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Seems like range is fixed to 4 now.
This is just a visual bug - the card info screen only displays both values if they are at least 1 tile different. The projectile still travels 4.5 tiles
Seems like range is fixed to 4 now.
This is just a visual bug - the card info screen only displays both values if they are at least 1 tile different. The projectile still travels 4.5 tiles
I think the real problem of executioner is the speed of the first attack..
This is tied to the range - if he has more time to start a swing, he's more likely to complete it. We decided to not increase the load time because we didn't want to overdo it and end up making him OP. Just fix the two most glaring problems - not killing fireball bait like Flying Machine, and making his minimum range not cartoonishly short.
Im kinda shocked they made it not 3.5, but 4 tiles. That’s pretty neat
Kills spirits AND flying machine. Just what I asked for
Also probably even kills ice spirit too. Still has a long attack wind up but its a lot more manageable
The reason we decided to go with 4 is that his old minimum was 4.5 - we want our reworks to be different but still feel familiar to players. The much shorter minimum range felt wrong to many existing Executioner player, so this change should make him feel/player much like before his rework.
The team may rework Zappies, though it may be difficult.
But a straight up buff? Hell no. We been there. That's why it was nerfed in the first place.
His opinion doesn't need to coincide with ours, and the whole team works TOGETHER to build the game. They had an AMA and said it themselves.
Unfortunately... Seth is the frontman who takes ALL the blame from the stupid 15 yr olds.
As for the community? Fok dat! We have shown multiple times our opinions are worth jack shit.
Zappies are definitely on the 'probably rework' list. We had one rework in testing but it didn't feel great and existing Zappies players didn't feel like it was an improvement. So we went back to the drawing board with a different rework but that starts the timeline all over again with playtesting.
Read moreDear Seth,
I’m not saying you don’t deserve this, but I’m also not saying the change wasn’t a mistake. I do think that Executioner is definitely going to an extremely low use card now, but I’m open to the idea that it will find a place in the meta. But let me ask you this: Why Rework Executioner of all cards? Even if it had low use and win rates, why not pick cards that people already complain about like Wizard, Witch (I’m glad you said that she is expected to be reworked in October, hopefully maybe Night Witch too?!), Elite Barbarians (you’re precious rework to them did not work and made them worse in the community’s eyes), Bowler (I’m glad you also said you were thinking of buffing him. He deserves it! All he needs is the Princes to NOT be immune to Knockback anyone with damage and/or hitspeed and/or health buffs to make up for it! I know you said it’s because it would be a kill joy to the card, but let’s make things consistent so it does not confuse other players! It’s e...
Hey JC, thanks for your well-written reply.
We made a big list of cards in the beginning to rework and Executioner was a popular choice (when I did a twitter question he came up often as well). At the time we locked in on Exe for September, Baby Dragon was peaking in usage and we wanted to prioritize splash attackers because the meta needed more diversity in that role. Executioner was always going to be the hardest of the reworks because splash attackers are so hard to balance, but we will get him balanced and continue the march of fixing cards that are not finding a spot in the game.
I agree the Elite Barbs rework did not go far enough, that was one of the reasons we decided to commit to much braver changes and deal with the consequences as they come up. We have learned a lot from the last few days and that increases the chances of success in the future :)
I have a feeling his alt might get banned soon as well lol
me too
Read moreWhy would you do such a drastic rework to the Executioner right before CRL ? If you really don't want balance changes to not interfere with CRL, you could have just waited an extra month and everything would have been alright.
Announcing such a rework to make an emergency nerf when the update drops is a really bad idea, i thought you learned your lesson with the Royale Recruits... they were bad at 8 elixir during testing, and you changed it to 6 elixir right before the update drops, which made them OP. Now, the exact opposite happened with Executioner: It was really strong before this emergency nerf (the playerbase didn't test pre-emergency nerf Exe but basing on this exact same nerf, i guess he was indeed very strong), and just as the update drops, you kill the card.
About the ladder levels, this just seems to be a really bad excuse to me for such a reaction. Not only does many troops have drastic interaction changes at only 1 level of difference, but it is an inhe...
CRL runs for many months out of the year - CRL will still be running next month as well, so we don't want to hold all balance changes (or limit ourselves to only tiny changes) for 3-6 months out of the year.
I do agree that perhaps in this case we should have trusted our data and playtesters and not overreacted to the community response, but that is the challenge of trying to balance player feedback with internal data. We will continue to evaluate the changes and see what we can do. I can pretty much guarantee next month's rework will go out as-tested regardless of what social media's reaction is.
Next month? NEXT MONTH? if he's worse this week, next week, three weeks into September you're going to do what? Give him a .5 range boost? Dude NOBODY wanted this. If your data shows exe isn't doing well PLEASE just revert the changes. It's bad enough you secretly nerfed your purposed buffs on patch day. Many of my fellow exe mains are disappointed and constructive criticism is needed. If it doesn't work out bring back the old exe.
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.
The rework was supposed to make him one shot fireball bait cards in expense of lower range and slower attack. I wish you just cancelled the rework instead of giving a last minute nerf because upside of the rework is no more and it ended up being an overall nerf.
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.
Thank you for the changes in executor. I already removed him from my deck, since he's completely useless now.
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.
You mentioned +/- 1 level interaction, what about the +1 fireball one shots Musketeers and the 3 Wizards, especially E-wiz who is underleveled on ladder in most matches. And goblins, +1 level goblins can take +1 shot from knight, princess tower... Have you ever thought about that?
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.
Why should +1/-1 even be a consideration? The whole business plan is around getting people to level up their cards to avoid these interactions.
I find it more interesting that the entire purpose of the rework was to make his interactions basically be a fireball. However, the community kicks up a stink, SuperCell flinches, and ends up making what can only be untested changes, and interactions now. So what was the point of the rework?
He can’t even take out fire spirits for crying out loud. This would have been addressed if proper play testing of the new interactions had been done.
I understand the CRL reasoning. Therefore revert him to previous balancing while coming up with another purpose for reworking him.
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.
The damage change was fine, but the range nerf is what is killing him. Think 3.5 was more balanced
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.
Wait wait wait. So having a game out for over 3 years with constant (but often unjustified) complaints from the community about over-levelled cards and it’s taken you this long to think about different level interactions on ladder?? Crazy
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.
If you consider a Usage Rate of around 5% and winrate around 40% weak, mind explaining why I am still waiting for a Mega Knight Buff since half a year?
Within the last 14 days MK had a 6% usage rate and a win rate of 38% in GCs. And within the last couple of other seasons these stats didnt really look any better, afaik he never went above a 40% winrate in Grand Challenges. The only trophy range where he is good is probably between 5.000 and 6.000 trophies where People also struggle against Hog Riders, Wizards and other Cards which are absolutely terrible in High Ladder and GCs.
Since its a Legendary overleveling shouldnt really be a Problem, so I dont really get why its such an big issue increasing any of its stats by a bit
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:
What We Deployed Today:
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...
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