Still too powerful imo. Removing a Troop from the enemy lineup just scales to well - even without giving you any Bonus.
If anything, the devouring Troop should get the status: FULL - halves Attack and Mana-Gain - for the remainder of the Battle.
And Maws 3. Trait could be: Not affected by Full…
A different approach to devour could be to not immediately kill the target. Instead it gets “temporarily” removed from the lineup and loses 20% of his starting life and armor per turn.
If the devourer (Maw) gets killed before the troop dies, it is put back into the lineup.
If the troop doesn’t die after 5 turns, it gets “spit out” and back into the lineup.
If the team of the devoured troop gets killed while still devoured, or it was the last troop, the game ends. (Maw wins again)
If Maw is big enough to devour a Behemoth, it could just as well use up two spots of the lineup, that would make it a 3vs3 after his cast and he still has the boosted stats.
Gobchomper is a good counter btw, cause he is empowered and deals double spell damage vs monsters.
Another counter that works vs Maw at first spot is a fully traited TSO at the first place combined with an empowered Mercy.
Time to run the roll that everyone hates and and play Devil’s Advocate!
Seems everyone thinks that The Great Maw and Devour are busted just because of the idea of one-shotting a troop, forget about getting it’s stats. While I would agree that Devour in itself is very strong, I disagree in it being broken in practice.
Let’s review, shall we?
Every single card with Devour is Ultra-Rare or higher, meaning the odds of obtaining one are low, so more casual players will be less likely to have them. This means you only need to worry about dedicated players, who would be able to to break any mechanic anyway, and then may choose something besides Maw (maybe goblins?). That means the amount of people playing Maw in a deck should be at a lower rate than what I think it being hinted at here. Keep in mind I play on console, so I have no idea how the PC/Mobile world is going or handling things, just using logic.
Maw himself is a Legendary, second only to Mythic. The odds of getting one of these is even lower, so now you are looking at people who are so dedicated they spend hours a day grinding GoW…or they forked over some cash and got lucky. Either way, they are much more invested than the regular daily player, which should mean even less people to encounter using Maw.
Now, for those who DO have Maw…I can only imagine the grinding to get the stones and souls needed to max him out, not to mention needing five MORE of Maw to truly max him out…that is a ton of time and effort needed for that! That should mean even less people using him…I think you all see where this is going.
Lastly, Maw is not self-sufficient. What I mean by that is that neither his ability nor his traits help him pull off his ability, and therefore he requires another troop’s aid to pull off, and you pretty much have to run either a Brown/Yellow, Mono-Yellow, or Mono-Brown Banner if you want to pull that ability off. You don’t have to put him in front, but you might as well if you truly want to get the full effects of his glory, and definitely ahead of any troops that shares a color with him. Some players may not enjoy how dedicated to the one troops they have to be in order to just simply use him…ergo, less people using him.
Now, as for whether the card itself is actually busted in the hands of someone who meets all that criteria…I would still say no.
Out of those six, we have two that can target any troop but only have a 25% (1 in 4) chance of actually devouring them, a chance so low that you can’t rely on it and it’s better to have some backup for them. Then there are two who have a 40% chance (a little shy of 1 in 2), but that is only against specific troop types, so that heavily balances them. There are only two troops who will always successfully devour, and one targets allies while the other targets enemies.
See, Ol’ Maw is the only one of his kind: he’s the only one who can successfully devour an enemy with his ability, and a guaranteed devour is insanely strong…so +2 made sure to balance him.
First off, the chances of getting him as a card are low, and he takes a crapton of effort and luck to get to maximum goodness. Obtain-ability and effort aside, he’s still rather balanced. Other teams of that caliber can easily take this wurm of a man, I mean we’ve got turns for dayz Goblins, stacking skulls, true damage, high damage AOE…at that level of play, he should be easy to take out quickly (and as in added bonus, since a team has to be so centered around him, destroying him can possibly dismantle said teams rather easily).
The card itself takes 24 mana to use…24?! That the highest in the game currently, aside maybe the new mythic. Hoyl Carp, that is a LOT of mana. I can’t think of a way to get that in one turn…maybe with multiple Stone/Air Links in effect + Mono-Banner + a 5-Match for the Mana Surge? Would that even be enough? That forces a crazy team comp, and even then it would be up to RNGesus for that to even happen! No, this is why they like to run Mercy with good Ol’ Maw: she doesn’t share any colors, and she turns a color neither of them use into a color he loves…and heals and cleanses too! Even with her though, it still seems like you would need a Mono-Banner and maybe even still an Air-Link to fill him up in a consistently quick manner…otherwise he kinda just sits there and hopes to do something before getting wrecked.
