Hey! During our testing we felt that the strongest use case of 3M was being a very quick defense. If you attacked and your opponent dropped 3M, they near-instantly generated a ton of damage. Even if you FB+Zapped them rather quickly, they often got ~3 Elixir worth of damage in, negating the Elixir trade. With a slower deploy time on defense, there are chances to damage or defeat them before they get a shot off. 3s Deploy time also greatly reduces the effectiveness of playing 3M in the pocket to take a 2nd tower.

Splitting behind the King Tower with a slower deployment does allow more saved Elixir, but the slower reaction time gives a bigger window for Bridgespam, Log Bait, or Miner decks to get in chip damage before they walk/shoot. In addition to changes to Barbarians, introduction of Earthquake, and buffing multiple splash Troops that match up well against 3M... I am optimistic the meta will find the tools to adapt.

I understand the feeling that this might be a buff, but every month there are impressions from the community that end up not being true. Please give this one a chance for a month, and if 3M is truly back to dominating the meta, we will be quick to address it.

Because it hasn't :) This is a good example of how websites can skew your perception of the meta. Here are the four small spells use/win rates in Challenges:

• Log - 30% / 48%
• Barb Barrel - 30% / 56%
• Zap - 27% / 49%
• Snowball - 18% / 58%

Snowball is a bit concerning, we have a nerf we want to apply but it requires a client update so it will have to wait. Barb Barrel has been slowly trending down, and given how many times we have buffed/nerfed it, we are letting it sit a bit longer because if it does get nerfed again it will likely be another Barbarians health nerf instead of Barrel-specific change. (Barbs are sitting at 55% WR, Battle Ram at 54%)

In general, Barb Barrel and Snowball are the higher skill cap Spells compared to Zap/Log. It stands to reason that better players would take advantage of them to generate marginally better results. This is why websites (which tend to self-select for hardcore players) are showing use rates of 50%+.

Thanks for your regular posts/contributions to the subreddit, Calcium! I see your posts very often :)

This is basically our stance for now. Despite having very high use rates, Baby Dragon sits around 48-52% win rate every day, in both Classics/Grands, and doesn't budge much even when you look solely at 8-12 win games.

Baby Dragon is a jack-of-all-trades that can fit into basically any archetype, providing the meta with a solid presence to keep air and swarm decks in check. I think the meta is better off with Baby Dragon being very popular compared to when Royal Ghost, Bandit, Valkyrie etc filled that spot of "Most Popular Troop".

Its possible we would nerf Baby Dragon with a slight health reduction (to put it around 1000 HP) but this month I suspect Baby Drag + Tornado will be useful in regulating how strong 3M decks can be.

I'm sorry you feel that way, I always respect your opinion and read your posts when I come across them.

Please give the balance team a chance here, I will happily come back and eat crow if we totally bork the meta. But every month we release a list of changes, the community spends a weekend saying that we have totally ruined everything, and yet this last month was one of the most diverse metas ever. If every month was really as bad as first impressions seem, we would not have reached this point as a community.

We use level one stats in the post because thats the number that changes, and ripples up to higher levels. Here is the Clone balance note I wrote (we didn't add it because it was a few weeks ago and seemed like old news):

CLONE Radius Reduced 4 -> 3

This change went live with the April update. We initially increased Clone’s radius to try and buff an underperforming card. The most recent buff, making the Clone animation vertical (instead of horizontal) was an appropriate buff and improved the card to being a strong competitive choice. Because of its unlimited duplication Clone is a very volatile card that works better as a niche meta choice – when Lava Clone was a very popular deck we did not like how it impacted high skill gameplay and decided to lower the radius.

(Note: Over the last week, Clone has a 4% use / 48% win rate, which is pretty much ideal for a spicy card like that. Freeze, a comparable Spell in terms of how powerful it should be, is 4%/46%)

In the 5000-5499 Trophy range, Witch has a 17% use rate. Buffing Princess and Bomber might help deal with her :)

Rascals almost made the cut :) They fluctuate a lot in win rate, sometimes over the line and sometimes just under. As their use rate rises and win rates stay high though, I would say they are a likely candidate for next month.

Wall Breakers gain quite a few new skill-testing tricks with this buff! You can use Miner to distract the tower and whatever is played to defend the Miner can be caught in the WB blast. It's very fun to set up Traps for your opponent, adding a new dimension to a card that is very basic by design. Glad we could make all 7 Wall Breaker fans happy :)