How I improved my war score

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1

Well, 250ish. I think it averages out to 249.7 over the last 30 wars. But close enough! It may not everyone’s idea of a great score but to me it has been a target to aim for for a while now.

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323 days ago I joined my current alliance and at that point facing top defenses I considered it a good day when I hit a score of 200. In a few weeks I should hopefully be at the point where I have dipped below 200 only once in 30 wars. None of this was by accident, and I wanted to share the specific things I did that let to consistently higher war scores:

  • Roster. This one is obvious. However, I started off with a less-than-average (at the alliance level) roster and have advanced to an average (at the alliance level) roster - with defenses also advancing in the meantime. So I would say that I have advanced my net roster position slightly, and whilst I doubt I could have gotten the consistent scores without this, I would not consider this the main factor.

  • Troops. Not the kind of crazy advancement that a lot of people promote, but I have gone from having troops in the 13s to my top troop being a 23, and the other colors in the 17 to 19 mark. Each color also now has 2 other mana troops at level 11 (a recent advancement, but will really help with VF wars) and a ninja troop for fast/hard hitters. Getting your key average heroes from 10 tiles to 9 tiles is a huge contributing factor (and VF from 7 to 6 of course) in getting the consistent scores - but outside of that, I still stand by my beliefs that troops have minimum benefit

  • Moving from mono to 2/3/4 color teams. This has been HUGE for me. I initially went through a period where my wars sucked as I tried to re-adjust and re-configure my teams, but since then I haven’t looked back. The team that performs the worst for me now is my single remaining mono team, which wins something like 2/3. There is still too much of a dependency on the board for me. Having options, particularly healing options, in multiple colors goes a long, long way towards helping teams survive until the board turns. This may perhaps not be for eveyrone/everyone’s roster, but I am so happy that I decided to bail on mono and go down this path.

  • Part and parcel of the point above was really focusing on building teams with great synergy, rather than teams composed of the “best” heroes. This involved a lot of experimentation and trialing out in regular raids. And I found that once I found teams that worked I had the best results when I didn’t play around with them during was and stuck with those that I knew worked well together.

  • Also going hand-in-hand with the point above was a focus on picking opponent teams that really fit my war teams. It wasn’t always possible to get a great fit but whenever possible I would take advantage of strengths and weaknesses in heroes. Note this did not mean looking at troops or TP (which I find highly misleading) but rather individual and team hero composition. Whenever possible I would wait for a team to respawn if that team was a much better fit for a remaining team than any that were stlil on the board.

  • Slowing down my play. Taking time to think through moves. Record videos and analyse what I did right and what I did wrong (and even where I did 6 O/S I still see errors, which shows me that there is stlil so much more to learn. I did find that I made the silliest mistakes that turned wins into losses when I rushed a move.

  • Focusing on the 4* healers in my roster. This has been absolutely crtitical. I did get some game changing heroes in Lord Loki and Alfrike and a handful of others, and I have always been lucky with my minion counters of 2x Grimble and 1x Skadi, but focusing on building up my 4* healers and emnbleming them and now also LB them has seen a huge improvement my consistency. These guys perform poorly wihout emblems. But take the hit and invest in embleming them up and they repay you a hundred-fold. I now have the following roster that gives me great flexibility in each war, and I tend to use them all as I have 2-3 healers in each time typically:

  • 2 C Rig

  • 2 C Kiril

  • D’Andre

  • Delilah (my only 5* healer)

  • 2 C BT

  • Lady Woold

  • C Mel (one is maxed/unemblemed, so doesn’t get use yet)

  • C Sabina

  • Guillimbursiti

  • C Gormek (proxy healer)

So that has been my experience. I am proud of getting to this point but this is not a post for me bragging but rather trying to breakdown and share the contributing factors to the improvements - many which I think can be done without a reliance on 5* roster improvement. Hope it helps some people out there.

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Great stuff- but you don’t have any other 5* healers? Not even Viv? Or they just aren’t leveled yet.

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2.5 years in I still don’t have viv… no ariel… no Garnet… no prof l no director z no toxicandra no kunchen no heim no alby no mn… just Delilah. I guess that’s why I love my 4* guys so much

6 Likes
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Yeah you’d kinda have to. I have Delilah as well but she’s not much used as I’ve been very fortunate with 5* healers.

