Because of this…
IS THE PERSON (OR ARE THE PEOPLE) WHO DESIGN FACTIONS DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB WITH THEM?
0 voters
Those who choose to partake in this poll may want to wait until after you get the Werewoods to 2500 if you’re into that. And if you aren’t into it. That should tell you how the designers are doing with Factions as a whole.
Personally, I bought Tier 7, 9 times before my first match. So I came in very biased against the design of the troops being “fun gimmicks”. But the actual design is probably intended to rob folks out of gems. So most likely working as intended.
I don’t mind challenges, but the moment new factions get released, u see the troops and imagine 100 ways to lose, and can only imagine huge stat boosts and incredible rng to win
I have mixed feelings here. Things have been made fiendishly annoying for us and/or pointlessly difficult. To the extent that the only way through is with dumb amounts of gems and gold that even veterans like myself just do not have access to, let alone the time and luck.
On the other hand, I also feel like this is and has been the intention - if not of the dev crew then of the publishers just to wring more money out of us - and the designers are therefore doing an excellent job.
Which isn’t to say I approve or want it to continue. This can stop at any time.
I failed to finish Dark Pits with 9 potions, and now this week failed the Warrens with 9. I see this faction, and don’t even want to bother. I would vote on your poll, but as a (somewhat) trained monkey myself, I find it insulting to us monkeys to be lumped in with this lot.
If I need yellow mana to cast a spell, I shouldn’t be fearful to match yellow mana because it might doom my team. But it did, far too many times. Bad beats for days. When that happens, I start looking for other casinos to play.
I will do myself a favour this time and not aim for the all faction team level 500.
This faction is trash. The troops are trash, the synergy is trash, and the designers should feel bad for putting out trash. I’m convinced they don’t play with the troops they release. “We’re too busy creating new stuff to play the game” seems to be a common theme among bad game designers. Look at this junk:
Why would I EVER use this troop?
Then we have the tank, I guess:
I mean, he enrages himself, so I guess he’s supposed to be in front? Better give him the worst skull defense possible with Thick Hide, a whole 20% skull damage reduction. Should he gain life, armor, or attack like other delve tanks? Nah.
This guy does the most damage, if the conditions are met… If there isn’t 13+ red gems, then he’s worse than Werebird. If there are 13+, you have a good chance of getting a 4+ match. Of course, with no way to make a firestorm, there is very little looping potential, unless you happen to get lucky with…
Clearly the most powerful of the troops, being the legendary troop, he hunter’s mark first two enemies, which is nice, but then you have a 25% chance every time you cast his ability to straight up lose him. There goes your Master of Beasts trait too.
I mean, good god, it’s just so frustrating to play with this team. It’s so bad.
I remember I started out getting these troops, early Friday. And I thought the “There’s a 25% chance to transform into in a Werewoods Beast” that the enemy troops that was attacked or Hunter marked with the spells was the ones that had the chance to transform. It was the only thing that made sense.
But then I started out my first all faction team match and the first troop I casted transformed into another beast, and I was like “Oh shit, wake me up now , this is a terrible dream…” but it was real, and then throwed the next troop, it got transformed into another beast as well. Then it was the 3rd beasts turn, and it got transformed into another beast as well. And then it was the 4th beast turn to get it’s spell casted and guess what it turned also into another beast.
And you know what, I made the ugliest screams there is out of frustration… The concept, the lying procentages, the ideas behind it, why the hell am I still playing this game, everything - it was just too much for me.
Getting to the final fight was a bit of a challenge - 6 tries - but the fight itself not so bad, since they have an equally weird team 
I like torbems art, wish he were viable going forward … summon rather than transform
I visited forums today to see if there were any folks as frustrated and annoyed as me with these faction troops.
Well look at that, there are so now I can vent.
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER!!! I have never had anything in the game induce fury like this faction.
I have vented and I still don’t feel any better!
Hear my screams 
I’m seriously considering this to be the last 3 day FA I ever do. For every complaint about City of Thieves and Stonesong Eyrie being crap. I feel 10 fold about this one.
So I won’t even waste your time explaining all the ways it’s crap.
But I will say this…
TL:DR When your business model is built around a free to play game. You don’t have customers. You have investors. Keeping your investors happy should be your priority. Happy investors leads to more investors.
And if all you take away from this message is that “we’re getting too many Sigils from tiers” then seriously Frank Off. I’m done talking to you reader. Because you are completely missing the point of any thing you see in this thread what so ever.
Right now I’m banging my head against the wall trying to complete level 500 with a faction team. I have purchased Tier 7 a total of 7 times for +49 to all stats. My horde level is at 144, and my Kingdom level is maxed at 15. Here’s the problem: these troops are awful, and I wrote about this previously when I tried to do it at level 300, but I’m running into the same problems at 500. Here are some tips for the faction designers/developers, because I’m pretty certain at this point any of us could do your job better than you.
You gave us these four troops:
What’s really baffling is how they think an Assassin, Striker, Generator, and Warmaster is a team. No support, no defender. You have absolutely no way to prevent a significant amount of skull damage, nor any way to recover health. Instead we’re given 4 troops that can transform into the wrong troop. Well, gee, thanks.
So my strategy is to put Werebird in front. I figure, I’m already getting 20% skull damage reduction from the shop, I should at least put the troop that does double skull damage in front. Then what I do is, and this is genius, I try to avoid casting any of my troops’ abilities. Genius. 400 IQ plays. I just try to match skulls and wait for a good line up for Beastmaster Torbern and then pray to the Gems of War gods that he doesn’t transform into some stupid beast.
