As an elite Clash Royale player who has hit over 6800 trophies and finished in the top 10000 global leaderboards, I live and breathe upgrading my card collection. I‘ve spent years analyzing the ins and outs of key interactions between troops, buildings, spells, and win conditions to determine which cards provide the maximum competitive edge at each level.
In this extensive guide from a tournament-tested expert, I‘ll share everything I‘ve learned about optimal card leveling priorities so you can dominate on the battlefield! Let‘s get right into the juicy card stats and interactions so you can start transforming your card power levels!
The Importance of Card Levels for Victory
Card levels serve a critical purpose in Clash Royale – they make your troops and spells stronger through increased hitpoints and damage output. This directly translates into more favorable interactions against enemy cards.
A simple example demonstrates this clearly. At equal card levels, the Wizard can one-shot a Goblin Gang before tons of stab damage piles up.
But if your opponent has a higher level Gang? Zap! Your Wizard gets shredded by piles of angry knife-wielding green men.
Having the level advantage lets you flip matchups on their head! By understanding key interaction breakpoints for all the meta cards, you can better focus your upgrades and gold expenditures.
Now let‘s analyze some of the top versatile spells and troops to prioritize.
Fireball & Poison: Meta Spells That Pack a Punch
Due to their low Elixir costs and ability to generate strong spell value against troops and buildings, Fireball and Poison top the list of leveling priorities. Their flexibility, effectiveness and high usage rates make them no brainers for every deck.
According to the RoyaleAPI statsaggregator, Fireball enjoys strong 33% usage with a 54% winrate in Grand Challenges, while Poison lags slightly behind at 25% usage and 52% win rate.
What makes them so popular?
Fireball provides excellent versatility as it can one-shot so many troops like Musketeer, Wizard, Electro Wizard, and more up to equal levels. This gives immense value whether you need to stop a dangerous push or enable your own troops to start a counterattack.
Levelling Fireball lets you destroy even more threats like Flying Machine, Mega Minion, and Zappies in one fiery blow.
For example, a level 14 Fireball‘s 728 damage can take out many key troops with ease:
| Troop | Fireball Level to one-shot |
|---|---|
| Musketeer | Equal |
| Wizard | Equal |
| Electro Wizard | Equal |
| Flying Machine | 13 |
| Mega Minion | 14 |
Meanwhile, Poison provides sustained AoE spell damage that melts swarms and damages high hitpoint tanks over time. Like fireball, increased levels provide more damage per tick, translating into faster tower takedowns.
Both serve as key win conditions in many cycle and chip decks by spelling down the tower. We‘ll discuss exact tower interactions later!
Now let‘s shift to discussing how to bolster your defense…
Bomb Tower: The One True Defensive King
While spells dish out major pain, you can‘t ignore building a solid defense. And the undisputed king sitting on defense‘s throne is none other than the glorious Bomb Tower!
Touting an intimidating 60% winrate at a 20% usage rate per RoyaleAPI stats, this spicy take on the humble tower hides vicious power behind its cost-effective frame.
Many players underestimate the Bomb Tower, but doing so puts you at an instant disadvantage.
Here‘s why it dominates:
- Massive amounts of hitpoints to distract enemies
- Damage on par with Inferno Tower while costing 1 less Elixir
- Death damage bomb destroys swarms
- Knocks back Hogs, Giants and more on final hit
All this utility translates into a building that handles nearly every win condition with ease. Plus, you can layer extra support behind it.
Now, it‘s not effective against spell resistant builds featuring Electro Giant and Graveyard. But the Bomb Tower makes up for this by crushing a wide variety of other threats!
Some notable interactions where levels make the difference:
- Level 13 Bomb Tower can fully counter a Level 14 Hog Rider
- Level 14 Bomb Tower death bomb one-shots Level 16 Goblin Gangs and Skeleton Armies
Use the table below to learn exactly when key buildings "activate" against major win cons:
| Building | Hog Rider | Royal Giant | Goblin Giant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inferno Tower | Equal | +1 | Equal |
| Bomb Tower | Equal | Equal | Equal |
| Tesla | +1 | +2 | +1 |
See why properly leveled Bomb Towers make short work of so many enemies? Make this explosive expert your first stop when considering defense upgrades!
Now let‘s move onto the other side by examining primary tower takers…
Win Conditions: Direct Damage for Demolition
Clash Royale‘s name of the game revolves around demolishing enemy Crown Towers to achieve glorious victory! As such, dedicated Win Conditions serve as key leveling priorities.
These specialized forces focus on dishing direct damage to take towers down brick by brick. Popular examples include:
- Hog Rider
- Royal Hogs
- Goblin Barrel
- Miner
- Mortar
- X-bow
They mainly differentiate themselves based on ground vs air, single vs swarm, and melee vs ranged.
But one key aspect stays consistent – their damage scaling against crown towers!
You see, tower interactions don‘t perfectly scale 1:1 compared to troop matchups. Instead, they utilize decimal percentages that require multiple hits.
For example, a Level 9 Hog Rider needs 3 hits to destroy a Level 9 Princess Tower.
