RadicalX

Emberstrike • Card Changes Ability dmg 1100(1650max) -> 1300 (3250max) Passive dmg: 500(750max) -> 900 (2700max) There is a general issue with current L units in T4. They have several downsides to XL units such as scaling limitations through unit & charge limit, L knockback, higher vulnerability vs burst, lower movement speed, damage loss as only a limited amount of creatures are able to attack one target (melee problem only) or the inability to attack air units (melee only). There is almost nothing that makes up for these downsides leaving L T4 units mostly behid. The AOE increase for Emberstrike is supposed to open up a somewhat unique playstyle by using their ability more frequently in order to clear big camps alot quicker than before. In addition to that you should be able to spawn them alot more aggressively into fights with a massively increased passive. I might extend this thread and add some more information in about 2 weeks (I'm short on time for now). Best regards RadicalX

This was discussed in the discord channel too. I think it is a reasonable idea, but impossible to implement for now.

Winterwitch • Card Changes Hp: 1350 -> 1700 Shield value: 1500 -> 2000 Ability power costs: 100 -> 65 Winterwitch lacks power that makes her worthy for a T4 card that demands 3 Frost orbs. The biggest current issues we see with this card are the low survivability in a T4 environment & the nonexistent synergy with AoE damage reductions. Cards like Ward of the North or Revenge have no effect onto iceshields. Therefore we want to increase her supportive strengh. Chosen card changes: The hp buff mainly is supposed to increase her survivability to get a proper positioning and good shield area placement. Regarding her ability a shield increase of 500 seems to be a low amount, but as Winterwitch provides up to 15 shields therefore it stacks up. An ability cost reduction is supposed to help players that have no access to voidmanipulation, which isn't guaranteed in a triple Frost deck.

To give you an answer to some of your questions and some general information: -> The buff gets applied to all units near the entrance zone, the exit zone does not affect units at all -> There are 2 effects applied by nether warp: Port immunity & the specific healing or slow effect dependend on affinity -> There is an instant healing tic once the buff gets applied which is the main reason for this interaction -> The buff refreshes every second always applying this instant tic which doubles the healing speed -> The max healing per target gets increased from 200 to 960. Intended healing: Instant starting tick + 4 ticks per 2 seconds (+200 hp over 8 seconds) Maximum healing: 20 starting ticks (1 per second) + 4 ticks per 2s (+960 hp over 28 seconds) The speed is twice as fast, but due to the constant refreshes the duration also gets extended by 20 seconds making the healing even more valuable. -> Cards like Incredible Mo or Green dryad suppress the port immunity, but healing is not affected by this -> Card descriptions are bad in general. There are so many missing information like damage caps for Shadow spells (even Nether Warp has an unmentioned healing cap). I could probably name more than 100 "Features" in this game that do have an effect onto the overall gameplay. About the balancing question: In in the current high elo environment a change is not necessary. Lyrish Nasty, Amii Phantom spam, War Eagle scream, Lavafield, Razorshard/Stonetempest are sufficient answers to this specific combo. Pure Nature ends up getting destroyed, but that is more due to the awful T1 conditions. You always lose on tempo unless the enemy makes a mistake early on and Magespam is just really good at snowballing leads. The stategy is easy to use, very oppressive and unfun to play against though, so from a mid to low elo standpoint a change could be reasonable.

I think a set of balancing changes would be able to influence both PvP and PvE in a positive way. PvE casual: From my perspective the casual player benefits from changes because it would open up more variety and playable decks. Splash decks are able to do everything (and even more) compared to pure and faction based decks making them underwhelming to play. Also by having all core advantages that factions provide (Crowd Control, Void Manipulation, Charge Manipulation, damage reductions and healing combined with a mobile high dps unit composition) you don't have to play as a team in order to suceed. I think every faction should get more unique strengths. In addition to that some dead abilities could be fixed by small changes to make them more useful and units more interactive. Right now you usually lose tempo and dps in most fights as abilities are expensive with a high cast time and low to medium effects. PvE Speedrunning: I think the only negative aspect regarding balaning would be within the PvE speedrun setting. They want to have a fair competition and with constant changes around cards this aspect is not given anymore for cPvE alltime records. Certain nerfs may weaken current strategies and certain buffs may open up new superior ones. By looking at the games history I think nerfs regarding PvE were justified and made the game a little bit healthier overall. Lost Spirit Ship, Second Chance, FoF+ embalmer + Splicer void manipulation fixes were good first steps. Overall I think some changes do make speedrunning more interesting as it forces people to create new strategies and not play current ones to perfection to get extra seconds. I'd clearly like to see the new T4 strategies without Batariel & LSS being super dominant. That may just be my opinion though. In the case where changes are applied they should be brought up in a way that allows speedrunners to have a fair competition: -> If changes are applied please do it at the start of the month to allow a fair competition. If there is some big nerf applied in the middle of a month records aren't comparable anymore. PvP I think there is a crystal clear consenous, that PvP players want changes. But we need to be very cautious about who is in charge of those changes. I don't think being at the top of the ladder directly qualifies a person to work on healthy balancing ideas. I've seen very questionable balancing ideas from people, that are reasonably high in the ladder. Majority votes also lead to some terrible decisions by EA back then. Alot of things need to be discussed in order to find the correct cards that need to be changed and also find healthy changes. I think the forum is the best place to discuss changes to have an open discussion due to better visibility of older posts.

I'd argue there are a good amount of cards, that don't even have a niche use due to really poor design. EA didn't really understand alot of game concepts. An example would be the importance of bound power which led to very poor balancing choices between buildings, spells and units. Like Amii Monument wouldn't be as overpowered by costing 390 bound power with 0 abiliy cost compared to the current 250 bound +140 toggle, which even returns the full amount of the ability power into the void (which means it's completely free in any void manipulation deck anyways). This is the thread I once made to talk about some cards, that could be buffed without touching the balancing by alot (I improved the list by now, so the thread isn't fully up to date though). Also there were alot of dead abilities that could be statbuffed or even reworked (Colossus has probably the worst ability design, because some people simply expected PvP would go to T4 back in 2009). In terms of PvP the major problem lies within some cards being overpowered, especially T1 towers like Mortar and Phasetower. Frost T1 got a hard hit by a questionable homesoil nerf, that was aimed to shut down Frostsplashes in higher tiers without getting a healthy compensation buff for the weakened T1 in return. I made a threat, that revolves around that topic, aswell. To add something for the nature T1 part, I do think that the faction gets shut downed, because you lose early fights and split engagements without the proper ability to trade in return as base trade threats get shut downed by turrets. I also do believe, that Thugs do have an unhealthy ability especially for extended trading in Fire mirrors, but that is something else. In T2 there are also factions that are overperforming (like pure Fire for instance) or underperforming (like Bandits for instance). PvE: Splash decks just overperform here and pure decks are completely dead in a competitive environment. Only a few cards are really worth to play and usually end up being used in splash decks with Enlighment. This eliminates the need of synergy between teamplayers to play the most powerful combos like having one pure fire player for Batariel and a Shadow Nature player to support it. Right now everyone can do everything on his own. Almost every speedrun strategy nowadays revolves around Enlightment -> Batariel -> Buffs or oneshotting specific bosses with something like selfstacked Mutating Frenzy. Voidmanipulation and power funneling are additional problems in that regard. If anyone likes to discuss balancing in any way, feel free to hit me up on discord, the forums or ingame. I'm looking to find overall balancing issues and work on potential solutions. Having many opinions about certain cards may help me to get a bigger picture as I would like to see how different type of players do experience the game. I'd like to present a full set of ideas once we get to a stage where balancing changes may be a possibility. Any help would be great here!

