An idea that could help th10 and 11 balance [idea]
If you are at th10 or 11, or pay attention to the elite war scene, you would know how unbalanced th10 and 11 are at the moment. The recent update gave a MASSIVE buff to air attacks, especially lalo (drags didn't get quite as much).
Right now, I feel that lalo and dragon attacks are balanced, with dragons being an effective safe 2, and lalo(hybrids) being the best shot at 3. Unfortunately, base design is not caught up, as is the case after any adjustments that threaten to shift the metagame, and good bases WILL be refocused to be anti air. This will leave 10s and 11s in about their previous spot, unable to 3 each other with half decent (anti ground) bases.
There are some common problems between these two that don't really appear at other town halls, and these are most likely what is making these town halls so defensively strong:
1) the sheer size of the base. With a great attack at th9, you might smash a base and have cleanup done with a full minute left. do the same at th10, you need to save a ton of cleanup troops, and even then you will probably be very close on time. at th11, the same holds true. The sheer amount of buildings to destroy is huge, especially if you are trying to get 3 stars.
2) the sheer defensive firepower of the base: every point defense at th11 does over 100 dps. there are 4 x bows, 7 cannons and 7 ATs (I think, don't quote me), and 4 teslas. multi infernos can do over 200 dps at lvl 3 and 4. single infernos start with little, but can get up to 1000 dps on tank units like golems and hounds. the eagle can do 90 dps, which isn't actually that huge compared to other things, but it covers the entire map. th10s still have nearly as many point defenses as th11, as well as infernos, don't have to fight the eagle, but also don't have the grand warden, or now the option of a 6th cc spell.
The problem is both town halls have many, many structures to clear, and also huge fire power in the defenses. use tons of tanks or a slow-and-steady army? they go too slow to get decent % if they even survive, and will have severe trouble cleaning up for 3 even if everything goes right. fast moving armies? they got completely decimated by the huge dps of all of those defenses. using healers on an army to keep it alive? infernos block it or strong defenses overwhelm their healing.
Th10 has never really had balance, neither has th11. seemingly autopilot 3s with 20 witches or barely able to clear 70% with the best attack ever done by that person.
They have fixed the slow and steady problem with laloon, having made it an actual fast moving, heavy army that will need to be defended. Base builders will need to learn how to defend against air and use it to their advantage.
Lets look at th9 and see why there are so many 3 star ideas it makes my head spin: there aren't as many defenses, and they all have lower dps. No infernos. many fewer buildings to clear. Neither of these problems exist, and elite war clans 3 star every single th9 every war. Never with crushing attacks unless the bases are terribly built or the attacker creates a brilliant plan to smash a good base in a way the designer hadn't anticipated. almost always with some idea that is different than the one for the th9s around it.
I will ignore the lower town halls for the fact that th7 and below is dealing with cc almost as much as dealing with a base, and th8 can usually get roflstomped with any hog based army.
So the problem is identified, now for a solution.
But first, a small note to keep you people from ignoring my ideas and skipping to WTL;DR:
The recent meta at th11 was first mass witches, then at th10 and 11, it was valks, then bowlers and miners. The problems I have presented are/were solved by these troops, which is why they became strong.
Witches: tons of points that do 100 dps? nah, more skellies. GB? tome. it was nearly impossible for the witches to be killed by anything other than a stray gb, which is negated by the tome. why they are garbage now? giant bombs and springs will kill them without skellies triggering them.
Valks? 5 buildings in a cell? run forward and swing instantly, now 3, keep running, now 2, now 0, wall? punch it and keep going. they could run over a base before the defenses could kill them, no matter how large the base was. only walls or great gbs could stop them.
bowlers? oh there's a wall there, who cares. let me take out nearly everything within 6 tiles of me. ezpz. bowlers could/can clear too much with just the tiniest access into the base.
miners? I pop up right next to you and immediately 1 shot you. oh the rest of the defenses want to shoot me, too bad.
ideas:
1) lower the dps of the defense levels at these town halls.
2) make units fast in a way that won't ruin th9 and below.
