MaranV

Hey Navarro, obviously you can criticize whatever you like. I am fine with phase tower dealing half damage after a teleport rather than a power nerf, but claiming phase tower @ 75 power is equal to removing it from the game is not a fair estimate since it rarely inflicts a cost of below 75 power on the opponent. The same goes even more so for mortar (in defense), the large range, AoE and high damage means it rarely fails to deal severe damage to at least 2 units with 1 barrage, either killing them or allowing them to be mopped up quite easily. Which for frost is at least 100 power and for nature at least 120 (although arguably a bit less considering SoL's efficiency). In the end that equation is perfectly able to be expressed in power costs, regardless of how simplistic that might seem. 
I don't mean to step on your toes either but steamrolling nature with a mage blob was resolved quite a long time ago when (blue) dryad was released, and countering it became increasingly more in the favour of the nature players after the homesoil nerf. Considering it is a key card to help negate the fact you don't have an M damage modifier and you deal 25% less damage permanently. The outcome is greatly influenced by the placement of units on both sides (but primarily frost) and how effectively the nature player root snipes you. By no means is this unplayable for either sides, but you can try it for yourself against a skilled nature player like Natiac. 
I am also unsure what you are expecting from ranked PvP, we already had 5 years (even more) of ranked PvP and the 'counter' was quite clearly displayed in the rankings: don't play frost or nature t1 if you want optimal ELO gain. Which was for example very clearly displayed by looking at 2 (PvP wise) popular decks that offer the choice between any t1 faction; Lost Souls and Twilight. What we saw in the PvP rankings was that almost all of these players went for shadow and fire t1. 
I am also not sure if you are being ironic when saying you will play fire vs a phase spammer, since the entire point of the thread is to discuss frost & nature viability VS fire & shadow. Surely you agree that at least on t1 level all factions should have a reasonable chance against each other, right?
Although I can agree that some maps present more issues for frost and nature than others, they are only underlining core issues, not causing them. The core issue for nature being that their high power investment eventually forces them to attack the mortar, or the phase tower (although the latter is more often used offensively). The core issue of frost being locked out of most maps early, since they are slow and have no field viability to contest the initial field battle with. Which drives the frost player into the mortar/phase when trying to break out. But a mortar/phase nerf won't be the only solution to that since even a 100 power mortar isn't going to give frost an efficient chance to take it down thanks to its lack of speed and reliance on barrier walking for IGs, which is why I suggested IGs to spawn with shields. Trying to change almost every map would cost far more dev time & effort, while still not addressing the core issue.
In closing; You are right about 2v2; Dryad (blue) probably shouldn't buff allies to prevent guaranteed efficiently healed blobs, and I support making that change along with the phase/mortar nerf. 

Hi Radical, thank you for bringing these important points up. 
I've been contemplating writing a post on changing frost t1, so I won’t hijack your thread with that. The essence of my idea was also to buff the Ice Guardian (IG) in exchange for keeping the rather ill thought through home soil nerf. My idea in a nut shell:
1      1 Always let IG spawn with its shield enabled (instead of only near friendly bases)
2      2 Disallow the spawning of IGs within a 40 meter (2x coldsnap radius) radius of enemy power wells. This limitation would be overruled when the frost player has a well inside that radius, so IGs can still always be spawned in defense.
Point 1 would allow frost to contend for a small amount of the (initial) field (battle) and end the complete dependence frost has on taking the first well they can get to, as in the current state of the game frost can’t (reasonably) hold their own on the field. Which leads to the subsequent abusive situations of always leaving frost open to rushes, whether it is a swift spam that runs in between your bases until a well drops or a direct rush that becomes possible thanks to 100 power frost just invested in a well. Not to mention the more often than not situation of getting locked out of the map, which is especially noticable on maps like Haladur where the frost player has to take the first well that is conveniently located right at the base of a choke point that leads to the rest of the map. A choke point which on the other end conveniently has 2 wells & an orb for frost's enemy to take and lock them out.
Point 2 is optional (imo) and might be too restrictive for frost and/or too difficult to implement. But I want to prevent any potential abusive situations of dropping IGs on to enemy wells, even though this concern might be exaggerated as Frost has no swift units to quickly approach wells with.
Could you perhaps elaborate your idea on IG? As I am quite sure IG received multiple nerfs, and I’d like to read your exact idea.
Mortar & Phase
With regards to Mortar and Phase tower, I can only agree. I think it is fair to say that both towers are too efficient so I would suggest the following:
Phase tower – increase the power cost to 75, this would at least decrease the vast efficiency difference between the phase tower and its opposing armies. This would also decrease the spam-a-bility of the card.
Mortar tower – increase the power cost to 80, this would achieve the same efficiency equalizer and spam demotivator. The reason I think mortar tower should cost more than phase is because you often only need 1 mortar to heavily influence a game, considering its vast range, large AoE and large amount of spike damage.
The reason I think we should go for power cost increases as a first iteration of balance is because it is simple to implement, and just as simple to roll back or fine tune. This would dramatically increase the speed at which (these) balance iterations can be rolled out and evaluated, and most importantly will save the dedicated devs time, subsequently increasing the likelihood of the changes actually being implemented. 
PS: A small example of what Radical described in mortar camp shutting down t1 battles vs Frost (and t2 for that matter)
 

