So here is my tactical guide, not 100% complete, but a good starting point I think ;)
- DE storage is usually always the most heavily defended storage tank, so you would need strong CC support. A bunch of archers will not work most of the time. Dragons & wizards are the best troops to help you punch through to the middle fast.
- Players holding a lot of DE usually have good defense and have successfully defended against lots of attacks to be able to save up the amount of DE I want to attack.
- I have tried farming range from Gold 3 all the way up to Master League 1, and after a couple months of experimenting, I have to say 1700-1900 is probably the best range for DE farming (not too hard to get, and the amount is decent = maximum DE loot per hour).
- According to my attacks in the past few days, I average about
3600-4000 DE per hour. I have improved to this rate from 1500 de per hour in the past, after many tweaks and experiments. So now I just give you the good stuff - the strategy we have finetuned :)
1. Army composition: 2 healers, 4 wizards, 15 giants, 7 wall breakers, 10 mininions, and about 20 each for archer, goblins, barbs. Also a CC full of strong troops (wizards and/or dragons).
2. Staying in the 1700-1900 range, when searching, the DE amount I aim to get is at least 1400 per attack, sometimes if they have a lot of gold & elixir (say 400k+ combined) and only 1100-1300 DE I would go for it too.
3. Now, check for CC location. If the CC is in the center, then perfect. Most good farmers have the CC in the center, and most good farmers have nice amount of DE loot. So when the CC is in the center, the CC troops are hard to lure out, but it is good to turn this against them. Why? Because when CC troops come out, all of your troops nearby will rush toward them and attack the CC troops, so the enemy CC troops actually act as a vacuum which suck in your forces to the core, and that is exactly what we want. Now, you might ask, wouldn't your troops get slaughtered then? Some yes, but because our goal is to get the DE storage, it is worth it (I will talk about the cost & benefit below). And because of my 2 healers, they will heal my "bio ball" (reference from starcraft) of troops so the casualty is minimized.
4. Next, check for heros. If they are in the center, then its great, you do not need to lure them, same as what I talked about CC above. If they are near the outside or just outside, then proceed to step 5 first.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: pick the side that is closest to the DE storage to attack, and clear the buldings outside the wall first with a few archers. You don't need to clear them all out before starting the main attack but get them about 1/2 way done if possible. This will prevent your troops go around the outside of the enemy base and miss hitting the core where the good stuff is at. If your archers will get killed by their towers then just forget it and just let enemy heroes and enemy CC troops suck your force into the core.
6. Depending on how far the enemy heroes are, you should lure them with 1 barb each at this point, so that they will kill the barb and then head towards your main deployment zone (where you are clearing the outside buildings with a few archers).
7. If the enemy CC is on the other side of the map, you should lure with a couple of barbs as well, so all the troops come out. You might want to do this step early if the CC is full of archers, will take a few barbs to get them all out. You can see how I lure them in my videos :)
5. Next, spam your entire army fast, except for goblins and/or maybe a few wiz. I use 2-3 fingers to multi-touch the ipad to deploy fast. Here is the order of deployment:
a. Barbs to trigger spring traps - I often forget this though and jump straight to giants :(
b. Giants
c. 2-4 wall breakers, depending on how strong the wall is. Also time it to deploy the wbs after mortar hits ground first so your wbs will survive
d. 4 wiz
e. 10 Minions (to distract air defenses and protect your healers).
f. 2 healers
g. CC
h. remaining archers & barbs if any
i. remaining wall breakers to break 2nd or 3rd layer of walls
By this time, your army should have broke toward the core a bit, maybe 1/2 way through. Drop a rage spell ideally covering 15%-20% of the core area, so that the forward of your army is soaked in rage spell. They will punch forward fast and the rest of the troops will follow, then entire army will immerse in the rage spell. I tend to drop the rage when the forward of my army meets the enemy CC troops and/or heros. This is the perfect time to rage your army to finish off enemy troops quickly, reduce your own casualties, and suck in most of your troops into the core very quickly (because your troops under rage will run much faster).
Note: I usually carry a jump spell so if the enemy base is heavily segemented with strong walls (lv 9+), I usually would use the jump spell instead. Jump spell has a larger radius than rage spell, so I can try to cover 2-3 intersections with the spell to let my troops through. I try not to use a rage if I have used a jump spell unless the base has lots of gold I can get easily ;) - hey I am a farmer, haha.
6. Next, after you break open the core and there is no high level mortar or wizard towers pounding the core, you should release all of your goblins to get the loot in the middle. I sometimes release them earlier if the enemy is very strong (high level defense and high level walls), to clear out all the resource buildings fast in the outter area of the base, and then my wizards will go near the core, next to the DE storage and kill it fast. I love wizards as they can obliterate the DE storage within a couple of seconds while my army is under fire from maxed TH9 defense or inferno towers.
So enough of the talk, here are a few of my recent DE farming videos. Please feel free to provide your input and tips, and share your journey to get your super heroes here :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Dc6qcrBJE
