Why Elixir Golem Can't Work in Clash Royale

The Elixir Golem is one of the most interesting cards ever added to clash Royale this is because if played incorrectly it can very easily benefit the opponent more than the person who placed it and yet historically it's been claimed to be the lowest skilled card in the game ever it looks quite similar to the size and shape of the normal Golem and splits into Golem mites when destroyed like a normal Golem the E Golem has similar Health to a balloon deals less damage per hit than a Golem but has a much faster hit speed meaning it actually has a higher DPS than the the normal Golem but while the Golem sits at a whopping eight Elixir The Elixir Golem is only three this is compensated by the fact that the Elixir Golem gives Elixir to the opponent when destroyed a total of four to be exact so why is this card considered to be Soo skill why is it so annoying to so many people we're going to be covering those questions in the entire history of the card in this video it may not have been in Clash Royale as long as most cards but there is a lot to talk about the Elixir Golem was sof released into Clash Royale in October 2019 but we're not even going to start there because this card actually has years yes years of History before its actual release so we're going to be starting all the way back in 2017 we saw a lot of cards being released around this time so obviously there were a lot of card ideas floating around on February 21st 2017 the official Clash Royale Channel uploaded a radio Royale episode talking about scrapped card ideas and this is where the first first public mention of the Elixir Golem happened what would you consider the craziest Troop that we tried craziest it might have to be the Elixir monster The Elixir monster was this idea that you you The Elixir has somehow mutated into this monster if you attack it it splits into two much like the Golem Works those little Elixir mites I don't know what you would actually call them they would regrow back into full size Elixir monsters if you left them alone as you can hear from from that it was originally called The Elixir monster the basic design idea was similar to The Elixir Golem today a mutated monster made of Elixir that would split into Elixir mites but rather than giving your opponent Elixir it was planned so that the Elixir Golem mites would eventually grow into full-sized Golems according to the podcast though it sounds like it was scrapped due to balancing issues is that do you think there's any kind of way that we could balance that to make it make it work I'm not sure however this wouldn't be the last we heard about the Elixir monster until 2019 a little over a month after this podcast dropped on April 1st 2017 supercell tweeted an image with the caption sneak peek the future of Clan battles where you can see part of an Elixir Golem on the very edge of the image yes this image was really tweeted by Supercell themselves over 2 years before the official introduction now obviously this 8v8 concept was a complete joke for April fools but some speculated that the Elixir monster being included was a teaser for its inclusion it seemed unlikely since they had confirmed it was scrapped only about a month prior and they had recently put Troop that multiplies over time on their ruled out ideas list likely directly referencing The Elixir monster but the fact that there was an official fully made render of the troop gave some players hope shout out to this guy though for accurately predicting the real name early on after this image was posted the community never really forgot about the Elixir Golem you saw fan art card Concepts and sometimes people with just repost the image from that April Fool's Day which would respark discussion about the Elixir monster all these things I just showed you were found over the course of years through 2017 2018 and 2019 people were constantly bringing up the Elixir monster wanting to see it be implemented in some form it was an interesting concept that clearly many did not want to see go to waste although the community was not letting the spirit of the Elixir monster die supercell hadn't acknowledged it since that April Fool's image was posted did most people didn't expect the Elixir monster to ever be added at this point supercell themselves said it was scrapped and they were probably just trying to have a little fun on April Fools and not let a render they had worked so hard on go completely to waste but suddenly out of nowhere on September 28th 2019 supercell posted a video talking about a generic update but it had a thumbnail with an ominous creature in it and for a brief moment during this video they talked about a new card that would be coming out very soon shortly after this update drops there's a new card coming to clash Royale it's going to be called I did not cut the audio there that's how it was posted but given the theme of this video and knowing what card was actually added to the game a few weeks later you can probably guess what he was saying all that was said about it at the time though was lowc cost powerful there's a catch as you heard the video confirmed The Elixir Golem would be three Elixir and it was said that it would be powerful with a catch no nobody was quite sure what that meant but they would soon see the card actually ended up being leaked on September 30th where the players found out that each of the Golem mites would spawn into two Elixir blobs and each of those four blobs would