Warning for new players

Do you have Krystenax? Dynamite combo with gorg and TDS.

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I do not. I have ragnagord which I played with a bit and I think I got the half mana trait on him, but I wasn’t able to make him work. I was messing with him when I was using Azura, but I found Azura to be more consistent in the team I had.

I remember in your phase of the game I used to have looping teams.
Hero/Archer with Yasmine’s Chalice
Alchemist
Valkyrie
Sunweaver

Ofcourse the weapon can be difficult to get. But that spot is more flexible, the other three are the looping part.

Also, as others have said, a team like Hellcat/Alchemist/Goblin Rocket x2 doesnt need to give up turns to kill, once it gets going. And it doenst need traits either, tho the link traits do help.

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I fundamentally disagree with this advice. If your aim is to eventually buy Deathknight armor anyway, then buying Dragon and/or Celestial first is literally throwing gems away, as Deathknight replaces BOTH of those armors. 1k gems is at minimum 110 chances at a Legendary or Mythic (pending you haven’t unlocked VIP). I’m sorry, but it’s just not worth buying either armor if you ever intend to get DK.

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You are partially correct, I use to joke that I wish I’d bought a negative exp armor when starting out.

I like the daily 2 week gem purchase, $10 and 28 days gives you enough for dragon armor. Death knight armor, best purchase you’ll ever make in gems but the XP and leveling can be a problem.

But, Death Knight armor shows a guild you are a serious player and want to play long term. Nothing is more important than joining the best guild that will let you in.

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While I don’t fully agree, I’ve complained similarly about how PvP matchmaking works.

What a newbie player should know:

The matchmaking algorithm is not documented, but players have more or less figured out it is based on the “average power level of your team”. I think it’s also been deduced until you reach some level (probably 200 or 400), it sort of caps the opponents that you’ll face. Because that’s sort of complicated, let’s talk about a player who is around level 700 like me.

Let’s say that, for some reason, I never spent any souls or traitstones and I’ve been playing PvP with a team that has 1,000 power level. Somewhere around 50-100 PvP matches in, that becomes my “average” power level. So even though I’m level 700, the game is likely going to matchmake me vs. newbie teams. But also, since my team is relatively weak, I will likely have as much trouble beating those teams as I did when I first started. (Experts will have some quibbles with this and I say let’s ignore level-based stat gains for simplicity, OK?)

Now let’s say I finally decide to build, level, and trait a new team. I end up making something with an 8,000 power level. I’m going to keep facing those weaker teams for a little while, because my “average power level” is still 1,000. I’ll think this team is amazing! But over time, the matches will get gradually harder until at some point all of my opponents are also in the 8,000 range.

Interestingly, I think it works both ways. I haven’t tested it, I’d love to hear feedback: I think if I played with a 1,000 power level team and lost hundreds of matches, I’d start facing newbie opponents again. There’s… practically no value in doing this, but logically one can assume it works. Temporarily. The moment I start using a stronger team is the moment my opponents get harder.

TL;DR:

If you have a stronger team, you face stronger PvP opponents. This is not really related to your level, but the higher the level the more likely you have a strong team.

I COULD BE WRONG.

It’s possible your player level is somehow involved with matchmaking too. I don’t think it is. I’ve been using the same team from about level 450 to level ~750 and I don’t feel like I’ve ever seen PvP get significantly harder in a way that wasn’t explainable by “the meta teams shifted against my favor”.

So how does Deathknight Armor hurt?

It gives bonuses to XP, Souls, and Gold at a better rate than any other armor. So when you use Deathknight Armor, you get more stuff. If you have a lot of souls, you’re probably going to level up your team. If you have a lot of gold, you’ll probably open more chests.

So it’s inevitable that if you gain power faster you’ll build a powerful team faster. That means you’ll face stronger PvP opponents faster. Deathknight Armor helps you gain souls faster, so you can level faster and have a powerful team faster.

But it only hurts if you use those souls to level your specific PvP team.

So should I buy it?

*shrug*

To me, it seems like Deathknight Armor is there specifically to offer expert players a way to power through the “bad” parts of creating a new account faster. $50 puts you exactly at VIP level 3, the first level that really matters for competitive players. Deathknight Armor skips the initial grind to get 500 gems for Dragon/Celestial armor, which takes a little bit of time even if you have access to a great guild. The keys you get are very likely to produce at least 1 really powerful troop you can build a team around. For an expert player who is starting a new account, I feel like Deathknight Armor probably skips a week or so of grinding.

