Recently feeling like the ladder is slowly falling apart with all-something decks. Either it's rage balloon or all the small clutter. It just feels almost impossible to play varied, interesting and flexible decks that trade blows and react.
I think the game needs restricted card pool for seasons or something like that.
Once again I'm fairly sure there are decent decks and interesting playstyles somewhere, but the experimentation process is so slow and resource consuming that it's almost not worth it.
Just an update to follow-up on all my complaints about not having specific cards, and believing matchmaking is rigged.
I not only still believe I have further evidence to support this, but i played the system and actually got myself over 3k by exploiting it.
TLDR: I believe there is a hidden MMR similar to most ELO systems for matchmaking. Here is why:
When I got back up to 2900 this most recent time, I was on an 8 game win streak. Based on my past experience, I had a feeling that would screw my matchmaking. It's not the first time I had a big win streak and then it was to be followed by a big loss streak.
I did one match. It was against a lvl 11 player, with lvl 11 commons, lvl 9 rares. He was under 3k rating at the time, but his highest rank was 4000... This confirmed my suspicion.
So I did some classic challenges. And I lost. I did not just give them away - I do not know if they have any detection for leaving or not participating. So I actually put up a fight, and went with an overly offensive deck. This deck allowed me to for sure take at least 1 tower, but left me vulnerable to attack. So I took a tower and lost.
I did this for 6 losses.
Then I did a ranked match. Guy dropped a giant in left lane, i dropped goblin gang in right lane, did about 500 dmg to tower, and he just left. Looked at his record, he was at his highest.
Then I did classic challenge for 3 more losses.
Did another ranked match. Guy made mistake after mistake. I shot arrows at his princess, he drops a skarmy right as tehir in flight. He drops a giant, i drop a inferno tower, in teh other lane he then drops a valk and mega minion (ofc inferno eats up all 3).
Checked his record after game, he was at his highest.
Repeated this a few times, and bam, broke 3k. Now I'm going to stick to challenges until the cards I need appear in shop.
But I cansee the same thing in challenges as well.
Using the same deck, my first challenge was 8 wins. Right away did another, 6 wins. Did another, 3wins. Did another, and it was then hard to cut even.
Look at the history of these opponents, and as the matches get harder, their "Max Trophies" gets higher. A definite correlation.
So to anyone out there who was in my position, and missing the most competitive legendaries, and having trouble getting 3k? Play the system. You will need to spend some gems, but I am very confident they are using a hidden ranking. The hidden ranking gets too high? Your opponents max rank gets higher. Hidden ranking goes below your actual ranking? Your opponents max right becomes their current rank.
On April 21 2017 03:47 Spyridon wrote: This game has begun to frustrate me like no other, lol.
The only cards I am missing are log, miner, ewiz, and bandit... but it seems log/miner/ewiz are the 3 key cards in the meta that you see at least 1-2 in EVERY deck.
I got to 4500 last season, here is what I see at the 4k+: A LOT of RG + shit barb, hog + shit barb, a LOT of lavaloon, and a LOT of zap bait decks, and some golem beatdown and some bowler/giant. If I had to guess, the most popular cards are still RG and shit barbs. I see them all the time. miner and ewiz not necessarily. I don't see very many bandits. Personally I think she sucks and never use her. The log is basically a must have in this meta, and will agree that if you don't have it, it is definitely a severe handicap. but again fear not, not every deck i face uses a log. it is possible.
I play a mortar deck. have been for months. i always say fuck the meta. supercell always leaves mortar alone. i think it needs a buff, but im content to play it as is. I have a level 12 mortar, level 2 log, level 8 mega minion, level 12 knight, level 11 arrows, level 5 lightning, level 5 skarmy, level 9 fern tower. so my card levels aren't too shabby, but they're not amazing either. often times my opponents have level 13 commons, level 10 rares, level 6 epics, and the occasional level 3 legendary. i'll upgrade my stuff slowly and eventually climb more trophies, but the message is if you wanna mess around and play what's fun to you, you can still do so and get away with it. unfortunately card levels do matter, so if you are free to play it could be why you've hit a wall. if you got a log i think you'd be set, you don't really require miner, ewiz or bandit. i dunno if legendaries show up in your shop but i'd save up and wait for the log. that is key in this meta with all the damn swarm units flying around.
EDIT: i will say this though. if you like pekka you're kinda out of luck because i almost never see pekka decks. she still isn't a very good card, although definitely better with the fast deploy time now. many people rock fern towers and skarmy and other counters. i see more golem than pekka
EDIT: shit barb = e barb, its what i call them (can you tell i hate that card)
PEKKA does tear through ebarbs and RG though. The skarmy and gob horde give you nightmares, but most of the matchups feel doable right now as long as you're not getting thrashed by some obscenely overleveled stuff or losing to the enemy early game gamble badly.
There probably are far stronger options too, but it's still quite fun and somewhat doable. You really want to have that log though and ewiz helps a lot in surviving the inferno stuff.
