History of Clash Royale's Most Hated Card

meganite is literally ruining the Mega Knight is stupid overpowered and replies [Music] today we're going to be talking about maybe the most controversial and hated card in all of clash royale's history in all my time playing this game I've seen complaints about tons of different cards but nothing could even compare to the level of hate I've seen this one card receive a card with more Health than a lava hound more spawn damage than a royal delivery while dealing Splash damage on every hit combined with a very frustrating jump mechanic has led to years upon years of community outreach So today we're going to be looking at the mega Knights Journey throughout the history of clash Royale its impact on The Clash Royale landscape and why it has remained as the most hated card for so many years Mega Knight was released into the game exclusively to players who could unlock it through the special Challenge on August 25th 2017. one interesting thing that the community was talking about was whether or not the Mega Knight was actually the Builder from Clash of Clans since the Builder had actually left Clash of Clans only weeks prior and was still missing this was an interesting Theory and there are certainly some similarities but it was confirmed just days later that the Mega Knight was in fact not the Builder now in 2017 each challenge for a newly released card worked a little differently the way this challenge worked is that you would need to build a deck around the Mega Knight meaning 100 of players would have the card there were no other gimmicks no draft just build a deck around the Mega Knight now I've played Clash Royale for a long time and I can confidently say that this was probably the most miserable challenge I have ever played in Clash Royale history and it's not just because everyone had Mega Knight challenges were just much harder back in 2017. first of all it was a 12 win challenge unlike most challenges today that are only 8 to 10 wins there is no pass Royale or any way to reset losses if you lost your three times you were out of the challenge and had to start all the way at zero most people were using a Mega Knight Pekka combo which meant in the majority of matches both players had very defensive decks and no real win condition ultimately leading to a lot of stalemates and often matches ended in draws there was no tiebreaker back then so it was fairly common to go multiple matches in a row without gaining a win or a loss this challenge was the only way to play Mega Knight originally and it highlighted one major problem for this type of challenge if you know everyone has a card you're going to build your deck specifically around countering that one card which in turn is going to encourage players to not play the new card as much after this challenge was over only the players skilled or Rich enough to beat the challenge had the card if you didn't win the challenge you could spend 4900 gems for a chest that had a high but not guaranteed chance of getting the card ah didn't get it in that one two weeks after the challenge began everyone could finally unlock it and over the coming months the floodgates would be unlocked there are no Grand Challenge stats from this time but there are top ladder stats and other ways we can see how Mega Knight was impacting the game at the time in the August 2017 season when the Mega Knight was only available in the game for the last nine days of the Season exclusively for players who could beat the challenge it appeared in nearly 12 percent of the top ladder finishing decks it was popular in these two cycle decks as well as a giant Elixir pump deck and the giant deck was actually the most popular Mega Knight deck for That season since Mega Knight wasn't really a win condition the Mega Knight was basically a support card for this giant deck and it was apparent suit into the mega Knight's lifespan that it had an impeccable Synergy with the Bandit part of this reason was simply because of a glitch that occurred when playing these two cards together if the Mega Knight and Bandit jumped and dashed towards the tower at the same time the Bandit would usually make it there first and then the Mega Knight would push the Bandit back off the tower this would lead to an infinite Loop of the Bandit dashing onto the tower until it was distracted or the Mega Knight was dead even though the distance was much less than the minimum Dash initiation range apparently it was also possible for the Mega Knight to be the one to infinitely jumped rather than the Bandit to infinitely Dash but I didn't find a single instance of this actually occurring likely because the mega Knight's Mass was so high that it couldn't really be pushed off the tower now let's look at the meta in the September 2017 season since that's the First full month the Mega Knight was released and it was finally released to everybody in September 2017 Mega Knight was appearing in a whopping 21 of all finishing decks the same three popular decks from the last season were the top finishing decks once again but this time the Mega Knight hog rider deck was the most popular Mega Knight Deck with the giant one being the least popular of the three the most popular Mega Knight deck this season was actually the third most popular deck in the game overall just under Golem Beatdown and log bait this month appeared to be the mega Knights p as by October 2017 it fell back down to about a 14 use rate in top 200 once again and the card would remain to hover around this area this likely was in part due to the Mega Knight Bandit glitch finally being patched this month in December 2017 though a big shift in The Meta would occur this was due to the release of the royal ghost the Royal ghost was one of the strongest cards released I would say in all of clash Royale history the skeleton Barrel also which had been added only a little over a month before the ghost received a huge buff giving it death damage and knockback ultimately making it a very powerful card in the meta the Mega Knight found great Synergy with both of these cards leading to this deck being the most used deck in top ladder in December 2017. despite this really popular deck the mega Knight's overall use rate didn't see a massive increase you might be wondering how the community felt about