Since I didn’t see a thread for it yet, let’s talk about this week’s special troop. And I mean “special” in the derogatory sense. Wow is the Sand Scuttler a mess.
I ascended mine to epic so far and gave him one trait, and at level 18 his skill is +50 to life and armor. But why the single-cast? Yes I know the life and armor buff are both high numbers, and that’ll be higher with the event, but it’s useless. The only reason to buff a troop’s life or armor is to keep them around longer so they can damage the enemy. And then the cast-once? Shouldn’t cast-once be reserved for spells that would otherwise break the game, like Scorpius or the Great Maw?
Oh, well. At least the Scuttler definitely, positively won’t be impacted by Frozen or Entangled. Wait… he’s not Impervious, you say? So basically he has one spell that helps only himself but not his team, does no damage to the enemy, can only be cast once, and then he basically has no other value for the entire match?
And let’s talk traits. His first trait is start-of-battle only, not even giving the team bonus mana for matches, and it only affects other monster troops–and then only in a very weak way. His second trait regenerates only himself. His third trait, Armored, means he might have some minuscule tank value up front where he sucks mana away from more valuable troops in the beginning–if you forget that Gorgotha is a thing, and when he’s traited he’s a tank that actually charges everybody.
I know I’m off on a bit of a rant, but even the throwaway troops of past events have typically had a skill or trait that was in some way useful. At this point I’m not even sure the Sand Scuttler is worth throwing into my goblin PVP team in the back just for that extra trait stone; I’d rather have someone who can actually win me battles against the nastiest teams. (However, the fact that this week’s event also gives you a bonus trait stone in Explore for using him is nice. In PVP he’s totally worthless, but in Explore his worthlessness will not matter and that’s the mode where I’d rather have a bonus stone anyway. So I will use him for that, and I’m grateful to the devs for opening up the bonus trait stone event to Explore. Credit where it’s due!)
Now let’s talk about what can be done to fix the Sand Scuttler, and also Fizzbang because I will never ever let that go. The Sand Scuttler needs Regeneration to be moved up to his first trait, Armored to his second trait, and his third trait should be Impervious. Then and only then would he be valuable as a front-line troop. Alternatively if his traits were left alone, his spell could be fixed by removing the cast-once restriction, halving his magic with each cast, and adding Cleanse for himself: thereby making him an actual menace to the entangling teams that are everywhere.
As for Fizzbang, her ill-considered nerf should be reworked to change the obnoxious OR behavior back into AND, and to compensate her explosions should be a fixed number of gems (5 was suggested) and the buff amount reduced–the current OR would be easier to swallow however if the times she failed to explode gems, she buffed two troops instead, since usually her buff is wasted on a back-line troop’s attack/armor.
