Clash of Clans update brings changes to Barbarian King and Archer Queen

As the final sneak peek before the release of the next Clash of Clans update, Supercell revealed that “big changes” are coming to the game’s Heroes. Both the Barbarian King and Archer Queen have had their strengths “readjusted” and are now “much smarter on defense, have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and their abilities are more important than ever.”

Okay, that’s pretty vague, so Supercell took to the forums to give us a more in-depth look at the changes. Here they are:

1. Heroes can no longer be lured out to some corner of the village and get smashed there. Now, they will become like a defensive building (they’re still not defenses, they will not be targeted as such) and will only attack troops that step inside their territory; if a troop tries to lure them out of that territory, they will retreat.

2. Hitpoints and damage for the Queen and hitpoints for the King have been slightly increased at lower levels. However, hero hitpoints and damage have been decreased at higher levels in order to balance heroes on defense and allow for stronger abilities.

3. Hero Abilities now improve much more significantly with each new ability level so the best way to make your hero stronger when attacking is to increase their ability level!

EDIT: Despite the fact that the HP has been decreased at higher levels, the new abilities will compensate and balance those adjustments.

During the video you can see that Jonas refers to the Barbarian King as the “tank” specialist and this is because they will now have new roles:

Barbarian King

• His damage has been reduced, but he now can heal himself greatly when using the Iron Fist ability (you can see in the video the health points being increased upon the activation of his ability).
• The Barbarian horde summoned by Iron Fist has doubled in size to cause even more mayhem.
• Use Iron Fist at the right time to help the King take more damage than he ever could before

Archer Queen

• Her hitpoints have been reduced in later levels, but the Queen now gains a tremendous damage boost while her Royal Cloak ability is active.
• The duration of Royal Cloak has been greatly increased in lower levels to help make sure the Queen has enough time to land her most powerful of shots.
• Use Royal Cloak at the right time to help the Queen hit important targets harder than she ever could before!

So in other words, their powers have been balanced and some elements replaced with new and stronger abilities.

For the reasons behind these changes, check out this interview featuring Clash of Clans developer Jonas.