You know, the hardest part about reworking EBarbs is that EB players just love them the way they are. Every time we survey EBarb players about reducing their Speed in exchange for stats, the response is universally "I like them because they are fast and people can't react to them in time". Unlike players of other weak cards, who understand there may be a trade-off to be overall better, EBarb players seem pretty locked onto the Speed as a must-keep part of the card.
Yes, this is definitely me. I always play Ice Bow, and I'm the undisputed master at it. I do not know the taste of defeat. Brother, when I lifted Andre the Giant over my head in front of ninety-three thousand Sethamaniacs in the Arena, I changed the course of history.
We actually had this at a potential rework but it got nixed pretty early. It makes sense if you are already familiar with Rage + Heal spells, but to new players it's really unclear, especially if you have both the yellow and pink circles. They would also need to last the same amount of time, which is big nerf for Rage but a big buff for Heal. Good creative thinking, but sadly this didn't survive playtesting.
Spells are a huge issue building 5 decks with no card being used more than once. The majority of the game feels balanced around fireball, lightning, and log.
4 decks! I agree Spells are the biggest constraint, which was a big driver behind the Arrows Rework. I think you could run 4 decks rather reasonably:
That's 4 decks that could be built and Tornado is still free to be a 3rd spell somewhere. If its really too constricting we can always release more Spells!
Did you guys consider the December Update as a "Major" one, or will we get a real Major Update soonish?
It was definitely not a major update - it was about 6 weeks of development time (the prior update was early October), we wanted to get it out in December because we felt the Card Boost and Info Screens were nice QoL changes that we could do in a short period of time before the holidays.
Something we have been tossing around as an idea, that I would LOVE to see content creators test out. This works in Best-of-3 or Best-of-5:
I think this format has a lot of advantages:
I like this idea and I feel more people would watch matches.
I feel like I would like to do this only in friendly matches between clan mates.
Based on what we have seen from past features, I don't think we'll ever implement a new sort of player-to-player exchange. The problem with betting on friendly matches (outside of whatever regional laws that would prevent this - ex. Japan is very strict on gambling) is that players would just abuse it to funnel gold from alt accounts to their main accounts. I am not sure how we could prevent the system from allowing players to purposefully lose and give their gold to other accounts. I think something like Fantasy Royale though (picking favored winners from an esports event) could be more viable.
Read moreSimilar to League of Legends "Clash", an interesting concept would be to form teams of 4 or 5 people to compete in a ranked bracket. This can also work individually.
How would this work?
- Form a team from your friends list or your clan.
- At a certain day and time (maybe weekend nights), your team will be placed in a tournament with traditional brackets (none of that ladder nonsense in global tournaments). All players must be online for this to work properly.
- Your team fights other teams to move on in bracket, following the CRL format of 1v1s, 2v2s, and KoTH. Bof3 for each (except KoTH).
- This will also entail card bans, gamemode selections, and of course, rewards!
- Once you beat the other team, you fight the next team on the bracket. I would imagine there being 3 rounds, with 8 teams total per bracket. If that takes too long, then 2 rounds would work too with maybe a loser's bracket.
- There will also ...
The biggest challenge with this (its been discussed a lot in Clan Wars) is that if you make such hard requirements (everyone online; only play other teams in the same league, etc) then you have a huge failure rate. Tons of matches are lost from forfeits - even if it wasn't a team-based bracket, an individual bracket could have a lot of gaps as players close the app and fail to show up for their next round. However I agree that some form of deeper/longer form of competitive format would be really exciting.
I love the idea of doing this post, I hope this is done every month!
Agreed! These sorts of discussions are useful, sorry I missed this thread but I'll do my best to catch the next month's one :)
Not me! My RG deck is the classic Furnace type. I rarely combine win cons - I'll play a Mortar deck OR a Royal Giant deck, but almost never both in the same list
The new Elixir system was more than just changing the values, it was a full rewrite to the underlying tech that allowed the game to be more accurate in displaying what was happening. Prior to this update, it would always show 1x/2x Elixir, even if the values weren't exactly accurate.
Rage Mode was always 135% Elixir (your Elixir was Rage'd too!), so now we display the 1x-2x-3x stages as 1.3x - 2.7x - 4x, as that is a more accurate representation of how much Elixir you are generating.
This is beyond hilarious, thank you for the time and effort put into this!
I didn't known Seth had a pink purse and a long lasting debate about his sexuality
True story - when I was in middle school, a group of kids bullied me by spreading the rumor that on the weekend I carried a purse. REDDIT COMMENTS ALWAYS HIT YOU WHERE IT HURTS
Glad you are enjoying it! It was really a passion project by members of the team who love Drafting, we are all really happy to see such a positive response!
Witch nerf seems over zealous. The fisherman nerf feels wrong reducing his range.