Soultree spamming could be seen as an exploit for instance since Amii Monument allows you to skip the last mission of clearing the enemies main base. I think regarding PvE we had good ideas from community and devs that could improve the game experience in the future: -> A less repetitive quest & achievement system after the reset, which makes maps outside of Soultree and Guns of Lyr attractive for the players (there is a post in the forums where many ideas got collected). -> Adding good and proven community maps to the "official" mappool to ensure more variety and maybe even more difficult challenges compared to classic expert maps. -> Setting up a community based balancing team to improve countless of poorly designed cards, for a much more comfortable gameplay for every type of player (casual & competitive - PvE & PvP) with alot more variety in gameplay. For PvP there is the problem of a wide skill discrepancy between a low amount of people leading to unsatisfying games for both parties. I still think that the removal of multiaccounting/multiple characters decreased the gameplay experience by alot as there is a much higher level of "ranked anxiety", leading to less participation in ranked, a smaller variety in decks and excessive que dodging, which decreases the effeciency of matchmaking even further.

Why is Yrmia even considered unbalanced? It is arguably the best map in terms of T1 balancing. Fire is good due to many chokepoints for effective Eruptions. Frost is hella strong due to small well distances and 75 extra void for the wall is insanely important for early scaling. Shadow is solid, because there are many paths on the map to allow unit circling and strong split attacks with motivate. Nature has some options to survive the early stage without getting locked out of the map, but probably the worst faction on this map due to its vulnerability against Phasetower. But that is 1 matchup and this is due to phasetower being broken, not due to the map being unbalanced. Frost on Haladur or Uro, Nature vs Phasetower on Whazai, that would be imbalance caused by map issues The center of the map is not necessary to win the game as there are 7 extra wells easily contestable without going into any danger of getting cliffed. I don't think pure Fire is overpowered here at all (at least in comparison to the strength on other maps). This map even used to be my personal strongest weapon against any pure Fire player in tournaments ... For Whazai I could agree onto a removal from the ranked pool as Phasetower is completely busted on this map. 2 Port from main base to wellrange of the enemy with guaranteed map control. This simply forces almost every player to carry a turret in his ranked deck (I mean this may be a strong strategic choice on alot of other maps aswell, but you aren't forced to play turrets every time). Outside of that any sort of cliffing is very powerful on this map and may be abused by pure fire players (even Termite hill can be insanely powerful, when being used on correct positions). A rework for some elements on this map would be nice, because it has alot of interesting potential especially due to a different scaling curve of the void level (the only map with 3 starting wells, but just a few spots to take safe additional power wells), but I' not sure if this will be a possibility in the future. Generated maps were fun, not necessarly well balanced, but some of them had alot of interesting strategic elements and it favours different factions dependent on map size and structure (I think nature may end up suffering a little bit, but that's okay). Would be cool to see them back in the ranked pool, because it brings more diversity into games. TL DR -> Yrmia is more balanced than the majority of the maps in the current pool. Sorry, but the idea of removing it is awful. -> Whazai is a fun map, but Phasetower and Cliffing are clearly overpowered here. A removal could be considered -> Adding generated maps again would be very good from my perspective

-> Reach 60 minutes que time without finding an opponent Jokes aside I think reaching certain rank points at the end of a month is a very good way to consistently reward people. This somewhat got mentioned, but only for the top players as far as I know. This would exlude the majority of people. I think you can reward everyone in the top 200, giving lesser experienced people motivation and specific rank goals to aim for. It could be done in steps like this: Rank 200-151 -> Reward X Rank 150-101 -> Reward 1,2*X Rank 100-61 -> Reward 1,4*X Rank 60-41 -> Reward 1,6*X Rank 40-21 -> Reward 1,8*X Rank 20-11 -> Reward 2*X Rank 10-6 -> Reward 2,2*X Rank 5-2 -> Reward 2,4*X Rank 1 -> Reward 2,6*X (+some fancy stuff like a trophy) My scaling values here are arbitrary, but rewards should slightly scale up for each rank class you end up reaching (just don't make it exponentially, lower rank rewards should be meaningful too). I think the mentioned elo ranges are somewhat representative for gaps in terms of skill. If we see bigger ranked participation after the reset, additional steps for rank 80 and 125 could be added aswell. People that want to keep their reward income are forced to keep playing PvP as the activity decaying rate is 30 days so you would be unable to cash in twice unless you play at least 30 games every month. This also encourages a fight for that sweet rank 1 spot. Achievements like play card XY in PvP isn't really a good thing. Your goal in PvP should be to improve your strategies, style and gameplay. Bringing up different optional goals that are rewarded by bfp hurts the competition. You could do achievements like win X Fire Nature games to encourage people to try out new decks. This could be done for all 10 orb combinations in T2, leading to 10 meaningful achievements. You could also show some basic starter decks for the factions, so people get some assistance with deck building here, if they are unfamiliar with all the different orb combinations. Sadly rewarding losses here is risky due to potential of abuse (just rush T2 and leave the game etc.). Daily rewards could be done like this: -> Split up the current "play X PvP matches to 1v1 and 2v2s". 2v2 is a very good but underplayed gamemode. Rewards could be helpful for that. -> If you intend splitting PvP and PvE quest trees, you could simply allow people to reset their PvP quest a few times each day limited to a number X dependend on where you want to set up your grinding cap. Additional reward idea that I would generally support: -> Hotstreak rewards (3;5;10;50 wins in a row) Most of the things are not really innovative here, but I think we need a healthy reward modell for PvP, not an insanely fancy one. I think PvE is much better suited for creative ideas and we got alot of good ones in this thread already.

What exactly do you need in terms of editing? If it's just about rendering and uploading I could do that easily. I also tried to do some tourney runthroughs with my replays, but sadly alot of files from spectator maps don't work anymore after a short time.

