Sacriefice

There are a couple of cards that I feel like discussing, but I don't like collection topics and somehow this card bothers me the most recently. 
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
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

System messages are red, deck locked, something like this.
Dialogue is what spams the chat window

I run into a bug today where I tried to transform 'Twilight Minions' into 'Nightshade Plant' (on Insane god - expert) but the transformation process got interrupted (likely by knockback or dino anti magic zone). The minions didn't transform, the charge got consumed and it stopped recharging. I could still select Nightshade Plant for transformation but nothing happened.

Sadly I forgot to save the replay. Maybe my friend still has it, will add it later then.  there isn't much to see in the replay. But I think one of the dinos with the anti magic zone was the cause.
 
 
transformation_Bug_Report.pmv

This card bothered me basically since it existed, because I literally have not seen it being used. And why does a card exist if its not even played by anyone.
I like the fact that you already came up with solutions, which actually sound reasonable. Having access to this card at T2 could actually help Fire in PvP to prevent f.e. a lot of war eagles spawning, or a lot of burrowers. But you still can´t really ignore an enemie unit in PvP, can you? It will just destroy your wells. And if you still have to kill the unit, the effect is gone. 
Your ideas would have following upsides, that one Affinity would be better in PvP (purple) and prevent mass attacks of problematic units, while the other would be useable in PvE (green) and would be stroing vs big targets like harvester. But would that be enough to justify an incusion in your PvP deck? idk
 
I also have some ideas for the card: the way the effect looks, it suggests that if would affect not just one unit but all units in the area around the target. What if this card would introduce light CC for fire? Possible effects could be:
the target and all units around it get slowed a lot (weighted down by the burden of being the 'dying breed') the target and all units around it can´t attack for 5 seconds (their attacks get 'locked' as the image suggests - e.g. like the effect of Cyrian) all units around the target flee from the affected unit and have to move out of the circle - freeing the way to focus the target and adding a light CC because all other units run away instead of attacking your units (idea also came from the image, as it looks like there are no allies around the target anymore) - I like this option the most but it sounds the hardest to implement into the game  
Maybe one of these effects could be added alongside the standard-effect of the card that no units of the same card can be played for 30sec. And paired with the effect that the target takes a %dmg of his max health every 2 sec. 
 

I can only comment on this section and say we try to improve the game on this front: clear and easy to grasp visuals as well as accurate descriptions are being worked on Especially for new releases and reworks.
I hope this shows in past releases and will show in future ones too. 

Would it be possible to remove duplicate buff icons, or giving temporary buffs priority?
Every time someone places wheels in rpve my SoW activation suffers from it, because I don't see when it runs out, instead wheels unnecessarily take up every single icon slot.

I considered making all of these their own threads, but they are all rather smallish suggestions. Either way its not very beautiful.
Market
set the buyout price automatically to the cheapest buyout price on the market if there is one I think most people try to sell the card for about the same price, meaning you have to search in the marketplace for the card first then switch tabs to type in the price. Since the market is a bit sluggish that takes a couple of seconds for every card which can add up, if you sell a lot of cards.
add the search filter/options tooltip for the card library to the market New players might not be aware that they can use them there
Chat
filter out pve (yellow) messages. This could also be a third tab for only player messages.  If someone whispers to you in the game the message can easily get lost
stop scrolling up when resizing chat window Pretty annoying imho. When chat history loads up, it even gets hard to hit the scroll bar with your mouse.
Card Effect Info
add effect icons to abilities like rage, charge attacks Some units already display if they are in rage, but not at what stage of rage they are, or even what the damage increase is. Same for charge attacks.
I think it's hard especially for newer players to understand, how often they can use the charge attack or when (how many times) rage increases.
I hope for something like Banditos, they show you what the buff increase is, without having extra information float on top of units like Mountaineer (which imho hurts the immersion a bit).
Upgrade Distribution
make Need/Greed the default Distribution method I think the only people using random is usually because they don't care about grinding upgrades on cpve and grind rpve instead, so it is random just because it is default. I can't think of any other good reason to use Random. There are also a few people who use Assign and those fall in another of two categories; They want to make sure they get one specific upgrade (or all if they are uncomradely); Or they disenchant every upgrade to optimize gold gain.
This leaves Need/Greed as the only "fair" distribution method. It is in no way perfect and even back in EA times people pointed out that it is unnecessarily confusing and suggested better systems, but it's the best system we have at the moment. 

This is really just semantics, we mean the same things. Even if it is not the same, it still is similar, redundant information. To my knowledge there are only 2 differentiations
1. effects that only affect yourself
2. effects that affect yourself and your teammates
possibly 3 for effects that also affect your enemy, but I don't think they are displayed for you.
I suspect there is any effect in the game that only targets a specific teammate.
I'd like to know what the reason was. My first guess was pvp, but do enemies even see your buffs?
Do you mean with 'only your own buffs' that this doesn't include teammates buff that also affects you?
If this is the case I would agree.
Otherwise I don't see a good reason to display buff icons for every teammate for the same reason, that a single buff can clog up your global buff displays, to the point that you don't see any other buff anymore.

