Also just want to mention something, I don’t think anyone’s brought up.
Don’t forget, these journey troops are hell now, add shiny keys.
One less mana, one extra gem. It’s even worse, it’ll be 100% loop , I think deep down everyone understands this can’t carry on.
The magic number on consistency of looping on gem creation seems to be around 12 and 13.
12 doesn’t feel reliable in the slightest, but will get extra turns sometimes
13 tends to land, but will miss after a few
15 feels good, but will miss the extra turns a few times
16 feels really good, but will eventually miss due to game mechanics
The hate that the pathfinder troops is completely overblown in this topic. They’re problematic when they get to cast, but its not hard to counterplay most of them before they start, except Seekra. But Seekra is also susceptible to freeze and many of its supporting cast will also get it in trouble, so it’s not impossible.
There’s a big difference on PvP Defense between an infinite loop based on a 2 turn fill, 1 turn fill, and 0 turn fill - they’re going to go off if they get their turn ever.
And that leads to the actual enablers: those stupid empowered troops.
Really, it’s the same as Doomed Books problem, except Pathfinders are infinitely tamer on defense, but are actually used by players outside of PvP defense.
For me, I don’t enjoy using them, but not enough to deny others who do like them to keep using them. I just don’t want to see one for every troop type since it would make the game very boring.
Ok so as more and more journey troops. And more and more mythics get added, different troop types.
3rd traits , with bless , cleanse and random good status effects.
These things will stop frostmage working or freeze working, against these journey troops.
What will the counter be against these troops then.
The problem is, that there used in every form of the game.
Bounty troops arnt
Raid troops arnt
Invasion troops arnt
The journey troops were made for journey, the issue is people wake up , turn on the game if the journey troop is usable, it’s used no matter what event.
Surely you can see this, the game isn’t supposed to be easy or played while reading a book. It’s supposed to be fun.
Plus the essence of this game is a match 3 game.
There’s a chance that you could use a journey team , with doomsayer. It explodes a gem gets you full mana. Then you press one button till the end, your not even having to match 3 gems. Maybe you can’t see why we hate, I can’t see why you like tbh.
I like the journey troops. I think they should stay the way they are. Just make journey easier with the scoring and enemy level.
Cool, maybe you can convince them to get rid of empowered troops while you’re at it.
Asking the design team to change Leprechaun at this point of the game will go over well with most players 
I’m sure you’ll be the most popular user in the game if you manage to convince the dev team to adjust the Vault event too (sarcasm). You know, that Explore 1 team that most people run.
I, personally, can’t wait. And I hope that re-balancing & changes will include previous Journey troops, because the Chalcedony/Todd/Seekra/Egris/Sir Ailuin/Huntmaster Arborius/Hippolyta series is just destroying the enjoyment of the game. Not just in PvP, but sometimes in explore too. (Hellcrag & Vulpacea in particular). These troops were fun during their Journey events (or, rather, made the events bearable and possible to win at all, by the end of the week they were mindnumbingly boring and annoying), but long-term - they are just another iteration of the meta-teams everyone and their brother are using.
It really, really wasn’t fun to go into old PvP and be offered 3 enemies to chose from, while each and every single enemy team with one of the Journey troops inside (the first three being insanely popular) over, and over, and over again, with a little break for some goblins or EK/Leonis Tower teams, or some other meta-teams (which were all NOT fun either). As soon as the team saving for regional restrictions works as it should, we will have unplayable regions (wargare, construct, elf being the worst of the lot). ANYTHING to break the current meta, make it easier to counter, or reduce the looping reliability. Pretty please.
I use journey troops in other modes like underspire, team selections are rough sometimes and they are a reliable way of beating tough opponents.
The game does need hard hard options for players but the epic trials were a good variant of that. Nerfing existing pathfinders would be the wrong move. I can do hard battles with imperfect synergistic troops don’t get me wrong. But I want it to be a rare occurrence that I have too.
If I’m doing 90-100 Underspire battles in a week, I don’t want 40+ of them to feel like an epic trial. That’s a slog I won’t endure. Having a ‘easy’ team makes things like this bearable.
People complain of the ‘meta’ of being told to use these troops is too strong, but remove them and it will just fall back on some other troops, potentially more expensive, specific mythics or bosses that will shut out newer players to a lot of content, or make the game look more pay to win to players struggling. Having epic troops be so strong is so accessible.
