Danol

Ok, I know I am late to the party. But since I don't like Discord, have played nature decks a lot lately (mostly rPvE) and want to share some thoughts on them, I'll just do it here. Obligatory "Primeval Watcher should not require 3 nature orbs" complaint. This has really ruined some decks for me and I don't think it was neccessary in any way. Besides that, there are some cards that I think don't perform as well as they should as well as general issues. Timeshifter Spirit. I really like this guy, he is basically a mobile Mark of the Keeper who can also heal. But there are so few situations that call for this card. He is pretty much limited to pure nature decks, and then only to T3, which is usually short to nonexistent in rPvE. I would love to use him more, so my suggestion is to give him the same speed buff as planned for Grove Spirit and maybe relax his orb restrictions. Nature needs something beefy in T2. It feels like there is a gap, compared to other pure decks. I would like to see some kind fo root network for support buildings that need to be activated. Like "link together two Fountains of Rebirth and the dormant one will activate once the active one is finished". Same could work for Healing Gardens or Shrine of Memory. Having to manually activate those buildings adds nothing but tedious micro-management once you built two of them and can have them active 100% of the time anyway, so it would be nice to get rid of it. Maybe slightly decrease their effects to compensate for the lacking downtime, but I don't think this is really neccessary. I think Giant Wyrm could use a slight buff. It is a straightforward attack unit that does nothing besides damage and it is not that good at it, given it's power cost. Sure, it's orb requirements are very nice so it is extremely well splashable, but this is irrelevant for pure nature decks and multi-color decks have better units to use. I rarely use this card and that's a shame - most other T4 dragons seem to get much more love. My suggestion is to slightly reduce its power cost. Maybe -5 for every update, so 285 in the end. I think Dryad should be affected by its own buff. I really like them in principle, but the fact that the Dryad itself becomes a kind of weak spon in your army because its own buff does not apply to it is a bit off-putting. If I, for example, go with a Windweaver plus blue Dryad combination, my Windweavers are noticeably more durable, but my weakest unit (in terms of suviveability), the Drayd itself, is not. This is not really a big deal, but it would be nice to have. Hurricane should affect medium flying units. Not for balance purposes, I think the card is fine balance-wise atm, but it just feels wrong that units like a Bandit Skyrake can fly through a Hurricane as if it's a sunny day. I'd slightly increase power costs to balance it out. Besides that I'd really love to see some use for root networks in rPvE, but I think this is more a question of "will we get a defensive rPvE mode", because root networks naturally should be more of a defensive tool in my mind.

As long as they manage to make those units fit into their factions theme, I don't really see a problem here. And I'm fairly confident about it: Every faction has a T1-Archer, many have a T2-Archer and they are still unique. As for the PvE difficulty: That's not quite true, If you, for example, add a card that is not worth using, nothing changes (as far as I am concerned, that's the point where Twilight Slayers are right now). That's also why I think that comparing it to Razorleaf + Root Network is a fair thing to do - when people are building their deck for a map, that's what they'll do. If Twilight Slayers are just not worth using if you could use Razorleaf, than either Twilight Slayers are too weak or Razorleaf is too strong. Since I think Razorleaf is fine, my conclusion is that TS could use some buff. In general I think the game is at a pretty solid point with regards to new cards right now: While there are over- and underpowered cards, there is also a fairly large middle ground and if a new card fits into that middle ground, balance does not change much by adding it. Which is a good thing, more middle-of-the-road card enhance deck variability. For example Banzai Lord and Wasteland Terror made new and interesting Badit decks possible, but I havent noticed PvE getting easier due to these decks. That's the spot I'd like TS to be in, too. But right now, they are a bit overshadowed by other defensive cards.

Well, I'd phrase it the other way around: The design of future T3/T4 Archers should take into consideration all the problems Twilight Slayers have. My suggestion is to make them immune to being knocked off a wall and give them a bit more range. Or maybe a passive ability to slowly repair the wall they're on while not in combat, which would make them attractive because they'd take a tedious micromanaging task away ... but, on the other hand, that sounds more apropriate for a frost or nature T3 archer ...

If (and thats a big if) this one card is absolutely neccessary for rpve 10, then rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced. That applies even if SoW remains unchanged, because such a design is just a fail. Btw no I'm not "wrong but right", simply because I never made a claim about rpve 10 that I could even be wrong about.

I don't even see how this is relevant to the discussion? If a map is impossible to beat without one specific card, then thats a problem with the map. A card being mandatory would be a proof that it's op, because it explicitly shows that no other card has comparable power. So even if you're right you'd just proven yourself wrong about SoW.

Somehow I did not notice this comment before, so my response is a bit late. Whatever ... Just slightly reducing the return (without further changes to the buff) would not bring it in line with the others. Goind with the 15% refund per kill, you can still get 100% refund every 30s. Take a look at what would happen if all my suggestions were implemented and only one player with SoW is on the map (basically the worst case for SoW). Everyone still gets a 100% return of void power every 60s for the cost of 150 energy (you'd need 28 kills for that, which is doable in 30s, especially in a 4 player map - just 7 kills per player). Shrine of Memory gives one player 84% return in 60s for 200 energy. Shrine of Greed gives everyone 75% over 60s for 200 energy. (For comparison: Without any of these, you'll get back 45% of void power over 60s.) SoW would still give the most void power for the least energy cost of these 3 shrines, for every player on the map. Shrine of Martyrs could yield more, but also restricts your playstyle more, so I'm okay with that - opportunity costs are significantly higher, so it should yield more.