Mega Knight overall at the time by the end of 2017 the Mega Knight had been out for four or four months with no balance changes besides that bug fix in October this version of the Mega Knight is objectively much more powerful than the one we see today so why wasn't this card getting nerfed yet well from discussion I could find about this card even early on there was already a pretty massive divide on the card's strength it seems like a lot of people believed this card was perfectly balanced when only some believed this card to be too strong there didn't seem to be a lot of outcry against this card at least no more than you'd see against something like hog rider or Royal giant unlocking and leveling up legendaries at the time was super difficult meaning most players couldn't level up their Mega Knight easily like they could with royal giant or hog rider the Mega Knight was actually considered to be a very balanced card after it came out but the further in the future each Mega Knight threat I found was it seemed like the complaints of Mega Knight were slowly growing people were slowly getting their Mega Knight leveled up and its usage rate in mid ladder had been steadily increasing over time by February 2018 the people complaining about meganite had grown so much that it could no longer be ignored the majority of people weren't claiming it was balanced anymore with many people conceding that the car needed at least a small nerve it's funny because sometimes when I think about the mega Knights release I think it may have been meant as a hard counter to the elite barbarians which were another very popular mid ladder car that was one of the most hated cards in the game for a while Elite barbarians were still one of the most hated cards in the game even if by now they weren't great in competitive play so I wonder if the Mega Knight was added specifically as counter play for the elite barbarians but by this point it was clear that the Mega Knight did not clear mid ladder toxicity but rather held it Under New Management on February 12 2018 the Mega Knight would receive its first nerve you might think that it would receive a small nerve considering it had been considered a fairly balanced card for a while but this card ended up getting one of the harshest Nerfs a card has ever received in the history of clash Royale both his jump and spawn damage was reduced by a whopping 25 this caused many interaction changes the bigger ones included no longer being able to fully counter a hog Rider by itself as well as no longer being able to kill Fireball leaves with just its spawn damage and one hit the spawn damage also could no longer kill zappies nerfing his spawn and jump damage so heavily was insanely rough for this card because it was the main thing it had going for it its normal damage wasn't what Mega Knight was used for and if this Nerf wasn't enough his spawn radius would also be decreased from 2.5 tiles to 2.2 tiles now when you take a card that was considered to be balanced by top ladder players and Nerf it this much you can probably guess what the result is in top ladder play the card dropped from a 17 usage rate to a zero percent usage rate the card was basically dead on a competitive level and considered useless to many players but what's interesting is that this car did not phase out of the game entirely everybody says everybody says the the Nerf to Mega Knight was way overboard and it killed the card however the win and use rates would speak otherwise especially on ladders this card's rates on ladder were actually okay it seems like at this point the card was turning into a mid ladder Menace a term used for a card that is purposely kept underpowered because it will thrive in the mid ladder environment regardless and too toxic especially when over leveled however legendaries have always been treated a little differently in Clash Royale history as they have always been kept viable and quickly buff if they fell out of the meadow with very rare exception also there didn't seem to be much complaining about the Mega Knight anymore which is a big reason why supercell does balance cards in the first place never underestimate the community's influence so a few months after this devastating Nerf in June 2018 the Mega Knight would receive two Buffs one on June 4th and the other on June 20th on June 4th his spawn and jump damage was increased by 23 percent not quite a full restoration of his former spawn and jump damage but it was just enough so that his spawn damage could kill zappies once again but this buff would come at the cost of his damage output which would be reduced by 7.5 on June 20th his minimum jump range would go from four tiles to 3.5 tiles which is above because this means he would jump more often rather than walk which is exactly what you want your Mega Knight to do this was an overall consistency change because supercell wanted every car to initiate at 3.5 tiles this buff was not the only thing that would impact the mega Knight's viability in The Meta though because on the same day as this minimum range buff the Royal Hogs would be introduced into Clash Royale this introduced a win condition that Mega Knight was Practically Perfect at countering however even after both of these Buffs the Mega Knight really didn't see any competitive play and Royal Hogs Landing soft into the game didn't help the Mega Knight either but even with royal Hogs eventually getting buffed and becoming a relatively strong card Mega Knight was still considered a dead card to many players it had a couple tiny Peaks thanks to the Royal Hogs but it was was nothing crazy it really goes to show how bad a card is when it's not even used that much even when the win condition in hard counters is Meta Even though its jump damage was almost entirely reverted it was easier to counter now because of the damaged Nerf with cards like Knight Bandit which could fully counter it just by themselves it was pretty easy to get defensive value out of this card but without much offensive value it set as a below average card the Mega Knight just didn't have enough value and expensive card like him needs there were a lot of people by this point actually rather upset that this card just wasn't getting the Buffs it desperately needed so finally on November 5th 2018 the Mega Knight would get an interesting