History of Clash Royale's 2nd Worst Building

I made a video a few months ago talking about the Barbarian Hut and how according to usage rates is the least popular card in the game however only slightly above the Barbarian Hut lies another card with a fairly similar function the Goblin hut the Goblin hut like the Barbarian Hut is one of the communities least favorite cards to see in Clash Royale given its low skill sealing and frustrating mechanic however despite the similarities it shares with the Barbarian Hut their histories are distinct enough to where I think it deserves its own video with the card's most recent changes it is now had a total of 14 balance changes which is the most of any card except the witch supercell has certainly attempted to get the Goblin hut into a healthy balanced state for many years now so today I'm going to be covering the goblin Hut's entire history why it's so difficult to balance the different metad decks it has been popular in and what the future will likely be for this card for the goblin Hut's history we need to start all the way back in Clash rail's Beta release on January 4th 2016 obviously the card was very different than it is today after 14 balance changes but the concept is still the same it's a five elixir building that periodically spawns spear goblins since it shares the same troop as the spear goblins card it posed a potential challenge when finding the perfect balance the spear goblins and Goblin hut were both in very different places in The Meta upon the game's beta launch to give you an idea of the difference the spear goblins were the third most popular troop in top ladder with a 58% usage rate whereas the Goblin hut had a 17% usage rate remember given the fewer cards that existed in the game back then a 177% use rate was just about average for the time also there really wasn't one specific deck the card worked in as back then people were much more creative with their deck building but you did very often see the Goblin hut paired with the Barbarian Hut this was known as the spawner archetype where you basically sat back and kept applying pressure with more and more spawners while defending with other troops to the point where you would overwhelm your opponents with swarms of goblins and barbarians it wasn't uncommon to see Tombstone and Goblin Hut together either although the Hut cards had no more than an average use rate it's safe to assume that this was not the case for the lower areas of ladder given the fact that spawners were typically easier to master than most if not all other decks it made the spawner archetype very appealing to newer players which at the time was everybody but it wasn't just a lack of skill that made spawner so difficult to counter for some players another problem was that there was very few counters to deal with them at the time wizard was the best option you had but he was five elixir and was quite fragile nowadays there are so many better cheaper options to deal with swarms efficiently but this was a totally different era very early in the game's lifespan the spawner archetype was almost unanimously hated it just took way more effort on the defender part than it did on the person placing the spawner which just didn't seem fair since this was so early on there are no recorded stats for the goblin hunt in mid ladder but it's safe to assume based on Old Forum posts and from personal experience that spawners were a fairly common occurrence for people trying to push through the Arenas however it was pretty clear that the statistics were not an accurate representation of the card's true strength at the time remember that nobody was really good at the game yet even an average player today could compete at the very top back then as the first couple months went by players started to get better and it was soon realized that spawners weren't actually as good as they may have originally appeared within the span of a few weeks Goblin Hood felt drastically from its average 18% use rate to a mere 6% of course this didn't mean a lot of lower players still seeing it often but it does prove the card was maybe overhyped at first however despite this fall the goblin hunt would receive its first balance change on February 29th 2016 this was a change to the spear goblins where their sight range would be decreased from 6 tiles to 5.5 tiles this change actually affected multiple troops and this was implemented because defensive buildings were too dominant in Clash Royale and supercell really wanted to promote offense over defense this change would make troops less likely to run towards defensive building but it didn't make a huge difference as this balance change was more to Nerf defensive buildings not make Goblin hut viable thus the card's use rate continued to fall spawner decks were getting easier and easier to counter by now if you knew how to play against them properly and this was despite no Nerfs to either of the Huts one big reason why the Goblin hut likely started to fall was the release of the princess who was a very popular three Elixir card who was great at dealing with the waves of goblins however later in May the Royal Giants would become a metad defining card and the Goblin hut worked well with him in some decks some of these Royal giant Goblin hut decks were reaching the top ladder leaderboards so thanks to the Royal Giants the goblin hunt wasn't completely dead however the Royal giant was nerfed fairly quickly and thus the goblin Hutt died as a result of that nerve by July 2016 it sat at a 0% use rate in top ladder by this point there were just several more cards that were really efficient at dealing with Spawners the goblin hunt for months just continued to see absolutely zero usage in top ladder super wasn't quick on buffing it though because players in general were not a fan of the card despite the card being Irrelevant in the competitive Scene It Wasn't uncommon to still see spawner decks in mid ladder especially with the brand new furnace card that also came out in July I mean the goblin hunt had been