Finding seldom used cards is not that hard (for the developers), but I doubt that these are such a good starting point. Card usage is determined by a bunch of factors, the power of the card is just one of them. For example most cards requiring 4 orbs of the same color will not be used as much as a card requiring only one orb of a specific color, because it can't be splashed (examples: Forest Elder or Dreadnought). Expensive cards might be used less, because many players don't have them, despite of their (often) obvious power. Mediocre cards that are dirt cheap and flexible, on the other hand, are used a lot (Giant Wyrm, for example), despite not being on top of the foodchain. It's like in real live: Popularity is a very poor measure for quality. You have to look at the dirty details, there's no way around it. The extreme cases might be worth investigating, though. If a card is almost always used if possible, it might be too good. If a card is seldom used even if possible, it might be too bad. But you definitely have to normalize with regard to orb requirements. And all that does not answer the simple question if the orb requirements are sensible in the first place.

The original game lasted for only 4 years, all the time in between then and now is meaningless. Btw. there was a SoW discussion back then but, as you might remember, there were a bunch of balancing issues that the original devs did not care about for ages. Wheel of Gift stacking, for example. Past ignorance is no excuse for current ignorance. Btw. yes, void power management was developed as a feature - not complete void power negation. That's why none of the other void power management tools is nearly as powerful as SoW.

Maybe, but trying to fix them all in one go is all but guaranteed to not find the best solution.

Yep, you're absolutely right. With 2 SoW in a game, the void power mechanic might as well not exist at all. The same applies if other void power shrines get buffed to the level of SoW. Void power was meant to impose a delay on power reusage, that is obviously not working if you can get your void power back nearly instantaneous. A simple comparison: Without any buffs, the void power regeneration is 1% per second, so to regenerate 99% of void power you need 459s. With Shrine of Memory constantly up it takes 152s. With SoW, it's 21 units killed. 5.25 kills per player on a 4 player map. How long does it take 4 players to kill 21 units on average, while on t3? Even if it took 30s it's still 5 times as powerful as Shrine of Memory. Even if you have only 1 SoW it totaly outperforms Shrine of Memory. It does not require the attention of Furnace + Cultist Master, it does not require specific cards/playstyles like Shrine of Martyrs, but also outperforms both and can be splashed easier. That's just insane. All that for a meager 300 energy, the cost of one (!) Great Wyrm. But, of course, there are always those people who think too much is not enough. Oh btw: Buffing the other void power refund options is not power creep, that's a power avalanche. It would be easier to just remove the whole void power mechanic, reduce spell cost by 90% and make units refund 90% of their power immediately upon death, because that's basically the same effect. Because they serve the same purpose: Void power management.

Well, my thoughts on the matter: In it's current state, the game needs more rpve content. Defensive mode, tower defense, pvpve ... new game modes. I'd love to play a MOBA-map, for example. more cards. Nature/Shadow or Frost/Fire - cards, for example. Those would add more options for deck-building and thus variety. balance enhancements. If cards are bad, players will ignore them and they thus add very little to the game. If cards are too good, players use them as much as possible, leading to repetitive gameplay. Both is counter-productive for the long-time motivation of the playerbase. bug fixes. There are not that many bugs, but some of them are quite annoying (dispelled buffs from wheel of gifts not getting reapplied after the dispell ends, for example). events like frequent official tournaments, live-streams, all the stuff that gets new players excited. So, in short: We need a constant influx of both new content and enhancements to the meta-game, combined with quality enhancements for existing content and better promotion. This, of course, is a lot of work - but given the current dev team expansion, I'm confident some of this will eventually happen.

There are some cards whose orb-restrictions should be eased, no doubt about that. On the other hand there are also cards whose restrictions are too lax or just right. So my suggestion is to discuss this on a card-by-card basis.

I don't think that this kind of micro-management is fun. Part of my reasons for suggesting the "once per player"-thing was actually that I'm a lazy ass who hopes balancing SoW goes hand in hand with getting rid of tedious, boring micromanagement. As for the "4 fire orbs" - suggestion: I don't think that's a good idea, because it vastly overshoots the mark. The goal is to balance SoW, not to totally exclude it from 99% of all decks. Pure fire-decks are a rare thing, so SoW would mostly get used with Enlightenment or Amii Monument, further increasing the power of these (already overpowered) cards. I could live with SoW becoming t4, though (2x fire + 2x whatever).

When playing RPvE in the last few months, I almost always saw someone using Shrine of War. When I build a deck with fire-cards at all, I include Shrine of War. The voidpower-refund it grants is just vastly superior to other means of voidpower management like Shrine of Memory. Voidpower is almost a non-issue when Shrine of War is active. I think that's a bit too good. My proposal is to make Shrine of War need two fire-orbs reduce it's voidpower-refund from 20% to 15% (u3) allow only one Shrine of War to be build per player (so you need two players with SoW to have the effect up constantly) The reasoning behind these changes is to make SoW a bit more rare, so we don't see it on every single RPvE-map, and to make it harder to have the effect up constantly, so void power becomes an issue again. Additionally I hope this would make other means of voidpower management more viable.

Yeah, but i don't always want to delete all my mail. Not even all my new mail. "Delete autogenerated mail" would be better - deletes all mails from achievements, daylies, auction house, but not other players mail. Your suggestion would make it very easy to delete some unopened mail from another player by accident. I don't think the 1 sec cooldown is an issue, I can't do anything else but wait during this time anyways ...