From the first moment I've summoned new card I have realized something is wrong with it.

Landship is not a Frost card.

Frost cards don't look like this in battleforge. It's about it's color scheme, which is deep (typically saturated?) blue and white. Landship has none of those. Ironclad has dark blue, and landship next to it looks almost purple. Brown used for the deck unseen in any of frost cards, with maybe exception for Dreadnought's shoes or Promo Construct. And certainly not used as a dominant color. What the dark brown also does it makes the unit way too dark. It's bright units faction.

Now for the esthetics. No icycles, blocks of ice, not to mention frost's theme to avoid using wood wherever possible and prefers marble everywhere. The model is plain and does not feel like fantasy.

Overall it feels out of place and not exciting at all.

Affinities have been part of the game since the Renegade edition. In some cases, they provide a great design tool where by making a minor modification to a card we can open up new playstyles and support multiple deck archetypes. In other cases, they are needless additions which not only hurt game balance, but also dilute faction identity. A big problem we have is that nearly every card added to the game since the game's initial launch has an affinity effect, and many of these affinities are very similar, with the same 5-10 effects used over and over again across all factions. This has lead to a steady homogenization of faction identities as we have rebalanced more and more cards, making it increasingly hard for us to keep each faction feeling unique. Many cards simply do not need multiple affinities (while some Twilight edition cards would benefit from having them), and this is particularly true with many spell cards where we have needed to nerf individual affinities to account for players being able to include both in their deck (and thereby bypassing the spell's designed cooldown).

While we have modified effects and swapped between affinities, we have to date not added any new affinities to cards which did not release with them, nor removed affinities from cards which once had them. This is largely because we view ourselves as stewards of the game and are therefore generally very conservative with our changes to the game's existing systems. At the same time, we feel like our choice to not directly add or remove affinities from cards has begun to hurt the game's balance and also damage faction identity. As such, we intend to begin adding new affinities or removing existing affinities from some cards moving forward as part of balance changes. To help explain our decision, we have included some examples of good and bad examples of the affinity system, as well as some clarifying questions. 

Good and Bad Examples of Affinities

[ Good Examples ]

1. Batariel - Batariel has a fire affinity and a shadow affinity. The fire affinity is designed to work as a solo-unit, while the shadow affinity is designed to enable other units to deal more damage. This makes the fire affinity good in Enlightenment decks and the shadow affinity good in Pure Fire decks, meaning that one card can enable or even create two different deck archetypes.
2. Soul Splicer - The core function of Soul Splicer is to turn corpses into a buff effect. The nature affinity's healing has always been good, and with the release of Random Wall Defense we see that the fire affinity's damage buff has a good niche in empowering archers from behind walls. 
3. Nether Warp - While Nether Warp likely does not need affinities in an absolute sense, the two affinities it does have both bring something unique to the table. The nature affinity's healing is better in PvE, while the frost affinity's slow buffs the spell's defensive capacities in PvP.
4. Equilibrium - Equilibrium is a healing spell with a built-in scaling effect based on the amount of nearby life points. The frost affinity scales with enemy health and the nature affinity scales with friendly health. This means that one affinity is reliable when used with a friendly army, while the other affinity can scale even with single unit compositions so long as the player carefully places it around enemies. This allows each affinity to work with different decks and find its own niche. 

[ Bad Examples ]