Hello MrXLink, First of all thanks for making this thread. I'm really convinced that a remarkable part of the PvP community would benefit from higher gold incomes and it can clearly enhance the overall game environment. Sorry for the upcoming wall of text, but I really need to talk about this topic! Current PvP Values I would like to start with some basics about the current reward system and potential problems. So let's get into the current formulas to check current rewards (They should be accurate as I double checked my calculations with gold incomes in some of my own games). 1. Winning player During the interval [0;2] the gold reward is at flat 250. During the interval [2;20] the amount of gold f(t) get's calculated as a function of time (t=minutes) -> f(t) = 250+((t-2)/18 * 1100) After 20 minutes the gold cap of 1350 got reached and it won't get higher regardless of gametime. I assume this is done to prevent abuse of 2 people agreeing on completely afk'ing in the game. 2. Losing Player During the interval [0;2] the gold reward is a flat 100. During the interval [2;20] the amount of gold f(t) get's calculated as a function of time (t=minutes) again -> f(t) = 100+((t-2)/18*400) After 20 minutes the gold cap of flat 500 got reached. What does this exactly mean? I'll show some rounded GPM values at 5 relevant game spots throughout the game for some clarity. 2, 5, 10 and 20, 30 minutes marks will be used here. time -> Winning player (Losing player) [50% wr player] 2min -> 125 GPM (50 GPM) [88GPM] 5min -> 87 GPM (33 GPM) [60GPM] 10min -> 74 GPM (28 GPM) [51 GPM] 20min -> 68 GPM (25 GPM) [47 GPM] 30min -> 45 GPM (17 GPM) [31 GPM] Comparison: I'll take your rPvE 9 value from one of your previous posts for that (145GPM). This implies that our average rPvE player aproximatly needs 29 minutes on average to win one map. Given that I think the average game time is faster, but there is no 100% winrate for all of these players that may be a quite accurate value. The average player in PvP has a 50% winrate in a normally distributed PvP environment. I'm pretty sure it isn't given (players with avg. skill should sit at sub 50% winrates), but I hope some gold changes may motivate more players to step into action again to fix that matchmaking problem. Anyways, these numbers lead to some problems I see with the current system and make me think that just raw stat increases won't be the solution to the issue. The big problems I see right now -> GPM constantly decreases with increased game time. -> Winning PvP (highly skilled) is getting compared to average rPvE times (moderately skilled) -> Losing income is really low, which is very counterintuitive for new players The constant decrease of GPM over time is a problem for balancing. If you straight up increase GPM values on by putting in a multiplicator onto the formula you end up promoting the easiest way of abusing the game which is straight AFK'ing & wintrading. An AFK player will always be finished off after 2-4 minutes. If GPM are at their peak during this time this is a problem for potenial buffs to gold rewards. The question about rewarding 30min games over 20min games is another discussion (maybe you could check the percentage of 30min PvP games, if that is possible for you). From my perspective I would set a soft cap for these last 10 minutes rather than stopping at 20min. If equally skilled players face off against each other in certain matchups games tend to last much longer than average PvP games once the players reach higher tech stages. Another problem I see with most arguments is that the PvP Winner gets compared to the average rPvE player. I would consider myself pretty experienced in rPvE, but not top tier. I still get to finish 4 rPvE 9's in an hour. This puts me at a GPM of 280, which is completely out of the range of what I would achieve with my current 92% PvP winrate even in the proposed improved system. This is something that really should be put into consideration when talking about these calculations. Matchmaking issues So let's talk a little about this problem beforehand. Right now GPM are vastly decreased by high que times and a very high participation of Top 10/20 players in ranked games resulting in que times. I really hope that after the upcoming reset and potential improvements to the PvP environment it may be possible to overcome some of these issues. With more motivated PvP players there would be a higher gold outcome for everyone as it minimizes the loss through que times. When talking about values it should always be considered, that the gold loss during waiting times has a clear implication onto the true outcome. That said I don't want to include this inconsistent variable too much into my arguments. Abuse of strong gold incomes Let's talk about it as you emphasized potential abuse as an issue. I don't think it is possible to abuse the system in a way, where it ruins game experience for serious players. If a change manages to make PvP interesting enough to attract abusers it will attract more serious players aswell, which has a much greater positive impact onto the PvP scene. There are 2 ways of abusing a high gold outcome for PvP: 1. Que up and stay AFK 2. Try to delay the game as much as possible For the first case, this may be a delay of 2 minutes. Finishing off an AFK is an easy task, should be done in less than 2 minutes and grants some valuable gold. I don't think anyone will be too sad about a free win. Since there is a report system nowadays you could also just threaten to ban people that are doing such things. The second case I mentioned is doable aswell. People that try to delay by turteling or running away will run out of gas pretty quickly. Mass towers allow early free wells that result in a fast T3 finish while running away without ressource generation will also be a death sentence, since ressource generation just works through immobile buildings, that can get targeted directly. Sure there may be different ways to abuse the system to get gold with a friend, but that doesn't ruin the game experience for anyone as you won't participate in these matches. Even with an increased gold income for PvP it will never get close to certain abuse strategies. You could also team up with a friend in dwarfen riddle expert to let him solo the map. You can make some food during this time and get a 500 (?) GPM value for that. Soultree is also an option to boost gold incomes into different levels in case you are a solo player. Unless PvP rewards for losing players start being competive to What are my goals? Before I start talking about real numbers, I want to talk about long term goals. Overall I want to see an attractive game with enjoyable gameplay for the majority of players in all gamemodes. I think the PvP community right now is quite small, but this wasn't always the case. During early 2013 times we had a very strong community and a strong PvP environment. 1. Better new player experience (increased rewards for losing players that tried their best) 2. The possibility for veterans to grind without spamming PvE I'm convinced, that the amount of people that would try out PvP within a much more begginerfriendly environment gets a little underestimated in general. A more consistent income would increase the ability to get decks and cards, that you see in your first games, where you surely end up getting crushed. But with a quicker removal of competitive discrepance through ressources you can start learning the game much faster and enjoy its beauty when the real PvP gameplay starts. Under equal conditions it is much easier to identify mistakes and improve. At that point the wins start to come in which brings in more motivation to go on. So the next thing I'm talking about is also about the veterans, that used to play PvP during 2013. I think the majority of people in the PvP community do want to achieve their first playable PvP deck within one month of active gameplay. To get the big picture that means 170.000-260.000 gold depending on the faction you want to play. Sure you somewhat can start playing seriously with some cards being on U2, but I made the estimation, this value may probably the difference, that my final modell doesn't catch due to the loss of gold through que times. With a GPM of 125 this would range from 22-35 hours. Looks bearable for the cheaper decks, but keep in mind only the best players do have winrates above 80% over many games and I used the winner values here. Average values of 125 for winning and 35 for losing imply a 80GPM for 50% winrate players. Back to 35-54 hours of raw gameplay for the first deck again. But without a competive deck the winrate will most likely be lower than 50% at the start even as a veteran. A state where grinding for a deck still isn't worth it. Sparring grounds Not much I can add here. The potential for abuse is very high, but no rewards at all aren't satisfying especially for people who are afraid of ranked and the ones who want to get practice beforehand. Setting up a low percentage based on ranked income seems like a good solution for me. What changes I would like to see The gold value I would like to see for a reasonable grind would be the possibility for people to get an upgraded PvP deck in about one month of gameplay. If we say Mr. XYZ plays 1 hour on average each day, this means we "ideally" do have 30 hours of gameplay. A full deck roughly costs 200.000 gold on average. In order to achieve that, we would need 111 GPM. An average player shouldn't earn less than that if PvP should end up in a reasonable state in terms of gold gains. The second value that I use to adjust my final proposal is the rPvE average value of 145 GPM. If an average PvP player ends up earning more than that, PvP might get vulnerable to that. So I would like to see an average GPM between 111 and 145. This would push PvP into a position where it still gets outshined by rPvE and especially cPvE, but may be able to bring some satisfaction to the people, that simply don't enjoy playing PvE. So let's try to get to the final formula. AFK players shouldn't be rewarded here, so flat loss income for the first 2 minutes should stay the same, while the flat bonus for the winning party could get increased by a little bit. It's less vulnerable to abuse and brings more excitement to very dominant games and decreases potential frustration upon facing an afk player. I decided to keep the income between 20 and 30 minutes for now in my modell. It could see a slight change in the future, but for now it should affect the lowest percentage of games. My model also brings rewards for the losing player, that ended up putting a long fight. Unless the enemy manipulates the game aswell no abuser will last long in these games and I really think PvP needs to be much more beginnerfriendly than it is right now. Final formula and comparison to initial values and other game modes Winning player: [0;2] -> f(t) = 300 [2;20] -> f(t) = 300+((t-2)/18*3200) [20;30] -> f(t) = 3500 Losing player: [0;2] -> f(t) = 100 [2;20] -> f(t) = 100 + ((t-2)/18*1700) [20;30] -> f(t) = 1800 Gold income comparison by using the marks of 2, 5, 10, 20 and 30 minutes time -> Winning player (losing player) [50% wr player] 2min -> 150 GPM (50GPM) [100 GPM] 5min -> 167 GPM (77GPM) [122 GPM] 10min -> 172 GPM (86 GPM) [129 GPM] 20min -> 175 GPM (90 GPM) [133 GPM] 30min -> 117 GPM (60 GPM) [88,5 GPM] These GPM values are what I would look for. It would be possible to farm upgrades for an entire deck within a month and a decent PvP player still gains below avg rPvE values while high lvl PvP player are still out of contention with PvE speedrunners. TL DR; -> Increased scaling for losing players by 240% -> Increased flat winner bonus for winning games during the first 2 minutes (150% -> 200%) -> Decreased gold over time multiplicator for winners (175% -> 88%) -> GPM for an average PvP player will roughly stay 15% lower than the average rPvE player -> GPM for a high ranked PvP player will roughly stay 70% lower than a top rPvE player Thanks alot for reading and I really hope, that the PvP community can come back strong again! If there is anything you want to talk about, I'll be around for discussion Best regards, RadicalX

