The power creep is too much

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
1

With Raids and Invasions, while they scale up, it isn’t insanely fast and takes time to go up and is never the same enemy teams to go fight over and over. I have never once seen either Zuul or Towers being paired up with transformation troops or anything too problematic unlike the crap Delves and Tower of Doom pull.

Delves are ESPECIALLY the worst. I couldn’t make it to the final reward as the game kept utterly cheating to prevent me from getting it (and even giving me a loss for a win. Screw you game!). The AI doesn’t even need to try as one little 3 match could be a skull cascade to them winning without needing to open their eyes.

The only way to combat delves is by upgrading the treasure hoard but since each one has their own separate hoard, it is stupidly impossible to do and since not everyone likes to be in pain suffering through the same 3 or 4 fights over and over again, the hoards should be together. I’d rather pay 1M a treasure to slowly upgrade a new faction’s quality over starting over again.

Then there is the rooms themselves. They are all designed to be as problematic and unfair to play against. Even if you have a team that can stop them, it still means nothing if you can’t get it active like Sylvanimora’s entangle which, spoiler alert, never happens when you need it. Bulette’s, Leviathan, TRANSFORMATION Troops, Goblin Throneroom, Dust Devils, Cockatrice, in fact, every troop at the high levels are all brutal and unfair.

I’ve had plenty of instances were I am about to win when all of a sudden, a simple three match for the enemy lets them get 3 skull matches in a row, killing my hero, killing two of my troops then spawning in 3 more enemies and then killing me off. Or the enemy is one hit from death and suddenly, the game drops skulls wherever I match in the perfect spots for the AI to match and kill me while also never triggering my troop’s resurrection chance (not stunned).

Tower of Doom is just as bad in this regard. While it ditches the stupid “Keep dead party members” rule, it has a mono color restriction which, unlike delve’s double color restriction, makes it more annoying and then there are the boon scrolls… why does it scale up with each level? The fact at +29 health requires 30 life scrolls for another +1 is absurd and unfair, especially for lower guilds.

The Doom’s also changing is a bad thing since you may need to adjust it accordingly lest you be stuck fighting a level 300 Clockwork Knight armoring itself up over and over after it killed your true damage dealer. Oh and the rewards from the last Tower of Doom show it isn’t a gem giver but rather a gem taker. Thanks(!)

In fact, now I think about it, the devs sure love to cripple newer players even more since, before the delve change, everyone could camp at 20 to get all the rewards with no problem and the people who wanted to move forward could and have the upper hand in those rewards. Now? No chance.

TLDR: Cut down on the uber powered troops.

2

While waiting for the devs to make any adjustments, which may take forever or may not happen at all, you need to use mang like weapons which scale up with the enemies stats to deal with high level delves/tod. Or dragons eye
Teams like this definitely wont work at high level

3

This will fall on deaf ears because the devs DON’T PLAY THEIR OWN GAME. (I’m not yelling, just putting a lot of emphasis.)

The only stance where the devs will probably make a change is when they fail to detect something clearly broken in the player’s favor until said players discover and use it ad nausea to reap the benefits.

I honestly just used this event to literally buy some extra shards with gems and farm some with the sigils to cover the holidays where i’ll probably be unable to play while traveling to see my family.

Unless you really like this style of gameplay/experience there is literally zero incentive to pursue the last rewards. Orbs of Chaos? They’ll be probably Growth, Clans and Wisdom orbs in disguise… Vault Keys? Better wait for a Gnome Event weekend where you have a lot of time to grind, gold, glory and souls are obtainable easily in other gamemodes.

At some point as i’m taking my time and collecting enough treasures i’ll invest in Hoards a little more to make those battles less gruesome as i see no incentive to rush these Delves for all the ugly and useless pets, except Minito Mori, he is cute.

4

Dragon’s Eye was hard nerfed in delves and tower of doom remember? Even with a good team, the AI still gets amazing luck. Take Hall of Guardians. Are you saying that:

The Great Maw
Alchemist
Dawnbringer (Archer)
Wrath

Is also a terrible team that won’t work at higher levels? Scorpius/Eurayli in delves that accommodate their colors? Even with the perfect team to win, the AI just needs 1 skull match to ruin your entire team comp or anyone who drags/transforms/etc also ruin it and at the high levels, they refuse to die without causing chaos.

5

Eye was nerfed but still viable. I reached level 500 sos using eye team
Maw devours and therefore does scale up with the enemies stats. The infernus team you posted doesnt
Im just giving you advice on how to deal with the current situation. Whether you want to listen is up to you

1 Like
6

As mentioned, the Devs do not play their own game so they have no clue. The may test a bit but by no means do not do any end game testing. This is a shame. It is the reason they have lost many end gamers but refuse to admit it. They focus on the cash grab of the newer players.