1. Sylvan Gate - Sylvan Gate's central identity is to bridge long distances between root network groups. Yet, because it started with an affinity, we had to give it mostly random affinity effects even after reworking it. Both effects buff units in a 25m radius around the Gate itself, but since the fitting affinity effects were already taken by Root Nexus we ended up adding two affinity effects which root network decks do not need or which are unbalanced. For example, the shield piercing on the shadow affinity is mostly insubstantial when used in campaign and random PvE maps, but it causes balance problems in defensive PvE and therefore needs to be removed. But what other shadow-like effect does the root network need and which would be fitting for a root connector card to convey? Additionally, Sylvan Gate and the root network are already very strong and do not need anymore buffs when used defensively. Therefore, it would simply be better to not have any affinity effects on the card rather than slapping on another random effect which would ultimately need to be so weak that it is ignored.
2. Skydefender - Skydefender is a T2 Bandit anti-air tower and because it was released as a Renegade edition card it was given two affinities. If a player were to chose which one to use, it would always be the shadow affinity which can bypass shields. If the card would benefit from shield piercing, it could be incorporated into the base card design, and not added onto one affinity while the other affinity does little to nothing in comparison (The nature affinity effect would only be useful in PvP, but dedicated anti-air towers are not viable in PvP). Attempting to find a 2nd affinity which is comparable in strength to shield piercing and which also fits a Bandits T2 anti-air tower might be possible, but it is a lot of creative energy which is better used elsewhere. And in any case, simplicity in design is often better.
3. Cluster Explosion - The primary purpose of Cluster Explosion is to do a lot of damage. Therefore, whatever affinity does more damage is the affinity which players are going to use, unless both affinities do so much damage that the affinity effect simply does not matter. Additionally, Cluster Explosion is purposefully designed with only 4 total charges as a way to balance the card. If we were to make the second affinity even somewhat comparable in damage, it would be slotted into decks as a way to bypass the card's inherent charge and cooldown limitations. We therefore are required to keep the shadow affinity purposefully weak, which is hardly a good design practice with an ultra-rare card.  
4. Lost Dancer - Lost Dancer recently received some changes that moved her into a good spot, but as part of the balancing we also reduced the affinity effects to a mere +30% more damage to humans for the shadow affinity and a mere +30% siege for the fire affinity. The unit also has its own counter, so these additional counters are entirely superfluous to the card's central design. We only left them because the card has two affinities, but we had to make them so weak they are largely afterthoughts in the deckbuilding process. 

Affinities are at their best when they enable new play styles and directly enhance the card's core function. They are at their worst when they detract from the core function, add unneeded complexity, or are randomly tacked on effects.

Clarifications

• Question 1 - Does this mean you are removing the affinity system?
  • Answer 1 - No, we will not be removing the affinity system. We think it has its place in the game and where it fits we will leave it or even expand it.
• Question 2 - Will you be changing all cards?
  • Answer 2 - No, we will only be changing some cards, and we will do so slowly overtime and with community input, just like our present balance process.
• Question 3 - What happens when you remove affinities from a card? What if I own one or both versions of this card?
  • Answer 3 - If a card has its affinities removed, any player who owns a copy of either affinity will have any copies they own swapped out for the new affinity-less version of that card. In this way, you will not lose any cards you own. For example, if we removed the affinities from Forest's Vim and you had 4 copies of the nature affinity and 7 copies of the shadow affinity, you would be given 11 copies of the affinity-less version after the balance change. Additionally, all upgrades the cards had will be removed and their gold refunded (in case you had both affinities upgraded).  
• Question 4 - What happens when you add a new affinity to a card? What happens to any currently affinity-less copies I own?
  • Answer 4 - If a card has a new affinity added, all of the existing affinity-less versions will be transformed into one of the affinities. The other affinity will then begin to drop from boosters like normal.

I'm wondering why there is such a big difference in stats between Skyelf Commander and Sky Dancers.

Both are rare, have good abilities, the same models, and the same attack speed. But Skyelf Commander has only half the attack damage and fewer HP.

Since Skyelf Commander is rarely seen, I think an adjustment (increase in attack) is necessary.

Or is there a reason for the big difference?

Iteration 1
1. Ice Bolt splash radius: 5m --> 8m
2. Gift of Ice Rework
   A. Now grants Ice Shields instead of damage reduction, Ice Shields apply to walls
   B. Permanent mode-change instead of timed, can be swapped back to attack mode anytime.
   C. New Description: "Grants an Ice Shield every 3 seconds to friendly entities in a 25m radius without. Each Ice Shield absorbs up to 450 / 550 / 700 / 880 damage for 30 seconds. Target cannot currently have an Ice Shield. Lasts until deactivated."

