Clash Royale [OFFICIAL] Balance, Current Meta & Why We Aren't Doing An Emergency Nerf

[OFFICIAL] Balance, Current Meta & Why We Aren't Doing An Emergency Nerf
When the enemy doesn’t bring any spells
Clash Royale players in a nutshell
Seriously though, does anyone else feel this way?
New CR challenge be like..
$5000 well spent. (From Darren Rovell)
I know I know CR, but more important HOE DO I GET THAT EMOTE???
A legendary should give 4000 starpoints since it’s worth 40.000 gold.
This has been my Challenger III experience so far lol
The 2 year old bug.
Here's a new Skill Tier List that won't offend anybody and everyone can agree with
Person loses game. Joins clan. Activates rage.
Some guy on Youtube thought my ideas were good, and that gave me confidence to post them here (balance changes) :]
Looking for the ballerina goblins. If anyone is selling or knows someone that is seeking please contact me! Want to finish my collection.
OOOOOH, i dunno how (seth) gonna react to this LoL Lmao Yeet don't remove or delete! feet?? XD
The X2 elixir sign covers the health of any building in the back corner. This is because my phone has a tall aspect ratio. Very frustrating.
I played against the same guy twice and we basically gave each other wins��
No, No, No please don't tell me thats ram rider's ram on a stick!
I don’t know how many times I had to watch this lol ��
Top 10 Photos taken Moments before disaster
When you use the freeze spell while Mega Knight is jumping or Fisherman is hooking someone, they should freeze in the air.
Found on Wikipedia's page for CR - is this correct? Single elixir takes 2.8 seconds to gain 1 elixir, and 0.7 is a quarter of 2.8, not a third.
Holy mother of princesses pt 2
Story of my life on upgrading cards usually in the Meta.
Only found this funny because I’m on the worst wifi ever lol across the world in the Philippines, placing a card takes like 3 seconds. And this guy celebrates a little too early.
Thanks supercell!

[OFFICIAL] Balance, Current Meta & Why We Aren't Doing An Emergency Nerf

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:07 AM PDT

Hey everyone,

We thought we'd post some feedback & information with regards to the current meta, Season 4 balance changes and what will be taking place in Season 5.

This post will go through why we are not doing mid-season balance changes and the choices behind this decision.

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Season 3 & Our Learnings

When we initially reworked Executioner, we reacted to pre-release comments about the Executioner's strength and did an emergency nerf with much less playtesting than usual (no time for a formal playtest cycle) before the start of Season 3. The result was a weak Executioner and most existing Exe players feeling let down. This also invalidated videos made by our Content Creators and made our own balance videos inaccurate, which was not good for anyone who wanted accurate information about Season 3 balance.

We opted to do a one-time 'Pre-CRL maintenance' to adjust Fisherman and Executioner and not affect matches that week, with an internal promise to not make it a regular thing. Any emergency changes are a nightmare from a communication perspective because the vast majority of our players only watch official videos or in-game messaging and aren't in touch with Twitter discussions or Reddit. To change a card with seemingly no messaging (even if it's all over YouTube, Reddit or Twitter) is a bad habit we don't intend to start.

Our biggest worry with a mid-season change was setting the precedent that we can and should do them often. This month confirmed that worry – while the meta has been impacted by the recent changes, it's multiple cards without an 'easy' solution. We don't want the community to call for emergency mid-season balance changes every time a card is perceived to be too strong but that's exactly what has happened. This is our fault, as we made a decision in Season 3 and set an expectation going forward that it could be a possibility.

So why not do mid-season balance changes?

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We Need Time for Data and Playtesting

Players began calling for an emergency nerf of Witch & Wall Breakers as soon as 48 hours after the balance update. We have generally never reacted in that time frame, because there is not enough info to make an educated decision. Cards that seem good at the beginning of the season will see their results wane as the season goes on as.

That happened this month – Wall Breakers dropped off from their initial stats while Witch rose up higher. We know now that Wall Breakers need a lesser nerf than Witch, which might need a larger nerf than initially thought. If we had to make that decision after just a few days, it's possible we would have over-nerfed Wall Breakers and under-nerfed Witch. This might put us back into the position of being asked to make yet another mid-season change – it's a slippery slope.

This month we opted to let it play out – while multiple cards are very powerful, the saving grace of the season is that it IS multiple cards. If it was just one card in 60% of games, the calculus might be different. But there are dominant decks without Witch or Wall Breakers. There are dominant decks without Elixir Golem or Fisherman. Even if all 4 of those cards are a notch above in power level, they are playing off each other and creating a meta of their own. We feel comfortable letting that ride out for 2 more weeks and doing our best to get it right in one change that arrives on schedule.

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Community Feedback

Gonna let u/Supercell_Drew take the lead on this one here.

