“Blizzard” soon?
Man, those were the days. We would wonder for months what was going on. All of us took bets on when the new patch for Diablo 3 would launch. I predicted it within a couple of days once and my friends took me out and paid for the drinks.
Good times.
I’m following up with the team on which wrong turn the changes took on the way to the live server to get lost in space time 
To respond to some of the comments made and shed some light on the game’s dev and thought processes:
This wasn’t done to Pathfinder Troops as this is a temporary change until a rebalance happens. There is no intention to leave the swap in. If you put these Troops on your team, they should be on your team, a permanent solution shouldn’t be to just remove all your agency and give unexpected results - that sounds more like a bug than a feature. As a temporary measure though, it’s fine, we’d prefer everyone didn’t have to wait.
Regarding why we’re changing it at all, as someone else in the thread above mentioned:
There is a difference between challenging and punishing.
In a challenging situation you still have the ability to change the outcome through your actions - in this scenario that would be through upgrading your Troops and making better choices when matching Gems etc.
In a punishing situation - the outcome is far less influenced by your actions.
In this situation, on the challenging - punishing scale (it’s a scale not a one or the other) we’d consider it more punishing than challenging to most players.
So while some players have ways to handle it (kudos for real!!!), the vast majority don’t, and we have to consider the top of the bell curve when it comes to the difficulty level of a core game mode. If it were content aimed at high level, long time endgamers, then MAYBE this level of difficulty would be acceptable. But PVP is meant to be accessable to most players so this is too much.
In regards to how this combo happened if it wasn’t intentional, there are 2,000 Troops and Weapons in the game and you’re all crazy good at making insanely OP and fun teams,we also buffed Stellarix after we got feedback it wasn’t good enough at one point. So this sort of thing happens sometimes and for me personally when I see something new that is like this my reaction is “LOL nice!” but then we also have to ask the question “how does this affect other players?” - in the case of Stellarix, Wand of Stars and Elementalist we have to look into it as it is souring most players experience a lot. In general, the designers are definitely keeping the ability to loop turns super consistently in mind (it is fun but also leads to situations like this) as it was also the subject of the Pathfinder rebalances earlier in the year and the less rebalances we have to push out the better. Although in a long running game like GoW it does have to happen regularly - see the Kingdom Troop reworks that have been happening over time for example.
As a note onto why this is a priority now, it’s due to the number of players it affects (well over 50% of the playerbase) and the fact that all our recent updates, and our next update too, are centered on PVP. PVP is also a very core game mode and has been for a very long time. We don’t want this to continue making PVP inaccessible to people.
I am now rambling so we’ll be back once we’ve found out where the changes have run off to 
so can you ask the team responsible to revert pathfinder changes and implement this measure to them in PvP too. because right now journey is worse than getting a kick to the stones
How long is this temporary measure going to last? Correct me if I’m wrong, there’s a new season coming up soon, which will dock players VP whenever someone beats their team in PvP. Replacing Stellarix and Wand of Stars with some paper cutout will make this VERY likely, it’s basically a free win. This will hit high level accounts especially hard, they are the prime target due to the high number of VP they offer for attackers.
Where does this piece of info come from?
To make this short:
You chose to punish all players by nerfing pathfinder troops into oblivion, then you chose to punish everyone that plays PvP by making it harder and more boring due to several inappropriate changes, after you chose to make the whole game all blinky and shiny, so that people had to quit because of health issues.
And now you’re saying, you want the game to be challenging?!
Huh, interesting … 
I mean, those who are left mostly still love the game. But sometimes an end with pain is better than pain without an end.
It will also sour everyone’s player experience a lot if you nerf these.
Ruining them because of one game mode is ridiculous. We’ve been there already.
And with the ever rising amount of “work” you give us to do every day, how are we supposed to keep up then? It’s tough enough with them as they are now.
If you want to give us agency, let us set our defences again. Otherwise what does it matter if you change our attack setup when you put it in defense?
No player goes “oh, let me use Stellarix, Wand, Elementalist so it is going to be my defense team and other players will have it rough”.