Iteration 1 Goals
Armored Tower has a particularly small splash radius for a T3 tower so we are increasing it to reduce the possibility of it missing moving targets and dealing reduced damage to M-size squad units such as Bandit Lancers. We have decided to move a different direction with the ability to allow Armored Tower to take on a full support role. Right now, Armored Tower's damage reduction overlaps with both Glaciation and Ward of the North. By changing to Ice Shields and allowing the mode change to remain indefinitely without needing to be reactivated, Armored Tower can act as a continual sustain tool for T3 Frost defenses. With the current numbers, one Armored Tower will be able to provide up to 10 targets with an Ice Shield over a 30 second period. Additionally, we have added the unique ability for Armored Tower to apply Ice Shields to wall segments. This will stack with Glaciation's damage reduction and provide a niche defense option in some campaign maps and the upcoming defensive random PvE.

I have to mention that I currently don't play pvp, though this card is clearly a pvp card. I used to play some pvp back in the day though.
The old Battleforge wiki even mentions that it is useless in PvE as is

Quote

Can only be useful in PvP.Cannot block PvE unit spawning

With this out of the way, does anyone use that card?
I honestly can't imagine anyone does.

The Card

The cards basic function is to block enemy players from spawning more of the same unit
-> shadow affinity makes it permanent (which is nice for a change considering permanents are pretty rare), well until the unit dies
-> nature affinity is limited to 30s but does 50dmg per second

 

What's wrong with it?
The utmost problem here is that it is a T3 Fire spell with 120 energy cost.
Being T3 already limits its use in pvp, especially as spell, especially for what it does. Now the price is what kills it.
Just to put this into perspective, imagine you play against someone who you know really loves Ashbones, maybe it's even his only t3 unit. So you spent 120 energy to block his Ashbone from procreating. What an act of genius, he is devastated, humiliated even, until, he sacrifices his Ashbone to call another Ashbone...
Net loss to you 120energy
Net loss to him 100energy
Even if he couldn't sacrifice his unit, even if he could never call another Ashbone ever again, that would barely justify the price. Skylords is not a game were amassing a single unit is usually a great strategy. Ironically the more expensive a card is, the less likely your enemy can play out multiple anyway (essentially anything above t3 120 energy are XL units).
As a T3 spell you might as just make it free and it would still be pretty reasonable.

Now I focused on affinity to Shadow. The Nature affinity card is an interesting one, it is quite different by doing 1500 damage to a unit which overshadows its main effect. That's quite a lot for single target damage, but it is still far from great, as it's really slow and there are many cheap option to counter it (passive building heal reduces that ~650 damage (1000HP unit, above 1500HP it will out-heal the damage)

Solution?
The thing is, I really appreciate the general idea of that card, I think Skylords could use some meta (no the other meta) strategies.
Like aforementioned I don't play pvp yet and I suspect it can be applied in PvE, so the following are just some unfunded ideas (not necessarily meant to be used in conjunction)

• reduce orb requirement to T1 or T2
• reduce energy cost to ~60
• (Shadow affinity) permanent, affected unit can't be sacrificed, but the spell can only be applied to one type of unit at a time
• (Shadow affinity) unit can't be healed
• (Nature affinity) 30seconds, affected unit permanently looses 2% of their health (max 20) every 2.5 seconds

I think those suggestions match the idea pretty well the name 'dying breed' very well. One makes sure the creature can't 'reproduce' while the other marks it inevitable death.
The last one sounds maybe a bit overpowered at first, even viable for pve, but it would take 2minutes to kill a creature, even longer for anything above 2000 health and obviously wouldn't work on bosses. Another idea with a different standard ability

• T2
• as long as the affected creature is alive, every other unit of the same kind (same card) played do not recover from summoning sickness
• (Shadow affinity) permanent, affected unit looses 10 health every second if there is not another of the same kind 50m around it (max unit cost 100 energy)
• (Nature affinity) after 5 seconds, for 30 seconds, all other units of the same kind 50m around the affected will loose 40 health every two seconds

