Would Kraken still be meta without devour?

Yes Kraken would still be very useful with out devour.

Please, please, take this to PM.

i would be ok if we can stun kraken. his devour has counters. impervious, indigestible, dwarf trait, mana drain. but his tentacles is completely protected by thick head.

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Yes, still meta.
1- unstoppable effect from third trait
2- immunity to stun
3- ability to self trigger trait since he is a spawner himself
4- stackable with copies (unlike, say, Mab)

As for counters, ooh, wow, many discovered that you just prevent green mana. What an extraordinary concept.
Oh wait, mana blocking or draining or silencing is the #1 way to prevent everything in the game, and I think most players can figure out how Psion or drains or Silence work. And with the current AI luck , there is nothing reliable.

5 Likes

Have you read your first post?
You don’t answer the topic, you start your own, with what some might interpret as misplaced arrogance.

No wonder we’ve drifted so far off subject.

You posted the most answers, but you still haven’t answered the topic.

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If I understand correctly, you don’t understand why it is meta, so you figured it would still be meta without devour?
By this logic, Peasant would be as meta as Kraken.

By my logic, if you can’t understand why something is meta, you can’t tell what will or will not affect its metaness.

But I guess, now I have your answer, wich is… You can’t answer.

Did I? I knew this wasn’t the information you were trying to convey, but that really is the only sense I could give to the sentences you quoted.

You basically quoted that Kraken was weak, yet meta, so making him weaker wouldn’t change a thing (wich is not logical to me).
If you really need me to explain how I translated your quote to that, I can do so by PM.

Now that, is a short yet proper answer.

@Zelarith i have unmuted this thread and dont worry i am deleting all my “off topic” posts

Wich now makes us all look like madmen talking to the wind.

Welp, I can live with that.

Anyway, seems like there’s no real debate : everyone agrees to say the devour is plain overkill on Kraken now that is has such a good synergy with the Forest Troll.

I’m actually looking for the thing we can remove from its spell (not its traits because that’s its identity) and make people unsure of his viablity wich is, in my opinion, the closest thing we can have to a balanced troop without making actual tests.

Maybe the gem creation would have been a better subject for this thread.

(As for the reason why I picked Kraken, it’s because it has so many different things in its kit, I’m almost sure we can make it balanced without touching anything but its spell)

I don’t think that’s what has been said. It seems more to me that the problem is Forest Troll and the way that the game resolves blobs of mana gems, not necessarily Kraken itself, or devour specifically.

2 Likes

Anyway, seems like there’s no real debate : everyone agrees to say the devour is plain overkill on Kraken now that is has such a good synergy with the Forest Troll.

Kraken has good synergy with Rock Troll too, or with Giant Spider. Has good synergy with whatever spams its colors.

It must of course be Biased Recall, but I have a Troll Loop I like because gives oodles of souls. When I first used it the looping was absurd, I could get 4 matches even with 4-5 gems of the right color on the board. Then suddenly it was the contrary and I couldn’t get a 4 match even with 12-15 gems on the board. Then suddenly loops happens reliably with 10 gems on the board.

We have told that no one is touching RNG, so it must be Mercury in retrograde in Scorpio. When in conjunction with Saturn it does that.
It messes up the Biased Recall. Curse you, small retrograding planet!

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You are right, people simply said devour was not the problem, I might have jumped on a wrong conclusion.

Resolving blobs might be a good way to go at it, however it must be well thought through to avoid… Side effects.
I can foresee a couple…

Mana generation of transformers, damage of skull spam…

I’ve always believed a blob should count as a single 5+ match.
As for how mana generation goes, it should do what it says : matched 7? 7*2 = 14.
But that might or might not be broken. I really don’t know.
For the skull damage, it should logically be +1 per match over 3, no matter how many skulls over 3 there are. This has actually always been underwhelming, so it might be huge nerf to skull spammers. Maybe the +1 damages shouldn’t be reduced by traits?

Ok i am gonna do what everyone elae does

From now on when i have a disagreement with someone i am gonna post publicly that i am willing to continue the discussion via PM and when that person does PM me i will ignore it.

That way i look good for all to see without having any intention of resolving the issue in actuality…

Very clever

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Or I’m just playing games of League of Legend with some friends and don’t care about what is happening here.
Anyway, you’ll find said answer in your message box.

EDIT : side note, you are quoting only a part of this sentence. The whole sentence stated that I was ready to share a discussion with you on a particular point. You felt free to talk about something else entirely, and I have no problem with that, but, again, you are going out of your way to give a different meaning to what’s said to you, so that you can play the victim.

4 Likes

Is that question meant for defense or offense?
Devour is the only thing I dislike about Kraken in defense. I’d stop to avoid Kraken/Mab combination teams if Kraken couldn’t devour anymore.

Otherwise I don’t know since I don’t use Kraken at all.

At the moment, @Alkali, you must be the only one. :smile:

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As long as he spawns and supports looping (while having a great trait for looping) - he’d still be used.

I think that when he’s compared to Kerberos - he can be countered equally easily. While Kraken ignores barriers, you only need 1 impervious against him.
If Kerberos gets lucky - he can get back to the game in 1 lucky cast (he summons a troop that can summon another one on death).

Kraken on the other hand can get nullified by combinations of things. In addition to 4th slot against devour - one freeze, or drain, or gem denial will do the trick.

Wanted to clarify that I’m not advocating the removal of Kraken’s devour (though having it work the way that presumably originally passed QA wouldn’t be out of the question) and especially not the reduction of the chance, or any other direct nerf to Kraken. The Unity switch over was inordinately kind to Kraken more than any other troop because it benefits hugely from both blob matches and lack of target lock for its multi-component spell as well as being a “danger” troop that can both devour and cause a random board event, and board events tend to be spikier as well. Even this current supercharged iteration is far from unbeatable, mostly because it is also vulnerable to every single gimmick you can throw at it, and denying greens works most of the time. Any engine issues that are going to be addressed should be addressed before balancing said troops to fit the engine.

5 Likes

If anything, I’d reduce the gem spawn. His kit otherwise is fine and unique.

This opinion won’t matter, but I wish they swapped all instances of Devour with Silence.