RadicalX

map of the month - 1 player 29:48 Edit: Went for a second attempt: 27:10 Edit2: 27:01 now Edit3: 24:48 Edit4: 22:37 Edit5: 21:03

Here is just a short overview of counter methods against CoN 1) Curse Well As Church of Negation takes out 150 power out of the void flow, this means hitting power wells with Curse Well makes it even more effective. The bound power makes counter attacks less frightening 2) Earthshaker This is more of a 2v2 thing and got mentioned here already, but Earthshaker is a very good counter for Churches for a similar reasoning. The Church Player is slowed down due to his defence so he can't punish T4 properly 3) Supression/Sunstriders Guess that got discussed already, so I won't comment on that any further. 4) Abuse the slot instensity Church of Negations requires alot of slots to work (2Nether Warps + Kobold Trick + Church + 3 T3 cards minimum). This means regardless of a Shadow Frost or Pure Shadow T2, the decks well lack some important early cards (Just to name some potential ones: Nightguard, Phasetower, Stormsinger, Knight of Chaos, Frostbite). I've seen Abaaama with a 12 card T3 while trying to get through T2 with Shadowmage and Netherwarp + Aura of Corruption. 5) Win by Score If everything fails, you still can try to setup a solid defense, especially when playing a frost splash, to stall up until 30 minutes. You will most likeley posses a higher score as the churches imply alot of bound power, that can't go through the void circle, which affects the score in a negative way on the long run.

There are quite a few cards, that dominate the meta game and completely prevent variety in the PvP environment. Only Fire and Shadow T1 are viable once people reached a decent level and that is quite unpleasant. We are in a turret T1 meta, where Frost and Nature can't compete. Turrets do have insane damage and tankiness, higher range and don't reward micro management at all. Phasetower -> 900 damage for 60 power is way more than any T1 unit could offer. Due to the splash you can take center wells vs Frost and Nature without any advantage. -> Even after the teleport 900/600 stats remain insane especially since there are no Siege units in T1. -> 40m range can force you to engage into the turrets as they can be placed at the edge to attack your power wells while your units can't reach them. -> Even Fire T1 can't beat Phasetower without stationary turrets itself, which is a disaster as Fire should be the faction, that can deal with turrets. The most reliable counter to Phasetower ... is Phasetower. -> 50m teleport range every 30s is faster than some Frost units (you can kite activated Imperials with Phasetower ...) -> Archers are sometimes bugged against Phasetowers. Their damage rotations apply about 2 seconds later (probably as the projectiles travel to the initial position of the tower). This makes it much harder to burst down aggressively placed turrets with your ranged units. -> While other turrets are risky and require initial map control and safetly to be built, Phasetower can be constructed at a much more safe spot and Teleport into the important areas or just jump over cliffs to remove some natural safety provided by the map. Mortar -> 1575/700 stats for 50 power is still viable in some T3 scenarios (this may be slightly exaggerated as it requires all shots to hit) -> if splash is included, the tower has a 55m range, which gives huge zoning potential, strong siege potential for close well situations and can be abused over cliffs. -> Center Well + Mortar is gg against Frost on map control based maps and forces nature to play more aggressive unit compositions, that are weaker in combat The Frost nerfs -> After Ice Guardin and Homesoil got nerfed Frost requires at least 8 T1 slots in order to stay relevant. -> Map Control issues still may kill the faction as you can't rush against Mortar -> Frostmagespam outperforms IGs on big maps in mirror matches and against nature. That results in stationary gameplay that is quite boring to play I personally would like to see harsh nerfs to Phasetower & Mortar in the future & maybe a revert of the IG nerf as it is more micro rewarding than a homesoil revert. Feel free to discuss!

