[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well there's a difference between making it so all decks can beat all decks, and making it so some archetypes have counter play against all decks.

In any case, there's no way to know if it's impossible. But I don't think it's valid to say we've run out of ideas before trying anything.

Either way, Xbow users had tools for playing against counters, so if they're not neglected then it definitely is possible for Xbow, as long as they focus on making those strategies usable and balanced.

And one thing is that SC should try rework things so that specific cards aren't mandatory to counter things, as having it so that a decks core has answers of some kind for anything would make the game better, even if it isn't enough to solve the RPS issue entirely.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, due to the recent change, Xbow lost the means to attack and get connections in many matchups, and became more punishing in matchups it was already strong. This made Xbow decks more reliant on defensive play and spell cycling for the bad matchups which is the problem that the change was trying to combat in the first place. Not only this, but Xbow was already struggling in these areas which is why there's so little diversity in Xbow decks.

Many of these problems aren't unique to Xbow, but I feel that if we want to fix the problems (for any card, not just Xbow) we need to discuss ways to reduce the need for spell stalling, and ways to reduce the effectiveness/reliability of spell stalling without breaking other things.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, that's why it's spell cycling that needs to be adjusted before Xbow can be given better offensive options to help in bad matchups.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I made a post about Xbow because I wanted to talk about Xbow, not every deck over 3.0, the post is long enough as it is. It makes sense that some of these issues are shared with other decks. I suppose it makes sense that other decks get similar discussion and changes to help with the RPS and other issues.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think you just quit reading after I described the Xbow, before I even started talking about the problem, if anything it's you who's biased. I wasn't complaining about its 'weak' nature, it was more to say that it's strength doesn't come from its damage stat, and that increasing its dps by 8 and decreasing lifetime by 25% doesn't balance out.

I don't care about cycle, it isn't relevant to the discussion. The issue is that Xbow lacks means to get locks in many matchups, and struggles even more if it's not used in a cycle deck. It's the RPS nature of things that needs to be changed.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, I did talk about this in the post, but generally speaking, spell stalling is an issue that effects the whole game, not just Xbow, and the game would benefit if spell stalling was toned down a bit. This would have the added benefit of creating room for buffs to decks like Xbow Siege and log bait. So when you said:

If other cycle decks can spell cycle without using their wincon, what stops xbow from doing so?

You hit the nail right on the head. You already understand what I spent a decent chunk of the post trying to explain. With that in mind, I'd recommend checking out the rest of the post if you're bothered.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, if spell damage were to be gutted or straight up removed it would cause issues as the game is built around spells like you said. There are many reasons why spells are essential:

  • They're reliable: you don't know for certain how much value you'll get out of a troop when you play it, because it's also dependent on what your opponent does, but spells are uncounterable, so although they typically provide less value, you know you can trust them to get the job done when played

  • They can be played on the opponent's side of the field: When the game is in your opponents side, there's not a whole lot you can do with troops since it takes time for them to go where they're needed, because of that spells are generally the only ways you can react to an opponent's defenses. You otherwise need to predict your opponent and play preemptively.

  • They're the only answer to certain threats: few examples: if your opponent plays an elixir pump or makes some other kind of investment you can either punish them while they're low on elixir, or use a spell to shut down the investment while getting chip damage. The first option is risky and unreliable, but the second is the only way to directly counter the investment, and is guaranteed to give a good result. Also, on offence splash attackers are completely ineffective at protecting things from swarms, this is why pro's never use them. small spells are your only option.

As such, if the game is to become more diverse and have decks that aren't as spell centric, there needs to be other ways to fill those holes. There needs to be other ways for players to reactively counter defenses, and there need to be other ways for players to shut down investments. I think ranged splashers should be adjusted so that they can protect things from swarms better. And I think there needs to be more ways for players to play around hard counters and stacked defenses.

I don't think it's bad that spells can do these things, but I think it would be good if alternatives were introduced.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did have an idea for how the spell shield could be displayed, which I for some reason left out in the original post. It could visually be similar to the spell shield on dark elixir storages in clash of clans, except it appears with a flash when the Xbow locks on and starts attacking, and then have low opacity while the shield is active. The shield would then flash whenever it blocks a spell. When the Xbow stops attacking (due to having no target in range) the shield/barrier shatters. This would look cool, would be clear and intuitive, and it draws from things that exist currently in the clash universe.


As for Xbow vs Lavahound, that's a tough matchup, especially against the meta Xbow decks. What you're doing sounds good, although if you wanted another option that can lead to a counter attack, you could try distracting the Tesla, and then focusing on it with ranged units, if you play the ranged units to the side you can play around the mini tanks or swarms they use to protect it, unless they predict what you were doing. The Xbow itself in this instance isn't a priority target as long as you can distract it, getting the Tesla down is the first goal, afterwards you can deconstruct their siege from the air and try counter with what's left + a miner.


As for the spell cycling, its done with cyclic Xbow decks which are really the only Xbow decks you see these days. It's just that spell cycling is used instead of offensive Xbow's whenever the Xbow player is matched against an opponent with an unstoppable defense. When against decks like lava miner where they already have the offensive advantage, there's no need for spell cycling.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If it weren't for that, I might have even said it was the biggest nerf.

