The 'One & Only' Poison Spell like it or hate it thread.

[ThrobSchneider]

I'm trying to understand the purpose of the poison spell:


Is Supercell trying to kill variation in CC troops?

- If yes, why?

- If not, why was the PS implemented this way?


It's known that the player base works as beta testers for Supercell but in this case ANYBODY could've foreseen the effects of such a spell, in fact, the forumers already pointed it out before the update was even released.

And it's not just them killing the cc variety (and making the only viable options far effective for the reasons I've repeated several times over, haha), but it was them increasing the building health across the board. That part was done to counteract barching for 50% up in high leagues, as could be seen with the additional increase in cost for barbs and archers. They did that b/c players could push high up in leagues with the fastest, cheapest army in the game, which rarely required spells (again, another time saver). This meant that players could push without needing to use gems to boost, as they didn't have to go offline and risk being attacked in between raids.

It was a blatant money-grab move, but b/c building health was increased (by about 11-12% overall, if I'm not mistaken), they had to offset how that would affect timing out 3-stars in war. What they did was introduce this stupid spell, which allowed you to bypass cc draw/lure/kills, saving you anywhere from 30-45 sec on your attack. In the developers' lazy, simplistic minds, they solved/balanced the problem caused by the financial move they wanted to make with regards to high league barching. What it actually did was remove the skill aspect of doing a troop- and time-efficient cc draw/lure/kill. Now better clans should have no problem with this, correct? They have already been able to 3-star TH9s consistently, the occasional TH10 as well. Well with the fact that they removed the cc kill aspect but also increased building health, it hurts them whenever they get a bad matchup. Worse than before too, b/c now they have to deal with an even bigger outlier in building health than if they got a bad matchup before this update. They can't overcome the bad matchup by being more skillful and 3-starring bases that the other team stick to 2-starring, b/c that cc luring aspect is no longer needed. So if the team that got the better end of the matchup is undeniably less skilled than their opponents, they still have a much easier time of winning.

Our win/loss record has changed dramatically since the introduction of this spell and the increase of building health, and every one of those losses/ties have been against clans that significantly outmatched us in clan strength up top.

war multiplayer attacks.. being used against me

Make it more expensive!!!!!

Yes, more expensive... but not in the DE cost aspect. Make it cost 2 spell slots. There are so many great ideas being thrown around with how to make this spell effective, but not gamebreaking in the way it currently is (at lvl 1, mind you), but simply making it cost 2 spell slots would solve all problems, and it could be left as is.

[Azrial]

I don't like the spell whatsoever. It's ruined dynamic cc's and any skill required to pull. Now people put beefy troops (drags, loons, hounds, valks) in their cc's and it's so predictable.

I prefer killing cc with my kill squad so the poison spell is almost useless to me. I bet 50% of war attacks i either forget to use it or use it last on a hero or skelly traps.

IMO taking a lighting spell was adequate. I would've rather they made lighting spell do 2x damage to troops (and hit air troops) and not introduced the poison spell.

[Echo006]

It was a blatant money-grab move, but b/c building health was increased (by about 11-12% overall, if I'm not mistaken), they had to offset how that would affect timing out 3-stars in war. What they did was introduce this stupid spell, which allowed you to bypass cc draw/lure/kills, saving you anywhere from 30-45 sec on your attack. In the developers' lazy, simplistic minds, they solved/balanced the problem caused by the financial move they wanted to make with regards to high league barching. What it actually did was remove the skill aspect of doing a troop- and time-efficient cc draw/lure/kill. Now better clans should have no problem with this, correct? They have already been able to 3-star TH9s consistently, the occasional TH10 as well. Well with the fact that they removed the cc kill aspect but also increased building health, it hurts them whenever they get a bad matchup. Worse than before too, b/c now they have to deal with an even bigger outlier in building health than if they got a bad matchup before this update. They can't overcome the bad matchup by being more skillful and 3-starring bases that the other team stick to 2-starring, b/c that cc luring aspect is no longer needed. So if the team that got the better end of the matchup is undeniably less skilled than their opponents, they still have a much easier time of winning.

Very interesting reasoning and theoretical argument. My raids are lasting about 2 minutes and 10 seconds post-update, but sometimes I would just run out of time before finishing the raid. Now, I don't even bother luring because what's the point when there's just a dragon/balloon/lava hound in there that my queen and wizards can take down?

