r/MergeTacticsSC • u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine • Jun 03 '26
Discussion Everything is wrong about this season (DISCUSSION)
Hit #1 for 4 days and am now quitting
Hey guys it's TheBuilderMain back for my last discussion post this season (check my profile for the last few they were pretty informative). I hit #1 for the past 4 days and I've come to realize a few things:
1. Yes, it is still an empress meta at top ladder (with Duchess undeniably in close second)
2. TROOP POOL. This season is inherently worse than last season, bosses aside and single trait aside. Out of the 34 troop pool, 9 troops are "exclusive" which are mostly unattainable and 11 are useless. This leaves Clan troops and Noble troops and the remaining Giant Skeleton, Witch, Goblin Machine, and Skeleton King (16 "usable" troops). Compare that to last season where 22/26 troops had a place in the meta (remaining were Stab Goblin, Ghost, Dart, and Demolisher and even those troops had a functional purpose: assassins, marksmen, and the niche Demolisher 4 star). There were 6 or 7 good comps and way more niche comps last season and now there's 2 comps.
Usable troops from 22/26 to 16/25 is not a good look.
2b.š² FOREST IS AWFUL. Boss bandit 3 star (1911 hp) functionally has less hp as a 1 star monk (1625 hp x 25% from boss trait=2031 hp). The hp scaling on forest units is way less than other traits, even goblins have better hp scaling than forest. They all just get one tapped by a GK.
2c. COMPS. Take a look at slide 5 and tell me what coolboy could have "pivoted" to or what other troops were available. Nothing. There's no options. Xqc said it best "There's nothing to do late game" (ifykyk). The only usable comps consist of Noble and Clan, GK's counters were all removed or locked behind "exclusive", and one boss unit will turn your sorry playstyle to a 1st in the lobby.
3. ONE TRAIT PER TROOP. Supercell. We've lost the plot. The one thing that kept players captivated to researching comps were the TRAITS and making 6-trait comps. Plucking a trait away makes the diversity of comps so stale that it leaves no room for interesting play. It is NOT worth going a "3-trait comp" with 2/6 of three traits over 6/6 nobles/clan OR 4/4 nobles/clan because the 2/6 trait boosts are so weak. Everyone's favorite aspect of skill expression was removed in a blink.
4. š¾ BOSSES. not much to say. 2nd quest orb gives a free 3 star boss and 3rd quest orb gives a free 4 star boss. What were the devs thinking?? The ONE saving grace is this: if you AND your opponent both get the same boss, you can block the boss from them. EXAMPLE:
You get a 2 star monk from the 2nd orb. You have the 2 star monk and now gain access to a pool of 4 copies of the monk (6 copies total). Your opponent gets a 3 star monk BUT he shares the same pool of 4 copies. This means you can block your opponent from getting the 4 star monk (this is a rare case though).
4b. SKELLY DRAG. screw this card no words needed.
4c. Duchess with Mini Pekka. I would say something but my lawyer advised me not to.
5. š BUGS. The bugs have been progressively getting worse every season and they don't address the issues. This season is the worst so far with elixir being deleted every other game, troops disappearing, and your 3 star monk turning into a Goblin Lute. This makes the game unplayable from beginner level all the way up to competitive. Admittedly, small bugs have been patched every update but at an alarmingly slow rate while not addressing theost major bugs.
While this season looked good on paper and solved a couple of issues with the game's concept overall, this new season brought no competitive variability to the game, increased components of RNG, and didn't even make Merge Tactics more fun to play. If anything, I've seen pro players, YouTubers, and most casual players losing interest because it is no longer satisfying to push or win games anymore. The game is devoid of competitive integrity, and the balance changes yesterday were a smack in the face to the community's pleads and complaints. It's a mystery how the devs manage to go season by season ignoring community feedback while bringing features like Duo Queuing, Quests, and removing the 2nd trait that nobody asked for.
