LagOps

upgrade tokens got entirely removed (as far as i am aware, they also are no longer in the alpha) and gold will be the only thing required to buy upgrades (again, as far as i am informed). gold rewards and gold required for upgrades will naturally be adjusted accordingly! i highly doubt i would swagger around with my 1 mio+ gold as i did back in the days...

it's true, you can mail bfp, but you can NO LONGER mail gold. if the gold rewards are well chosen, you will lack gold if you multiaccount on your main and can't upgrade all the costly ultras/rares you could buy with the extra bfp. i feel the current proposal strikes a good balance between having a fun system for the regular players, while making multiaccounting ineffective.

i can recall lb taunt causing issues with disenchant, i think disenchanting after the taunt didn't work.

I will eventually add a matchups section for the bandits guide, but i will be kind of busy for the next month(s), so no promisses there.

@Ultrakool This is a very good point and maybe should be mentioned in the opening post as well. Overall i really do like the proposal since tokens were more of a reminder to grind rpve (for pvp players), because you had so many honor tokens and no battle tokens at all, than an actual reward system. Tokens were confusing and i also like gold no longer beeing tradable. So many players got scammed during gold trading, there was hardly a day where someone didn't try to trick other players with it. Overall a very solid proposal and i don't think there is anything to add to it.

I have one more question: will the dayly quests be the same for all players or will each player have a different set of quests? Everyone having the same quests would result in more players playing ceratin maps and modes so you might have an easyer time finding other players (finding players in tome pvp or 12 player maps), but this might mean that it will be harder to find anyone in any other mode (for instance: quest is 1v1 pvp ranked -> fewer players in 2v2 ranked).

@FrozenRipper: I couldn't have said it any better. I think i might want to add that stonekin can not even afford to play any t3 usually, which gives you a chance of beating them if they only turtle later in the game. Stonekin is allready very powerfull in late t2 and with a 5 card t3 i often feel that there is hardly anything i (as a bandits player) am able to do to win the game. Let's just add: "treespirits are too slot efficient and too strong in defense" to the whine list. We only want to collect issues here, remember?

Spamming 1 single unit should not be viable by any stretch of the imagination. But it is more than viable; it is so stong that the awesome complexity of nature t1 often is entirely replaced by a single card. It's not only about how strong and safe this is in t1, it is also about how many slots you can save to play all kinds of extra cards in t2 and t3. You can at least go even in t1 because of how hard it is to do anything offensive against treespirits and then win in t2 and t3 just because you can have all kinds of optional cards in your deck.

On one had the free to play was very fair and on the other it was very unfair. There was nothing a free to play player could not get. Imagine if there were extra deckslots you would have had to buy (only with real money!) or any other cracy stuff you find in other games. At least you could get the paid currency via trading (not allowed in other games, not even in "trading" card games). However, it took forever and for instance pvp was entirely unplayable until you spent like half a year in the game doing pve and trading. You just got stomped or ran out of charges. So much fun...

@xHighTech Let me be very clear: My comment was not directly aimed at you. There are others which are far less resonable (i do not call names here) and actually i think you are beeing resoable as long as no outrageous claims are beeing made. You should try to remain a bit more calm and just ignore posts which clearly indicate a lack of skill. These posts will not have any effect whatsoever if the balancing team is halfway decent. This topic has been made to provide an unfiltered list about balancing issues present in the game. As stated by op, even if all kinds of cards/issues are on this list, not all have to be adressed. There surely are questionable choices on it, no doubt. Especially "unit x is op" statements often correspond with a lack of skills and experience. There will allways be discussions, that's true. This is especially true for tactics requireing low skill to execute and require a higher amount of skill to counter such a cliffdancer. Most high ranked players share a simmilar view in terms of game balance (as long as they want the game to be balanced) and as long as they are somewhat in charge/ have a say in terms of balance i doubt "unit x is op because i just lost" arguments will have a significant impact. Players have opinions, no matter what skill lvl they have. They can be wrong. They can be convinced that they are right even if they are clearly not. As long as balance is not decided by a public vote, i can't see a problem with that.

