Gems of War News and Discussions

#565

That’s good info, I’m glad to hear that you like the boss difficulty increasing, it lets me know that there is an audience for that sort of thing that the devs are targeting.

For me, I ended up picking up the Xiong Mao raid troop off the store (which is indeed only currently available from the store, https://community.gemsofwar.com/t/panda-express/36332), which also comes with the extra currency that gives more matches against the boss, but then it turns out that I just didn’t really care to use the extra tokens for more battles against a boss that was going to just keep increasing in level.

I did my obligatory match this morning, but just went through the motions without really trying, because it felt pointless to me. My reward was going to be an even tougher scaled match next time was my understanding. Unless I’m missing something, I got the feeling that it was inevitable that I would hit a wall, and the option available to me was to then spend gems (money) to just kick that can down the road a bit until I hit that same wall, just further down?

Am I missing something? Otherwise, I think this new mode was designed more for somebody else, and while I should tinker with it while it’s enjoyable, I’m better off enjoying the many other parts of Gems of War that I do enjoy more than this new option.

#566

not just increasing stats.
the Boss teams keep changing.
so another challenge in next step and you might want to adapt to that by changing your team as well.

i have changed my team for the third time by now.
Penglong was great for some time but started to feel outdated when enemy stats kept growing. his damage no big impact any longer i wanted a support unit instead, taking Diviner in.
at last i decided for taking in the Hero. at first with Hook Sword, then searching through weapons library for something with more UMPH. and what Hero class?

must admit that i had underestimated the Boss Raid challenge.
it’s not simple, and it’s not as repetitive than i had feared.
keeps growing on me.
you hit the wall, you decide for some changes, and you succeed.
no real money spent. just some brainstorming effort.
that can be quite satisfying.
now i may have to grind some explorations for hero’s next trait.
that’s ok.

we are very short before closing the next portal, which will give each guild member a vault key. so it’s not pointless and “an even tougher scaled match” is not the only reward.

even when losing a match we can deal the same amount of damage to the boss as long as we kill at least him.
so i would keep spending sigils trying to beat him down as often as possible, even when not succeeding to advance to next boss level.
but who knows? it may happen eventually :upside_down:

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#567

Okay, I’ve got over 1,000 damage on the boss now, & we got the Vault Key for the guild! Went into the Gnome Vault. :sunglasses:

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#568

ouch :frowning2:
bad luck. no Chaos Orb.

i had so much fun in my recent Boss Raid battles. total drama, always sitting on the edge of my seat. better than Guild War.
key to success and for having fun: hero weapon Mang, hero class Archer with full traits.

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boss has just killed the 331-attack hero.
the following 1 on 1 was a “game of skulls” like in the early days of GoW.
a heart stopper, because when you have gone through a hell of a battle to come so far, you really want to win.
in the end i was forced to take the last possible match on the board, and after the jumble the boss got a skull match :weary:
in the rematch i succeeded and climbed one up.

most Boss Raid battles have a story to tell.

no problem at all if you don’t like it (too much) though.
but don’t forget to keep looking for collectable rewards :wink:
nearly halfway to next portal.

#569

Wow! Glad you’re enjoying it, I suspect the one-shot kill feels so cheap to me that it’s hard for me to muster the enthusiasm that you have, along with the restrictive troop requirement does feel repetitive … perhaps you’ve cracked the code that we’re supposed to have been developing Hero classes prior to this release.

I persevered for the guild rewards that you had mentioned. How does one get a Chaos Orb? I killed everyone in the Gnome Vault, and I did some research prior to going in that said that difficulty settings had nothing to do with rewards. Did you get a Chaos Orb, JT?

#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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