it’s very sad, if so many troops aren’t used in PVP. As a new player, I’d like more soul gaining overall. It’s getting boring to use the same troops over and over, but there’s no chance to level more troops in a reasonable time. Spending hours of grinding to test a new setup isn’t fun.
Maybe change the won souls after battle from the low 7 to 70, rework valks second trait and give guild bonus on souls.
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I think part of the explanation for mercy (and to a lesser extent gorgotha) being so popular in high levels is that they’re only worthwhile once fully traited
tl;dr: There’s no simple solution here.
There are many viable end-game invade teams that don’t utilize any of the “power seven” or whatever you want to call it. If that’s not reflected in the numbers, it is because people are simply copy/pasting other people’s successful invade teams (or defense teams) and calling it a day. That’s on them to change, not on @Sirrian and company.
On defense, the issue lies directly with the fact that a few troops are designed with traits and/or spells that are hard for the AI to mess up.
- Mab freezes automatically when the AI gets 4-5 matches. Her spell targets everyone and if the AI is lucky enough to have enough gems free, gives her a free turn.
- Maw grows automatically on skull hits. His spell is usually devastating no matter what random target the AI picks.
- Mercy “wins” a 4-5 gem match often enough, even if fired randomly. If she doesn’t, then she’s at least given Maw an edge.
- Gorgotha just is.
- Bone Dragon freezes when he’s hit (automatically). His spell doesn’t require careful target selection most of the time and will usually spam enough skulls for an extra turn.
- Famine reduces enemy stats automatically. If he manages to fill up, he drains mana from everything indiscrimantly and will probably kill whatever target he picks (the first time anyway).
- Valkyrie, at least when paired with Mab, can pick whatever color she likes (she doesn’t meaningfully rob anyone of another color except herself, and that’s not a huge problem). She’s also cheap to fill.
Endgame players pick these troops because of their fail-safe nature. The only way to “balance” these troops on defense is to neuter them so much that they don’t see competitive play on offense either, which isn’t fair, because there are many troops that are just as powerful as these troops when their targets are picked with care by a human player.
I don’t see how the devs can win here. What you want is more variety on defense; after all, who cares what other people are invading with? It doesn’t affect your enjoyment. The only viable paths I can see are:
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Buff the enemy AI
While this could make many other troops viable on defense (converters, targeted removers/destroyers, spells with targets being selected with foresight), it’s a sgnificant investment in resources, and will ultimately serve to make people maaaad at losing more games. -
Introduce more autopilot-friendly defense troops
More choices are good, and a few new troops here and there that can be operated by the AI without too much chance of failure and are potent enough to be used at endgame would be welcome. However, this just expands the number of viable endgame defense troops by one or two, and doesn’t address the crux of the problem. -
“Balance” the autopilot-friendly troops so they are easier for the AI to mess up
How? And that just means an even higher win rate for a player base that is already winning 95% of its matches.
Do you see other alternatives?
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Well said. There isn’t really any way to deal with this properly. I’m all in favor of Option 1 there but the downsides are obvious.
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What has Marilith so high up there?
And why is Valkyrie used number 1 on Defence?
I see one alternative (besides option 1) and that is to temporary:
- buff the troops from the weekly event of that kingdom, for example they get 5 extra magic + armor + life, so becoming stronger for that week
- randomize each week which troops of a kingdom are not selectable, so you must chose different teams setups each week
- or like above but not by kingdom but by type, for example knights get +10 extra soul when used
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My guess is that Valk is #1 on defense simply due to laziness.
I imagine everyone is using her for invades and several are using their invade team for defense.
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The debate on rebalancing so many troops seems fruitless if people are too lazy to make a team anyway
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My eyes are bleeding, can we get raw data? pretty please 
The fact that three teams dominate each of the three distinct phases of play isn’t a case of simple copypasta. A small group of innovators find what works best, then everyone adopts it. It’s not bandwagoning in the sense that “everyone else is doing it” so others do it blindly; it’s bandwagoning in the sense that someone innovates and then others follow their lead as they realize that it’s a more optimal solution. We’re all trying to min-max our Gold gains in PvP, and that’s the driving motivation to use one of three teams. Are there other teams that can be played and are thus viable? Sure. But the fact that they can win games doesn’t mean they’re equally effective.
Additionally, as I’ve said before and the devs have openly stated, these few outliers affect us all in the sense that the dev team looks at the rate at which players are gaining currency and balances content based on these rates. I guarantee you they’re paying careful attention to our current Gold earnings as they design Update 2.1. Which means these few outliers have a long-term impact in that they perpetuate the use of these few teams otherwise you fall behind. If the power of the outliers is curbed, it means the economy doesn’t have to be based on these outliers and suddenly many of the “viable” teams are now worth using.