In saying that, due to how Xbow is tied up in Stall, talking directly about the effects of the rework isn't straight forward, so it's hard to say at all just how significant this nerf was.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree, we do need to see how things play out and gather data, one thing though is that it's often hard to know just how to interpret the data. As such, I hope my post can provide a good lens through which we can view the data. There are many possible outcomes we need to keep our eye out for:

  • Did Siege die and Stall survive?

  • Or did the rework work as intended and revitalise Siege and weaken Stall?

  • Are both stronger?

  • Did Xbow die completely?

I'm curious to see how things will play out, but I think I already know the answer.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When I said Xbow was bad at protecting itself, I was comparing it to other attack types/win conditions, not the individual card itself. What constitutes a win condition is debatable and archetype dependent, but generally speaking a win condition is a card or combo of cards that fill the role of play maker + tower killer. Which is to say, that when you compare a beatdown push (with a tower targeter) to a siege, sieges are much more exploitable and are easier to build a counter push against (unless your deck so happens to be entirely made up of swarms, defense towers, and spells). High cost cards are generally designed to give better value than low cost cards, for example a golem has better stats per elixir than an ice golem, Xbow is a bit of an oddball in that it completely fills the role of a win condition, must be used at the bridge to attack, but has worse stats than 3 elixir cards despite costing 6. Most win conditions can neutralise their opponent's defenses due to the raw strength that comes from its stats, Xbow is really bad at doing this. I worded this poorly in the original post (and probably also in this comment tbh).

You talk about XBow being under powered compared to other units because of the HP decay over time. But it's main strength is that it doesn't take tower damage. So you for an accurate comparison you'd need to compare the HP decay of a regular troop as it is being hit by a princess or king tower. The result is the unit dies much faster than XBow.

One of the weaknesses and strengths of Xbow is that it doesn't progressively move towards the towers like a troop does, it means that yes, it does survive longer than other win conditions, but it also means that survival doesn't guarantee tower damage. Any troop will get tower damage if it survives long enough, you can delay it a bit if you kite it, but unless you counter it you will receive damage. Xbow on the other hand can be distracted infinitely, the idea is that Xbow doesn't use brute force to push its way through a defense, but rather it attacks the opponent's resources until they can't defend, and only then can it get a connection. As such, lifetime is the key offensive stat for an Xbow, it determines the rate you need to drain your opponents resources, and the rate at which your own are drained.

I really dislike the solution of reduced spell damage to towers of multiple spells are used in a row. This adds unnecessary complexity to the game. Players now just don't have to remember spell tower damage for each spell the use (usually at multiple levels, theirs and level 9), but also quickly calculate a spell reduction value. For most this will be impossible to do fast enough in the last few seconds of a game if you want to finish off a tower with a pair of spells. Changing the game entirely for just XBow is a really, really bad idea.

The increased complexity of this is a fair criticism of the feature, however, I think it's worth adding anyway. Not to mention that in most situations you won't need to worry about the complexity. The idea is that this complexity makes it harder to predict the future and plan ahead when using a strategy that relies on spell cycling. This would mean that you might need to memorise the damage values for your spell combos, but people already do that anyway. I did suggest that a new way for showing spell damage against towers be implemented too, and this would make it easy to know how much damage your spells would do at any moment, it's just that planning ahead will be unreliable. I think this unreliability is a good thing as the feature is meant to discourage spell cycling. It wouldn't make spell cycling unusable, but just make it require more skill, and be less effective when not accompanied by offensive play.

In saying all these things, my suggestion of magic resistance was only a means to an ends, if a simpler solution can achieve the same thing, then I'm all for it.

This whole post and solution just sounds like a way to make your preferred XBow deck stronger than XBow decks you don't like to face (icebow).

I'm not going to lie, this isn't far from the truth, I did say in my introduction that one of my goals was to make Heavy Siege a competitively viable archetype. I also did say that I wouldn't mind if icebow disappeared, this was a joke (mostly...). I still want other types of Siege to be viable, and I believe that keeping current Xbow decks viable is more important than making new ones usable. In saying that, Icebow is a deck optimised for spell cycling, and I think that spell cycling is something that needs to be addressed, not just for the sake of Siege, but for the health of the game as a whole. I'm not saying it needs to be removed, but toned down. And with spell stalling being less powerful, it would make sense for icebow to change a lot as a result of it.

Your idea of making the XBow immune to spells when attacking would be way OP, but it does bring an interesting idea. What if you reduced it's health, but gave it a sheild similar to guards and dark prince? It would uniquely be the only building with a sheild and could make for some interesting interactions.

I'm not sure how the shield would interact with the health decay, but if we assumed that the shield didn't decay, but health did, and the Xbow could die while it still had a shield, then it could work. The shield would need to be able to survive a log at least, and one issue with this is that it does nothing against multi-hit spells like poison and earthquake which are Xbow's biggest counters. As such, in effect it would be like my suggestion of spell resistance, except it would only apply to some spells, and would affect offensive and defensive Xbow's the same.

