Goblinstein

Goblinstein is a 5-Elixir Champion that deploys as two independent units sharing one activatable ability. The ranged Doctor stuns and chips away at both air and ground troops from range, while the melee Monster is a pure building-hitter that ignores enemy troops entirely, similar to a Golem or Giant. Their shared ability, Lightning Link, briefly electrifies the space between the two units to zap anything caught in between. As of an August 2026 game-wide ability rework, Lightning Link now fires only once per deployment instead of recharging on a cooldown.

• Goblinstein costs 5 Elixir and deploys in about 1 second, putting two independent units on the field at once: a ranged Doctor and a melee Monster. The Doctor has 721 hitpoints and, after an August 2026 damage buff, now hits for 135 damage roughly every 1.8 seconds — about 75 damage per second — with its very first swing landing in just 0.5 seconds, much faster than its normal rhythm. It can target both air and ground troops from a long 5.5-tile range, and every hit stuns the target for 0.5 seconds, briefly interrupting whatever that enemy troop was doing.

• The Monster is the tanky half of the pair: 2,393 hitpoints and 128 damage roughly every 1.5 seconds — about 85 damage per second — in melee range, with a faster opening swing that lands in 0.8 seconds. Unlike the Doctor, the Monster can only target buildings: it walks straight past enemy troops and ignores them completely, functioning much like a mini Golem or Giant that beelines for the nearest tower.

• Lightning Link is Goblinstein's activatable ability. For 2 Elixir, it forges a crackling electric line directly between the Doctor and the Monster after roughly a one-second cast delay, and any enemy troop — air or ground — caught standing inside that line takes damage about every half-second for 4 seconds straight. The link deals noticeably reduced damage if it strikes an enemy Crown Tower instead of a troop.

• An August 2026 update reworked how Hero and Champion abilities function across the whole game, and Goblinstein was part of it: nearly every ability, with Boss Bandit as the lone exception, switched from recharging on a cooldown to firing only once per deployment. Lightning Link previously recharged every 17 seconds and could be triggered repeatedly during a single life; now it can only be used once before the Doctor and Monster are both defeated, and Goblinstein has to be played again from hand to get another activation. To offset losing that repeatable access, the same update also trimmed Lightning Link's damage output from 214 down to 188 damage per second.

• Just three months after launch, a January 2025 balance update cut the Doctor's hitpoints by 19%, from 885 down to 721. Supercell said Goblinstein had pushed the meta too hard toward Lightning and Rocket as the only reliable counters, so the HP cut was meant to let spells like Poison, or a Fireball followed by a Zap, finish the Doctor off.

• A follow-up update in February 2025 reduced the Monster's hitpoints by 8%, from 2,598 down to 2,393, continuing the tuning pass Supercell had started with the Doctor a month earlier.

• Goblinstein released on 7 October 2024. It came out strong enough that Supercell issued an emergency balance hotfix just over a week later, cutting Lightning Link's duration from 5 seconds to 4 seconds and lengthening its cooldown from 15 to 17 seconds, along with a reduction to the ability's Crown Tower damage.

• The Doctor's stun is more than just chip damage — because it briefly interrupts whatever the target is doing, players use it to make a surfacing Miner drop its lock on the tower and redirect onto the Monster instead, saving tower health. Lightning Link also doesn't fully shut off if the Monster dies first: the fallen Monster leaves a Lightning Rod behind on the ground, and activating the ability afterward links the Doctor to that rod instead, so the ability still functions with only the Doctor left alive.