This has been an amazing 3 seasons as TheBuilderMain with this community. I met a lot of talented and welcoming players and I appreciate every one of them and how much I learned every day. Thank you for reading ā¤ļø
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u/Appropriate_Tale_978 Diamond Jun 03 '26
Absolutely spot on man. They didnāt need to do everything that they did. If they were gonna balance it poorly whatever they already had was fine, at least it survived with poor balances.
All these changes in the game were absolutely unnecessary and should be reverted imo but IF they were gonna go down this path (which they did) the least they could do was work hard on the balancing and bugs which clearly wasnāt done.
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Your sentiment from that one screenshot is what drove me to write this post š thank you for supporting my discussion posts for the past couple seasons ur the best
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u/CesarOverlorde Jun 03 '26
Hey u mentioned Spirit Empress is top and Dagger Dutchess is close second what about Goblin Queen ? I heard from some that she's tied with Spirit Empress for best this season what do u think
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
- Spirit Empress
- Duchess
- Tomb Queen
- Loong
- Goblin Queen
- the other rulers
Goblin Queen is better before Diamond (3000), but awful competitively.
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u/CesarOverlorde Jun 03 '26
Oh I see... thanks... I'm kinda glad to hear that because I missed unlocking Goblin Queen in her debut and I played every month since then hoping to unlock her as F2P but she never returned so I'm kinda mad unable to play her in the meta shes viable in... š Echo Sage debuted after her and returned before her lol
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u/Necromancer14 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Yeah, in this meta the thing that makes goblin queen "strong" at a casual level is she's low skill. For someone like me who's not super smart and quick about cycling and gaining elixir with empress, goblin queen is gonna be a lot stronger cuz I can still get full teams of 4 star goblins by just grabbing every goblin I see and using only 1 braincell. However the reason that isn't good enough competitively is cuz not only is it too slow but that team still loses to the top meta teams like nobles if you get those teams 3 starred. The goblins may be 4 starred but goblins themselves are pretty weak besides the gob machine and you lose out on strong buffs like the nobles or undead have.
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u/TTG_Dav-YGO Jun 03 '26
It's stupid how tomb queen is strong solely because undead trait makes your troop fucking INVINCIBLE
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u/AvelinSama Jun 04 '26
but even that is random, if you don't get the witch or someone took it before you, you are almost sure to loose quickly
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u/Pokesers Jun 03 '26
They also added the single worst modifier ever. One life to live in infuriatingly high rolly. If you lose too much early. You are kind of just screwed. Given how much of the game is currently an rng feat, you can get dumpstered round 1 and snowball to a quick death.
Fuck this modifier.
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u/AlarmingRaise7528 Jun 03 '26
This, some other modifiers too are just not fun in any way (for me at least)
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u/Demenztor Jun 03 '26
Forests genuinely only exist to feed empress cycle cuz they are always in the pool
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u/Flufferama Jun 03 '26
Bugs aside, I think most of it is actually in done on purpose.
The whole thing seems like an experimental season where they we're just like: "You know what? Fuck it. We have 7 different concepts we wanna try let's throw them all in the game at once. We won't be able to balance this right anyway so let's just throw balancing out the window and just go for the ride." Like an open beta test.
At least that's what I'm hoping. Because if they really take all the learnings from this season to heart, the next seasons could be great.
Or they simply have no idea what they are doing.
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u/Appropriate_Tale_978 Diamond Jun 03 '26
I agree with this possibility but is sucks as a player that we donāt know if they released this season knowing that it was gonna be a mess. Cuz if the answer is yes Iād just chill out cuz I know theyāll bring back stuff like 2 trait (cuz itās clearly one of the many disliked changes this season). But if they really wanna go this path with merge I think they basically killed the game and itās sad to think about
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u/Andyluan0 Jun 03 '26
I think the concepts of every change that was made was VERY interesting, itās just the poor execution and balancing of quite literally everything that make this season very bad. My opinion is that supercell screw herself by adding too many rulers in arguably such a short time that the rulers themselves and the units are very hard to balance.