considered viable for a while in the current state it was in and hadn't been changed much so the smart thing seemed to be to let this card settle for a little while before taking any action but it was clear as the year went on that the goblin hunt wasn't going to have any impact on the meta in the state it was in for the rest of 2016 Goblin hunt would get no balance changes and it consistently remained around a 0 to 1% top ladder use rate and even in lower laders spawner decks were becoming more and more irrelevant with each passing month Super Cell was still being very hesitant going into 2017 when it came to this card but finally on April 19th 2017 over a year since the spear Goblin sight range decrease the Goblin hut would appear in the balance changes and receive direct attention for the first time ever it would get a an HP buff of 5% a rather small buff but this buff made the Goblin hut able to survive a rocket before this it actually had the exact same HP as damage the rocket dealt this interaction didn't really matter though as using spells on the Hut was not a very common way people dealt with Spawners the way people dealt with spawners was by stopping the individual waves but ultimately above buff is above buff and this would help the card be a better defensive building again though the card wasn't really used as a defensive building up to this point so this buff was fairly in significant so even after this buff the card saw no usage in top ladder now one thing to remember about the spear goblins is that they were very different from the spear goblins today they just hardly did any damage back then and even though in early 2016 they were practically ruling the game they had completely fallen out of the meta despite no balance changes as backed up by the fact that the spear goblins card had a 0% top ladder use rate now as well part of this drop off was due to the goblin gang a new C that was a better value for your Elixir that included three regular goblins and three spear goblins this card had a 44% use rate in top ladder at the time and it was boxing out both goblins and spear goblins if this card wasn't in the game it would have made perfect sense to just buff the spear Goblin troop directly but because the goblin gang was so metad defining doing so would have had the unintended effect of making an already way too strong card even stronger this is the problem that comes with having the same troop appear in multiple different cards this is likely why supercell opted to buff the HP of the goblin Hut instead of the troop itself originally at least with the goblin Huts the building can be used to balance that card separately from the other cards that included spear goblins if supercell really wanted to make this card viable all they would need to do is increase the total number of spear goblins that would spawn from the Hut which can be done by increasing the lifetime of the building or decreasing the time in between intervals but even though there were plenty of rout supercell could go with this card while not affecting the goblin gang there was still the problem of the spear goblins card supercell did not want to leave this card in the dust so they were likely attempting to find the right balance between the goblin gang and the other Goblin troop cards and if they buffed the Goblin hut too much now then it may have caused problems if they did decide to buff the spear Goblin troop in the future to help bring back the spear goblins card which would ultimately just force them to revert any Buffs they gave to the building despite a pretty big Nerf to the goblin gang in July spear goblins were not doing any better with the goblin gang not quite as meta defining though supercell finally decided to buff the spear Goblin troop directly on October 9th 2017 this was a pretty massive buff making the hit speed of the troop go from 1.3 seconds to 1.1 seconds but even after this buff both spear goblins and Goblin hut didn't get much attention from the community until December what happened in December was the crown tournament World Finals where the Goblin hut surprisingly made quite a few appearances it was being used a lot with Pekka and Mega Knight at this point the community could clearly see the potential Goblin hut really had to offer but that wasn't the only major thing that prompted more usage of this spawner this month also saw the release of the royal ghost of which prompted the game into a new meta a meta of which seems to greatly benefit the Goblin hut over the next few weeks the Hut's use rate in top ladder rose from a mere 1% to a staggering 15% and almost every single appearance was in this one specific Mega knite Royal ghost deck this deck was easily the most popular deck in the game surpassing log baits breaking its 3month streak of being the number one deck in the game although no other Goblin hut deck at the time even came close to this Mega Knight one some top players were also finding Success With The Hut in Golem or minor control a 15% use rate may only sound slightly above average in terms of a healthy use rate and for the time for most cards it was but in fact the goblin hunt was actually the most popular building in the game at this point although the player base's attention during this era was primarily on the Royal ghost supercell would not ignore this this sneaky rise to a Troublesome accomplice 2018 was probably the most interesting year for the Goblin hut the goblin Hutt was so popular in December of the previous year that it would get an immediate Nerf in the January balance changes its spawn speed would be changed from 4.95 seconds to 5.05 seconds and ultimately this meant one less spear Goblin would spawn overall it may sound extremely small but one less unit can make a big difference given the card's strength though it may have been Justified but at the same time it may not have worked as well if not for an overpowered Royal ghost of which was getting some Hefty Nerfs in the same balance change the stats speak for themselves and they suggest that this