give the opponent one Elixir players were really confused and thought the Elixir Golem was some sort of joke why would anyone ever spend Elixir to give their opponent Elixir supercell had been purposely releasing cards in an underpowered State throughout 2019 but this just seemed ridiculous Seth who was the head of balancing did an interview after the Elixir Golem was revealed but before it was released where he shared an interesting history about how the Elixir Golem was originally balanced before release the very first version was insanely strong when we set it off to play dusting it came back with like a really really high win rate and that was actually a four cost Elixir Golem that had significantly higher stats it was more like like an eight or nine cost card for four that was really really strong we both reduced the stats uh dramatically but also cut it down to three cost because we felt we wanted to separate him from Battle RAM and hog rider like how could we really make him unique and something you'd really want to play and three cost felt like the right discounted amount he also stated that it was intended to be a little stronger on release so it wouldn't have an underwhelming launch like some of the cards released earlier that year I think it's going to be very strong I think we learned our lesson from wall breakers like I said earlier we want to make sure these cards uh are coming out a little bit more on the aggressive side because even if he's a little on the strong side he doesn't defend himself even though this card was looking to be underwhelming players were excited to see this long teased card finally enter the arena at last but it wouldn't be long until the Elixir Golem broke everybody's expectations The Elixir Golem was first available to play on October 11th 2019 it wasn't going to be fully released until November 2019 but if you got eight wins in the special Elixir Golem draft challenge you could unlock it early since pass Royale was in the game and because you only needed eight wins instead of 12 more players than usual were able to get the card early than some of the previous cards released this way if you didn't get the card early you were going to have a tough time this season because the Elixir Golem was meta defining I'm not exaggerating this card was arguably one of the strongest cards in Clash Royale history and by far the strongest win condition in the game and thus it was the most popular in Grand challenges this card's use rate was hovering around 35% with a very high win rate it's especially impressive when you understand that a huge chunk of the player base didn't even have access to the card overall the best way I would describe this card is being an alternative to the standard Golem which is crazy to say considering their Elixir costs are a difference of five when in any other situation A card's alternative is almost always at most a one Elixir difference but remember since the Elixir Golem gave four Elixir to the opponent it was more comparable to a seven Elixir troop considering the El Elixir Golem similar purpose and greater strength the regular Golem's rates tanked for this season comparing the stats of the two Golems they were still very similar cards they had practically the same DPS and if you add up the health of the Elixir Golem in all its forms it was almost exactly the same as the Golem the stats also scaled consistently through the Elixir Golem in all its forms the damage and health was halfed for each descended form so one Elixir Golem had the same stats as two Elixir Golem mites or four Elixir blobs despite having the same Health as the Golem if you sum up all the forms it was still a bit easier to counter than a normal Golem since Splash cards could attack multiple of the mites and blobs with each attack but at the same time that's what made typical high damage Golem counters worse at countering it you'd want to use high damage dealers to take out the Golem in its first form but once you got down to those little blobs Splash cards would be the most efficient so having just a high damage dealer or just a splash card to counter with would still allow The Elixir Golem to get a lot of damage and these little blobs had way more Health than you would think they had 352 Health at level 9 tournament standard which was more than the princess meaning they survived arrows one important thing to note about the Elixir Golem is that even though their health and damage skilled consistently through forms their damage per second did not this is because the hit speed was actually faster for the lower forms this was an insane amount of stats for a three Elixir card which was obviously the whole game but the downside was not detrimental enough to make the card balanced you see with Golem decks they're typically played by building up big pushes to completely take down the opponent's Tower in one go so this is pretty much how The Elixir Golem was played but since the defender didn't get the elixer until the blobs were destroyed the offender had a way higher value push than the defender could reasonably deal with mostly by the time the opponent got that four Elixir one of their towers was already destroyed and for many archetypes that depend on not losing a tower it was devastating especially when they're playing something like a cycle deck where their play style involves fastly cycling and chipping not banking Elixir and building up pushes The Elixir Golem changed the entire Dynamic of the match it