On Friday morning, Supercell, creators of the massively popular Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Boom Beach and Brawl Stars mobile games released information regarding their upcoming balance update to Clash Royale.

Slated to go live on March 4, the Finnish developers decided to approach this series of gameplay changes with an emphasis on diversifying the meta. How they opted to go about this was by buffing a few cards that have been out-classed recently, adjusting deployment times for horde creatures and targeting a specific individual that has been iconic across the company’s numerous titles, the Barbarian.

The following patch notes were shared by the company on the Clash Royale official subReddit and inside the game’s client with developer insight.

The changes

Barbarians: Hitpoints -13%, Troop Count 4 -> 5

Regular Barbarians have been a bit too expensive for their cost for a long time now, leading to a low use/win rate in competitive play. We are going to reduce the Hitpoints of all Barbarians (which also impacts Battle Ram, Barbarian Hut, and Barbarian Barrel) but increasing the amount of Barbarians in the original squad by 1. The goal of this change is to indirectly support cards like Magic Archer and Royal Hogs by providing a pure ‘Fireball bait’ deck with solid anti-tank damage dealer in place of Lumberjack or Mini P.E.K.K.A. (This also affects the Hitpoints of Barbarians in the following cards; Battle Ram, Barbarian Hut, Barbarian Barrel)

Wall Breakers: Hit Speed 1.5sec -> 1.2sec

The daring duo of dive bombers hasn’t been quite dangerous enough. This buff will allow the Wall Breakers to make their one and only attack a bit quicker upon reaching the tower, meaning both Wall Breakers will connect if unblocked. This makes Wall Breakers comparable to a Goblin Barrel if ignored, don’t take them lightly!

Bomb Tower: Added Death Damage bomb (deals 2x Area Damage)

Many defensive Towers have excellent uses against specific matchups. The only building that doesn’t seem to have any role is Bomb Tower. Despite swarmy ground attacks being popular, Bomb Tower was not a reasonable defensive choice. We are giving it a death bomb like Balloon (or Bomb Towers in Clash of Clans) to make it a dangerous trap for incoming attacks.

X-Bow: Hitpoints +4%

Out of the two Siege buildings, Mortar has had more widespread success than its more expensive cousin. Mortar has a much higher Health-per-Elixir ratio than X-Bow, so we are going to adjust X-Bow slightly to balance them out.

Goblin Gang, Rascals, Bats, Barbarians:  Added 0.15sec Deploy Time between Troops

A few months ago, we changed the deployment of Minion Horde to place one Minion at a time. This has been a good change to Minion Horde, allowing more reaction time for the opposing player. We are doing the same to the above cards, making them deploy 0.15sec apart.---Let us know what you think about these changes below!