card was a bit much because only within a couple weeks of this change the card's use rate in top ladder dropped to just 3% despite the low rates in competitive play the card was actually still one of the most popular buildings in general ladder it was an interesting situation because in the top 200 Tombstone was a more popular spawner than the Goblin hut but if you take the stats of the rest of the game into account the Goblin hut had a higher use rate than all of the other spawners combined the Hut still had a casual appeal but it was relatively easy to beat if you knew what you were doing I'd say the card was actually in an all right position for the moment but come April the card would be changed again this was a tenth of a second hit speed Nerf to the spear goblins troop this change was more so likely just to tone down the goblin gang and spear goblins cards since they were very popular during this time but of course this had devastating effects for the hut after this change it was practically unseen in competitive play hovering between a 0 and 1% usage rate this Saga was far from over however because supercell was really bad at balancing the spear goblins which prompted them to keep changing the troop so the Goblin hut got a major rework just two months after its April change the spear goblins troop was getting a major rework with their hit speed being increased by .5 seconds plus their first hit attack time increased by3 seconds to compensate their damage was increased by 34% % so that they could one-hot skeletons and so minions died in three spear Goblin shots I think this rework would have potentially made the Goblin hut game breaking since if left alone the Goblins would get one hit on the princess Tower like they already did before but it would deal so much more damage the hit speed Nerf just wouldn't have been that much of an issue on offense for the Goblin hut and supercell realized this so they decreased the lifetime of this card by 10 seconds which meant if left alone the Goblin hut would spawn two less waves of goblins as we've already seen from the January change just one spear Goblin can make a substantial difference so decreasing it by another two just goes to show how much precaution supercell was taking but it was a bit too overboard because this card was even worse after this rework went live it was probably the worst it's ever been up to this point if not ever the following month though we got a new rage game mode where the entire arena is under the rage effect at all times and all spawners were fairly popular in this mode including the goblin hunt the reason spawners were so popular in r rage was because they would spawn extra waves of troops due to the rage speeding up the spawn time intervals but outside of that special game mode you would hardly ever see it so come October it would get a fourth balance change in 2018 decreasing the spawn time interval by. 3 seconds so in total one more spear Goblin would spawn given the spear Goblin's damage buff this meant now the Goblin hut would deal the most damage to Towers it ever dealt if left alone however despite that the Hut still had one of the lowest use and win rates in the game even if units themselves were a bit stronger having less of them was such a deterrent to the car that it could just not find a spot in the meta that easily could have been the end of the Goblin hut story a card that was looked unfavorably by the player base left to die with the wizard and Barbarian Hut but supercell wasn't ready to let spawners out to rock quite yet 6 months after its last buff in April 2019 supercell would reduce the spawn time interval by another quarter of a second so now the Hut would spawn 12 goblins once again this was partially done as a response to the Lava Hound meta buffing one of the best counters would hopefully put that archetype in check although players did laugh at the idea that Goblin hut was supposed to be a good counter to Lava Hound I don't think anyone disagreed that this buff was justified given its longtime underperformance Remember by now it hasn't been competitively viable for about a year initially the buff seemed to make the card good again getting its 12th Goblin back definitely garnered players interest it was primarily being used in Pekka and minor decks but it didn't take too long for this car to completely fizzle out of the meta once again dropping to very similar rates that it had before this was the only balance change that the Hut would get in all of 2019 and its rates didn't really change for the rest of the year in March the following year though Seth the head of balancing put out a poll asking the community which long-term underperforming card they wanted to see get a buff and Goblin Hutt was an option it ended up getting the least amount of votes but history shows us that supercell cares little about the player base's opinion thus the goblin Hutt would be getting a rework in April 2020 a few months prior in February 2020 the Barbarian Hutt got a rework so that it would always spawn barbarians when its lifetimer was up the card was relatively balanced and healthy after that so supercell thought this would also be a healthy change to the Goblin hut supercell ultimately decided to make the Hut spawn three spear goblins on death they would reduce the Lifetime by 10 seconds to compensate for this buff keeping the total number of spear goblins that would spawn by an unanswered Hut the same it actually seemed like a pretty fair rework although some players were even questioning whether this would help nobody could have predicted how impactful this change was going to be but they were ultimately going to find out the rework unquestionably was a huge buff and it was much bigger than anyone could have expected this card went from a 0% use rate a bottom five card in the game to becoming one of the most overpowered game-breaking cards having three of those 12 spear goblins guaranteed to spawn no matter what helped it to get cons consistent value the goblin hunt was just such a strong defense