completely disrupted the flow of Elixir by adding more in in a standard 3-minute match a player would get 86 Elixir if they didn't leak any but if you cycled three or four Elixir golems in that time it would allow your opponent to get an extra 12 to 16 elixir while you could place more than 86 Elixir worth of troops you could play strong cards without a lot of Elixir and now the opponent had more Elixir to play with no other card disrupted the flow quite like this the only one that even comes close is the Elixir collector because you spend six to generate AIDS but even this didn't come close to the Elixir Golem because when you played the pump you were at the disadvantage since your opponent would have six more Elixir than you but if you played an Elixir Golem the opponent didn't have the initial advantage you did plus the Elixir from The Elixir collector was never guaranteed as you could take out the card with things like big spells and miners all right now let's go over some of the top decks you initially saw the Elixir Golem in the most common partner to The Elixir Golem was the night witch considering the night witch had been a staple of Golem decks for its whole existence it was a no-brainer that you would see this card everywhere with the new strong Golem variant but it was more than that because only a few days prior to the Elixir Golem's release it received a buff where it got two addition death bats meaning she wasn't just strong in Beatdown she was strong period after players noticed the night wit was being played a lot more it was frequently commented on as being a badly timed buff since she would have likely seen a huge rise in play thanks to the overpowered Elixir Golem regardless of the change she received you also saw the eagle impaired with the normal witch quite a bit the Synergy wasn't as great but the witch received a huge buff in the last set of balance changes as well making her appear just about everywhere these these factors led to some popular e Golem double witch decks rising up you also saw the Elixir Golem paired with Sparky since Sparky was a six Elixir support card fitting her into a normal Golem deck wasn't really feasible but with the Elixir Golem's cheap cost it allowed for more flexibility and thus a lot of players saw success with the combo finally I wanted to mention the Elixir Golem Mega Knight combo Mega Knight was extremely popular in this meta since it was one of the best counters to The Elixir Golem witch combo now remember when I was talking about how there wasn't a great single counter to The Elixir Golem well there actually was one and that was the bomb Tower the bomb Tower was easily considered the best counter to The Elixir Golem Not only was it one of the few cards to be able to distract the E Golem since it was a building but it dealt both high and splash damage so it was the near perfect counter the bomb Tower's rise was actually extremely surprising because before the Elixir Golem's release it was considered to be an F tier card we're talking bottom five here's the comparison of the bomb Tower stats from September 2019 to October 2019 keep in mind it had been over 6 months since the card's last balance change so seeing a development like this was truly remarkable and truly showed just how much influence the Elixir Golem had in the meta normally a card this strong would get an emergency Nerf in no more than a few days but this would not happen with the Elixir Golem because only a month earlier supercell had given several emergency last minute changes to the Executioner and that card was a huge mess because of all that so they were just kind of taking a break from emergency changes for a while but one thing remained very clear The Elixir Golem was overpowered and needed a Nerf wait a minute let's rewind some of these events don't appear to make much sense the main question I thought of first was why would supercell buff the night witch just days before they knew a Golem alternative was going to be added to the game sure the night witch had been falling out of the meta for a while up to that point but waiting just up until the point where there can be a major development and deciding then is the best time for a major balance change seems a bit odd to me you'd think you'd wait at least one or two seasons to see how things settle out just to see if the card literally iconic for being a Golem escort could synergize better with the new alternative you could just think it's an unfortunate coincidence since supercell wasn't really thinking that ahead and historically they have made some pretty poor balancing decisions but I don't think that's necessarily what happened in this case because supercell never intended The Elixir Golem to be an alter alternative to the Golem that's right this card was never meant to be a Beatdown card which meant supercell never thought the night which was going to be a great synergizer so if supercell didn't intend for The Elixir Golem to be a Beatdown wind condition what was its intended function well it was actually intended to be an ice Golem competitor a competitor to the two Elixir mini Golem and that's not just speculation Seth said in an interview what decks he believed The Elixir Golem was going to work well in just days before it was playable I think the three archetypes that are going to benefit the most are graveyard because it's so much stronger than ice Golem in terms of an offensive tank balloon as well because giant balloon is obviously hard to stop but