I opted to drop poison even though it's very good against a lot of the horde cards. Maybe once its a bit more leveled, I can remove hog and rely on PEKKA + poison for damage. Or maybe I'll drop my elixir pump, it certainly isn't in fashion right now.
On April 21 2017 03:47 Spyridon wrote: This game has begun to frustrate me like no other, lol.
The only cards I am missing are log, miner, ewiz, and bandit... but it seems log/miner/ewiz are the 3 key cards in the meta that you see at least 1-2 in EVERY deck.
I got to 4500 last season, here is what I see at the 4k+: A LOT of RG + shit barb, hog + shit barb, a LOT of lavaloon, and a LOT of zap bait decks, and some golem beatdown and some bowler/giant. If I had to guess, the most popular cards are still RG and shit barbs. I see them all the time. miner and ewiz not necessarily. I don't see very many bandits. Personally I think she sucks and never use her. The log is basically a must have in this meta, and will agree that if you don't have it, it is definitely a severe handicap. but again fear not, not every deck i face uses a log. it is possible.
I play a mortar deck. have been for months. i always say fuck the meta. supercell always leaves mortar alone. i think it needs a buff, but im content to play it as is. I have a level 12 mortar, level 2 log, level 8 mega minion, level 12 knight, level 11 arrows, level 5 lightning, level 5 skarmy, level 9 fern tower. so my card levels aren't too shabby, but they're not amazing either. often times my opponents have level 13 commons, level 10 rares, level 6 epics, and the occasional level 3 legendary. i'll upgrade my stuff slowly and eventually climb more trophies, but the message is if you wanna mess around and play what's fun to you, you can still do so and get away with it. unfortunately card levels do matter, so if you are free to play it could be why you've hit a wall. if you got a log i think you'd be set, you don't really require miner, ewiz or bandit. i dunno if legendaries show up in your shop but i'd save up and wait for the log. that is key in this meta with all the damn swarm units flying around.
EDIT: i will say this though. if you like pekka you're kinda out of luck because i almost never see pekka decks. she still isn't a very good card, although definitely better with the fast deploy time now. many people rock fern towers and skarmy and other counters. i see more golem than pekka
EDIT: shit barb = e barb, its what i call them (can you tell i hate that card)
Thanks for the reply.
I actually updated after getting 3k with my findings to support my belief of matchmaking being rigged. Used it to get to 3k.
So I'm just sitting in shop waiting for log. I have gotten bandit & ewiz already. Only missing log and miner now.
And I do agree, log definitely is the key to the meta. Has been for months really... not really fair that they never did anything about it.
My prediction? Once I get log, they will nerf it, lol.
On April 21 2017 03:47 Spyridon wrote: This game has begun to frustrate me like no other, lol.
The only cards I am missing are log, miner, ewiz, and bandit... but it seems log/miner/ewiz are the 3 key cards in the meta that you see at least 1-2 in EVERY deck.
I got to 4500 last season, here is what I see at the 4k+: A LOT of RG + shit barb, hog + shit barb, a LOT of lavaloon, and a LOT of zap bait decks, and some golem beatdown and some bowler/giant. If I had to guess, the most popular cards are still RG and shit barbs. I see them all the time. miner and ewiz not necessarily. I don't see very many bandits. Personally I think she sucks and never use her. The log is basically a must have in this meta, and will agree that if you don't have it, it is definitely a severe handicap. but again fear not, not every deck i face uses a log. it is possible.
I play a mortar deck. have been for months. i always say fuck the meta. supercell always leaves mortar alone. i think it needs a buff, but im content to play it as is. I have a level 12 mortar, level 2 log, level 8 mega minion, level 12 knight, level 11 arrows, level 5 lightning, level 5 skarmy, level 9 fern tower. so my card levels aren't too shabby, but they're not amazing either. often times my opponents have level 13 commons, level 10 rares, level 6 epics, and the occasional level 3 legendary. i'll upgrade my stuff slowly and eventually climb more trophies, but the message is if you wanna mess around and play what's fun to you, you can still do so and get away with it. unfortunately card levels do matter, so if you are free to play it could be why you've hit a wall. if you got a log i think you'd be set, you don't really require miner, ewiz or bandit. i dunno if legendaries show up in your shop but i'd save up and wait for the log. that is key in this meta with all the damn swarm units flying around.
EDIT: i will say this though. if you like pekka you're kinda out of luck because i almost never see pekka decks. she still isn't a very good card, although definitely better with the fast deploy time now. many people rock fern towers and skarmy and other counters. i see more golem than pekka
EDIT: shit barb = e barb, its what i call them (can you tell i hate that card)
Thanks for the reply.
I actually updated after getting 3k with my findings to support my belief of matchmaking being rigged. Used it to get to 3k.
So I'm just sitting in shop waiting for log. I have gotten bandit & ewiz already. Only missing log and miner now.
