You know, it does seem strange that his spell has the potential to render 3/4 of its damage useless. Maybe it’s there ‘in case’ troops don’t transform? Idk.
I am finding him really fun and useful? I dominated everyone on my last two streams with my Possessed King team. It is as follows:
- Gorgotha
- Glaycion
- Possessed King
- Infernus
He’s not a troop for everyone, but I’ve been having a great time running a Possessed King team.
(although I think the topic was more specifically about the spell, and first two traits, as opposed to general usefulness, as the fun of the third trait was acknowledged).
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A great time until his spell is cast. Pun intended, he’s a blast, but his spell is atrocious no matter what reason you give. Simply saying he’s not for everyone is just down playing what seems to me to be a pretty agreed upon issue. That’s like me saying anchovies ruin this pizza, and then being told pizza is not for everyone.
While I get being picky about his first 2 traits is nit-picking, the 2nd half of his spell seemingly ruins a great and fun troop.
For what it’s worth, fighting against Possessed King and Dragon Eye on the same team was one of the more annoying things I’ve dealt with.
I started with one team and ended up having to use about 12 different characters by the end of it. And with the constant converting, they were level 1 at the end of battle.
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Just elaborates more on this troop working AGAINST you than with you. Though, Dragon Eye is a completely different rant altogether.
Even if he makes the BEST DAMN defense team in the world, that’s not me using and playing with him. That’s me throwing him on a slot and staring at him.
Did you by any chance face my def team? It was 3x PK and dragons eye. I recently switched to 2x PK/ dragons eye/ scylla. Its a troll team that doesnt beat you but can drag the battle pretty long 
Maybe? I don’t pay attention to names ever. I thought it was two other troops and not duplicates but I do know it was super annoying whatever it was.
I’m warming up to the troop for more than its 3rd trait.
Admittedly, the 3rd trait is still great and the spell still sucks. However, if I ignore that the spell does damage and just consider it as 3 separate chances to transform different enemies into daemons, then the value goes up a tiny bit in very niche scenarios.
If I had a choice in the matter (and thankfully I don’t!), I would have designed the troop to be more similar to Emrakul (more specifically Emrakul, the Promised End) from MTG. It would be a bit insane to control your opponent’s Gems of War turn, but everything can be interpreted in a Gems of War way.
Without going into too much method of madness, I would have wanted something like this:
Barrier all allies, dispel all enemies, and deal 3 separate 20% chances to turn a random enemy into a Peasant. Gain an extra turn if an enemy is transformed this turn.
Loosely translated:
This spell costs {1} less to cast for each card type among cards in your graveyard. (TPK’s 3rd trait)
When you cast this spell, you gain control of target opponent during that player’s next turn. (transform with extra turn proposed above)
Flying, trample, protection from instants (barrier, dispel)
Too much time to think while clearing the easy floors of the faction event…
I was losing a battle in an upper level delve. My possessed king against TDS. I cast spell and transformed TDS into Gargantuar. After a laugh I won the battle eventually.
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Beware, TPK is very addictive.
More so, I made a mistake of playing a day with a team including 2 Mythic considered bad:
TPK and Queen Aurora.
Now I can’t play anything else, because it’s all so slow!
TPK+QA is like a drug I tell you.
Help!
How so? What team build are you using?
I tried a few.
But with the Queen giving +1 mana to any match, and the free explosion from TPK, the mana just keeps coming. Even costly troops like World Breaker are full almost all the time.
Even sub-Par teams are fun, because they are full.
Right now I am just kidding around with:
Because I like to try to Vorpal thing, and the Yellow removal helps cascades.
My Hero is a Rune Priest (barrier on brown, dispel enemies, gain life and attack)
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I think TPK is a great troop. Most teams only operate with 3x main troops anyways. Why not fill their mana more quickly with out casting a spell. Especially when a storm is in effect. There are far worse mythic troops than TPK.
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Ahhhh sorry you summoned me, I’m in the middle of studying a lot of stuff so I can’t not explain a Computer Science topic.
Numbers in programming either have a decimal point or not. Numbers without decimal points are easy to understand and interact with. Numbers with decimal points have many different implementations, each with quirks and imprecisions that result in a lot of extra work. So, whenever we can, programmers like to use integers, the numbers without decimal points.
But that makes division a bit of a pain. If you absolutely cannot store a decimal point, then 1 / 2 is going to have to resolve to something. It can be:
- An error.
- Rounded up to 1.
- Rounded down to 0.
“An error” is rare enough we’ll just call it “silly”.
The fastest, easiest thing is to truncate, which means you chop off the decimal point. In this case, 1/2 = 0.
But a lot of people like rounding to be done. The kind of rounding we’re used to considers any number with a decimal point greater than or equal to five tenths rounded up to the next-highest integer, and any number with a decimal point lesser down to the next-lowest integer. This would give us 1/2 = 1. It costs computational effort and is slower, but mostly trivial.
It turns out that’s not how C# works though, for mathematics doesn’t like that. See, there are slightly more values in { 0.5 <= x < 1.0 } than there are in { 0 <= x < 0.5 }. That teeny difference means the algorithm favors rounding upwards. If you are a bank, and you round thousands of numbers per second, that accumulates to a lot of bias very fast. So “banker’s rounding” is an algorithm that rounds “to the nearest even integer”, instead of “always up”. Our result of 0.5 is closer to 0 than it is to 2, So in banker’s rounding 1/2 = 0.