There are still many, many other troops (goblins, Rowanne, to name a few; and so, so many legendaries) that are stronger, better, and/or have more uses than many mythics (think: mana cost versus damage/versatility). Reducing the reliability of the loop in the journey troops won’t change that. When I was a new player first time, there were no journey loopers in the game - and it was possible to move forward (currently 1700+ lvl). With my alt account, some journey loopers were there, but I hated them so much on my main account that I refused to use them on the alt - and I still moved forward to have a 1400+ alt account. As luck would have it, I didn’t even use Rowanne or goblins, on either account - and I still moved forward. Journey loopers are NOT the only useful troops out there. And yet somehow everyone and their brother, and sister, and school friend, and a friend of a friend are using them. We have 1300+ troops in the game. Why it has to be Seekra/Chalcedony/Todd? When 80% of the playerbase uses 3-6 troops and little else, these 3-6 troops deserve a nerf, because it makes the game unbalanced. Sorry, but not sorry - this is not making the game pay to win.
PS. I’m not saying take them away completely. Just make them STOP looping so easily.
Ok so you don’t like using those troops and you choose not to use them. Why then, should that effect my ability to use them? I like them. You can choose to avoid them, surely I should have the choice to use them.
Balancing troops around PvP & PvE at the same time is such a pitfall, nobody is ever happy.
Keeping in mind this is a game with asynchronous multiplayer, and PvP losses are not punishing at all. Seems silly to nerf troops over it.
Other people using journey loopers on defense destroys my enjoyment of PvP, when I play actively, as I keep losing even against low level opponents. Maybe the losses don’t mean much in terms of points, BUT they have a huge impact on the enjoyment of the game.
No one is using these on PvP defense unless you are talking about GW. Outer kingdoms are just random troops we while internal is supposedly the attack team.
I’ve seen all loopers in Central Spire. So… no, you’re not correct. They are used on defense.
*checks clock*
Chalcedony was introduced in July 2022. And you noticed that there might be an issue with it… now?
You still press more than one button,and use more than one troop to win fight. With empowered troops.
Did you think I’d forgot empowered troops.
My point is still valid.
Games been around ten years, this year coming.
8 and half years, there was no bad journey troops.
The people saying they need them, very small portion of player base.
Nothing to worry about.
Exactly this. You start nerfing things in PvE just because of PvP (that not everyone cares for), i.e. the Bungie way of doing things, and you end up ruining your game, nerfing everything down into mediocrity that nobody actually enjoys anymore.
It’s an engagement tactic, we see it for what it is. Like adding Polaris to MPQ, utterly broken but it gets people excited and gets them playing when a game is falling off. Careful with any hard nerfs though, you’ve got a lot of very invested long-term grumpy old players on here telling you what’s best for them and protecting their own interests. Break journey troops and you’ll hear from a different side of the community no doubt.
I’d really prefer this in the Game Feedback section. This isn’t players speculating among themselves, this is direct feedback to the makers of the game that the changes planned for next week are going to fail hard, along with an explanation why.
Reading the tea leaves, the intended solution is to definitely lower the amount of gem created, you are just still looking at which number will work out well for PvP. Allow me to stress this once more, this won’t work out for Journey. Even is you nerf this down from 15 gems to 12 gems instead of 10 gems, it will make the Pathfinder troop way too unreliable to use repeatedly against high level opponents. Bumping up the damage number won’t compensate, unless it outright kills the targeted troop, because the high risk of handing the opponent a killer board just isn’t worth it to use the spell at all.
Which usually boils down to a Monday morning de facto post saying that what you see is what you get, with feedback getting collected and taken into account at some far point in the future. Could this particular change PLEASE get discussed with the community before it goes live, possibly with enough time left to address valid concerns?
So your solution is to destroy other (usually lower level) players’ enjoyment of pvp?
No one will ever be fully happy, no matter what happens with the journey troops.
But if they nerf the ones that are already there and that people have spent real money and shiny keys on, oh boy are we in for a riot.
Very invested grumpy old players.
That paid into the game for 8 and half years, with money and time.
So the new , I want everything now, without working for it properly players, could play this game.
I definitely think the majority of the player base, we’re here before the journey troops, as there only a year and a half old.
So the Devs know , what side of there toast the butter is on 