But… It’s not as easy to fill the small troops as it is for the big ones?
Rock worm, who is very cheap, you can fill up in skill in 1-2 matches. If you have a team of rock worms and one generator (would be better if there was a transformer for this analogy… But work what what we have) that generator is going to fill up the entire team of rock worms with one charge of his skill.
With big troops like Maw or the Mythics… If you have a team of big mana costs and one generator/transformer you most likely will not fill them all up. At least that’s been my experience. It typically takes two to three transformers before I have enough to use all my skills.
That’s why you typically like a balance of different costs. Because then you have your easier to get ones and your more costly ones that pack a big punch
Yes it’s not an answer to everything I agree, but If you use maw and these other troops, you can fire him off fairly easily in a couple turns. Same with a lot of these other troops. There’s no real trade-off imo. They take more mana to fill, but you rarely feel like “oh man this is taking soo long to fill.” Everything is fairly easy to cast without much sacrifice to the player is all i’m saying. Especially since some of the most used troops have full mana at the start of the match.
Generators of any kind (create, destroy, transform, explode) do disrupt the balance of mana costs, which is why people use them. And they have to produce more than they cost to be worth the team slot. There are teams that can perform without them, and the link traits certainly help, but generators are a core part of most teams. It’s the variety of generators that saves them from being disruptive to the game as a whole.
This seems like a snap shot, I wonder if we could get a line-graph of all troops to see if events play a role in usage or if that is a futile effort.[quote=“Mekkalyn, post:12, topic:10681”]
we shouldn’t be nerfing based on popularity. That is a dumb way to balance. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s overpowered.
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This is very true. Most of the time the teams chosen are easy to dismantle by taking out one troop. [quote=“Mekkalyn, post:12, topic:10681”]
So really the only issue I have is Valkyrie. She shouldn’t be giving us souls. It should be taken from troops and given to us base. Have the enemies drop more souls.
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If valkyrie loses the ability to make souls, even though it has no direct outcome on the game, chances are she will see less play. [quote=“htismaqe, post:13, topic:10681”]
I’m not sure you can infer actual troop combinations from a graph of their individual usage.
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Very true, i think that this graph is not telling us everything. We need even more info than this. This seems like a cup of water from a giant ocean. We can infer but we need more info before we start using confirmation bias.[quote=“Spherix, post:15, topic:10681”]
But overpowered troops are likely to be popular. Popularity alone isn’t incriminating
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Something does not have to be strong to be popular. If a player notices that they are facing goblins then group bias takes over and they start to think “i guess this is strong so i will play it too.” or “this must be op because i can not beat it” or “i see it everywhere so i should play it too.” If only the ai code (which we know of thanks to @Sirrian) was reworked to more better control the team it is running. I doubt the code has been effected too much when running goblins or other really strong line-ups when it comes to story mode. [quote=“Mekkalyn, post:18, topic:10681”]
Yes overpowered troops are likely to be more popular, but the goblin team usage has been very consistent even through multiple patches and nerfs and different metas, from my knowledge.
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Goblins seem to be anomaly. They have been nerfed both actively and silently.
Is there a sharp drop off at the end somewhere? I’m curious what the least-used troop is. It could be an interesting challenge to try to build a good team around it.
I buy that it’s a fairly steady decline in troop usage from there. That makes good statistical sense!
I think the real issue is how the individual troops come together to form teams. The fact that the top 10% of troops are used in the same 6 teams that everyone plays with regularity leads to a very unpleasant experience for players. That’s why I think seeing team usage would be very instructive. These data say to me that while the individual troops look fairly evenly distributed, the teams are much less healthy looking.
I’d bet another $100 that there’s a big drop off in teams from the 2-3 that are popular at a given stage of play to the rest, then it becomes pretty flat. Eh, @Sirrian?
No surprise at Valkyrie being the top offensive troop, given her soul generation ability. But I am surprised at her being on top of the defensive list. Never really considered her a good defensive troop.
I don’t read much into that data. Mostly strikes me as people using their strongest team across the board. Some minor differences that are interesting, but with Valk it’s still the same Mab/Bat teams I’m sure.
