I think most players benefit. My rank 17 account is definitely finding it easier to earn chests.
However, players from 6-7 ERs who are facing 80-100% BH boosts and similar BD boosts probably are badly affected, maybe very badly. At that stage of the game, these battle scenarios are common:
- A conventional attack can get 1 ER, but it's quite hard. You may get 0.
- A smokey warrior or HZ attack can get at least 1 ER if you can pull it off. You are very likely to lose all your troops. For sure there's no way to retreat once you're at the back.
- If no Sky Shields, you could bart down 1 ER. Keep in mind, with 100% BH, that's 7 arty and 4 barrages. That's 139 GBE. You will need to land troops to farm, and they will take casualties. Also, it's not guaranteed to take down an ER if enough barrage missiles miss.
- With the previous chest rule, maybe you tried to fight the guy for % destruction and ignored ERs entirely. You still can, but you don't earn chests.
My legendary II account managed to make rank 25 just before the change occurred, by which time he already had all 3 GBE nodes unlocked and had high TD, max smoke, etc,
plus instant training. Even now, though, I frequently get only 1 ER. In the rank 20s, I started switching to smokey HZ with about 73 GBE, and I'd usually only manage to get 1 ER an attack. Then there was a phase when I could quite reliably get 2, but by then I quickly hit legendary and I was usually facing Sky Shields. And now, it's again pretty common to get 0-1 ERs per attack.
I think this mechanic needs re-thinking for the higher rank players. And don't think that it's only skilled players up here. Hopefully, a bunch of average players will hit the 7 ER phase. We will all hit a ceiling, but I don't want average players to get forced out of the game entirely.
Additionally, I think players could have adapted to this change had it been in place at the season start. They could have gone for as much GBE as possible (you can have max 104 with 2 GBE nodes; you unlock the 3rd GBE node two slots after opening the 7th ER), plus TD, plus max smoke and upgrade flare, plus warriors or HZ. F2P players might want to have to do both types, since they will otherwise be limited by casualties. However, the rule was changed late in the season, and a lot of people are very dissatisfied. They don't feel like they can do enough experimenting to learn smokey attacks. Or they are totally off the optimal upgrade path.
That brings me to my final point: there was already a big disparity between those with instant training and those without. This widens it. I probably lost a dozen attacks trying to learn the timing for smokey HZ with microwavers (it involves a double shock on the microwaver). F2Pers don't have that luxury. We don't want the game to become too pay to win. In fact, right now, a lot of people are feeling like it's pay (for instant training) to even progress.