I’m a new player and can’t think of anything more frustrating than the Raids. I’ve lost almost every raid, even rolled a couple times to try and draw a more even opponent, but the battles are so lopsided, I’m losing a hero before the end of the first round in nearly every battle. How can you not take hero strength and levels into account when matching up opponents? It doesn’t make sense. Just infuriating!!!
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I agree that in the beginning raids are extremely brutal. Your heroes aren’t typically very high on star level or even being upgraded. Food is so hard to come by that you waste more looking for a opponent than you can win back. My suggestion is to just be patient and give it some more time. Keep building your team and leveling your buildings to allow you to bring additional items to help in battle. Don’t worry about cups at the beginning. The less you have, the easier the opponents should be anyways. Also, don’t level your watchtower too high or you will have people raiding you for the resources as well. Good luck.
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I’m level 24, my hero strength is like 2580. Scarlett, Li Xiu, Rigard, etc. All 4*'s.
Raids are a waste of my time.
I’ve seen a 3* Gormeck hit Scarlett SEVEN times in one volley, she went from full health to dead in one round. It feels as if EVERY attack by the opposing team is a Special Skill Strike, even though I have to wait for my Mana to refill.
And my heroes are usually dead before I get the chance.
Raiding is an exercise in futility and frustration, and has become detrimental to the enjoyment of the game.
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I can’t really say I fully understand your message.
3* gormek? He is always a 4* hero, do you mean in 3rd tier of ascension? (edit: and which ascension tiers are your heroes then?)
How did he hit Scarlett seven times when she died in 1 round (assuming you mean 1 hit, if you mean the entire raid is 1 round then that wouldn’t be that weird - she has low health).
Raids are difficult, require a different strategy and sometimes a lot of luck from the boards. There are a lot of tips on how to raid better on the forum, but if it makes you enjoy the game less then I can only advise you to not raid - it is not necessary to do 
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I may have gotten the name wrong. It was an Orc, and he had 3 stars, and I can assume he was maxxed.
I was waiting for my chance to go; the Orc image flashed seven times in rapid succession - real time, about one second - and all his attacks were aimed at Scarlett. Her icon flashed as she was struck, seven times in under one second, and her health went from full to zero in that one-second volley. Then it was my turn. But it was too late, even though she had had full Mana and I was preparing to use her, she was killed.
And over the next three turns, all the rest of my heroes died too.
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Only 3* Orc out there is Nashgar I believe. But his special is supposed to hit once (and then hit with burn for 6 more turns, but that shouldn’t all hit at once).
Was he in the far left? Was it possible that the other hits were all his other heroes hitting normally (tough luck all hitting scarlett, but it’s possible I guess?). I’ve never heard of a special hitting 7 times - if this is actually true it would be the first time someone noticed the bug.
Scarlett does die easy though, I use her as well - she hits hard but dies just as hard 
Guess we’ll never find out about what happened, but hope you have better luck in the future!
I believe this post explains a bit more about raids: Raids: fair or unfair? - #50 by LordForge (I haven’t read through it in a long time, so might be wrong - but I believe this adressed a bit more of the mechanics/tactics, might be helpful).
Thanks!
So far, Scarlett is my strongest hero - I’ve not seen her dying on the map, not as much as Rigard or Skittleskull. In Raids, everyone dies so it’s hard to judge who’s dying more frequently.
Raiding strategies? Nothing’s worked exceptionally well so far, just load up on nukes and a healer. I don’t get that many combo strings, it usually takes me 3-4 turns to get enough Mana to fire off one special.
I wish we could use resources on raids.
I’ve been playing for about 4 months. I do genuinely love the game - except for raiding.
I’ve never gotten any 5* heroes, and I usually cannot afford to buy gems with real money.
I’ve had poor luck cooking my own heroes; I can make 4*'s, which is how I got Scarlett and Sonya. My odds are 50/50 that I’ll get Prisca, I’ve gotten her SO MANY times!! She’s almost as frequent in my hero roster as Derrick and Bland.