I think at least 2 things are clearly problematic in this calculation. 1. No one will use rPvE 6 to farm gold. Almost no player will use rPvE 10 to farm gold unless the MotM is super easy to allow 3 runs per hour. rPvE 9 is the realistic measurement for an average PvE player that farms gold. You can easily go for 12.000 gold per hour here without being super experienced at the game. Just build 8-11 Windweavers, fight to T3, build Amii, spam lost spirit ship and that's it for the 1p version. 2. In rPvE 9 it is at least 20 times easier winning every single game. Especially with Map of the Month you can collect information about difficult camps beforehand and improve strategies to get more effective with each run. These maps are easily beatable in 20mins, which gives you about 12.000 gold. An average rPvE player should get about 95-100% winrate while an average PvP player probably sits at sub 50% due to the top 20 being much more active than other PvP starters.

This is the one point I don't understand. In which world does PvP have higher rewards than PvE on paper? While the PvP high ranked community seems to be always begging for gold people from the PvE faction are laughing about me with millions of gold. A high elo speedrun PvE team could farm about 100.000 gold in an hour. A high elo PvP player can get up to 6000 gold. An average PvP player will sit on about 3000-4000 in an hour (searching times not even included into the calculation). Might be even less since the skill level isn't normally distributed due to the high activity of the top10/20. I somewhat got in touch with a big amount of former/new PvP players and discussed their problems with the gamemode and alot of them are simply not playing because they hope to see an improved PvP reward system. I will make a video quite soon to break down the problem a little more specifically with a possible solution about the current problem of PvP for new players and former veterans without an upgraded deck.

Toggy managed to chose the only day where I ended up being completely unable to attend to the tourney this week. At least I can go through the VOD this evening and rewatch the games

Just to throw in a certain idea here -> Make more PvP quests and let people choose between a PvP or a PvE quest tree. So no one ends up being forced to play a game mode he doesn't want to play. -> Give PvP meaningful gold rewards, especially for losing players the experience is awful. As I already stated, the current values are even worse compared to EA times. This would give people a choice of playing PvP to farm upgrades and cards and it also would be less frustrating to lose matches if you get decent gold/bfp rewards. Someone lost 5 games in a row because of bad upgrades and cards? At least he does get to buy/upgrade some cards then in order to get competitive. Especially people, that don't have the time to grind hours and hours for upgrades and cards, do want to get the cards by playing the games they enjoy, may it be PvP or PvE. I mean just take a look at the amount of people from the PvE community, that started crying about the PvP quest before rerolls got introduced. People don't want to get forced into a gamemode they don't like. This is a quick overview for one of the current Shadow Frost decks that shows the difference between U0 and U3. Almost every single card gets a significant buff, making it more effective from a range about 10-60%. This is huge. Just for comparison: The stat difference between T1 and T2 units ranges about 10-25%. So this is somewhat worse than starting a T1 vs T2 match. Alot of combos aren't working anymore, which decreases the cost efficency of cards even further (burst breakpoints are the most important thing here). One simple example: Nightcrawler + Nasty Surprise is a standard combo for 4/10 decks to burst down the Skyfire Drake, who is used in 4/10 of available color combinations. With an U0 Nasty it doesn't kill the Drake anymore leaving couterplay potential with healing spells like ravage. This has huge implications on how these matchups end up playing out. The lack of charges for core trading cards makes things worse on top of that as you will run out of effective counter methods much faster than your opponent. I'm the current rank 1 player in PvP, yet I wouldn't stand a chance against any decent player, who has an upgraded deck even if my winrate was up to 100% against that person beforehand. There definitely is a decent playerbase outside of the "top 10/20", just take a look at toggys recent rookie tournaments. People are willing to play PvP if there is an environment to do so and there are alot of people from the PvP community, that simply don't bother playing before the reset, as they want to avoid as much PvE grinding as possible. If we take that comparison to the old Battleforge, it is looking pretty grim for PvP. There was a way to get cards and tokens for upgrades just by investing a small amount of money. People had the chance of getting cards and upgrades for a strong PvP deck and PvP players used that opportunity as they wanted to play PvP, not PvE. Right now the game suits to players, that like PvE and you did a good job at that so far, but honestly it is worse compared to vanilla BF for PvP players. I'm pretty sure, that the majority of PvP mains would rather invest 10€ rather than being forced to play 30 hours of PvE over multiple weeks to start playing the game mode they do enjoy. Right now this possibility of paying money is gone for good reasons, but there is no compensation for it for a player who just likes playing PvP.

That's correct!

Killroy started playing again about one or two weeks ago.

From a competitive side a slower grind would be a problematic aspect for the game. Right now I want to talk specificely about the huge entrance barrier for PvP as I'm not as experienced at the competitive PvE aspect as some other guys here in this discussion. In order to start playing PvP on a competitive level you need at least 1 upgraded and nearly fully charged deck. Otherwise you are at a clear disadvantage, as nearly every single upgrade changes trading patterns. Witthout upgrades you can not use your charge upgrades aswell which simply weakens your late game capabilities by alot. I will start with Lost Souls because it is very popular and one of the cheapest decks. 8*4 Common Cards 4*4 Uncommon Cards 8*4-3 Rare Cards (Motivate charges are unneccessary) 0 ultra rare cards (There is Mountaineer, but 4 mounties are more expensive than the entire deck and you can play without him) Keep in mind that these are specific cards and more than 80 percent need to be obtained through the market. I can't drop an exact bfp number here as the market is way to inconsistent, but from experience it takes about 5-6 weeks to get these cards for an average player. Without these cards you will be unable to compete with serious intentions. If this time window would be even greater after the reset, it would be a serious hit for the PvP scene. A new player would be forced to compete with hardcore players, who are the ones that invest the needed time to get their cards and upgrades asap. Less cards, less upgrades and less experience create a very frustrating triple disadvantage. Something else I want to talk about is the amount of rewards you get for playing PvP. The current gains are worse compared to the token system. Back then you got honor tokens for each victory, that were somewhat valuable for upgrades as rPvE mostly gave you Battle Tokens. Sorry for being a little harsh here, but right now the amount of gold you get in PvP is just useless. In order to upgrade the Shadow Frost deck I mentioned above, you need 168.000 gold. I'm not sure about the maximum value for PvP gold gains, is it 5000 or 6000? (I will show potential grinding times for both values, both are equally low) The god lvl PvP player, that has a 100% wr and plays PvP in a world without que times and loading screens gains 5000 (6000) gold/h. To gain a fully upgraded Shadow Frost deck this means 36 (28) hours of straight PvP gameplay. To be more realistic: The average PvP player has a 50% winrate and has about 20% playtime loss due to que times and loading screens (something like 10 minutes playtime, 3 minutes loading/searching). This reduces the gold/h to 2800 (3360). To gain a fully upgraded Shadow Frost deck this means 60 (50) hours of straight PvP gameplay. Trying to upgrade something like that is atrocious. And keep in mind that alot of other decks like pure Fire require even more gold (246.000) to get upgraded. If this is your first PvP deck you will be forced to play with a competitive disadvantage during that time as everyone else will just farm PvE and get a serious upgrade advantage Just in comparision: An average PvE player can still go for 4player rPvE 9 in order to farm gold and do 3 rounds in an hour which equals 12.000 gold/h. A very good cPvE speedrun player can get waaaay more. If you are here in the game to play PvP, you will be forced to invest gold, bfp and alot of time into PvE even if you are not interested in the game mode.

