PvP Balancing and 1.0.8

Ah I thought you might’ve been on higher than that.

Not quite true. The ‘combo breaker’ affects both cascades and future moves lined up for the AI. Check this old post:

Also you can seriously affect that yourself by:

  • looking carefully at what your move will set up
  • not doing matches in (or below) an area where two skulls are near each other near the top of the screen
  • using exploders with caution
  • only firing colour-changers when you can control getting 4+

…and so on.

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This is a completely legitimate concern honestly. The longer matches take, the harder it is to grind for the resources to become more effective. With AS MANY different resources as there are now, it should be EASIER to grind for them, not harder.

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Agreed… matches are getting slower… Life/Armour gain outpaced Attacks a bit, and spells a lot… I don’t quite find spells irrelevant yet, as @Pasa has suggested, but it’s risking getting that way…

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Yeah, something needs to be done about spells…my poor hobgoblin ability feels severely…meh…

Hmm I don’t know. At lvl20 most things have around 20 attack, give or take. Highest I’ve seen things get is around 60 total armor and life. So three hits will still kill. Compared to before, where things typically had about 15 attack at the top end and the larger teams - so Goblins, damn them all - would have about 45 total armor and life at most… still around three hits, on anything not called Goblin King.

Spells obviously are taking it pretty hard though.

I’m currently running Anu’s Sceptre, Orion, Alchemist and Green Seer.

To win most matches I have to inflict triple damage than my enemy and take no damage from skulls, as 2 of them kill my hero. Usually it goes well, but it takes at least 4 minutes a match (usually more)

@Jainus: Huh, didn’t realize that. Of course, I do try to avoid situations where I know there’s a high risk of setting up the AI, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, like when you have tons of skulls scattered across the board.

Agreed on the spells issue, too; now that a common troop with decent attack can be Ascended 5 times and then leveled 5 times, each with a gain to attack, armor AND health, skull matches are now far more useful vis a vis spells than they used to be, which upsets the balance of a lot of teams (and makes it even more disappointing to have only just gotten the Crimson Bat and still no Keeper of Souls (one day, GoW, one day…).

@Shimrra: That would make sense in a match between equals, but I’m currently using a Goblin team which is just barely above what they were in 1.0.7, and routinely running up against players who have the resources to hyper-level their troops, so where it would take me 4-5 hits to get a kill with skulls, they take only 2 to kill me.

I don’t mind longer matches so long as this means a bigger challenge (and reward) and not just chipping of health points from a billion hp 5 attack monstrosity.
Machi: I’ve only recently maxed my 3rd city and this takes weeks of saving. It’s not easy to get there as a freeloading newbie.
Similar: I own about half the troops you mention and most of them are still at level 1. I’ve managed to max a grand total of about 30 troops in total. To get a legendary to the (old) max level can take a week at least. Getting them ascended, traits AND leveled… yikes!

As is mentioned in other topics: if you already have a diverse and strong troop bag to pick from you can build a team to face any obstacle. But getting that strong and diverse army has become an even longer (and more chance based) chore now.

And to Magic when Ascending as well, if I am remembering/reading right… that means the spell damage/cost ratio is screwed… my Mythic Boar Rider deals 11 damage, deletes a row (for good board reshaping) and gets an extra turn - judge it right and it can always give a skull match (with its humble 21 attack before any team bonus) - and all for just 9 mana - you are kidding me…

Certainly not ALL spells are irrelevant, but those that deal damage or add armor/life/attack are mostly dead in the water.

With the most used teams we can see that surviving spells are in the “support” category, board manipulation, gem insert, explode, convert, skull creation, stat effects, maybe summons… (mostly matching the list of the nerfaton targets, hmmm).

What leaves us with a small fraction of the game in the “viable” category and the rest is mere ballast. A huge waste.

My current team works fine atm because I did my upgrading to 19 and still hit many old lvl15 teams but very soon it will be nothing but 20/60/20 x 4 bodies with some surprises attached. Not just 1-2 per dozen. Unless certainly people decide to deliberately defend with weak teams to collect revenges. I assume the developers refuse the address that economy problem despite continuous request exactly to avoid a scene with almighty teams and many players leaving for "I can’t win a single invade or must skip 25 to even try).

(That is what I see at lvl 260, other ranges may see very different picture… but as you need to upgrade only a handful of characters it can’t be that far.)

Hush there, boar rider is the last thing that keeps me in the game currently (my old favorite in action again after long pause). Unfortunately the trait ‘Nerf-resistant’ was not introduced.

Isn’t it strange that there are still so many goblin teams around? I mean 25-28 attack depending on bonuses and such, then Goblin deals 8-9 damage with its spell. The extra turn is what saves these teams at the moment I think.