Web needs to be halved to 50% magic.
2 Likes
Interesting update. Archproxy needed the buff, she is actually decent now!
1 Like
I’m going to agree with the notion that Night Spider received a (minor) de-buff with the changes. Not that it was anything close to a guaranteed looper before, but it’s (a little) less likely now.
If you’ve played around with troops that create two types of gems, whether the dual-color trolls or the Wild Queen or even the Night Spider in question? You’ve long since noticed that the colors that are created can overwrite one another; e.g., the “old” Night Spider could create Blue Gems to overwrite Purple Gems already on the board and vice versa.
But there’s a secondary problem, one that’s also existant here but also rather noticeable with single-color generators. And that’s the ability for different-type gems that are technically the same color to overwrite one another, whether it’s Red Gems to Burning (and the other way around), Purple Gems to Lycanthropy Gems to Web Gems, Skulls to Doomskulls to Uber Doomskulls, et cetera.
The game is programmed so that it recognizes Web Gems (and probably Lycanthropy Gems as well) as Purple Gems, at least from the screenshots shared in my Guild Chat where somebody was testing the Night Spider/Mother of Shadows/Captain Macaw meta to see how these changes affected it. But would it be too much to ask that gem creation operates the same way, that these overwrites are programmed out of the system? Because that’s the sort of thing that de-values gem creation in the first place, by not having it live up to the expectations we have.
Maybe it’s intentional by the developers. And maybe it’s something they never considered, because all of these special gems weren’t part of the game from debut through a great many years.
And maybe it’s something where the base programming of the game is so slapdash that it can’t properly be disentangled without creating a whole slew of unintended new problems.
4 Likes
I would appreciate if the announcement post described the new Web Gems and new traits. “Terror Pact” sounds like it summons a Night Terror upon death right? “Spider Silk” though – oh, wait, the troop changes are already live (even on Switch). Nevermind.
How will this impact King Dokkalfar during Friday dungeons? Buff? The scatter damage was always easily countered by a mass Armor buffer (e.g. Clockwork Sphinx), so long as the Giant Spiders weren’t constantly spamming casts.
Losing “Stalker” is technically a nerf – but only in such cases where Tomb Spider is in lead position, but who even does that? (Arachnean Weaver teams notwithstanding)
This sounds like a nerf, but a welcome one. Previously you needed 13 Purple Gems for a guaranteed mana refill, which was always super fun while it lasted (provided it was YOUR Shadowblade, not the cpu’s), now you need 17 Purple Gems for a guaranteed mana refill. An average board will have about 8 Purple Gems (so, a ~50% chance of mana refill), and the added RNG will mean that the cpu doesn’t get locked into constantly spellcasting as much.
The problem isn’t whether it’s less likely to loop or not but that it is worse if it fails and the enemy webs our team instead.
2 Likes
So you still haven’t figured out how to not pile all of this onto us on Guild Wars week yet I see…
Also, if you don’t figure out another way to do Kingdom passes you’re probably going to start losing more people’s interest in them. Paying money for an excruciating battlecrasher grind every day isn’t the best way to keep people happy or interested in paying for your game. You’re roping in nobody but the completionists with this approach. At the bare minimum you should give people who paid for the Kingdom pass an extra Kingdom Crown per battlecrasher killed, so they have half the grind every day.
5 Likes
The Eldrazhor faction is actually quite reliant on first slot Tomb Spider spawn for 2x skull damage after Deep Huntsman dies.
This is actually a big nerf: making the Web Gem is meaningless on Tomb Spider without that 2x skull damage to synergize with it.
This is a Sunspear level of downgrade and should be protested by the general audience, but most people have already done their Eldrazhor faction so Tomb Spider is already off the radar.
Magic Spirit should have been replaced over Stalker
11 Likes
You get a deathmark on cast now at least - previously it was only if there was 13+ purple gems on the board.
I would say deathmark is better than fishing for skulls. Especially Eldrazhor where you are inflicting a lot of status effects so the death mark keeps getting refreshed.
And it HAD to be done in Guild War week just after the Krinklemess. Yes. Because 'tis the season to be jolly.
1 Like
You do know that refreshing status effects prevents deathmark from triggering, right?
Summary
This is how it goes…
- Apply deathmark
- 0% chance to trigger DM
- 10% chance to trigger DM
- 10% chance to trigger DM…and so on until cleansed or activated.
