it so itâs scaled (usually skull damage) world events. As the enemy gets harder, more miles are awarded. Remove the turn limit and remove the lost troops. Failing that, scrap the event in its entirety. It was fun to begin with, but being forced into using a looping team because of arbitrary restrictions makes the event monotonous.
Overall, the journey is a tedious event in its current form. So much so that our guild has made it our optional event, allowing players to hold back on spending gems and build a reserve for other events.
If this nerf is implemented or not changed before the following journey event, I suggest a game-wide sit out.
P.S
Remove journey and just give us another world event, many players would like more medals of seasons anyway.
5 Likes
The biggest problem with the first Jouney was that the scoring was gorkâed; points were deducted âper moveâ and not âper turnâ. It actually was pretty quick and easy to do for my (casual) guild at the time because Green/Elemental meant you could throw two Gobtruffles on the team and loop that way.
The second Journey was a bit of a pain, but there were ample Purple/Undead troops that could let you manipulate the board in some creative ways and not have to depend on the random-ness of the Pathfinderâs spell.
Does anybody remember how in the early days of Faction Assault, there was no score bonus for the Level of the delve? And that for that period of time, one âstrategyâ for scoring maximal points with minimal time/effort invested was to always retreat in the Final Boss room unless a Valraven was there?
The developers eventually made a change. So why canât they do that here, and add in a scoring factor for the level of opponents in a fight? At least to some degree, because fights are already worth more if you pick the fight that increases enemy levels by a larger amount.
3 Likes
Off the top of my head, the only thing I could think of would be to create a new potion (like potion of armour, or potion of explosion, or potion of rejuvenation) that grants an event trait (the kind that appear on a black bar on the left when selecting a troop during battle). Have the event trait called something like âtandemâ or âprismâ and have the effect âwhen this troop creates a coloured gem, it creates another gem of the same colour as wellâ, meaning that if a troop would create 10 red gems, it instead creates 20 red gems. If it would create 5 red and 5 blue, it creates 10 of each. And if it would create âa mix ofâ two or more colours, the game decides how many of each it creates then doubles each value.
Not a perfect solution, and it might be hard to only give that potion to the pathfinder, so that might make it easier to give it to all troops on your team, making the event easier.
Alternatively, just realised that changing the pathfinder trait (which already applies only in one specific journey event) to something like this, and having the event give a double (or triple) points bonus to that pathfinder troop (like most events do now) would work better. Thatâs probably the best way to do it.
1 Like
Iâve moved this thread to the spoilers section.
We do have changes coming to Pathfinder Troops, however, they are not finalised.
We are also reviewing the scoring and difficulty of Journey events in conjunction with this, but no changes have been made there yet as all of this is a work in progress.
We are making these changes due to the Pathfinder Troops reliability with looping turns causing issues in PVP.
We plan to make an official post once the changes are finalised with the details.
16 Likes
I gotta say, I wouldnât mind that at all.
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I have used a chalcedony team that got fully webbed in an event, and stubbornly fought to the end against level 200ish enemies because I refused to sacrifice the sigil Iâd used to play the battle. It sucked and I wouldnât want to do it again, but I knew that even just doing a couple of damage I could eventually win, so Itâs doable. RNG is crucial though, cus one bad spawn of gems and the enemy gets a turn, which is dangerous at those levels.
Which is also why I donât usually quit against looping teams unless my troops are about to die. I know thereâs always a chance of bad RNG on the enemy teamâs behalf, and I get a chance to fight back.
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing this.
EDIT: I hope this doesnât mean changing existing troops, only new ones.
I think any changes to pathfinder troops will have to be handled carefully and will probably get a lot of backlash, so Iâd suggest warning players well in advance of any change. On the other hand, most players know theyâre OP troops and outperform others of higher rarity, so it makes sense to consider changes. I hope they end up in a good niche where they still get used in teams, but donât feel unfairly powerful.
I hope these proposed changes to the event make it more fun and easier for all players to join in.
This may be a workaround thatâs possible
As the vulpacia troops have double spell choice.
How about, the journey troops have double spells not a choice.
One for journey, and a completely different one outside of journey event. Like deal 50 damage to bottom troop.
They should come into line, with similar rarity troops.
Itâs the fair way.
It would solve everything. Just a suggestion.
It seems to me that it might be simpler to just disable problematic things for PvP modes. Like the looping troops/Elementalist class, etc.
2 Likes
Will these changes be active for the upcoming Journey event next Monday?
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I completely get not wanting to unbalance pvp with the Pathfinder troops, but nerfing their gem creation will make Journey even more of a pain than it already is. Please consider increasing the amount of miles given at higher levels, and also reducing the rate of enemy level increase as the event progresses.
5 Likes
Good to hear something on this matter! As other people have pointed out, itâs likely only a matter of time until we get a Wildfolk or Mystic typed Pathfinder, and if it follows the same pattern it WILL be paired with Queen Beetrix and suddenly the one and only counterplay to Extra Turns (Frozen) is defeated. (Heck, you can already pair a Pathfinder with Queen Beetrix and be almost as unstoppable right now!)
And if I may be blunt, stuff like THIS is why the design team gets super stereotyped as ânot actually playing their own game.â Sure the spell looks not-bad on paper, but how was the possibility not recognized that creating +15 Gems of the casterâs own color is going to all but guarantee an extra turn AND generate enough mana to just immediately recast?
5 Likes
Alternative theory, just to share a different perspective - they may have considered it at the time, and decided it was worth it.
Then, later on, after having everyone playing on it and lots of changes and new troops and content being added to the game as well as feedback received, decided it was something that needed to be changed.
We do have to regularly rebalance to account for things not being the same as when they released because the game is turning 10 this year 
What was released in the past doesnât all work forever.
7 Likes
Honestly, having self-looping troops like this is great, there just has to be an easy/widespread answer to it. Unfortunately the only answer right now is freeze, with the snap freeze talent being the easiest way to proc it. If there were more ways to counter it (especially once it starts going) it wouldnât be a big problem.
5 Likes
But seriously, ⌠yes, I actually can understand that response. To be a fly on that wall when the decisions were madeâŚ
Sometimes you donât know how to fix something until it gets broken, but the team still deserves some criticism for actually breaking it first. The design team didnât just âdouble downâ on this pattern so much as triple-, quadruple-, quintuple- and sextuple-downed on it. To be fair, I can understand (even respect) the desire to âfinish the jobâ of similar Troops across all six Mana colors, but on the other â this is not how the âfail fasterâ mantra is supposed to work!
(Or if we want another two words to describe how something small can disproportionately impact the wider game as a whole: âcorrupted bloodâ)
I disagree that it is âgreatâ to begin with â yes it feels great to exploit it in your favor, and thereâs a decent conversation to be had about whether they are âreallyâ stronger or weaker than other top-tier looping teams. But again, the ONLY viable answer after they start looping is to Freeze the looper, which can be quickly circumvented if the looping team has easy access to Cleanse (Queen Beetrix) or Bless (Cursebreaker weapons? Wand of Stars?). The other answer is of course to kill at least one Troop (and unlike other looping teams, it does not matter which one), but Prevention is not Counterplay.
8 Likes
Donât forget
Arborious, with rubirath and diamantina.
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Noted. (insert standard âSwitch disclaimerâ here - Huntmaster Arborious, Sir Ailuin, and Egris are future releases for NS)
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Well hopefully theyâll change the troops, pre switch release.
So they donât have to put our poor switch brothers, through the same hell as us 
1 Like