Hey Navarro, obviously you can criticize whatever you like. I am fine with phase tower dealing half damage after a teleport rather than a power nerf, but claiming phase tower @ 75 power is equal to removing it from the game is not a fair estimate since it rarely inflicts a cost of below 75 power on the opponent. The same goes even more so for mortar (in defense), the large range, AoE and high damage means it rarely fails to deal severe damage to at least 2 units with 1 barrage, either killing them or allowing them to be mopped up quite easily. Which for frost is at least 100 power and for nature at least 120 (although arguably a bit less considering SoL's efficiency). In the end that equation is perfectly able to be expressed in power costs, regardless of how simplistic that might seem. 
I don't mean to step on your toes either but steamrolling nature with a mage blob was resolved quite a long time ago when (blue) dryad was released, and countering it became increasingly more in the favour of the nature players after the homesoil nerf. Considering it is a key card to help negate the fact you don't have an M damage modifier and you deal 25% less damage permanently. The outcome is greatly influenced by the placement of units on both sides (but primarily frost) and how effectively the nature player root snipes you. By no means is this unplayable for either sides, but you can try it for yourself against a skilled nature player like Natiac. 
I am also unsure what you are expecting from ranked PvP, we already had 5 years (even more) of ranked PvP and the 'counter' was quite clearly displayed in the rankings: don't play frost or nature t1 if you want optimal ELO gain. Which was for example very clearly displayed by looking at 2 (PvP wise) popular decks that offer the choice between any t1 faction; Lost Souls and Twilight. What we saw in the PvP rankings was that almost all of these players went for shadow and fire t1. 
I am also not sure if you are being ironic when saying you will play fire vs a phase spammer, since the entire point of the thread is to discuss frost & nature viability VS fire & shadow. Surely you agree that at least on t1 level all factions should have a reasonable chance against each other, right?
Although I can agree that some maps present more issues for frost and nature than others, they are only underlining core issues, not causing them. The core issue for nature being that their high power investment eventually forces them to attack the mortar, or the phase tower (although the latter is more often used offensively). The core issue of frost being locked out of most maps early, since they are slow and have no field viability to contest the initial field battle with. Which drives the frost player into the mortar/phase when trying to break out. But a mortar/phase nerf won't be the only solution to that since even a 100 power mortar isn't going to give frost an efficient chance to take it down thanks to its lack of speed and reliance on barrier walking for IGs, which is why I suggested IGs to spawn with shields. Trying to change almost every map would cost far more dev time & effort, while still not addressing the core issue.
In closing; You are right about 2v2; Dryad (blue) probably shouldn't buff allies to prevent guaranteed efficiently healed blobs, and I support making that change along with the phase/mortar nerf. 