But as a newbie player, I don’t know if any of that is quite so exciting. You need to learn which troops you should level and trait. It’s easy to spend all your souls leveling a very bad team to an extent where you get “stuck” in PvP for a while until you can build a better one. I think that’s what happened to OP here: they built a team that was great at early levels but fell apart once matchmaking threw tougher teams at them.

Advice:

Power level is the biggest factor in matchmaking, but is only based on some function of rarity, level, and traits. There are some 9,000 power level teams that will almost never win an appropriately-leveled PvP match. There are some 8,000 power level teams that compete against 9,700 power level teams. So the best thing you can do to stop from getting “stuck” is to judiciously keep your power level low until you can assemble a very good team.

If you want to spend $50, I’d argue you should shoot for whatever gives you the most gem/event keys and/or traitstones early in the game. Traitstones are very precious, and you don’t have to spend them right away. Keys unlock better troops. You would rather your power level go up because “I have a legendary” than “I traited a common”.

Don’t spend traitstones at all without asking on the forums if the troop you are traiting is good enough to warrant it. Mythics and Legendaries are worth traiting. Most Epics are worth traiting. Everything beneath has very specific niches and you’ll be able to judge if you should trait them after you’ve learned more about the traits and what they do.

Try to pace yourself in terms of leveling your troops. If the game’s too easy, gain +1 or +2 levels and see if it gets harder after a few dozen rounds. Don’t rush to max out your team just because you can.

Play the dungeon every. single. day. Even if you can’t win consistently, you should try to get enough diamonds to buy legendaries from the soulforge. Save your diamonds until The Dragon Soul or some equally-powerful exploder shows up. You might have to wait so long you have enough diamonds for a mythic troop. Those are good power multipliers, but in general most mythics aren’t very good unless you also have some legendaries and epics to support their abilities.

None of this has anything to do with Deathknight armor, and I don’t think the extra boost to souls makes a very significant impact on how quickly you can shoot yourself in the foot. The problem is if you do the most obvious thing and spend all of your resources, you can back yourself into a corner. The armor only gives you more resources.

REAL TL;DR:

The matchmaking thinks a level 18 maxed out Villager is as strong as a level 15 or so partially traited The Dragon Soul. The Dragon Soul will win that fight 100% of the time with one arm tied behind its back. Armor makes it easier to build a team of maxed-our Villagers before you have something like The Dragon Soul. Then you lose. A lot. So just hoard your resources and be smart about what you level. For at least a month, your teams will get much stronger via new troops than from leveling the ones you have.

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I don’t completly agree with the OP but I can see where all of this comes from. Most of the people who answer here don’t have such problems bc they got their legendaries (and some mythics too, probably) before the chest nerfs. Today getting mythic and legendaries is really hard (and as consequence leveling your kingdoms to 5 stars). I can see it very well on example of my wife. She started playing about a year (or little less) ago, then stopped around level 250 when for a long time. She came back 3 weeks ago. Now around level 800 she has freakishly op sets compared to what newer players on similar levels have. The biggest problem for her were getting enough troops from Urskaya, Merlantis and Suncrest to make it to 5 stars. I can see why the author of the original post would feel like he/she has too high level with too little resources when compared with players with (about) similar level but most of the card base build much earlier.

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I know you weren’t directly speaking to me, but I actually started in October, which was after the chest nerf, and I also struggled around the 400+ range. However, all you need to do is get into a good guild that finishes all tasks (really not that hard, even as a newer player), and the cards start flying in, and the difficulty starts to lessen quite a bit.

I bought deathknight armor on day one because of public chat recommendation. I can’t think of the last middle PVP opponent I lost to.

Orange cards (or mythics) don’t win games, deck synergy & attention to the board win games. You’re playing against AI, and while it’s perfectly fine, it’s not perfect. (Let’s just hope Google DeepMind doesn’t get involved!)

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sorry I cannot agree with you, if you are in a good guild most of that will be taken care of along with good troop advise, the gold and soul increase will help a lot when you want to complete tasks

PVP match pairings are based on Level, PVP score and team score. In no particular order. So Death Knight armour should not have a huge impact on all three potential pairings.

Besides, Celestial looks cooler. :sunglasses:

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I play GoW since day 1 and it took me almost one year to reach level 1000… so it looks like that DK helps you a lot to level up.