Right now the average player gets 7 boosters & 1050 bfp at best in one week. Getting 21 promo cards from that is impossible (Even a single one could be considered lucky). The people, who got these insane amounts of cards and bfp were simply abusing an unstable market that allows huge benefits through effective trading.

rPvE 10 1p 14:45, this month is truly super easy.

How to play Frost T1 a PvP Guide by RadicalX - General talk - Hey everyone, apparently I didn't plan on releasing this guide so early, but since I have this finished guide lying around for such a long time I'll just post it now. This time I will talk about Frost T1. I'll try to do pretty much the same I did with my shadow guide: I'll try to provide some basic informations for new players combined with some deeper analysis of matchups and tips for more experienced players too. The stuff I wrote refers only to 1v1, because 2v2 is different in many ways (I said the same stuff in the other guide). General question: Why should I play Frost T1? Let's start with an essential question here. Why would somebody consider playing Frost T1? Because Frost T1 isn't as reliable as Shadow or Fire T1, since Frost has got 2 major weaknesses: 1. no access to a T1 swift unit 2. Frost does very poorly in open fights without a near power well Those two weaknesses combined make Frost very inconsistent in a way, because the difficulty of your game depends primary on the map you are playing on and not the opponents deck-color like in other matchups. Alot of people consider Frost T1 as too risky and that is a big reason why next to no high ranked players used it (only nature T1 was actually even less common). But lets take a look at the upsides of Frost T1. First of all Frost Units are the strongest T1 units in the game in terms of combat stats. Their cost efficency is amazing and they have such an incredible amount of hp which makes aoe damage useless unless your opponent is already T2. Frost may be weak if you can't get a close well situation, but when you manage to take a favourable power well you can smash your opponent from that point on. Frost T1 is unbeatable in a close well fight as long as your opponents doesn't build turrets or is T2 and even then it's possible to win due to the incredible stat efficency of Ice Guardians next to buildings. In addition to that Frost T1 offers a very strong late T1. There is pretty much no colour that stands a chance against you at the late-T1 stage (not even nature as some people may think). Your units already have got an incredible amount of health and homesoil adds another scaling effect in terms of damage which lets you outscale your opponent easily. I guess you can describe Frost T1 like this: "High risk, high reward" - the Deck - This list is going to be short like the one for my Shadow Guide. It just gives a slight overview about the cards to show what was essential/viable/trash. Group 1 - The "must have" Units (You would suffer alot if you decide to play without them): Master Archers Frost Mage Ice Guardian Ice Barrier Home soil Glacier Shell Group 2 - Very strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups: Lightblade (purple) Frost Bite (purple) Ice Shield tower Glyph of Frost Group 3 - Cards that are only useful for higher Tier combinations: Frost Bite (red) Frost Sorceress Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable): Imperials Lightblade (red) Wardens Sigil (both affinities) Northern Keep (blue) Glaciation (blue) Wintertide (both affinities) Group 5 - Trash Northern Keep (red) Northguards Glaciation (red) Construction Hut Defense Tower Some of you may noticed the surprising fact, that I included Wintertide in group 4 despite the fact that the card used to be pretty popular. I want to talk about it a little bit more in detail, because alot of players rated it pretty highly even tho it was a very unnecessary card and pretty much a wasted deckslot. And this is the reason for it: The only unit, that has any kind of synergy with Wintertide are the Master Archers. The other M Units, don't get anything from the knockback immunity and even if you can give your units insane amount of effective hp for a good amount of time, it wont make a difference due to its self-root. Wintertide + Masterarcher spam is not useful against any deck and there is always a better option for Frost T1. -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide loses against Dreadcharger spam if the shadow-player stops every movement command so he doesn't kill his own units with the reflect damage through stomp and it is not really hard to execute that. Motivate makes it even worse in this matchup. -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide is useless against nature, because you wont have enough burst to kill units effectively. Hurricane will at least do a single knockback before you can react unless you are a master at predicting the enemies actions and even tho it seems like hurricane does no damage at all it can deal up to 500 damage in total against a massive unit spam (10 damage that gets applied 5 times against up to 10 units). That is at least a respective amount for 50 power. -> If you try Master Archer spam against Frostmagespam you are going to have a bad time. A very bad time. Frostmages will just demolish you, because it's an S-counter and has a constant knockback. This means you have 0 damage without the use of wintertide and still less damage when you decide to use it and this is just bad. -> In the matchup against Fire Scavenger is just a better version of Dreadcharger, because there is no stomp-effect, which makes it even more reliable (Therefore the blue affinity of Wintertide would be actually better in this matchup). Apart from Firesworn there is no real knockback (Sunderer doesn't count) that makes Wintertide useful in any way. You may think Wintertide helps you to scale better into the late T1 stages since you get a higher efficency the more units you affect with a buff, but honestly ... you already outscale every deck in the late T1 stage due to homesoil, which is the superior buff in every perspective. Wintertide just doesn't have any kind of synergy that makes it worth a slot for a 1v1 deck. I consider Wintertide a 2v2-only card and this is why I would recommend to take this card out of your Frost deck. - The maps - I want to mention the maps right away, because they are super important as a Frost player. I want to give you a little overview about the strength of Frost T1 on each map, because in case your opponent plays shadow or fire as his T1 (which happens probably around 80% of the time) he will try to prevent you from getting map control and close wells. Against nature things are much different, but I'll talk about that a little bit later. Haladur: It alawys felt a little bit weird to play on this map. The middle of the map was pretty much perfect for you, because the power wells were pretty close to each other and it was not possible to get zoned from the first power well. Sounds great at the first look, but there was a massive downside. The main base was super far away from the middle position. This allows swift unit spam for the shadow/fire player and this is pretty nasty to deal with. Your opponent attacks your power well in the middle, but if you try to play units to defend he can just run down to your main base and leave your slow units on the other part of the map. You have to spend your power very carefully on this map, otherwise you'll end up with a massive amount of bound power, that does litereally nothing for you. Uro: This Map is your worst enemy. If your opponent starts immediatly with his swift unit he can block every spot on the map. You are pretty much forced into a dazed fight, which isn't favourable for you at all. Many Frost-players tried to start with 2 units immediatly and sent them to different positions to aquire at least some sort of mapcontrol, but that only works as long as your enemy doesn't pay attention. If you are in a tournament and your opponent picks this map you should consider playing something apart from Frost T1. Lajesh (standard version): You had a wellcluster next to your main base which is easy to defend. But on the other hand it's very hard to apply pressure due to the walls. Your T3 spot could get blocked pretty fast, but if your opponent takes the position himself it opened up opportunities for you to launch a strong attack. Lajesh (without walls): If both player agree to play without walls this map got just so much more interesting. When the power rises you can take an aggressive power well and force your opponent into a close well situation. Even though you had to spend 100 power into the power well you will come out on top. But take care of mortar & phasetower! Yrmia: I loved playing Frost T1 on Yrmia. The well distance is very short and