Hi Radical, thank you for bringing these important points up. 
I've been contemplating writing a post on changing frost t1, so I won’t hijack your thread with that. The essence of my idea was also to buff the Ice Guardian (IG) in exchange for keeping the rather ill thought through home soil nerf. My idea in a nut shell:
1      1 Always let IG spawn with its shield enabled (instead of only near friendly bases)
2      2 Disallow the spawning of IGs within a 40 meter (2x coldsnap radius) radius of enemy power wells. This limitation would be overruled when the frost player has a well inside that radius, so IGs can still always be spawned in defense.
Point 1 would allow frost to contend for a small amount of the (initial) field (battle) and end the complete dependence frost has on taking the first well they can get to, as in the current state of the game frost can’t (reasonably) hold their own on the field. Which leads to the subsequent abusive situations of always leaving frost open to rushes, whether it is a swift spam that runs in between your bases until a well drops or a direct rush that becomes possible thanks to 100 power frost just invested in a well. Not to mention the more often than not situation of getting locked out of the map, which is especially noticable on maps like Haladur where the frost player has to take the first well that is conveniently located right at the base of a choke point that leads to the rest of the map. A choke point which on the other end conveniently has 2 wells & an orb for frost's enemy to take and lock them out.
Point 2 is optional (imo) and might be too restrictive for frost and/or too difficult to implement. But I want to prevent any potential abusive situations of dropping IGs on to enemy wells, even though this concern might be exaggerated as Frost has no swift units to quickly approach wells with.
Could you perhaps elaborate your idea on IG? As I am quite sure IG received multiple nerfs, and I’d like to read your exact idea.
Mortar & Phase
With regards to Mortar and Phase tower, I can only agree. I think it is fair to say that both towers are too efficient so I would suggest the following:
Phase tower – increase the power cost to 75, this would at least decrease the vast efficiency difference between the phase tower and its opposing armies. This would also decrease the spam-a-bility of the card.
Mortar tower – increase the power cost to 80, this would achieve the same efficiency equalizer and spam demotivator. The reason I think mortar tower should cost more than phase is because you often only need 1 mortar to heavily influence a game, considering its vast range, large AoE and large amount of spike damage.
The reason I think we should go for power cost increases as a first iteration of balance is because it is simple to implement, and just as simple to roll back or fine tune. This would dramatically increase the speed at which (these) balance iterations can be rolled out and evaluated, and most importantly will save the dedicated devs time, subsequently increasing the likelihood of the changes actually being implemented. 
PS: A small example of what Radical described in mortar camp shutting down t1 battles vs Frost (and t2 for that matter)
 

Interesting point, however a mine can be dodged by a player that pays close attention. Mortar attacks can't be avoided, so I suppose that justifies the difference.  

Well, the eruption also does 300 damage to the well and any nearby units. But I guess you're right, I'd rather if people didn't make offensive mortars at all, and a mortar in the middle of nowhere can be erupted without hurting anything else. I was concerned with someone running up and erupting the mortar, then running away, but scavengers should be able to intercept and allow the tower to go up.
And I do think it will still be viable at 80 power, but there's also mine, which might just be better (bc you can use it in offense as well).

I agree with increasing the mortar's powercost. That lets it continue to function as a defense if someone is building a braindead army to attack you with, and it still allows you to punish someone for taking a well that they really shouldn't have. On the other hand, taking a well and instant mortar can get destroyed relatively easily, and now fire can erupt the mortar at any time (possibly the power cost should be 75 to be equal to eruption?).
It also still allows defense in fire nature when combined with roots (and fire nature needs all the t3 help it can get). Although again, 75 power might be better so it's cheaper than mine.
I don't play phasetower at all (even when trying shadow), so I don't have experience with it. I'm fine nerfing it to unusability, especially because I don't see a necessary role that it fulfils?
Alternatively, ice guardians could be given an ability for something like "if this unit is within 20m of a friendly well, all units within 10m of the ice guardian take 20% less damage from structures." Not sure how abusable that is, but that effect might prevent offensive tower attacks.

