WindHunter

When I got online I was only able to successfully complete the tutorial and 2 RPvE maps. Even so, I have enjoyed the small time I've been able to play and I am very thankful for the work the team has put in reviving the game. I'll keep trying periodic (hopefully getting to play a bit more) and even then I'll patiently wait for a larger server and more stability. Keep up the good work Dev Team!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Hello, I have begun uploading some of the matches that I cut from Obesity's footage, 8 up currently. They are still poor video quality(some better than others) but the matches themselves are good. None of the matches currently up are commentated. I have put all of the ones currently up into a new playlist so they are easy to find. There will be more playlists for matches that are mostly tier 1, Non Obesity matches, and Colors for which I have a lot of videos(F/N, S/N, & F/Fr). I am currently holding back the 2v2s because their sound is the worst of the bunch. A few commentated matches will be up this weekend unless something unexpected happens.

If you check my signature, just updated, you can click the embedded link and go to my commentary thread. Inside I have a short description of what I usually look for in replays, but this criteria is suspended until the game actually starts. Do you have videos or the replay files? Unfortunately we do not have a way to view replays until the game comes out, but when it does I'd be glad to take a look.

Quick Update. I have all the footage and have been cutting it on-and-off for the last 2 days. By tonight all footage should be broken down into individual matches and organized. I will listen through a number of them to decide if I want to do anything with the sound. I haven't done any sound editing in about 1.5 years so I would need a relearn here, mostly worried about how much time this would consume; my second midterms and final projects start up next week so if this goes beyond that it could be a month before they get released. Tell me if you have any opinions here. Either way, expect a commentated replay(or 2) and replays I decide are fine sound wise(sorry I can't do anything about the video quality) by this weekend.

Has a playstyle second in lameness only to Church spammers. :P

I just want to be clear with everyone how much I can actually do. Video quality problems are very hard to fix post recording. You can't add something that was never there. If microphone static is a problem I'll look at a few things for fixing it, as I have options here. The goal is to preserve in-game sounds though. I would rather not have to just wipe the sound. The replays will take awhile. This is a lot of footage and I don't just want to dump it on Youtube. I will separate games by 1v1s or 2v2s. Then they will be further broken down based on if the game ended in t1 or not. Finally they will be separated by what color Obesity was using in the game, though I might just use this criteria for the 1v1s. I will hold back a few of my favorites and release them over time with commentary. I will spread them out so that you don't see them all right away and just binge watch them.

I have the time to cut and edit any footage you have. It should give me a refresher on video editing for commentating again in the future. I would also like to practice commentary again on a few on them, I would run any commentary past you before posting of course.

[quote='claun' pid='9212' dateline='1437686350'] Cliffdancers are op but you can not remove them without giving pure fire something else to keep balance, in my oppinion they should get the game to work before they think too much about balancing it. I am saying this despite pure fire not being my main deck. [/quote] On maps without cliffs Pure Fire is not weak. They do not need something to compensate for taking away something they never should have had.

I completely agree with Hiroo. Cliffdancers and Walldancers need to get removed. His breakdown of each map is fantastic and was what I was going to do before seeing his post here. The fact that the map-picking RNG could often decide matches because of cliffdancing was a very sad situation. Now for actual fixes, I'm not sure. I believe(please confirm anyone who remembers) that when playing on Uro, if I was attacking the top or bottom 3-well sections that my Forsaken had reduced range because of the minor cliff. Again, if I'm remembering correctly, archers on top of the ridge/cliff were able to hit my archers while I had to move my archers closer in order to get them to start firing. Also on Uro, when cliffdancing from the 3-well area on the bottom into the orb position right above it, the firedancer could only attack from certain positions. The large cliffs in the one area completely blocked the firedancer from attacking. These two instances make me believe that there is some kind of height metrics that we could use to fix the problem. It might involve just going into each map and manually changing the parameters on the cliffs to block projectiles from going over them, assuming my memory is correct.

Hello! I am Windhunter and I used to commentate PvP matches. I was one of the first native English speakers to start commentating and I can claim to have inspired FarRock to do the same. I was a top 20 PvP player when active. I have played nearly every deck in 2v2, but my 1v1 decks were mainly Shadow/Nature, Bandits, Fire/Frost, and Pure Shadow. I will begin commentating matches when the server is back online. Any match has the potential to be commentated, but I will only commentate high-level play. This doesn't mean it has to be a Top 20 replay, or even Top 50. What I look for in matches I commentate are mainly 2 important things. 1. Opponents are equally matched 2. A major source of ingenuity, technical skill, or smart play. Something I can point out as I commentate. Examples of number 2 include, Beijingguy, when possible, hurricanes into a wall to let his Swiftclaw have an easier time killing the enemy units. Top players like CDKillRoy use their scavenger to bite an enemy unit, then walk the scavenger inside the enemy unit to slow it down even farther, letting him set up his defense or get his well repaired. MaranV personally micros his Stone Tempest to keep up to 4 medium units knocked back at once. A few instances of play like this in a close match warrant me commentating it. I already have a Youtube channel with 24 PvP replays and 1 PvE. In the past I used to decide 5 minutes into a match I wanted to commentate then wing it from the beginning. Not so this time around. I will watch the replay in depth and make notes of major occurrences to make sure I point them out during my commentary. I will not do PvP lesson videos, FarRock has done a phenomenal job creating PvP lesson videos, if you wish to see these, please check out his channel. My Channel: WindHunter's Commentary I look forward to commentating some fantastic matches in the future.

Hey its WindHunter or Brooks. I'm an mechanical engineering college student I used to commentate and hope to get back into it when this gets up and running. I played BattleForge from the Renegade expansion to its death and was an angry forum warrior. I am an avid lover of shadow decks and shadow phoenix is my favorite card.