7r3 champs, return on investment, and the current war mess
TyEdge
Member Posts: 3,116 ★★★★★
I’ve been thinking about my history with the game, various champ metas and resource metas, and I’ve come to the conclusion that changes in the game have unintentionally changed the decisions we make about our rosters, and it’s contributing to the frustration we have in war with the new tactic.
Back in the #SaveForBlade days and the Corvus meta that followed, many of us were getting our first maxed 5-stars. The most rational decision at the time was to focus on viable attackers. They could help in war, AQ and/or single player/story content. Defender rankups basically existed to frustrate other players and were a help primarily in war.
To a large extent, that continued to be true for the lifecycle of 6-stars, but two key things have now changed that decision making calculus: battlegrounds and the 7-star pool itself.
Whereas war only required five defenders per player, Battlegrounds requires a deeper deck with attackers, defenders and dual threat champs. On top of that, rotating metas and tactics drive summoners to rank more and different champs. The problem is that, as presently constructed, the scoring seems to encourage ranking defenders over attackers. Let’s say you have an offensive champ who can finish a fight in 60 seconds. If you get a 16% attack boost for going to 6r5, you might save yourself 10-12 seconds. Meanwhile, if you rank up a 7-star (specifically a defensive champ) you might increase the length of an 80 second fight by 25%. That’s 20 seconds worth of points in your favor. I know there are many variables here, including special damage, overkill, etc, but fundamentally and over an infinite number of fights, I think the principles hold up.
That takes us to the 7-star pool. Several decisions about 7-stars contribute to this problem. First, the decision was made to leave out the most elite champs. This means the pool contains champs that are, level for level, B-attackers and often A or B-defenders.
Now that necropolis is giving out a 7-star r3 gem, summoners get to make a choice. Ranking an attacker carries some measure of risk - if the champ is that good, they may be banned in war and thus be useless. In BGs, as mentioned above, there are probably more points to be gained from ranking a difficult defender than a great attacker. Then you compound that with the champion pool available, and those scales tip even more.
So as we all complain about war, remember that we have a new season of tactics where many of us haven’t been ranking our attackers, while many of us are simultaneously taking on our first r3 defenders placed on the most obnoxious nodes our opponents could find - typically miniboss nodes that give the greatest boosts to their already-incredible health and attack.
No wonder we’re all having a bad time.
PS…if anyone wants to duel a duped 7r3 Sauron, I’m your guy, because my choices were him or unduped Gambit.
Back in the #SaveForBlade days and the Corvus meta that followed, many of us were getting our first maxed 5-stars. The most rational decision at the time was to focus on viable attackers. They could help in war, AQ and/or single player/story content. Defender rankups basically existed to frustrate other players and were a help primarily in war.
To a large extent, that continued to be true for the lifecycle of 6-stars, but two key things have now changed that decision making calculus: battlegrounds and the 7-star pool itself.
Whereas war only required five defenders per player, Battlegrounds requires a deeper deck with attackers, defenders and dual threat champs. On top of that, rotating metas and tactics drive summoners to rank more and different champs. The problem is that, as presently constructed, the scoring seems to encourage ranking defenders over attackers. Let’s say you have an offensive champ who can finish a fight in 60 seconds. If you get a 16% attack boost for going to 6r5, you might save yourself 10-12 seconds. Meanwhile, if you rank up a 7-star (specifically a defensive champ) you might increase the length of an 80 second fight by 25%. That’s 20 seconds worth of points in your favor. I know there are many variables here, including special damage, overkill, etc, but fundamentally and over an infinite number of fights, I think the principles hold up.
That takes us to the 7-star pool. Several decisions about 7-stars contribute to this problem. First, the decision was made to leave out the most elite champs. This means the pool contains champs that are, level for level, B-attackers and often A or B-defenders.
Now that necropolis is giving out a 7-star r3 gem, summoners get to make a choice. Ranking an attacker carries some measure of risk - if the champ is that good, they may be banned in war and thus be useless. In BGs, as mentioned above, there are probably more points to be gained from ranking a difficult defender than a great attacker. Then you compound that with the champion pool available, and those scales tip even more.
So as we all complain about war, remember that we have a new season of tactics where many of us haven’t been ranking our attackers, while many of us are simultaneously taking on our first r3 defenders placed on the most obnoxious nodes our opponents could find - typically miniboss nodes that give the greatest boosts to their already-incredible health and attack.
No wonder we’re all having a bad time.
PS…if anyone wants to duel a duped 7r3 Sauron, I’m your guy, because my choices were him or unduped Gambit.
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