Gems of War News and Discussions

#570

yes. it’s a lottery. you get it or not.

and revealing the Chaos Orb is the next lottery step.
Orb of Growth (one free level up. senseless crap) and Orb of Seals (150 or so guild seals) are the fumbles.
Orb of Magic (one free trait) and Orb of Ascension (one free ascension) are the winners.

i got an Orb of Ascension in Boss Raid reward and ascended the Dwarven King Highforge to mythic level for free. awesome! i would have needed 5 more legendary kings otherwise.
and i got an Orb of Growth in the Vault. doh. ridiculous.

Boss Raid: my enthusiasm grew with experiencing many close and dramatic battles. i had been very skeptical before.
with “one-shot kill feels cheap” you mean the boss’ ability?
it’s an exciting race. kill the boss before he can use it. he is slow.
later it’s better to allow him one kill and to fight his minions first.

no feeling of repetitiveness came up for me as i had to change my troops and tactics multiple times.
at first i went with Spearmaster/Diviner/Spellblade/Penglong.
then changed to Deathknight with Hooksword/Penglong/Diviner.
later to Archer with Mang/Mao/Diviner/Spellblade.
think i will take Spellblade out and try Pandaska Guard in the upcoming battles.

changes of battle tactics too. for a long time: kill the boss asap with a two-shot-combo (Mang+Mao).
but since the minions became extremely strong and since two shots were no longer enough to kill the boss i had to adapt.
now it’s: destroy boss’ armor to raise hero’s attack, but then concentrate on the minions.
allow the boss one kill. team can take it and win nonetheless.
battles are exciting and not always the same.

hero classes: i had leveled and traited most old hero classes since the early days. most of the new classes not. and many classes aren’t worth it anyway.
to search for potential and trying to trait those hero classes is fun.

btw txtaz just said in guild chat that the Archer/Mang setup works for him too and that the battles are fun again now.

#571

gimme more battles like this. can’t get any closer. next skull match hit me and again sitting on knife’s edge. what more entertainment can i want from a GoW event?

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and as long as we can win over a level 230 Boss in this way there is no other limit than the sky. could win all four today’s Boss Raid battles.
yeah, all these wins may be kind of repetitive :joy:
…but so much fun and excitement :yum:

tried the Monkey Disciple today and he did a good job loading up Mao.
and as lucky charm.
guess i can’t convince you, @Falkenstein, but believe me, it keeps getting better the higher you climb.
especially nice about this event is that we all have to go with the same weapons and troops.
ok, nearly. kingdom boni still active :rolling_eyes:
but against such overwhelming odds their impact feels like melting away.

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#572

I’ve been trying not to say too much, since others are enjoying this mode, but seriously this is a bad mode, IMHO. Where you see excitement in racing to kill the boss before he can one-shot you, I see a cheap trick where the options I have spent the last years slowly developing complimentary teams are tossed on the trash … no longer do I have the option to decide if I want to deploy a team with a Silence approach, or steal his mana, focus him down with one of the many approaches (like triple against his color, true damage, etc.). All I can do is try to brute force beat him down, and I don’t believe those who don’t purchase the anti-boss Xiong Mao troop out of their gem shop will have much success, at all.

Not to mention that traitstones are a valuable strategic resource, at least they are at my level. I’ve had so little success in trying to farm them that my understanding is the drop rate for Arcane ones is so low that it’s not reasonable for me to attempt to farm them. For these new troops to roll into town and ask me to blow my traitstones on them is ridiculous.

Of course, I may be missing something.

Having said all that, the rewards are not so lucrative that I feel like I have to either throw money at it or quit the game entirely in frustration. It’s just another mode/option, play it until it’s no longer fun, then play a different mode or play a different game, or go read a book. :sunglasses:

One of the things that I have learned from this discussion, is that I do need to learn about the Hero classes and developing my Hero. When they did the big Hero changes, I never explored them but rather kept my focus on developing my troops and teams.

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#573

@Falkenstein I agree … the best thing about the Boss Raid is that it has caused me to check and use my Hero … who has been out of a job for a long time.

Xiang Mao has definitely been the key factor for this mode along with a great weapon. When I got the second trait on the Archer class (start battles with 50% mana) that also made a big difference.

But also said by @Falkenstein, the thing is variety and this mode can be ignored it does not suit. Nice to have a break from the Guild Wars. Next week there will be a new dawning …

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#574

i guess no one in our guild threw any real money at it.
i only decided to spend some of the gems i have got by the guild maxing out the gem statue. that’s it.
and why should anyone have to quit in frustration?
all members get the same rewards, no matter how much they contributed. and total rewards of seven portals are not so bad:
55 gems, 23k gold, 2300 souls, 10 event keys, 30 diamonds, 5 arcane and 8 runic stones, a vault key and a chaos orb don’t hurt.

when i take a look at the guild boss raid leaderboard many members played a lot and seemed to have fun.
eg txtaz said “EPIC battles in Raid today!”
for me it’s a nice change of pace.

of course you must not like it nor play it more. you have already contributed more than enough.

playing in guild war takes me 20 minutes each day. playing in BR takes about the same time, maybe a bit more, because i must think a bit deeper, planning more in advance, reading the board more carefully.

but whatever event is running i spend more time for playing PVP and in explorations to farm arcane stones.
(with a fast-kill team (2 or 3 turns at normal) and at speed x4 i can farm 3-5 arcane stones in about an hour. i’m farming nearly all my arcane stones this way.)
so special events like guild war or boss raid are not really over important.