The concept here is that one punishes the player indirectly from summoning more of it. Shadow affinity card should be a minor poison like sapping spell, that is less useful if the enemy has already summoned more than one or might encourage him to summon a second ) the energy cost should prevent it to be used on creatures that rarely get played more than once. Nature affinity card does the opposite by punishing the player from having already played more than one. The damage can be avoided though by separating the affected unit temporarily. but both shadow affinity and nature affinity can be used in combination to create a bit of an predicament.
Damage and price is debatable, price should be somewhere around the same as the units its used against, so immediate sacrificing them is about even or slightly favorable to the spellcaster.

This might give the card some value as a counter to wind weaver spam for example

As you all know, shadow in PvE is in a really weird place in the T1-T2 phase. Past T3, shadow has access to plenty of tools to equal the playing field with other factions.
At T1, shadow is in a hard place. But PvP balance & shadow identity make it hard to assure a good T1 in PvE. It is however still viable, with access to sustain, good range units, a global damage buff, and a viable tower in def scenario. Considering how careful balancing T1 require, owing to PvP, I'm going to concentrate on T2 viability.
 

T2 shadow is defined by 2 cards : harvester and shadow phoenix. All other options are clearly inferior.

Shadow mage foulplay + chaos knight neither warp TP is too cluncky, and impossible to scale up (you can successfully & with a limited range TP 1chaos knight for a good explosion, but more than one and they kill each other, so you can't scale the combo, & by itself it isn't enough).
Nightcrawler suicide rush and eliminator + rippers simply don't work well enough outside of really specific situations.

Harvester is overall in a good place. It benefit from lifeweaving for increased survivability, and can use stocked corpses from soulsplicer to insure the 1st use of it's ability.

Then we got shadow phoenix + embalmer's shrine combo. A combo that has always been problematic because it allows to basically crush any land armies while unbounding your army.
Now, I don't think having strong card combo is a problem in the game. After all, synergies are good to push payers toward complex deck building, and combo of cards also cost precious deck slots, a resource that was always at a premium, and a downside that is even more costly in the post amii monument era we are in.
Having said that, phoenix + embalmer combo is a clear outsider compared to others (Time vortex + FoF, viridya + lost shade, strikers + Fire Force, commandos + rioter's retreat, ...).

Contrary to all those, the phoenix + embalmer combo allows not only quick nuking of entire group of ennemies, but also the full unbouding of your army. That last part is what really make the combo stands out compared to all others.
It's also the reason why shadow hasn't received any PvE T2 support from the team. It's too strong, hence you can't up the rest of the faction.

For the short term, it's also a combo that is used as a short gap for the almost non-existent T2 amii. On the long term however, it will also keep the rest of the faction from evolving, like T2 shadow.

Now let's talk about the other options, should we ever do something about it.
 

1st the limits :
1) The unbounding part is almost impossible to remove, with phoenix in it's current iteration.

2) We do need to offer compensation, but also an alternative, to shadow T2, and to a lesser extend to amii & maybe even bandit & lost soul.
3) We should avoid destroying the combo, & more importantly the cards themselves.
4) We need to offer alternative to the affected factions.

The last point 3 points is what has motivated me to write this long post 😅.

Many ideas have been thrown around to solve the phoenix issue. There's basically 2 big side : make shadow phoenix spawn smaller phoenix or phoenix with less damage (the reduce damage per iteration solution), or increase corpses requirement after each resurection iteration.

It is the last one that has made me realise 1 of the biggest issues of the combo : embalmers shrine insanely high level of corpes increase +220% or x3,2.
It basically divide by 3,2 the resurrection cost of the phoenix. But outside of phoenix, the card is never seen.
So we got a card that trully enable the combo, but is never used anywhere else.

Right now, a phoenix can do up to 2200 dmg. Add dmg to buildings not generating corpses, ennemies shield, and overkill, and it's hard for a phoenix to pay for it's own corpse cost.
With embalmer, it's 625. 2 unit in the area is already 1100 dmg. even with shields & overkill, it allows easy resurection.