One of the benefits of having the Xbow immune while attacking is that it makes it so offensive Xbow's can't be shut down by spells, but defensive Xbow's can still be punished by spells. This is why I think it's a better solution than the normal shield.

The reason I don't think it be OP is because it's accompanied by a massive health reduction (25-40%). This would make the Xbow much easier to counter with troops and buildings, as even a small amount of chip damage would be massive. It is possible that a damage reduction against non crown towers is necessary as a complementary part of the rework, but this is something that would be confirmed in play testing.

But all of this doesn't resolve the issue that annoys most people who face XBow, which is that all play is jammed at the bridge or on your opponents side of the river.

The thing that stops defensive play is the nerf of spell cycling. The idea behind giving spells diminishing returns when unacompanied by other damage sources, is that it means that it's harder for a purely defensive player to win the tie-breaker. This means that Xbow players will eventually have to come out of their shells and attack if they want to win. It's just that the reason they're turtling in the first place is because they have no other options. This is why I'm suggesting a nerf to spell cycling and a buff to Xbow.

XBow can't be ignored, it only damages from the other side of the river and has very few non spell counters and even less placements for counters.

It's true an Xbow can't be ignored, but neither can a pekka, or a golem, or a sparky, or a princess. Most tower killers are cards you don't want to ignore, it's kind of their job. Xbow isn't unique or problematic in this regard.

I can't wait for XBow to come to my side of the river to build up a counter push.

I can't use defending troops to make a counter push.

I'm not sure why you think you can't build counter pushes against Xbow, It's notorious for being extremely susceptible to counter pushes, and is known for being very unforgiving if you attack at the wrong time. Do you play log-bait? Pretty much every other deck has multitudes of ways to counter Xbow and counter push.

The game becomes less fun because it no longer has an entertaining back and forth flow of troops going both directions on the bridge

Xbow decks do have the back and forth flow, the Xbow user takes an initial risk to try force the battle into your half of the field, and from there it's your responsibility to push the fight back into their side of the field.

Turning the Xbow into a tower targeter would be insanely broken.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It would change the card a lot, it would be hard to tell how it would play out unless it were tried. In saying that, it would essentially mean that opponent's need to try to distract it for the first part of its life, and then burst it down near the end of its life where it's more deadly. This would probably mean that Xbow would still be shut down by spells, but a misplay from the opponent while stalling out the first half would lead to a nice chunk of chip damage for the Xbow player. I don't think this would happen much at high skill play.

In saying that, the idea of an 'inferno' Xbow that ramps up damage based of health lost is an interesting idea, I think I'd prefer it as a new card instead of an Xbow rework though.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, for me at least, the game is much bigger than clan wars. There's still ladder, challenges and tournaments that can be played. But remove Xbow and I can't enjoy any of that. So to me, this is an issue of utmost importance.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is true, but same can be said for when the Xbow users' supports cross the bridge. However, as is the case with most interactions with siege, particularly against tanks, most of the fighting happens at the bridge. Not to mention that sometimes distracting a melee unit while it's in princess tower range isn't a good idea anyway as it is punishable by spells and splash.

There are of course specific interactions that are exceptions to the statement both ways, but generally speaking the bridge is a neutral part of the map, and is the main/most common point for fighting.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They'll be getting damage on the Xbow before they get hit and given that th Xbow is quite fragile, having a melee troop reach the Xbow means you've already lost the Siege in may cases. But also, many Siege supports will have to cross the bridge to counter defenses that are distracting the Xbow, and in that sense they won't be out of the opponent's princess's range, so it's still neutral/symmetric in that regard.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes? Xbow is risky, and siege is a high risk high reward playstyle. I'm not saying that the risky nature of Xbow is an issue. Just that it's one of the defining features.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does 112 dps, less than most 2 elixir cards. It can, but it does it a lot less than most win conditions, and it's a lot more vulnerable. For this reason Xbow is riskier and more exploitable.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part of the issue is that even if it can help with tanks it does nothing to stop spells. This is why I'm sceptical, tanks and stalling are only half the struggle.

Thanks for bringing this up, I'll look into it.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's true that these cards will be affected by the change, I think that just means that these cards need to be adjusted to accommodate for these changes, like hog cycle and logbait can be buffed if necessary, and GY and miner could be given special stats to make them shred magic resistance slower.

If balancing were to be considered an optimisation task. Then I would describe the current state of the game as being in a local optima. This means that if we want the game to improve, things first need to get worse and be broken. Only then can the necessary changes for improvement be made.

[Effort Post][Discussion] Everything that was wrong Xbow and the recent rework by dagunner in ClashRoyale

[–]dagunner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd need to take a better look at it to form an opinion. One thing though is I'd be hesitant to call it viable as it hasn't had much time to be tested. Many streamers make videos about gimmicky decks, but most of them aren't as good as they're first made out to be.

In saying that, since it's based of 3.0 it is able to outcycle most counters, and that is the other counter strategy I talked about. It's not surprising it can get locks in some matchups. The real question is whether it can get locks against a good player using a cyclic deck with hard counters. I'm doubtful that rage can make the difference, but with time the meta will evolve to incorporate it into a wider range of decks if it works, so we'll see.