JarodDempsey

why is lifestealer getting no buffs?! it takes like 15 attacks to kill a single t1 s squad. Using your fire rate thats 43 seconds to kill a single s squad at t1 which means the tower will regen 215 health but will lose 750 from its own attacks which means vs a t1 s squad the tower has an effective health of 1200-750+215= 665 which is abysmal. it suffers from the same problem that snapjaws does which makes it extremely ineffective against squads of enemies. Considering lifestealer is supposed to be a cc tower to counter s units this is a major problem. Look at how it does vs 1 squad of stonekin shards and then try makeshift tower and see how obviously broken lifestealer is. makeshift has 41% of lifestealers damage and a slower fire rate and yet it kills a squad of shards taking 10-25% of its hp in damage while lifestealer cant even reliably kill a single squad. Furthermore the self damage entirely defeats the purpose of a cc tower which is to lower overall damage to your defensive installation. Even if shadows best t1 def strategy via splicer didnt exist, current lifestealer would still be useless because phase tower completely outclasses it even though phase tower has been nerfed and is balanced with weaker stats to make up for its ability to move. Lifestealer needs at least 10m splash range to even see if the damage can properly distribute to squad members and after that its self damage mechanic will still likely need work or removal. infected tower is getting a useless 8.7% damage buff and you are deleting its only use case by removing its ability to bypass the unit cap. The damage buff (and splash radius increase) is not enough to make it worth using and considering youre also removing its only use case, this ends up being a massive nerf. Why was infected tower given such a useless change and are there plants to rework towers such as this that will still be useless? tower of flames looks interesting. it will finally have competitive damage however the increased health rather than ability to knock is very puzzling. i get that fire does have access to some cc at t2 via rocket but really that theme should carry through to t3. tower of flames has no knock currently but really should be knocking L to maintain parity with the lower tiers. similarly for volcano it would be nice to see it knock xl, idk what to say about howling shrine. this falls squarly in the still garbage tier category with infected tower. it will literally have less health than the t3 frost fortress. This is a prime example of how unhealthy the current root system is. this card is completely awful by itself or in any standard defensive installation. the only time it becomes worth using is when you have power bound to useless entities who do nothing but provide battery support. But whats weird is that youre also encouraging players to instead use howling as a battery due to its superior support per power ratio. This in itself just shows how poorly howling shrine is treated despite being what should be the keystone structure in all of nature. The root network needs to be completely reworked so atrocities like this (and treespirits) dont continue to take the place of what should be great cards for nature. would also be nice to see trap structures get buffs somehow before drpve also dont forget church of negation is still unusable in shadow and needs a practical source of healing to be added

the inability of frost buildings to passively knock mediums by t3 is a major oversight, could this be added to the small cannons? Also just to reiterate one of my comments from the deep dive, having strongholds power scale on missing health is really dumb considering frost has 2 healer units and at least one spell to heal structures by that tier. From the direction armored has been pushed into, it looks like players are supposed to let it get melted then shield it but really this just ends up being a really clunky way to ignore all of the structure healing mechanics that should provide synergy.

blue vortex has effectively the same dps just worse splash radius and that weird initial attack delay. and while vortex is also less dense than blaster, the lack of corpse requirement and availability at t2 allows vortex to easily compete with blaster. with both getting nerfed it will be interesting to see how things pan out but really in cases where towers work behind walls, vortex will likely come out ahead if these blaster changes actually provide a meaningful downside so blaster cant just constantly run on autopilot like they do now which afaik was the reason theyre being nerfed in this way

just to clarify for anyone wondering rage on this card goes 100% (1, 2, 3)[0+3.33+3.33]s 125%(4, 5, 6)[+3.33+3.33+3.33]s 150% (7+)[+3.33]s for a total time of 24 seconds to fire a 150% shot. The proposed changes would make this 100%(1, 2)[0+3.33]s 125%(3, 4)[+3.33+3.33]s 150%(5+)[+3.33]s which ends up being 16 seconds to fire a 150% shot. also im looking forward to testing the efficacy of the ice shield, i think it is a step in the right direction overall.