So my idea is this : rework embalmer shrines to reduce its combo potential with phoenix, while opening the card to combo with others shadow corpses based cards, like FoF, necro-blaster, shadow insect & altar of chaos.

To do that, it means reducing the bonus significanty while giving a better reason to play the cards in any other situations, introducing flexibility. We need to"de-couple" a bit the 2.
My idea is then to make the shrine passive, moving it to T2 &increasing itscost in compensation while cutting by more than half the bonus :

Orb cost: Shadow, Neutral (T2)
Power cost: 70-90 range
Charges : 4
Description: Passive : all corpses in the current game will grant (55-65 / 60-70 / 70-80) 80-90% more life points when being gathered

At 80% bonus, phoenix resurrection cost increase to 1111 instead of 625, meaning that at least 3 units per phoenix must be hit to trigger its effect. Additional testing must be done with the numbers of course (& maybe resurected phoenix will need to have an increased cost to 2500-3000 if trully needed), but this change is a step that allows us to both keep the combo with a slap on the wrist, while giving a new tool to shadow to combo with other cards.
FoF basically becomes 9% void return, but at a cost of 1/1.5 less cultist master at T3 bounded power in the shrine). It "gives" back to casual players a solution to automate their necro-blaster defense, so without cultist, but at a cost of an additional card slot (which in this case is alright, again a solo tower is problematic, a combo of card isn't, the player will have to sacrifice something else, like cultist).

Now for the compensation : we need something to help shadow T2 units (mage, knight, rippers, nightcrawlers, eliminator). I already made post on the subject.
What shadow T2 needs is a healing/sustain spell. There's 2 theme for shadow : corpses & lifesteal. Lifesteal is out of the question for T3-T4 scalability reason (thx Cocofang & Hrdina Impéria).
Furthermore, as pointed out by Tristan in previous conversations, we need to be carefull not to allow the new card to enhance harvester (PvP & PvE considerations).

After much iterations, the best idea I have than can work is to introduce a sustain shadow spell using the special effect from rippers; allowing units or the spell to consume corpses. Since many sustain options are 1 orb restrictive (nature heals but also bloodhealing), & in the idea to also help amii, I think it's faire to make the spell 1 orb restrictive :

Soul Feast Orb cost: Shadow, Neutral (T2)
Power cost: 90p (more ?)
Charges : 16
Description 1 : Summon a 25m radius corpse collecting aura in a chosen area. For the next 30 seconds all corpses in that area will be consumed to regenerate 35-45 life points every seconds to every friendly unit in the area. Reusable every 30 seconds.
Description 2 : Summon a 25m radius magical aura. All friendly unit in the aura consume nearby corpses to regenerate 35-45 life points every second. Last 30 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds.

I feel the correct regeneration rate is somewhere between 35 & 45hp/s. The new card will combo with our reworked embalmer's shrine, but most of all shadow mage doubled with a frontline of chaos knights or rippers.
This spell will give an alternative to shadow at T2 that doesn't enhance harvester.
I'm still not 100% on how to make the effect work in relation to range units (I prefer description 2, easier to implement, but the question for me is whether ranged units will have enough range to gater the corpses for regeneration).
The spell doesn't combo that much with ashbone, who tends not to kill things 1 by 1 but often all at the same time due to their flamethrower, & then moving away. Viridya already offer a 45hp regen every 2s to them, unconditionnaly.
Big XL units at T3 don't gain much with this. Only magma hurlers could be a bit of a problem (& even there unity G might be better so i'm not too much afraid).

The big upside of this spell is that it allows shadow to use both shadow mage at T2, and cultist master at T3, in an offensive way (blood healing with cultist master is impracticale).