giant balloon uses up all your elixir with Elixir Golem and balloon you still have a little bit of Elixir left to cast anything from a zap to a fireball and last but certainly not least is Three Musketeers I think what that deck needs is just more synergis cards ever since the barbarians got reworked to have lower Health all those battle Ram sorts of cards don't fit so well with three musketeers cuz they can't absorb lightning Three Musketeers could maybe play Ice Golem and elixir Golem and have some very cheap tanks to put on either side balloon graveyard Three Musketeers All wind conditions that were commonly paired with the ice Golem ice Golem was a versatile mini tank that didn't have much competition so Elixir Golem was meant to compete but it ended up not being popular in any of those listed archetypes at least nowhere near as popular as it was in Beatdown perhaps if it was played with those other win conditions it would have been relatively balanced but because it was played like a normal Golem and not an ice Golem it strayed from its intended purpose from being a secondary wi condition to the primary one although there were no emergency balance changes balance changes were monthly at the time so thankfully players didn't have to wait too long of a time for super to restore some semblance of balance and order to the game on November 4th 2019 The Elixir Golem was finally available to play to anyone who didn't unlock it early but on that same day the hit points of the Elixir Golem mites and blobs were all reduced by 10% the witch was also softly removed from the game meaning it got nerfed so bad that it was essentially unplayable but funnily enough the night witch completely slipped under the radar despite being used in nearly onethird of all Grand Challenge decks throughout the October 2019 season having very similar rates to The Elixir Golem it would not be receiving a nerve it was firmly believed that she didn't need one either since everyone thought her strength was directly tied to the Elixir Golem and not the buff she received a few days prior but even after these changes the night witch was still appearing in over a quarter of Grand Challenge decks while the Elixir Golem was only appearing in 177% so now it was kind of apparent that the Elixir Golem wasn't carrying the night witch she was doing just fine on her own Merit this means after the Elixir Golem Nerf if anything the night witch was carrying the Elixir Golem 177% usage is still above average and this actually made it the second most used wind condition behind the miner but now you were seeing a lot of execution or tornado paired with the Elixir Golem remember this was still during the era where supercell was balancing the Executioner every 5 minutes so on the same day as this Elixir Golem Nerf executioner received yet another rework which made it more popular and several of the top executioner decks this season in included The Elixir Golem executioner was changed yet again before the season was over and thus it wasn't as popular anymore but Elixir Golem with night witch was really all you needed to have success this purple blob was still vastly overpowered and clearly needed some more adjusting before it would be healthy so the following month in December it would receive a rework Now The Elixir Golem in all its forms would have a hit speed of 1.3 seconds this was a nice buff to The Elixir Golem and Golem mites but a huge Nerf to the blobs at a glance it seems like this rework could make the card better but it actually was a well thought out change the blobs were the main part of the Elixir Golem that people seemed to be the most adamant about the four of them combined did twice as much damage per second as a Golem before this change a lot of the time the Elixir Golem troop didn't even make it to the tower anyway so even though its hit speed was decreased by 710 of a second which is huge mind you that change specifically was less impactful than slightly increased increasing the hit speed of the blobs because the blobs more consistently connected to the tower because you have to take out the other two forms just to get to them this change essentially made it so not just the health and damage scaled properly for the different forms but also the damage per second this change helped the card take more skill to play because it shifted the incentive to reward players who could keep it in its earlier forms for longer disincentivizing getting to the blobbs quick for high DPS I think raising the effort it took for players to achieve maximum damage output was super sell's goal because ever since the Elixir Golem's release lots of players were complaining about how the card took little to no skill to play successfully now naturally when a card is overpowered it's obviously going to be much easier to get value out of since you're getting much better stats for the Elixir cost than you should be getting but the miner had around a 30% use rate around this time about double what the Elixir Golems was and no one was calling that card low scale even though you probably didn't have to practice a lot to have success with it it's an interesting assersion for a card like this because if you played The Elixir Golem wrong you were basically giving your opponent free elixir but a lot of people saw the play style of Elixir Golem to be very easy to pick up and play well even though the skill floor may have been low like some other archetypes the skill ceiling was also low meaning it wasn't