In many years of playing Gems of War it started out as 6 guardian task and then we got a legendy task, and troops that we all play with is the same now as it was back then. People wanted more so now we have campaign, 12 guardian task, more hero classes, more factions, more kingdoms and more troops with new abilities. Nothing has changed in the way we battle we can use the new abilities like everyone else can. We collect mana, at random times get a mana surge, we cast spells & we attack with skulls. Barrier protects a troop from a single piece of incoming damage. It last until it is used. Submerged Avoid all damage effects targeting the whole team. Fortitude Dwarves Ignore Stun, Death Mark, Disease, Poison and Devour effects. Each has their uses and Skull damage is based on your attack power we all can increase by improving kingdoms factions the attack guardians, troops and your hero gets the bonuses from all that including when you level your hero up at certain levels. I completed all campaign task just use the A.I. to make you a team and beat Explore on the easiest difficulty. 
There is a fast team for earning gold in Explore 12: Slayer + Bronzelock Pistol / Zuul’Goth / Greed / Cedric Sparklesack under Sea of Sorrow banner. The idea is simple: cast Greed, then fill the hero and shoot. ZG will charge very possibly (and the hero as well), so just kill Fireproof/Impervious troops with ZG and let Slayer kill others with skulls. (That’s not my team, I saw it in CraZy’s streams.)
I used to see one, maybe two answers to any my reply here, so 22 that is in this thread looks very agitated for me.
I didn’t mean anything bad with that.
Hm. That’s how I see it:
There is no difference in buffung damage of skulls for most winning teams: just because they are already have times more damage than that buff, and possible extra 10-20 damages will change nothing.
There is difference in damage for low-level/inexperienced teams, if your skull match hit for 10 or 10+10. Just as with mana, so “argument about non-optimal” teams works for both mana and skull teams.
Difference is, while mana behave itself as you can expect it, damages of skulls are capped on +2 and cannot be doubled. And I see no any valid reason for it.
What’s wrong with this argument?
I know. Unfortunately, I have only handful of troops with spell hits, while all others are tuned to skull damage/buffing. Yes, there are Morterra, Horned Asp, Mummified King, Wight and Revenant, but all of them quite weak for 390lvl of enemy. Hero with book or skythe is decent, but killed very soon, and Pharos is only great troop… that either got killed just after hero, or shares this prominent blue-violet theme with all troops above, so set them above is stealing Pharos mana. I didn’t find acceptable solution. 
And I still think that “+2 damage per group” is a very wrong and counterintuitive decision. Ok.
Um, do we speak about raw stats of troops? Why? It not matters while enemy cannot one-shot you before you do. I speak about player level and accessible troops - that is apriori very high, as he can afford Zuul.
Hm. I cannot see your reason here. You can surely block one attack with energy shield, you can reflect it, etc. There is no any random, you simply put unit at the first position - or cast defensive spell over it.
You cannot block targeted spell damage at all, except “hide” trait - it hit it’s intended target regardless of anything. You cannot influence this target, and can only try to protect your most valuable troop. “Partially” came in effect only for random damage, or “hit all” spells that will miss protected targets. Spells are much more effective here. That’s why they are weaker in raw might, I believe.
But, except some circumstances, you cannod protect everyone, and cannot redirect spell damage from non-protected.
Hm. In rated game I see only such spells, it seems, so it’s hard to agree with you. All goblins have this trait. Several messing field spells have this trait. Ton of “change color” spells trigger that 4x, as you can see, where it goes. And what on the other side of spectrum? Pure 4x? shrug
I can totally agree that pure might of single skull attack is more than most non-instakilling spell. And so they have much less opportunities to execute such attack. But saying “skull attack is much more predicable and give more extra turns” is simply wrong.
Sorry, I don’t have the spare time to prolong this argument further. I’ve made my points, and I’ve responded to your counterpoints. I think your counter-counterpoints do not add anything new to the discussion, and I fear we’ll simply be running in circles if I keep this up.
I will close with my strongest point, which you’ve not countered: if skull damage is as mediocre as you make it out to be, then we should hardly see skull-based teams in high-level, difficult, or competitive gameplay. The fact that we do clearly vindicates their strength.
And I note that all this strength goes not from the skull damage itself, but from abilities, associated with skull damage (and I never wanted to change abilities, only pure skull damage).
I feel as I cannot express my point good enough, so… sorry for my arguing. I’ll stop.
If the base skull damage were buffed, do you think the associated perks that already buff skull damage would be nerfed to compensate?
Because, if not, that is why base skull damage cannot be buffed — it does not exist in an isolated state, and so would be unbalanced if and when combined those things that lead to its greatest result.
If a critical hit doubled damage and fireblade tripled on top of that, game over for literally anything being hit by it, save barrier-d troops if they only get hit once (which is rare, because skull teams cascade). So does one nerf fireblade to compensate buffing base skull damage? Many would be upset by this — especially since, arguably, fireblade is a condition-based buff and, thus, harder to earn; that x3 bonus is a reward for achieving a somewhat difficult thing: a skull hit upon an enemy on fire.
To make a normal skull 4+ match suddenly just as “worth it” to have (because it would just as easily guarantee a kill in almost every case) would be to make the more complex set-ups either obsolete or way more powerful than they already are, and they are already able to compete with the best endgame strategies. So the change would make something already competitive become dominant — not good for the balance of the game’s META.
The most I could get behind is removing the +2 cap. I didn’t know such a thing existed, and thought all extra skulls past 3 counted as one additional damage, and I don’t think the cap is really needed in most situations. It’s always sort of struck me as weird that an entire board of skulls does less damage than three sets of three well-separated — but see below where I sort of justify this being the reality — yet I’ve got to admit that “most” I said before does matter: in the situations where having +12 (or more) damage being tripled by fireblade and increased an additional 50% by being enraged it’s a runaway train — too much.
But when I think about it critically do I think it should rather be “(skulls matched / 3) * top-troop’s attack” (meaning each potential skull hit gets “what it deserves,” to be commensurate with situations where cascades and other gems buffer the skulls and so separate the cascading hits)? No. I don’t.
Cascades should be rewarded more than skull-spam is my basic justification. Skulls should not be “swingy” for the sake of skyfall RNG because — as you say — for new players this would be incredible. Too incredible — luck could help them beat content at twice their former ability. BUT it would more often slaughter them in the way that endgamers get slaughtered in the high-level faction runs.
People tend not to like how a “lucky sky-skull” can end their entire run. A buff to base skull damage would effectively be inviting that dislike into all game modes, all battles, as the reality would be skulls>everything
In the light of the upcoming mythics and especially Archproxy who converts gems into uber doom skulls I am glad we have this limitation of how much skulls in a group worth dmg.
Imagine if you remove this limit with Archproxy’s spells the dmg from the skull gems would easily exceed the attack dmg.
Skull dmg should be nerfed in all game modes so we could have a more balanced game play.