The 10 Best Cards in Clash Royale

Hey guys it’s Ash and in this video I’m going to give you guys my opinions on the top 10 cards of Clash Royale in the current meta. Now I know I’m going to get some people who may disagree with my opinions, so I really want to emphasize that these my own opinions. Along with why these cards are the best cards in the game, I’m also going to give you guys my opinions on how these cards can be balanced and ways for us to have more diversity in the game because I do believe some of these cards offer too much value.

Top 10 Cards in Clash Royale

Princess

The Princess is by far the best card in the game:

She costs only 3 Elixir, which makes it easy to form powerful combos on offense and obtain incredible value on defense.
She has the greatest troop range in the game with a 9 tile range. No other troop comes close, the Royal Giant has a 6.5 tile range.
She is the only troop in the game who can take down both the Arena Tower and King’s Tower if she’s left alone.
She does Area Damage, equivalent to 140 HP damage from a level 1 Princess from just one shot. Making her the best area damage troop in the game not only because of her incredibly cheap 3 Elixir cost, but also her ability to target air units. The only other troops that can target air and do splash are Baby Dragon, Witch, Fire Spirits, Wizard, and Ice Wizard.
She has a very large Area Damage splash radius, allowing her to deal damage to multiple units at the time.
She evenly trades with Arrows, as both cards cost 3 Elixir. But there’s actually a lot benefits to this as you can use her to bait Arrows. Which means if your opponent uses his Arrows on the Princess, then on many occasions you can safely send in something like your Minion Horde or Goblin Barrel.
One of the biggest advantages that the Princess has, in my opinion, is her ability to force the opponent into playing down a card or else incur a lot of damage because of the Princess’ range. This is a ridiculously powerful ability for a 3 Elixir card because this allows the user to effectively and very cheaply Double Lane pressure or force the opponent into expending more Elixir than needed just to counter the Princess if they lack a proper counter in their hand. For example, if your opponent doesn’t have a 2 Elixir or less card in their hand, then they’re never gaining value. The only 2 Elixir or lower cards to counter her and gain value from are Goblins, Spear Goblins, Skeletons, and Fire Spirits. Only 4 cards in the entire game, out of the 54.
Another very big advantage of the Princess many people overlook is her ability to defend from the opposite lane. For example, say your opponent’s Arena Tower at the top left is at 1000 HP and you want to finish that tower off, but your opponent goes with a Minion Horde on the right lane. Well with a Princess, you can send her on the left lane and she’ll be able to easily cripple the Minion Horde to allow your Arena Tower to one shot them all with ease, and then you add in a supportive troop like the Hog Rider and counterpush easily on the left lane with both the Princess and Hog. If you had another Area Damage troop like the Wizard, you would not be able to do this. Not only is he expensive, he won’t be able to target the Minions from the left lane, which will then mean you’ll need to support him on the right lane, which you don’t want.
So what can Supercell do to balance her? I believe simply making her cost 4 Elixir will make her balanced. Or significantly decrease her Area Damage splash radius, allowing some Minions from a Minion Horde or Barbarians to escape and not allow her to gain so much value by also dealing crazy Area Damage to clumped units.

The Princess is ridiculously overpowered in my opinion and it’s only a matter of time until everyone has her. I already see her in 80% of decks in Legendary Arena.

Ice Wizard

He’s easily the best support troop in the game as he’s not weak to Arrows or even Fireball like the Princess is.
He is the best troop in the game for counter-pushing because of his cheap 3 Elixir cost, which allows you to form powerful combos with ease and because of his incredible ability to slow down incoming threats, allowing you to easily counter them and then add the Ice Wizard for offense.
And the Ice Wizard is no joke on offense either, his ability to slow down troops, buildings, Arena Tower while also deal area damage to hordes make him absolutely lethal on both ends.
Then we also have to talk about area damage coupled with the ability to slow troops down. You can easily obtain value against Minion Hordes or Barbarians.

To balance the Ice Wizard, I think he needs an HP nerf. If Fireball had the ability to one-shot Ice Wizards, then this would bring about a lot of diversity to the game and not make Princess with Ice Wizard such an incredible 6 Elixir combo. Less people would be using both Legendary cards in their deck. And again, it’s only a matter of time until more and more people unlock both Princess and Ice Wizard and use them in their decks and work so well together.

Hog Rider

Hog Rider is the most popular troop in the game. He’s a Rare card (not Epic or Legendary), so he’s very to obtain and level. And in my opinion, he’s the best card in the game right now that isn’t a Legendary.

