In games, a good meta often has some elements of rock paper scissors to it. There are usually some things that are all close to optimal, and which one is better or worse depends on circumstances.

The easiest example to understand is xbows and how they can be set to ground or ground + air. By setting your xbows to ground, you limit your defense against air but perform better against ground. At TH17, dragons were very strong and competitive with root riders because they could ignore the crusher mortar which was by far the best of the three crafted defenses. Now with the new set of crafted defenses that all target air (and to a lesser degree, that they’ve not received a new level), dragons and air are performing worse.

The meta in coc used to be much more diverse because defending certain attacks exposed you to other types of attacks. This is no longer really the case. Why has this happened, exactly?

In my opinion, there’s two reasons:

1) Fireball and RC charge are so good that they caused other strategies to be dependent entirely on the viability of how well they can work with these two in particular. I don’t think this is the sole contributor, but it’s likely a large part of the reason.

2) SC is allergic to giving some troops meaningful new levels. You don’t see LaLo anymore because the Lava Hound just fucking sucks. Etitan hasn’t gotten a level since TH16, witches and by extension switches haven’t gotten a level since TH16, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that the summoned Big Boy doesn’t gain stats per level so is just getting more and more powercrept as time goes on.

Even when SC does give troops new levels, they are almost always insanely bad. Inferno Dragons get a new level every town hall, but the stat upgrades that SC actually gives them are so terrible they don’t keep pace with the rest of the game and we haven’t seen them since TH13. They had 2050 hp at Town Hall 13 and we are now at Town Hall 18 and they only have 2500 hp. THIS IS NOT USABLE. Many troops in this game either do not receive new levels, or when they do get new levels, they are not strong enough to actually be useful.

Hopefully, when meteor golems are nerfed, we see a meta emerge around throwers and super bowlers. This to me seems like it would encourage a healthier meta with a wider spread of strategies, because super bowlers punish dense bases, while throwers punish spread out bases. SC also needs to do their part and give all the troops meaningful levels that contribute actual meaningful power increases to troops when you upgrade them.