Today, I want to introduce to you my thoughts about the Zap rework and how this change may address some strategic issues that already exist in the game. The first is about the strategic issue. For me personally, Zap is a very unsatisfying card. In most defense positions (except when countering the prince), people will prefer to use Snowball instead of Zap. On the other hand, when attacking, beatdown players prefer to use Rage to rage their troop rather than have a Zap tickle a little bit of the health of their opponent troop. Regarding the main intention of the Zap card, it was used for beatdown players to deal with the Inferno Dragon and Inferno Tower, which Zap is not good at handling (you could ask the pro log bait 3.3 how to use Zap to counter Inferno Tower and they will have a hard time to explain it to you). In many ways, the Zap has a very flawed concept. Many people only use Zap to get to its evolution, but since its evolution’s rework, the use of the Zap has plummeted. My solution to Zap is to add the randomness possibility to the card. When deployed, the zap will randomly stun the target from a range of 0.25 s to 1 s. It will make Zap become a low-skill version of Ice Spirit but with double the cost and unguaranteed stun value for compensation. The gacha element of the stun may add some pleasure when playing the zap, and it can help beatdown push some possibility to break through the inferno tower, which was an impossible task before.
Ehhhh, I mean zap its realy bad right now, but I wouldn*t suggest that random thing. It could be a waste of elixir in a moment of need or value in an unnecesary moment. Zap should have it`s stun incresed to match the slowdown AND PUSHBACK of G snowball, the efect of rage and the goblin value of gobcurse (not to mention log and barbbarell). The stun just feels not enough. And also, the evo zap should have a rework, more specific 2 stuns with a larger area for both (3-3.5). Added to the longer stun it would be ok.
It is quite tricky to balance the zap. If we increase its damage and its radius a little bit, it will become an arrow. Similarly, when we change its stunt duration, it will become another version of Snowball. When we can make the Zap stun and Skeleton could counter the hog rider (like the old giant snowball meta before) then a Zap will becomes a stronger version of snowball. Imagine a world without Inferno, Mighty Miner, and Double Prince; then the Zap will be a weaker version of a snowball. Nowadays, with all kinds of evos from Valkyrie, Hunter, Goblin Cage, etc., people no longer need to use the Inferno card to counter tanks anymore (those evos are much more effective and efficient), so I could say we are getting closer to that world. Like it or not, the Zap can not escape from the fate of becoming another version of the giant snowball. What I want to say here is to simply make the zap become an unstable version of a giant snowball with high risk high reward,not a better or weaker version of it.After all, it is the zap and it is shockingly unstable!
I understand your vision of what you think the zap should be, although personally I can’t say that I agree on taking it in that direction. Sure, it’s true that right now zap is worse than snowball in performance and that, as the game evolves with more cards and evos, it seems that the reasons to use zap over snowball become lesser. But, honestly, I don’t see that as a bad thing, not a problem. Deep down, while both zap and snowball may seem very similar, they are actually quite different. While zap stuns, resetting all cards in the game to their initial state of attack (more useful against cards that charge in one way or another: princes, infernos…) and is instant, snowball takes a while to travel but compensates for it with a slowdown effect and knockback in the case of some troops. While the evo zap retains the same functionality as the regular zap but with increased effectiveness in all scenarios, the evo snowball acts differently to its non-evolved version in ways where sometimes it is more worth using over the non-evolved state (with extra knockback and untargetable enemy troops for a second), and sometimes less worth it (for example, against a defending megaminion or phoenix with your offensive balloon, or to defend a princess at the bridge).
Right now the meta demands for more snowball, and that’s ok, but when I use zap against infernos or princes, as long as I time it correctly, it always gets the job done in a reliable manner. Yes, it’s not as valuable as the other 2 elixir spells in average scenarios, but it is much more effective in specific scenarios; it’s in its own niche. And I would rather it stay that way while being not very used, than be more used but have that randomness factor added in. But I still think your idea is interesting, and that it could be a viable implementation if enough experimentation is done around the random stun length factor.
Unfortunately, the current Clash Royale dev team seems to perform little to no experimentation before introducing certain cards and balance changes (and I am aware that they launch some cards and evos in a broken state on purpose to draw in more cash), so I’m not counting on it being a good implementation for now, but who knows… Clash Royale’s future is very uncertain. Your idea may or may not be viable (in my personal vision) in said future. We’ll just have to wait and see, or attempt to experiment with the idea ourselves by implementing those mechanics into our own private servers. Now that would be very interesting to see and experience…
Thank you for adding a little bit to the conversation man. Of course what you said is probably true. There is some slight difference between Zap and Snowball (the initial state of attack like what you said). But, deep down, I think that doesn’t impact a lot so you know I just… exacerbate a bit just to get to the main point. Anyways, nowadays I thinks the Clash Royale dev team seem to be quite conservative on the way they balance card. Personally, that make the meta become less interesting so that is my job here to give more and more radical views with the hope to balance that attitude out. I remember the last time when The Clash Royale was quite radical that is the witch balance changes in season 4. Their ambition at that time is quite big, they say it quite clearly is to make the witch become a counterpart of the musketeer (like when we compare snowball to zap now we will compare musketeer to witch). That went terribly wrong, and the witch became a super broken version of musketeer and dominate that Halloween in every deck in the game. I think that mess-up turns them a little bit into conservatives. Anyway, just a little bit more chit-chat.