[ThrobSchneider]

Very interesting reasoning and theoretical argument. My raids are lasting about 2 minutes and 10 seconds post-update, but sometimes I would just run out of time before finishing the raid. Now, I don't even bother luring because what's the point when there's just a dragon/balloon/lava hound in there that my queen and wizards can take down?

Yep, and that's my biggest pet peeve with this spell: the skill aspect. Our clan made unlurable cc bases, meaning attackers would need to invest at the very least 5, sometimes upwards of 8 hogs just to get the cc to trigger. That was huge in ensuring that they didn't have enough DPS to take down our bases for 3, especially if they took too long with the pulling and kill squad setup. We gave up 2-stars all the time, but it was ok b/c even in terrible mismatches, we'd still only be giving up 2 stars on our TH9 bases, while we were able to 3-star most of their TH9s, and just do the lazy 2-star attacks on their TH10s. So when we did face bad mismatches against merely average warring clans, we would still edge them out by a few stars, as they used their lazy GoWiPe attacks for the safe 2, and 2-star attacks don't win wars.

Now when we get a bad mismatch, they can use those 3-starring attack armies without worrying about failing for 1-star (or worse) due to a poor handling of the cc. Meanwhile, we have to settle for 2-stars on their TH10s that greatly outnumber ours, and some of the near-maxed TH9s with anti 3-star layouts up top. We have lost a considerable amount of wars by 1 or 2 stars in bad matchups ever since this update came out. We didn't suddenly become bad war raiders coincidentally at the time of this release. Supercell just closed the skill gap by removing an important aspect of war raiding when they introduced this spell.

What's worse is they didn't even bother to address their terrible war matching, which is something they should have tracked very carefully. Had they bothered to take even 30 min to think about the effects of introducing this spell when combined with the building health increase and the current state of war mismatches, they would have seen how vital it would have been to fine-tune the war matchmaking search.

[JJ48]

It sounds like SOMETHING needs to change (I like the sound of increasing the spell slot requirement to two), but the complaint about it killing CC variety should eventually sort itself out. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the progression goes something like this:

1. CCs have tons of different troop types
2. Poison spell introduced. Everyone uses it to kill off weaker CCs.
3. CCs start only including high health troops.

This seems to be where we're at right now, but I think it'll continue with:

4. Due to high health CCs, many people dump Poison in favor of other spells. Others hold on to it just in case.
5. Due to fewer people using Poison, some people risk lower health CC units. Others stay high health just in case.

So ultimately, using high health or low health CC troops simply becomes a gamble. But isn't this the same as many other defenses in the game? We can set X-Bows and Skeleton Traps to target air, which reduces the defenses against ground, and vice versa. We can set Inferno Towers to single-target mode and be swarmed, or we can set it to multi-target mode and be tanked. So yes, Poison is currently limiting CC selection because it's the newest thing on the block and everyone wants to use it, but over time it'll balance out and settle down again.

[Ajax]

It sounds like SOMETHING needs to change (I like the sound of increasing the spell slot requirement to two), but the complaint about it killing CC variety should eventually sort itself out. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the progression goes something like this:

1. CCs have tons of different troop types
2. Poison spell introduced. Everyone uses it to kill off weaker CCs.
3. CCs start only including high health troops.

This seems to be where we're at right now, but I think it'll continue with:

4. Due to high health CCs, many people dump Poison in favor of other spells. Others hold on to it just in case.
5. Due to fewer people using Poison, some people risk lower health CC units. Others stay high health just in case.

We are already seeing this.

It does in fact seem to have increased CC variety from the clans we face, not decreased it.

Of course it may be very different among elite clans, although I don't think there was any real variety there before.

[JJL66]

war multiplayer attacks.. being used against me

Make it more expensive!!!!!

How much more and why?

[manosnta]

How much more and why?

well they have to add 5-10 mins, and at least double the cost because people,wouldnt use it that much and there would be bigger cc variety...also ,they would focus on both 3 d. spells and not in one....i m the only one in my clan and the opponent clan in war,who doesnt use it...

[tellingthetruth]

We are already seeing this.
It does in fact seem to have increased CC variety from the clans we face, not decreased it.

How can you differentiate between your perceived "increased CC variaty" (which doesn't make sense at all, at least not yet, as JJ48 proposed - and only if this kind of development happens at all) and players that simply haven't adapted yet to the new game mechanics?

[MCDimples]

I like it, especially when we get paired with a clan who still finds it strategic to put wizards and archers in the cc for defense.