the map in general is very small, which helps you alot to defend yourself against early aggression. If you get yourself into a safe position you will be able to launch super powerful attacks in no time. In my opinion this is the best map you can get as a Frost T1 player. Simai: A very passive map. It is very easy to defend yourself against aggression and you can take alot of power wells on your side of the map without losing to much map control. On the other hand it was very difficult to attack your enemy if he decides to stay on his side of the map. Pretty much an antifun map, but pretty favourable because it allows you to scale. Elyon: This map causes alot of problems, because it's small and mid centered. Since you wont be able to win dazed fights against fire or shadow you would lose the control about the mid position which means you would lose the entire map control. You have next to no available power wells & no T3 spot which causes serious issues. At least your T2 spot was very save, so it's not as bad as Uro. Whazai: It always felt a little bit weird to play on this map. You have no control about the middle of the map in the early stage of the game and your opponent has the pressure advantage. That said, Whazai isn't that bad for you. The map is small and that increases the power of your Ice Guardians (you can spawn dazed IG's with active shield over the cliff at your starting wells). If your opponent gets a little bit too greedy and takes a power well in the middle you can punish him for that. By way of conclusion I want to remark that Phasetower is broken on Whazai. Generated maps (small): The small maps were very threatening, because they are super mid-centered. The player who controls the mid position (usually 1 orb + 4 wells) controls the entire game, sometimes you could even deny T3 spots. In most cases you had at least a save well spot with a T2 orb, but you lost so much map control and you had to fight really well if you try to reclaim it. Generated maps (big): These maps are just bad designed. You need 2 entire minutes to walk up to the enemy. At least the maps were favourable for you, because no early aggression means you can take safe wells and scale into a T3 which should be not too bad for you since Frost T1 allows you to play a timeless one T3 regardless of your T2 colour. Still not the most enjoyable type of maps ... Frost may be very map dependend which makes the T1 a little bit unreliable for your casual ladder games, but just imagine how strong it can get in tournaments. There were a good amount of players, who used to play only pure fire. In a best of 5 you would get at least 2 free wins by picking a good map for Frost T1, because Pure Frost naturally beats Fire in T2. Mastering frost T1 can help you alot in these situations and can make yourself a way more threatening player even for opponents with superior micromanagement and decisionmaking when they aren't flexible in their deck choice. - Matchups - Frost vs Shadow Time to take a look at the specific matchups. I'll just start again with a short look at the core cards in this matchup: Frost: 1. Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Homesoil Shadow: 1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate Core Strategy: There are 3 possible scenarios that can happen in this matchup and I'll descirbe all of them. First scenario: You don't get a powerwell If your opponent get's the opportunity to deny you a powerwell and forces you to go into a dazed fight you will just lose. Master archer spam is the best thing you can do here, but you need at least 10-11 units with homesoil to stand a chance, because the Dreadcharger just demolishes Master Archers due to its bonus damage against S units. Ice guardians on an open field won't help you, because they have no iceshield and that leaves them as super squishy units. Lighblade costs too much & even a well placed Glyph of Frost won't save you, because there is just not enough dps early into the game to make good use of it. The shadow player motivates the focussed Dreadcharger and destroys you when he gets out of the cc. This is why you want to avoid this situation at every cost! Even if you have to give up alot of mapcontrol, getting a power well is the first very important step to keep yourself in the game. Second scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent attacks you immediatly. This is the most common situation in high ranked. The shadow player has a 100 power advantage and alot of strong players will attack immediatly at this point because this is a very micro intensive fight. The Shadow player tries to pick off your units immediatly, because your units are more cost efficient and if he waits to long or doesn't get his picks you outscale him, defend the well with glacier shell and get a massive advantage. This is why you have to micro your units as well as possible to survive up to the point where you can fight back. The units you need to play are Master Archers and Ice-Guardians. How much of each kind is decided by the units your opponent plays. If he plays many Dreadchargers, Ice Guardians are your way to go, Master Archers perform better against Nox Troopers on the other hand. Be careful with the use of spells at that point.Only use Glacier shell if your well drops really low. Otherwise your enemy can just switch his focus back onto your units immediatly and you wasted 50 power which could be invested into another unit. Only use Frost bite if you are 100% sure to finish off the unit & don't use home soil on just 2-3 units. It's better to get more units into the battle and micro them to build up a huge army. If you defend this attack successfully, the game is nearly won. Third scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent takes one too Unless you are a really high ranked player this will be the most common scenario. And luckily this one favours you. If both players just take a well you are pretty much save due to the high cost efficiency of your units around your power wells. Just don't let your units die for free and wait a little bit up to a point where alot of power is in the game. Because at that point you can take another power well without any risk. Your opponent lost his momentum and can't attack you at a high power level even with his advantage due to the strong stats of your Frost units. This often results in a situation where your opponent decides to take a power well himself. And this is how you can take advantage of this: Try to take your wells in a way to close the gap between yourself and your opponent. If you reach a point where you just have to build 2-3 Ice barriers for your Ice Guardians so they can walk up to the enemies well without losing their shield to crush your opponent. Your unit composition should consist of 2-3 Ice Guardians + Master Archer spam. The Ice Guardians are a big threat to the Dreadcharger and Master Archers naturally outscale a nox trooper spam espcially since Nox Trooper needs so many extra hits to take down an entire Master Archer squad. The last missing piece is the homesoil that gives you the needed boost to wipe out the entire shadow army. In smaller skirmishes it's important to use Frostbite to pick off units and prevent yourself from getting outmicroed by swiftunits. Tips & cards to watch out for: Starting unit: Always start with Master Archers and don't get baited into the Lightblade start. Yes, the card allows you to skirmish well due to the taunt ability if both players take a well, but if the shadow player attacks immediatly, the card is useless, because it gets demolished by nox troopers while binding more power than other units, that would be more useful in combat. This will make a rush much easier for your opponent. Phasetower: This card can stop your aggression entirely, so try to figure out if your opponent plays it or not. Phasetower is strong enough to allow Shadow fighting in close well positions, therefore even at a mid/late T1 stage it can be risky going too aggressive against it, especially when the Shadow-player can make good use of terrain to protect the turrets from your Ice Guardians. But as long as you make sure to avoid being overaggressive there is not too much to worry about, because your units are strong enough to deal with Phastowers when the port ability gets used. Motivate: Not every Shadow player uses it, because Nature & Frost were sort of underplayed! If your opponent doesn't use it you will reach your power spike earlier to punish your opponent harder. So always be aware if your opponent uses motivate in the first skirmishes or not. Replays: - coming soon - Frost vs Nature Core cards: Frost: 1. Frostmage 2. Ice Barrier 3. Home Soil Nature: 1. Swiftclaw 2. Surge of Light 3. Dryad Core Strategy: This matchup is pretty easy to describe. Spam Frostmages ... and