Warden (and maybe eagle) changes

[Bman10]

I've been watching some th11 (3 star) attacks from my clan and on youtube, and I have been noticing a pattern. The majority of the attacks are just spammy with like 2-3 golems 15-20 valks and a few wiz actually getting 3 stars. I also saw a th11 in my clan make an honest attempt at a govaho, with good execution, get crushed. I thought about why a spam attack worked as well as it did, while a well thought out, careful attack with great execution, fell flat significantly. After a lot of thought, I realized that this didn't happen much at th10 (except witch spam and 5+ golems with 40/40 heroes. RIP witches), and that led me to the warden. Supercell wanted attacks to become careful, surgical attacks, but they have returned to skill-less brute force, almost to old gowipe before dark spells or hounds (or queen walks). I then realized that the wardens encourage attackers to clump up their troops to get the best value for the aura and tome. By making the range smaller with the last update, this got even worse. I think with th11 attacks is that the warden is so strong that it makes this type of attack (20+ valks with a queen walk and the warden and king in center) work for 3. I think warden needs a few changes to the tome.

First, change the range of the aura and tome back so people atleast want to spread their troops a LITTLE bit more than they do now.
Second, make the tome give like 90% (75% at lvl 5, 80 at 10, 85 at 15, 90 at 20) dmg resist, not 100. This makes it so high point defenses and single infernos still can do damage, but stuff isn't straight up invincible.

also, the th11 update wanted to encourage stuff like queen walks to get the eagle, so I say make the eagle worth walking to for a th11

Have it go into rage mode (with glowing red eyes and fires 3x as fast) the second the tome is popped. This makes it so you NEED to take it out before your warden's ability wears off (or get into its blind spot), or your troops will be decimated.
Second: have it do double the dmg of everything else through tome (50%, 40%, 30%, 20% relative to the tome resistances per 5 levels as above)
third: change it's dmg calculating methods. the point of the eagle was to get attackers to stop clumping troops. Troops often get just barely spread out and the eagle is useless. Eagle should have a radius (of the target area) that calculates troop space there of 1.5 (with heroes however supercell likes), and scales up damage and actual blast range with troop space in it(with linear falloff as it approaches the edge of the blast radius). for example, if there is one archer in this area, it does like 10-12 dmg a shot with 1.5. If there is 40 space in the area, does 100-120 dmg a shot with a 3 tile radius. If there is 100 space there, it does 350-415 dmg a shot in a 5 tile area.
Fourth: increase it's blind spot size a bit. If eagle is centralized, the blind spot should reasonably cover the whole core, and if it is on the edge of the core, it should be able to shoot the opposite half.

Other stuff I was thinking about because I have nothing better to do while valkyries train for a tornado...

Warden lvl 5 should be given to th10 so we have methods to overrun cores more easily without needing like 180 space and 30/30 heroes to get a good max core gutted, opening up space for stuff like hog attacks.

Healers need to be smarter, have them switch actively based on closeness (but more flexible than now, so they can switch from queen walk to lead troops quickly and reliably), dmg intake, and hp remaining. my healers always like to stay on queen with full hp who isn't getting shot once while giants are getting mowed down a few squares ahead.

bowlers need to be smarter: have them line up to take out buildings in the back specifically. This makes bowler walk viable as they will actually stick together and take out the back buildings, and also makes em more reliable altogether. One bowler should deal about 160-180% dmg as a single wizard when it is hitting both, small dmg sacrifice for some hp and deeper funnel.

fix valk glitch where sometimes they don't run between buildings that are together if they were already attacking one and another building that got destroyed. Its annoying when they don't get maximum value when their ai is designed to.

That's about all I could think of.

[AlphaClasher37]

This all seems like a good idea. Th11s seem like they are having it too easy. Small nerf to the warden, small buff to the eagle. Maybe 10 should get lvl 10 warden? th10 is still the hardest town hall to me, have some good heroes, 25/32, and mostly maxed troops but can't get the 3s while a th11 in my clan with 20/20/5 can 3 the base with like half his army left. This needs to be fixed.

