The Great Maw really wouldn’t like that change.
no, but I wouldn’t have to worry about any more Maw related glitches or unbalances again.
But yeah, my previous statement assumes they adjust/rebalance troops accordingly afterwards.
Just for the heck of it, I used the FT/2xKraken/Mab team on offense today, which I had never done before. It ran over everything. I started at #6937 on the leaderboard and am now #79. I haven’t hit the top 100 in well over a year, if not longer. It’s not Kraken itself that’s so OP, it’s the combination with the massive amounts of mana that FT can generate. Mulitiple times the opposing team never got a turn.
Conclusion? It’s almost as boring on offense as it is on defense. It requires no thought or skill, just boatloads of mana dropping from the sky and boom, the opposing team is dead. As many others have said, the strategy portion of the game has been almost completely eliminated. And that makes me really sad.
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River I think it’s the combination of RT gem spawn with Kraken that is the issue myself as well. Kraken by itself is not OP in any way I’ve been using them for a long time in a team and my win % is well below many of the top 100 ranked players running other teams.
I conclude from these latest exchanges that the problem really lies with the Forest Troll, not the Kraken itself…
I have said before: the Trolls create too many gems, and certainly too many for their mana cost.
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Before, the trolls created so few that they were never used except in GW for filler. Now, apparently, they’re too powerful. The only difference was the four extra gems, which doesn’t seem like it should swing their usefulness that hard.
We’ve long observed that for gem-spammers (single colour), 12-13 was the ‘magic number’ point at which you became very likely to score at least one 4+ match and keep the turn.
An average board state will have 7-8 gems of any one colour. You really don’t have to stray that far to have 9-10 gems of the colour. Especially as a troll will have been collecting two colours other than the one it creates - and putting 14 gems on a board with 10 of that colour is almost always going to land an extra turn… (or it will misfire sometimes for the player, cue RNG anger, whilst having every potential to loop and cause problems on defence)
So an ‘average’ cast of a troll is looking pretty likely to get a 4+ match… and very often very likely to get several… creating so many gems also causes a lot of board movement, which in the Unity build seems to mean a lot of cascades, sky skulls and further casts…
Doing that for only 11 mana seems a bit too strong. I’d like to see a progressive and minor nerf until they feel right… at the moment it’s too much an easy button, and way too much an RNG-AI-rage spell that sits on defence as it needs no skill to use…
I’d start with a minor nerf to all trolls with -1 gems created and +1 mana cost… try that, and if they still feel too good after several weeks of play, do it again…
Realise this is technically off-topic: but I’d argue it’s answering the OP exactly - Krakens are very much meta because of the mindless gem spam we get from trolls…
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Back on-topic, would making devour a one-time effect change things up? Not just Kraken, but Kerberos and Doomclaw also. If devour procs, that effect is stripped from the list of things the spell does.
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Agree with this and I have also previously suggested it. Kraken would still be extremely powerful, Kerberos not so much and may need a rework to compensate.
This has been my experience too, can pretty much steamroll PvP with that build. Instead of Mab I run the Titan Hero with DawnBringer to get the Troll up and running on the first turn. The Krakens create Blue which feed DawnBringer and it’s Good Night Irene.
Agree with the others that too many people are pointing their fingers to Kraken as the suspect when in fact it’s the Troll that’s the real perp. Should raise mana cost by 1-2 and reduce the extra spawn after doubling to 3 and see how that works.
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It still is on topic, since the troll is the very reason the Kraken made it into the top meta.
Another interesting approach in my opinion would be to remove the bit of code that prevents a gem of a given color to be spawned on top of another gem of the same color.
This would remove the broken barrier of 13 gem spawn obsolete.
Then again, all other gem spawners would be affected, wich would require a lot of balancing…
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To add to this, remember that Celestasia was too reliable in getting extra turns with just 10 gems created, and needed to be toned down because of it. 12-13 basically guaranteed an extraturn back then.
Back then a single gem made a huge difference in the effectiveness in gem spawners.
7 gem spawners basically allways missed the extra turn on average boards, 8 gem spawners only occasionally hit. 9 gems was the number at which a spawner was considered likely enough to hit a 4 match to be considered worthwhile for the gem spawn itself, and 10 was already very likely to hit the extra turn.
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Krakens also are Gem spawners though. It’s not just the 3rd trait plus hard headed… or the double damage + devour… or the spawning… Collectively it’s just too good at too much.
But, yes, trolls also need to be toned down slightly.
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Submerge would be rather good on Kraken, because the Tentacles trait wouldn’t break the submerge. It would be a nice thematic fit, too: kraken diving underwater and continuing to wreak havoc with its long-reaching tentacles. I think Kraken would still be a solid troop if the devour was simply removed, and if the devour chance was replaced with a submerge chance then Kraken would be quite strong but not overpowered for a legendary troop.
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I don’t see why the problem would lie with trolls, specifically, let alone only Forest trolls.
There are looping teams of Krakenx2-Justicex2.
There are looping teams with Kraken not with spammers but with changers, such as Giant Spider - Green Seer. And those don’t even need all that many gems on the ground to loop.
Problem is, once you have Kraken onboard, you only have to mantain a loop with any colour/s of gems and you’ll kill everybody dead, because Kraken doesn’t need to move and break the loop to damage opponents. It doesn’t even have to fill up.
One might wonder why Kraken teams weren’t such a plague before the advent of Forest Troll. Older troops can give him loops aplenty, after all.
That one is obvious: no other troops can produce gems in the same quantities as Trolls. Forest Troll, in particular, is fed by the gems Kraken creates, while in turn feeding Kraken. Dark Troll doesn’t have the same synergy. Or the wildly useful/infuriating ability to entangle on skull damage.
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Take off devour and add submerge to itself and its targets.
Or add more mechanics to flesh out the limited space we have now. Have a tag system like a proper RPG. Submerge has the current effect of dodging AOE and a small amount of DoT unless a troop has the aquatic tag.
I’m waiting for the kraken nerf to 2 damage via tentacles on 4’s, it’s only a matter of time. Similar thing happened to courage and you never see him these days. I personally think kraken should devour at maybe 33% instead.
I love the trolls, finally they have a use but they might require doubling plus 3 and not 4 as a slight revision.
Neither of these remotely address the issue (neither do any of the suggested removals or alterations of devour), and yet, sadly, these are about the changes I’d expect.
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Because Forest troll creates blobs. Blobs are very-very bugged in current versions since unity upgrade and are not resolved properly. Instead blobs register as multiple 4+ matches resulting in a single blob triggering Kraken’s trait multiple times. The issue can be solved together with other ugliness in current version by fixing blob-related glitches,
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