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Are not those two statements mutually exclusive? Paraphrased: “they are useful in gaining advantage but outside of that that, they aren’t beneficial.”??

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It is very useful to get your troops up to a level where they give you those mana breaks. Other than that, levelling troops is (close to) useless. That is what I am intending to say.

So for example I get great benefit from getting my troops to level 17 or 23 (depending on emblem nodes) but then I see almost zero benefit in further levelling them

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Absolutely yes. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Agreed on this. I stopped at 23 on my main set and then I’m just doing multiple sets of troops to 11 for V.Fast wars.

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Question, which will frame the rest of your post.

When you say “top level defences” what sort of tier are you warring in? Is it like top 100 alliances? Top 50? Top 1000?

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We range from top 8 to top 100, but usually sit around 60th or so

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I’ve been unlucky with 5* healers aswell, just got my first one from S4 (Prof) and I always hear that “4* healers are too squishy” and it drives me crazy. No matter how I’ve tried telling them with emblems and costume bonuses they have better stats than older 5* heroes, and newer 4* healers just like D’Andre are the same. I wouldnt even ascend a Vivica anymore if i got one. She’s slow, 5* heroes take lots of emblems and has almost identical stats compared to D’Andre.

Also one tip to make your roster stronger; dont emblem 5* heroes above 18-19. Only if it really benefits the hero, like for example paladin class. But critical chance, more healing or attack for healers is not worth the 250 emblems in my opinion. With that amount of emblems you can get a 4* hero to 10+ and also a couple of emblems for another 5* hero.

Oh and I lied there, i do have 2 Zulags but they arent getting my tabards. They wouldnt help me perform better at all even if I have 23 troop.

My 4* healers are currently:
2x cRigard 15/19
cKiril 20 +lb
cBold 19
cMelendor 17
D’Andre 20
cSabina 19
Gullin 20
Lady Woolerton 18
cKasshrek 20
cGormek 20 +lb

And unemblemed second cMelendor and Gullin. I use always 2 healers for my war teams and raiding. Well I do have Freya and Frosth which I count as healers aswell, but with minion makers I use only one healer. I never pair Frosth and Freya together, I’ve just noticed they overwrite each others minions too fast, so I prefer using Frosth as a mana bringer and a minion maker for my blue heavy team (I use 3-2 or 3-1-1)

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They really need the emblems, but once they get the emblems they are generally OK - they will do the job which is to survive long enough to heal. There are some that I would like to LB for the added survivability, namely C Mel (my favourite healer) and C Sabina. Possibly Lady Wool too. Will likely do D’Andre too - he doesn’t have survivability issues but I use him all the time so there would be a benefit there.

Agreed. Where it has made sense for me is for the last mana node, which means I only need a level 17 mana vs level 23 mana troop (for Grimble, for example).

I try to see the best in all heroes. I really can’t for Zulag. Somehow she has turned up as tank in some of the alliances we have faced, and i am always grateful for that.

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Thanks for the thread! It’s great for me to see that others are employing successfully similar stategies. I also try to bring two healers in every battle and I even use Frosty (+19, limit broken has almost 700 defense) and play 2-2-1 or 3-1-1 usually.

This is also because of my very limited roster - I play for 8 months and I only have 22 maxed 4*, 5 maxed 5* and several 5* at 3.70 which I throw in the mix successfully. My teams are usually 3800-4000 TP and I take on teams 4200-4500 TP. Of course, since I am in well-developed alliance, often there are few opponents under 4500 and I need to focus on clean-ups, but those must be done as well.

And as my roster will develop, the more I will be able to attempt one-shots.

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Yeah, Heal three heros may as well not exist in my book. The only way they really shine is in a double or reverse double where you’re building a team around them, then they’re great but I’m quite happy with what I run currently so Zulag and Aeron will sit and every friar tuck gets fed.

Only exception is costume kashhrek since overheal is very valuable but even then I only use him on alts and because I don’t have more green 4* yet.

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This seems to be a very similar experience to mine. I prefer a 3/2 strategy, followed by 3/1/1, and use mono only when out of options or when it is the better choice.

With that in mind, long ago, I decided to create and focus on the best 3-stack for each element, preferably 1 healer + 2 hitters. After maxing them, I threw all my emblems there too.

