So… quick insight into what we’re currently thinking here…
This is very insightful, and THIS is one of the 3 key big-picture things we need to address in a “best-case” solution.
- General troop balance issues
- Mechanics that are highly valuable when used in conjunction with a given meta (in this case the Guild Wars scoring system)
- A lack of feedback on how your defenses are affecting the outcome, coupled with a lack of clear reward for those defenses, which creates a certain inertia (i.e. “I’ll just copy his defense, because it looks cool, and because setting defenses is boring and doesn’t really give me anything”)
Fact is that @Paazabel is quite correct, we can see the best-performing defenses (in terms of wins at the higher levels) are the ones that are customized for the week’s events, or customized for a color-day (e.g. adding Amira on Blue day)… or both, obviously… but not the meta defenses. We’re just so %@$#%$#ing BAD at rewarding you for this behavior in Gems!!!
HOWEVER, as in point 2 above, the meta devour defenses in GW feel really valuable because Kerberos can get a quick random snack and mess up somebody’s perfect score, even though he’s unlikely to win. Similarly in high level PvP, where the meta evolved towards speed, mana drain is extremely effective at ruining somebody’s day!
To answer these issues, I don’t believe that the solution is necessarily:
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A bunch of troop nerfs… general troop balance issues aside (which we tinker with on occasion), have you noticed that for every thread saying “Nerf XXXX”, there will be a bunch of responses yelling “No!”. And I guarantee there are more in the 99.9% of our players who aren’t on the forums! I think the solutions here are more about mechanics and less abotu individual numbers.
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More counters… I generally dislike heavy-handed counters that make something completely obsolete, so don’t expect any of those any time soon. And while we DO have some more counters on the way, because more variety is good, I don’t feel these are a real solution to the problem, because (while I personally enjoy countering teams), many of our players do not seem to find enjoyment in that, which is fine.
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A heavy nerf to (or removal of) certain mechanics… because mostly they’re quite fun to use for players at a number of level ranges, and just doing this isn’t really addressing an underlying problem, which is something I speak to in pt #2 above…
“Mechanics that are highly valuable when used in conjunction with a given meta”
I think this is really the problem. The meta gets stuck, and the mechanics that are currently valuable in that meta cause certain troops to rise up and become prominent.
Currently, because it’s hard to actually have your defense WIN in end-game, AND because we’re bad at telling/rewarding you about that even when it does happen, the prevailing wisdom is (quite rightly) try to get kills with insta-kill mechanics… Things like devour become highly valued, and the meta becomes stuck.
I think the solution lies in finding ways to make it fun & rewarding to experiment with new stuff. And partly that might even be about presenting players with more options of teams to fight, where there is no implied obligation to “always take the 3-trophy fight in slot #3”. We’re working on some ideas there.
Weekly events have “un-stuck” the meta at certain level-ranges, but they’re NOT un-sticking it in the top 6 Guild War brackets. So we’ve done a good thing for 99% of the playerbase here 
but the 1% up in the top brackets (who are highly represented on the forums) are having a poor experience. That’s obviously not something we want, and we’re actively working on stuff right now… it’s NOT a trivial issue to solve, and frankly I haven’t played too many games that ever solved it to a large degree, but hopefully we’ll have some ideas to share shortly.