But upgrade that angry bacon boy to Level 10? Then it only takes 2 hits! This dramatically accelerates your tower takedown speed.
Alternatively, being under-leveled means needing more costly hits – turning positive trades into negatives.
As such, math dictates focusing on incrementing your win cons to the next “breakpoint” makes perfect sense for efficiency and value.
Let‘s analyze two popular F2P options – Hog Rider and Goblin Barrel:
--------------- Hog Rider --------------
L13: 3 hits for L14 Princess Tower
L14: 2 hits for L14 Princess Tower (breakpoint!)
-------------- Goblin Barrel -------------
L12: 3 Goblins required to destroy L14 Princess Tower
L13: 2 Goblins required to destroy L14 Princess Tower (breakpoint!)See the immense value from reaching key offline levels?
Your tower takedown speed effectively doubles thanks to those incremental levels! 💥That translates into more pressure, an easier path to crowns, and sweet victory.
Now let‘s switch gears to alternative ways to chip down towers using spells…
Spell Cycling: Death by 1,000 Cuts
Spell cycling involves using low cost spells repeatedly to whittle down Crown Tower HP. This provides an alternate win condition when traditional troops can‘t break through your opponent‘s defenses.
Why does spell cycling work so effectively?
Two reasons:
- Spells bypass enemy distractions and defenses, ensuring guaranteed tower damage each cast
- Their low costs allow cycling rapidly to enable constant pressure
Now, the key to success lies in proper math. Each Crown Tower‘s HP scales significantly from level 1 to 14. Higher level towers thus can take more punishment before falling.
Optimizing your spell damage output to defeat higher leveled towers requires knowing exact HP values and spell damages per tick.
Let‘s examine a Level 9 Poison ticking down a Level 14 Princess Tower:
Princess Tower HP: 4267
Poison Damage per Tick: 95
Ticks During Duration: 8
Total Damage Per Cast: 760
Casts to Destroy Tower:
4267 HP
------------- = 6
760 damageAs shown above, it takes 6 casts of a Level 9 Poison to erase a Level 14 Princess Tower. But upgrade Poison to 13? Then only 5 casts finishes the job due to the extra damage per tick!
See why earning those small incremental upgrades makes all the difference in the world? It takes patience, but the payoff permanently boosts your Crown tower takedown potential.
Now, let‘s shift gears to discuss utility support troops that enable your offensives…
Support Troops: Versatile Tools for Any Job
Spells and Win Cons serve as the hammers you wield to crush towers and enemies. But versatile support troops function as the glue keeping those tools effective.
Cards like Electro Wizard, Fisherman, and Musketeer provide excellent utility for both defense and offense. Although they don‘t directly damage buildings, their indirect assistance makes breaking through possible.
For example, Electro Wizard serves a critical role in many Beatdown decks thanks to his 2 incredibly useful abilities:
- Zap on spawn resets Inferno Towers/Dragons
- Constant stun effect on closest target with every bolt
This allows him to cripple swarm defenders like Skeleton Army while also disabling dangerous single threats like Sparky.
His versatility makes him well worth the steep 5 Elixir investment – one that pays even bigger dividends after leveling up his HP and DPS.
Key interactions include:
- Level 12 Electro Wizard survives Level 14 Fireballs
- Level 13+ resets Level 16 Inferno Towers/Dragons
For pulling enemies out of position, the Fisherman comes up big. His hook drags threats like Giants, Hogs, and Balloons towards the kill zone of your own towers.
Plus, his melee whacks build up to respectable damage on tanks like Golem.
While a bit trickier to use properly, he enables fantastic counter-initiations and defense with proper timing. Key interactions favoring higher levels include:
- Faster hook speed to catch fast enemies
- Survives more hits from enemies while reeling them in
Finally, Musketeer represents one of the highest skilled damage sources in the game. Although easily countered by spells, distracting troops let her dish out terrifying DPS from across the bridge.
Layers of protection can enable her to quickly shred tanks and demolish towers in seconds!
Now that you understand card interactions…
Optimal Card Leveling Priorities
We‘ve covered many of the top spells, defenses, win conditions and utility troops worth upgrading. Here are the cards I recommend prioritizing first and foremost:
S Tier
- Fireball
- Poison
- Goblin Barrel
- Skeleton Barrel
A Tier
- Hog Rider
- Goblin Gang
- Log
- Zap
- Miner
B Tier
- Musketeer / Electro Wizard / Wizard
- Valkyrie
- Skeletons
- Cannon
Adjust based on your own deck archetype, but levelling this balanced mix of forces arms you to handle nearly any opponent or meta shift!
For defending, Bomb Tower and Tesla deserve early love to bolster your backline. While win cons dish the pain, sturdy towers buy you time to build unstoppable offensives!
And if you enjoy playing cycle or chip, make sure to show your Poison spells extra attention. That minor damage per tick increase quickly adds up to demolished towers and glorious victories!
Finally, consider leveling your entire card collection evenly, especially if playing Champions. This minimizes severely under-leveled holes in your attack and defense roster should you need to pivot decks based on balance changes.
Got all that? Great! Now rush into the Arena and start dominating with your optimized card collection! See you on the global top 10000 leaderboards soon 😉