Let's be real here: Is is possible to win players at an equal skill level (in terms of mechanics) with a bandits deck? Yes, i have done so. No real "autolose" situations (that is: the enemy will win no matter what). However: You only win those matches if you have a better gameplan, mindgame your enemy and/or pull ahead in t1 against certain problematic factions. This is hardly something that happens all the time and the room for errors is very slim in some cases. Still, bandits are not as terrible as most players make it sound, it is certainly not a troll deck. Does that mean it is balanced? Certainly not! I doubt that the top 50 winrate (i say top 50 here, otherwise there would just not even be a sufficient amount of players for the statistics) of bandits would be near the 50% mark and in some matchups (lost souls, stonekin, shadow/nature) it feels like it is close to just 30%. The only favorable matchup i can think of is pure nature and you usually go even or have a slight edge (depending on deck build) against pure fire. Every nature-splash and frost splash has a major advantage by having protects and cc or having cc and burrowers. Most players cannot utilize this advantage very well since they in general lack experience vs. bandits because the faction is so underplayed (get baited into using cc poorly or use protects when i never really tried to take the well etc. etc.). If my oponents had the same experience/insight into the matchup as i did, i would have a very hard time in these matchups because i could not surprise them very well or play around my weakpoints properly. Bandits both have no cc and only have units at their disposal which are highly suceptible to cc. If the enemy does not misplay his cc, the bandits player can get devestated by the slightest misstep. In my opinion bandits would need a unit which is cheap and ranged and cannot be knockbacked, so they at least stand a chance against nature cc in defense. Frost defense is somewhat managable with shadow phoenix against clusters, just shadow frost is very hard to deal with. In this case the issue lies at shadow frost in my opinion and i would not buff any bandits units before shadow-frost is in a healthy state (t2 too effective and safe for the amount of deckslots it takes, allows for extra cards in t1 and especially t3). I would love to see a bandit sniper card in this faction (filling the cheap, ranged and hurricane proof role), that one might just solve a lot of issues against cc. I honestly think this is all what it needs; sure there are other bandits t2 cards but they usually are only usefull in offense and there they only help in matchups which are not that bad for bandits players. Most bandit t2 cards (just look at banditos) do not fill any role in the deck and are in general poor designs. I doubt that we could make any of them viable without giving them entirely broken stats (even bandit spearman are not having broken enough stats te be worth a slot imo). I am not in favor of giving bandits any sort of hard cc/strong defensive spell, it just does not fit the faction. No cc and beeing suceptible to cc should remain a weakpoint of the faction, however it should be a managable weakpoint. Currently it is more like a big hole and not just a weakspot. Ps: The behaviour of certain high rank players indeed makes me feel like a proper balancing discussion with them is not possible. They just claim their standpoint to be correct and if you disagree you clearly are just "not at their lvl" even though the points you have made were perfectly valid. I would not want to trust them with balancing in any way, but selecting the right players for the job is difficult as well. On one hand they need to have proper insight into the faction which is beeing buffed/nerfed/reworked, but on the other hand they must not be biased to a point where they just disagree with other players without making proper arguments (not wanting to nerf their own factions even though they know it is justified, trying to nerf everything they do not have a counter for in their deck just because they do not want to spend a deckslot for situational cards etc. etc.). Should a balancing team be made, i trust in the ability of the devs to pick the proper players and have the final say in the changes which get implemented. So far the dev team has made very resonable choices regarding the project and i doubt they would mess this up in any major way.

I can fully agree on this, especially the bugs need fixing. A bug which i is kind of a big deal in certain matchups is that you can nasty a unit beeing swaped by ng or parasite swarm, killing the swaped unit after the enemy payed for the swap . This can be done reliably (VERY easy timing, works almost 100%). Also happens with green windhunter ability (harder to do because of the windup on the ability) and maybe even green disenchant (not sure about that one, maybe some fire-frost players know?). Also purple disenchanting units, which are abusing the mageport glitch, removes the teleport imunity and prevents it from beeing applied resulting in units beeing teleported uncontrollably and unable to attack (does not need fixing if mageport glitch is fixed).