3) buff levels of troops at 10 and 11 so little to no ripple effect at th9 and below (looking at you cc bowlers)
4) completely rework offense/defense
5) craziest idea yet: remove a defense level from th10 or 11, refund its cost/worker time in gems (the royal, "yeah we screwed up" response). or just make lvl 12 practically 11.5 and 13 new 12, 14 new 13.
6) ignore the people complaining that their weak base was smashed by a good attacker!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok. I think town hall 10 balance was half decent (for valks, miners, bowlers, giants, and healers) until the cannon and x bow buffs happened (and healer nerf), then defense was just a little bit too powerful. that increased dps (opposite of 1).
Valks got "buffed" with th11 update (some time in there), and could run over bases, taking out the defenses before they could get too many shots off. I personally feel that they were nerfed in the sense that it was made much harder to use them in small groups instead of mass. (so this was sort of 2, but it had a bit of a ripple at th9).
tons of new unit levels introduced since th11 update at both town halls. this should not be a first step though, as it will only balance that unit, not the town hall itself. Once other stuff is balanced, sure. (2 also sort of has this problem)
Th11 got the eagle, which took off like 60% of the hp of a maxed king. solution: introduce the warden! it worked to some degree...
did th10s need lvl 13 cannons, did th11s need lvl 10 WTs, did they really?
OMG A GUY PUT 4 HEALERS ON IS AQ, WALKED STRAIGHT INTO THE AD OUTSIDE MY BASE AND THEN SENT TROOPS AND 3ED ME, PLEASE NERF MORE... you get the idea of this one.
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OK, so that means that the best ideas are reducing the sheer dps at this town hall, speeding up units, or removing levels as the strongest candidates.
I will just say this now: the cannon buff was beyond unnecessary. that was a problem with a single troop, not the defense.
I personally agree that x bows having extra power opened a lot of doors for the defender, but it was just over the edge.
I will stop reasoning and cut to the chase now:
How I think stuff could be fixed:
*note: I personally think lvl 13 points should be removed from th10, and lvl 14 all together. however, since that would leave max th11s in a hole, I think the lvl 14 points could be reworked for a weird quirk instead of raw power, or the idea above of basically making 13 the new 12 and 14 the new 13.
1) remove cannon dmg buff. (12: 90, 13: 100, 14: 105)
2) decrease the power of ATs sligtly. (12: 82, 13: 94, 14: 98)
3) make AT arrows fly much faster (so they don't end up shooting an arrow at something that already will die to an arrow flying at it). rarely happens but is annoying.
4) buff single infernos to "smart-target" the highest hp unit in the area, including king. This way, it will not be stuck on barbs, and give a reason to freeze it. (or just take smaller units like valks and giants instead of golems or pekkas or hounds)
5) reduce healing block by multis to only 50%, instead of 100%, and it scales down to 0 over 1 second, rather than remain in full force for 2. this is to make healers a bit stronger at th10, and make heal spells useful. plus single infernos need to be able to contend without being beyond broken.
6) make springs go off 33% faster. I am a valk user and I love seeing spring traps go off and miss, but whether or not this is intentional or a bug SC is really just yet to fix. Increase spring range by 50% (not trigger range), to still take about the same number of smaller troops. (plus valks get a slight buff if you scroll down)
7) consider increasing clock to 3:15 or 3:30 for th10 and 11 defenses (doesn't matter what is attacking). this counteracts the size slightly.
now th11 specific!
8) rework eagle: takes 120 space to activate, not 180, but it subtracts 3 housing space per second if not active (but stays active once activated). it does 40% less damage (so 54 dps at max), still the triple-volley, please keep reading if you've made it this far. It increases damage based on how much housing space is inside of a 1 tile radius (0.9 dps per housing space, so 3 hp per hit per housing space in that area. Splash goes 2 tiles further with 30 damage per shot scaling to 0.