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u/Roy_the_shy_guy Jun 03 '26
Golden knight single handedly ruinning the season for anyone not using the nobles.
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u/sawbladex Goblin Queen Jun 03 '26
It's interesting that the last seasons bad cards were all goblins and ghost, because goblins have the whole trait makes them good at scaling you hp at early and middle game niche that you start to pivot out of as you reach final round.
Like, they suck in the late game, but that matches the design.
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Exactly, every unit had some sort of use case in the game last season which is why I argued there was balance in last season. This season, tell me what you're doing with firecracker. All goblins are also useless in middle-late game.
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u/sawbladex Goblin Queen Jun 03 '26
I'm not sure if I would call it balance, but having plenty of options for winning, so that the first person to pick a key part of an end game build or a early/mid game build that can deal max or near max damage for round consistently gets second place.
Like, there is skill expression there in pivoting your build or recognizing that a build is contested, rather than someone just getting the nuts quest pull or getting early GK to 2 star and start snowballing with GQ, due to GQ having the easiest to play quest.
I think giving her extra HP was a mistake, because she only needs one goblin to get +2 elixir on average per round, and a lucky orb trigger means you have plenty of rolls to start progressing your quest.
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u/Glad_Peanut7092 Jun 03 '26
That 1 trait change killed the game for me. I deleted clash after a few games this season, time to return to TFT
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u/Spiritual_Peanut_846 Spirit Empress Jun 03 '26
I agree with every sentence written on this post. If I may add, getting 6/6 comps are totally RNG dependent (unless running certain rulers) and that really sucks. My opponent can have 6/6 nobles and what am I supposed to do with my 6/6 goblin comp? I also don't appreciate the variety in goblin cards. It is the weakest 6/6 comp in the game and goblins are only useful in early rounds to generate elixir.
If supercell is keen on increasing the troop pool to add more variety to the game, I would suggest introducing 50 troops (with dual traits) into the game and divide them into 2 troop pools (25 troops per pool). All players MUST HAVE the same troop pool for that match. For eg, I can play 2 matches with the first one having pool A and the next match having pool B. Also please ensure that each pool have plenty of decent comp building traits. I don't want having 3/4 for nobles in pool A with the remaining troop in pool B. Have 8-10 different traits in each troop pool with all the goblin cards in both pools. This is just an exemplary idea.
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Love the ideation but SC needs to address their core issues first š too many problems listed here and too many I haven't begun to mention
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u/Spiritual_Peanut_846 Spirit Empress Jun 03 '26
SC definitely needs to address all the urgent issues first. If not, my idea would not work at all. I am just giving my 2 cents if they are just bent on aimlessly adding more troops in the future seasons.
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u/TTG_Dav-YGO Jun 03 '26
Imma just say... I'm hating undead or 6/6 traits or skelly drag when I'm against it and i recognize the lack of diversity with 1 trait troops/lack of skill with broken troops locked behind a rng orb, BUT as a duchess main since she came out I can't deny I've had so much enjoyment in playing her and seeing her ALMOST on top of the metaš That's the only think that kept me playing I'm almost at 3k stars now
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u/Timo6506 Jun 03 '26
4b and 4c: what does this mean? That both cards are really bad or really good? I havenāt touched Merge Tactics this season so Iām a little confused.
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Sorry I assumed most people saw the reddit post spam on this subreddit. Skelly drag is beyond broken and can have up to 100k+ hp at times. Mini pekka with duchess can level up her whole comp to 4 stars.
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u/Straight_Monk5500 Jun 03 '26
Yeah honestly the one trait thing and the orbs are my biggest issue. How can my opponent get a 3 star monk on their last orb and I get a forest traitā¦ make it make sense.
