With the recent nerf to Explosions, an issue arised concerning the design of troops that are capable of only exploding a few gems…
Given that the reasoning behind the nerf was the high amount of mana generated by troops who can explode many gems i think there is a clever and simple solution to address both problems:
Create a new effect called Blast.
The devs would simply Copy+Paste the lines of code for explosions, save it as a new keyword named Blast instead of Explode and then use it on all the troops/weapons who explodes high number of gems. It would use the same formula of 50% mana gain we have now.
After that they simply “un-nerf” the Explode of all the remaining troops/weapons they deem adequate to have a better mana generation.
Sounds simple enough and wouldn’t make any future troops that explodes less gems useless for design purposes while keeping the balance of troops who can modify bigger portions of the board.
All good?
Now… Let’s see… If we can just move on and take a look at Wild Plains…
I’ve been getting the feeling the purpose of the nerf was actually to deal with 1-gem exploders, not the big ones like we thought. I mean, as everyone has pointed out, the big ones didn’t suffer too badly.
I got this feeling because Titan is such an overpowering class. I have a feeling they’d like to take back its gem explosion but can’t figure out a way to do that without making players upset.
The longer they take to address old problems the worse it gets. In this process they surely threw a lot of troops and weapon upgrades that weren’t so great into the “never use again” pile unless they change/rework each one.
Even future troops with such effects would be useless and unreliable, which means they will probably be released into Wild Plains, home of some of the worst and weakest designs the devs ever came up with…
Yeah, for clarification I’m not wholesale disagreeing with your idea. I think exploders are a mess and hard to clean up. The “right” thing to do right now would probably be to cap the number of gems a troop can explode. People would riot at this point. Another good solution: remove free turns from the game. People would riot.
I think it’s fair to say a hole has been dug, and the sides are slippery.
I see another reason for nerfing exploders: blocks in Delve.
They are annoying when using converters (like Alchemist), but you can use explosions to break them.
So explosion gets as much mana than a converter and can break the annoying blocks = nerf exploders.
I think the blocks weren’t even accounted to warrant such changes… I could be wrong on this of course, but the impact they have feels so small even when you are using converters. But if the devs are even planning different blocks with other effects then it would make more sense.
It would also makes a lot of sense if they decide to finally rework Wild Plains i must say…
I do like the idea of the blast and I would like to see explosions put to 50% instead of the 49.9% they’re playing as. Currently destroy pulls more mana than explode because if you do not explode at least two of a color in that specific explosion you get nothing.
I don’t believe this nerf was aimed at a specific troop, class, or weapon. This nerf was geared at making money. If you slow the ability to make mana, you slow down the battle, slow down your ability to get resources, slow down your progress. This nerf effects early gamers more than late gamers as they may not have the resources, troops, etc to add storms or combine troops in a way to compensate. To make up the difference: spend more gems. Everyone is feeling the drain of gems this week so…spend money to get more gems.
The only worthwhile alternative classes I can think of are Bard, Dragonguard, and in a pinch Archer. I haven’t pushed Priest far enough to be certain it might be better, partially because I’m not losing as Titan enough in any situation to seek an alternative.
What’s so funny about that? Instead of tearing down, maybe try building up.
Disprove what?
First off, i know for a fact many high end players still prefer the Priest class over anything else, and even among the Titan players i’d wager many don’t even spec into Lightning Strike because auto enraging while skull spamming is just too damn enjoyable.
But for argument’s sake let’s say that this talent actually makes Titan overpowered and the Devs decide it needed to be nerfed.
You think they’d rather nerf 100+ troops + a majority of upgraded weapons + that particular talent instead of just that one talent alone to avoid “making people upset”? That’s hilarious, man. Conspiracy theory gold.
When the Wisp/Mab team was overpowering, they nerfed Wisp.
When the Kraken/Mab team was overpowering, they nerfed Kraken.
When Kraken/Mab was still too powerful, they removed Mana Surge from all 4-matches.
When Kraken/Mab was still too powerful, they nerfed Kraken again, and changed how clusters are calculated affecting every troop with 4/5 match traits.
When Nyxbringer was too powerful, they nerfed Trolls.
When Nyxbringer was still too powerful, they nerfed Nyx.
When nobody was complaining about a Doomskull meta for longer than six hours, they nerfed Doomskulls twice.
When Divines were too powerful, they nerfed all exploding troops in the game.
Yes. I think they might occasionally make a knee-jerk reaction to a problem and sometimes nerf an entire category of troop instead of doing something about the one that seems like the eye of the storm. It’s not a hill I’m going to die on, but I hardly think history shows it’s a ridiculous thought.
It’s actually less ridiculous than believing they nerfed explosions to deal with Divines. The nerf doesn’t do squat to Divines, but it does a lot to other troops.
The real Occam’s Razor answer is “I guess they didn’t like how explosions work, period”, because really focusing on any one category of troop makes it seem silly.
While i don’t entirely agree with your line of assessments on the particular nerfs you mention, I am absolutely with you on the part about knee-jerk reactions, but i give the Devs a bit more credit than you do, i don’t think they are outright morons.
I don’t think the Devs would ever think nerfing one particular thing(Lightning Strike) + over a hundred other troops/weapons would ever make less people upset than just nerfing that one particular thing alone.
This one makes sense. New faction event shows how much you can get with gems, and there is another faction event happening this weekend and yet another the Tuesday after. Of course you want to encourage people to buy gems. I’m not even mad; this is just a good business decision from I+2.
It sure is. This week is has been created by someone that knows how to make money. I’ve spent more, myself, this week than I ever and we haven’t even hit the gem sale.
…the downside is they will make enough that we’re never going to see the explosion nerf reversed…or even amended. Even if it’s in the best interest of all players. It’s not in the best interest of the companies wallet. That’s just business.
I believe the devs showed more than once they are willing to listen¹, and my proposition to make two effects/keywords similar is easy to implement.
It would be good for the troops who can explode less gems to keep them useful and wouldn’t affect the Mythics/Big Exploders in any way, so they wouldn’t lose any money no matter how many weird and twisted “logic gymnastics” people try to create to relate the gems generation and explosions.
Yes, slowing down some troops and teams have an impact in the economy, so more changes can come up eventually, but having Lil’ Exploders un-nerfed would never get in the way of such plans.
¹ Now, they just need to listen and make decent adjustments for Wild Plains, it’s about damn time…