[AlphaClasher37]

fix valk glitch where sometimes they don't run between buildings that are together if they were already attacking one and another building that got destroyed. Its annoying when they don't get maximum value when their ai is designed to.

That's about all I could think of.

This should probably be a different thread in the right place, but to have it all together seems nice. adding this to the glitches thread right now

[bactgudz]

I see what you are saying. Maybe this could be addressed more simply by returning the warden's aura to a larger area but making the hp boost maximum on the total troop level rather than on the individual troop level.

For example instead of Warden 20's hp boost max being 275 for each troop it could be maybe 2750 overall. So if you had only 5 lvl5 valks in the aura, they would each have 1650 hp, but if you had 10 valks in the aura they would have 1375 (like they do today regardless of troop count), and if you had a mix of valks and a hero or two they'd have even less.

Then you could benefit from having just a few large troops/heroes in the aura and get only amortized returns as you increase the troop count.

[Bman10]

This could be abusable though, if someone were to place just the queen and the warden, then the queen would gain a lot of health. Maybe have it so each unit can only gain so much% but still have it as you said (just with a cap per unit). Also, my point was more towards the tome than the aura (although the aura encourages clumping too. Maybe a minimum hp boost, a maximum, and a total. if more units in, can go above total if they drop below minimum boost but don't reach total, but so few units don't get like 1000 extra hp to one unit). My point was that they are clumped for the tome ability much less than the aura. the tome is SO POWERFUL that it makes that much clumping viable, while the health boost is certainly good, it makes the warden useful, but doesn't encourage too much clumping by having that max. Honestly, I think aura can go unchanged, but with old range. My thought was that tome needed nerf because full invincibility on the entire army, on demand, for like 3-4 seconds is too much. 90% would be more OK, and sending the eagle into rage mode is the important part. It FORCES the attacker to deal with the eagle before the tome (QW to exposed one), take it out during the tome (on edge of core), or get inside blind spot using tome (dead center). I think the point of the warden was to make small-medium killsquads work, opening up the ability for a larger backend than was possible for most th10 attacks. It has turned into completely removing the backend part to maximize on the warden's OP ability, the tome. If the tome is weaker, but more spread out, it will encourage more spread out troops. (maybe 90% is still too much, would take some experimenting by devs to figure it all out)

[bactgudz]

The percentage would still apply like it does now, it would just be how the max works. A lvl 40 queen would gain 815hp (50% of it's health, or this percentage coulde be altered to balance strategies) as opposed to 275 now, but the total max can be chosen so that a warden/queen walk would be less efficient since the healers start cutting into that maximum.

I understand that you're focusing on the tome, but the tome simply affects things in the Warden's aura. You don't have a greater advantage ex nihil by having a spam army in the tome radius, it is the base ability of the Warden that disproportionately favors a spam army solely because of the per unit hp max.

If the base ability of the warden supported large unit non-spam attacks as well you would want to protect those strategies from things like single target inferno and all the structures that are now pointed at your smaller collection of troops instead of amortized over a larger one.

[Iainthedestroyer]

Bump Bump, this is truly and certainly the reason for the mass spams, and with this changed why not rebuff the witches, since the skeletons won't be invincible, and the reasons for the nerf (spamming), would be removed.

[Bman10]

You make a good point, the aura does get more value as more units are inside it. Maybe each should get a potential boost(static %) but it should cap at a certain amount of space or certain total hp, maybe if there is 5k hp gained total,[fake stat], then it drops from static % to re-disperse 5k hp cap. Still though, the problem lies in the tome. With a swarm army (Especially max valk swarm now), with just the tome and a rage they can gut the entire core with no taken damage in a number of seconds. The life aura helps with sustainability, but there are 3 types of defensive distributions IMO, small clusters (like cannon-archer tower pairs throughout base with x bows and teslas somewhere in there), super-core (infernos, teslas, gbs, x bows, and with all points very close to it), and evenly dispersed.

evenly dispersed is a peace of cake for healers (especially like vhgh with a golem and a freeze), and tome helps if healers are at risk or if troops start to encounter a threat.