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Raids are frustrating. However, I’ve gotten better at board solutions in order to win more. If you pick an opponent of equal strength it’s likely you’re going to lose - it appears the algorithms favor the defender somewhat. So you need to plan accordingly, which means also using more food to select opponents. Focus on growing your farms and leveling up your heroes and maxing your specials. That means using elemental heroes to level them up so you get a higher chance of special upgrades.
After being as frustrated as you I’ve gotten to where I win 9 of 10 contests. Of course I get raided a lot and lose, but that just keeps your cup total down so you can continue to find easier fare to raid.
Tactics are important too, and I’m not going to give away much here. But one little tip is to leave the healer for last and take out the weakest damage dealers first. YMMV as always.
Good luck.
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It is clear that the algorithms favor defenders, but to an unacceptable extreme. Over the last 4 weeks, I have raided every day to fill the chest. I am finding consistently that teams which are rated 250 - 300 less power than mine are able to quickly defeat me. There has to be a better “balance” then a 2462 team defeating my 2720 team without taking down any of the defending team’s heroes.
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are you doubling up with 2 strong attacking heroes vs the tank? if you have other defensive heroes, it may make sense to double up on two colors to favor your strengths. If you’re using a rainbow attack team, that’s not generally a good strategy.
I’m in the category of those who hate (despise really) raids. In fact, my whole alliance complains about them, no one has anything kind to say on the topic. The imbalance of favoring the defender is too great. It also seems to favor ascension level over star and attack/defense/health levels. I look at everything about an opponent before deciding to raid, as well as the trophy win/loss info in the bottom right. Since we cannot use any aids, I see no reason a team of two 5* & three 4* heroes, armed with at least one ascension each, and much higher troops can’t beat a team of 2* & 3* heroes. Strategy is obviously important, but it only goes just so far in raids.
Trophy count shouldn’t have anything to do with matchmaking because I see players fooling it all the time.
I must admit to being dismayed by the rather flippant suggestion above that raids aren’t required, so don’t play them if you don’t want to. That’s not good enough. They are a part of the game and how you can get loot. If it’s included, it needs to be a functional part of the game.
This is truly a great game. I never spend money on games, yet I’ve put more than $300 into it for myself, and gave my daughter $100 to buy gems. I’m strongly considering another $100 for myself too. Clearly I’m in this for the long haul and will support the developers.
My suggestion is to make the team strength more accurate and more germaine to the matchmaking, offer up much better matches so it comes down to how the board is played and how it falls. You could even make it a best 2 out of 3 instead of a single rematch. That would raise the excitement level and thus the game enjoyment. Offer an option of attacking a stronger player with the possibility of more trophies or loot, but keep it as an option only.
Making raids more reasonable would also generate more income because players would be able to equate real team strength to wins.
Remember, frustrated players abandon ship for another game.
Thanks for “listening”!
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I’ve already moved on.
I’ve kinda moved from actively despising them to now being ambivalent / tolerating them.
I don’t think changing the matching strategy will help, really, and nor will changing the Defense AI or algorithms.
Why?
What will happen if they do is that people will then rise (or drop) to a different level until they reach equilibrium again. No matter the algorithm, and no matter the matching strategy, everyone (if trying to win every match and not game the system) will get to a place where they are matching ‘even’ opponents on whatever basis the raids system selects for ‘even’. At that point you will win a few until you get to ‘stronger’ opponents, then lose until you drop back down to competitive levels again. The wins will feel great. The losses will be frustrating.
Now the majority of players will always encouter this wall. Why? Because ultimately you will come up against the group of players who simply pay more, and/or play longer and will have a stronger team than what you can assemble for what you put in to the game. It can be no different… and works this way for every game I’ve played that has a PvP component that pits you against other players’ teams.
So really, tweaking the mechanic will only delay the inevitable. Everyone plays using the same mechanic. As such it is ultimately fair, no matter what it is, because all play on the same basis, and everyone will naturally find their place of equilibrium.
Ordinarily I find it too frustrating competing against teams that are same or higher level than me. Some get off on the challenge or the thrill or whatever. I’m not one of them (and have nothing against them). So really I would normally choose to just opt out of raids for this reason.
But the problem? They have raids provide you real in-game resource that can help your team (hero missions). (I normally wouldn’t bother with the ham and iron - this is only really necessary for powergamers where the natural resource accrual is not sufficient. I’m not one of those.)