- lack of a cheap t2 m/m counter in pure nature - phasetower is problematic against nature (and maybe frost?) t1 - lack of reliable wareagle counters for pure fire

Overall, i do like the proposal. I also like that there is a chance that you get a mission in pvp if you are a pve player and there is still a chance that you get a pvp mission after reroll. I feel that there are many players sticking to pvp or pve only although they might enjoy other game modes every now and then as well. it might get some players into pvp or pve respectively. IF there are standard missions, they should be completable with only minimal players online but they should also require a bit more time overall (otherwise you just multiaccount and speedrun a pve map solo with the standard cards for max bfp/playtime. with random quests such optimzed strategies are not so easy to make and i don't see a big issue there) or have a minimum time spent limit (play rpve 5 or higher for 30 minutes total etc.). Personally. i do not like hard caps based on playtime. It just makes you feel like you get nothing if you keep playing after 3 hours. I personally would prefer a softcap system: 0-2 hours: 100% rewards 2-4 hours: 50% rewards >4 hours: 25% rewards. This way playing at least for some time is encouraged, active players do not get too far ahead (at least 8 hours spent to double the rewards for 2 hours spent seems fine to me) and active players at least still get something and not entirely nothing. Overall i like the proposal, it seems far more resonable than what i usually see beeing proposed on the forums...

@xHighTech i was never in favor of nerfing cards because they were too strong at lower elos. I was merely ponting out that the issue with cliffing is that at lower elo players can't counter it because they are lacking the skill to do so. that's still better than nerfing them and messing with high elo balance, which was fine in terms of pure fire. If there was a way to only target cliffing, i would be fine with a nerf, but as stated previously this is unikely to be possible.

@xHighTech It is true that cliffdancing is avoidable and not that much of an issue in high level play. I entriely agree that it is avoidable and that pure fire is in a relatively fine state right now. I do however remember very well what it felt like when i wasn't good myself. At lower elo, you just don't have the skill to avoid cliffdancing and the real issue is that the fire player needs less skill to properly execute cliffdancing than the oponent needs to properly counterplay it. When i was in mid-high gold elo, everyone and their mother was playing cliffdancer and it was really frustrating to deal with. In this elo range, players were able to execute cliffing, but not able to counterplay it.

There are other players who could beat me in a 1v1 with bandits, but they would not win because they are "better" with the faction, but because they have better micro management in general and just force and win a tier 1 fight. I feel like i should still be on the list beacuse noone really actively played bandits as much as i did and i doubt there are many players who have the same lvl of understanding regarding the bandits fcation as i do. Maybe add me as honorable mention if you don't want me to be mentioned as "one of the best" (i realised you wrote "one of the best" there and not "the best" like with some other mentions, so i guess that would be correct then), i would be fine with that.

fire is by far the superior choice in my opinion. I actually recently answered this question in detail, but the response was in german. I will quicky answer with the main reasons to play shadow: -In general bandits need damage imediately if they are defending and they don't have any high hp units for nasty surprise. Eruption is superior to nasty surprise in a bandits deck. -Nightguard is inferior to firesworn in bandits, because you do not have any cc or defense to prepare a swap. In addition to this, Nightguard is very suceptible to cc and thus highly unreliable in a bandits deck. Other decks can play around this with cc and/or protects. -In a bandits deck you will need sunderer if you want to stand a chance against pure shadow t2. no matter what else is in your deck, without a sunderer you will have a very hard time in this matchup. -Aditionally, motivate is not as strong in a bandits t2 as one might think as it just makes the deck even more suceptible to cc. it can backfire really heavyly if used poorly. spamming one type of unit in a bandits deck just doesn't work very well as there is no spammable unit which isn't highly suceptible to cc. you have to play a bunch of different units to play around enemy cc. motivate might be worth it in the future in case bandit sniper becomes a playable card. to make things short: shadow cards are unreliable and often telegraphed. other decks can play around this, bandits cant.