will enemy unit collision for initial placement be removed? i just dont see it being useful as a trap building if it is outranged by ranged units and you cant reliably build it once the enemy force has already move into your space. it is a neat idea but really this structure will be competing with mine for offensive use and for only 10 more power mine will do way more damage without binding any power or being easily outranged despite having much smaller aoe since the enemies wont stop to target. I would suggest provide a delay after death for the explosion so pvp people can have a chance to move their units out but at the same time increase the explosion range so it is actually useful in pve. especially considering it will have only 267 ehp for 10 seconds when youre supposed to be constructing it in combat close enough to hit ranged units. The only use case i can imagine for this as proposed would be some area where you want a bunch of sacrificial structures and plan to fight mostly melee so basically like crusade, these towers could outclass morclay assuming they get adequate damage from their arrows but outclassing trap buildings when trap buildings are currently D tier isnt exactly a badge of honor.

seems interesting esp if people use a slot for ice age but it is disappointing that it is being balanced past comboing with ward of the north. the main argument against ward buffs has been that it effects structures but now this strat will be more useful considering free shields over time and increasing efficiency so long as you maintain ice age as the tower creates more shields. i guess maybe this could be another reason why ward needs buffs but idk the whole t3 strats for frost is very muddled yet

Per Kapo and Sylar i redid my #0 tip to better explain the technical aspects of camp engagement propagating wave spawns. This was great info as the incidence where pulled camp enemies not getting damaged in my experience as someone who was unaware of the damage to health requirement was so low that i was well unaware of it lol so by adding it in there perhaps other players may sieze the opportunity to avoid some accidental wave spawns. Mynoduesp has some solid tips as well tho most are more advanced for the basic section and I decided not to include focus fire because although the focus fire itself is fairly beginner, if the player doesnt have the enemy unit knowledge to choose the priority targets then it can overall be a detriment so im saving it for intermediate tips. Regarding ThomasMann's mauler suggestion 🙃 well ill just leave that there for players to make their own decisions lol.