Hi Radical, thank you for bringing these important points up. 
I've been contemplating writing a post on changing frost t1, so I won’t hijack your thread with that. The essence of my idea was also to buff the Ice Guardian (IG) in exchange for keeping the rather ill thought through home soil nerf. My idea in a nut shell:
1      1 Always let IG spawn with its shield enabled (instead of only near friendly bases)
2      2 Disallow the spawning of IGs within a 40 meter (2x coldsnap radius) radius of enemy power wells. This limitation would be overruled when the frost player has a well inside that radius, so IGs can still always be spawned in defense.
Point 1 would allow frost to contend for a small amount of the (initial) field (battle) and end the complete dependence frost has on taking the first well they can get to, as in the current state of the game frost can’t (reasonably) hold their own on the field. Which leads to the subsequent abusive situations of always leaving frost open to rushes, whether it is a swift spam that runs in between your bases until a well drops or a direct rush that becomes possible thanks to 100 power frost just invested in a well. Not to mention the more often than not situation of getting locked out of the map, which is especially noticable on maps like Haladur where the frost player has to take the first well that is conveniently located right at the base of a choke point that leads to the rest of the map. A choke point which on the other end conveniently has 2 wells & an orb for frost's enemy to take and lock them out.
Point 2 is optional (imo) and might be too restrictive for frost and/or too difficult to implement. But I want to prevent any potential abusive situations of dropping IGs on to enemy wells, even though this concern might be exaggerated as Frost has no swift units to quickly approach wells with.
Could you perhaps elaborate your idea on IG? As I am quite sure IG received multiple nerfs, and I’d like to read your exact idea.
Mortar & Phase
With regards to Mortar and Phase tower, I can only agree. I think it is fair to say that both towers are too efficient so I would suggest the following:
Phase tower – increase the power cost to 75, this would at least decrease the vast efficiency difference between the phase tower and its opposing armies. This would also decrease the spam-a-bility of the card.
Mortar tower – increase the power cost to 80, this would achieve the same efficiency equalizer and spam demotivator. The reason I think mortar tower should cost more than phase is because you often only need 1 mortar to heavily influence a game, considering its vast range, large AoE and large amount of spike damage.
The reason I think we should go for power cost increases as a first iteration of balance is because it is simple to implement, and just as simple to roll back or fine tune. This would dramatically increase the speed at which (these) balance iterations can be rolled out and evaluated, and most importantly will save the dedicated devs time, subsequently increasing the likelihood of the changes actually being implemented. 
PS: A small example of what Radical described in mortar camp shutting down t1 battles vs Frost (and t2 for that matter)
 

Hi Radical, thank you for bringing these important points up. 
I've been contemplating writing a post on changing frost t1, so I won’t hijack your thread with that. The essence of my idea was also to buff the Ice Guardian (IG) in exchange for keeping the rather ill thought through home soil nerf. My idea in a nut shell:
1      1 Always let IG spawn with its shield enabled (instead of only near friendly bases)
2      2 Disallow the spawning of IGs within a 40 meter (2x coldsnap radius) radius of enemy power wells. This limitation would be overruled when the frost player has a well inside that radius, so IGs can still always be spawned in defense.
Point 1 would allow frost to contend for a small amount of the (initial) field (battle) and end the complete dependence frost has on taking the first well they can get to, as in the current state of the game frost can’t (reasonably) hold their own on the field. Which leads to the subsequent abusive situations of always leaving frost open to rushes, whether it is a swift spam that runs in between your bases until a well drops or a direct rush that becomes possible thanks to 100 power frost just invested in a well. Not to mention the more often than not situation of getting locked out of the map, which is especially noticable on maps like Haladur where the frost player has to take the first well that is conveniently located right at the base of a choke point that leads to the rest of the map. A choke point which on the other end conveniently has 2 wells & an orb for frost's enemy to take and lock them out.
Point 2 is optional (imo) and might be too restrictive for frost and/or too difficult to implement. But I want to prevent any potential abusive situations of dropping IGs on to enemy wells, even though this concern might be exaggerated as Frost has no swift units to quickly approach wells with.
Could you perhaps elaborate your idea on IG? As I am quite sure IG received multiple nerfs, and I’d like to read your exact idea.
Mortar & Phase
With regards to Mortar and Phase tower, I can only agree. I think it is fair to say that both towers are too efficient so I would suggest the following:
Phase tower – increase the power cost to 75, this would at least decrease the vast efficiency difference between the phase tower and its opposing armies. This would also decrease the spam-a-bility of the card.
Mortar tower – increase the power cost to 80, this would achieve the same efficiency equalizer and spam demotivator. The reason I think mortar tower should cost more than phase is because you often only need 1 mortar to heavily influence a game, considering its vast range, large AoE and large amount of spike damage.
The reason I think we should go for power cost increases as a first iteration of balance is because it is simple to implement, and just as simple to roll back or fine tune. This would dramatically increase the speed at which (these) balance iterations can be rolled out and evaluated, and most importantly will save the dedicated devs time, subsequently increasing the likelihood of the changes actually being implemented. 
PS: A small example of what Radical described in mortar camp shutting down t1 battles vs Frost (and t2 for that matter)
 

Hi Putin, thanks for your reply. I understand it is difficult to communicate through a translator. 
1. I think you misunderstood the point of the replay cast. The point was to show the absurdity in how well the nether glitch + mage spam works, no matter how poorly the shadow player performs.
2. Are we really going to pretend it is hard to defend with mages? They are probably the most efficient (power to damage ratio wise) unit for defense.   
3. Radical stated it was a bug and reported to EA, but that it was never fixed. Probably because EA pulled back nearly all development resources. Besides that you can read the card description and conclude the heal only applies to entering the warp, the glitch is that the game seems to think you constantly re-enter the warp if the start & end point are close to each other (even though you don't actually get teleported repeatedly). 
4 & 5. Spamming mages in combination with nether warp is not the only strategy you can try as pure shadow.