as difficult to push the Elixir Golem to its fullest potential I think a big factor that was common in Golem but also very prevalent in Elixir Golem was that a lot of the time you didn't even need to defend if an opponent started pushing on one side you as the Elixir Golem player could just push the opposite lane ignore your opponent's offensive troops and you'd probably win the race to the three Crown Victory especially if you could stack multiple Elixir Golems on the field you would have so much value out there that could deal a lot of damage very quickly before your opponent would see any of that Elixir he was owed this is why the Elixir Golem had the highest crowns per win on average than any other win condition when the Elixir Golem player won they won hard although this was similar to how the Golem was played there are still some major differ differences of why the normal Golem wasn't nearly as complained about as his purple brother arguably Golem took more skill to play because once you played that eight Elixir card you were left vulnerable since you had little Elixir meaning you had to count Elixir and get positive trades and keep track of all those interactions to make sure you had enough of an Elixir advantage to time exactly when it's safe to play the card you had to be very patient when playing Golem and that very often meant waiting until double Elixir to play it if you fail to be patient enough your opponent might be able to throw something at the bridge after you played your Golem to take your whole Tower these factors that gave a skill factor to Golem just weren't as present with Elixir Golem while Elixir Golem kept the benefits if you played the E Golem you could still have seven elixir in your hot bar which was more than enough to defend against anything your opponent could Rush at you so hopefully if you didn't know before you understand a bit better now why the Elixir Golem is widely considered to be the lowest skilled wind condition in Clash Royale with all that said let's now an analyz The Elixir Golem's performance for December 2019 first of all I will note that the night witch slipped under the balancing radar yet again and her use rate was only rising in December she was the second most popular card in the game with her use rate reaching nearly 40% in Grand challenges The Elixir Golem was taking hits for an overpowered night witch supercell just couldn't get over the fact that maybe the buff they gave her back in October was a tad too much if her strength was tied to the elixir go then her rate should have gone down when the E Golems went down but it went the opposite way but aside from the balance changes there was a huge Development coming in December that the player base was not prepared for the battle healer was added to clash Royale this season and instantly started being paired with the Elixir Golem to become an iconic Duo the battle healer was a fairly balanced card nothing gamebreaking but still could work significantly well in the right Deck with each hit the battle healer sent out a healing effect to heal all the troops around her it worked best in beat down decks because those decks were the decks where you would Clump a large amount of troops in big pushes but the Elixir Golem just so happened to benefit a little bit more than the other beat down wind conditions because obviously The Elixir Golem would eventually break down into multiple smaller units each battle healer hit healed each blob allowing them to attack the tower for much longer if unanswered the battle healer and elixir Golem sort of became dependent on each other and it was uncommon from this point on to see one card without the other each of them had about the same use in win rates as a result of this the stats showed that the Elixir Golem was not overpowered but still a bit on the strong side it was still a very hated card but we're just talking pure statistics using the standard supercell gave one major thing keeping the Elixir Golem down at this point also was the bomb Tower we already talked about how it was rising in October to help counter The Elixir Golem meta since it was considered useless before that you would probably expect its use use rates to go down alongside the Elixir Golems but like the night witch it was actually the opposite the car's use rate Rose to being in nearly a quarter of Grand Challenge decks despite the Elixir Golem's popularity dwindling part of this Fallout of The Elixir Golem was also thanks to the arrows at the end of November the previous season their damage was buffed so that it dealt barely enough to take out the Elixir blobs with all its waves things were starting to look pretty bad for the Elixir Golem and it seems like it was only going to get worse with night witch at one of the strongest Heights of its history it was clear that she wouldn't be able to avoid the Nerf Hammer much longer so in January 2020 things were about to take a huge negative turn for the purple blobster the night witch the now second most popular e Golem synergizer was getting a Nerf in the first set of balance changes of the new year but on top of that the Elixir Golem's Health would be toned down by 6% for each form the bomb Tower also wouldn't be getting any sort of Nerf despite its use rate being 10 points higher than the E Golems the previous season but people were just sick and tired of seeing the Elixir Golem in the meta and with the new battle healer synergizing so well with it a small nerve seemed more than