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Several members of my clan have been asking for "Defensive Troops". Which got me thinking what are some good defensive troops that are readily available at the Barracks? Troops that Most members will have access to. So lets try to cap this at nothing better than healers.

So of barbarians, archers, goblins, giants, wall breakers, balloons, wizards and healers which are the very best at defense? By best I mean likely to save you the most money. Whether they kill the enemy before they can do damage or draw enemy fire works. Longevity of troops is also an important element to consider.

I am aware that what the enemy attacks you with will have some impact on this, so let's limit this to which troops are best most of the time.

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    Currently, Valkyries are great for lower town halls below th7, and baby dragons, wizards are better for higher town halls Apr 4, 2017 at 7:04

6 Answers 6

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For lower levels Balloons can be a great alternative to dragons, but they are not as good at higher levels because they can be killed easily by Archers. Apart from that Wizards can completely demolish a Giant and Healer strategy with their intense splash damage and they can hide behind walls. Archers are good in the fact that they can be protected by your walls while dishing lots of damage. Healers can now no longer heal buildings and can only heal heros or cc troops. Though in certain scenarios this can be useful, such as if you want to try Super AQ on defence, but in general healers are not good for cc.

Make sure to position your clan castle in the center of your base to protect your troops from easily being drawn out and killed. Keep in mind that if you use your clan castle well it can completely change the outcomes of defences!

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  • Balloons can be easily killed by archers at any level honestly, depends on the attacker and what they bring to the battle.
    – Dupree3
    Apr 15, 2014 at 19:15
  • I actually have found one way to make healers very effective on defense. On one of my bases, I have my clan castle, my archer queen, and some storages in the center. From watching some of my defense replays, I found out that the healer actually comes out and will heal my archer queen. So I have my clan castle filled with a healer plus some other troops (archers, wizards, etc.). A decent level archer queen is by far better than any troop you can receive in the CC, so having a healer to keep her alive during defense can thwart many attacks.
    – Spencer D
    Jan 3, 2015 at 19:14
  • @Dupree3 when the balloons are destroyed they fall to the ground and explode
    – Eisler 485
    Apr 3, 2015 at 2:30
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I always ask my clan mates to donate Dragon for defense. Since Dragon is an expensive troop and takes 30 minutes to create it, most people won't make it.but it is very powerful and very strong and a lightning spell won't do any harm to it.

The next troop that is cheaper and strong is wizard, A group of 5 wizard will tear apart all the giants that your opponent summoned in a second.

After that a CC (clan castle) full of archers would be nice because they are ranged troops and they can shoot enemy's troops while they are inside walls.

As my experience tells, Healers(they always heal buildings instead of other castle's troops ),pekkas,wall breakers ( they do a lot of damage to walls not troops) are not good for defense.

If your castle has 25 space a combination of 1x Dragon, 1x Wizard , 1x Archer will keep your village safe( if you put your CC in the middle of your village )

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  • The problem with the dragon is as you state in your answer and I state in my question. It takes a long time, is expensive and won't be available to most of my fellow clan members. Aside from that good answer! Apr 10, 2014 at 19:37
  • hi, you might want to answer this: gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/198567/…
    – Esqarrouth
    Dec 31, 2014 at 20:20
  • Is that right? I lightening spell doesn't harm dragons.
    – Celeritas
    Oct 4, 2015 at 23:01
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TL;DR: Minions, Dragons, Wizards, Archers

In my opinion, the best troop that you can donate is archers. There are several reasons for this.

  1. They have a ranged attack, they can shoot over walls and provide a HUGE distraction if they are defending from behind walls. This will cause troops to try to break through the wall just to get a single archer. Also they can shoot down air troops, which isnt much of an advantage because most air troops can one shot them back but it is still favorable.

  2. They have a small housing space. This is where they beat wizards, you can have more archers in one clan castle than wizards. You might be thinking "but wizards have a higher attack and do splash damage." Well while those are very huge advantages, the best one that an archer has is my next point.

  3. They can be targeted by all troops at once. This plays off of their ability to pack a ton of archers in one clan castle. When the attacking troops see the archer, they all will target that single archer. While that archer doesnt stand a chance and does not have time to attack, she will be the "meat shield." The time it takes for the attacking troops to kill the archer, switch targets, and then kill the other archer, is very long in terms of distractions. Since all the troops are attacking at once, it doesnt matter if the archer has 50 hitpoints, 500 hitpoints or 5 hitpoints, the archer will be killed in a split second. The same will happen with a giant and other troops (with the exception of troops like golems, dragons, and PEKKAS who all have a ton of hitpoints). So 20 archers will provide more of a distraction than 4 giants.

  4. They are cheap and relativly quick to make. This is more of an advantage to you, assuming you are donating them. You only spend 1000 elixir when donating your fill of 5 level 5 archers and you will spend 2000 elixir when donating only one giant.

Another very good troop to have in your clan castle is minions. They might even be better than archers.

  1. They FLY! This means that they can only be targeted by archers, wizards, dragons... etc. This reduces the amount of troops that can shoot them down, that also means they are invaluble against an all melee attack (although i dont see many of those)

  2. They also have low housing space. Ten minions in a level 4 clan castle can really be helpful.

Of course dragons can be good as well, im not going to go into detail about them because they are pretty obvious. High DPS and HP, flying, splash damage. When i ask for troops i usually ask for dragons, minions, valkyries, wizards, and/or archers. I hope you understand all that i am saying and learn something about the mechanics of troops on defense.

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So defensive-wise with what you stated you will either want to have archers or wizards on defense for you. This is because they both can target land and air enemies. If you are between the two you will most likely want wizards since they do more damage and do splash damage so they can hurt multiple troops at once, unlike the archers.

If for some reason you are more focused on ground troops than air then you will want giants or balloons, the giants have high health and can take a decent beating and the balloons (if your lucky) can avoid a decent portion of ground troops and just bash away. Goblins and barbarians are kind of under powered for defense though they are cheap so you will see more of them given out in a lot of cases.

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i have found that a combination of troops is the most effective defense. especially goblins paired with ranged units. goblins run fast and hit hard! this gives the advantage that they will reach the enemy before the ranged troops does and engage them in hand to hand combat while the archers can do their thing without dying too soon. this can be very important at lower town halls, since you don't have enough walls to cover the detection range of your clan castle. also in later town halls, when wall breakers have opened a path to let a runner draw your troops out, or a hog is used as bait.

giants and balloons are the least effective defense units, since they move too slow.

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  1. Town Hall 8: 2 Wizards, 4 Barbarians, 1 Balloon and 8 Archers.
  2. Town Hall 9: 1 Witch, 5 Barbarians, 1 Balloons, 1 Wizard and 2 Minions.
  3. Town Hall 10: 1 Witch, 1 Balloon, 3 Archers, 5 Barbarians and 5 Minions.
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    Why should these troops be used?
    – Frank
    Apr 10, 2015 at 15:21
  • Hi, Windy. I have removed all your links, as it seems to be borderline spam. If you run that site, you need to disclose that.
    – Frank
    Apr 10, 2015 at 15:59

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