Is Ruin Witch still good after the Ruin Knight nerf in Clash of Clans?

The answer in numbers

Three-star rates of eight real TH18 ladder builds before and after the Ruin Knight change alone, on the same simulated bases and dice. Changes of about 2 points or more are real.

How big the hit is

Data for the chart: Every Ruin Witch build lost 1.5 to 4.3 points to the nerf

Item	Value (Three-star points lost)
Super Witch + Ruin Witch (4)	4.3
Super Archer + Ruin Witch (4)	4.2
Thrower + Ruin Witch (4)	3.3
Thrower build 3 (3)	3.1
Thrower build 1 (2)	2.9
Mass Ruin Witch (6)	2.6
Thrower build 4 (2)	1.5
Mass Dragons (none)	0.0

Every build with Ruin Witches lost something, and none lost much: 1.5 to 4.3 points. The mass Ruin Witch build, which leans on Ruin Witches hardest, lost 2.6. The size of the loss doesn’t follow the number of Ruin Witches closely, so read each build’s own figure rather than a rule.

The Dragon build carries no Ruin Witches and scored the same before and after, which shows the drop comes from the Ruin Knight change and nothing else.

What changed in October

Supercell announced the change on 17 October 2026 and it went live in the 20 October maintenance break: Ruin Knights dropped from 4,000 to 3,800 HP and from 345 to 330 damage per second, move more slowly and take 18 housing instead of 20. The same update took the damage bonus off Fire Heart and buffed several ground troops. With every one of those changes in, most of the Thrower builds lost a little more, up to 5.3 points. The troop buffs don’t touch these builds, so the extra comes from Fire Heart, which their Dragon Duke carries.

Version and platform notes

Simulated with the October 2026 balance changes and with the Life Gem bonus ending one second after a troop leaves the Warden’s ring, as in the game. Everything here applies the same on iOS and Android.

How we counted

The eight builds are real TH18 ladder armies from the TrophyCoach ranked-battle tracker (30 days to 5 to 6 October 2026, before the change), the same ones our simulator was calibrated against. Each played the deploy style the calibration picked for it, with every troop and hero at max TH18 level and the heroes on their usual kits, since the tracker lists no equipment.

Each build ran three times on the same 600 TH18 bases, rolled twice (1,200 attacks per run): with the unit table from before October, with only the Ruin Knight row changed to the live numbers, and with every October change. Each run is compared with the one before October attack by attack, so each change is measured to about plus or minus 1 point.

Limits

• Simulated, not played. The simulator ranks real armies in nearly the same order as the ranked ladder (rank correlation 0.74) but misses single armies by about 9 points on average, and some of these builds by far more (Thrower + Ruin Witch by about 29), so read the changes, not the levels.
• Builds as recorded before the change. Players may already have adjusted their Ruin Witch armies since 20 October.
• Everything maxed. Lower troop or hero levels shift the numbers.