and it actually provided slightly more offensive value on top of that you saw the Hut in everything from graveyard to minor control to Lava Hound Elixir Golem and Mega Knight bait for a five elixir building it was incredibly versatile the response from the community was far from Pleasant with Barbarian Hut being viable and Goblin hut being so strong people were strongly advocating for keeping spawners weak this is not the direction that people wanted the meta to go in being balanced wasn't good enough players wanted them gone this high performance and Community backlash prompted supercell to take drastic measures so in the next set of balance changes in May the Goblin hut was going down it received a 35% HP Nerf before this change it could survive a rocket but now it couldn't even survive a lightning strike however if you did immediately strike a Hut with lightning you would at least still get three spear goblins unlike before April part of the reason supercell went so harsh was because earthquake was actually getting a rework to deal less damage to buildings but they wanted to keep it strong against spawners of course losing over one-third of your hit points is going to hurt and with the May balance changes going live Goblin hut was back at square one what place in this game could this card hold without upsetting players what was the perfect balance for Goblin hut players were talking about Goblin hut pointing out the obvious issue that there was no middle grounds for this card spawners were either going to be useless or Be A disruption to The Meta giving supercell no choice but to leave the card the way it was unless they could think of another creative way to rework it that would make it a healthy card after this balance change it seems like supercell had no intention on giving any attention to this card it remained as being statistically one of the worst cards with virtually no player clamoring for its Revival months would go by without a single balance change while players slowly forgot about the Hut entirely however just when everyone thought the Goblin hut was down and out for good a miracle happened almost a full year since the huts devastating Nerf it began to make a small comeback in April 2021 the elite barbarians and mother witch were both given substantial Buffs at the end of March and thus the meow was shifting this Goblin giant deck and especially this Elite barbarians double spawner deck were trending Goblin hut was officially back in the meta it wasn't crazy strong but it had a niche and fulfilled it well for the time with inevitable Nerfs to the elite barbarians and mother witch the rates of the Goblin hut began to trickle down since it was heavily relying on those cards being so strong however even after the Nerfs the rates didn't quite drop down to what they were before the mother witch and the Le barbarians were still fairly strong despite the Nerf they got and Goblin hut continued to have some success in Fireball bait with the mother witch you might think that once the mother witch got balanced out the Goblin hut would die again but it continued to see Niche usage going into the final months of 2021 even peing as high as 5% in October the card seemed like it was in the perfect position it was viable but but still a bit on the weaker side but alas right when things seemed like they were going all right another meta shift was right around the corner despite the miniature success the Hut was seeing throughout 2021 supercell decided to give the card another balance change in the final set of balance changes in 2021 over a year and a half since its last change for this set of balance changes the Hut would receive a lifetime decrease of 9 seconds but its spawn time interval would be reduced by half a second its hit points would also be decreased by 177% making poisons and earthquakes much better counter to it I'm not sure why supercell thought this rework was necessary they stated that spawners were leading to passive gameplay and frustrating battles and didn't want people to be able to stack buildings when it came to double Elixir I can understand where they were going with this but I think the lifetime and spawn time interval changes were fine by themselves I don't see why the hit point Nerf was necessary sure it makes it easier to counter with spells but without at least a little resistance to some of the bigger spells how was this card expected to stand in the arena as a result result of this rework the goblin Huts rates plummeted once again because it was just too Fragile the card saw little to no usage in competitive play until a full year later where it would appear in the December 2022 balance changes to get yet another rework where now goblins would spawn in waves of three instead of just one the Goblin hut spawn time interval would be increased from 4 seconds to 11 and 1/2 seconds and its lifetime would be decreased by 2 seconds this made it so it would spawn three waves of three goblins plus three upon its death this rework was heavily inspired by a barbarian Hut rework from a few months prior and supercell even stated that the reason they were applying it to the goblin Hutt was because the Barbarian Hut rework was so successful which is pretty much exactly what they did back in 2020 I guess the Barbarian hun is the testing ground for potential Goblin hunt reworks I actually do love how proud of themselves they are for claiming how successful this rework was because it implies that the Barbarian HUD is actually doing well when in reality this rework put the Barb Hut in the worst position I that it's ever been in but I don't think the rework to the Goblin hut was necessarily a bad direction to take it in I think with less waves of goblins it feels less annoying to go against because you feel like you have a little break in between waves ultimately it seems like the rework helped the card a tiny bit but it still wasn't really competitively viable and had pretty subpar rates this month it was occasionally seen in a mighty minor Fireball bait deck but this