I don’t use him, but I’ve been frustrated when fighting him, mostly because he packs a punch at lower levels (flat 9 damage hurts more a lower levels I guess) and then summons a Thrall on top of that so you can’t attack him directly with skulls (or axes which might be the main weapon if so many people are Warlord as per the graph Sirrian posted?). Just my thoughts from a “low” level perspective. Though I dunno if I still classify as low level at level 60 or not.
EDIT: Also the Thrall’s level is based upon Dark Master’s magic stat, so it can come in at a reasonably high level if Dark Master is also high, making it a decent meat shield.
We can break it down over different level ranges. Dark Master is quite prolific under 100, but drops off at higher levels. All of the other troops are fairly consistent, except perhaps Gorgotha who really picks up in the higher level ranges.
Dark Master does 9 damage, summons a thrall, and gives all troops +2 attack if an enemy dies. Not a bad deal. Chimera does 10 (I think) damage to the healthiest troop, burns and poisons them. That’s a killer in the arena, where your healthiest troop is almost always your hero.
The thing is that Dark Master does a whole 9 damage regardless of level. So at lvl1 he can one-hit something. I mean, he still costs 14 mana but the damage is considerable. Its a problem with a number of troops (particularly summoners but not exclusively) where there is a set amount of damage attached to something else and the something else scales with magic and the damage doesn’t. Such as Dark Master, Ghiralee, etc.
Summoning doesn’t need Magic scaling - summoned troops should just come in as they are in your own collection (and level 1 and useless if you don’t own a copy) - as I believe I may have requested a lot here…
Dark Master could then have damage scaling with Magic as usual… and so could other troops with buffs, after all, not every troop has to have scaling with Magic does it? We’ve a few where an arbitrary (and unnecessary and random) stat buff got popped on a troop that didn’t need it just for the sake of keeping a Magic stat… Goblin Shaman or Skeleton I am looking at you…
“Number of players whose defense team uses troop x”
or
“Number of pvp defends whose defense uses troop x”
Because the first is obviously easier, but it counts people that haven’t done much of anything the same as a 100+ trophy a week player. The second would give people with high invade/defend activity more weight and be more indicative of actual use, but would also lowball teams that are avoided (such as when people skip a 4x celestasia or a full traited stoneskin set)
It’s based on the defend team of unique attacking players, I believe… otherwise the results get a little flawed.
If we look at ALL DEFEND TEAMS, then it includes the teams of players who aren’t PvPing
If we look all DEFENSES, then it wouldn’t include teams that were skipped by attackers
If we look at the Defense team of EVERY ATTACK, then it would skew towards teams used by players who play A LOT!
So my understanding is that if 50,000 people were involved in PvP this week, then it would grab 50,000 Defend Teams, one every time a player played their first PvP battle of the week.
is there a way to grab all the unquie attack teams? i know i have 4 setup… and i never defend with goblins, but one of my attack teams is goblin and one is skeleton… wonder if it would change things?