Characterizing Bandits is not as easy as it seems. While it has a good offense and lacking defense, i tend to play a very different style depending on the matchup. Against pure shadow for instance, i immediately rush with buffed sunderer (in this deck mainly for this single matchup) as soon as the match goes t2 to prevent a harvester camp in most cases. This playstlye is limited to this single matchup and i don't use it in any other case. Against pure frost i try to make multi base attacks with windhunters (i do not even try to kill a well, just harassment to force the enemy to make sykelfs and use cc/protects). If there are enough skyelfs, the enemy won't be able to rush me if i go for an early t3 as soon as i come out with more energy in the pool. This playstyle is also limited to this matchup, but radically different to the first one. Against stonekin i take defensive wells in such a way i cannot be attacked at multiple bases and draw out the match. In most stonekin matchups stonekin wants to get a big army and permaheal+cc (they usually don't go agressive right away and are fine with just taking wells). But against bandits this will backfire hillariously as aoc+lava field wrecks the slow stonekin units. If you manage to take it to t3, your t3 will be vastly superior to stonekin t2 (as long as you are not playing vs. stonekin with t3 and this brannoc nonsense) and the game should be an easy win at this point. If i get burrower rushed as soon as i go t3 (happens most of the time. the enemy will also have tons of void after failing an offense), bandit gunners will stop the burrowers from running around. this forces a cc every time and a single gunner stalls the burrowers at your well long enough to catch up with previously spawned units. If the enemy stonekin player goes agressive in t2 and knows what you are trying to do, your chances of winning are slim (the aura tactic is not going to work here). So in just 3 matchups, i play 3 different styles (extremely agressive, multi base harassment and defense until t3). Also the choice of units and spells is entirely different in every matchup. It is hard to break this down easyly. "Bandits is mostly rather agressive, but there is a lot of varitey in the playstyle. There is no one hit wonder in the deck and you have to adapt to win" might be fitting. A deck in the 100-200 bfp range is hardly playable (i doubt any faction is playable with this amount of bf). For bandits to work, Aura of corruption and giant slayers are essential and you won't be getting them that cheap. Overall bandits is one of the cheapest decks to be effective, but still you will at least have to pay about 1k bfp for important cards with charges. However, i doubt this will be much of an issue in the new Battleforge. At the point in time where you have at least some basic skills to attempt pvp, 1k bfp should not be much at all. I highly advise against playing bandits as your first deck. It requires a lot of faction knowledge if you don't want to get destroyed all the time. Small misplays snowball the game out of control quickly. If you want to play a cheap, more forgiving deck you might want to try out fire-nature. The transition from fire-nature to bandits should not be too hard later on and you should have a much easyer time gettting into the deck. ps: ofc you can mail me what you have, but i am hardly an expert on decks besides bandits. i do understand the interactions of those decks with bandits very well, but the rest might be a bit shaky.