To resume :

1) To nerf phoenix + embalmer combo, & open embalmer to other possibilities, make it passive in exchange for Tier & cost increase, & massive corpses buff decrease.
2) Give shadow/amii/bandit/LS a new sustain tool using rippers effect. To me it is strange that only rippers & overlord use this considering how shadowy the effect feels. This tool open shadow to shadow mage + frontline rippers/chaos knight combo, & use of cultist master offensively (shadow mage needs 35hp/s min to regen between 2 shots).

These changes should open more possibilities for shadow at T2, while starting to put in check the phoenix combo.

Your though ?

https://discord.com/channels/604212371828899851/739437604914855996/1388891178920837333

Have it Buff und thus scale T3 of size L and below, when in RAMPAGE, like a reverse Skydancer. I see it used alongside Giant Slayers (give that way more charges pls btw, Magma Hurlers or the upcoming Hell Hound. Imagine Jumping enemy camp with buffed giants slayers that run in with thunder wagons that go into tank mode immediately and buying time for a fire sphere to go off.

I see it buffing HP by 500, Dmg by 15% and casting a weaker and shorter version of Unity each time Thunder Wagon kills within Rampage or simply granting stalwart to all units taking away the biggest weakness of non-XL units.

This Buff would make playing Fire Bandits more appealing, than relying on frenetic assault/Infect each game.

Also we would see more  of Bandit Hut and Aura of Pain.

Mentioning Giant Slayers, How can we buff that card without breaking PvP?
My idea would be to give it more charges and adding either Gang-Up or Bloodthirst that strikers received.

Amok+infect+blood healing + earthquake + hero of power (more dmg). They are invincible, cheap and easy to play.

And obviously don't play them on occasions where you absolutely need card xy to get something done. Or put in a backup for that occasion.

I've tested it a few times. Is it viable? Kinda. But it's slow. However, the main issue is that it's tedious when you need to teleport 3 times in order to prepare the attack from the next camp. The turtles are already out of range, so you need to move the master archers or whatever unit you have, then teleport the WB, then move the skyelf sage, wait, repeat etc.

Yes, it can wipe out camps. But it's unfun to play. At first, I was trying to teleport the breeding grounds too. I quickly stopped that, as it's too tedious. So please change it. Or leave the skyelf connected and teleport it with the wb gun.

From that point of view, I do wonder, why do don't allow teleporting comet catcher? Not sure if anyone would do it, as it's still unfun to teleport again and again + micromanage, but still - what's the point of restricting it?

Is there any other powerful combo I should try?

I mean, T3 can cheat power anyway. In order to pay for itself, you need to wait at least as long as it takes to get 650 mana from a well. How long is that? 11 minutes? Idk how long it takes on average to reach tier 2. The later you get there, the later it pays for itself. Assuming you need 10 minutes to get t2, you won't benefit before minute 21. And you will be slowed down considerably for the entire time.

Thinking of it, right now, it's probably best to only use it on your starting wells once they have little energy (300) left to get the most out of it without the huge drawbacks.

So what do you think? Do you use that card frequently and benefit from the extra energy? (and please don't say pvp...)

+1000hp and regeneration turn almost anyone invincible. Plus they are very cheap. It should have 1 shadow 1 nature and 2 shadow or nature orb requirement. Or the effect has to be weakened.

As soon, as you have shadow + nature, it feels like a must pick. It complements with any other t4 unit and simply makes that unit 4 times stronger / viable.

Suggestion A : Let it loose Hp at a constant rate when not being fed, because of 'starvation' instead of being uncontrollable.

Suggestion B: Let it stay uncontrollable in its Frenzy State but devour ANY Unit in range including enemies(maybe exclude teammates)

As it stands now Tortugun is just a frustrating card to play with and doesnt provide enough power to justify that huge deficit of being uncontrollable and killing your own T4 units.

I'd be happy to hear any other suggestions if u can think of a better fix. Personally I prefer the first Suggestion but any change will do to be honest. Better than letting it stay a meme card.

I wonder why spells like Lost Evocation (lost souls), Amok (bandits), Twilight Pestilence (twilight), Plague, Maelstrom or Noxios Cloud only have max 8 charges when a simular powerfull spell like Regrowth, Bloodthrist or Earthen Gift (stoneskin) have max 12.