For my next step, I added 2 hitters to that group, making it into a mono team (1 healer + 4 hitters).

After this, I added a second healer, making it now possible to create 2 stacks of 3 from each element with 1 healer and 2 hitters in each stack.

Finally, I added three more hitters. Slowly of course, but eventually, I got there.

At this point, I was done adding heroes and I started improving the roster by replacing my existing heroes with better ones, as they came along. And of course, I kept embleming them.

So now, my first three attacks in war are based on a 3-stack from the strong color against the tank, + 2 off-color heroes. The other 3 attacks are either mono with neutral elements against the tank, or a 3/2, 3/1/1, or even 4/1 stack of the neutral elements, depending on the type of war.

I like it, not simply because it makes it easier to determine which teams to use in war, but also because it helps me manage my roster better and keep my spending in check, by trying summoning only for heroes that are a clear improvement on my current top 9.

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I agree with those. cSabina sadly has too much attack compared to cRigard, for example, so her defensive stats suffer from that. Thats why I was planning to limit break her too, because her special is super useful, she just cant take much damage even with 19 emblems. I love cMelendor too, but for me he has sturdy enough defensive stats so I will propably limit break Buddy instead.

Agree with that aswell, but for a fast hero I dont see the benefit that much, slow/average heroes for sure it helps a lot. Well maybe it changes when I have better secondary mana troops, currently I have level 23 in every colour, but my secondary mana troops are only at level 5 (so my costume average heroes charge in 9 tiles). And for most of them I’ve taken the emblem route aswell, because some will charge with 6 tiles without mana troop in very fast wars, and just need level 1 mana troop in regular PVP. Also would help with the tile damage having better troops, because what I’ve understood the game randomly chooses one of the troops to give the damage % for the tiles. So for example if I raided with level 23/5/1 mana troops, the tiles could use the level 1 troops 17% attack boost instead of the 24% from the level 23.

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Just shouting out to an old alliance mate in the slim chance they are still around in the forum
@Noodle_Boy hello?

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. Imo the most important point. I am a huge fan of countering specials with a 3-2 stack. If I can’t, I won’t pick the target.
Many focus on improving tileplay. At a certain lvl tileplay is a given and we won’t find systematical mistakes. Special skill usage and target choice are the critical points for me in war.

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I agree, and I am quite systematic in making the highest probability choices in war based on how my team counters/takes advantage of the opponent - I have a number of team configs so I choose the 6 that fit best based ont he teams we face:

  • Yellow mono: Ideally a tank that won’t cripple me if it goes off once. Perfect if is passive like Zulag but typically more like a Seshat/Clarissa/Killhare. In VF the mono also takes on an Aflrike

  • Grimble 1: Run this one with a Chakky at 3/70 and a C Mel and so look for a more passive Bera/Freya defense with multi buffers like Krampus/C Kad/Sif

  • Grimble 2: Takes on Freya/Bera tanks where both wings are non-passive as I have both Onatel and Proteus to mana control

  • Skadi: A strong Freya/Bera defense that is unlikely to take out my Skadi with snipes (Skadi is supported by 3 healers in different colors). This one is super tricky to use in cleanse wars so sometimes sits out

  • Baldur/Noor/Wilbur: A Freya defense with some passives (C Kad, Sif, Krampus) and some snipers and no healers

  • Myztero/Lord Loki/Emilio: An Alfrike defense

  • 2 or 3 Elradirs, possibly Myztero: A defense with multiple DOT dealers such as JF, or Bera & Vela, or Bera & GM, or GM & Clarissa, etc

  • Blue heavy stack: Where I can’t utilise some of the specialist teams I use this heavy hitting typically against a non minion tank, but it is kind of defense team agnostic.

Alexandrine joins one of the above teams where Bera is the tank.

I do mix and match to some small extent but I realised a while back that the more I try to play with ad-hoc teams the more likely something will fall apart, so I try to use the pre-configured teams as much as possible. These teams have had extensive experience in other wars and in daily raids

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I wholeheartedly agree. For me it is the fact that I need to know what my team can take - damagewise, hence also related with the point of special skill usage. If I’d switch my teams often, I’d miss out on this and it leads to underestimating the opponent. Plus - it also leads to stretched teams via splitting emblems. Puts me in a weak position before the match starts.

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