Justified with all these changes the purple Golem was beaten down to just a 3% use rate but its loyal battle healer companion followed it down the hole with the night witch not being as prevalent thanks to the Nerf she received the Elixir Golem was in a rough spot but it certainly wasn't out yet the card was still viable and did work if played right considering the hate it's gotten and the chaos it caused for months this seems like the best spot for the card to be so from here supercell would let it settle for a while it would be a long time before its next balance change but there were still some major developments that would occur before then that greatly shifted the E Golem's place in The Meta before the month was even over you started to see this Elixir Golem Deck with the magic Archer trending briefly becoming the top performing deck in Grand challenges and causing the Elixir Golem to temporarily have the highest win rate in the game in February 2020 the Barbarian Hut got a significant rework which made it competitively viable this development to the Hut boosted The Elixir Golem's popularity the rates of the E Golem were almost exactly average now but the developments would only keep coming in April that same year the Goblin hut would also get a rework making it super strong and The Elixir Golem was one of the most popular wind conditions you would see it with on top of that the heal spell would also become the heel Spirit which was quite strong upon its transformation that month thanks to these cards The Elixir Golem's use rate was able to hold at around 10% for the April season but this wasn't going to last long as in May 2020 the battle healer Barbarian Hut and Goblin hut were all nered the heal spirit and Barbarian Hut were still viable cards so if you did see The Elixir Golem it was usually with them you still saw the battle healer in Elixir Golem decks but because of the hit she took it obviously hurt the combo strength another likely contributor to the eem's downfall was thanks to the Royal delivery the reason reason I'm bringing this up is because it was rumored that this card was specifically released to help deal with the Elixir Golem this is because it dealt enough damage to fully take out the Elixir blobs which no other spell under four Elixir could do at the time of the Elixir Golem's release sure the arrows could deal with it by this point but it's good to have multiple options in competition and allow for flexibility if they decided they needed to Nerf the arrows damage later the Royal delivery received a 27% damage buff at the same time as the Hut and healer nerves which made it prevalent in the May 2020 season so although the Elixir Golem received no Nerfs directly a lot of cards related to him in one way or another were changed in ways to make him worse in the meta but the following month Royal delivery and bomb Tower would get nerfed which helped Elixir Golem to be able to sprout again with the rise of Barb Hut and heel Spirit and the addition of skeleton dragons as a new strong support card things would turn around as quickly as they got bad in the first place I don't want to keep going over every single balance change of every single card related to The Elixir gold and pinpointing exactly how much it Rose and fell each season because of it but I wanted to go over some of it just to emphasize how this card's usage was like a roller coaster and showed that it wasn't settling in one place despite getting no balance changes since January to give you an idea for the rest of 2020 the card's use rate was mainly hovering around 4 to 5% in Grand challenges with no new major developments however towards the very end of the year it did begin to dip and dipped as low as only 1% usage in Grand challenges below what was considered to be viable rates this is easily explained if you look at the December 2020 balance changes where both the Barbarian Hut and the heal Spirit were harshly nerfed supercell had been nerfing every major support card The Elixir Golem worked well with and the December balance changes were essentially the nail in the coffin even untouched synergizes like the rage spell and Electro Dragon couldn't save it because they were dependent on the other cards in the deck being good it was official The Elixir Golem was no longer longer competitively viable 2021 was a very bad year for the Elixir Golem it clearly wasn't in a good place but nobody was exactly clamoring for a buff it would not receive any balance changes throughout all of 2021 I checked dozens of stats throughout the entire year and at no point did The Elixir Golem's use rate surpassed 3% in Grand challenges with the exception of a very brief period in early April 2021 where it Rose to 8% this was thanks to a huge buff to the elite barbarians which made them incredibly strong this Elixir Golem deck was trending for about one week before the elite barbarians were emergency nerfed and the raid sunk back down like a rock since that is literally the only notable event related to Elixir Golem in 2021 we're going to jump right to 2022 clearly nothing was changing with the card you weren't seeing it Flex in and out of the meta like in 2020 it was just a continuation of 2021 always hovering around that 1 to 2% usage range from around April to July if you did see The Elixir Golem it was usually played with the newly buffed mirror which could now level cards two levels higher than its own instead of one the mirror worked pretty well with the battle healer