WindHunter

I'd say prior to the last round of PvP balance changes we were looking at the most balanced meta in game history. Reverting the thugs buff would rebalance tier-1 which I would argue was essentially done. Tier-2 was looking decent, minus bandits. Even then, a few very small tweaks like Bandit Spearmen getting knockback resistance (please) and Bandit Stalker being given siege damage could go a long way to fixing the faction's woes without affecting other match-ups. PvP was looking pretty good overall. Some factions had obvious advantages but I don't think we had any obviously overpowered Tier-1 or Tier-2 cards/combinations that were ruining the meta. I'm happy to hear that our new Dev team will be focusing on buffing some obscure PvE cards first, as we will all be pretty bad at PvP when we get back into it.

Thank you good sir.

Good guide, only thing is it seems you forgot Executor exists (unsurprisingly).

Do I actually want to win this?

This is a card near and dear to my heart. I used it as a crutch to get 12th on the ranked ladder at a time where everyone said it was useless. Before I go farther let's remember what it does: Shrine of Greed: Tier 2, Shadow/Shadow, 100 Power Building Transfer half of the void pool to the power pool instantly. For the next 30 seconds, no void power flows into the power pool and any power that would normally flow into the void pool is instead permanently lost. This debuff means that for 30 seconds if you use a spell, lose a building, or let a unit die you permanently lose the 90% power that would normally be refunded. The debuff is so crippling it makes the upside, gaining half of your void pool instantly, not worth it. The lose of a single nightcrawler means permanently losing 54 energy. Lose two nightcrawlers and it is worse for you than building a power well and instantly destroying it. The issue is, the debuff is so bad that you will lose far more than 100 power in the 30 seconds it is active. But, did you know Shrine of Greed's (SoG) debuff is tied to the building itself? If you destroy the building immediately after activating it, you lose the 90 power bound into the building but instead get half your void power instantly. This is clearly a bug but it makes the card incredibly interesting to play and gives Pure Shadow a way to run an incredibly long t2. Rediscovering the bug from another Pure Shadow player Eljyn(?) is what vaulted me into the top 20. It lets you turn a match you are losing into a game where you have 2 buffed harvesters on the field. If you have ever played me and wondered why my micro is below every other top player's, reading this should give you a hint. For 1v1 PvP In my opinion the card is balanced. If given the chance I'd redesign it to bring back Pure Shadow's old school t2 turtle into Harvester or 5-card T3 without requiring the player to abuse a bug every game. Once someone knows you have this in your deck(or is given the impression), they can punish you hard when you build it. I typically had to go one Power-well down when I built it and if I didn't get major value the game was essentially over. It is a true high-risk high-reward card and fits well in the Shadow faction. For 2v2 PvP This is the important part of this post. The widespread use of this bug had a detrimental effect on 2v2 in the later years of BattleForge. The issue is that both you and your ally get back half of your void power instantly and only one of you suffers a -100 power penalty. In 2v2 where there is more power already in the game, this gives a team with a Pure Shadow member an unfair advantage in the mid-to-late game. Assume all four players in a 2v2 match have 1500 power in their void pool. One team is capped at +20 void power per second with 1500 in their void pool while the team using SoG pulls out 750 power instantly and still gets 15-16 per second. This isn't healthy for the 2v2 scene and as time went on and knowledge of the bug grew, more and more teams started incorporating a Pure Shadow member. And that's why I'm making this post. I've seen talk of balancing and if we are going to be making balance changes it is very important for us to look first at cards that hurt the overall playing experience of the PvP communities and this is a card we need to focus on first. Discuss.

Very nice, I second the Dreadcharger

I meant how quickly we gain the boosters themselves, not the ratio of the cards within the boosters. That isn't something I've seen you mention yet though I'm assuming based on previous posts on daily quests it will have a cyclical effect where its not just about grinding in large sessions and you are encouraged to come back everyday. EDIT: Additionally, I agree that Lord Cyrian should be given a balance pass instead of being left as is. A few small tweaks to make him a bland but usable T3 XL unit.

I'm glad you were willing to change the ratio. Since I don't know the drop rate of the boosters themselves I'm going to assume you know what your doing.

Hardest deck in my opinion is Beijingguy's Root Network Pure Nature deck. The skill floor is something beyond most players(definitely beyond me). He either didn't have burrowers or deep one in the deck(can't remember which) which made his attacks almost entirely reliant on spikeroot.

Good to see after all this wait. I'm looking forward to getting back to playing and commentating.

I think the ideas you have conveyed here warrant some serious looking into. The system as created is not conducive for what we want to achieve with our reborn game and we should be looking to other successful f2p games as models. I would be on board with all of the changes you outlined. As a side thought, if we need money to help fund the servers, I think selling old promo cards might serve as a useful cosmetic or prestige incentive for drawing in revenue. It could also function as a "Donation-level" indicator, where your donations are added up and each time you hit a threshold you "unlock" a new promo card. Especially if UR cards are more balanced in their distribution like Synthc is suggesting, this shouldn't cause a P2W issue. I believe they stated somewhere ages ago they will just be putting the promos in the boosters. I think this would be a wasted opportunity to use cosmetics for server upkeep.

I wish this card was moved to T3 as a fire-splash card so it could be used in PvP. I've been dreaming of this since I started playing.

Firstly, I still don't understand why people are really against multi-accounts. Is it avoiding the grind or the PvP smurfs? The first is really a non-factor, as the game is fun enough to sustain itself without the need for a grind, and avoiding the grind increases PvP population. About smurfs, one of the reasons it was so frustrating before was that your cards were not equally upgraded, so your opponent's windweavers would stomp your windweavers and you'd just feel hopeless. Otherwise there are usually only 1-2 smurfs climbing ladder at a time and they progress upward rather quickly. I'd be surprised if you find a single top PvP player who doesn't want multi-accounts, it adds deck variety. Most people aren't willing to switch to bandits and watch themselves drop 30 spots on the rankings until they improve, as they have a lot of pride in their spot. That's also a recipe for about 10 ego-uploads in the same day and again, most people don't like to let their pride take a hit. Lastly, I think the ideas for changing ELO scoring to be based on cards or decks is unnecessary. It would also mess with the scoreboard pretty badly. The system is fine as it is, the people who stay at top will use 1-2 decks only, while the constant deck swappers like Ninjaflute will sit around the 20s. You should just realize that ranked score doesn't directly correlate to who is the best once you get to the very top, just a person's willingness to play a single deck according to the meta.

Like the two of us discussed before, I still think this is the best solution. This way we can pinpoint problem areas and remove them without hurting Pure Fire's main offensive abilities. No reason to nerf rally banner. I'm having a hard time seeing how Pure Fire or some bandit decks would stay viable in some match-ups without the ability to apply pressure this way.