I once made a test to check the actual values of this bug. Nether Warp is supposed to heal for 200 hp, but witch the bug it can get to more than 900, which is quite a remarkable difference. I was in talk with some guys from EA about quite a good amount of bugs. They always told me they would fix them, but never ended up doing so ... For the Netherwarp bug it's probably quite under the radar as just a few decks really suffer from it. All Mages need to be around the same place, which makes them vulnerable against AoE burst damage and you can' t split against cc. The 4 fire splashes do have Lavafield & Shadow Frost can deal with it easily by using high hp nasties (Lyrish Knight to give an example). Pure Frost can use War Eagle to intercept the bug abuse as a scream forces a long range port in oder to dodge it (scream can be cancelled, so there is alot of outplay potential). Shadow Nature can use cc + nasty or an early root aura before the mages get into attack range (you just have to be aware, that oink + phoenix doesn't work before nether warp is played as you can dodge them easily). For stonekin you showcased a pretty solid counter combo by using lyrish knight & Stone Tempest which worked despite a wasted crystal fiend. Razorshard is also a very potent counter against Mages, I personally don't like using them though. The only deck, that really suffers is pure nature as it has no knockback, no burst & no way to rush instant T2 by pure shadow unless you are very close to the orb. I ended up picking up spikeroot in order to survive the early game in this matchup as the ranged attack bursts down shadow mages, which works very well, but isn't really fun to play. Balancing wise it is just a minor issue. That said the Magewarp playstyle is easier to execute than the proper counter strategies. So even though there is reliable counterplay, people that aren't familiar with that kind of playstyle may suffer alot, so a potential fix of this would be definitely a good thing for the quality of games. Your first solution is the one I do support. Just remove the constant refreshing and everything is fine. The second one would break nether warp for defensive uses as it would be a 20s hard cc against enemies. Server wise this shouldn't be a problem as the "permaport" already works once units do have the green dryad buff

Pretty cool idea to give the card an own identity that really fits to an Executor. That said with these numbers a free execute would be quite broken in 2v2 against stuff like Lifeweaving Sunderer and also may be a problem with dazed units as they are spawned with 50% hp. Adding tools for the stronger factions is quite a problem. Nature (in 1v1s) and Frost (1v1 & 2v2) do have a huge problem to keep up anyways.

fathom lord + drones + ashebone (+XL unit) is a decent T3 aswell. There are alot of viable options in T3, depending on meta and your personal playstyle.

If you look for a shadow nature deck I recommend starting with Shadow T1 as it is more solid overall and easier to learn in the first place. High dps units are nice to provide a strong early game, that synergizes well with the strong early T2 by shadow nature. Just to give a strong deck example for a Shadow Nature deck T1 Dreadcharger Forsaken Nox Nasty Motivate Phasetower Nightguard T2 Nightcrawler Darkelf Assassins Amii Phantom Shadow Phoenix Ensnaring Roots Curse of Oink Surge of Light Hurricane Aura of Corruption T3 Silverwindlancer Ashebone Pyro Shield Building Lost Grigori (Purple) If you prefer playing a 3 card T3, you can pick up Ghostspears in T2 (they are quite useful against pure Fire) or the Burrower for some easier, but slightly less effective attacks. If you have any questions regarding the deck, just let me know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LAzuMCkw2I& There you go

Shadow Insect is a possibility, but requires high micro and a low ping. Otherwise the clunky ability + lag will be quite a pain. I had way more success in the CBT phase with it than right now. Fallen Skyelf combos well with Shadow Insect as you can burst down L units like Virtuosu with its ability. So either pick both or none of them as consistent dps suffers from cc as a hardcounter to this card. Shadow has pretty great Anti Air anyways so it's not like Fallen Skyelf is essential in other areas. Satanael can be very strong, but requires alot of buffs to be played around. You need Blood Healing to make him work with his ability (since you do have Unholy Power already, a pickup could be a good idea) Nox Carrier is bad. Either needs Portal Nexus to work or will never reach your power well. Mutating Frenzy has a bad stat cost efficency and too many stacks will result in a quick death. Wrathgazer needs Altar of Nihil to be viable. This way you could avoid any crowd control as a hard counter. I don't think there is a stronger T3 combo in the game right now than Nihil + Voidstorm as it could not just kill everything of your opponent but lead up to 400+ permanent advantages in one second. Makes pure Shadow from one of the weaker T3s to reaching Timeless One level (In 2v2 it is the strongest T3 you can play if you can coordinate plays with your teammate).