[Up to date as of end of 2021, fire rpve is released and none of the other factions have had significant changes afaik. If people like these tips I might consider expanding to intermediate tips, adding pictures, making faction specific tips (looking at you lost souls), and keeping it updated as the game evolves.] I wanted to write these tips because theres a lot of fairly simple strategies/knowledge that might not be readily apparent to beginner/intermediate players but which can make rpve a lot smoother experience for everyone involved. Disclaimer: Treim has an in-depth speedrunning rpve guide however it is geared more toward veteran players (and speedrunning) definitely feel free to check it out if that’s more your speed or just for some of the helpful info that it has which can usually be applied to the lower difficulties. My guide will have a lot of useful tips for average and beginner players playing 4 player rpve difficulty 6 to 9 with other random players of similar skill and some of these tips might not necessarily be the best strategy for other types of rpve. These tips also work on rpve 5 though the earlier camps don’t have spawners so some of the tips might not be entirely relevant. Now on to some of the most important tips: 0. When you cause damage to the health of a unit in a camp (a camp is an initially static group of enemy units and structures spawned at the beginning of the match), every camp directly connected to that camp will start spawning waves of enemies. Waves move toward whichever closest orb you currently had constructed when they were spawned. Attacking a wave will not cause enemies to start spawning from attached camps however if the wave is close to a non-wave (aka camp) enemy then they can be agroed and if that enemy takes damage to its health from your forces it will cause attached camps to start spawning their waves. Something as innocuous as a bandit shaman running from fairly far to get a heal in on a wave and being hit by a stray arrow or some splash damage can suddenly turn 1 wave spawn into 2 or 3 or even more so be wary of assaulting a wave close to an enemy camp unless you plan to engage the camp or can run far enough that any camp enemies lose interest and turn back before they are damaged. 1. Always* go for the spawner. *Very few exceptions to this rule exist for new/intermediate players in random groups, most are from bosses like urzach and abaddon, and possibly infestor or hellhound where you need to kill the boss as soon as possible else it can delete your army. There are few strategies where it can be fine to kill the camp starting from elsewhere but those are advanced strategies. For new players just always go for the spawner if there isn’t a boss as mentioned above. 2. Only 1 spawner is real. All the enemies from a camp only spawn from one of the spawners. The real spawner will always be on the right side if entering from the tower side. In other words most camps can be shaped with 4 corners, 2 corners (1 side) has towers and the other 2 corners (side) has spawners. If you consider the tower side the front then the two spawners will be in the back, when you enter from the front (tower side), the real spawner will always be on the right side. 3. If in the outside lane assume you will be using T1 to get to T3. (outside lane means players in spot 1 and 4 aka the outside of the map compared to players 2 and 3 which start farther away from the corners) Do not rely on using T2 in the outside lane unless you can guarantee you can trap (trapping is an advanced strategy to prevent further wave spawn) since it is often stacked (stacked means that the camps are close enough together that attempting to clear one will pull enemies from the other). It is much more efficient to clear your t2 but not build the orb/wells and build up a t1 while defending there to then assault t3 with your inside lane rather than spending all your power failing to defend at your t2. As you increase your game knowledge and ability you will be able to decide for yourself if it safe to build t2 (or just use a trapping strategy) but if youre ever in doubt just stick with t1. 4. If you are in an inside lane do not assault your t2 before the outside lane assaults their t2. This is important because due to #0 when you assault your t2 then your shared t3 will spawn a wave of enemies that will attack the outside lane. If they aren’t ready then this could be very bad for them. This isn’t a hard rule as it rarely causes failure outside of lost souls but it is an appreciated courtesy. Remember this is a team mode, things will go smoother in general if you work together. If one person rushes which causes another person to fail then this will likely be a setback overall. 5. You can see the location of camps and paths through the fog of war. If you pan the camera over the areas covered by the fog of war you can still see the shape of the terrain, you will notice the clearings which likely contain camps as well as the narrower parts which are the paths. Use this to your advantage to avoid pulling stacked camps and also to plan out your assault. For example if you see your t2/t3/t4 is stacked with another camp then build up at the previous tier so you don’t get rolled. 6. It is generally best practice to kill edge camps/corner camps first. These have no or 1 path connected to them (generally when people mention paths it is paths from the target camp to enemy camps beyond that camp so although dead end camps technically have 1 path, for the purposes of wave spawning they have no path since they are a dead end) so if you eliminate them then the total number of waves currently being spawned stays the same or decreases. This also helps prevent missing stuff as well as rogue waves getting behind your force and potentially assaulting one of your orbs. Disagree with any of my tips or have some of your own? Post them in the comments and maybe I’ll even add them to the list.