9) complete warden rework: aura buffs more/less hp based on the number of units in it (also reverted to old size). Warden does not buff himself, for clarity. current applies for 140 space, it ramps up down to 80 and stops there, at about 200% of its base strength. It caps at 290 with about 10% of its base strength. I trust SC can make a basic curve or graph of exponential decay and fit it to that. Tome offers 50% defense and trap resistance. warden gives set (base strength) aura on defense. If units leave the circle while on offense, they are subtracted from the counter. If they die in the aura, they count permanently. hero ability units don't count. heroes still 25 (excluding warden). Warden tome still applies to himself (unlike aura).
Now troop specific:
giants: give a 15% hp buff, make them favorite targets of wizard towers (no damage increase though). This helps them contend with golems just a bit better, but the attacker needs a plan for large incoming splash damage.
wallbreakers: they are drawn to target the same place as any active wbs dropped within a tile of them in the past second. this way they don't split up and go after a completely different wall (ever dropped 3 wbs fast and they all go to different walls for seemingly no reason? yeah it stops that).
Loons: reduce hp by 10%. This way the attacker has to be careful to keep them up with the new faster drop speed.
Healers: change the heal on target mechanic to actually be number of healers in an area (8 tile diameter), with every healer having her power decreased equally to match the old numbers (so instead of 2 at 100%, 3rd at 75%, and 4 at 50% or whatever the stats are, have all at about 80%) this penalizes the way that they were used with mass bowlers more heavily (By slightly spreading). If a healer falls in 2 circles like this, choose the more penalizing healing % for it. Also, make them not trigger air mines. While air mines might shift back inside to counter laloons, it hinders queen charges (one of the hardest things to do IMHO at the moment, especially into an inferno or cc/hero).
dragons: +25% damage. they are out shined most of the time now by bbds, with more health, less effective damage taken from air mines, and slightly lower overall damage. If they get separated, nearly double the damage. increased damage makes full drags more volatile in groups, but slightly less tanky than a hoard of bbds. (also a bbd change below)
pekka: increase wall damage by 33%. With the valk changes below, they both sort of become the same troop again. Valk is slow swinging, fast-ish moving tank that can damage multiple buildings at once. pekka is slower and can still do about as much damage (ignoring grouped buildings) but stays behind tanks. Make pekka have a 0.33s swing time (same DPS). this way pekka shreds individual buildings without the massive overkill right now, but still stays behind tanks. also pekka walk animation now has sword raised. valk can do damage to clustered buildings, but runs ahead, while pekkas can wipe out individual buildings very quickly, and don't have the pause before moving on like the valk.
bbd: fav target of air bombs, 2x dmg. this way they are slightly less effective in mass (same reason drags got buffed). the two need different purposes, upsides, and downsides to play well together, otherwise one will emerge as almost always better.
miner: revert the "bug fix" that was hidden from us that now makes their burrow time random/increased. They receive only 33% spell/healing power while underground (so less speed from rage, less healing from heals/healers). they all target different skellies... they stall for about 1s while passing under a wall. Also, they can't burrow back down if they come up on a spring, and bombs that they trigger will still hurt them while underground (blowing down the miner hole I guess). This way they still set off traps, but are still capable of dodging defense damage. The spell penalty can be decreased if necessary.
Valks: revert to old hp. Keep the faster initial swing, but after the building(s) is(are) destroyed, they pause for about the time of their old initial swing speed before continuing. This way they sink defenses a tiny bit faster than their old selves, but move through a base exactly as slowly as before their "buff." Rage decreases this waiting time by 33%, haste by 50%
Witch: revert the hp and dmg. make the skellies trigger gbs again. make small bombs and springs the threat, not gbs. Also they can summon continuously while attacking. lvl 1 only summons 2 skellies at a time, lvl 2 summons 3, lvl 3 summons 4 (think it is 3,4,5 right now, just to avoid a cascade effect at th9, maybe revert to 4/5 on lvl 2 and 3 if necessary). With warden change, they aren't invincible. they keep a constant wave of skellies, and the threat is that a bomb will go off, and stuff will start to lock on to them. they are as hard to kill as before (ignoring warden getting them out of everything), but still very low dmg.