Okay I watched the replay and it was pretty much the issue that I assumed earlier. Your void level lowers itself by 250 from picking up T3 and this makes Eruption for Cannon Tower trades more than effective for your opponent. What is more important though: You mentioned, that you outplayed your opponent and were in a good spot to take the T3. That wasn't actually the case. You lost T1 by a wide margin and this shows in the power scaling. You did well in T2, but still you were slighty down in power at the end of your T2 (1805 vs 1824), so there was no lead at all during the time you went T3. Since there was no power lead in the first place you ended up losing as Fire Nature doesn't have the strongest T3 in this game. If you don't pick up such a greedy powerwell in T1 you will most likely be able to win these type of games before any cannon towers hit the ground as your mid game was quite good and it's fire natures strong point anyways.

Multiple decks are quite easy to aquire, as alot of cards are used across all decks (Hurricane, Roots, Burrower, Kobold Trick, Lavafield, Nightcrawler, Darkelfassassins and so on). So once you finished your first PvP deck getting the second one will be much easier. Farming the stuff for my PvP decks was still a painful grind though, but for me it was just unpleasent because we had to spam the same thing over and over again. Spam RPvE to get gold Spam Soultree Expert to get gold Spam King of Giants Expert to get experience for the upgrades Repeat From my perspective a solid achievement/quest system needs to be implemented to give us challenges across the board so every map and part of the game has a solid reward rather than just being forced to spam the same map over and over. There is a thread in the forum to collect ideas, so it would be great to get more of them as it grants a higher pool of potentially good quests and achievements. @SunWu II. Once ranked PvP will be back, getting up to rank 10 there should be no problem anymore.

Would be useful to see the replay in order to give you more effective tips on how to deal with cannon tower spam. Usually an investment in every single base is very expensive and grants you alot of tools to either pick out one base that is unprotected or brute force through one single spot with Virtuosus since the power pool is split up onto a defence in multiple bases. Also you may want to check if your T3 timing maybe ended up being the problem. It shrinks your void level by 250 and if you do this too early, you end up struggling against a strong T2 spam. So this means even trades end up being in favour of the person, that is on the lower tech level and Eruption for Cannon Tower will favour the Stonekin player. Fire Nature has an excellent T2 with alot of tools to attack with massive power efficency. If you do have a solid power lead in T2, there is a good chance to finish the game there aswell. Your T3 is most likely just a tool to close out games with a huge power lead.

@Hirooo get in here @Toggy Thanks for doing these tournaments! It's awesome. I don't like the map pool though. Yshia is just the worst PvP map that exists in this game. Playing Pure Fire + X there is a default win. Also I think Turan > Zahadune & Danduil > Nadai as starting maps, but that may just be my personal opinion. Just don't pick Yshia into the fixed mappool as the map is not fair at all.

Twilight Brute was used in Fire Nature mirrors and against pure Fire, because both do have attack patterns where Ghost Spears do end up struggling at certain power levels. Especially Scythe Fiends + Wildfirespam in late T2 are insane and Twilight Brute was offering more reliable dps against that. Not worth the slot for me personally though. @ImaginaryNumb3r I wasn't exactly referring to the twilight units itself, it was more about the transformation ability. I mentioned the strong T3 as Bandits can cut a big amount of deckslots in T2 to play 4-5 card T3s. The T2 stays bad even if you invest more slots into it ... Soulhunter is an important tool to crack current Timeless One defences. If Shadow Frost goes Fire in T3 you are at an advantage because disenchant + aura is a reliable XL counter that Shadow Frost lacks since Sunreaver got nerfed. In addition to that Shadow Frost T2 doesn't require Life Weaving so the slot efficency is awful when going for Fire T3. Bandit Lancer & Vulcan do have top notch dmg/power values and shred through attacks while Giant Slayer is empowering your attacks by a wide margin. Since alot of these cards are cheap, motivate makes a big difference I don't play Rallying banner in bandits anymore, but if you do so Cultist Master + Evocators Woe may end up being super strong. Combined with Shadow Insect and Fallen Skyelf that is a very strong T3 too, that requires 100+ APM (sounds easy, but is a really high value for Battleforge) and low latency to be played effectively though. Soulhunter remains as a potential finisher. This T3 is more effective when playing Fire T1 because it isn't motivate reliant like the first one. Timeless One T3 still remains stronger, but Bandits can close out games once you are ahead. That's something alot of T3's in this current meta can't do ... and I guess that's something ... at least. In the meantime Twilight transformation will never give you an advantage. I mean the passive effects of transformations are useless and the only meaning of this ability is to spawn a small unit and transform it into a large one (Twilight Minions -> Vileblood) to bait out wrong counter units. That said most T2 S counters in this game (Darkelf Assassins; Scythe Fiends) are useful as allround counters so this strategy simply doesn't work at all since it is expensive (you have to invest like 170 power to get your vileblood and can't transform at the enemys base if he defends proactively)