1. you guys have rocket tower all wrong. it also become apparent when you mentioned fire lacks a viable defense tower at t1. fires implementation of towers at lower tiers are for unit support (especially in combination with walls). it isnt correct to take every defensive strategy in a vacuum for every faction. for example natures root structures shouldnt be balanced around working without (root)units. similarly fires cc structures shouldnt be balanced around working without units either. You are nerfing the hp and the # of targets effected which will make it much less reliable as a cc tower and completely destroy its main usecase. rocket tower doesnt need more damage and less health (which fire already has access to via pyromaniac), it needs faster fire rate (stacking over time if possible akin to rage for thematics but for attack speed instead of damage) or the ability to lock on combined with bigger splash. your proposed changed would completely remove a cc tower from the game in favor of another damage tower which needlessly homogenizes the game and limits variety for potential strategies and themes. 2. stranglehold sucks and should not be used as a benchamark unless you guys can fix it so that it can chain its own cc or it wont recast on immune units without manual intervention then stranglehold should not be used as a benchmark. also it cant even hit air which is even worse. nature has arguably the worst tower structures in the game, i dont think any are worth using as a benchmark in the building rework. makeshift should be the third t1 benchmark as it is a much better example of a t1 cc tower. 3. lost launcher is mediocre at best and should not be used as the t2 benchmark for damage structures, similarly cannon tower is on the low side of ok and should not be used as a baseline either, it cant even hit air targets which is not a quality that should be included in the baseline. blue vortex should be baseline it is the only t2 tower worth using as a damage source. it is well balanced due to low density and moderate cost while also being thematically effective and having an effective combination of dps and cc. if it wasnt for its fairly high density, lost launcher would be basically garbage. the blue affins shield doesnt recharge after breaking and the red takes way longer than is reasonable to have good damage considering low tower hp and lack of m knockback at t2, lost launcher actually a prime example of a tower that primarily needs some flat buffs to be in a good spot. 4. dont nerf skyelf utility to buff frost towers. like why would you consider this even smh. Firstly wbg is perfectly fine, it should be used as the baseline to buff t4 forts around, u dont need to buff it and you definitely dont need to buff it at the expense of skyelf utility which has the added effect of nerfing every 2 orb building in the game. stronghold should be able to scale as frosts primary combatant structure for general use (vs ranged as well as melee) while wbg can help against ground xls but mostly be used as an artillery nuke. 4.5 stronghold changes are not the right direction. stronghold needs to be the keystone for t3 frost building defense and ideally be able to scale into t4. Making its longranged counter manual and costly with a long cooldown makes zero sense and giving it a passive that works by losing health in the faction with building heals and shields is even more nonsense. Stronghold should be able to passively copy its buffs to friendly structures and actively apply a unity to friendly structures. In this way with an orb increase to pure, frost alone would be afforded the opportunity to make most efficient use of its structure support utilities and stronghold would actually become fitting of its name. In addition to this the long ranged middle gun just needs to have 50-60m range and knock l units while the little guns need to fire faster and knock m units even if the fortress costs like 200-250 this would be the best direction. Failing to implement stronghold in such a strong manner will be a huge failing for frost as a whole. 5. "towers with larger models should be more expensive than towers with smaller models." i cant tell if you guys just slightly missed the mark here or if you were being intentionally roundabout to hide your intent to nerf a bunch of towers. This statement should written towers with larger models should be stronger than towers with smaller models. this would be correct as then relative strength density could be maintained. The original statement just becomes clearly problematic as you impose a needless limit on your own balancing options. There verywell can be the case where a large tower should be made relatively cheap to compensate for other stats while a smaller tower could cost more if it has better stats. Strength density should not be made identical* as that will needlessly limit variety and cause undue difficulty during future balancing. *Dont get confused with my statements, when i say density should be maintained and density should not be made identical those two statements are not contradictory. I basically mean larger weaker towers should be cheaper while stronger smaller towers should be more expensive. just because a tower is larger doesnt mean it needs to be more expensive as the original statement suggests, nor should smaller towers be cheaper. I think another bad outcome --in addition to larger towers getting cost increases-- of the original statement would be some smaller towers having nerfed stats and neither of these outcomes should occur as towers in general outside of maybe necroblaster should all get buffs or be left alone 6. " A tower’s knockback should thus be carefully weighed against its splash radius and act as an important consideration when determining a tower’s stats." agree, but i feel like you guys neglected to mention (hopefully not notice entirely) that some tower structures are not primarily damage towers just as some combat units are not primarily damage units. Towers like makeshift tower, rocket tower, and lifestealer are cc towers just like frost mage and aggressor are cc units. I agree that knockback should be weighted along with damage but some towers like the 3 ive already mentioned should be balanced around their cc rather than their damage. The use case for the mentioned towers are best seen in strategies with archers on walls. Taking this one step further id wonder if these could be tested/changed in a way such that theres a buff to range when placed behind a wall to further cement this case as a viable building strategy and add diversity to tower strats in general -- definitely something worth considering during the building rework. 7. "Overall, this means that towers with higher burst damage should have lower damage totals" another example where i cant tell if you guys missed the mark are are being intentionally obscure to allow for massive nerfs. Instead of saying burst towers should have lower damage you should be saying sustained towers should have higher damage. No towers need nerfs outside of maybe necroblaster and outside of nerfs, my statement and your statement effect the same thing so it remains puzzling why you chose to say it how you did rather than the way ive worded it. TLDR u better not be nerfing practically anything outside of necroblaster or this entire rework will be a complete waste of time. Other considerations: -lifestealer needs a serious buff. please just make it into a full cc tower by removing the health lost on attack and change its sacrifice to give it a strength buff like dreadcharger. the current health loss mechanic is just a prime example of detriments outweighing bonuses that is rife within shadow. just get rid of the whole awful mechanic, you can still keep lifestealer thematically appropriate by allowing it to keep sacrifice to either heal itself or provide itself with an expendable damage buff like dreadcharger has. If lifestealer got rid of its terrible self damage it could actually be usable as a cc tower and would be nice for added variety as it has a high density which is a very good combo for cc towers but currently the self damage is just so unfun (and ineffective) it isnt even worth slotting to use behind walls. -church of negation needs a viable and practical healing source within shadow one of the most shadowy structures is practically unusable in pure shadow. this has long been recognized as an item that requires fixing and now is the time to do it so dont forget about it. -i see little to nothing in the deep dive regarding diversity of strategies, especially on a per faction basis. i get you guys are focusing on towers mainly rn and not yet all the other types of structures but dont balance them in a vacuum without considering the general strategy targets of each faction. Frost towers are probably best designed to be built as the primary combat forces in an installation (to the point where the units ennd up as the supporters) whereas nature is the opposite as it will rely mainly on units and have more support only structures. Fire leans more towards nature and shadow leans more toward frost. Dont neglect this or we will end up with cases like rocket tower getting nerfed into a worse pyromaniac which will be 100% bad for the game. I see current strategies where frost has a variety of structures and available strategies. Fire has two main strats which are structures that melt enemies and structures that cc while units melt enemies. Nature has mainly structures that directly aid own units or cc enemies, and shadow like frost tends to strike a balance between structures that melt enemies, directly aid allies, and cc enemies. -a lot of other structures need buffs i get dev resouces necessitate prioritizing certain things above others and for much of the community that means towers before other structures but please dont leave the other structure types to languish on the back burner for too long, especially in the case where theyd still not be buffed before drpve is released. stuff like kobold buildings in frost, trap buildings in fire, and my beloved healing well need some serious tlc so all the building strats are ready to go when drpve is released,

