The Dragon Soul needs to either be nerfed or taken out of this game… 90% of every match i play in PvP has him on it. It’s not fun to play against (and i don’t just mean getting to beat him). he just does too much for his mana cost.
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What would you suggest should be done in order to make him/her more level with the rest of the playing field?
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I don’t agree that TDS needs to be nerfed, but I do agree that Dragon teams seem to be booming in popularity lately.
Do you have Dragon Cruncher (particularly with all traits)? If so, he is very effective against all dragons, including TDS. With all traits, he does double skull damage to dragons and impervious protects him from frozen and entangle when TDS travels with Borealis or Sylvanimora. Even without traits, his spell has a 50% chance of devouring dragons and does double damage even when it doesn’t devour.
I’ve had a couple battles where I’ve been able to devour TDS more than once, which really turns those annoying resurrections into an advantage for me.
I love my TDS but I have to agree.
Before I had TDS I was limping along with a Crimson Bat team. I had my schedule down pretty good: it took me until Thursday to hit tier 1 in PvP, then I’d go play Arena or farm traitstones.
I got TDS and assembled a team around it. Lucky me got Worldbreaker. So I’m running Dragotaur, TDS, Venbarak, Worldbreaker. The only other viable dragon I have is Sylvanimora. Anyway.
I got to tier 1 in 2 hours that next Monday. I used to consistently have to fight the leftmost weaksauce guy, now I tend to stick to the middle. Don’t get me wrong, I like all the gold, but I’m not sure one troop should represent that big a jump. (I guess it’s 2, with WB, but honestly in 80% of my matches WB doesn’t even fill up.)
Some TDS teams are miserable to play against. There’s some 3-dragon combo that likes to get 4-6 turns every round, the only way I beat it is if my TDS fills up first.
I will be very sad if you nerf my superstar, but it is worrisome just how important TDS seems to be for a middle-of-the-game player.
Unless he’s in a team with 3 or 4 dragons he doesn’t do that much damage, especially compared to other dragons. His damage doesn’t increase with magic, you can do 20 damage, tops (a little extra to the first troop if skulls are exploded). Compared to krystenax who does 23 damage MINIMAL, it’s small potatoes. Yeah, he explodes, but even when exploding 11 gems it still leaves the board quite full a decent amount of the time. He can be frozen, he can be tangled, he be stunned and in turn mana burned, he does not need to be nerfed. I was in a rut, i hated pvp, it was tedious farming souls and arena had become unbearable with dawnbringer, the dragon soul IN COMBINATION with other dragons got me wanting to play primarily pvp, and racking up a sweet amount of souls while i do it. Any less than what he does now will make him yet another blah troop. Can it be annoying to fight? Hell yeah, fight enough and any troop gets annoying. But i’ll take a dragon team over a psion/ragnagord/famine tram any day of the week. Dragon teams aren’t even a challenge anymore, they’re a welcome easy slaughter. Figure out a good counter and go with that. Like said previously, dragon cruncher works great. Use mab to freeze, korvash to stun, then mana burn once it’s stunned. There are a lot of options out there without a nerf. Personally i’m disgusted with famine and infernus looping and crazy cascades, but i would be super mad if they got flat out nerfed. We lose, it sucks, we find a counter and move on. The last thing we need, imo, is more useless or semi useless troops. The fact that a lot of people use dragons means that they, at least me, think they’re fun. Kraken is terrible after the nerf, tds does not need to be the next victim, he’s not nearly as op.
Actually yes I want to counter my own post:
I only have TDS, Worldbreaker, and Crimson Bat in terms of “relevant high-end cards”. Each of those, on their own, pays off immensely if you build a team to exploit its strengths.
Kraken WAS on that list, but it feels like Kraken’s age has ended. It’s still strong, but I don’t see so many PvP teams with it anymore and I don’t tend to lose to them unless they’re in the 9k power range, I haven’t quite figured out what makes that team so special yet because, well, I don’t fight that one anymore.
But damn these Psion teams. And Famine/Death too. Lots of Queen Mab/Psion teams seem to be not just viable, they’re frustratingly likely to reduce the game to a race. Khorvash sometimes gets the better of me, but he feels “fair” in that I lose when I have a bad board or make a stupid match.
