Supercell-Seth

So far there doesn't seem to be many outlier cards. Almost everything is within expected ranges, and the cards that are above that range aren't urgent / could be benefiting from the meta.

If things stay the same, you can expect an all-buff sort of balance update. Though we have reduced the amount of 'rework' level of changes that are coming up, the cards that needed reworks will probably end up with buffs. Here's one we have been playing with that will probably ship in February (as always, nothing is final / everything can change):

BARBARIAN HUT

Lifetime Reduced 60s -> 50s

Spawn Time Reduces 13.5s -> 12.5s

Added Death Spawn of 2 Barbarians (1 wave)

The reduced lifetime and added Death Spawn work out to the same number of spawns, but the building becomes a bit more Spell resistant (since there is no way to remove the Death Spawn by damaging the building). The waves also end up closer together with a shorter spawn time, providing m...

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.

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:

• Zap & Poison
• Log & Fireball
• Arrows & Lightning
• BarbBarrel/Snowball + Rocket/Earthquake

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!

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:

1. Players build 4 different decks, with no cards being used in multiple decks (ie 32 separate cards) - these decks cannot be changed once a match starts
2. Players pick 1 deck (secretly from each other) and play Game 1.
3. After Game 1, Players will pick a 2nd deck (again, secretly). Any decks used in prior games (win or lose) cannot be used again in the same match
4. If it goes to Game 3, you will have 2 decks remaining to choose from. In Bo5 matches, you can use any deck in Game 5 (all 4 decks are available again)

I think this format has a lot of advantages:

1. Extreme deckbuilding skill as you need to balance your collection and really know what decks need what cards, instead of pushing Electro Wizard and Mega Minion into every deck. Can build diverse lineups or maximize a single archet...

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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...

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...