Hello and welcome!
So here I am going to try...ehmm, highlighting genious at work.
Remember how BB guys keep preaching how blocking is not an intended feature and thus any losses incurred one way or another isn't any of their responsibilities?
Remember how BB implented a game feature, falsely labeled "PvP", which has.
Exactly. That. Mechanic. They. Do. Not. Support?
To be fair, blocking units die as time passes within this feature, but it's supported and promoted via an explanatory entry within their game FAQ/Archives to read up on, as sparse the information may be, that being more than okay though.
In a regular working brain (take regular with a grain of salt, somehow critically thinking or the delusion thereof eludes alot people), assuming "PvP" was the actual release of the game and adventures/PvE added later on, one would check and apply the same concept to that part of the game too.
However, here it is not supported.
To be fair again, troops don't die as time passes and even come out without a scratch if it went successful, on the other hand if it fails by whatever cause, the losses can and mostly heavily outweight the cost of the "intended" way of clearing every camp without blocking them.
Though we essentially have the same mechanic, it has slight differences despite it's overall great resemblance. Which is perfectly fine!
Maybe we just need BB to say
"Ye know, blocking may or may not have been an intended feature originally, but as it stands now, it is being used, enjoys a great popularity and is just about the most amazing and interesting thing our 'click and wait boring as hell adventures' have to offer. But! Whatever problem arises, it's not our concern due to the potential risk that you option in for potential gain...so if something happens, go suck it and leave us alone."
Although it's not supported nor promoted, it seems that BB at least has come to terms with it and made that spin off "PvP" thing where it is supported. Although I will place bets that in case if a failed block due to server lag etc no action will be taken, aka risk evaluation you need to learn from and deal with. Meaning if you send a support ticket about the issue, your response will not be "blocking is not intended" but your 0815 standard "We are very sorry for the incovenience, but we will compensate jack to you" kinda one.
Furthermore, BB has another trick up their sleeve, the actual reason why I started typing in the first place.
The Legendary Veteran! Omg omg omg, it sounds great! Just that everything about him is not.
Let's recap.
- We got a Veteran General that is not Legendary, but can carry 250 troops. Which the Legendary Veteran cannot, he is simply a 200 Gen.
- We got Battle Hardened Gens (or any Gen that is not from the Tavern for that matter) that travel and fight faster. The Legendary Veteran can do that too.
- We got a Martial Artist who has the 1st Strike ability and attacks the weakest target with a decent amount of splash damage. The Legendary Veteran does not 1st Strike, but he attacks the weakest targets with splash dmg too, but at a pathetic number.
- And then finally, we come to the health points. Every General has 1hp only. The Legendary Veteran on the other hand has an amazing 5000.
However, Generals are
always attacked last. Always. No exception. Generals bypass special abilities like "Attack Weakest Target" from enemy units (don't count the 1R SAC where wolfs etc chew the General first in the visual combat log, it just means the entire army+general got annihilated perfectly).
Meaning, a General can't tank for it's troops, which makes his 5000HP unintersting right off the bat solely by the fact that he gets attacked last under every circumstance.
With all troops being finally dead, the General will get attacked. In most cases this is 1HP and pretty much means "gtfo you lost, come again".
But 5000 HP is a big number that one could work with then. So how do you use it? We can't tank with him, so that option is gone. Offense is the best defense then!
Well, turns out we can't make use of that concept either, as the amount of damage he does is around the bottom of the entire game's unit spectrum. So he fights with with the strengh of around 1-5 units but can take a hit or 2 at the end for better or worse, making him not a great attacker either.
If the enemy camp has more than a handful units left after your main army got wiped out, he just cripples his way out like a little boy that can't lose and is all like "I haven't lost yet, baweaaah T_T", just getting what's coming at him, since he is taking swords and pokes back with a feather.
Assuming he actually wins after his army got wiped out afterall, he returns to his camp and takes a break, because any attack that returns no unit is considered defeated. As amazing as his victory had been then, literally promoting his Legendary status, one gets to wonder why and if there is any possibly bigger slap in the face within this universe than that.
Now, if your regular brain is working in overdrive, you may see the potential for him to do blocks. By definition, one would bring an great enough army to wipe out the majority of the enemy and then stall for time, as troops are low and the ping pong takes time. Which would result in the Legendary Veteran to make the maximum use of his HP and his low dmg combined, making this Legendary actually Legendary.
