I’m having a lot of fun and so far I’ve beaten 10 or 15 doomskull teams but I think this point is true:
I am standing at the gates to endgame. I can build almost any meta team I want, and the ones I’m missing are more for maximizing my GW performance than “winning more PvP”. So even when I’m playing a Doomskull mirror match, I can weather a couple of rounds of the opponent wailing on my tank. It doesn’t always go right for me. My most consistent losses with Doomskulls are against a Psion/Rag/Famine team, that seems very, very well-equipped against me. So I switch to a different team that can beat it.
But when I imagine being a lower-level player, Doomskulls are atrocious. At lower levels, +5 damage can be a 25% damage increase. In certain situations, that’s the difference between a one-hit kill and surviving another turn. I can take 8 or 9 doomstorm-fueled cascade hits and still crack back with my team. They can’t.
So I think we’re going to see a VERY strong hatred of Doomskulls from lower-level players, tempered by a “meh” from higher-level players. I think this also makes contemplating a nerf difficult: how does one make them more fair on lower-level players without ruining the fun for higher-level players?
My guess/hope is there are more hard counters to doomskulls coming. Mana drainers are, so far, the biggest problem I have. The storm is expensive to set up, so if you can stop that from happening in the first place the teams don’t tend to be very exciting. I cry a little every time a pet rescue troop one-shots something early.
Oh. Pet rescues are also a very good example of “Why I think MORE mechanics like Doomskulls are a good thing”. If you are a lower-level player who suddenly lucked into one of the Doomskull troops, I bet your life got a lot easier.
If i was a new player I’d avoid PvP like the plague I’d think especially the poor sobs that get past level 200 and have to face every end game player in the game that will smash their souls into pieces over and over for hundreds of levels of grief (but that is just me). I’m at the very end game and this new Doom Skull meta has no counter for me - it doesn’t matter what team I face I don’t care what is on the other team they stand virtually zero chance of winning 99% of the time (1% of the time the AI just decides it’s going to win no matter what I do so there is that )
Cheers
I think this is overstating the effect and ignoring what we DO know about the matchmaking algorithm.
If you’ve got a competent Doomskull team you’re fielding at least one fully-traited legendary. That’s going to put your team power at a higher level and sort you vs. people who are also fielding at least one fully-traited legendary. Same with if you’re running a full-tilt Doomskull team: you’ll have a team score in the 9k range and you’re going to start playing vs. big boys with their Psion/Famine teams.
If a level 300 player with an “I don’t even have Queen Mab yet” team is non-stop fighting Doomskull teams I’d be really surprised. Maybe untraited ones, that’s a weakness in the algorithm, but then the team isn’t so exciting without Bloodhammer calling in Doomstorms.
But all that has been true for several offense metas in the game over the years, it is true for several completely different offense team setups right now.
If we talk counters it is more important to think about what a certain setup does on defense in the AIs hand and how we can counter it, and this one doesn’t really seem to need a specific one.
Yeah, speaking honestly everyone’s got their PvP team they stick to and it’s probably very effective.
A few months ago I was using a dragons-based team with TDS and The Worldbreaker with special guest Gorgotha. I won more than 80% of my matches and the losses came down to things like “if Goblins is faster” or “if Psion/Famine is faster”.
Then I got Infernus and upgraded to the Divine Infernish team. I won more than 90% of my matches and the losses came down to things like “if Goblins is faster” and “if Psion/Famine is faster”.
Then I got Doomskulls and upgraded to it. I win more than 95% of my matches and the losses come down to things like “if Psion/Famine is faster” or “if Dwarves manages to one-shot the right troop early”.
This is it. We’re at endgame. We have the best collections of troops in the game. If we were really meticulous and careful, we could win 100%. I know this because I know guildmates who go hundreds of matches with no losses. It’s a matter of careful play and well-tuned teams.
Doomskulls didn’t create this situation. It’s just a slightly-cheaper endgame team than the others. All of my other “80%+” teams require at least one mythic.
I am a end gamer and im not enjoying them. I hate Everything that increase luck factor, there is no strategy it’s only a game of who will be more lucky during cascades
Who is the person holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use the Doomskull team?
Maybe we’re in different matchmaking universes but so far I’ve seen this Doomskull team in fewer than 10% of my matches and, actually, the AI is really bad at playing the team.