appearance was brief because the mighty Miner was vastly overpowered at the time and was quickly emergency nerfed midseason Goblin hunt was still underpowered and with how infrequent supercell even attempted to balance this card and with each attempt ultimately being a fail it didn't seem like supercell was going to be giving this card any more attention anytime soon but unfortunately for the balancing team the Hut was going to be standing in the way of some changes that they would want to make in the coming months so for a little bit of context before we get into 2023 the Goblins card was reworked to include four goblins while the goblin gang recently got its third spear Goblin back the spear goblins card was vastly underperforming and goblins were boxing out the goblin gang other cheap ranged units like archers were also just way better at filling the niche at the time so the meta sort of settled into a position where all four spear Goblin related cards were not doing well which meant for the first time in nearly 5 years supercell was going to directly change the spear Goblin troop this was a simple range increase from five tiles to 5 and 1/2 tiles this helped spear goblins connect to the tower faster and one big interaction change this caused was that three spear goblins would take out any spirit this also meant that damaged spear goblins that were one shot away from Death by the tower would still manage to get a hid in this change to say the least was definitely a more impactful one than supercell could have expected the goblin hun was so irrelevant up to this point that I don't even think supercell thought about the potential impact this range buff would have on the card and why would they the goblin hunt was the worst performing of the for spear Goblin related cards so if the buff didn't break the spear goblins why would it have more of a drastic effect on the Hut that's what I'm assuming supercell thought when these changes went live there was no instant Splash in The Meta but over the next few weeks the goblin Hut's use rate in Grand challenges steadily Rose until it hit about 16% usage making it the 12th most used card in the game it was being seen a bit in this Mighty minor graveyard deck but the deck that went on to Define The Meta for over a month was this Skeleton King graveyard deck one thing I've noticed with the goblin Hut's history was that whenever it's in the meta there's typically about one or two Decks that it's seen in but that doesn't mean that those one or two decks aren't seen everywhere this doesn't apply to April 2020 but when you look back at April 2021 or December 2017 there's not really a variety in Goblin hut decks despite being a popular card at the time another deck that became vaguely popular in May 2023 was this Goblin hut mirror deck which seems like a troll deck given that the mirror is not that good of a card but it actually was an effect deck and it notably used three of the four spear Goblin related cards Goblin Hutt was officially meta once again it was a surprise to many to see a spawner card performing so well in 2023 since it had been a good 2 or 3 years since any spawner had a real impact on the meta this surprise was certainly not a pleasant one for many players there were several posts in the community going viral of people not just expressing that Goblin hut needed a Nerf but needed to be killed or removed completely so finally in June 202 three the Goblin hut would get the last balance change it's ever received to this day its death goblins would be reduced from 3 to 1 meaning once again the Goblin hut would only spawn 10 goblins if left alone so how is the Goblin hut doing today with the June 2023 Nerf and the introduction of Evolutions the Goblin hut has some of the weakest rates it's ever had it's the least popular card in the game right now besides its Hut brother but it's not even that far ahead of that it's safe to say that the June 2023 changed took the card from being very strong to being borderline useless but there haven't been too many complaints the card is close to being in the worst position it's ever been in and supercell has not given any attention to it in about 4 months it seems unlikely supercell is going to be balancing the Goblin hut anytime soon this card has been reworked so many times and yet it somehow seems to end up in the same place every time it's a very tricky card to balance given the circumstances of how spawners are if supercell wants to make this card viable stat-wise I think a small hit point buff or a second spear Goblin on death makes the most sense but given the community's reaction to them I don't think supercell wants to give the card even a small buff no matter how much it may deserve it the main issue is that players don't like a card that constantly chips away at them the only idea I think potentially could make the Goblin hut into a healthy card is to rework it to spawn normal goblins instead of spear goblins in waves of two to make it function more like a tombstone the main problem seems to be the constant chipping so this change fixes that I'm not sure how you would balance the other stats out but I think this is the direction a potential healthy Goblin hut could be obviously the entire function of the card would be changed but it's better than being completely useless I'm definitely very interested to see if anything happens with this card or any other spawner I want every card to be at least somewhat viable in competitive play but there really does seem to be no hope here I'm interested to hear some opinions on this so let me know if you have any good ideas for potential Goblin hut reworks whether you think it should get above or you think it should be left alone to rod for good thank you all for listening and have a good [Music] one [Music]

Channel: Gratz

Views: 248,903

Keywords: Clash Royale, Clash, Royale, Goblin Hut, Goblin, History, Clash Royale History, History of, Goblin Hut History, History of Goblin Hut

Id: t-sPZqhpjH4

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023