He’s only 4 Elixir and favors buildings, which makes it super easy to punish your opponent if you’re making great Elixir trade offs.
I don’t believe the Hog Rider is overpowered, but I do believe that he grants too much value for a 4 Elixir card because the only building to obtain value from the Hog Rider is the Cannon. There is no other building in the game that costs less than 4 Elixir and can shut down a Hog Rider from targeting your tower. That is just ridiculous in my opinion. The only other 3 Elixir building is the Tombstone, which will not stop a Hog Rider from getting to your Tower.
He’s too fast and powerful and goes directly for your Arena Tower. There are 9 Buildings in the game, while there are 45 troops. That is a 1 to 5 ratio, so if your deck doesn’t consist of at least 2 buildings (and most decks carry 1 building), then you will struggle to defend against the Hog Rider at some point if you don’t have that key defensive building in your hand or if it was simply destroyed and right before your opponent sends in a Hog Rider.
So the solution is pretty simple then, you just need to make sure you have at least 2 buildings in your deck. But then the problem with that is, it hurts synergy a lot. It restricts good decks and restricts good offense, which means you’re going to experience a lot of draws because your offense sometimes just won’t be good enough because of how much you’re investing on defense.

Now there are a bunch of ways to balance the Hog Rider in my opinion. But I don’t think we should nerfing the Hog Rider because he makes games more exciting and fun and fast paced. But he’s obviously overused, he’s harming diversity, and offers too much value.

So my proposal to balance him is slow him down a little. His speed right now is “very fast,” make him as fast as a Mini Pekka instead so that it gives people enough time to react to Hog Rider pushes because every troop every has a deployment speed. For example, the Minion Horde has a 1 second deployment speed. By the time the Minions are deployed, the Hog Rider already got a free shot onto the tower.
Defensive buildings should be able to have the Hog Rider re-target onto the newly placed building even after the Hog Rider had already locked onto a tower. For example, the Prince locking onto an Arena Tower, by placing your Cannon in front of the Arena Tower, you can have the Prince re-target onto the Cannon. This is not possible with the Hog Rider, and really makes no sense to me as to why. Because the Hog Rider is super fast, so if you’re like 1 or 2 Elixir low from placing down your building on time, you’re punished to death because most defenses will really not do enough to stop the bleeding from the Hog Rider.
We also need more troops like the Hog Rider to add to the diversity because no other troop (that isn’t a legendary) is as inexpensive as he is and can directly target your opponent’s Arena Tower. We also need more cheap defensive buildings because right now for as long as the Hog Rider is very popular, the Cannon will also be very popular option.

Royal Giant

The Royal Giant quickly went from the worst card in the game when it was first introduced, to being one of the best cards in the game.

The Royal Giant is super bulky for his range. And his range poses a lot of problems. Not only the godly ability to avoid getting shot by defensive buildings, but more importantly the position at which he stands with his range. His position restricts the ability to counterpush effectively. Counterpushing is an extremely important strategy when dealing with aggro-based troops such as Hog Riders and Giants. However, because of the Royal Giant shooting your tower from pretty much where the bridge is, the ability to counterpush is severely restricted and limited. Perhaps the only two feasible cards that effectively counterpush are the Mini Pekka and Barbarians, which you can support your troops behind with. While a troop such as a Pekka isn’t as great because a Pekka requires 3 seconds to deploy and still requires a lot of time to kill a Royal Giant, which by that time the Royal Giant would have already crippled your Arena Tower badly.
Another very big problem with defending against a Royal Giant is his ability to restrict “double lane pressures.” For example, you just can’t pressure your opponent on one side with a strong push like Hog Rider and Goblins and expect to cheaply kill the Royal Giant on the other side by restricting them from using support troops behind the Royal Giant. Because the Royal Giant doesn’t need support, he’s a ranged tank, he locks onto the Arena Tower quick.
And the biggest problem dealing with the Royal Giant is his range. If you screw up your building placement or timing, then you get punished hard. And it’s not hard to screw up deployment timing, especially if you have a slight connection lag, a millisecond that can easily translate into a win or loss. That’s just ridiculous!
The other problem with his range is his ability to immediately target your Arena Tower after one of your Arena Towers has been destroyed. Usually when you’re down an Arena Tower, it’s supposed to be harder to take down your 2nd Arena Tower as you now have the King’s Tower supporting you on defense, but it’s the opposite when dealing with the Royal Giant. It actually becomes easier for the Royal Giant user to take down your 2nd Tower because he can now freely target your Arena Tower while avoiding your King’s Tower and without having to travel. Which means the only way to stop a Royal Giant from instantly targeting your Arena Tower is to place down a building in front of your Arena Tower before your opponent deploys the Royal Giant. And this is just absolutely ridiculous because that would just allow your opponent to easily destroy the building or completely disregard it, let it decay, and then overwhelm your opponent with a Royal Giant combo. This is the ability I believe that makes the Royal Giant OP.