This means if I want to maximise my rate of progress (without simply spending more, which I’m no longer willing to do) then I pretty much need to take part in raids. So to earn the resources, but to avoid the frustration, I artificially keep my cup level lower than my team power and/or tactical prowess deserves, so I can consistently win to fill my mission.
This is why I am now ambivalent. I recognise that no amount of tweaking will change these fundamentals and that I’d end up getting frustrated when I reach my equilibrium, so in accepting this, I’m content to just keep going with lower cup level to earn my resource.
(In fact if they changed the matching algorithm to team strength instead of cups, this would push me to the point of simply not playing raids, as I’d then be at my equilibrium no matter the team, so would find it permanently frustrating. I now PREFER the cup system because it gives you the opportunity to tweak where you position yourself in the opponents you face).
SG, have you read this topic? Have you read any topics on raiding?
The general opinion is that they suck. They suck bad.
Whatever code you wrote that so drastically stacks odds in favor of defenders is over the top. It’s ridiculous.
Your “rebalancing” effort in the latest update just made it so we can’t seek out much weaker opponents, you did nothing to level the playing field.
Raid for raid still is pathetic.
The loot received from this unnecessarily idiotic endeavor is rubbish at best.
I find myself going back to a comment presumably made by one of the SG team that “it’s not a required part of the game, you don’t have to raid”.
It takes so long to get ascension materials (which PRESUMABLY can be in the raid chests) that anyone who wants to advance in the game actually does have to raid. Frustration over how badly this part of the game is will indeed drive away people who want to advance but don’t much care for the tremendous urge to throw their expensive phone across the room.
So, SG, do you want customers who will pay money to advance and enjoy the game, or do you only want casual players who simply don’t care and won’t spend a single penny?
Clearly the choice is yours to keep, fix, or remove the single worst part of what is otherwise a very good game.
Just as clearly, we the players/customers have the choice of staying or moving on to your competition, seeking a challenge that does not have a component this frustrating.
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I wouldn’t say the general opinion is that “raids suck” nor would I say that spenders all hate the raiding setup. That’s a pretty broad generalization. Remember people who have a complaint are way more likely to post than people who don’t.
If you think the code drastically favors the defenders, then I think your tactics are at fault here. My 5 ad 7 yr old sons manage to not go worse than 50/50. Everyone I know generally wins 75%ish of their raids (yes there are days you lose 6/6 it happens). Raids definitely favor the attacker, why else would you generally lose cups after each night when you’ve been asleep. On my alt account I had the defender/healer poo poo platter for a long time (Boril, kiril, li xiu, rigard cyprian melendor lil john and a single reasonably good attacker - Gormek.). Somehow I managed to find ways to fill my raid chest almost every day. It took a change of tactics from what I was used to. Did I win every raid? No. Did I kill enough heroes over the course of 20 raid flags (wake up and play at 8am use 6 flags, go to bed at 10pm, that’s 14 more flags) to fill my chest? almost always.
as far as getting loot they are a minuscule part of loot (the raid chest). a majority of your ascension loot is going to come from rare quests and titans. if it takes you 2 days to fill a raid chest instead of 1 day, maybe you miss out on a rare chest a month or so.
Why don’t you take some vidoes of your raids and ask for help in the forums? lots of people willing to help…
Dante
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The general opinion isnt at all that they suck.
Some people think they suck, and that usually stems from a lack of understanding the game mechanics.
Some people really enjoy raiding.
These are subjective opinions though, and there is always the choice to drop cups and raid easier people.
On a non-subjective note. Atrackers hold basically ALL the advantages when raiding.
- You can tailor the team to counter your opponent.
- You can manipulate the board to make ghost, avoid and select what to do.
- You can predict when and how to best use your hero specials.
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If any explain me how is possibile 70% of my raid my enemy make 2/3 turn of skill for all’ Hero and i make 1 turn sometimes(enemy Hero medium/low mana Rechard…My hero medium/rapido)
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Every time you hit a defender with a gem, their mana increases. You need to be strategic about where you send gems up and not just fire willy nilly trying to charge your heroes.
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You can’t bring battle items on raids.
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