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The balance changes are live now! Between the announcement on Saturday and deployment today, we decided to pull back slightly on the Executioner rework:
Original Rework:
- Damage Increased 98%
- Range Reduced to min 3.5 -> max 5
- Hit Speed Reduced to 2.5
What We Deployed Today:
- Damage Increased 82%
- Ranged Reduced to min 3.0 -> max 4.5
- Hit Speed Reduced to 2.5
(Axe time was also reduced, but just proportionally to the range)
I wanted to write this blog post on the two reasons we decided to hedge our bets with the Executioner between the announcement this weekend and Monday’s release. It boils down to two major factors: the impending start of CRL and the effect of various ladder levels.
Clash Royale League
As many of you know - the debut of the CRL West Fall Split is this month, and CRL Asia and China have already started! CRL consists of the best players in the world vying for a large prize pool. These are literally the most intense and lucrative games of these player’s lives and we don’t want to risk their livelihood with an overpowered card just a week before the season starts.
We were (and still are) willing to do an emergency nerf if Executioner turns out to be too strong. Hypothetically speaking, there are roughly four places a rework can land:
- Emergency Nerf: 50% Use, 70% Win (Royal Recruits launch)
- Meta Defining: 30% Use, 60% Win
- Strong: 15% Use, 50% Win
- Weak: 5% Use, 40% Win
If Executioner had fallen into the ‘Emergency Nerf’ range - we would have to make a pretty large nerf in about 5 days time. If a card is that far off the mark, it’s difficult to know how much to nerf (and if you don’t nerf it enough, you still end up in ‘Meta Defining’ range). If you over nerf, you end up in Weak range and have undermined all the excitement around the rework.
Ultimately we decided it was safe to do a minor nerf before deployment. If Executioner is too strong still, we at least have made a move in the right direction and have a higher likelihood of getting it right if we need to nerf again. If he ends up being in the Strong range, then we don’t need to make any changes and CRL isn’t upended. This also gives players the maximum amount of time to practice in the new meta before the first matches.
We still want to be fearless with future reworks, I hope that every rework leads to a card being strong enough to shift the meta. But with the kickoff of CRL West and the uncertainty around huge reworks like this, we decided to play it safe. We still have the monthly balance changes to buff/nerf Executioner depending how he shakes out.
LADDER LEVELS
The other reason for the preemptive nerf (specifically the damage reduction) was how level disparities on ladder affected his interactions.
During the design of the reworked Executioner, we were accounting primarily for equal-level interactions. For example, an Executioner would not kill an equal-level Musketeer in one throw. There were a lot of interactions like this, where Executioner would just barely fail to kill something in 1, 2, or 3 swings.
Something that was very eye-opening was seeing how a single level difference turned a strong card into an unkillable terminator. We did not want to make the ladder experience so binary, with a slightly overleveled Executioner becoming a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem.
The lesson learned from this rework process is that we need to account for ladder level disparities far more than we do for smaller balance changes. Having too many -/+1 level interactions leads to a tipping point where that 1 level makes a card suddenly too good in all situations. This is definitely something we will consider in future reworks moving forward.
Thanks for reading this balance blog on the Executioner Rework - enjoy Season 3, and BE LEGENDARY!!
- Seth and the Clash Royale Team
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