Clash Royale Dev Tracker

I hear your criticism - its too early to tell where Executioner will land but if it's too weak then yeah we can consider making changes outside of the normal schedule. We will not revert back to the old Executioner but I promise we will make sure the new Executioner is a strong, viable option within the new framework of a shorter-range but high damage splash attacker.

If we cancelled every balance change that the community reacted to before release, we would not release anything. Remember, like 5 hours ago people we absolutely certain we would have to nerf Executioner. So we nerfed it - and perhaps it was too much. The alternative is saying "Sorry players, we aren't going to listen to you" and perhaps having to nerf anyways. With big changes, developers are definitely between a rock and a hard place - we had our playtest data that showed the change was dramatic but not OP and a community on the brink of riot over a perceived massive buff. We made a call and for better or worse we will live with result and share our thoughts with you via social media like this.

I am sorry you feel that way - give it a few days and see if you still feel that way. If so, we will continue to tweak/buff the Executioner. The whole point of reworks is to make low-usage cards for viable. If we didn't get it right this time, we will keep working on it.

Yep! Most cards have a small number of interaction changes from +1/-1 level. That's just a part of leveling up, it's not possible to make every interaction the same within a band of +/- 10% damage and health. Cards can have a few of these, but if it affects too many various cards of different roles then the normal methods of counterplay start to fall apart.

I mentioned this on Twitter earlier this week - we want to be aggressive and push these reworks to be very good. If he's not clearly better then people feel betrayed and you can see the vitriol in these comments and on social media. Maybe the first version of Executioner was pushed too far, but naturally we are trying to balance "playtest changes and consider data" with "respond to criticism from pros and the community". The latter was very clear this weekend that they felt we were making a mistake so we try to listen to them.

Perhaps this is true - we will keep watching the stats and make changes accordingly. Worst case, we can buff with next month's balance changes if he's truly worse overall. We try not to react to day-1 feelings since it takes a few days for people to try out new changes before settling.

Of course we think about ladder levels but it's not the primary focus of our balance. The difference with Executioner is that it wasn't just 1 or 2 interactions here, he had more than usual and once all of those got flipped with an overlevel there were hardly any counters. We have made balance changes specifically focused on improving ladder interactions in the past, it's just not our highest priority since we assume players will eventually max out their deck, making level interactions less important than endgame balance between equal leveled cards.

Because Mega Knight isn't 40% winrate - he's at 4%-48% in 8+ Win GC games. So while a bit underused in top play, he's not bad. His use rates are strong in GCs (11%) / CCs (17%) overall and very popular on the ladder until you get to the very top highest ranks.

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 p...

https://i.redd.it/z8atsqr385k31.jpg

SEASON 3 PASS ROYALE REWARDS

• Exclusive Season 3 Fortress Tower Skin & Princess Emote
• 35 Pass Royale Reward Tiers to unlock
• 35 Free Reward Tiers to unlock
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Note to new visitors - we changed the Executioner's stats from the previously announced ones. Seth will have some more info on that decision later!

Coming with Season 3: Be Legendary on September 2nd

Executioner - REWORK

• Damage +82%
• Hitpoints -5%
• Range reduced (min 4.5 - max 6.5) > (min 3 - max 4.5)
• Hit Speed reduced 2.4sec > 2.5sec
• Faster Axe return time (1.5 sec > 1sec)

The Executioner has lagged behind in win/use rates for a while in competitive play. The issue with buffing him has been his general toughness and lack of counterplay. Due to high health, long range, and spatial control, a buff would make him powerful with only Rocket to defeat him on defense.

We wanted a solid ranged attacker that could counter Fireball-bait type strategies, especially squads of Barbarians. This change will kill Barbs with one axe swing, and leave Musketeers with just a sliver of health. Executioner will be less well-rounded – now he is extremely powerfu...

when the opponent rages ebarbs at the bridge

Your last line is really the crux of it and its something that has been echoed by every balance team of every live game of every genre - when you have enough players, its impossible to playtest perfectly. We can playtest things into the ground and players will have more battles with it in 5 minutes than we could in months, even with a big team. Ultimately there is always going to be room for error and that's part of the job. PEKKA fell into that margin of error (we did have discussions above Medium vs Long range during testing) and when that happens it's incumbent upon us to fix it quickly. Overall I think we get more right than wrong and if we can keep up a positive %, the game will march towards a better state each month.

I don't think our goal is to get every card in the 4-13% use rate range. Some cards like Spells or Mega Minion will ALWAYS be above that range regardless of how bad they are - Wizard is proof of that. But we do care about win rates. Even if the use rate is low, the win rate needs to be competitive so players of niche strategies still feel like they can keep up.

Cards like Skeleton Barrel and Three Musketeers are not a high priority because they maintain a decent win rate despite low usage. Cards like Bowler (mentioned above) are perfect candidates for buffs because their win rate is bad even with only Bowler fans playing him.

Bowler may have a rework this year too :) Hard to predict any timeline, but there are many Epics that could use some love to make them feel truly Epic and big bowlie boi is certainly not as cool as he could be.

no joke, this is among the best/most professional suggestions I've ever seen on reddit. It's easy to lulz over the handwritten text (omg dude why did you not just type this out) but it effectively analyzes problems and proposes well thought out solutions to them. Even the color coding helps convey the information effectively

if i print this and stick it over seth's whiteboard do you think he'll notice?

happy cake day!

really nice ideas. thanks for sharing

it hasn't been removed - we just haven't had it for a while (as a challenge) but it still crops up in clan wars from time to time.

even though some people hate on it, we still love it!