I did actually get really close to finishing a 500 run, but of course one of the enemy rooms was the frozen buff, so any time I took skull damage I was frozen, which is a nail in the coffin for a team that’s supposed to rely on skull damage and looping.
Devs, maybe you should let the community design the next faction team. You obviously don’t play the same game we do.
I don’t want to sound condescendent, but this week people are REALLY experiencing “the last drop in the bucket” of bad design decisions.
Some can still say: “If event/faction/troop/weapon/class X is bad you still have all the other events/factions/troops/weapons/classes to play with…”
Well, that doesn’t cut it, what’s the point of working to make new things to keep the game fresh and entertaining IF the new things will be bad?
The whole point of making events viable/enjoyable is to get people invested into it. Invested players can pour a few bucks every now and then, and with enough invested players you will surely atract MORE players that MAY also become invested and buy a few things. But well, maybe in two years, or later, they will consider all this feedback presented here and change something in this faction. 
Out of 17 delves, there are only 5 that have neither a defender or support. These are City of Thieves, Dark Pits, Sunken Fleet, The Warrens, and Werewoods.
In City of Thieves, King of Thieves is the only troop that can generate stats, and only for himself. Coincidentally, a lot of people put him in front, even though Tomb Robber and Street Thief are the ones with Agile (20% Dodge).
In Dark Pits, nothing could generate stats. Plague Rat though did have Impervious, which is pretty nice for front line, and Sledge Paw had 25% skull reduction and +6 Life per turn.
For Sunken Fleet, again, nothing generates stats, although Maraji Queen has 33% Skull Damage reduction and Crab Man has 30%. Crab Man also submerged himself to avoid damage from the enemy’s Water Elemental. I really don’t remember what I put up front for this team.
The Warrens has Lapina Knight, which has both 25% skull damage reduction and 20% dodge.
What’s really interesting is that the delves with no defenders/supports are also the majority of the delves that I have the least pure-faction renown with (Werewoods, Warrens, City of Thieves)
So what’s the difference than between Dark Pits/Sunken Fleet and Werewoods?
Hex Rat gives you an AoE with double damage on the targeted troop if they’re cursed, and death marks them. And Rattigar puts random negative effects too on enemies. Sledgepaw also gives you a semi-controlled gem destruction (5x5). In other words, the damage is very consistent.
With Sunken Fleet, Water Elemental also gives a massive AoE and stun, an empowered troop to give you mana and death mark enemies, and a doomskull generator that also starts all your troops at 50% mana.
Werewoods has no AoE damage, it has two single target damages. Its generator is color specific (explodes red gems). Only one troop starts at 50% mana, and happens to be the troop you want to use the least often (it has the worst ability).
Werewoods highest damaging ability from Werecat also has the potential to backfire tremendously, giving the enemy 4+ matches, since at its lowest, 13 gems, creating 8 more doesn’t guarantee a 4+ match to loop it.
In other words: Dark Pits and Sunken Fleet work because they are much faster, much more consistent in damage, and you can effectively kill the enemy before they kill you. The same is not true for Werewoods, it’s a gamble. Now add on top that every troop gambles itself as well with random transforms.
Werewoods is a LOL from me.
Horde is 200, Kingdom is 15, bought Tier7 x4… still can’t make it passed 2nd room without losing most of the team because the team doesn’t work cohesively. Can’t plan moves ahead if you don’t know what troops you are going to have next turn.
I’m not spending more gems on this. I’ll throw it on the pile of other factions I’ll do when I can get their hordes to 500. Probably after the last one is released, May 2021.
Can we talk about the next faction? Lyrasza’s Lair coming out on Feb 21st looks like it will induce even more rage from players. Three of the troops perform 1 of 3 random abilities. And of course it’s another no-Defender, no-Support team. We get a Warmaster, a Generator, a Warlock, and a Mage. And the Legendary, Lyrasza, has a trait called “Unstable Mind” that conjures a “Madness Storm” when her turn begins. I am 100% convinced that the developers are trying to make it harder and harder for people to actually complete the 500 Pure-Faction team attempts. When this faction team comes out in a month, and if it remains as it is now, mark my words, the revolt will be worse than this one.
I think this faction finally broke me. I’m done caring about pure faction delve runs. They are the opposite of fun.
I think the poll is harsher than is justified. Yes, the latest factions and the upcoming one are incredibly flawed to say the least, but some of the earlier ones do have some mechanics that make both interesting to fight with and against rather than horribly frustrating. Werewoods and Mirrored halls so far take the cake in being both horrible to fight with and against. It’s almost a work of art to design something that is powerful in enemy hands yet worthless in player hands.
@igniteice It’s even worse than your troop breakdown suggests. I had 2-4 Torbens a lot of the time. In the right team he might be powerful, but when all gems are already converted having more of the same is completely worthless.
You are missing the most absurd part. There are no damage spells at all, other than one troop having a low chance of causing damage as one of many random effects. Pure faction teams have to rely exclusively on skull damage, without any reliable way to create skulls. And the path to the boss room even has four fights. It’s like they are intentionally trying to drive away high level players.
Assuming the odds are equal, Chaos Hound has a 2/3 chance to create (doom)skulls. It’s only such a low amount that it’s pretty likely the opponent will benefit from it. 