I think there were players for all 10 basic colours, that managed to hit rank one at a given time. But this isn't exactly how I'd define success. A deck is being used successfully from my perspective if the deck has actual win conditions and the players ends up winning, because he is using these win conditions. I will give a very simplified example: Take a look at 2 of the most popular matchups Fire Nature vs Shadow Frost. There are 2 simplified win conditions: The Fire Nature player has the upper hand in mid/late T2 while Shadow Frost is superior in T3. Let's say T1 goes even and so does early T2 the Fire Nature player has to use supported Burrower spam to beat the equally skilled shadow frost player. A perfect Burrower spam is very hard to defend without any disadvantage at higher void levels. If the Shadow Frost player managed to reach T3 though he ends up winning unless he's down 3+ wells. This is why alot of people don't like Bandits, because the deck doesn't have a clear win condition in some matchups. It lacks individual strength, but even that deck has some combos (Skyfire + Lifeweaving; Windhunter against pure Nature) and a very strong T3 to play around. I don't see any win conditions for a Twilight deck though, which is based on transformations. And I haven't seen a player win games due to using them. It just looks like a handicap and it seems to be all about having a deck, that looks cool. You could even say Abaaaama played his deck to success, because while his micro was terrible, he managed to annoy alot of decent players (especially in 2v2s). If his T1 ended up being better, he would've been much harder to beat, because his deck at least has a clear win condition in his T3, used to be quite a big one pre church of negation nerf.

Prepare yourself, Phasetowers are coming! Btw: After a disconnect a rematch should also be possible if both players agree to it. Sometimes you dc after having a clear lead, where even the opponent realised, that he was losing.

Would be available for some content creation too. Not sure if I will be able to upload on a regular base though, since I also want to keep my own channel. Maybe we could set up little PvP tournaments (with like 4-6 players to make organization easier) and simply cast the games for the channel. This will give us alot of material to show while at least from my perspective tournaments/community challenges were the most enjoyable things to watch. A high ranked player clash in a bo5 or some elegant solutions to expert PvE maps were the things I enjoyed watching the most.

You can always hit me up when I'm online. I'm trying to set up PvP lobbies as often as possible. When we are more than 2 people we could also set up some spectator lobbies which is quite nice.

I mean it's a viable choice for sure. It helps against pure Frost and Fire Frost to an extend, which are somewhat the hardest matchups in the game for pure Fire. Comes down to personal preference if you like to have this safety card for these matchups (they still remain difficult to play against in T2) or if you like to have another card for T3. Giant Slayer won't be able to defend everything there on his own. I prefer to play a very long T1, so I can drag out the early game to rise the void level. This allows me to almost skip the T2 stage, so I can finish things in T3 with Juggernaut.

I fully agree, that's what I was looking for. Sadly it's hard to find the accurate replays from my replay folder with thousands of files in there. I guess I will invest more time into finding more and better replays. Also agree about the editing part. I guess I will take some time for other section parts and maybe Eirias could support me there aswell

Thanks for the offer! Would be great to do this together. Explaining stuff like the void was something I intended to do in these bonus videos. But with a proper structure and better editing we can make this tutorial much better.