This is what happens if you constantly refresh status effects:
- Apply deathmark
- 0% chance to trigger DM
- Refresh status effect
- 0% chance to trigger DM
- 10% chance to trigger DM
- Refresh status effect
- 0% chance to trigger DM…
2 Likes
I strongly disagree.
There are already many factions with the Death Mark mechanic as its primary gimmick and most of those factions are unpleasant and win with other means than Death Mark (or spam Potions of Power to do enough damage to avoid Death Mark). Death Mark is very inconsistent.
Meanwhile hitting for a consistent 150-200+ skull damage is very valuable as secondary damage when you’re already doing damage with other sources.
The skull damage helps a lot in the final Eldrazhor room when you’re getting webbed down by the opponents team. (Deep Huntman does Curse and Web to the first enemy troop, Deep Magus can Curse all or Web all, Matron Velenne can Curse and Web by sitting around and existing).
Sure you might lose the attack from Deep Elven Rogue if it casts on it, but until it happened, its the best damage source you’ll have.
Fishing for Skulls is better than fishing for Death Mark, if only so you aren’t waiting around only for Death Mark to fizzle (meanwhile the AI can hit you back during the waiting time) only to end up losing troops/the match because it takes too long and the enemies hit you with skulls instead.
If you need a refresher on the futilities of Death Marks, try the Hell Gate faction again.
3 Likes
We’ve got missing graphics again - not turning black, completely missing.
Yup, this change is super annoying right as I was about to work on the pure faction run.
1 Like
Ah, right, I forgot about that. Thanks.
On a tangent note, the change to Night Terror seems welcome for that one battle in Broken Spire’s questline (vs. 4 Night Terrors). The boost ratio can become quite dangerous at low levels but at least it no longer steals Magic per cast.
What happened to Sunspear when?
Pretty sure Death Mark can kill on turn 1 now?
For a short time in one of the older updates, the dev team misunderstood (hopefully? I can’t imagine it being malice?) the grievances of the players having troop talents that create storms at the beginning of the battle being useless on Sunspear since the 3rd trait overwrites those talents.
So… instead of adjusting those troop talents, they changed the 3rd trait to be the red version of Corsair/Archmagus. +2 Red Mana on a Red Gem match.
At the time, Phoenicia had finally become popular with farming, so people took it as an intentional nerf to farming teams for resource generating.
+2 Red Mana on a Red Gem matche is actually pretty decent, but doesn’t compare to a permastorm at all.
After like 2-3 days, they had to make an official statement about the change and reverted it back to a permastorm.
There’s like a dozen classes that could use those kind of buffs, but instead a popular class got tinkered with.
5 Likes
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Yes this is a big nerf of Tomb Spider, particularly on Eldrazhor as noted. Given that the devs said that the troop changes were all supposed to be “buffs or sideways changes” to justify no troop refunds, they should look at reverting this change at least for this reason alone. I also think the mana cost increase in exchange for always inflicting death mark is a bad trade, and would revert that change as well.
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I wouldn’t exaggerate it and say it’s as bad as the Sunspear nerf though. That nerf would have been devastating for red teams.
I didn’t rely on Tomb Spider in my pure 500 run on Eldrazhor, preferring (and succeeding) at keeping my Deep Huntsman alive in the first slot. My strategy turned on Deep Elven Rogue wiping out the skull damage of each enemy troop, with two Huntsmen ensuring plenty of Rogue and Velenne casts.
- 100% agree that swapping out Magic Spirit would’ve made the change a proper buff instead of the nerf that it is.
1 Like
After a few days I have to say that I had to replace Night Spider (RIP) and replace not only the troop but the whole team in PVP and Pet Rescue, where it was my main team. 
3 Likes
I’m sure someone has said this before: It’d be nice if the stage releases were moved one day earlier so that you’re not forced to play on a weekend to complete the event.
Now => Proposed
Stage 1: Mon => Mon
Stage 2: Thu => Wed
Stage 3: Sun => Sat
Stage 4: Wed => Tue
Stage 5: Sat => Fri
You’d still have 3 days per phase, but the release of the 2nd phase would come sooner.
3 Likes
Just to let everyone know, pet ‘Yvendra’s Tome’ can be found in pet rescues.
11 Likes