That said, even if we assume that you’re right, I disagree that it’s on the players and not the devs to fix the problem. The dev team are the stewards of the on-going health of the game and it’s their job to use a combination of carrots and sticks to get players to play the game in a “healthy” way and not let players be their own worst enemies. In the real world, I understand why some people might advocate for a “personal responsibility” stance whereas others advocate for a “systemic change” stance, but that argument doesn’t apply here b/c in a F2P business the long-term success of the title is dependent on the dev team ensuring that the players aren’t their own worst enemy. Otherwise the game will die and so with it will the dev team. Fundamentally, they have to incentivize players to change, or else players will leave.
I agree that there aren’t simple solutions in some cases, but I also think there are obvious ones in many others:
- For Goblins, in the early/mid game it’s just patently not true that they are no stronger than other teams. They’re usage is astronomically high b/c they are incredibly strong and efficient. The real problem is that their extra turns are undervalued. Increasing their mana costs and/or requiring a certain number of a given color for the extra turn to trigger (similar to all other troops that give extra turns) would go a long way to curbing their strength.
- For Rock Worms, you could reduce their magic scaling, or eliminate it entirely, and they would be much less effective over time. I understand the need for cheap/easy teams for very new players, but they are far too effective for far too long.
- For Valk, many others have recently proposed changes to the way Souls are rewarded, as well as new troops with Necromancy, so players feel less inclined to use her.
- For Coronet, the troop is simply to complete. It’s tanky via stoneskin, has strong attack stats, it’s spell deals lots of damage, and it denies purple. It’s also UR, which means it’s much easier to get traited. Something simple like reducing the scaling on the spell and lowering its attack would make it much more situationally useful.
- For Mercy, I still maintain that she should be Fast instead of Empowered b/c having a denial/generator first turn gives far too strong of an advantage.
- For Mab, I think her spell could cost slightly more and/or she could lose the Arcane trait.
I agree the problem is more difficult on Defense, but what we mostly see are people using the same teams on offense and defense b/c they have one strong team that they invest in and generally teams that are strong on offense are also strong on defense. I think fixing things on offense would help quite a bit on defense as well. That said, some people will continue to use the “easy mode AI” teams, and that’s a much more challenging solve, but we also don’t have to fix everything at once.
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Actually ALL of us aren’t. A lot of us surely are but I know of at least one player that doesn’t care one iota about min/max.
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@Sirrian how did the base mythic troops fair?
Sure, not everyone is, but when it comes to balancing decisions they should be based on the min-maxers majority and not on the “I like to try interesting comps” minority.
It seems pretty clear to me that Mythics need to be buffed befitting their rarity. Only one is ever used with regularity, and that’s strictly on Defense b/c the 3rd trait is annoying. I suspect Plague will tick up b/c he’s Impervious, but again that’s not a great use-case.
Another option would be to simply Double the specific Event Kingdom bounds for the week. So you would get a buff based on the number of troops used in your lineup based on the Event Kingdom: 2, 3, or 4 troops. For example if it was a Sword’s Edge week and you had 4 troops then “King of Blades” would give +20 Armor to all troops for the week instead of +10 Armor.
At least each week you would probably see different lineups than the “Standard Defend Set” week in week out.
The Souls problem sill needs to be examined…
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I believe, apart from your info, that many people first and foremost still need to get a/the mythic (they want) and on top of that trait it, which is sometimes, in the wake of traiting one of your pvp attacking legendaries (for example), difficult.
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Marilith has a huge amount of her power at level 1. She has the +6 attack and the 6 true damage to all enemies. She also isn’t incredibly reliant on traits to function. This makes her crazy strong for lower-level players.
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Hey Guys,
This is John, the one Sirrian mention from 505 Games.
I noticed a lot of you wanted a breakdown of the data by the level groups, so here are separate charts with the top 40 most used troops for Offense and Defense for yesterday (Aug 4th).
Offense on the left and defense on the right.
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Another topic I had hoped to write about in a thread, but thank you for offering it here. I also feel that while on Defense a couple of other adjustments could help.
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Make loosing on Offense HURT - currently when I lose an invasion, I am deducted ~7 (points?), that is a pittance. The issues lies in the averages will win out, and are heavily weighted towards accruing more rank points that losing even with a mediocre team. The leader board seems to award those players that can spam through as many battles as possible, not necessarily the best players. It is already extremely unlikely that a decent player, with even a mediocre comp will lose. So, a mediocre player with a cookie-cutter, but extremely efficient comp, will dominate the rankings if they play a ridiculous amount of time.
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Random Initiative - make a initiative a coin-flip. Going first is a HUGE advantage, and having it granted by default makes offense even more likely to win the match. I understand that there is something to this being a PvE encounter, and forcing the player to take an action to initiate combat has its merits, but this is a massive advantage.
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Defense Traits - these are mediocre at BEST, why not in lieu of 3 armor on defense, 6? Why not have a trait that provides a status effect on turn 0, but only on D. i.e. Frozen Fortress - When defending against invasion, a random opponent is Frozen. Preparation - This character begins the game with full mana, when defending against an invasion.
I think i might make a feature request post, just for visibility sake for these.
I work in Analytics and Data Visualization, and I am bleeding from the mouth and ears with the formatting of the graph. Why not remove the ALL category, and have the stacked bars represent themselves? The light blue section appears to be completely superfluous.