yeah and if you bring only one indigestible/impervious troop then the kerberos will have 75% chance to roll his devour, same analogy with deathmark, not my problem you choose only one unit with defensive counter
also as far as i know they said they will observe famine further so perhaps the mana cost will be increased again
(personally im surprised they kept the jynx on, but i suppose it just fits the theme ‘too well’)
No i bring manadrain to counter Kerberos, as an all Impervious team is terrible in concept, not really feasable without multiple mythics and overall slow and clunky.
Anyways comparing Manadrain and i am talking the balanced kind of Moloch or Manticore, to Devour is pretty weird. You absolutely must counter Devour, there is no way around it, or your troop is gone. You can just generate more mana to fight manadrain, which might be annoying but is 100% viable as long as you disregard the two outliers.
countering moloch or manticore with a selected few mana shield troops is not a tragedy
that way you possibly weaken your team where instead you could have a better synergy or stronger offense
i dont see why you are so negative that this would be so huge change that would dispabalnce the game
i understand and agree that moloch needs love but its another subject to bebate about (underpowered troops) just like you said overpowered troops are also another subject for debate
also perhaps what you really wish is changing the famine boost to 1/4 ? which i dont mind and it doesnt mean the mana drain immunity shouldnt be introduced if that change is made
I haven’t read the whole thread yet, but I wanted to drop my kudos on @Nimhain!
Giving this forum community a peek behind the curtain is something we both crave and thrive upon.
I will be looking forward to the next _ ahem _ “WEEKLY” _ ahem _ Lair report! 
I already stated that it is unelegant, passive and by that boring, creates a ton of new issues, and it won’t actually do a lot about the two manadrain troops that are really a problem, while crippling the other drainers that aren’t. I don’t see how that is hard to understand.
How about an anti explosion trait to reduce the amount of exploded gems by spells? That’ll fix the overuse of Gorgotha and Dragon Soul! Sure it will absolutely kill any single explode troop in the game, and massively cripple all mass exploders that don’t deal damage in addition or serve as perfect tanks, but Gorgotha/Dragon Soul creating 20% less Mana is worth it!
The problem with counter traits currently is that there’s just too many status effects to protect against. And even if you have the right ones, they don’t really tend to change anything unless your whole team has them. If something is immune to a status effect, there almost always tends to be another target available that will serve just as well. Unless, of course, the status effect hits the whole team (cough Famine cough).
Some thoughts:
All these changes look amazing. Awesome to see.
This topic is temporarily closed for 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.
@DEMONorANGEL we wanted to make sure that Guild Wars had completely finished before making the changes to Famine so it didn’t effect the week.
This topic was automatically opened after 4 hours.
Yay, open again. First post 
i wouldnt mind.
when creating a team you would have to make choice either that trait or a unit with devour for example 
i dont see why is it unelegant or even not-fun
when there is an effect i hate ( or am tired of ) too much - i like a defensive counter, even at cost of team synergy/utility
and its perfectly logical option, otherwise impervious (and all other defensive traits) shouldnt have existed
So what is the verdit? You guys noticed a difference about Famine nerf? Or you feel like it is exactly the same?
Huge difference here, Famine have not been able to use his spell against me yet. Played possibly against 20-30 famine teams since he was nerfed. In the old days he possibly would be able to use his spell 4-5 times in 30 matches against him.
No real difference here.
I don’t take particular measures to stop Famine from loading up in regular pvp to form an opinion about how much of a difference the 2 mana change actually made.
-Had 23 fights against Famines so far, Famine filled up his spell 14 times without ever hitting 20 or 21 mana, it sat at 20/21 mana only three times.
So in 3/17 times the nerf actually made any kind of difference so far for me.
Small sample size i know, but i will keep taking note of the numbers for the rest of the week.
I don’t see much of a difference.
I will say that I’ve only seen one Famine in PvP and zero today in GW. But I have a team score in the mid 8000s, and GW has been temporarily changed to Paladin/Gards teams.
Was away for the weekend, and didn’t get a chance to post here. First, big thanks to @Nimhain for deciding to do this sort of regular post. I’m really looking forward to peeking inside the minds of the developers a little more, and possibly having some interesting conversations as a result.
As for the specific changes posted, I’m very happy that a decision was made to do something about Famine. As for the specific change, I’m not sure I like it that much. I’m echoing others, so these aren’t really original thoughts, but I think the mana increase was not enough to make a difference, and the proposed changes to mana shield still won’t nerf Famine enough but will cause other unwelcome side effects. But as I’m sure the specifics are still being figured out, I’ll wait and see how it looks in game. The change to barrier so that it prevents devour is really good, and should make a few different strategies more viable going forward.
Overall though, it feels like the changes announced really only modify the details of how the 3 main defenses will function and change the ranking of those 3 compared to each other. However it does not seem that these changes have really opened things up enough for additional defensive teams to become “top tier”, so it seems that the meta won’t really change as result 
Yeah, I haven’t seen nearly as many Famines in PVP this week, that’s for sure.
No difference whatsoever. My GW defense (which has 2 Famine’s) wins at approximately the same rate as it did the last few weeks. And when I am invading Famine is still charging fast enough to cause the occasional problems for me (including a loss in my second GW battle today).
So it seems Famine is still one of the best troops for defenses. And considering the fact that Famine is a mythic IMHO it should be a powerful troop, so I have no issues with how it is right now…