7

You have to power creep back in these scaling events.

I went with a Divines team and it really started petering out around level 100. If you aren’t using a troop that gets stronger when the enemies get stronger, you get punished.

That means all of the “destroy armor and do something boosted by armor destroyed” weapons are very powerful at that point. Interestingly enough, they suck at the low levels since they don’t have any gas. Trickster’s Shot can become a sniper very fast. Yasmine’s Pride helps your team stay alive. Earth’s Fury is a staple on skull damage teams. I don’t like Mang so much anymore but its main problem is true of all of these: if your hero dies you’re toast.

So that also means considering very defensive hero classes. Anything with “barrier on color” is nice. Skull reduction is nice. Spell reduction is nice. I’m running Titan because it can help churn the board, but there are other, better defensive classes to pick.

Dragon’s Eye is still a fairly viable strategy in the 100-200 range. Yes, it was nerfed. But a level 50 not-quite-a-dragon is a ton easier to handle than a level 100 whatever. Think about it: if you start having trouble around 100-120, then knocking enemies back down to 50-60 is going to make a big difference. The nerf mostly made the weapon not work for level 250+, because that “only” gets reduced to 125 and it needs more casts before the team is sufficiently weakened. (I don’t personally like this strat but it still works with high variance.)

Also consider troops like Megavore with that magic phrase “all armor”. Or Arachnaean Weaver’s true damage plus web. Weaver and Mab are available this time and putting both freeze and web on the opponent takes a huge chunk out of the shenanigans they can pull.

Also consider that you need exploders on your team, not just for blocks but for “churning” the board. A lot of times when the CPU gets an unreal cascade it’s because I handed them a board I knew smelled fishy. The worst-case is when they have a transformer like Nyx that whiffs, then I can’t do much with the board I get, but that transform + bad match cycle sets up a great cascade for the CPU. An exploder fixes that by nullifying their generator. I don’t just mean stuff like Jar of Eyes, character classes with Lightning Strike or troops like The Possessed King can do a lot to keep your board free of disruption by generators.

To me the main problem is these modes were meant to be hard to complete, but they were presented in a way that most players think they have to go all the way. This is particularly clear now that the scoring system’s been changed, it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to get all of the prize tiers in weekend Faction events. Raid and Invasion let you get at least partial credit when you’ve pushed too far. I wan to play a few more Towers of Doom before I decide if it’s too swingy.

Anyway again: I think the problem is a lot of people would like to not have to fight at level 110+ to get their treats. That kind of game isn’t fun for them, and at that level it only takes one bad cascade to see something ridiculous happen.

8

Megavore may be nice at shredding armor but if you also have something that relies on armor like Trickster’s Shot or Yasmine’s Pride, that idea is thrown out of the window and as I also said, it doesn’t matter what your team comp is if you can get one shot.

The Hall team I mentioned has that problem. 1 skull kills the Great Maw even with level 100 Hoard and he can’t take skulls unless he wants to be silenced. That’s not considering Gargoyle or other faction troop problems such as Morana’s instant kill, Leech’s steal, Xerodar’s death mark and so forth.

True damage and empowered are also major problems in all areas. High true damage burst with empowered is impossible to counter (Spirit Fox especially) and empowered in general is also a problem. I mean, getting looped by Siren’s before you can do anything isn’t fun and unless you shove a mana drainer into your team comp or Psion in the first slot (Not worth it), then it means nothing.

Even a skull tank in the front struggles because a 300+ skull hit without buffs is still brutal and easily able to chip away at them including Gorgotha and Stonehammer. A simple bad cascade is all it takes to utterly ruin the chance of winning. As I said, in two battles I was going to win until the game decided to drop skulls for the enemies to kill and not for me. Again, it’s tied to luck and hoping for good drops.

A summoner might be nice but they too also die quickly and it makes All-Seeing Eye and Primal Rift even worse due to this (Even more than Hall’s skull and magic reduction) since they can easily repair their entire team and with the extra troops, prevent a win (As I also mentioned).

TLDR: Luck plays a major factor in winning the later battles. A scorpius/euralyi combo can’t win if a mandatory room has poison immunity as a good example.

9

All this talk about skulls…

Entangle is your friend.

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10

How do you entangle if the game isn’t giving you the chance to get a 4 or 5 match to get that entangle off or it wears off just as a skull falls for the enemy?

Edit: Or if the troop has immunity to entangle? Can’t entangle a troop with immunity to entangle.