Players use it to attack.
I’d wager 90%+ people won’t go around and visit every area when they’re done with it to “set” a defense team by attacking with a different team.
It’s already annoying enough that we have to change teams so often with no slots to have them saved in so we have to use an external app.
You know when everyone was the happiest with pvp? When the teams were random without hero. Go back to that. Fixes all issues with Stella/Wand/Elementalist, and with the teams all being way too similar. Also makes it easier for all those who are unable to be strategic in a strategy game.
I’m getting so exasperated here.
If you nerf these, BTW, another annoying meta will pop up. We didn’t use these teams so much of at all before you nerfed pathfinders.
Always the same thing.
Change pvp, no the troops, weapons, or classes.
So you’re saying dev team is aware of the shtshow happening in PVP and intend to apply bandages to Stella/wand/elementalist? Can’t wait. Haters gonna say they paid for stella.
I think you are very seriously underestimating what impact nerfing any of the 3 will have on players throughout the entire game and how that will effect player retention. The devs also seem to be overestimating player’s desire to play pvp at all regardless of any changes you made. A lot of people simply have no desire or do not have the time due to all of the other daily requirements. Ruining troops for the sake of one game mode is incredibly short sighted. “Rebalancing” troops, weapons and classes in a harmful way to all game play outside of pvp will not make people run to pvp, it will make them run to an entirely different game.
Mostly by putting the pieces together. Questions have so far remained unanswered, which usually means any further information isn’t going to make players feel happy.
As much as is known, the next update concludes the PvP rework. If there is ever any mode within the next couple of years that allows VP to be lost, it will show up then. There’s only one VP pool, so your VP will drain away passively, even if you almost exclusively play Quick Battle.
Please don’t nerf anything.
There is a good example of MtG, which simply bans cards from certain game modes.
The combination is 1 2 3 4 5 
Don’t nerf anything anymore. And buff pathfinders back to their old state. Thanks.
Took me a moment to realize what you’re actually talking about, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with US politics. I’m so disappointed where my mind went.
I also agree, why not just ban certain cards from certain modes? They’re already doing it with all the restrictions so what if certain cards or classes never appear on pvp defense?
I couldn’t care any less about my defenses as long as I can’t lose VP.
And if I can at some point lose VP it will better not happen unless I can set defenses myself.
So why can’t this be implemented with journey? At high levels it is punishing even for end gamers.
Exactly this. If there are people who only do pvp and need Stella et al to go away, fine. JUST for pvp. But some of us would like to continue enjoying the rest of the game. We don’t need everything becoming sad like journey, just to prop a poorly designed pvp mode.
Exactly this. The only incentive for me to play this abysmal game mode (one of the worst I played in 35 years of games) is to get gold marks to buy dragonite, so that I maybe get Stellaris myself in the distant future. Since I’m getting only 6500 VP each week and you need 10k to buy them, any automatic draining of VP will probably be the final nail in to the PVP coffin for me.
The main problem I see are not the troops themselves and nerfing them will change nothing much, there will be others who taker their place in the same way. The biggest problem are the “cheating” advantages of the AI that heavenly utilize their assets to make them so overpowered.
Just take a look at the Wand of Stars. For the AI every single use has the following results for it: 100% extraturn (even with a bad viable board) + full mana back + 1 to 3 skull matches dropping in from outside of the board + player team full on bad status effects (Elemantalist). For the player you are really lucky if you get 2 extraturns out of 10 tries (even with a good viable board).
In other game modes you don’t see it that much on the nose because either your team is to strong or the premade enemy teams are not that good. But they definitly should tone down those advantages of the AI and not only destroy every small advantage the players get.
Ive got an idea. Make pvp less of a core game mode and release new content. Pvp is NOT fun and if there wasnt gold marks id not play it. This is coming from someone that has all troops including stellarix, well all the needed troops.
Wait WHAT!?
This. If they would simply introduce a better way to get books (which should have been implemented a hell of a long time ago), I’d avoid this mode.
And the journey troops are no longer a threat with what we have now.