#575

Strategy at high levels this week feels like it will be the same as last week. Unless I can boost Wulfgarok fast enough of course. Barrier wars!!

#576

Wulfgarok … wherefore art thou? Such a Beast is beyond my ken … :slight_frown:

Guess I will just have to manage with more mundane troops :pray:

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#577

don’t worry, Rob.
nice as he was in the first 4 chapters, i’ve got the feeling that it’s about time to replace him now. in all last battles vs 3 and 4 towers he definitely was the least useful team member.
the more towers, the less useful. and he is too slow for what he can do then.
thinking on replacing him by the hero with the Crescendo (TD to all enemies) or the Cursed Blade (deal damage equal to attack of an enemy) or Dark Sword (triple damage vs users of yellow mana) or Staff of Visions (+21 to an ally’s random skill + barrier and 3-15 mana) or Cauldron (double an ally’s attack + 26 life) or Beastly Bow or Mang again.
or Hellcat (transform a selected mana color to red + deal 16 damage), useful for loading up the Siegebreaker and closing a mana gap.

#578

I have got as far as the Citadel with Wulfgarok (usually can get him to 170/250 which is enough to one-shot all towers without skull mitigation). I can definitely see him starting to lose effectiveness soon though as towers start to whittle away his health faster than I can buff it.

#579

same for me.
then i switched to the Siegebreaker as tank.
buffed by the Fenris he can do even better skull damage and spell damage as well.
Forest Guardian still very useful. in a good moment he can blow up the whole board. and even for only one skull match the barriers can save the day.
many options for fourth slot.

#580

I do have Forest Guardian but without the last two traits. I have no Arcane Light stones and can only make 5 easily in the Soulforge. My Fenrir has no traits …maybe it was the lack of Wulfgarok which stopped me developing those troops … but I certainly have not been using them hence the lack of buffing on them.

My last battles have been with Mang | Hellcat | Stone Shaker | Giant Spider. But that line-up is starting to wear thin. I see my next level has three towers in the opposition team. So if multiple towers get barrier something that hits all enemy troops will be handy. Time to look again at the GoW bestiary … and maybe Fenrir & Forest Guardian will figure even without all their traits.

My Orb of Chaos was Ascension … which will no doubt come in handy at some point but the Trait one would have been great right now.

#581

hero weapon Crescendo deals true damage to all enemies/towers and there are many more weapons of all mana colors which deal normal area damage.

and i have noticed that the explosions of 3 brown gems which the Stone-Shaker initiates are quite useful for removing barriers automatically.

in higher levels Stone-Shaker’s x3/x4/x5 skull damage gets more and more important, much more than his spell damage ever was.
so Cauldron (double an ally’s attack and add 26 life) could be used instead of Fenrir for buffing the Rhino’s base attack.

#582

@JammaTal As always, thanks for the tips.

So far the team I mentioned above has held together … maybe I just had a couple of unsuited/unlucky battles. So the need to rethink is not yet upon me … yet …

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#583

I still feel pretty “meh” about the two new modes. Initially liked the Raid Boss but hit a wall and didn’t play the last two days, while the Invasion mode has already gotten a bit tiresome to me. Both modes feel a lot like something out of MtG: Puzzle Quest, which I gave up on a while ago. I’m all for promoting variety in teams, but if the best solution is going to involve me throwing a bunch of gems at new troops/weapons every week, I’m not a fan.

Looking forward to returning to Guild Wars next week.

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#584

the last 1350 gems which i had spent for 150 normal gem chests had not brought along a single useful creature. felt like total stagnation.
so i was ready for a change. and for much less gems i got some decent fun in the last two weeks.

but looking forward to good ol’ guild war now too.

i have found and (with the help of orbs) traited a promising new all-red team during both events :+1:
can’t wait to see if it can cure my red weak spot in upcoming guild war.

i would prefer a cycle of Guild War/Boss Raid/Guild War/ Invasion/Guild War.

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#585

I was able to complete the troop that I was focusing on, now it’s on to learning about improving my Hero and Hero classes. I have not done anything since that big update with classes for the Hero, does anyone have a recommended guide that they’ve used? If not, I’ll just use Google to educate myself on the “new to me” Hero features. :slight_smile:

#586

i would recommend to take a look at the traits of the hero classes.
many are nothing special. but some are great, like eg the traits of Archer, Deathknight, Assassin, Bard (for yellow teams) or Orbweaver.

and some hero classes can give you access to interesting unique weapons too, like eg Assassin’s Serpentine Dagger, Deathknight’s Crypt Keeper, Oracle’s Staff of Visions or Orbweaver’s Spider Totem.

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#587

Nice! Do you have a recommendation on which one(s) to focus on first? I mainly just need them, at this time, for these new Boss Raids and Tower things.

#588

i recommend the Archer. and i know that Rob has changed from Deathknight to Archer too.
but itm i’m using no hero in invasions. simple team of 2xSB (no mythic)/Fenrir/Forest Guardian does an excellent job. have only lost one battle.

but in next Boss Raid he will be back, with Mang in hand :smirk:

#589

Man, I’ve got to remember to come out here more often! Some of this advice would have been so helpful when I was fighting the same battles.

Still picked up a few new ideas to explore, so thanks team!

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