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Alderfather → purple match
Yasmine → green match
Sylvanimora → 4 or 5 match
Bogstrider, Green Gole → on skull match up front
Sir Snothelm → Entangle and Web on cast + Extra turn
Spring Imp → Entangle all

Just some of the options for this new delve.

There’s no perfect counter for every situation in a delve and they added more delve rooms specifically to make that happen.

If you rather sit here and make a fuss about every little thing while many others are progressing without a problem, then keep going.

and reply to your edit: If it has immunity to entangle, I have barrier up as a backup in most cases.

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Yeah I dunno how much testing they do, but I watched 10 mins of last weeks stream after Kafka popped on ps4 and mentioned it was on
And it was 9 mins of goofy team names and her setup
With a minute of reading off what the troops do without any real explanation or even showing traits
It was like a kid in school asked to read a paragraph aloud
I won’t be watching again

My suggestion, think about synergy and effects while creating troops and how they work together
Then make them n talk about it

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They don’t play or experience the game in depth as much as any reasonably dedicated veteran. That’s why the devs are so prone to make mistakes by design and later they try to use even more amateur fixes such as the Dragon’s Eye Nerf that created another colateral bad experience in PVP.

That’s a huge issue with many repercussions, the devs only react to things they don’t seems to try to prevent those in the first place, and rushed out/emergencial decisions end up bringing more trouble in the future…

Even powercreep in favor of the players should be avoided, because if the devs make some certain troop types too good then some compositions will be too prevalent and thus they are also creating a bad enviroment for the game direction.

3 Likes
15

And your response if you can’t get the color you need for Alderfather/Yasmine or entangles the second/third/fourth troop? Or the inability for an extra turn from 4 or 5’s for Sylvanimora? No skulls for Green Golem? No mana/no color matches for Spring Imp or Snothelm?

The game forces you to put in so much work and can easily take it away when you did all of it for nothing because of the luck factor or could outright cheat and give you a loss when you won (Like it did on my last sigil).

Take Titan, even if you have barrier on brown, it means nothing if you can’t get a brown (Hey All Seeing Eye!) or they shred through it and still hit you. Many people have had problems with the higher levels as well so it isn’t just me and it tends to be nothing but luck at the end like Crypt Keepers. Need I say anything about Morana?

Great Maw might scale well in Hall but he can’t take skulls on either side. He takes one and is silenced. He doesn’t and dies in one hit. Even if entangled, the AI could ‘recover’ from it just as a skull falls perfectly into place to ruin the chance of winning. At the higher levels, it’s more luck than anything else.

Oh and, been seeing far more skulls spawning in compared to before… almost like there is a permanent skull storm on.

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I’ve been using Yasmine’s Pride and Ketras the Bull. Use Yasmine to remove enemy armour, which increases your life and Ketras damage increase too by increased life. Try and cast Yasmine 3 or 4 times before using Ketras and easy win.

Yasmine will end up with so much life that a few skull drops against you won’t matter. Plus I use Archer class for first enemy to start entangled to give you chance to cast Yasmine a few times first. Queen Aurora is useful too to create barrier on all troops.

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I feel like this is a rant thread masquerading as a discussion thread.

There are some valid points. There are some setups that are particularly frustrating. But there are also a lot of counters to many of these situations and most people use them.

But every time someone explains these counters, the response is “Yeah but AI doesn’t let you do that”.

I identify strongly with that statement. I attract bad luck in a way that makes some of my guildmates mock my stories as impossible. But if everyone were having luck like, “I maybe get to cast Tai-Pan for a free turn once every third game” then I think there would be more widespread complaints. Either that or it’s very common and I’m the only one bothered by it.

But you can’t really have a discussion in a rant thread. The premise of conversation is, “The game is broken and you can’t convince me otherwise.” The speaker is angry and willing to be irrational to try and deal with that anger.

OP doesn’t want solutions, they want commiseration. It’s probably more productive to tell your own stories of bad luck in here than try to point out this or that team is less prone to it. Here’s mine from this morning:

I’m playing with a Yao Guai team that’s ruthless. Turn 1 and turn 2 wins are exceptionally common, and I can get multiple free turns on all but the worst boards. So I’m playing PvP this morning and curious if I can take it to Rank 1 undefeated. Match 3 is vs. the YG team with Flammifer and Titania. My starting board is garbage, so I make a move to get one of my generators ready. The opponent gets a turn off their Tai-Pan. Then a turn off their Yao Guai. Then the skyfall lets them get ANOTHER turn off their Yao Guai. Then a turn off Flammifer. Then a turn off Yao Guai. Then they make a match, but I’ve only got one troop left.

That’s an exceptionally rare series of events. I know this because I’m running a team that tries to be a little more successful, and big hits like that only happen in maybe 1/3 games. But it’s also exceptionally frustrating to be on the receiving end and I will say it until I ragequit: GoW would be a better game without free turns.

