Troop Balance Change Discussion

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
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Well, the PC patch has adjusted a few troops, and totally ruined my monster team that ran Night Terror and Swamplash :frowning:

So I thought I’d run through some of the troop balance changes, and discuss how they affect the meta.

  • Reaver : red gem removal has been quite strong in the meta, making Reaver a reasonable common troop. One additional damage is nice, but extra damage now relies on web synergy, which isn’t present in many troops yet.

  • Dark Maiden : spell image now makes no sense… (a poisoned claw heals the first troop?) - but her life gain is on a par with Mercy, though it only affects the first troop. Changing yellow gems to a “selected” color, like Finley’s skull transformation, is very flexible and powerful though. Sad that I just put the old Dark Maiden on a team the other day…

  • Night Terror : should lose the magic link ability, as he’s now red/brown, not red/purple. Significantly weaker now that he cannot affect the board, and cannot boost his damage. He DOES still just cost 8 mana though, which has always been his biggest strength.

  • Spider Queen : our first straight buff - she now applies the web status! Not a lot of synergy with her armor-killing spell, as generally the troops you are trying to destroy aren’t the ones with the spells you are worried about. A good counter to Knight Coronet, though.

  • Dokkalfar : a minor change. Dokkalfar is a very tricky troop to use, since he summons a summoner. And his damage is so minor as to be essentially useless. I would still love to see him really come into his own, somehow.

  • Spider Swarm : a MAJOR buff here is also an indirect buff to the Giant Spider, and Dokkalfar. No more 50% poison chance makes the spider swarm a reliable debuff troop.

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I agree with every single point you made. My monster team got reworked too, and I’m mourning the loss of the Maiden, although the new version looks pretty good too. Spider Swarm is much more potent, and I really hope we’ll see the current summon unbalance of the Arena reworked, otherwise the Giant Spider just crossed the OP border. Though to be fair, that post didn’t touch upon new effects, which also imply new adjustments. All units with Deathmarks have become much too powerful; Web looks nice though situational; Stun looks good.

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I don’t see many of these affecting the meta much, at least not in the later game (where a lot of the play happens). The most useful one probably being dark maiden, just isn’t used by the AI that well. Speaking on defense, the nice thing about Mercy, is that we force her to turn purple to the color we want, so the AI can’t make the wrong choice. Sure, we can use dark maiden on attack to deny the other team and help ourselves, but we’ve had a lot of troops with that.

Overall, I’d say the meta is not going to change much, if not at all from the changes. Not neccessarily a bad thing because teams could come out of this later in the game, but nothing that was changed would really effect the majority of the end game teams. Web could be nice against goblins I guess.

Can’t really say how much it affects early game pvp, or pve. There are so many early game teams that are viable that such a small amount of troop changes would cause much of a ripple in it.

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I’ve been really surprised by the amount of people missing Dark Maiden’s old spell. o_0

The only difference between her old spell and Spider Swarm’s new spell (besides stats) is the lack of being a Green Mana user.

Was she really that great? Because in all the time I’ve played this game I’ve never used her once. (Maybe once or twice in Arena, maybe.) With her recent changes, she personally feels more flexible to me.

I don’t know, maybe I just never gave her a proper chance before, but I still feel I’d pick a troop like Mist Stalker any day in comparison to her previous spell.

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Spells are generally balanced in terms of mana cost → effect. (Usually damage dealt)

In some situations and some compositions, very low-cost damage spells (goblin, dark maiden) are VERY effective. Dark Maiden was easier to fill than Goblin, since she could use 2 colors, so in some respects she was among the very best damage/mana deals in the game.

Obviously there are lots of other synergistic elements to consider, but I’m not surprised that she was a very valued troop in the few teams she found her way onto.

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Yes, exactly. In the Arena, I used to consider her a top tier unit. One mana surge and she was filled, plus poison is much more effective in that game mode, making her even better. She was always the MVP whenever I could draft her. Basically filling every other turn, doing decent damage and poison for a very small mana cost that was almost consistently halved by surges.

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Whoa wait hold up can we talk about how this is the game developer voicing how bad he thinks the changes are.

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Not sure what value that adds to the conversation.

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If a dev complains about something that he made even though his fans think it is good speaks volumes about what has happened during the dev cycle of the game. From the stand point of a dev, you should like what you make and if you do not like something in your game you normally change it if possible so the troops he mentioned must have been out of his control to change. This calls into question who is in charge of troop balancing or how the devs determine how to change a spell or ability on a troop.
Reaver: Technically it is a debuff that will become a buff over time.
Dark maiden: how did this spell make it this far into development even though it now is another mana generator for the kingdoms.
Night terror: not sure why colors where changed exactly and why some developers thought it was a good idea. He became a team player now so who knows what to expect from him in the future.
Spider queen: straight up buff but is still hard to use because of her leader ability, if we only get dokkalfar to have a spider boss trait similar to the orc leader or goblin king then the queens trait would make sense.
Spider swarm: i understood it was weak because buffing it would also buff 2 other troops but then they buffed it anyway. I think dokkalfar did not used to summon giant spider so yes in theory you could have buffed the baby spider at any time before dokkalfar could summon giant spider.