hound: cause a slight delay before releasing puppies, so half of them don't instantly die to defense retargeting. Also when a bomb hits a hound immediately after a sam kills it and it wipes every pup :mad:. -15% hound hp. loons are faster effectively, so hounds need to die a bit sooner to stay balanced. nerf lvl 1 and lvl 2 hounds hp by about 25-30% from current (to rein in their power at th9 a bit).
bowler: revert to 8 space. if they can adjust 2 tiles or less to line up targets, do it. +10% rock damage where it lands (so the 2nd hit, the one after the bounce). revert initial attack speed. -40% damage vs walls, and wall shots don't bounce (if 1st hit is a wall). This makes them much smarter, but it also makes them much weaker. Th10 is getting some huge defensive decreases in power, so bowlers need to be toned down to match this. Also please bear in mind these numbers can be adjusted until they seem to fit in.
Lighting: add 3 additional strikes that hit much further out (4-5 tiles). right now it is literally only useful for 3 things: AD zap for drags/lalo, mortar zap for barch, taking out queen/inferno/cc if they are all right next to each other. This will boost its overall damage and make people remember it exists. This one will have a very hard time fitting in though, since spells usually help units, rather than do damage. if only santa could do a better job.
heal gets buffed due to inferno nerf.
rage is one of the strongest spells currently.
jump is usually better than quake. keep as is also.
freeze still huge for singles and allowing heals or saving back units. same.
clone: it packs a punch, but costs too much space: reduce size to 3. also the first spell of that size, so could lead to some interesting stuff. It won't allow an extra elixir without dropping a poison (most of the time), which is risky.
poi is great, haste is great, skelly has tons of uses, especially for air attacks.
quake: increase damage to buildings slightly. jump is usually better because it does the same for half the space (referring to quad quake), and the building damage rarely matters. If it hurts the buildings more, it could come to importance. still has its uses though, especially in being permanent.
Also, a weird idea: maybe add something that affects the clock:
a) if all defenses are down, add 30s
b) if over 90% it can play out till all units are dead
This could replace 10 or something.
hopefully this could help bring some balance and fun to the top of the game. As far as I am concerned, any max th11 should be 3-able, but the attacker should know what he/she is doing and do it right.
Some info on how I came up with these balance ideas:
I wanted to avoid creating a troop that supported being used in as large a group as possible. Poster-child example: valk "buff." they can chew through a cell in a matter of seconds in their current form, no haste or rage even needed. In a small pack, they don't one shot stuff, and get picked one at a time while taking additional swings. My idea makes them capable of destroying stuff quickly, but not gaining speed by being in a large pack or horde.
Miners? they were too good because they couldn't get hurt while underground (and could get spell-ed). the less hits they need to destroy, the longer the spend underground (relative to time above). my redesign gets rid of the spell while underground mechanic (practically), and they are weaker to giant bombs and springs, sort of like hogs. plus they are slowed down (wall delay), to cause potential time trouble if they are used poorly.
giants are favored targets of WTs, and already suffer hugely from splash, so they need healing or spread to avoid this.
I am personally a bit unsure on whether bowler and witch will be balanced with this, but it could work. Bowler still has massive destructive capabilities, but is much slower. My fear is that his wall weakness could be counteracted by the pekka's wall crushing buff. his problem is he doesn't have a particular weakness besides walls, and it can be offset by another troop. my only other idea is to decrease the range of the rock and/or its bounce so they can't destroy as much on a spread base. Witches might risk becoming OP in mass again, but the witches have a weakness. My fear is that they could be healed to survive bombs. then again, I could see a small patch of small bombs being a problem. granted they haven't been in great use since bomb towers were released, they could act as a counter to them... I'm not entirely sure on these two.
WTL;DR
th10 loses 13 points (effectively). th11 loses 14 (Effectively). multis block 50% of healing, not all. eagle does less dmg overall, but can do more to large groups. It activates sooner vs mass attacks, but might not activate at all against a great phased attack. warden aura gives more hp buff to less space, less to more, and tome is only 50% resist, not 100. tons of individual unit changes, maybe add extra time to 10 and 11 raids.