win. Honestly, that's pretty much everything about this matchup. Frost mages negate Windweavers & Spearmen entirely, outdamage Shamans & Dryads by a wide margin and outrange Swiftclaws, who are the only real threat to you. In the early game Swiftclaws do a massive amount of damage to M units and therefore you need to keep Distance from your opponent up to the point where you get enough Mages to oneshot the Swiftclaws in one attackrotation (you need around 8 Frostmages with homesoil support to do so -> 930 damage per rotation, which is enough to kill a swiftclaw even with the dryad damagereduction). The most dangerous thing for you is an early T2 from your opponent. Therefore you always have to be in a good position, where you can threaten a T2 rush while being in a safe distance to be not caught out by an early swiftclaw spam. The most popular decks with nature T1 were pure nature & stonekin (nobody played shadow nature or fire nature with nature T1). Executing a rush against pure Nature is pretty easy, because it lacks an M/M counter in T2 and as long as you split up your Frostmages against Curse of Oink there is nothing that can stop you (kiting Deep One with Frostbite is an easy task). Against Stonekin it gets a little bit more difficult, dependend on the cards you are playing against. Stonetempest for example can perma cc 3-4 mages, but Lightblade hard counters him, so try to play one if you see your opponent switching into T2. Razorshard got nerfed, which makes it easier to outmicro them, Stormsinger doesn't have enough dps to stop you and the other cards are also S units, so as long as your micro is on point you can rush against stonekin aswell even with alle the cc & building protects. Tips and cards to watch out for: Treespirit: The honorable nature players wont use him, but you will still encounter this card due its ridiculous strength. But the good thing for you is the fact, that your Frostmagespam can't get caught out by treespirit, because you can build up Ice Barriers pretty fast to block their entire damage. It's a little bit more difficult to build them in an offensive position, but if you manage to do so it isn't a big deal to win a fight against them. Primal Defender: Never underistimate the influence turrets can have on the game in this particular matchup. While bound power is usually a really bad thing, Primal defender can create a huge zoning are & on some maps (Haladur for an instance) your main base is super far away which allows to to stop any type of aggression. Your opponent can switch into T2 safely, which allows him to stay in the game. Primal Defender & Mark of the Keeper map have a big influence on this matchup, so keep that in mind. You probably won't play against Mark of the Keeper, because it's useless against Shadow (outranged by Phasetower), but people definitely used Primal Defender! But if your opponent doesn't use any buildings be confident try to finish your games in T1! Pure Nature does pretty well against frost splashes in T2 and you really want to avoid that unfavourable gamestage. Tip: Keep your Frostmages at one spot in T1 and don't split them up! You want all of them shooting at the same time at the same target (The damage can be bodyblocked by other units otherwise & having delays between the attacks allows your opponent to time more efficient heals betweeen the attacks) Replays: -coming soon- Frost vs Fire Core cards: Frost: 1. Ice Guardian 2. Master Archers 3. Lightblade 4. Ice Barrier 5. Home Soil Fire: 1. Scavenger 2. Sunstriders 3. Mortar Core strategy: To play against Fire T1 you need to follow one golden rule, that will bring you alot of success: Don't get Greedy! It sounds a little bit silly, but it's really important to handle a pure Fire player and I will explain this in detail now. Like in every other matchup you will be in an defensive position right from the start. If you survive the first attacks against fire you will gain a massive advantage and be able to apply alot of pressure or force your opponent into an early T2. So let's take a look at the different type of attacks a fire player may launch at you and how to defend them properly. How to defend a scavenger rush? I mentioned this scenario already a little bit earlier. It is a really dangerous strategy to play against when the distance between your power wells is really high. So I will choose Haladur to explain how to play in this situation, this map is a prime example due to the high distance between the main base & the middle. What's my starting unit? You have 2 viable starting units: Master Archers & Lightblade. Theses units will be needed in the defense. Lightblade allows you to make easy picks & is super tanky against the Scavengers. But I personally prefer to use master archers as my starting unit, because they are more reliable in the other scenarios against fire and if you see your opponent goes for the scavenger spam anyway you can still play the lightblade (pretty much as a surpise spawn to get a free taunt). - Do I even take a power well in the middle? - Yes, definitely. You stand no chance winning a dazed fight and you have to get access to at least 1 spot in the middle. Take the closest well next to your base (don't worry to much about map control, if your opponent takes the aggressive well on Haladur he puts himself into a close well situation which forces him to either bind power into a defensive mortar or he will just straight up lose the game from that point on). - My opponent started spamming scavenger, what shall I do? - Don't panic! You got less power, but way more efficient units, try to taunt one scavenger with your Lightblade! If your opponent runs away you got a very efficient trade, if he tries to attack, play maybe one additional Ice Guardian. Don't play more than 3 units immediatly! And DON'T use homesoil. If your opponent goes for the powerwell and it drops to 66% health start playing more units, only use glacier shell if it drops below 600hp! Your power management is the most important thing here. While it's usually good to play at your power limit it is important to keep some energy in you backpocket, so you will be able to react when the scavengers start moving down to your main base. Don't get too greedy and spend all your power at one spot, your other base will be left entirely helpless. Keep this in mind: If you play your defense perfectly you can ALWAYS defend a Scavenger spam, so stay calm! Second possible scenario: While the scavengerspam is just one possible scenario there is also one big threat, that is really dangerous to you, when you decide to take an overaggressive powerwell. I'm talking about the mortarrush. The threat of an offensive mortar is really big and forces you to make bad trades, which allows the fire player to snowball. Scavengers will rip Masterarchers apart while Sunstriders are a big threat to Ice Guardians. I finally found a great replay to showcase why this is the most dangerous thing you can encounter in this matchup: How to play this scenario properly: Sometimes you need to give up map control as a Frost T1 player due to bad map conditions. Even though you put yourself at a small disadvantage by taking a defensive power well, beeing too greedy may cost you the game against a top tier player and this just isn't worth the risk. Third possible scenario: You can also be lucky and get into a close well position, where your opponent has next to no chance of winning. But be careful at some positions. If the position is protected by terrain your opponent may try to build up a mortar, which can be really annoying to deal with. It's usually wise to have a well distance around 70-80m, which allows you to spam Ice-Guardians & Master Archers (their stats are faaaaar superior to Scavenger & Sunstrider) from a save distance. In later T1 stages you don't even have to worry about that. It is possible to beat out Fire even with a Mortar, your units have a great health pool and don't die immediatly, and with homesoil you can destroy the Mortar in about 3 seconds. Afterwards feel free to kill every unit around you. Tips & cards to watch out for Wrecker: This card is also used from time to time in a rush due to high dps & the rallying ability. But your Ice Guardian are stronger in theory, so keep in mind that you can take a well against a wrecker spam, but if you lose 1 or 2 units in addition for that things may snowball really damn fast. Firesworn: I didn't mention the card at all so far, but the S knockback can be a problem for your Master archers, so don't rely too much on them! Mine: Some people may try to protect their offensive mortar turrets with some sneaky mines for zone control. It's usually not worth it, because it's easily dodgeable (for the majority of people atleast) but always try to think about it so you don't get caught off guard! Replays: -> another mortar rush by Obesity vs freemka - coming soon- Frost vs Frost Core cards: 1. Ice Guardian 2.Frost Mage 3. Homesoil 4. Ice Barrier This matchup is pretty simple in terms of explanation, but pretty difficult when it comes to execution. First of all I recommend starting with frost mage (I know it's pretty uncommon, but that is pretty much because there were next to no experienced frost players around the high ranked ladder, since everyone played shadow & fire due to the high reliabilty). Master Archers don't have any particular use (there are no unitsquads to finish off and also no S units in general) and they get permacc'd by Frost mage. Lightblade isn't too bad, but it's just really useful against careless opponents who let their units get to close to their opponent before the true fight starts. Otherwise the Lightblade is just too expensive (with the taunt ability nearly as expensive as 2 Iceguardians, who have far superior combat stats). Apart from that there are 2 types of possible fights. 