the t3 i have played in bandits consisted out of bandit lancers, gunner and giant slayers. i cannot stress how important lancers are in t3. they are cheap, deal lots of damage and disable so many actives that would wreck any bandit deck (tremor, juggernaut (a bit tricky to avoid knockback but possible)). i just don't see ANY alternative to this card to be honest, maybe cultist master but then you would not have slayers. after i started playing them (as soon as they got buffed into a usable unit) i came to realise how essential they are to the bandits t3. bandits may have a strong t3 (lots of good cards here), but they still lack the cc and thus cards which have high dps and cc are most welcome. lancers and slayers give you the ability to intercept and totally wreck siege units before the enemy gets any use out of them. i complemetend this deck with bandit gunner, mainly due to lost souls popularity (1 gunner + 1 bandit lancer totally destroys silverwind lancers in offense. adding a phoenix for basenuking in t3 is legit as well if it hits a cluster and/or revives). an alternative would be ashbone pyro, but there the damage spits up at clusters too heavyly and i didn't have so much sucess with it compared to the gunner. also gunner brings more utility to the table and can surprise frost players with the ability to penetrate glacier shell and the massive siege damage. Soulhunter is also a very good card, but i rarely get the energy to use it because i really don't want to play the waiting game in t3. it is just too telegraphed and outplayable in higher elos. it wrecks in lower elos tho. Sandstorm is kind of a mixed bag. very costly and has litle counterplay. The main issue i have with it that it doesn't teach you how to play the game, if the enemy t3 orb (or worse the t1/t2 orb) drops, they often are utterly defenseless. In higher elo you often get counterrushed as long as the orb still stands. with 230 energy (+a unit to send to the enemy base to cast it) energy down, this usually means that your base gets outright destroyed if you don't manage to somehow defend with aoc (if any sort of multi base attack is possible, this will not work). You just use 230 energy and don't have a unit standing afterwards. if you were to play soulhunter, you would at least have something to keep the enemy base pressured so he doesn't destroy your base instantly. relying on sandstorm is also very telegraphed (if you see that lonely lancer you know what is comming). in short: sandstorm is a risky noobstomper which is inferior to soulhunter in most situations. it still needs less skill than actually doing a proper offense and might net you wins vs. better players if you can surprise them. i highly reccomend to "git gud" instead of relying on this card. I also advise against nasty surprise. your units are too low hp and you have no cc or well... anything to help you prep a good nasty. in bandits you want to have instant damage, lavafield is your bread and butter here. it cannot be cc'ed (a lone nc running off usually gets rooted by nature right away etc. etc.) and against nature it sometimes provokes panic heals which are too late/not worth it. Warrior's death... oh boy the most toxic bandits card ever. who ever thought this card would be a good idea??? first of all: bandits have a good enough offense just with the basic cards you would play anyways. chosing purely offensive cards is very risky and will create holes in your defense. even if it is as devestating as it is, i would not play it just because it does not fill a role that needs filling in a bandits deck. This card has only frost protects as a counterplay and in combination with rallying banner and/or nightcrawler, this is just utterly ridiciuolus. a frenzy warriors nc+assasins kills a well vs. anything that is not frost and can hardly be avoided. as soon as your well drops into the 1500 hp range it can be deleted by this very cheap combo. it is as close to a t2 curse well as you can get. in 2v2 it is even more broken since you won't be lacking defense if paried with a frost splash. this card needs a rework. it has no counterplay and is only worth it when beeing abused. it is hardly usefull in defense (what prevents your enemy from running away and letting the unit die?) and adds nothing to the bandits playstyle. it simplyfys it to a point where the whole complexity and strategy (every matchups requires a vastly different tactical approach and deep faction knowledge pays off. you can find your own style within the faction and try out new things) is nullified as long as you don't face anything with frost. usually warriror's death players are unable to play bandits propery (no offense, not beeing able to execute a faction is nothing to be ashamed about) and then lose to frost splashes anyways. As a general rule of thumb, a deck should be able to include the tools to deal with all factions (as far as the faction allows it) while having the tools to overcome the enemy defense in most matchups. if you play cards which are only good in offense in your deck (especially bandits), the enemy will figure out a way to bypass your defense. If you have the tools to defend yourself, it is down to your skill as a player to pull it off. i rather have a fighting chance in defense than an advantage in offense. this way i can win by skill and don't have to face defeat against certain cards. playing strong offensive cards at the cost of defense only works well in lower elo. if you really want to play a faction at a high level of skill, avoid cheesy strategys and think about counters and deck synergy first. after you have those things covered you can start trying out offensive combos that fit the rest of the deck. you should have at max 3 slots for this. in my own deck my mainly offensive cards were limited to phoenix and sunderer because those helped me the most in the matchups the rest of the deck struggeled with (pure shadow, shadow t1 rushing t2 and forst splashes). When picking offensive options you really have to prioretize matchups where you are at the disadvantage. I much prefer an optional card that helps me in one weak matchup over a card that helps me in 2, maybe even 3 strong matchups. If you are just skilled enough, you should be able to win almost every strong matchup without that extra card. There is just no point in having that card in the deck if you mostly win the matchup where it is most usefull anyways.