So make your team that feels strategic and play that. Me, personally, I see Doomskulls that way. My team is REALLY fragile before the cycle starts, and a fast team can tear me apart. So the early game is a puzzle while I try to figure out how to get that cycle started. I think really hard for a few moves, then POP. Infernish was that way too.
It’s not “optimal”, it’s “another optimal team” in my opinion. Go back to playing the team you were playing last week. If it gains too much dominance in PvP everything but the Doomskulls will be nerfed until there are no support troops left: that’s what happened to Mab. We nerfed like, 8 individual other things to avoid nerfing the one thing causing the problem.
I disagree completely. For myself it has never ever been that way. I have always had to cycle teams to win at a very high (95% or higher) win rate.
For example I used to have 1 "general great PvP team that beats a large % of teams but gets smashed frequently by a couple of specific meta teams.
For those 2 other Meta teams if we go back say 2 weeks in time before the doomskull meta team it would have been the Psion/Famine meta for that team I specific counter team I have to use to win the vast majority of the time.
Another one is the Mercy/ Divine meta that team again I specific counter team for as my previous 2 PvP offensive teams won’t work very effectively.
What has changed is I’ve gone from cycling 3 or even 4 Ranked PvP teams depending on my opponents team to now just using 1 regardless. In my experience I’ve never ever been able to do this and have the Win/Loss % I’m seeing now with the Doomskull team I’m using.
Just my personal in game experience though yours and others may be different but I’d be very surprised if you were just taking every single 3T match in ranked play over and over and not changing teams and still winning 95% of the time or more (and if you were what team were you using because that is incredible - or was until now)
I’ve seen people that claim 100% using the same team but all I can figure is it takes either much slower and meticulous play than I have patience for, they got lucky, or they’re lying. Often I’ll fire up the same team and lose my first 5 matches, then proceed to get better until I’m performing just as well as my previous teams.
I can’t beat every single defensive meta team with the divines in the same fashion and high % win rate with the divine meta but yes they are very good but imo not as good as the new Doomskull meta. I have videos up right now on my channel of just Kingbloodhammer left wiping out an entire 3T team with one cast it’s crazy
Cheers
GW is full of boring rock-paper-scissors and a handful of accidentally too-strong teams. It overly rewards people with large stables of mythics.
We shouldn’t let Goblins in GW. We shouldn’t let Divines in GW. But there they are in everyone’s list of “lazy defense teams”. People have been complaining about those teams for ages. Lord Ironbeard’s like an automatic Zuul’goth and he gets to start half-cocked, where’s the strategy in that?
Something strategic in GW would look more like pre-level-200 Arena, where your stats are limited and your wins are based on things like “matching gems” or “making intelligent troop decisions”. If anything, Doomskulls have HELPED this because people haven’t figured out the best offenses or defenses in a world with Doomskulls. I don’t think GW’s been this shook up since the string of Mab-oriented nerfs.
I’d be interested to know these Divine counters you meet, nothing seems to throw a wrench in my runs, well other than bad starting boards and unlucky cascade nonsense.
As for Doomstorm, i agree it is silly.
The developers have to make money. They do that by creating broken overpowered troops that you can simply buy outright or spend money on to increase your chances. They’re not stupid. They know exactly how broken the new troops are. Enough people will pony up the cash to buy and upgrade them, keeping up with the Joneses. Players will complain about the new meta, and then the devs will stall the nerfs until they don’t matter (enough people have the troops and/or they get bored).
Then, just around the corner will be a new broken troop, kingdom, weapon, or whatever. People will spend money on their new toys. We rinse and repeat.
What is important to remember is I’m speaking from a strictly ranked PvP 3T Offensive team perspective (as others have mentioned the AI doesn’t play this meta well on defence from what we’ve seen so far)
As far what team I use to smash the “Divine” meta in Ranked PvP I don’t mind sharing hopefully everyone uses it and people stop putting it up. Here it is:
Trident Banner
Diviner
GlitterClaw
Mercy
The WorldBreaker
This team is highly effective against the Divine meta (imo)
I’m not that jaded (yet) but I will agree the new modes are very “Pay to Win”
The rest of the game we have several free players in our guild that seem to do just fine with out spending a dime so I’d say they are not there yet as anyone can still get nearly everything with out spending real money (so far)
No what i meant is, what team on defense counters offense Divines? Because you claimed you are forced of your Divines by some defenses, which makes them inferior to your Doomskull team which isn’t countered by any defense teams.