Perhaps - Witch's nerf grew over the course of the season as she just kept inching up. She peaked at about 50% usage in GCs with a high win rate, that's pretty extreme and requires a heavy-handed nerf. Imagine if we nerfed her and she was still the best card in the game - we'd never hear the end of it. I think she's still quite useful if placed in the back behind a tank, but much much worse as an instant defense.
Hey Seth! Nice balance changes overall, but could you share why you gave the Baby Dragon a hitpoints nerf instead of hit speed? On release it was tanky and had a slow hit rate which felt right for the card, so why take it in a different direction with this nerf instead of moving back to the old stats?
Slower hitspeed makes it much worse vs. swarms like Minion Horde. We wanted to preserve its strength vs light swarms but make it worse against high point damage attacks from Musketeer or Towers, so health it is!
Read moreThanks for the extra details, Seth.
SO glad you didn't re-implement overflow elixir.
And Wallbreakers the logic is sound!
Executioner change is good in regards to Lavahound and was definitely needed, and I think viewed on his own it could be a small nerf, but when you consider he is ALWAYS used in conjunction with Tornado it's not the same, the reduced radius nerf being mitigated by the Tornado pulling everything into range. Fingers crossed he is kept in check by the meta, though many feel it was only Fisherman and Witch succesfully doing that.
I've mentioned elsewhere, but I do feel bad for witch users who have spent a long long time levelling her to fulfill the role of splasher, only for that role to be removed. Do you consider changing cards roles entirely in re-works as reasonable, or do you think endeavouring to keep their roles the same (albeit the way they perform said role potentially altered) would be better?
Overall these look solid...
Overall we want to keep them the same role. I'm sure there is an alternate universe where Witch was kept as a splasher, but for us we try to emphasize what makes a card unique. OG Witch was basically always going to be a crappier Wizard with this bonus Skeleton spawn. We tried to make her primarily a spawner with tons of Skeletons but it felt too binary and frustrating. So we decided that perhaps an alternative to Musketeer would be better - there are several Wizard-parallels already between Exe, Bowler, Baby Dragon, etc. Musky's alternatives are pretty distinctly different - Flying Machine, Magic Archer, Electro Wizard.
We tried to keep the splash damage, but it was so small that it felt like it didn't work often enough. I don't know if this is a satisfactory answer. I think we made correct decisions along the way, but perhaps there is another path to balance that kept Witch as a splasher. The rest of the reworks in development largely keep the card the same... except for...
Read moreThank god, I was literally about to shit myself thinking they were actual patch notes LOL, good call on not adding these. Also, do you think you nerfed fisherman too far? The massive hook range nerf will certainly reduce his capabilities a lot. The hook range is what defines this card, after all. I think it is how reliable he is on offense is what pushes him over the edge, so i think a deployment time increase might've been the better approach. Let me know if you tested this. Again I thank you for stepping up and readjusting the currently cancerous meta.
The thing that sold me on Fisherman at 6 tile range is that he can still pull Golems and Giants to the king tower but not quite Hog Riders. I think having this disparity between him and Tornado makes for an interesting choice. I could see buffing his HP/Damage but I think we are going to let the 6 tile range sit for a minimum of a few months to see how it affects, for example, Executioner. There is a big hypothesis that Exe only shows mediocre stats because of Fisherman, I think now we can put that to the test.
Hey! Just wanted to share some balance changes we did NOT do:
Elixir Golem - Opponent can overflow the Elixir (ie go up to 11, 12, 13)
We opted not to do this because it would be breaking the rules of the game just for one card. Also it takes away from some of the strategy of EG - relying on your opponent to spend Elixir wisely so they can take in the 4 new Elixir from the Golem
Wallbreakers - Speed from Very Fast to Fast
They felt so slow! This would make the first WB die so only the 2nd dealt damage. But this was disappointing because it removed their ability to split lanes, which is a nice bit of depth for the advanced WB player.
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Overall let's see how next month plays out. I think Exe is overall a nerf but admittedly I can see how people would perceive it as a buff. Its stats are the least begging for a nerf - only 10% use / 49% win in GCs, which would normally not be changed - but I understan...
Read moreHey everyone,
We thought we’d post some feedback & information with regards to the current meta, Season 4 balance changes and what will be taking place in Season 5.
This post will go through why we are not doing mid-season balance changes and the choices behind this decision.
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Season 3 & Our Learnings
When we initially reworked Executioner, we reacted to pre-release comments about the Executioner’s strength and did an emergency nerf with much less playtesting than usual (no time for a formal playtest cycle) before the start of Season 3. The result was a weak Executioner and most existing Exe players feeling let down. This also invalidated videos made by our Content Creators and made our own balance videos inaccurate, which was not good for anyone who wanted accurate information about Season 3 balance.
We opted to do a one-time 'Pre-CRL maintenance' to adjust Fisherman and Executioner and not affect...
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