buff making its hit speed go from 1.8 seconds to 1.7 seconds and a first hit attack speed decrease from 0.6 seconds to 0.5 seconds the main interaction this changed was that the Knight could no longer fully counter on Mega Knight by itself this is exactly what this card needed because this rate of how fast this card attacked really didn't matter on defense if you were using that card on defense you were really using it for that enter the arena ability otherwise there were dozens of better options especially if you're willing to spent seven Elixir for it but even after this buff this card still had stats that showed it to be a below average card however this buff sparked something massive for the Mega Knight meganite had certainly had its fair share of complaints in the past but up until now I wouldn't say it was much more complained about than most other cards were complained about in their past so how much of a difference could a 0.1 second hit speed change really make I looked extensively through multiple different websites threads and comment sections from March 2018 all the way up until right before this card's buff and found virtually no complaints about the Mega Knight and if there was one it didn't get any traction and people would just clown on the person making the comment Mega Knight was just never hated as much as other hated cards at the time however when I did the same search but this time starting from November 2018 through the following months the results were overwhelmingly different I started to find tons of people complaining about the Mega Knight some of these posts getting thousands of likes in this period of the game it was clear that the community hated the Mega Knight it was probably the most hated card in the game at this point it's important to know though that this was not a unanimous Community consensus because on any one of these posts you'd see a ton of people on the opposing side saying that meganite wasn't even that good of a card and it was relatively easy to counter at a competitive level this was true a win rate in the low 40s is below average and supercell has stated that the minimum goal a card should have is 45 with the game average being 50 the community was very split over the this card and what the future should have been for it so supercell left it alone for a while but the complaints did not stop eventually in July 2019 supercell actually buffed the Mega Knight once again giving it a range increase from one tile to 1.2 tiles this is because they were simplifying ranges for all melee cards so now every melee card had to have either a 0.8 1.2 or 1.6 tile range with one being right in the middle of 0.8 and 1.2 supercell had to choose whether they wanted to give the Mega Knight a slight buff or a slight nerve giving such a massively hated card even a slight buff seems like it would cause even more outrage but since so many other cards were getting changed as well and since this was being done for Simplicity purposes on top of the Mega Knight already not being that good in competitive play Supercell pushed him in the direction of above and nobody said anything about it good slywork supercell it didn't really make a difference anyway according to the statistics now you might think supercell after a few months would give this card some sort of additional change or rework because of all the complaints it was still getting but after this July 2019 change supercell was done yes Don with the Mega Knight it would receive no more changes nothing for the rest of 2019. in August of 2019 we had a brief period where the Paco was op which obviously hurt the Mega Knight but then later in the year we also had an OP fisherman Opie executioner op wedge op Knight witch op wall breakers and OPI Elixir Golem so I think there was definitely some distraction from the Mega Knight because the second half of 2019 was basically the era of balance changes designed by a Reddit user but there were also no Mega Knight changes in 2020 and nothing in 2021 either other than a few bug fixes however the use and win rate were actually still growing in competitive play by January 22nd 2020 the card had amassed to a 17 use rate and a 52 win rate in Grand challenges which are the stats of a very strong card if not a little too strong The Surge was caused by the rise of wall breakers which had been buffed only months earlier this deck specifically was trending in January being the most popular Mega Knight deck in the game however this card did settle back down to about an 8 to 11 use rate with a win rate of around 43 to 49 percent which is actually about as average as a card can get most people in high ladder or competitive play consider this card to be perfectly balanced it certainly wasn't useless and it had decent counter play but the complaints of this card only grew and grew over the years and this was likely due to the mega Knight's latter use rate being a whopping 20 over the years with trade tokens pass Royale and magic items it just got much easier to level up legendaries making a lot more mid ladder players easily upgrade their Mega Knights but why do players choose to focus their resources on Mega Knight of all cards the reason people choose to upgrade cards like Mega Knight is because the mechanics of a card like Mega Knight just appealed to newer players more it's really that simple these types of cards are easier and more satisfying to play so even though this card was seen a normal amount in competitive play it was seen in one-fifth of all ladder decks much higher than the intended amount of usage for a healthy card Mega Knight also just thrives due to the mid to lower areas of the game being a completely different environment than high ladder and tournament standard play wizard witch and Elite barbarians have much higher use rates on latter than competitive play calling for a higher demand for Mega Knight since it counters all three of these cards so well and one thing that drives people to hate a card in Clash Royale is repetitiveness people don't want to verse the same thing over and over again even if they're winning against it in some of the games Mega Knight players became pretty much a joke to the community because of how over glorified he was more seasoned players just couldn't understand why this card was being complained