I considered making all of these their own threads, but they are all rather smallish suggestions. Either way its not very beautiful.
Market
set the buyout price automatically to the cheapest buyout price on the market if there is one I think most people try to sell the card for about the same price, meaning you have to search in the marketplace for the card first then switch tabs to type in the price. Since the market is a bit sluggish that takes a couple of seconds for every card which can add up, if you sell a lot of cards.
add the search filter/options tooltip for the card library to the market New players might not be aware that they can use them there
Chat
filter out pve (yellow) messages. This could also be a third tab for only player messages.  If someone whispers to you in the game the message can easily get lost
stop scrolling up when resizing chat window Pretty annoying imho. When chat history loads up, it even gets hard to hit the scroll bar with your mouse.
Card Effect Info
add effect icons to abilities like rage, charge attacks Some units already display if they are in rage, but not at what stage of rage they are, or even what the damage increase is. Same for charge attacks.
I think it's hard especially for newer players to understand, how often they can use the charge attack or when (how many times) rage increases.
I hope for something like Banditos, they show you what the buff increase is, without having extra information float on top of units like Mountaineer (which imho hurts the immersion a bit).
Upgrade Distribution
make Need/Greed the default Distribution method I think the only people using random is usually because they don't care about grinding upgrades on cpve and grind rpve instead, so it is random just because it is default. I can't think of any other good reason to use Random. There are also a few people who use Assign and those fall in another of two categories; They want to make sure they get one specific upgrade (or all if they are uncomradely); Or they disenchant every upgrade to optimize gold gain.
This leaves Need/Greed as the only "fair" distribution method. It is in no way perfect and even back in EA times people pointed out that it is unnecessarily confusing and suggested better systems, but it's the best system we have at the moment. 

Would it be possible to remove duplicate buff icons, or giving temporary buffs priority?
Every time someone places wheels in rpve my SoW activation suffers from it, because I don't see when it runs out, instead wheels unnecessarily take up every single icon slot.

who is stronger, 
10 Promos
vs.
1 Promo + 200 Mountain Rowdies + 1400 trash cards
checkmate
 

who is stronger, 
10 Promos
vs.
1 Promo + 200 Mountain Rowdies + 1400 trash cards
checkmate
 

Effect seems to work as intended but the English effect description is wrong

As we announced in our Towers Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass across all attack buildings in the game. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for our second round of building changes. The original master thread can be found here. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change. 
Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes

The following buildings have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads.
Previously Announced:
Rocket Tower Stronghold Newly Announced or Updated:
Armored Tower Ice Shield Tower Fortress Changes 

One category of towers we spoke of in our Deep Dive were Fortresses. Fortresses are expensive towers from T3+ that have large models. Due to the way space works in BattleForge, larger towers should have higher stats in comparison to other towers as you can build less of them in a given area. We have decided, outside of the unique case of Church of Negation, to make 200p the base cost of Fortresses. This allows us room to pack more stats into a single building. Our goal is to move Fortresses in the direction of self-sufficient defenses that can hold positions even in those locations where you might only be able to build one or two.
 Deepgorge
1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m.
While Deepgorge has substantially increased in strength since the most recent changes, particularly in connection with North Star(b) with which it naturally synergizes. Unfortunately, due to the tower's large size, its ability radius is still too small when the tower is placed behind a wall making it difficult even for a well-placed Deepgorge to hit all melee attackers on long walls. 
 Howling Shrine
1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total ➜ 750, up to 1125 in total (3750 dp20)
2. Crowd control duration (both affinities): 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds
Howling Shrine is feeling better after the buffs both to itself and to the root network in general. When the initial changes were proposed, some people suggested larger buffs to the card but we urged caution due to the difficulty in account for how things would change once the full set of root network changes came through. Now that we can evaluate the changes more fully, it appears that Howling Shrine is still a tad on the weak side. To remedy this, we are giving it a +25% damage increase and increasing the duration of both its root and paralyze to help it keep dangerous melee units at a safe distance. 
 Volcano
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20)
3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690
4. Infused Eruption's (red affinity) Rage:
   A. Rage scaling: 100%/200% ➜ 75%/150% 
   B. Rage timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds
   C. Attacks per stack: 4 attacks ➜ 3 attacks
5. Lava Sea
   A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   B. Bugfix the ability so that it works
Making Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the nerf to Rage's percentile damage increase (12,000 --> 13175 dp20). Additionally, the rage should activate substantially sooner. Previously it took 29 seconds in combat to full scale, now it should only take 22 seconds. One thing we learned in the wake of Volcano's previous changes is that its Lava Sea ability is bugged and does not work. Fixing the ability to function as advertised should do much to make Volcano a larger threat. 
 Worldbreaker Gun
1. Life points: 4500 ➜ 5400
2. Descriptive: Add "Has a long range of 50m" to its Ground Attack description.
WBG is the best defense in the entire game, but that is achieved primarily through its Heavy Snowball ability augmented by Skyelf Sage. In terms of functions as a tower, it is still good but has uncharacteristically low life points for its cost and tier. We are giving it a slight bump in total health, which should help it when functioning as a tower while leaving it unchanged as a long range artillery piece. 
Minor Changes