Welcome Skylords Community, today I want to introduce the start of my PvP tutorial series. This is going to be a section for newer players that are interested in PvP. Since there are not many sources, that introduce you into the world of PvP I just wanted to offer something, that maybe useful for some new competitive players, that are interested into this gamemode. Since I tend to make walls of text I decided to go for a video series this time, which is hopefully a little bit more enjoyable. I will add more and more videos over time, so we hopefully end up with a full tutorial series when open beta starts. Right away I want to say: If you have any questions or if you think I miss any important points -> simply message me and I will add videos to give more input. Overall introduction (you can also just skip this video tbh): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34NyBAZ1Xfw&t=8s #1 Pick your Deck You need to find a deck that you enjoy playing and what fits your playstyle. Every deck has a somewhat unique feeling when you play it, therefore it is useful to find something that you enjoy while playing. If you are a new player I recommend an easier deck (so stay away from Bandits at the beginning), that allows you to learn alot of basic mechanics without beeing forced to read walls of text before winning a single game. 1.1 Fire Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUfp3C0yFY 1.2 Pure Frost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRNkDzuILFQ 1.3 Pure Nature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyj1ZpAH1ws 1.4 Pure Shadow https://youtu.be/CSaFiZ7UjHE 1.5 Pure Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIbRiH2LR4M #2 Deck Building #3 T1 Basics #4 Deck specific basics - more videos and comments about to appear soon: I will extend this topic as soon as possible -

Yeah, for the traditional nature T1 he is quite essential and you need at least one charge for him, because he is the core unit in nature mirrors unless Treespirits are played.

@doomsword1 If that's your concern don't worry. There won't be any changes any time soon since there are different priorities than balancing right now. Also these changes are mostly minor ones, that don't change anything in the current game. It just makes some cards/decks a little bit less weaker since some cards aren't used by any person like most anti air turrets to give probably the best example. I've seen cards in the AH that noone would buy for the lowest price possible, because noone wants to play them at all. Big changes do require alot of time (maybe with a special testing server) and a good balancing team that also interacts actively with the community to allow open discussions and offers transparency.

Alot of good and interesting points! @Navarr I agree with you, that most cards would need a rework to be fully viable. That requires much more work though compared to changing some simple numbers. I also do think your Shatter Ice idea is better than mine. I just don't believe that Emberstrike would be op in 2v2. Earthshaker (+Bloodhorn) will remain as the superior T4 choice and even that is just semi viable. @Mirosius Adding pure faction cards at some point in time would be a great addition for the game. I guess it will take some time up until this gets possible. The only problem I still do see with this is Enlightment. In order to make pure Cards worthwhile they need to either be simply stronger than other cards or add a unique strength to the faction. Enlightment can circumvent this barrier and will allow even stronger combinations for the superior splash decks. Also you are right that Revanants and twilight transformations are rarely used. I think Revanants @Eirias @ here you go Mutating Maniac is a rather weak card that could've been part of the list as it's outclassed by Fathom Lord, who is cheaper and more versitile due to his great ability. You could give it a small buff and the card would still remain as a weaker XL counter than Fathom Lord or Vulcan in the PvP environment. @Chibiterasu Bandit Stalker would be my main target to buff the Bandits faction as it could fit its gamestyle, which is about proactive defence and snowballing. It is a swift unit with good damage, but as you mentioned there is no reason to pick it over Nightcrawler. I would like to see the slow ability on the unit (similar to Scavenger) which allows you to intercept attacks earlier or at least force out cc. The card could be great to pick up burrowers with their bonus damage against beasts. Also you are right about the Rocket Tower, but I don't know how hard it will be to change the attack accuracy. Regarding Fire Sphere and Blood Healing I do understand your point and I agree that these cards are worth a slot in a pure Fire deck. But this also states how weak pure Fire is in PvE. I feel like there are alot of good damage sources in here with some great units, but without proper support (especially the lack of proper healing) the deck is simply inferior to other decks. This is why I would target Blood Healing as a support healing spell and Fire Sphere (requires 3 Fire orbs and isn't available in splash decks). Void Maw in T3 would be somewhat OP in PvP with such a powerful ability. A simple cost reduction would make more sense if you want to keep the card as an ability bot. It could remove a key unit in big camps and be a better supporter for the deck. Shadowworm was probably one of the most tricky cards as he simply isn't worth the effort for a pure Shadow deck while a disintegration buff would make him just stronger for the Enlightment deck. An implemented self heal after successful disintegration would be quite interesting, but requires work to find accurate numbers. That could also circumvent any over the top buffs for Enlightment decks. Right now I just wanted the Shadow Worm to be more versitile and suggested the dmg buff, since this would give him use outside of the disintegration. His current stats are underwhelming for a pure Shadow card.