The 4 Best Defending Clan Castle Troops in Clash of Clans

Guide: Perfect Clan Castle troops for defending

What defending Troop should you request for your Clan Castle? I had an argument yesterday with a clan mate about which troops are working for defense or which are not. He was requesting “Defensive Clan Castle Troops” and we’ve been discussing for ages what troop fits that description. This is the reason I wrote (and updated) this guide.

I want to make a guide about the advantages of different troops in your Clan Castle for defending. Maybe you will try out some new troops that will keep watch over your village while you’re away.

Clan Castle on defense?

In case you’re wondering what I mean, I want to explain the concept behind having defensive troops in the Clan Castle.
Let’s say it’s 11PM and I have 6 hours of shield left. I know that I will not do another attack for the day and I will not be awake when my shield (don’t forget to add the Village Guard) expires.

In this case, I will request defensive troops in my Clan Castle that will help defend my village because I know that I will get attacked before logging back into the game.
The Poison Spell

The worst enemy of your defending Clan Castle Troops is the Poison Spell. It is able to kill almost all Troops within it’s area and:

• it deals constant area damage (unlike the Lightning Spell that could miss).
• deals even more damage to troops than the Lightning Spell, especially when it’s at max level.

The only positive part (from the defensive perspective) is, that your troops will leave the radius as soon as possible when they are not actively attacking other troops – this makes the “lure-and-kill-with-poison” a lot less possible.
What’s important for us at the end of the day is what kind of troops are able to survive the new Poison Spell, because I believe every attacker will have and use one Poison Spell on your Clan Castle Troops.
These Troops don’t stand a chance against any Poison Spell:


These troops get killed very fast by a Poison Spell. It’s simply not worth having them inside your Clan Castle for defense. 
Even in the short period when they walk through the range of the Poison Spell, the spell effect will charge up so heavy on them that they will die.
This means, we can now take a look at the other troops, the troops that are able to survive a Poison Spell (some of them only in a higher Level):

We can group them up into tanks and damage dealers.

The damage dealer will deal a lot of DPS and, if the attacker doesn’t address them the right way, he will see a part of his army wiped away.

The tanks, however, are binding and delaying the attackers troops and hold them while your defenses deal damage.

Not all of them make good defensive Clan Castle troops, so here are my thoughts on each one of them. This is just an initial thought about the troop, not the final recommendation. I have listed the best troops below, depending on the Town Hall you’re in.

Now the troops in general:

• Wizards are kind of useful with their splash damage.
• Dragons are good because they deal good damage and are sometimes hard to kill.
• PEKKA are useless. Very slow and also their hits are so slow that they are easily killed before they can deal any real damage.
• Valkyries are useful against larger groups of ground troops.
• Golem is great to stop troops and deals extra damage when it dies and spawns the Golemites.
• Lava Hound is a nice stopper and distraction.
• Giants are ok, but not the real tanks for defense because they get killed too fast.
• Balloons are great, especially when an attacker has only ground troops.
• Hog Riders are pretty useless because their hitpoints are not high enough.
• Baby Dragons are nice because enraged they can deal the same damage as a normal Dragon for half the housing space. Only useful when it’s the only air troop in the Clan Castle.
• Miners are useless. Not much damage and also not a lot of hitpoints.
• Bowlers are only good against Witches (that almost nobody uses today). otherwise not much damage and also not a lot of hitpoints.

What Troops Make Your Defensive Clan Castle Good?

Before we take a look at the specific Town Hall levels, I want to point out that there is not “the one and only” defensive Clan Castle troop in the game. There are many things to consider and it depends on these 4 things:

• Town Hall – because each Town Hall region has different attacking styles.
• League – in higher Leagues you will get hit by higher Town Halls more often, that means you need to adjust to their attacking strategies.
• Base Layout – some attacking styles prefer certain base layouts. E.G. If your Air Defenses are in the core, it’s less likely you get attacked by air attacks, so you should not focus on defensive troops against air attacks.
• What’s effective right now – there are always roughly 5 very common attacking styles. These make up 80% of all attacks and these are the ones you need to think about.

You see, it’s not that easy at all! The good news is, you don’t have to dig through tons of charts. The easiest method to know what you need to defend against is to take a look at your defense log.

You will easily see what kind of setups attack you the most – these are the ones you will need to adjust to.
I know you might be thinking why I haven’t just written that down in the first place. The answer is, I wanted to show you how complex the system is.  There is no real answer to the question “What is the best defensive Clan Castle troop” in general. 🙂

Clan Castle Defense for Town Hall Level 7 and lower

With the current matchmaking algorithm you will primarily get matched against opponents with a similar Town Hall Level – in this case, being TH7 or lower, you’ll not see a lot of Poison Spells raining on your defending Clan Castle Troops.

I assume your defense log shows 3 different kinds of attacks – Giant/Healer, Dragons or BARCH.

You now have to decide. I would not recommend specifically preparing for Dragon attacks – they don’t happen often enough compared to the total number of attacks your village receives. These troops are working good for defense:

• Valkyries
• Dragon
• Wizards

Clan Castle Defense for TH8 & TH9 When you request your defending Clan Castle Troops, always try to have troops that will give the Poison Spell a hard time and are able to defend. The variety of attacking compositions is changing, so please take a look at your defense log to see what attacking composition seems to like your base a lot.
In general you will see combinations with tanking troops and damage dealing troops behind, so you should focus on getting the tanks down with fast troops. Troops that work good for that are:

• Baby Dragon
• Wizards
• Balloons (only of you don’t see a lot of air attacks)

Clan Castle Defending Troops for TH10+

Defensive concept is switching a lot when you reach Town Hall 10. The attacking styles are heavy and the Heroes will also give defending troops a hard time.
Combinations like defending Wizards or Valkyries will get blasted in seconds while a Poison Spell is making them attack slower.

There are actually 3 kind of troops that are nice for defending:

• Baby Dragon
• Golem (my favorite choice)
• Lava Hound

The best thing you can do is try to make the attack slower – and a tanking troop is the best way to do this. The Lava Hound will release the Lava Pups and the Golem will release the Golemites – all distractions for attacking troops.
I personally love the Golem, especially with the Bowler and Miner attacks these days, because it deals up to 550 damage when it dies and the Golemites are spawning. That’s the damage of a double Giant Bomb and all the surrounding troops will feel it!

The Baby Dragon is great because he enrages himself and deals the damage fast enough to get some shots in – when the attacker is not prepared he will not have sufficient air damage to get the Baby Dragon down.

Conclusion

Defending troops are essential and make the difference between successful defenses and failed defenses. I personally don’t see defending troops a lot in multiplayer battles, but since I started to always care about that I have some when my shield is about to expire. This has resulted in way better defensive results. Just a simple request and you’re done! 🙂

 

#COC , #Clash