rip master archers you will be missed

Name: Gifts from Ym Ability: Death Underfoot fyi Ym is a traveling desert kingdom and provides a loose relation to shadow (via moon and related shadow abilities originating there) via the card's desert aspect without contradicting potential goblin origins of the technology introduced by the original mine card. I like to think the ymian people coopted the technology and began a practice of using it in areas they left behind to deter any who would wish to encroach on their historic migration range.

Name: Skyscorcher Ability: Tainted/Infused Ablation

I have listed most of the current classes, i left out marauders because i dont see much use for an additional designation based on the units i saw which already had it and instead would make more sense classified as soldiers, feel free to explain why you disagree. Please let me know if there are any i'm missing. Rank 1: soldier, archer Rank 2: wizard, supporter, corruptor Rank 3: dominator, destroyer Rank 4: crusader I've listed them in this order due to what i think is the approximate general power level of each. For example rank 2 classes are usually slightly to moderately more expensive per unit than soldiers or archers (rank 1 classes). Think 60-80 power at t1 for a wizard vs 50 for an archer. Similarly rank 3 are oftentimes double that of rank 1 for example sunderer or mountaineer. Granted such costs are also determined by other factors but such factors are often interrelated with the target class. Rank 4 units tend to cost double a rank 2 or rank 3 unit. Another aspect to differentiate the classes on a similar scale is spammability. Lower ranks tend to be used in higher quantities than higher ranks. For example dreadnought vs tempest, grinder vs batariel. Now for general class definitions:, i started with the old definitions from the original bf wiki then modified them after looking through all the units and then changed crusader to be a bit more intuitive. Soldier: basic melee combatant Archer: Basic ranged combatant Wizard: usually ranged combatant that uses magic, primarily used for additional ability/utility Supporter: below average to very below average combat power but provides bonuses to allies Corruptor: average to below average combat power but provides detriments to enemies Dominator: Above average combat power Destroyer: average or above average combat power and excels against structures; oftentimes has siege Crusader: Significantly above average effect on force strength. Often similar to adding support/corruptor/wizard to another class, Some notable comments: 1: marauder has very little purpose and should probably be removed if not repurposed 2: skyelves should be changed to wizard or possibly support to better define crusader 3: more units should be placed in crusader. for example batariel and harvester 4: the distinction between dominator and destroyer isnt always clear. It is obvious that for the most part units with siege were often destroyers but for ease of balancing and intuitiveness of the classes i dont think siege should be 100% required, just as not having it shouldnt prevent being a destroyer if the unit's use case is often buildings. Stuff like ashbone are right on the line, i would say most people dont use them to specifically counter structures but since they have siege they are classed as destroyers. Others are a bit farther over the line such as juggernaut who is significantly better at fighting structures instead of units when compared to alternative strategy for his color and tier. Even farther over the line are units like abyssal warder who is classified as a destroyer despite having no siege and no structure related ability, when you realize that avatar of frost and grinder are both classified as soldiers abyssal warders destroyer class seems obviously in error. 5: magic is usually the determining factor in close cases between wizard and archer 6: satanael is a destroyer for no apparent reason and should instead be classed as a wizard 7: overlord should definitely be a dominator rather than a crusader, 8: forest elder should be classified as supporter/corruptor 9: misclassification tends to be more common at higher tiers when units have more effects and the rank 1 classes arent used as much, a lot of misclassifications like 6, 7, and 8 can be found in the higher tiers