1. Ice Guardians vs Ice Guardians This occurs on small maps with close well positions. The winner of this matchup is going to be the player who has better micro management. So make sure to always keep track on your Ice Shields and move your units properly. In addition to that it's important to play at your absolute power limit, otherwise you will ultimately lose out due to lower dps. Try to have homesoil constantly active in combat (An Ice Guardian spam usually involves more than enough units to make it worth is), but don't get baited into using it too early at the start of the fight, otherwise your opponent may be able to retreat without losing any units and that would be a pretty huge loss for you. 2. Magespam This is why starting with Frostmage is so damn important and valuable. On maps without proper wellpositions to fight at, the Frostmagespam outscales Ice Guardians pretty fast. The amount of mages you need is higher than against nature so don't even think about attacking too early, but after 10+ Frostmages you will be able to oneshot Ice Guardians with a single attack rotation (75*10*1,55= 1163 single target burst damage). If you face a magespam with your magespam make sure to get off the first damage rotation. That's enough to win fight, because at some point your opponents counterattack won't deal enough burst damage to kill mages and your additonal splash damage also adds up over time. So make sure to get a clean & fast damage rotation at the start. Tips & cards to watch out for: Glyph of Frost: Just make sure to respect its threat and you should be able to dodge it. But if you walk into it with your entire army, it can be pretty dangerous, because the enemies dps is really high in such a big spam and getting hit by a good Frost-Glyph can possibly cost you the game. Also be careful when playing a magespam, because you will have all of them pretty close to each other since you need to do this for better focusfire. This may lead to a full 7 unit freeze, which is pretty dangerous. So just dodge it & take the free 50 power advantage. T2 timings: Dependend on your T2 colour you should chose your T2 timing wisely. As a pure Frost player you can negate even a big disadvantage by just going T2, if there is at least some void power in your pool. War Eagles demolishe entire M unit armies. Replays: -coming soon- Frost T1 vs T2 This section will be added for Frost T1 specificly, because it's one Frosts biggest advantages over every other T1. It has enough power to even beat some T2's in a close well situation and I'm not talking about just defending with an extra well, I'm talking about straight up aggression. Here are the decks Frost beats in a T1 vs T2 scenario. 1. Pure Nature: I mentioned this already, Magespam can't be stopped by a pure Nature player. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunter are useless against the S knockback, Deep one will end up getting kited with Frost bite, and pure Nature doesn't have any other swift units. You don't need a close well to do this, but Ice Guardians will also do the job pretty well combined with the additional mages. Careful: Dependend on your opponents deck you may have to play a lightblade to counter a potential Spikeroot. This is especially important against people who used Tresspirit, because it's often an indicator for root decks. 2. Stonekin: Pretty similar scenario. The Frost Mages will do a great job against stonekin and Ice Guardians are almost impossible to kill (Stonekin lacks high dps units, which leaves the deck with no option to kill any units, while beeing forced to spend more and more power for cc and building protects). Having a Lightblade as a hard counter for Stonetempest can be valuable too (even though Stonetempest isn't too popular anymore). Just make sure to split your units as well as possible against cc and aoe knockups (razorshard). 3. Pure Fire: If the pure Fire player goes T2 early into the game you can punish him by taking a close well. Your Ice Guardians have a great hp pool to survive initial Enforcer charges. Pure Fire has no cc and therefore has to rely on a combination out of units & wildfire to defend attacks properly. On a low power level you can just play either units or spells and that lets the efficency decrease by alot. In later game stages you shouldn't rush Pur Fire players because their defense gets much stronger and you don't want to allow the fire player to scale into the late game (Especially when you are playing pure Frost, T2 is such a great opportunity for you to win the game). 4. Fire Nature: This also works really well, because Lavafield doesn't do enough damage to deal with the hp pool of Ice Guardians. Try to split your Master Archers against Hurricane and focus single Skyfire drakes with Frost bite. The lack of cheap & spammable T2 units will allow you to apply alot of pressure in the close well situation. 5. Bandits: Well Bandits has no cc, the aoe spells don't do enough damage and this makes it alot easier for you. But Bandits has spammable high dps units (Nightcrawler & Darkelf assassins), who can punish you really hard if you micro poorly, so try to kite nightcrawlers with Frost bite and play a Frostmage to deal with the Darkelf assassins. 6. Fire Frost: The success against Fire Frost was really dependend on the situation. Most of the time you should look for a close well against a wellcluster to reduce the efficency of Glacier Shell. Otherwise Coldsnap & Building protects may stall the game up to a point with enough room for Skyfiredrakes and Scythe Fiends. Fire Frost has pretty expensive units though, which means you got a big advantage in the early fights. The other decks had some cards that were to strong to allow a favourable close well situation unless you've got a tremendous lead. -> Shadow Nature has the cheapest cc and the cheapest high dps units -> Pure Frost has War Eagle (The Ability is too damn powerful) -> pure Shadow has Shadow Mages -> Shadow Frost has Lyrish Nasty, cheap high dps units & building protects Overall playing pure Frost was always a great experience for me and I hope we see at least some Frost T1 players in the game, when everyone is able to play again. So I hope you like the guide and I hope it will be useful for some of you in the future. I'll update it with replays, when I found some good ones, currently there are sadly no impressive Frost matches on youtube. If you are interested in more content about playing T1 check out my Shadow T1 guide aswell! I guess that's about it, thanks for reading and have a nice day! Best regards, RadicalX

Thanks! Yes, I want to make a guide for every T1 faction. It may take some time though due to current exams.

Yeah, Nature is almost finished. I'm looking to extend the existing guides aswell as I've got more & better replays to showcase some scenarios now.

Some basic tips when playing against Nature -> Early engagements do favour Fire, while Nature has the stronger late T1 scaling -> Try engaging from multiple angles to dodge effective CC placements -> When using Eruption, make sure to always finish off at least 1 unit with it, otherwise Surge of Light may end up being way to effective. -> Firesworn is strong when S units get used, but loses against massive amounts of Dryad -> While Nature is strong at beating T1 units later into the game, it is very weak against T2 units, so make sure to get a good timing to tech up

Hey! It takes 3 minutes and 20 seconds to get the costs back into your power pool If you cancel an orb during constructing you regain 75 power. This means if you rebuilt it you lost 25 power. It definitely is worth it to cancel monuments if you are sure it's not going to survive. Everythings gives 90% void refund with a few exceptions (repair costs 100%, toggle abilities 100% (Ghostspears, Spearmen etc.), lost wells and orbs 0)