I think it’s possible they’ll try to change the monotony of it slightly. However in terms of it being a gem sink with sub-par rewards I can’t see it changing. Have a feeling the Publisher has slowly been getting their mitts over GoW now and this is what we can expect in the future.
Hope I’m wrong of course.
Raid number 2, here we go!!!
Another good idea here
How is everyone doing on this raid? Going all out or doing less this time?
Is it new Troops that we are fighting?
Tier 2 as with last time.
Seems harder due to the kingdom we have to use.
Fighting different troops. I think. It was three weeks ago my memory isn’t great.
Was doing ok until the game decided to crash after the battle, killing a Valraven. No more sigils.
I’m doing really well, apparently. My guild started with a special 770 extra points for a later portal, that’s going to come in handy!
For those aspiring to craft Zuul’Goth one positive is that there’s now a guaranteed major orb of growth as a reward for closing the third portal, which should shorten the time required from the ~2 years initially estimated by @Mithran (particularly if they added another one in the invasion rewards table too).
The lack of synergy among the troops of Glacial Peaks, coupled with the various stoneskin minions present this time, means you’re in for a total grindfest after a few battles, however… It gets to a point in which you don’t know whether to be happy or regretful whenever you kill a Valraven 
I noticed the Major Orb and it’s a welcome addition, those are worth a reasonable amount of souls and that tier is also reasonably within reach. I’m still using it on acquired legendary/mythic troops rather than hoarding, but at least now it’s not “Ha I’ll never get one of these.”
This raid feels like it’s going to be a grindfest, I really wish you’d still get your boss damage if you retreat.
More importantly, it regins in the time table from the “I didn’t close portal 10” crowd back from its previous over a decade point. We’ll have to wait an entire rewards cycle to see how far back. The previous calculations also didn’t include bounties, which give another ~3-4 minor orbs for minimal costs (when we have access to previous bounty troops at mythic) and have the possibility to parlay 1100+ gems into 2 more greater orbs, but the “over a decade” still held at that point unless you were buying in for the full 1100+ gems. But the “over a decade” is no longer a thing for sure for almost anybody that wants him with this single orb change, if it is on the table permanently, quick estimate a couple years given equal weighting on drops and good RNG for the p9/low bounty buy-in crowd and significantly less for the p10/full bounty buy-in crowd (possibly within a year), and less still for the leaderboard (but the top spots won’t change their acquisition speed much from what it was). Still prohibitively long for those in a guild that can’t get p8, but hes “on the table” for everyone else, more or less, and the sub p8 crowd are more likely to actually use the orbs for their intended purposes.
tl;dr: Single major growth orb strategically placed in the reward pool makes all orbs less bad by proxy. Still not good, though…
Want to share my experience with raid so far.
I like this raid much more than the previous one already, almost tempting to buy more than tier IV. Will have to see how far my guild progress before decided.
The fun mostly due to the minion change. The fire-minion is much better than last time. (which appeared to be magic-based one, instead of Ice-based like the boss is - just a test run, will be change in the future?) The stone skin and first-slot target sometimes suck, but they’re much better than losing troop to random deathmark/devour.
The main issue for me, beside gem costs and rewards, is the creativity on player’s part is much less compared to Guild War. In Guild War, new teams have to be created every day to maximize score and countering many user-created meta teams. But in raid, you just decide on one team on monday that will work best at every stages and go with it all week. It’s pretty boring.
And that best team won’t change much for each raid as well. Consider best team is consisted of hero and new Godslayer troop in first two slot. The 3rd and 4th are just for support troops (healing/protecting/summoning/mana-generating/skull-spamming) whichever that kingdom get to offer.
Maybe some very unique minion combinations in the future might force some more creative team to be created for player to use. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.
I’m really not sure why they can’t just have 3 random troops in every fight. Especially once you reach the “maximum boss” in any of the 3 new modes it’s the same team over and over and over…
This new fun mode just lost us our first player, will there be more now that it’s not the first time around?
