How I Got Here
According to my in-game profile, I’m about to hit 10k Raid Wins shortly, which presumably means I’ve completed some significantly larger number of Raids in my 19 months of playing, when counting losses too.
That’s a lot of times to do basically the same thing over and over again.
And it’s starting to feel like a chore.
When I started playing, I mostly Raided with Rainbow.
Eventually I stacked 2-1-1, as my heroes allowed for it.
That ultimately evolved into 3-2 for quite a while.
For many months, I would change my team each Raid.
But that eventually got tiresome, and the “2” for months became Rigard and Proteus. Effective, fun, and versatile, and less adjusting to do.
But also a little boring.
So several months ago, I stopped running 3-2, and switched to Mono, solely to increase the number of heroes I used in Raids. 5 distinct heroes per team meant a little more variety overall, instead of 2 slots always being the same heroes.
I was burned out from spending time constantly adjusting teams, so I set up 5 Mono preset teams, which meant I could swap without spending time adjusting my team each time — which helped reduce my fatigue with futzing with the team UI 20ish times every day. I picked teams with good synergy and versatility, so I could avoid swapping between them.
I typically select the team for each match based on the tank or flanks, or sometimes based on the synergy of one of my teams being better suited against the opponent, regardless of tank color.
That actually worked well for me for quite a while — I liked the teams I had made, enjoyed swapping between them, and found it fun to use a wider portion of my roster.
But now I’m getting bored again from the repetition, both in my teams, and in seeing a lot of similar Defenses over and over.
What Next?
I’ve been mulling this for a couple of weeks, but this post from @Brobb is what threw me over the edge to make this post and figure out something to do:
I actually don’t fully agree with this, as I’ve learned from months of experimentation with Mono that there’s significant leeway with practice to work a board into a usable state, regardless of the start, and it’s not just a matter of what the boards give you.
But that’s not the point of this thread, and there are plenty of other places to debate the merits of team composition strategies.
The reason it got my attention, is I’m wondering if returning to Rainbow — like when I first started playing — could be the biggest source of variety for me, just because it’s such a shift from what I’ve been doing for a while.
I’m used to leveraging tile damage and Mana Control a lot, and Rainbow would force me to change up my play style, which would inject some variety.
And Now You
I’d love feedback from others about your own experiences keeping Raiding interesting, and from becoming a chest-filling chore.
And if others want to join me in deciding on a radical shift in their own Raiding — not necessarily to whatever I end up doing, just doing something different than you are now — then that might be fun for us to share and keep track of our experience with.