The game could implement the other form of rounding, but the implication is “in general, the result would trend towards rounding up”. It’s also a little more complex to get “normal” rounding in C#.
Right now, the code probably looks like:
newTroop.Level = oldTroop.Level / 2;
To get the result you expect, it’d be:
newTroop.Level = (int)Math.Round((double)oldTroop.Level / 2.0, MidpointRounding.AwayFromZero);
That’s why, in general, GoW likes to use banker’s rounding. It is a pain in the butt to get the other rounding algorithm. Math doesn’t have a “standard” way to round, it only asks you to use an algorithm if you want it. Programming languages have to pick one.
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Wtf this is so derailed. 
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TPK has been great for the doom event this week 
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Yes, I’d agree that the thread has been derailed, and it seems misinterpreted.
I never called TPK a bad troop, in fact I keep saying he’s a fun troop, but his spell sucks.
I HAVE been using him on some teams, but I’m simply disappointed by his iffy spell. Sometimes it helps, USUALLY it hurts.
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The skill is really fiddly. I want to make a case for it.
I see Umberwolf on a lot of teams. Nobody wants to actually cast Umberwolf. they want to get the storm from Umberwolf, and put it in the back so it doesn’t get harassed.
TPK’s trait is similar to that. It’s tasty and it’s really hard to evaluate how powerful it is. Its ability is OK very early in the game, if you get lucky then “a level 10 Famine” is probably still a downgrade from whatever the opponent had. It is “dangerous” very late in the game, because a level 10 troop might be stronger at full status than what it used to be. The damage is so piddling it’s not even worth considering as an upside, other than in rare cases it can triple-kill. You were probably winning that game anyway, and I don’t think “wins when you’re winning” is very unique.
It feels disappointing because we have a lot of other troops with a really nice 4/5 match trait but they also come with a great ability. Kraken comes to mind: it had to get a couple of nerfs AND the 4/5 match mechanics had to be adjusted to make it fair. Queen Mab, similarly, is a great 4/5 match trait plus a good ability that happened to synergize very well with half the game. So we had to nerf nearly a dozen troops and change Mana Surge mechanics to make her fair.
That makes TPK fall short. He isn’t strong enough to cause the devs to take away free turns, or nerf Divine Ishbaala again, or reduce the mana you get from exploding gems, or any of the other things that “fun” troops cause.
So in order to put him in line with both “how other troops with a 4/5 match trait perform” and “giving it a twist that makes it truly mythic”, TPK would need some really hyperbolic ablities. And the nerfs we’d have to take to counter that ability are ridiculous.
Just take away the second half of the spell. That would be more suitable to me than keeping it there. There’s also the option of having the spell transform the enemies into a specific troop or set of troops, however, as to WHICH those might be, I have no idea, and not much time to think on it too hard.
In it’s defense, the spell HAS saved me. I feel I have to express to everyone my actual intentions behind this post. I DON’T doubt that TPK is really good on certain teams, and pretty damn fun to use. He HAS saved me in a battle before.
BUT, the ratio of saving me to screwing me is pretty damning. I’d say about a FIFTH of the time he transforms something, it goes to help me out. USUALLY, it just wastes time by changing the enemies into something that doesn’t really HURT me OR help me, just prolongs the battle, which I still interpret as hurting me since my time is precious. Even though he usually just inconveniences the battle with his spell, it tends to hurt me more than help me far more often.
ALSO, while many people keep stating that there are PLENTY of teams formed around 3 good troops with basically a “support” troop in last place, I think that’s a pretty bad excuse for making an unnecessarily placed handicap on what could simply be a good and fun troop. Why have him be good in a “niche” than be good just in general? Besides, even troops like Queen Aurora, Queen Mab, Kraken, Elemaugrim, etc, there spells are VERY good when you fill them up and cast them, at least in my opinion. Even Divine Ishbaala sees its use when it casts its spell.
So, I’m not seeing any good defense for TPK, at LEAST in the argument as to his spell being perfectly fine (which is my point). It appears the comments and defenses I’m getting for him are just telling me how to work AROUND his spell, and not defending the spell itself. In my comment to Saltypatra above, it’s just like how I LOVE pizza, but someone decided to put anchovies on it. MOST people don’t like anchovies, so just take them off and now we can all enjoy this pizza. Instead, the comments are basically, “just eat around the anchovies,” or ,“if you add this sauce you won’t have to taste the anchovies so badly”. I’m sorry if that’s a bad analogy, but I feel I’ve made my point pretty clear.
TPK is a fun troop and good troop in his pretty niche role, and has the potential to be even MORE of both of those things. And to further the point, the fact that the ONLY reason he’s even remotely bad in any way, is because of an UNNECESSARY handicap at the end of his spell.
On that same note, I feel like MUCH of this issue would be alleviated if transform was reworked a little better. Even if TPK is left untouched, simply keeping the same stats (though magic might need to be altered depending on the transformed troop), and even keeping the enemies’ level would be fine in my opinion. The issue comes with HELPING the enemy team by giving them a troop that could pose more of a threat than the troop that was transformed, and giving them health.
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