I think there is a difference between make things possible and makes things easier. Ascend/Mythics troops belong to the 2nd part, not the 1st one (in PVP at least).
In your message, it seems that in your situation (i.e. high level, not enough OP troops), you cannot win in PVP, but I didn’t catch what was your issue because:

  • ascend bonus skill points are laughable
  • you should be able to level up your kingdoms (gold bonus from DK helps) so get these bonus points

The best way to get troops is to join a good guild (for guild tasks and Leg. tasks).

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Death Knight Armor increases your level faster. The fact that it’s even taken into consideration automatically increases the difficulty. By how much only you know.

Now I’m not gonna try to sit here an defend my point, cause clearly the majority disagree with me; but I would ask that majority one simple question… how many bought that dk armor prior to level 50?

I think Slyp’s post above is good because it shows that my experience is a symptom, not the problem. The question to you and yours is how much do you want to improve those kind of experiences vs how much do you want to defend the decisions you’e already made.

I wholly admit that I’m a new player and may not know what I’m talking about, but if you want to retain new players, you have to at least listen to the ones that speak out.

Several people have brought this up already, but I didn’t see an answer:

Are you in a guild?

If not, I think joining a decent guild would solve many of your problems.

Consider: I’m in a good guild. Not a ‘top’ guild by any stretch, but we always have 29-30 active players, we finish all statue tasks every week + half a dozen LTs We usually hit 40k seals. Meanwhile our requirements are modest-- 200k gold, 1000 seals, 100 trophies plus play GW every day.

I’m not here to recruit, we don’t even have openings ATM!

My point is that there are dozens of guilds out there just like mine and most would be happy to have a 700-level player like yourself.

In exchange for joining a guild and fulfilling their requirements, you get:

Guild Skill Bonuses– guild statues provide me with +8 life and armor, +3 attack and +2 magic

Other bonuses– +50% XP, +50% Souls, +2 Glory per PVP battle, 6 extra Treasure Hunt turns, +10% Tribute, +6% Tribute chance, and finally mana mastery bonuses for each color, the exact amount depending on your guild’s statue levels, but to take mine as an example it varies from +150 to +166.

Weekly rewards– Just the basic statue tasks, when completed, give all members the following (these numbers are dated, they are from the initial 3.1 nerf but before final adjustments were made to bring back the rewards a bit): 5250 souls, 360 glory, 140 gems, 9 maps, 3000 shards, 150 diamonds, 515 gold keys, 360 glory keys, 80 gem keys, 24 event keys. Plus level 5 Guild Chests for your seals. Plus whatever the LTs bring in, usually rather paltry but we’ve also gotten one Mythic and several Legendary troops from LTs.

(Hopefully) Community– friendly teammates who can give advice and help you improve your teams.

If you’re not in a guild like this, you must find one and you’ll be glad to have your Deathknight armor after all. :yum:

If you are in a guild then I just wasted half an hour! :roll_eyes:

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I appreciate your half an hour!

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Sorry I feel bad. I’m in a good guild, our gm has very low requirements but we’re completing all our tasks this week. Also I’m on xbox, so recruitment is prolly moot.

I just wanna say I appreciate all feedback and comments both positive and negative. Yeah I said I was gonna quit which was dumb, and knee jerk, I’m not. I wish there existed a template where I could present my experiences in a way that weren’t divisive or bitchy, but I know it doesn’t exist.

If I could sum up my problem it would be this. My entire experience I was trapped in this box of grind, which is fair, it’s a very grindy game. But my options were grind explore, grind challenges, or grind easy pvp. When I wanted to “play” the second and third pvp options were so outrageously hard that they became unplayable.

Which mneant all I could ever do in this game was either grind or spend money. For a long ass time, until I spent money, I couldn’t “play”. That’s what aggrevated me and ultimately led to this post.

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Please note that I know the $60 dk armor helped trap me in that box. My alt has that problem not at all. Yep, I have an alt. Cause my main is level 700 and still hasn’t gotten enough of any troop to elevate anything to mythic. That’s the discrepancy I’m trying to bring up.

Just so you know, I would withdraw every single negative thing in this entire thread if the matchmaking was remotely balanced. It’s not, everyone seems (I think) to know it’s not, is it really that bad to balance it?

It’s probably worth pointing out that when I first started out I didn’t buy an expensive armour so I wasn’t power levelling, but I still had a lot of issues with the second and third trophy matches until I really started getting decent units, it was only after I started trailing units and building up my kingdoms that I begun to stand a chance.

The same applies to my new character on mobile (main is on console) he really struggles with the second trophy match (more losses than wins).

Thanks and thats very fair enough.