But! BB does not support blocking.
See how messed up the concept of this General is? His only real advantage over a BHG was his potential to block due to his HP, but that is not supported.
A Veteran carries 250 units and that 50 units worth of extra dmg vs 5000HP that cannot be used for any potential gain, aside from a not supported feature, outperforms so hard, that you can't help but question how this is Legendary of any sort. Add in his cost compared to a BHG or Veteran during events (or for gems eventually too I guess) and notice how you pay for bad quality.
Now to add insult to injury, the Legendary Veteran got renamed to Master of Defense.
If you are defending, your ultimate purpose is still to win one way or another, and if that is not possible,
Stall. For. Time. Alot of it. As much as you can possibly stall for. Regardless if we are talking about tanking in an MMO or being sieged in the middle ages...he who has resources (5k hp pool in this case) makes use of them to fulfill a purpose (to win or stall for time in this case). However, stalling for time is not supported, and winning is done _massively_ better in other ways or roughly the same at lower cost.
So the introduction of this General was saying something long the lines of:
"Alright, here, look. We don't support blocking but we acknowledge it regardless, thus we made a General for pretty much that purpose,
except he will be virtually useless because of our (intended) fail execution to make him any attractive aside from doing petty things. Last year we had the Master of Martial Artist, which was supposed to be a different kind of joke along those lines, tweaked him after that constant whining and actually made him maybe a tad too powerful in the end, but nobody is crying to have him nerfed, everybody only ever wants buffs...so that's the balance we brainstormed togehter and voila we managed to produce underpowered to balance it out!"
The only thing you can compare the Master of Defense against is the Tavern Gen and a BHG, as they carry 200 units and their abilities are just about the same, but let's recap that too.
- A tavern General carries 200 units, fights slow and travels slow, does 120dmg in the normal speed round and can only defeat 1 enemy at the most. This is the vanilla Gen.
- A BHG carries 200 units, fights fast and travels fast, does 120dmg in the normal speed round and can only defeat 1 enemy at the most. This is the tavern General on drugs.
- The Master of Defense carries 200 units, fights fast and travels fast, does 45-50(?) dmg in the normal speed round but attacks the weakest enemy unit and takes hopefully out more than 1. While this is indeed superior, on paper, for alot of camps, it is trivial for just as many.
Altogehter the difference is neglectible on multiple levels.
As we have now concluded this Master of Defense can only be "+/- on par" with the Vanilla Generals and holds nothing against any other General, one can only help but wonder what this is aside from, an extremly funny but just as sad of, a joke.
And the one and only thing you would need to do to make him have an impact as any other non-vanilla General is to make him fight slow (I'm not even going to put up drama to make him travel fast regardless, one might complain but that's just the greed speaking). Make him fight slow and he has earned the name of Master of Defense (or Legendary [well not Veteran but I'll compromise!]) and is an asset to the game and the players as a whole and can join ranks with the Generals that pay for their money/investment.
As of right now, I am deciding weather to name him "Master of Wheelchair" or "Legendary Wheelchair". Altough I'm insulting and offending wheelchairs and any possible person having to rely on one, I think most everyone (with a regular brain of course) gets the implication of being able to walk over having to rely on a wheelchair is better. Although wheelchairs are a great asset in real life, here it just defined as being crippled.
Maybe we need BB just to tweak it's stance a little bit. Rather than saying "we don't support blocking" how about "blocking at your own risk, we take no reponsibility" and "properly expand" on this aspect of the game? There are, probably more than I think but also less than I assume, players who enjoy creating guides, blocks, timings and so forth with the tools given to us. Even as bad as the Master of Defense is at this very moment, I am thinking of having 4 or 5 camps that he may be useful for that currently can't be done or are way too insecure. If it works out with him or not is another thing, but I still have this tool to work with, albeit it may not be a frequently used one.
As you can see, the genious is very high here and to our enjoyment, we are likely to see alot more of these brilliant things in the future.
Although I'm getting more realistic and therefore pessimistic the older I get, I still have this random irrational hope for
genius to happen every so often, until then, I will just milk the contradictions out of genious until it's too old to make fun of.
Have a legendary day!