because the healers could heal each other which allowed them to heal for much longer but I hesitated to even mention this development because these Elixir Golem mirror decks didn't appear to be that popular The Elixir Golem was commonly agreed upon by the community that it was a weak card but no one was quite sure what the best way a balance this card would be people liked the idea of the mechanic behind it but people hated Elixir Golem metas even if there was a way to get him into a perfectly balanced State he arguably wouldn't have made the game more fun his fundamental mechanic just wasn't working a bunch of stats up front for some Elixir to the opponent once they took out all of the blobs was not something that worked because the Elixir they needed to stop the E goem wouldn't be received until it was too late so on August 2nd 2022 supercell would attempt to rectify this issue by giving the card a rework now instead of getting one Elixir from each blob destroyed each blob would only give half of one Elixir but now the Golem mites would also give half of one Elixir and The Elixir Golem in his first form would give one Elixir when destroyed this change certainly was going in the right direction now instead of needing to get through all three forms for just one Elixir you got two of the four total Elixir you were owed just for getting through the first two forms so now you could get your defensive troops down quicker which ultimately means less damage taken to compensate for this change which was clearly un Nerf the health of the Elixir Golem and Golem mites was increased by 9% it still wouldn't have quite as much health as it had originally though if you've been paying attention to these changes you'll immediately notice the odd decision made by The Balancing team of not including the Elixir blobs anytime the health or damage was changed to The Elixir Golem in the past it was consistently adjusted between all forms so that an Elixir golemite would have half the stats of the Elixir Golem and a blob would have half the stats of a golemite this change broke that consistency the Royal delivery still would have fully taken out the blobs if they had received a 9% Health buff so why break the consistency well the one major interaction that would have been affected by a 9% Health buff to the blobs is that the arrows would not have been able to fully take out the blobs anymore so they likely wanted to keep that interaction the same but supercell seemed to greatly underestimate how much of a Nerf attaching The Elixir to the earlier form seemed to make or they were just being extremely cautious because the Elixir Golem was in an even worse position after the changes went live a small Health buff did not compensate for how much earlier the opponent was getting Elixir it made a huge difference so only 2 months later in October 2022 The Elixir Golem in all its forms would be getting hit speed Buffs their hit speeds would all go from 1 .3 seconds to 1.1 seconds and as a bonus their first hit attack speed was decreased from 1 second to8 seconds and this would be the last balance change the card would ever receive just to be clear this was a very generous buff buffing both the hit speed and first hit attack Time by 2/10 of a second for all forms made a huge difference its DPS was increased by about 15% thanks to the hit speed bu and obviously the first hit attack means in scenarios they would get an extra hit given how bad the previous rework cost it to be though it definitely needed some good help it's good they didn't go the route of increasing the health further because if they had increased it too much it would counteract to the whole point of the original rework now given that it's the last balance change it's ever received you might expect us to be towards the end of The Elixir Golem story but in fact it has had a few significant developments since this October 2022 buff initially the rates were still below low average but doing better than it previously had been but by the end of the month The Elixir Golem's use rate in Grand challenges exploded to 24% usage the highest it's been since its release almost exactly 3 years prior to this point it was officially once again the most popular wind condition in Clash Royale after years of being dormant it was back in its full Glory one of the interesting things you see when you study history in depth is that you see that it tends to repeat itself The Elixir Golem wasn't overpowered because of the hit speed buff it was overpowered because a few weeks after the balance changes supercell released the Phoenix which just so happens to be one of the if not the most overpowered card in Clash Royale history and also just so happens to synergize very well with Elixir Golem decks just like how the night witch was buffed at a bad time because it happened right before the Elixir Golem a great synergizer was released the elixir Golem was buffed at a bad time because it happened right before the Phoenix a great synergizer was released but the difference here was is that its rise wasn't mostly because of the Buffs it was really all because of the Phoenix so this returned to the spotlight like with the elite barbarians Peak did not last long because only days after the Phoenix was released it would receive an emergency Nerf Sinking The Elixir Golem's use Rate Phoenix was still pretty good after that though so the Elixir Golems rates would hover around 6 to 8% up until mid December where they would fall back to the