Super-core is where the tome excels, the entire core can go down during the tome with a rage and a lot of high dps troops(Valk swarm being the best example). After that, there are practically no threats to the remaining troops. Tome with a lot of dps wrecks the entire core with a rage, should break this type of design, but not this hard.

small clusters: In theory, this one would be the most annoying, the tome can only work on 1-2 clusters, the healers might not keep up as the clusters are going down (although they can catch back up afterwards). This one would require the most thought. Surgical deployment is the way to go against this base. Killsquad takes eagle (and infernos[if hogs or if loons are gonna get harassed for a while] CC and specific targets for type of backend). Warden makes this too easy, you can send minimal troops and still get the job done with his tome (aura would be more for the backend, but tome is still better).

In short, either the tome or the aura helps a large amount vs different defensive setups, and if used properly, either can smash a base. You already addressed the aura (I left it out originally, but you made it clear it was a bit much against spread bases), and the tome was my original focus. Full invincibility is just too much. The eagle is devastating if left alone, but it is far to easy to take out with the wardens tome (and this just helps gain some extra value too), and otherwise the aura is just generally really good (maybe balanced with that extra x bow and archer tower, probably still favoring warden. the aura is not too overpowered, but it needs fall of after too many units are inside, as you said. The tome is what truly needs a hard nerf though. It far overpowers the eagle artillery, and it should not be able to do this. The eagle either needs to become about as OP as the original one was (that nearly one shot a maxed king) once tome is popped, or tome needs a massive nerf. I guess this thread could discuss different ideas for changes to either.

[pacomius]

The former valks were largely unused; the new update was a revolution that made valks a th10 and 11 favourite. But their abilities are exaggerated: with little planning required we (in my clan) hardly make any more 0 or 1 star even against fully maxed th10s. Also th5s and below can't kill them and have anything left for the attack unless they are forced to take cc minions. The new valks are really exaggerated, their attack speed need to be returned to the former

[Bman10]

Valks are still ok. If they eat a double giant bomb with anything less than 90% hp and a heal or face cc loons they are as good as dead. Trust me. My clan actually required 5+ valks (Fólkvangr or fòlkvangr, forget which way the accent goes, and \/alhalla too, yes with 2 slashes as V) since like last year(all attacks in war and replays), the new minimum is 8 (unspoken but universally agreed) because you need that value out of the heal. Are you talking in terms of valk swarm? Also, new valks really rely on funneling (old ones did too, although they run stuff over now with higher dps, and funnel could be made around a few of em before or could get turned around if you react).

New valks are pretty good if you can keep em up, which is why they combo so well with the tome. I just 3 starred an enemy th10 in war with lvl 11 points (I have all maxed troops with 17/18 heroes), and ran it over with 3 healers, 4 giants, and 12 valks with some backend hogs. (I failed against my mirror because queen didn't go in, so she didn't get air d behind one wall that killed all 3 healers, didn't get cc dragon, and in general didn't help valks move to back inferno fast enough before freeze wore off).

Back to the point though: New valks aren't that OP against proper defenses. I doubt all of these bases were well spread bases. they were probably clumped resource rings with cores that don't have units thataren't touching anything else. Attack is ahead of defense on the curve. soon enough th10 dead zone will probably be a thing with nice spread out defenses. Valks are only good if funneled really well and have a heal at th10 (the tome just gives em a bit too much). If you combo'ed em with backend hogs it would probably run over a base harder. I personally think the time has come for the th10 3 star to become possible with something other than queenwalk laloon with 40/40 heroes a standard (So you can actually kill a base your own skill level).