Would like to have an adjustment to max 12 charges for every of these spells.

I tried everything. So if after reading all of that and testing yourself you found a way, I'd like to hear it.

1) Solo Amii Sentinel deck with spells like Batariel 4/10.

2) The intended way of all 3 of the new units together. I tried to use 1 Amii Sentinel, 1 Skydancer with mass spam of Cores and used their 1st skill 5/10.

3) Same 3 units together but this time run / Nether Warp with mass Cores spam in the middle and explode them all and then heal with Healing Gardens 6.5/10.

4) This time I used Inc Mo. Yellow with Green Peace and mass explosions - still feels weak 6/10.

*When you get a lot of them they do indeed a lot of dmg but it feels so bad to get them into position and all that amount of set up feels bad for the end result.

If you think it as a super fun deck ugh maybe, but as at least a solid and functional deck? I would not use it.

Suggestions:

Cores 1st skill feels underwhelming to say the least. All that micromanaging with spamming the Z button feels bad. Need to change it completely, maybe somehow work a way to activate all of them together with 1 click??

The 2nd ability with the Skydancer actually feels really nice since you can activate mass explosions with 1 button and it does neat dmg, however without making the Cores super fast I feel like it's pointless.

Thus I suggest giving them high movement speed. The move speed buff could be a new spell or just a passive when it's near one of the other Amii units. I would also suggest maybe to somehow making the Cores spawnable without ground presence so I don't need the useless Amii Sentinel walking around doing nothing, but i'm not sure, could potentially be OP. I would give it a try imo.

my ideas stem from a stray thought i had, why not give each base elements a T2 xl units like the harvester? 

ones that each embody the elements core mechanic like how the harvester is a units that work using corpse and hordes of temporary summon. but also shore up some of the elements weak spot.

so i did a bit of brainstorming and come up with three cards to pitch, tell me what you think. 

first is ice :

Bear Bastion 

2 frost orbs /  300 power

a giant polar bear (using forest elder model) carrying four section of walls as a castle on its back, it cannot attack itself but small units can climb on the walls on its back like on normal ones getting all the usual advantages, those units can then attack enemies even while the bear bastion move like how battleship or corsair can.

the bear Bastion has three passive abilities and one active.

>>>passive

x Lumbering step: knock back and damage small and medium enemy units around it when moving, only affect ground units.

x slow: this units is 50% slower 

x rally: units summoned within 25meter of this units are not dazed.

>>>active

x the new frontier: the units turn into ice making it into a static building and cannot move anymore 'but mounted units can still attacks) until the power is deactivated, it is now a valid target for of spells and effect applied to or around buildings. this power can only be deactivated after 30 second. cost 50 power to activate / 30 second cooldown after turning off.

0 attack  /   XL 4000 hp

second is nature:

cornucopian monolith

2 nature orbs  / 300 power

a moving temples (using the construct model) made of green stone and tick brown roots its tower is replaced by a small livestream that create healing rays (like church of negation) but targets both enemy and allies, stealing health from enemy to heal allies continuously at about 15 hp per second drained per enemy units then spread across all allies in range.

the cornucopian monolith has three passive abilities and one active.

>>>passive

x selfless: this unit cannot heal itself, it also cannot be healed by any other mean while in combat.

x organic flow: wells within 25 meter of this units will produce 25% slower but deplete 100% time slower

x slow birth: this units does not appear instantly and instead need to be constructed over 30 second.

>>>active

x feast aplenty: drain a friendly well of 300 power sending it to the void pool and shutting it down for 30 second. cost 0 power to activate /  60 second cooldown after use.

-------attack  /  XL 3000 HP

third is fire:

sunspear vessel 

2 fire orbs 300 power

a flying ship built around a small sun, (death ray model with a fire orb inside the brazier and the skull replaced by banners and the prow of the ship by the shrine of war skull) this ship attack is an active ability athat affect all units and structure in front of it in a 25 meter range 45° cone but said damage is very low at first and ramp up the longer it attack. the catch is that it also hurt allies and has limited fuel that recharge when out of combat.

the sunspear vessel has three passive and one active.