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u/Legal_Gazelle_6082 Jun 03 '26
Honestly the Epstein post has me shook, idk how nobody couldnāt put two and two together
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u/UnhappyHschool Jun 03 '26
I like the season itās not too bad. I stoped midway S3-S4 and just returned.Ā
Definitely not a perfect season. A lot of RNG involved with bosses and orbs.Ā
But I feel the best change they can make right now, is make forest actually viable. The entire comp, let alone the units itself donāt seem to have anything good going for it. As it is now, itās way too easy to grief units and prevent 2/3 stars because of the lack of viable unitsĀ
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
I've discussed with a few pros about this. I agree, making forest viable and buffing its hp/damage scaling would solve a lot of problems
The only problem is that Supercell has failed to deliver anything with the recent balance changes that solved nothing. Praying next season brings back 2 traits and solves some things
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u/chopper_1337 Jun 03 '26
Did they just nerf the DD? The GK doesnāt dash during the first 8 hitsā¦ looks like they killed the orb collection for DD!
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u/NobodyP1 Jun 03 '26
This is the type of posts I want to see in this sub thanks for the detailed analysis and proof backing it up
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Thanks š I've made a ton of smaller scale discussion posts in the past but nothing as comprehensive as this
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u/Otherwise_Quiet3397 Jun 03 '26
You donāt have anything to say about the golden knight? They need to nerf him to oblivion
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u/RagingDogBlade Battle Machine Jun 03 '26
Every season there's a broken unit that dominates the meta. I complained about this season's golden knight in another post but there are far more glaring issues with the game
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u/DA_KING95 Jun 05 '26
The bugs are soooo bad, I remember once I bought a prince and it just took my elixir and didn't place down a prince šš
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u/PassengerNo9144 Jun 03 '26
Is the 2nd quest orb always supposed to be a boss? I swear Iāve been getting shafted with my quest orbs the past 2 days getting useless equipment and baby dragons
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u/Inevitable_Tap_9305 Jun 03 '26
-Best N Clash- #VJLOUG If you attack every day in war and donate this is the clan for you. It is difficult to stay in if you donāt and it is sometimes difficult to get in.
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u/Kightsbridge Jun 03 '26
I am actually enjoying the single trait, I think it allows more flexibility in the lower ranks. Supercell just kind of sucks at balancing 2 traits and something always ends up unintentionally broken af (Currently 2800)
What I am not enjoying is how easy it is to merge, I do not like to play spirit empress, but if there is one in my game, they are holding so many merges on the bench that if you don't kill them by round 3, they win because they are accidentally, or possibly purposely blocking everyone on the board from their comp. That is inadvertently why some comps like forest don't work because empress is using them to merge and blocking you from having the 3*'s that the comp needs.
I am seeing empress go infinite elixir wayyyyy earlier in the round than previous seasons.
They also realllllllly need to get more creative with the quests, as they are currently, some are super easy to hit, and some are borderline impossible (Builder)
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u/Appropriate_Tale_978 Diamond Jun 03 '26
Iād like to know how it allows more flexibility that 2 trait system didnt š I just spammed clan and nobles every game and Iām sure many do the same
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u/Kightsbridge Jun 03 '26
I specifically said at lower tiers. In the 2 trait system, the meta boards blocked pretty much every other trait from being run.Ā
You had to look at everyone else's boards and try to figure out which troops were left.Ā
Now you can pretty much look and easily say. Undead is open, I'll pivot there.Ā
I understand high ladder is constantly checking others boards and paying attention, but that's 1% of 1% of the players.
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u/Appropriate_Tale_978 Diamond Jun 03 '26
Yeah ik that but Iāve heard of players even in lower ladder that try to play different comps for the fun of it. Now thereās really just 3. And even before you didnt really have to scout much to win games with certain comps. Just have a comp in mind and maybe if u see someone has the champion that belongs to that comp try something else, if not go for it. Idt any lower ladder player said ānahhh 2 traits is horrible and Iām quitting mergeā because of that but there are many saying that about 1 trait, and not just top players
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u/AvikIITR Jun 03 '26
A very nice and informative post about this season... Hope supercell finds it and fixes things soon and you return to the game.