As it’s clearly pay to win and also very, very, heavy in inducing burnout as well, improvements need to be made and soon.
Coincidence???
On a brighter note, I do like having a summoner on this raid to help out, that makes a big difference, so it will be interesting to see how well each kingdom can do.
The experience of this kingdom depends on summoning. Without a Skadi, or even proper mana non blocked generator on this kingdom it gets really silly. I suppose moving to mountain crusher from mang might change that, but then you lose the ability to strip the boss and skull down, but still facing the envious task of killing minions with triple or quadruple your health - but are 11 or 12 mana cost. I lost all 4 of my battles today, either sky skulled or explosion skull 4 gem matched down or one shotted by Igneous or Fire Giant. Suppose that’s a relief from actually winning…
This time around on ps4, way less then the first time around, I took it with 250,000 points.
I may sneak 3rd at the last minute, how high are the other platforms going this time?
Didn’t bother to buy any from the shop this time around. Godslayers are really a joke when the enemy team continues to ascend to ridiculous new levels. Most players do not have every card that’s available, nor do they have multiple copies of them. Buying any from the shop to increase the likelihood of getting new troops will bleed them dry of any gems they mustered much faster than those who’ve been around the longest and belong to guilds whose maxed out active memberships easily complete those weekly guild contributions like nothing. Doesn’t matter what new modes the devs come up with since clearly they are designed for the few well-off players.
No dig against the players who are well off. Just stating the obvious of how this game continues to cater to the few and not so much to all really anymore. Godslayers and even Siegebreakers for Invasion modes along with their special hero class weapons are a complete joke. If they really were Godslayers and Siegebreakers, then they wouldn’t be easily wiped out. They would have certain abilities to counter what the enemy raid boss and towers can do. In other words, OHK wouldn’t work on the Godslayer and thus the Raid boss needs to use his brains more when defeating the Godslayer. Imagine that, using their brains more than looping the board and OHK or gank without consequence.
I’d say more, but not really encouraged to do so. Enjoy your day.
I think it’s obvious by now that Raids are everyone’s LEAST FAVORITE new mode. A couple reasons I can think of for this:
Less rewards than invasion and bounty
Restricted to 1 kingdom’s troops
Not much variety in enemy teams
Higher level boss battles take AGES to complete with practically 0 match rewards
Ideas on how to improve:
Buff the rewards a little
Add a few different troops each raid that can be used in addition to the kingdom troops. Think of them like mercenary troops hired by the kingdom to help out.
Have each battle randomly select 3 troops from a pool. (much larger pool than the one we have now) Even if we lose a battle still select 3 new random troops for the next battle.
Substantially buff the gold/souls/xp per match. Make people WANT to do their battles for these rewards alone. Would it break the game if Zuul dropped 5000 gold, 1000 souls, and gave 1000 xp? (just some rough numbers)
Raid is as boring as …
completely dependent on sigil drops which remain a joke.
7 between birds won’t get u far.
pay gems for a random abysmal sigil drop rate - yeah right.
toss in the skull cascades that appear with the rare bird later on - no i don’t think so.
other variant absence of black gems dropping and on the board.
Raid displays everything that is really wrong with the game currently - which is a lot.
Cannot be stressed hard enough, which is why I’d take gw over it, even if I hated it. Invasioms at least are kinda fun but still challenging, just 
rewards.
This last raid was even worse, even if he could be mana burned as freeze was a vital spell effect. Next kingdom is khetar, than swords edge. Both have great potential with summoners, board control, offensive mythics, etc.
Hmmm, mang plus bone dragon or kos? Great potential. Soul based damage as well.
Swords edge will be interesting as well, mang plus the queen. Essentially mang will be quite popular.
Ps4.
How high is the auction going on the rest of the platforms?
And how is everyone liking this black hawk raid?
