As the title suggests, there was a sudden change to Asteroth this evening, and it got me thinking–they HAVE to be trolling us. They actually made his final trait worse and added only 1 more damage to his boost ratio.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory:
Infernal Flames 24
Deal (magic + 2) damage to all enemies, boosted by Daemonic Portal gems. Then explode 1 gem for each Daemonic Portal gem. (1:1) changed to (1:2)
Hall of portals (final trait)
Create a Daemonic Portal gem when my turn begins.
This was changed to:
50% chance to create 1 Daemonic Portal gem when my turn begins.
They made his final trait worse and gave him a marginal increase to his boost ratio that isn’t even going to make that much of a difference?
They made a bad troop even worse. I just don’t understand it. If they want people to buy the campaign pass, you would think they would have made Asteroth better. They could have made his traits better and improved the number of gems he exploded instead these minor, yet worse changes.
I’m sorry if I sound like I’m on a rant but honestly, what are they doing wasting their time and energy on this?
My guess…they made a mistake with how daemonic portals explodes (see other thread), then given the official response was ‘they’re supposed to explode that way’, someone thought they had to nerf the trait to ensure it didn’t generate too much mana. Just a guess.
Wouldn’t it be better if Asteroth destroyed all Daemonic Portal gems then? Because they technically “explode” like bomb gems? Or maybe it’s just me?
I know people hate these new gems, and so do I, but I feel like the devs lost an opportunity to make him better. Or maybe they are working on the immortal of chaos next season and had to rethink how impactful Daemonic Portal gems could be.
Most of the campaign mythics suck. And to such an extent that “a little more sucky” or “a little less sucky” doesn’t really matter. If it’s an awful troop that’s going to gather dust within your collection and may be completely meaningless outside the possibility of kingdom stars, does it really matter just how awful it is?
Also, it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine that boost ratios are very erratic and nonsensical. Mythic troops ought to have mythic boost ratios and more ordinary troops ought to have more ordinary boost ratios.
You want Astaroth to mean something a little closer to “mythic”? (Alternately, a little bit further away from “garbage”.) How about giving that guy an x10 boost ratio or even better? Instead of having him at some really lame number and a bunch of Epics and Ultra Rares with boost ratios that can massively upgrade somebody’s spell with the loose conditions.
And we all know who those last category troops are; they’re the ones you aim for in the Arena because boost ratios are godly there.
I agree with the boost ratio thing, but… yeah it actually matters how awful they are, because those mythics don’t actually have to be awful. I’ll point to Groevanga as being a sub-par troop with the old explode 1 Gargoyle gem per turn trait and became a well rounded troop with its current explode 4 good gargoyle gems when matching 4 or more troops.
Campaign mythics “should” have more sense of urgency since they’re trying to sell campaign passes for actual money and not gems.
It’s hilarious to me that The Crag Maw is actually better in effectiveness and creativity than most of the PvP shop mythics and campaign mythics.
As for Astaroth, even something as little as changing:
Then explode 1 Gem for each Daemonic Portal Gem. [2x]
to
Then explode 1 Gem for each Daemon ally and Daemonic Portal Gem. [2x]
would help a lot in Astaroth’s consistency. There’s a lot of little things they can do to make it better; it doesn’t even have to be this.
I can’t speak for others. And I don’t really have a strong enough opinion on my own because I don’t spend (real) money on this game and therefore don’t buy the campaign passes.
But if I did? (And there were times when my financial position made that a consideration.) I’m not viewing the campaign mythic as the “hook”, or the part of the shopping list that’s likely to make me push that “buy” button. Because there are enough other ways to get the mythic if I’m willing to wait without too much effort and aggravation. At least, there are enough other ways for me, given I’m a reasonably active player in a high-achieving console guild and therefore have a steady enough stream of resources to manage that. And the same goes for the campaign Weapon.
Not having to go through Vault Battle roulette hoping for the new Tarot card would be something I’d value. Getting a couple of extra Books of Deeds would have value, although less now than it did before the PvP revisions.
…
Many of the new mythics are duds. Then again, most of the new troops are also duds. And a large number of new weapons are similarly duds, a percentage that’s only going to increase once we finish out the “explode gems / summon a troop / positive status effect to troop” paradigm that accompanies Raidboss and Invasion.
So I’m less wrapped up in “effective troop” metrics because that’s been the status quo for a very long time. Even before the acceleration of troop releases that started with the “event captain” paradigm being introduced, we were fortunate to see two worthwhile troops per campaign.