>>>passive:

x explosive: when killed this unit explode dealing 2000 damage to all units allies and enemy in a 25 meter radius knock back small medium and large units.

x siege: deal 50% more damage to strucutres.

x astral mass: this unit is slower the more fuel it is holding. fully empty it is swift and completely full it is slow.

>>>active:

x liquid sunlight: the ship store the fire of the dwarf star it carries as fuel to attack it appear with an initial capacity at 1500 and can store up to 3000 and recharge at a rate of 50 per second, consume 150 per second to attack all units and structures into a 25 meter long 45° cone in front of the ship, the first second of attack deal 50 damage to all units and buildings in range and increase by 100% pf the base damage every second for a total of 1000 damage for the last second after 20 second of continuous attack, the sunspear vessels cannot move or cancel its attack once it start firing. cost 15 power / 20 second cooldown.

1. Increasing Ray of Light's healing to from 3% per second to 4% per second or from total 3300 healing to 4000 healing.

- Personally I feel this card is still a bit too weak and is too dominated by Surge of Light. I'd like just a bit more incentive to use it. I think for a slow, gradual healing spell it can pack a bit more punch still.

2. Reducing the cool-down of Shrine of Memory from 60 seconds to 30 seconds after being built or increasing the speeding-up of void return from 300% to 350% or 400% .

- I feel SoM is by far the weakest void return building of the four factions. I reckon this may have to do with Nature's faction design? Due to having to prevent too much abuse of voidlessness (mind control, promise of life, etc)? Either way, I always find myself craving one of the other faction's void returns and indeed often feel forced to go furnace of flesh with cultist masters as it just feels too slow. What bothers me the most is that ridiculous 60 second cool-down after construction. I get that with Shrine of War as it is so insanely powerful, but this one is kind of weak in comparison if you ask me, so it feels like too much.

Just some thoughts. Cheers!

Some might be useful in pvp (maybe the ones with *). If that's the case, leave them be. Else, they do need a buff, as they aren't played in pve at all. Btw: Do you have statistics about played cards to verify this assumption?

Frost:

Kobold Laboratory

Timeless One*

Amii Ritual*

Architects Call

Kobold Inc

Also, I do think there are too much towers. Thus many don't see any play.

Fire:

Warlock

Global Warming

.. I wanted to add Girl Power here, but I see that you changed the card already. Interesting. Will try it out.

Sun Reaver

Aura of Pain*

.. not sure about Dying Breed. Is it working in PVE? I think the effect changed too. Will try it out.

Boom Brothers*

Shadow:

Eliminator

Unstable Demon*

Altar of Nihil*

Infernal Chain

Second Chance

Nature:

Treespirit

Stonekin:

Deepfang

Stone Tempest

Earthkeeper*

Amii:

Amii Phantom*

I can't say much about bandit or Lost soul. 

EDIT: nvm found, for whoever is interested https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Rebirth_Edition

Since many other XL units got additional abilities, reworks, slow even removed (Magma Fiend), i believe there should be a solution for Construct as well.

Adding "Full speed Ahead" to Construct as a feature that only frost has might allready do the trick, as in mixed decks one would be encouraged to play with cards that grant ice shields as a balance.

As it stands now Construct has been never used in any Maps i played ever which is a shame. I understand Ironclad has completely taken over the role of ranged Frost XL, but still, the treatment of Construct is quite unreasonable.

Having been playing around with deepfang T3 creature.

I find the critters a little anoyying, with their range hit points, and the intreraction with the main units ability, I think changing hp or range will be reaching into card balancing, but can we add a simple summon new stonekin critter button to its abilities, maybe max of 2 as is or maybe 3, dont want the ability to spam them but i find i lose them frequently during fights and this nerfs the unit itself badly.