TL:DR If a dev is complaining about an update then it throws into question how the updates are determined.

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You do know that @Mr.Strange works on the Console port of the game, right? He works for 505, not Infinity Plus Two.

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Sure here is what must be said: He is a player as everyone else, and as a player he can voice if the changes, that seems meaningless to “almost” everyone, have an impact on one of his teams. Done, there is no much else to say about this subject.

On topic:

Yeah, i’m kind of bothered about Wild Fang spell’s picture too… The muzzle on the picture is from a feline, and the same “issue” with Dragon Cruncher.

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Yes this is true but also that he will have his hands on porting this to the console. Surely he would have some say on that front when he gets his hands on that part of the code. I thought there would be more communication between the two entities than here is the code good luck. He is also one dev for a different version of the game, considering the pc/mobile side of the game has 10 devs it means that those 10 devs all or most decided to make the changes they made. Now him as a player that is less concerning but still holds weight. I thought as him being a dev meant his words held more weight to them than a normal player which is why i basically freaked out. (i thought there was going to be anarchy in the dev side of the game.)

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Well, yeah i guess his view on the changes has a certain weight, but if they, devs, call for votes to decide something, and his side loses what else could be done? No need to “freak out” buddy. :slight_smile:

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True i guess i over reacted.

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You’d think so, but…

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Even with that fixed, though (and aside from arena usage), I don’t think the buff is that big to the Spider Swarm. In most teams I would use him in as a summon, it generally still wouldn’t be worth the turn it takes to cast most of the time.

The other redesigns I tried out briefly, didn’t really like these troops before, still pretty lukewarm now. The Reaver change is a nerf in most situations, since he doesnt board modify anymore, and I dont see the next kingdom being overly web themed so his new synergy isn’t great either, but that also puts him more in line with most commons and his overall damage is still good for his mana cost regardless. Night Terror is still generally inferior to (but at least not 100% comparable to anymore) Mist Stalker. Dokkalfar is pretty much exactly the same, since about as many troops can web as can silence (that is to say, not many), though being silenced is much worse since a webbed dok could still get out a Giant Spider to possibly charge him back up by the time Web wears off and get out a full strength spider. Dark Maiden covering 3 colors is pretty good, but less useful in my teams since she eliminates yellow (a cleanse would have been nice, also). Spider Queen is even better as anti-caster now with Web, but her usefulness still wanes as the fight goes on (still squishy vs skulls if in front, does no actual damage with her spell).

One thing not mentioned was Webspinner, which I think got a pretty significant buff by having Web on skull damage. She is still hard to keep alive in the front spot, and her spell usually mass eliminates skulls rather than leading to skull hits, but it may be worth a second look trying to build a team around that. Hypothetically speaking, of course, since my traitstones are still going to Plague long before her.

Early game wise, though, Night Terror’s buff is good, Spider Queens buff is okay, Reaver’s situational change is probably still harder to use, Maiden is just a completely different troop, and Spider Swarm (by extension Giant Spider) is better, and Dok is pretty much the same.

Overall, the changes were good for making the troops distinctive, if nothing else.

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Can we talk about celestia and returning some of her former ‘glory’? Personally I think she was nerfed too far, the risk/reward factor doesnt justify casting her in my opinion

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If you believe I think the changes are bad, then I don’t think you read my post very closely. I talked about th changes - I did not make any value judgements about them.

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The way it was written came off as you thinking it was bad. From spell damage making no sense and extra damage not having enough synergy, night terror’s new color set-up, dokkalfar still being tricky to use, the only pluses you mentioned are queen and swarm. So from the outset it seemed like you disliked the changes or thought they were bad even though this is a vary small list of troop changes out of the many that had happened in this update. Also it seems like your first sentence setup that kind of mood reading. [quote=“Mr.Strange, post:1, topic:9660”]
Well, the PC patch has adjusted a few troops, and totally ruined my monster team that ran Night Terror and Swamplash :frowning:
[/quote]

With a sentance like this why wouldn’t someone think you disliked the update.

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Because not everyone thinks that change is bad, and that having to modify teams is a huge problem. Mr. Strange reacted to the changes, and stated that said changes made his old monster team invalid (as it did one of mines). That’s just facts, with a hint of sadness (because he most probably loved that team), but that doesn’t mean he disliked the overall troop rework, nor does it mean he can’t get over losing one of his teams. You just read too much into his post me think.

(Edit for typos.)

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That is fair, i did a gnarly job of reading too far into his ost to the point i thought there was going to be anarchy in the dev area. That is completely my fault. I understand losing a team or two due to changes in troop design. It sucks, and some time the changes hit and it buffs a team (my knight team woot)

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