You guys make some good points.
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Looking at it again, I’ll agree with you both in that Starflower should be C-tier, maybe even higher. Her individual abilities don’t jump out at you, but put them together and you have a useful troop, at least at low levels (that x5 boost ratio could make for an interesting all-Fey team). If her 3rd trait was good, she would be a lock for B-tier.
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Lust you’re going to have to cast at least 2x to have a decent chance of transform, and that’s a lot for a turn-ender with no other significant benefits. Maybe it ends up working out. If you’re saying Lust-centric teams work out at a high level, I’ll move it up to B. It just sounds pretty risky overall, for a good/not great reward.
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If we are basing the type-boosters on the strength of the troops of their type, how does this sound?
A-Tier
King Avelorn
B-Tier
Hyndla
King Silenus (could be A-tier, for his synergy the Wild Queen)
St. Astra
C-Tier
Urskula
@TheIdleOne I think my D-tier descriptor (“D: Do not invest in these, your lower-rarity troops are better”) still has to be taken in context of normal gameplay - we can’t pretend all the better Legendaries/Mythics don’t exist. In a world without them, yeah, some of the D-tiers might have use, but that’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m basically saying is: don’t invest in these, because they aren’t significantly better than your lower-rarity options, and are not worth any of the resources that could be spent on better troops. This is why citing 3rd traits and such doesn’t make sense here - that’s a ton of resources for early-game players, and mid and later game players will have better options to spend those resources on. Kind of the same story with AoE damage in general - it’s not great early in the game, and later in the game you’ll have better options available than the D-tiers.
(The resource-sink part of that kind of holds true for C-tier Legendaries too; but the C-tiers provide enough benefit to spend some [not a ton] of resources on for early-game players.)
On the specific examples you cited (because it’s worth discussing D-tier troops too!):
Starflower - you right, see above
Leviathan - like Starflower, this is a frankentroop, except its mash of abilities is significantly more uninspiring than Starflower; this is probably the textbook example of “not good enough early/better options late” troop I was discussing above
Willow - there are a lot of row/column destroyers and exploders in the lower rarities, why invest in a Legendary that’s barely better than those?
Behemoth - I can see the argument for C-tier, the main concern is its spell’s random removal aspect giving the opponent a good board, that’s why I have it in D; it would for sure be a C if it didn’t have that downside
Widow Queen - I could actually easily see it in C, just thought that the ally sacrifice aspect was enough of a negative to move it down. That gameplan doesn’t seem very good even at lower levels, but we can move it to C if you think it belongs there
Gog and Gud - When I started my list I was totally going to put it in C, but that 17 mana cost is just too high to be stuck with such a major rng swing. The single-target damage of the “good outcome” is actually really good, especially if you build a supporting team; it’s just that downside of the “bad outcome” plus the mana cost really makes it too unreliable.