Great topic, love it! I have a specific case. I have a 4* purple mana type troop to lvl 10 and just drew the crit type same color. I doubt i have enough feeders to get it to lvl 2. Im still using the mana type everywhere for its att bonus. Anyone disagree?
Given the huge investment youāve already made, Iād stick with the mana troops. The hard question is whether you keep leveling that one up or shift your efforts to the crit one? No best answer.
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Resurrecting this thread for a new interesting find courtesy of Aibrettyās having a wtf moment.
Mana troops vs. Guin (or Li incidentally and maybe other mana burn / control heroes)
Two fast heroes, Nat and Marj, with a 9% mana troop on Marj and two sets of tile combinations against Guin to demonstrate:
Note Marj is one tile faster on both scenarios, the first is very plausible in my fights against Guin fwiw, second is more of an illustration since diamond matches arenāt that common and ghosting is a non-event if Guin (tanking ofc) aināt dead.
And that first use case? With a level 1 4* mana troop (5%) Marj stil gets charged (8.19 instead of 8.502) and I am profoundly glad I kept a spare 4* mana troop in purple 
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First
Thank you for the math
Second
Glad you kept that purple troop.
As Rook has said many times, keep all your high rarity heroes and troops, the Devs are always tweaking under and over used heroes and troops.
In this case the new reflect blue event hero changed the game, and reflect red and reflect green still havenāt come out yet
MY PERSONAL OPINION
In general, a 3* lvl 3 troop is better than a maxed 2* lvl 15 troop and a 4* lvl 1 troops is better than a 3* lvl 9 troop, so I keep three of every 3* and 4* troop for use with my 3 color teams since you donāt even have to level a 3* or 4* troop to have them become immediately useful, see above, but if you donāt have them, you can spend hundreds of summons trying to get them back, this is a lesson I learned with my duplicate Banes.
It will become a lot easier when next non-bug update rolls out ( Devs have promised the ability to favorite troops ).
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What exactly is this chart saying? Ive been staring at it for 10 minutes trying to figure it out. What is the difference between case 1 and 2? What do the numbers in each column mean as well as the columns themselves? Help 
The column title is the action, the numbers below is the resulting mana after each action.
So 6 tiles = match 6 on color tiles (hits no ghosting in this example) and the number beneath is the resulting mana.
Guin is a 20% reduction, again numbers are resulting mana, 3 tiles as explained.
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It can be a little hard to understand if youāre not well versed in the mana mechanics.
Basically Fast hero needs 8 tiles to charge up. What revās chart shows is that even if guin fires once, with a mana troop at 9%, that offsets Guinās mana reduction so that your fast hero charges after 8 tiles.
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Thank you bud, still too early for me clearly haha.
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Appreciate the explanation. Itās perfectly clear now. So, are mana troops now overtaking crit troops in the meta? Looking at the top teams, that seems to be the case.
Depends on how much youāre willing to invest. If you push the mana troops to very high levels, theyāre better. At lower levels, crit troops are better.
It costs over $2000 to get a fully leveled 4* troop, or an amazing amount of grinding. So Iām with crit troops except for Jackalās troop (only need that at 11).
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Ok, Now Iām confused or have things changed? The math was done on the Mana troops months ago and it showed no benefit until Level 17 and that was only for slow mana Heroes. I think it was stated that Medium speed mana heroes gained benefit at Level 23 Four Star Mana troops. So, Have things changed then? If so, at what point does a Fast mana hero, Medium mana hero and Slow mana regen hero gain benefit from the troops and how much?
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Either flavor of 4* has a big att and def buff, @Gryphonknight is correct that you would always want to use a 4* in preference to a 3* until you have leveled that 3* a lot. Heās also right that throwing away any 4* troop is imprudent, at least until you have five of a flavor in a color.
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War, what is it good for
Raid and war and Guinevere (see above replies for Guinevere)
The math was done for Titans and that still applies. But it is so expensive to level troops and defense/ neutral/ attack troops have such lopsided stats, that saving at least three of each 3* and 4* troop has benefits.
In war, 4* healing/ mana troops with a Rigard/ Vivica in the upper right corner can fend of 12+ attack teams because it looks easy, and in raids itās not too bad, but unlike raids the revenge bar fires more often with a single hero. While it does less damage, a healer with cleanse keeps healing so the revenge bar damage doesnāt decrease as fast.
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very fast (jackal) using a lvl 11 mana troop takes jackal down from 6.5 tiles (so 7 really) to 6 tiles to charge.
the rest was correct - to shave off a tile to charge, slow is 17, average 23, and fast 29.
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All my 4* troops Iāve received have been mana troops. And are all at lv 10
I just got a 4* green and purple HP/crit
Iām using Alberich and Toth amun in those spots so would it be worth for me to try to build those new troops up for the extra tankyness to help keep alby alive, and the extra HP it would give toths minions? Or is the difference negligible due to losing some attack and healing affects?
Iām very curious because i use Toth as Tank at the moment.
Is it still level 17 to shave off a tile with Alberich? Does he make a difference?
Yes, still 17. Hard to say how often that one tile makes a difference. Alberich often is the last hero standing, and one extra tile can save a raid. But is it worth the investment? Excellent Troops are that subtle edge that top-shelf players have. While I have all the base troops, Iām not willing to spend the thousands it would take to get my troops to that level quickly.
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I agree. Im deciding if I should bring up my new green 4* crit troop to replace my 4* lv 10 mana troop. I already did the same for my purple and yellowā¦ So I have a lv 10 of each mana and crit. But I was not sure if i should also start switching over for alberich as well.
Iām looking for That extra edge to push my team to be stronger defensively.
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Do one of each. Level 1->10 is a lot easier than 10 ->17
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I will do that ill get one of each up to 10. Then focus on the crit/hp troops for my defence team to build past that pointā¦