So in the hours since I said “TDS seems too strong”, I decided I want to take a different stance:
The game is always going to have a handful of high-end troops that change your game when you get them. A frustrating downside is when you don’t have them, or you don’t have their answers, they will be a constant menace in PvP. Every time we nerf one, the next-worst becomes a menace, and if we keep going we sort of lose the thing that makes getting mythic and legendaries exciting. I don’t like this argument because it’s “deal with it”. But I think there’s something to saying “this is the carrot that keeps you moving, one day you will get TDS and then you will have revenge.”
Same with these Psion/Mab teams that haunt me. If there isn’t a counter now, there will likely be one later and/or I’ll get my own Psion/Mab.
My guess is OP is somewhere around level 350-450 and has a team in the power range 6,400-6,900. That’s where I was about 2 weeks ago and I bitched nonstop about how much I hated TDS. It was 3/4 of my matches and I could never win consistently against it. Then I pulled a TDS and my life changed.
TDS is crazy strong. It’s way too effective at self-looping, and doing AoE damage and filling the rest of the team in the process. I think the obvious move is to reduce the explosion so it doesn’t self-loop as effectively.
It would also be nice if it got that unique legendary trait one day…
Ragnagord fills just about everyone up for just 14 mana and starts out half full. For 16 tds better at least fill itself for its measly 11 aoe damage or it really wouldn’t be viable for later and end game players especially. Even though webspinner can fill itself i don’t use it cuz its damage sux for that mana cost, plus it poisons. Tds is a huge carrot!! I crafted it as soon as it was in the forge, i’d be extremely upset if they ruined it by nerfing. Now it’s in the offers for real money, i’m sure there will be a lot of upset people if it got nerfed. Yes, pvp is frustrating at early and mid game, but that doesn’t warrant a nerf for every troop that gets people annoyed. That heads down a very slippery slope where we’re left with troops that are just not fun to play with. If you think tds is bad, how do you feel about infernus? I’d imagine he’d be even more problematic. At the end of the day, newer players need something to strive for, and older players need something to keep it fresh and fun. Tds plays both those roles beautifully and needs to be left alone!
TDS is literally one of the strongest troops in the game. With any other 3 dragons it can single-handedly beat basically any team. I use that team for all dungeons every day and never lose, for instance.
Ragnagord is a bad comparison. It does no damage. It’s specifically just a generator. Maybe it’s a little too good at it’s job, but TDS can fill itself, the rest of the team, and do a bunch of AoE damage, and often loop. It’s stupid how strong it is.
Infernus is good, yes, but definitely not as good. And it’s a Mythic…
I started using it to counter the kraken meta, now it’s just about the only thing to sometimes beat the psion famine meta. It’s strong, but we need something to counter. I don’t see a lot of dragon defense anymore, it’s all famine in three trophies. My issue is that just because something is strong doesn’t mean it should be nerfed. It’s ridiculous. They ruined kraken. He’s not fun, he’s not reliable, and now his tentacles are losing power. We don’t need more meh troops. For what ragnagor at essentially a 7 mana cost for first cast, in the build he’s primarily used in, is comparable to me. There’s insane cascades on console since the update, so once he goes off, unless my dragons get a really good starting board, i’m at the very least burnt and famine is almost ready to cast, or psion is ready, ragnagord has filled himself and gets famine ready on his second cast, and my two enchanted dragons and my tds up a creek without a paddle unless tds resurrects. There has to be balance, for as strong as tds there are much stronger troops. We can’t afford one less. Every problem doesn’t need a nerf solution.
IMHO, it might be worth trying to look in general at exploders and especially random exploders that basically redraw the board. The main issue with TDS, Gorgotha, Rag, etc are extra turns. If the newly spawned gems would run through 4+ match check similar to what is done with the starting board, that would largely solve the issue. The check should let through only those 4+ matches that are formed with gems that were already present on the board while blocking the others. Otherwise, at least, it should count as combo breaker event. IDK if it counts as one right now (it actually might) but obviously it should. Not that combo breaker is working correctly anyhow but still, it might help a little bit.
This means basically reverting to the way it were before Unfinity upgrade for PC/mobile. There is enough looping in the current meta, too much if you ask me.
Another alternative that been discussed quite a lot IIRC is reducing mana gain from explosions.
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