And I do agree, log definitely is the key to the meta. Has been for months really... not really fair that they never did anything about it.
My prediction? Once I get log, they will nerf it, lol.
They've been nerfing log a lot, it used to be way more dominant. I think the spell itself is in a pretty good place now, but there are just so many good horde cards that it's difficult to handle it all without log. Zap got nerfed too, which doesn't help at all.
I feel like the unit AI in general isn't well suited for handling all the hordes. Even with all the splash damage units you still need spells to handle very cheap cards. For example PEKKA can't properly tank through skarmy even with a wizard support. That's 12 elixir worth of units playing to their strengths and 3 elixir skarmy still manages to halt the push.
I do hope they nerf the hordes. I think it should leave log in a place where it's useful, but not as direly needed as it is right now.
There is no hidden matchmaking on ladder. Stuff like some over levelled asshole 1k below where he belongs is usually due to intentionally dropping trophies to spam 3x wins for clan chest. Pretty scummy but that's how the game works. Challenges are a bit different. Pretty sure there's a hidden rating that's used to match you there. My first few runs were all in the 8-10 win range (never got the 12 win achievement though >.<), now I average about 2-5. I just use the cheap one to test out decks I've been theorycrafting before I drop gold into it.
Completely agree with Fishjie re the meta. Only difference is I see a bit more of that mortar deck I assume he's running in the low 4ks :p Very annoying to face actually. It's pretty strong.
Yeah the AI is terrible with hordes, particularly melee when one or two towers are firing. IMO Log just does too much work vs mid size creatures (M Pekka, Barbs, Muskies) in addition to hordes. Reckon the knockback range should be reduced.
Thoughts on Heal? It's pretty useful in my 3M deck (counters Fireball or forces them to use it with Log/Zap which frees up the other side of your push) but most of the time it feels like a more expensive Rage (used to add punch to a successful push).
Haven't seen practically any good heal uses yet. I'm investing my gold elsewhere at the moment and the few attempts of heal I've seen have been very underwhelming. In general I'm struggling to fit the necessities to 8 slots and there's very little room for complimentary cards like heal.
As you said, it's probably the card to play after an AoE spell. Maybe it'll work somehow against these Tornado + AoE combos, but so far they're the least of my worries.
On May 12 2017 13:13 Amarok wrote: There is no hidden matchmaking on ladder. Stuff like some over levelled asshole 1k below where he belongs is usually due to intentionally dropping trophies to spam 3x wins for clan chest. Pretty scummy but that's how the game works. Challenges are a bit different. Pretty sure there's a hidden rating that's used to match you there. My first few runs were all in the 8-10 win range (never got the 12 win achievement though >.<), now I average about 2-5. I just use the cheap one to test out decks I've been theorycrafting before I drop gold into it.
While I can respect your opinion. I have tested the same thing on ladder to strong results (at least below 4k, not sure if things change with matchmaking in the new arenas).
I have seen a correlation between the ladder matches AND challenges, as well. Matchmaking getting a bit ridiculous in ladder? Do some challenges, even at 0 wins, the matches are quite difficult. Once it eases up? Do some more ladder. Just the other day this week my co worker was complaining about ladder, and he does not really run challenges usually. Went in to a classic, did not even get one win.
Even if you drop rank a bit to where you are below your natural rank (such as 1k below where u belong as u mentioned), hit a 8-10 win streak, you will likely find you are matched with stronger opponents, even if you are ~500-750 rank below your natural at that point. It makes it much harder to progress after moving up quickly.
I ran in to that issue multiple times.
You can also check starfire graphs for rankings.. Many of my co workers started using that app. I've checked clan mates as well. Do you know the most common graphs that you see? Steep inclines followed by steep declines. Back and forth. Each consecutive one being a little steeper than the last.
Could it be coincidence? Of course. Is it likely to be coincidence? Statistically, no.
But, you may not be in a position where attempting testing it is needed. For anyone who is actually having trouble and/or hitting a wall, give it a try. You might be surprised what spending 30-40 gems achieves....
CR admitted somewhere that once you hit certain amount of wins, you get matched against people with same amount of wins. I'm pretty sure it was around 10 wins?
On February 19 2019 00:20 TropicalHaze wrote: Anyone still playing this game? I only started maybe a month ago but now I'm starting to have second thoughts if it really is worth the time/effort.
I've been playing since mid 2016. It's certainly takes an immense amount of time to hit max level as a FTP, but the core gameplay loop is enjoyable so the in-game experience can be worth it in and of itself. That said, if I had my account wiped I'd probably not have the energy to level it up again as FTP and I'm not willing to spend money on games like these.
Bear in mind, I'm somewhat jaded atm. I spent the vast majority of my 2+ years of progression on a 3M deck that was completely obliterated in the last patch. I've been playing online multiplayer games long enough to have seen my share of nerfs, but having something I'd spent 2+ years building get destroyed was a special kind of painful.