about so much and mid ladder players just couldn't understand how people could consider this card to be balanced there was a huge disconnect hence the card's history of controversy the card had gone two and a half full years with no changes and a lot of players didn't like this card in the state it was in so now let's head into 2022 to see what action supercell would take against his controversial card in February 2022 supercell said in a q a that they were considering changing the Mega Knight that year and explained their hesitation due to its popularity and controversy only two months later in April 2022 supercell would officially changed the Mega Knight for the first time in years they nerfed the Mega Knight spawn damage once again by a whopping 20 this made it have even less spawn damage than it had when they took away 25 of its original spawn damage back in 2018 making it the lowest ever this is the thing that killed the card in the first place and now they were doing it again interestingly enough though they didn't touch the jump damage ruining the consistency that it had had for its entire lifespan but nerfing the spawn damage back to basically its February 2018 state where the card was perhaps in its worst state ever just seemed like the wrong move to me I know its other stats were different than they were in 2018 but this card is practically built around its spawn damage and yeah superzo opted to Nerf the spawn damage for this reason they didn't want this card to be built around the spawn damage alone because it was the most frustrating aspect of the card but I think they should have buffed its offensive capability if they were going to drastically Nerf its defensive capabilities because this was a huge nerve for a car that was considered competitively balanced according to the statistics this Nerf was a drastic hit to the card in competitive play as you can see the comparison here it didn't even lower the use rate in general ladder since the use rate stayed virtually the same that means what likely happened was that the Mega Knight players continued to play Mega Knight but dropped some trophy since it wasn't as effective anymore which will end up terrorizing a lower section of ladder this makes perfect sense mid ladder players don't have the privilege of Simply switching to a different deck if their deck gets nerfed because they've already invested their resources into one specific deck this Nerf was one of the worst ways to going about solving the problem of Mega Knight to me it just seems sad supercell was willing to kill a balanced card for the sake of mid ladder players I really didn't want this card to suffer the same fate as wizard or witch this card needed a small rework if anything definitely not a Nerf let alone another 20 spawn damage nerve would this really be the mega Knight's Destiny nothing but a mid ladder Menace for all eternity four months after this nerve on August 2nd 2022 the Mega Knight would get the last change it has ever received to this day his charging time went from 1.1 seconds to 0.9 seconds making him able to jump faster I probably would not have gone this route but at least they were trying something part of me thinks supercell knew that Mega Knight was going to be bad after the April nerve and this buff was pre-planned but they wanted a break from the complaints for a while and to give mid ladder players a break from the card if it was the plan it certainly didn't work so what's happened in the last six months since the August change well right after this change the Mega Knight ended up floating back up to his pre-april 2022 raids however when the Phoenix came out in October 2022 the Mega Knight took quite a hit because the Mega Knight didn't work well in a phoenix-dominated meta with each bi-monthly Phoenix Nerf though the mega Knight's use and win rate is easing up back to where it was for the majority of its lifetime and nowadays as of March 2023 it's actually being used in nearly a quarter of all ladder decks Which is higher than any previous ladder stat I could find in its entire history even though it's doing worse statistically in competitive play than it was before April 2022 and I think if there's not a massive meta shift the use rate on ladder will only continue to grow but with the spawn damage being nerfed it should at least be a little less frustrating to go against I'm sure you 5500 trophy Warriors can enter that one for me I don't really know personally I've never really hated the Mega Knight I always thought he was a fair card to go against in any stage he's ever been in although in his OG State he may have only been kept in check due to the surplus of Inferno Tower at the time I definitely would not rank this card as being one of the most overpowered cars in Clash Royale during its peak and if it was up to me I would actually revert him back to his pre-april 2022 State because I feel like most players grow out of their Mega Knight hatred eventually and I do think he was more balanced in that state but for the sake of the overall state of the game for the majority of players it's probably best to not go too overboard with this card Mega Knight players are just in a different mindset than the rest of the Clash Royale player base sometimes maybe supercell can sneak in a rework by distracting everyone with an insane Goblin giant buff or something but getting back to the topic the community is still divided over the Mega Knight to this day and it's likely to stay that way some cards are just like that I hope this video gives everyone a good idea on why the Mega Knight is the way it is regardless of your relationship with the card let me know your thoughts on the Mega Knight in the comments below I'm always interested in hearing more perspectives just please don't comment Mega Knight spirit and just remember if this video could teach you one thing it's that if you complain for long enough super so will give you whatever you want [Music]

Channel: Gratz

Views: 3,224,294

Keywords: Clash Royale, Clash, Royale, Supercell, History, History of, Clash Royale History, Mega, Knight, Mega Knight, MegaKnight, Nerf, Nerf Mega Knight, Mega Night Deck, Mega Knight History, History of Mega Knight, Why Mega Knight Is Hated, Mega Knight Hate

Id: qYO9bOqQcRE

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023