Elixir Collector

The Elixir Collector is a very valuable card for almost all expensive decks. If you’re using an expensive deck with an Average Elixir Cost of over 4, then you will almost always struggle against another player with an Elixir Collector as that player will always have the advantage in Elixir over you. There is no other card in the game with a high investment value as the Elixir Collector.

Supercell had done a great job balancing the Elixir Collector by significantly decreasing its HP as it once used to be viable defensive structure just due to its high HP.
Another thing that balances the Elixir Collector is its negative impact on synergy. It’s a must that you have another building, other than the Elixir Collector to block threats such as Hog Rider and Royal Giant. Then you also need a spell card or two, so that only leaves you with 5 or 6 troop cards. So these limitations do balance the Elixir Collector.
However the biggest problem when dealing with the Elixir Collector is how big of an advantage it gives you if your starting hand has the Elixir Collector. It becomes extremely annoying when your opponent starts off with an Elixir Collector and your Elixir Collector is the last card in your cycle.

Miner

One of the biggest reasons why the Miner is one of the best cards is simply because it’s the best counter to the Princess.
The Miner is a super good card because of how effectively is kills or disrupts many support troops like Wizard, Musketeer, and Witch.
Another thing that makes the Miner super good is his ability to dispose of Elixir Collectors. A 3 Elixir card destroying a 5 Elixir card and disrupting your opponent’s deck. Especially if they’re using an expensive deck with the Elixir Collector, the Miner will be a nightmare for them.
And the best thing about the Miner is ability to quickly lock onto and distract your opponent’s Arena Tower and because of its very good HP, it can shield your low HP troops such as Goblins and form a ridiculously fast and powerful combo.

Zap Spell

The Zap Spell is hands down the best spell card in the game. It inflicts damage super fast and has a 1 second stun effect. What makes it the best is that it only costs 2 Elixir and can almost always grant you value. You almost can never go wrong with the Zap Spell. If you zap Goblins and Arena Tower, then you’re making value. If you zap a Minion Horde and allow your Arena Tower to finish off all the weakened Minions, then you’re getting ridiculous return value. Zapping Skeleton Army or Goblin Barrel also gets you lots of value.

The Zap Spell is a super useful spell card not just because of its 2 Elixir cost, but also because of its super useful stun effect. This can allow your troops to get an extra shot onto the opposing Arena Tower or allow your defense to get an extra shot.
Not only that it has other useful abilities such as the ability to reset the target of troops and buildings. For example, if the Royal Giant targets your Arena Tower instead of your building, then you zap the Royal Giant and have it re-direct onto your building.
Another very very useful ability of the Zap Spell is the ability to reset Sparky’s charge.

Valkyrie

The Valkyrie has the highest HP of any splash attacking troop and also is the strongest splash attacker in the game (excluding Sparky). For a card that costs 4 Elixir, this makes her very useful, especially her ability to counter the Princess and Ice Wizard with ease. As well as many other support troops behind tanks. She’s the best support killer in the game. The main reason why she’s one of the best cards in the game is because of how useful she in against the most common threats in the game such as Princess, Ice Wizard, Hog Rider combo rushes, and so on. And because of her high HP and DPS, you can’t ignore her if she’s alone like you could with other splash attackers like Baby Dragon or Wizard.

Cannon

There is only one reason why the Cannon is in this top 10 list, and it’s a very big reason. The Hog Rider. The Cannon is the only defensive building in the game that can counter the Hog Rider and grant you a positive value in return. Hog Rider decks are everywhere, so as long as the Hog Rider is popular, the Cannon will follow.

The Cannon also serves other great use. It can successfully defend against many other cards that cost more than 3 Elixir such as Mini Pekka, Valkyrie, Giant Skeleton, Dark Prince, and so on. So it’s just a great card for obtaining value against some of the most common threats in the game.

Skeletons

The 1 Elixir Skeletons are a very high value card and are often underrated. To give you guys an example of how good they are, four level 9 Skeletons do a total of 268 damage per second together. While three level 9 Goblins do 288 damage per second, while costing 1 more Elixir than the 1 Elixir Skeletons. While four level 9 Barbarians together do 424 damage per second while costing five times as much Elixir as the Skeletons. This makes the Skeletons so deadly when supported by another troop to distract the Arena Tower.

Skeletons are also super good on defense, so easy to obtain value. They can beat Musketeer, Mini Pekka, and properly deploying them against almost threat with grant you great value.
They can be used to pull, distract, separate combos, just so many useful properties of these 1 Elixir Skeletons.
Best of all, they keep your Average Elixir Cost low and allow you to cycle through your cards fast.

Thank to http://www.gameofwarrealtips.com

Guide for Clash Royale