Drew: We aim for every rework to land right on the 50% win rate margin but that may not always be the case. We want a rework to come out on the strong (but not too strong!) side of the meta, or else a rework can feel pointless or lack impact. However this month has been a mix of too many strong synergistic cards upending the meta at once, creating a narrow selection of 'best decks'.

We know that the meta this month has caused upset within the community. Various members of the Royale team read Reddit and Twitter daily and a lack of immediate action on our end does not mean that we aren't listening and paying attention. We have a lot of opinions voiced at once and my job is to take everything into account and filter this to the rest of the team so that we can make the decisions that are best for the game (backed up with data where possible).

Based on last month's 'emergency nerf' scenario, we decided that even though the stats showed several issues with cards, it was not going to benefit the player base to react in panic on a weekly cycle.

For as long as we started doing balance changes, every balance change has been the 'worst ever', every meta is 'the worst meta ever' to somebody, and we have a responsibility to the player base to make informed decisions using the data and tools at our disposal rather than make kneejerk reactions to opinions or posts that get traction (as Seth discussed in his point above). Even if these posts and opinions make great points (which they often do) we still want to take the time to do things properly.

We know that by not immediately nerfing cards it can seem like we aren't listening or 'don't care' (as I've seen on the sub the past week) but we hope by being open about our processes in this post you can better see why we do the things we do!

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So What's Next?

Well, first off, we can confirm two things:

There will not be a card rework in November. We need to pause and get the meta back to stable and balanced before tossing more reworks into the mix. We have a few exciting ones planned and playtested and will most likely be bringing a new one in December if things are settled.
Witch, Wall Breakers, Fisherman, AND Elixir Golem will be getting guaranteed nerfs of varying impact in November. It's clear all of these cards are warping the meta around them and no one card could be nerfed to get everything back to normal.

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As always, thank you for your vocal feedback, your tweets, memes, effort posts, videos, all of which lead us towards making decisions that shape the balance of this game (even if it doesn't happen immediately).

We will be announcing the final Season 5 balance changes next week, so stay tuned!

See you in the Arena,

Seth, Drew, and the Clash Royale Team

submitted by /u/Supercell-Seth
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When the enemy doesn’t bring any spells

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:54 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Lord-Sprinkles
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Clash Royale players in a nutshell

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:46 PM PDT

submitted by /u/josh_12314
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Seriously though, does anyone else feel this way?

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:51 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Greenbay64
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New CR challenge be like..

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 03:54 AM PDT

submitted by /u/BlueDogTM
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$5000 well spent. (From Darren Rovell)

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 09:43 PM PDT

submitted by /u/suspencewu
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I know I know CR, but more important HOE DO I GET THAT EMOTE???

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 12:25 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Tron2c
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A legendary should give 4000 starpoints since it’s worth 40.000 gold.

Posted: 23 Oct 2019 12:44 AM PDT

submitted by /u/zirrzilla
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This has been my Challenger III experience so far lol

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 10:55 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Bacon_Maker9000
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The 2 year old bug.

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:09 PM PDT

submitted by /u/UNsPn
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Here's a new Skill Tier List that won't offend anybody and everyone can agree with

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:41 PM PDT

submitted by /u/MissStealYoTrophies
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Person loses game. Joins clan. Activates rage.

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 12:25 PM PDT

submitted by /u/fyuce
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Some guy on Youtube thought my ideas were good, and that gave me confidence to post them here (balance changes) :]

Posted: 23 Oct 2019 01:33 AM PDT

In my opinion, the cards should be should be balanced in this way:

Witch: have her skeletons spawn in an X formation instead of a + (this means that the one skeleton will not spawn directly behind her and offer the speed buff), reduce damage to 181 at tournament standard, which is the same damage as the musketeer, and maybe increase the splash by just a very small amount.

Wall Breakers: just nerf hp by 10 percent. This will make it so only 1 will explode onto the tower if left without a tank, and will allow ice spirit and skeletons to counter them more consistently.

fisherman: increase the amount of time before he throws his hook by 0.25-0.75 seconds. after this, you can actually rebuff his health and damage to where it was after the last balance changes (i think they were 5 and 6 % changes respectively)

Elixir Golem: I really don't think the card's stats need to be changed, but I have a pretty interesting idea. when the E-Golem first pops, the Golemites that come from it should get knocked away from whatever killed it, just like if it were hit by a log or fireball, and they should be in a stunned animation for a short time like maybe half a second. When these Golemites pop, they should also receive this same stun animation, but with more stun on the blobs. I think this will make it so that more cards can counter the elixir Golem, but without touching his actual stats. If this doesn't seem to be enough and he is still too much, change the blob health so that towers can kill them in three shots. This will reduce damage by a lot, and change some cards interactions with them to allow them to one shot the blobs, instead of previously leaving them with a sliver of heath.

submitted by /u/Luzoro
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Looking for the ballerina goblins. If anyone is selling or knows someone that is seeking please contact me! Want to finish my collection.

Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:56 PM PDT