Also: because of the above, I’m lowkey expecting someone to ask for a YG nerf in the near future.

18

When someone is frustrated and pissed off, the way they react is irrational and considering my past when I’ve gone off the deep end of anger, it shows. I hate that fact as well but when the same crap keeps happening over and over, it just gets frustrating and the example you posted has also happened… a lot.

I tend to play this game more to try and relax or burn time if I have some time to spare hence why I’m happy exploring since it doesn’t cause trouble or any problematic issues like Dragon’s Eye. Hell, I’m even fine with Invasions and Raids for the most part since they don’t spike up as fast compared to Doom or Delves and you have a counter to the respective threat (Godslayer vs Zuul and Siegebreaker vs Towers).

Doom’s and Delves have problems with power creep. They escalate very quickly and some of the legendary rooms are downright sadistic. Any skull spam especially as, if you can’t/game won’t, let you entangle them, good bye to the attempt. Thankfully all legendary rooms are optional right now but it still sucks and the fact you can’t get back troops doesn’t help.

Example: Imagine if, once you entered the fight against Zuul, you were locked with your team and couldn’t change until you got wiped out. If a troop died, it was gone for good until you lost with them scaling and whatever level you were at, you are back to 20. Not fun right? That’s how I see delves.

As for Yao Guai, I don’t like the guy. He is a major hassle but like Ketras or any health scaling troop, a true damage dealer blows the wind out of them but if not bothered, can easily destroy a full team. I know from when Shentang was the invasion area.

Still, losing my cool and refusing to take criticism was never a good idea. Amazing how much influence Wrath has huh? Still… as it stands, at the higher levels, it is all but luck to win. If all the treasure hoards were fused together into one big hoard but individual qualities, I don’t think anyone would complain. The ones who can beat it at 199 hoard level can still do that and with more to it while others who struggle, get an extra helping hand with stats.

19

I feel every rant has some bitter background truth on it. Sometimes it’s about perspective and underlying problems that not everyone can pinpoint.

For example, when you say:

I’m not necessarily arguing about the use of tactics, but we should also consider that not everyone might be able or willing to run classes with these exact talents…

And oh… how wonderful it would be if we could change classes without spending 50 gems… How wonderful if the other classes wouldn’t be utter garbage in comparison, or if some past weapons would be available in a timely manner to allow us to pick them and how wonderful it would be if said weapons wouldn’t have garbage upgrades…

All these small problems are dragging the game down to some extent, combine them all and we have a disastrous inbalance that keeps only growing and we can also sprinkle some distaste the players feel towards this features because it locks itself on the highest level forever.

And meanwhile Wild Plains is not being reworked…

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20

I feel it sorts out like this:

There are a lot of different little things that are each person’s pet peeve in GoW. For a lot of people there seems to be just one. So they’re content to live with the one problem, and the other things don’t get under their skin.

But for a lot of people, several of those pet peeves line up at once such that it’s hard to go through a day without seeing all of them.

I think GoW can’t make up its mind if it’s a slow, strategic game or a fast, explosive one. It can’t decide if it rewards careful teambuilding strategy or sheer brute force. It’s trying to support both playstyles, but that means it ends up being sort of bad at each. That’s behind most of the pet peeves.

Some people want a fast, explosive PvP where they can play a handful of meta teams, get their rewards for the day, and feel good about having spent a half-hour or so. They don’t like being told constantly if they’d just cycle through 15 different teams they could achieve a higher win rate. Changing teams means spending time that isn’t throwing themselves at matches. To satisfy these people, we need more homogenous defensive power levels, fewer defenses that can summon replacements, and much slower starts.

Other people want a slow, strategic PvP. They’d be pretty happy if they had to swap troops around between every match. The last thing they want is to consistently win in less than 4 turns. To satisfy these people, we need more gaps in the power level between offense and defense, very thoughtful hard counters to specific strategies, faster defensive starts that don’t work as well on offense, more defensive summon strategies, etc.

We can’t make a PvP that satisfies both, but we’ve tried. So it means if a person strongly wants one flavor of PvP, on a bad day they can’t get it at all and they have a bad time playing GoW. The more strongly they want their flavor of PvP, the more bad days they have.

It’d be less painful if the game chose a flavor so the people who like the other flavor can decide, “This isn’t for me” and find a game they enjoy. Instead, everyone’s constantly tempted by a small taste of what could be, but the game can never fulfill their needs. GoW is an abusive relationship.

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21

GoW is a wicked Master/Mistress that ignores your safety word and keeps going with all those extra turns, mana surges, skull drops… :skull:

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