Hey, thanks. As far as I'm concerned the issue gets fixed in its core (i.e.properly applying the buff only once upon entering the warp). That would be the best solution, if the devs can pin point the cause of the issue of course. 
Thanks for your feedback too Prit, nice to see you!
 

I'm not sure whether this belongs in the technical issue category or just card discussion, cards probably is the best place to discuss this old bug. Come to think of it I have no idea why this was never fixed seeing that it is an obvious bug. 
According to the Nether warp (green affinity) card description every unit that gets teleported (warped) receives a 40hp heal every 2 seconds. The problems begin when the starting point and the end point of the warp are placed close to each other, effectively 'teleporting' to the exact same place, which results in the heal being applied twice. This effectively means an 80 hp heal per 2 seconds (actually 40 hp every 1 second). Combine that with an army of shadow mages and you get a broken blob of damage dealing & self healing that carries the shadow player against just about every deck that doesn't have lavafield or wildfire. This is nothing new, but now that we have an active dev team this might actually get fixed, especially since I've already seen several players abusing this bug by camping & building a mage spam. This will hurt the PvP community as frustrated players leave the game eventually. 
In my opinion this is a glaring bug considering the card is a teleport (warp) and you achieve this unintended effect by starting & ending the teleport in the exact same position, effectively nullifying the entire design of the card. 
The technical solution I would like to propose is to ensure that nether warp's starting and end point must at least be 20 meters apart, ensuring that the warp actually teleports you instead of giving you a heal on steroids. If anyone else has ideas I'd like to hear them. Thanks for reading!
PS: Found an old replay on YT to illustrate the issue:
 
 

I'm not sure whether this belongs in the technical issue category or just card discussion, cards probably is the best place to discuss this old bug. Come to think of it I have no idea why this was never fixed seeing that it is an obvious bug. 
According to the Nether warp (green affinity) card description every unit that gets teleported (warped) receives a 40hp heal every 2 seconds. The problems begin when the starting point and the end point of the warp are placed close to each other, effectively 'teleporting' to the exact same place, which results in the heal being applied twice. This effectively means an 80 hp heal per 2 seconds (actually 40 hp every 1 second). Combine that with an army of shadow mages and you get a broken blob of damage dealing & self healing that carries the shadow player against just about every deck that doesn't have lavafield or wildfire. This is nothing new, but now that we have an active dev team this might actually get fixed, especially since I've already seen several players abusing this bug by camping & building a mage spam. This will hurt the PvP community as frustrated players leave the game eventually. 
In my opinion this is a glaring bug considering the card is a teleport (warp) and you achieve this unintended effect by starting & ending the teleport in the exact same position, effectively nullifying the entire design of the card. 
The technical solution I would like to propose is to ensure that nether warp's starting and end point must at least be 20 meters apart, ensuring that the warp actually teleports you instead of giving you a heal on steroids. If anyone else has ideas I'd like to hear them. Thanks for reading!
PS: Found an old replay on YT to illustrate the issue:
 
 

Lol, you`ll be fine doing it too, when the missing packets issue gets resolved.
Yea his first question was about the MA match up. The latter was about rushing fire when they over well. I`ll take some time later to write something proper about how to play frost t1 in the current meta (or rather how I played it, obviously everyone is free to play it in whatever way they want). But in a nut shell rushing with frost is a no go simply because you are nowhere without Ice Guardians (IGs) and in the current meta they can only be spawned at friendly wells/orbs, subsequently meaning you`ll be spending anywhere between 60 to 100 power on ice barriers to even be able to move in. At least in a manner that won`t be giving away guaranteed efficient eruptions. Of course this is assuming the fire (or shadow for that matter) player actually used his speed and subsequent  map control to not choose a well that is within 100m range of a frost well. 
 

Hi, 
A friend of mine told me there is a possibility to reclaim your old (in game) name. I would like to reclaim my old name MaranV (currently named Maran ingame), as it has been taken by someone that named their character/account 'maranv'. I trust that my forum name and allocated e-mail address are proof enough but if you need more information I`ll gladly help out. 
Kind regards,
Maran