Also, his stats are pretty low in terms of HP and Armor. 10 HP at Lvl 1…that’s child’s play, one of the many reasons you HAVE to max him out. Even at max though, he only has 12 Armor and 35 HP. Mang would destroy him pretty easy, and beyond that getting up to that much damage isn’t hard. Plus, with RNGesus usually being on your opponent’s side, between spell damage and skulls he can die VERY FAST…much like any other mainly-offensive troop.
Let’s get into the meat of Ol’ Maw now: Frenzy buffs his attack upon damage take…not bad, but it’s been put on troops that it works better with. Huge is a good one here, giving 2 life on each 4 or 5 match you make, and this is great for trying to keep him around…but you aren’t always guaranteed a 4 or 5 match, in fact lots of times you are forced to make multiple 3 matches. Lastly is his Legendary-Unique trait, the one that everyone is talking about: Hunger. 15% chance to Devour a troop on skull damage. As far as I know, skull damage only applies when that particular troop either matches, destroys, or explodes skulls, although it may only refer to matching skulls.
Now I understand that there is a bug with this currently, though I’m not sure what that bug does, but let’s be honest here: it doesn’t matter how many skulls you match, it’s still only a 15% chance to devour someone. That’s less than 1 in 4, that’s incredibly low in terms of chances, even with multiple skull matches. Moreover, it’s only going to effect the first troop in line if it goes off, and any team should be able to win when missing one of it’s troops…that’s just a given.
Oh, and let’s not forget that he can only do it once!
That means that the gems he makes do nothing for him, and could only work for teammates. That means you only get to devour one enemy troop. What if that’s not enough? What if you misclicked? What if you just pick the wrong one? What if the choice doesn’t matter as victory will not be yours regardless?
Over all I really think that Ol’ Maw himself is balanced. So is Mercy…it just so happens that together, that are really REALLY good…but not unbeatable by any means.
My advice is to see him in action before you form an opinion.
Maw isn’t self-sufficient for his spell, that is true (and he has a high mana cost that somewhat offsets it). However, Hunger is available off the bat, and while 15% sounds small, it triggers frustratingly often. Unlike most other troops that have a proc-on-skull, his is truly devastating (contrast with, say, Burning or Poison, which are small damage ticks and nothing more).
Devour is undoubtedly the strongest ability in the game right now. No other single spell skews the balance of power by 1.5-2 troops in favor of the caster. It’s out of control in PvP, and enough people have this Legendary that the argument that there shouldn’t be that many is untenable. Also, there was recently a yellow/brown traitstone week, so a great many of these Maws are fully-traited.
If I get Maw/Mercy/Sheggra/IK for all three possible opponents to spend a gem to get something else and get the same three lineups only from other people, that’s ridiculous.
If used as intended then yes he is balanced cause 3 attacks out of 20 should be a devour hit with his trait. Right now though the bug with skulls counting as a multihit makes devour broken passively. Not to mention the rollover bug and the ghosting bug. To count bone dragon (looking at you) is bugged with 2 bugs and maw with one. Sand shark can devour with a 1 in 4 chance and costs less mana just saying.
You say he is hard to obtain? I dont know what kind of guild you are a member, but many guilds produces 1k+ glory keys and 1k+ gems weekly. Nothing is actually hard to get this way…
Everytime I go ranked pvp and get a set of 3 opponents at least one of them got Maw in team, fully traited. So the only thing that comes across my mind after reading you is: are we palying the same game?
It’s not balanced, sorry. There are counters for all other damage types in game, but Devour is at once the strongest and completely unstoppable. Hell, you can’t even Entangle Maw to stop Devour because the next time his Frenzy procs, he snaps right out of it.
You can be successful playing against Maw, certainly, and you can even have reasonably decent odds; but that requires very specific builds, and you’re still on pins and needles the whole game, because the AI only has to get lucky once and you’re done.
This skews the data as most and i mean 3000 different guilds actually do not move or do anything. They are dead guilds. Those in the top 1000 might make alot of keys but i doubt it.
If not for the bugs, we can counter him is what i am saying. Silence for his spell and entangle for his trait. Yes those wear off however without the aforementioned bugs he is fodder you can even give him disease or frozen as well.
I disagree. It takes only a few minutes of inspection of the top players in PvP to see that most people disagree with you, @killerman3333. That said, you’re welcome to your opinion.
“One should be wary of offering unsolicited opinions, James. You should spare yourself the embarrassment of discovering their exact value to your listener”
Only counter was to cast a quick Alt+F4, which doesnt even need mana. But they even took that from us, since this now counts as a loss. So they basically took the only available counter, thereby buffing Broken Maw.