It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. All values below are U3. 
 Artillery
1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m
2. Increase turret turn speed. 
Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall.
 Fire Bomb
1. Damage: 715 up to 1650 in total ➜ 720, up to 1800 in total
2. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Allow to hit air units & enable splash overflow fix.
 Hammerfall
1. Increase turret turn speed.
2. Breeze of Life (g) / Breeze of Strength (b):
   A. Maximum capacity: 1500 ➜ 3000
   B. Recharge rate: 15 per second ➜ 40 per second
   C. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Breeze of Strength, Ice Shield cost: 495 capacity ➜ 600 capacity
Increased turret turn speed should increase damage output due to faster target tracking. Change to affinity effects: Higher maximum capacity should make both affinity effects better, but especially the healing one which is only drained as required. Higher recharge rate means that a new Ice Shield can be bestowed every 15 seconds instead of every 33 seconds, even with the higher cost. Range increase to make it easier to place units around it. Total charge time is now 90 seconds. Additionally, Hammerfall's shields do not decay while within the aura. This makes them a stable source of extra health for allied units. Hammerfall's recharge and healing is still less than Healing Well's, a T2 60p card, with the same maximum capacity.
 Infected Tower
1. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1215 dp20) ➜ 138, up to 207 in total. (1466 dp20)
2. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m
+20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it.
 Kobold Laboratory
1. Mason Mastery radius: 25m ➜ 30m
2. Material Research: 
   A. Changed buildings ➜ buildings and walls
   B. Allow repairing while in combat
   C. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   D. New description: "Friendly buildings and walls in a 30m radius have 50 / 50 / 50 / 70% lower repair costs and are repairable in combat."
Allow Kobold Laboratory to have a niche use in defense and to provide something beyond what Glaciation is capable of providing. Change is meant in preparation for DRPvE and will also be useful in maps with prolonged defenses, especially near walls.
 Lost Converter
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. Corpse cost to freeze: 200 ➜ 250 stored life points
 Morklay Trap
1. Enable splash overflow fix
2. Explosion Blast total damage: 2640 in total ➜ 4400 in total
Increase total targets from 3 to 5 and enable splash damage properly transferred even when units die.
 Stone Hurler
1. Damage: 100 damage, up to 150 in total (834 dp20) ➜ 120 up to 180 in total (1000 dp20)
Align actual damage with stated damage on the card.
 Twilight Bombard
1. Remove "Siege" from Infused affinity
2. Add "Rage" to Infused affinity. 
   A. Stage 1: +25%; Stage 2: +50% damage
   B. Attacks per stage: 3
   C. Reset timer: 10 seconds
3. Increase turret turn speed. 
Twilight Bombard (r) has Siege as its affinity effect, which is largely useless. By changing it to Rage instead, we make the choice between the two affinities one of increased damage versus crowd control.
 Waystation
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. New passive, Fast Construction: Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Infused damage buff: 30% ➜ 40%
4. Tainted poison damage: 30 life points every second ➜ 40 life points every second
5. Corpse storage: 2500 total ➜ 4500 total
6. Corpse cost per potion/poison (both affinities): 180 ➜ 400 stored life points will be used up.
7. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
The first step in what will eventually be a full rework of Waystation. For now, the addition of fast construction means it can be set up offensively as its name suggests and the addition of Soul Suction means it should be able to easily gather corpses to fuel itself. Gave a small boost to both affinity effects and increased the radius to require ranged units to enter its effective radius to damage it.

Since we are past submission date. 
Don't think I'm gonna make it far. My deck is severely un-upgraded.
Even had to buy a t4 building to even being able pass the requirements 👌
I went for some style points, because I tried make all cards work as a self set goal.
But was fun to try
 
 

Since we are past submission date. 
Don't think I'm gonna make it far. My deck is severely un-upgraded.
Even had to buy a t4 building to even being able pass the requirements 👌
I went for some style points, because I tried make all cards work as a self set goal.
But was fun to try
 
 

But isn't that a problem because walls against t4 enemies are little more than cardboards, just there to buy you a couple seconds.
Don't see how stronger archers will fix this. Your best options would be CC, but this pretty much rules out fire/shadow.
I don't even remember anyone using rifle cultist on walls (ok they are rather weak but still).
Not to mention enemy abilities that just throw you off walls and deny them for some time.
Higher tier archers would all need resistance against this or justify it with some incredible power/price ratio or greatly buff the walls they are standing on

hire this man.
Your Avatar is fitting, it reminds me about another thing; Seeing a Deepcoil Worm today I though how neat a small worm squad would be