range they were at before the Elixir Golem's August 2022 rework this correlates perfectly with the December 2022 Nerf to the Phoenix where it would now die to lightning this purple blob would fall back into being borderline useless because a bird died to electricity 2023 was another relatively uneventful year for the Elixir Golem but around August through October you did see a popular Elixir Golem deck rise with the Skeleton King and evolved barbarians I think this deck is notable because it was the first real Elixir golden meta deck in years to not contain the battle healer or Electro Dragon but of course there were still other variants of which did include some of the more traditional Elixir Golem support cards and around this time you even saw some top players having success using the evolved night with Elixir Golem but like many of the previous Elixir Golem uprises this didn't last the use rates would tumble around November thanks to the Nerfs the cards supporting the E goem would receive and since that time The Elixir Golem has only recently in February 2024 seemed to make any impact in The Meta this deck with evolved bats and skeletons specifically began to Trend this season having great success in competitive play but I'm sure like many of the recent upticks this won't last forever The Elixir Golem spot in the game has fluctuated pretty randomly in the last 2 years it hasn't really been able to stand on its own but is clearly a very flexible card like when the Elixir Golem Phoenix meta was going on in October 2022 the Phoenix was working best with Elixir Golem despite the E goem being one of the worst wind conditions statistically before that Phoenix did benefit plenty of other archetypes in wi conditions but they just didn't compare to the difference the Phoenix made to the Elixir Golem based on what I've observed about this card it's clear to me that it cannot thrive in a balanced meta it seems to only be viable with cards that are well above average in terms of strength and that can never last because those cards will always inevitably get nerfed I think that's a terrible spot for a card to be in so I really think the Elixir Golem needs a rework but given its mechanic It's tricky to assert what the best route to go would be I thought about the idea of increasing the Elixir cost of The Elixir Golem but instead of The Elixir going to your opponent it would go to you instead so that it would be harder to build up pushes since you would only start getting some of that Elixir back once the Elixir Golem began to die and this would help a avoid the situations where the Elixir Golem player builds up a push so big that the defender couldn't reasonably defend it this design idea is to make the Elixir Golem be more like an Elixir collector in the sense that when it's placed the opponent has the advantage at first but if played right The Elixir Golem player will benefit more in the end if the opponent can't utilize the brief period where they have the Elixir Advantage you could even try something wacky where the Elixir Golem mites would give your opponent Elixir but the Elixir blobs would give the user Elixir so the opponent had this incentive to take out the Golem and Golem mites but leave the blobs alive a bit longer so that they wouldn't give Elixir to their opponent as fast but of course they would have to take them out eventually or else they would deal too much damage if the Elixir Golem mites gave the opponent one Elixir each and the blobs gave the user half an Elixir each then each player would get two Elixir but since the opponent would get that Elixir first you could still give the Elixir Golem extra stats for whatever it would cost knowing the opponent would have have an Elixir Advantage for a little bit once they took down the Golem mites and it would be much more balanced for each player to get to Elixir than for one player to get four Elixir and the other to get a tower there's so many potential routes to go with this card it's sad that there hasn't been much of an attempt to fix it just because of the hate the cards received I understand that increasing its Elixir cost would drastically diminish its versatility but I think supercell needs to stop pretending this card is meant to be a balloon assist and accept it as the Golem's competitor and start balancing it with that new idea in mind if they don't have any other plans for this card right now it's probably worth a try because in most metas it's never even thought about if anything it's just going to be really annoying again once they release the next overpowered card I just think the mechanic of giving Elixir by destroying a troop is so cool that I hate to see it go to waste and if you don't want to rework it supercell please just buff the blob's health by 9% so it consistently correlates with the other forms again I don't think that change would break the card so throw it a the bone if nothing else The Elixir Golem may have had a toxic past but if the Royal giant can become a healthy wind condition I think it can have a bright future too thank you all so much for listening and I'll catch you all next [Music] time [Music] [Music] a [Music]

Channel: Gratz

Views: 446,791

Keywords: Clash, Royale, Clash Royale, Elixir Golem, Elixir, Golem, Elixir Golem Clash Royale, Elixir Golem Toxic, History, Elixir Golem History, Clash Royale History, History of, History of Elixir Golem

Id: McqN1xkalZk

Length: 41min 1sec (2461 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024