Oh boy, I just can’t wait for the pc /mobile brigade to get console ai. This forum will collapse.
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I think this is the best argument anybody can make about Famine being OP. Is FAMINE supposed to be the Horseman who swoops down a slays a single target? 
Nope… I would say that sounds more like WAR. Who, imho, still can’t EFFECTIVELY do this.
When a troop is no longer functioning in a way that feels right for the story/rpg/ feel of that character than there is a problem. When that problem, comes along with a “secondary” ability that results in essentially pressing the reset button on your entire team. That is a BIG PROBLEM!
Solution:
I think that the MANA DRAIN is the PRIMARY function of FAMINE. That fits the feel of the troop. With that being understood, then the DMG should just be a bonus because it is a Mythic troop after all. So I would propose changing the ratio from x2 to 2:1. While that may take some of the “literal” teeth away from the troop it will by no means remove the metaphorical “teeth” because FAMINE should be primarily utilized as that reset button. 
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What about taking it back to where it started 1:1? although I would support either 2:1 or 1:1.
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1:1 might be ok too. I just think the x2 is un-CHARACTERISTIC of the Horseman that is a “non-combatant”. To be fair part of this might be because the devs did not account for people fielding teams of multiple Mythics? But when I have 4 troops sitting on a total of 40 mana, and the AI gets a lucky string of drops and Famine casts then knowing he’s got an 80+ dmg wallop coming at me PLUS a TEAM RESET is beyond annoying.
It doesn’t feel right for the character of Famine. And that’s an egregious error that must be rectified! 
… imho… of course 
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I disagree. With same logic, then whatever meta comes next will always consider as broken? Also I’m actually curious on what’s the most used troops on defense. I wonder if @Sirrian can give us table of the most used troops like he did before when we were discussing about BD.
If that’s how people always feel with meta, then I agree with @beanie42 that the problem is lack of defensive variety because there’s no incentive of using different teams to pull defense victory and lack of good troops on defense. Well not in PvP, but in GW defense victory means something.
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This is my thinking, that any single over-used troop, or an over-used 2 or 3 teams is “broken”. In my opinion there should be a minimum of 25-30 “meta defensive troops”, that’s less than 10% of the catalog. As for a table, I’m sure @Sirrian would have something more expansive, but I actually just finished doing a review of the PvP top 100 defenses, so I’ll share my findings.
33 players had single troop defenses and 24 had event defenses (meaning at least 3 cards that have event bonus, fourth card could be anything, including “meta” troops). Of the 43 remaining defenses, there were basically 4 groups:
- 8 Famine-based (4 with DM, 3 with Psion, 1 with both)
- 9 Kerberos-based (4 with DM/FG/GS, 4 with 2xKerb/FG/GS, and a unique Maw/DM/Kerb/GS)
- 4 were EK/Valk/Mab (3 with Mercy, 1 with Psion)
- 22 other (but of those, 1 team used 3 “meta” troops, 7 teams used 2, 6 used 1, 8 used 0)
So 29 of the 43 “real” defenses or 67% contained 2 or more “meta” troops from a group of just 9 (Famine, Psion, EK, Valk, Mab, Kerb, FG, GS, and the DM class).
Something else the data points out that might be less obvious is that a third of the players opt for a one-troop defense in order to avoid these meta teams. Obviously some do it for easier battles, but there have been many posts from players who do it simply to avoid the monotony of the “Big 3”, so it would be interesting to know the proportion.
NOTE: I realize DM is not a “troop”, but rather a class and then you actually select a hero weapon. For completeness, all cases but one used either Black Manacles or Crypt Keeper. That means only 1 of the 13 classes and 2 of the 157 weapons. So while technically inaccurate, I think my generalization of DM as a troop adds a significant amount of simplicity while not dramatically changing the results.
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Wow, thanks for doing this!
There are some stark differences between PC/Mobile and console. For example, I almost never see a single-troop defence anymore. Also, our most common meta-team seems to be anything/valk/justice/Mab, which doesn’t appear on your list, unless it was one of the “other” teams. I haven’t run down the top 100 defence teams, but I feel pretty confident based on my personal play and forum/chat chatter among console folk.
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I agree, that a troop just being prominent in a meta doesn’t automatically make it broken/op. It might just be a really good troop in a variety of ways.
However in this particular case when in addition to it being very prominent we also see Famine appearing in any amount of copies in a team with one or two irrelevant filler troops and all these team ‘setups’ (as much as you can call stuff a random amount of Famines in your defense team a setup) resulting in very good defense win/loss ratios we can safely say, that s**t is broken.
Gorgo
Dragon soul
Famine
Mab
I only see these 2 team 95% of the time
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I almost never see that on PS4. I see some other combinations with Gorgo/TDS/Famine, but usually not Maw as the 4th. Lots of FG/Kerb teams, as well, but that is more similar to PC/Mobile.
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Lol sorry i misstyped, i ment mab
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THAT, I’ve seen. Still not epidemic, but gaining in popularity.
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Instead of nerfing famine further (which imo isn’t needed) why don’t we make other mythics more relevant with a buff?
If we have more strong troops we would see more of them out to use.
But ketras and jotnar buff have been announced so we just need to be patient for it to come.
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That buff by not actually changing a single thing about him yeah that’ll be a thrill^^
Anyways i like underpowered troops being buffed as much as the next guy, probably even more if the buffed troops in question are Giants. But what i don’t want is a number of troops being buffed up to anywhere near the absurd level of power and annoyance Famine has.
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I like the attention to detail in your data collection and categories you assigned, but throwing out 24% of defenses teams because they rotate weekly seems to introduce bias in the summation of your data (but not your overall conclusion). I would say there are 67% “real” defenses (43+24). Very minor point in an otherwise excellent post.
We still have a problem with variety, although in fairness to the developers its probably around 1/4 improved than before Weekly Events were introduced to the game. I would love to see the true data on all players defense teams like Sirrians has provided before across player levels.
I enjoyed the post.
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Fair point, and I wasn’t trying to “throw out” those event based teams. Maybe instead of “real” something like “teams built with unbonused troops”. And rather than throw the other teams out, I think the numbers show something pretty telling, and that’s how well the weekly event bonuses actually seem to be working. Imagine how horrible these numbers would be without events as an incentive for other teams.
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What if we didnt have defense teams.
You queue up with a team and then are matched against other teams people have queued up with to play with themselves.
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Then nobody would ever lose anything. I can’t decide if I like nail-biters when I play GoW or if I want turn-my-brain-off decompression (I play other games for the challenge), but I certainly don’t want to be facing teams full of complex troops the AI can’t play properly. That’s just boring.
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I’ve also been thinking along similar lines. Devs need to either (1) incentivise players to vary and change defence teams or (2) rework pvp rolling completely to create variety away from player discretion.
If/when we get a competent AI, I think we’ll see a resurgence in defense diversity. Right now it feels like the only way to have any success from your defense is to use/abuse the random instant kill mechanics because it is so simple an AI can do it. Same reason Bone Dragon was so popular, it didn’t require thought so whenever the AI cast it was a “good” cast. Likewise with Famine, draining all mana is rarely a poor choice.
But an AI that figured out how to use converters when they produce an extra turn, or ignore skulls when entangled, or cast spells that would win instead of a skull match, or not cast a spell that loses outright (Elspeth)…
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