my game says your replay is broken due to update

Firstly i meant no offense. Secondly by your own reply to my initial comment it is patently subjective. You draw the line where you see fit between various effects because of differences in their mechanical origins despite the fact that they effect the same actions such as refreshing shields so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ================================================ I didnt mean my reply to come off so negatively I just wanted to further the discussion. ================================================= I dont have a problem with reasonable hyperbole. I generally like your suggestion but my main issue is that if we use it for this spell then we have less opportunity to use those words in places where they might be more fitting such as when the building overhaul happens.

Firstly i think this reasoning is pretty subjective and not very strong. Shield building is practically the same as avatars shield and ww and yet building falls in a different category. Plus ice guardians shield is really similar to the new purple affin without a building so they should be in the same category. Secondly this new spell has nonstatic shields. The blue one for sure can grow and the purple one degrades overtime. Judging by wording and context a combo with ice age or ww or even area ice shield should strengthen the shield. These are different than all of the cards in your "ice shield" category (except the similarity between guardian and purple shield as ive already mentioned). Thirdly if they would choose to go this route (which i hope not bc it is boring calling every thing ice shield) then the whole system should be completely standardized similar to heals vs regens wherein the shield aspect should be separated out from any additional aspects. ======================================================================================================= I like where youre coming from with relation to frosts theme (though some of your assertions about i disagree with) however the main thing i take issue with here is that it doesnt really fit with the actual card effect. I dont disagree that the art could work for this name but the effect is neither a bastion nor immortality. Dont get me wrong im not 100% a stickler about bastion only being used on immobile targets as it is technically and historically used in the context of a fortification (or even a movable building) however the usage with a generally mobile being is fairly weak. Furthermore ice shields make their targets far from immortal. 2500 ehp is nice but it's is outclassed by anything stronger than a 33% damage reduction on a 5000 hp t4 unit, i dont think the word immortal in a primary name should be spent on such an effect. All of that said i think such a name would be a great fit for when stronghold gets building unity. 😉

Name: Skyborn Aegis Ability: Tainted/Blessed Preservation The primary name i wanted to keep something similar/simple to ice shield but make it sound more t4/better. The first word i wanted something relating it to frost but not so simple as frost so i eventually came up with skyborn because frost itself was born of the winds and mists which reside mostly in the sky. Then i was staring at the artwork gif a lot and was like omg that also works super good with all of the elves in the picture. Then for the second word i wanted shield but something cooler and considered ward but obvi that would overlap with ward of the north so then i settled on aegis because nothing has that in its primary name and it also sounds cool. For the ability name i wanted something like protection or shield but not so generic so i eventually landed between preservation and providence. While i personally think that providence fits better by definition i eventually chose preservation because it has a better ring to it and its meaning is more widely known. Overall i think it would be a great fit and also provides a solid short name of aegis for the spell whereas something that had say shield in it might overlap with area ice shield. ============================= Wow this spell looks super cool (pun intended) and uber great job on the artwork i love it. I've been wanting to see better skyelf participation in frost since i made my first skyelf deck in 09 and found out that theyre mainly supporters T_T but seeing them positioned for defence around that castle looks epic. I like to think while the commanders and templars are fighting in the air the barrier is being projected by a ritual of the sages within the castle. The building reminds me of a stronghold but also maybe with a kind of shrine of martyrs on the left side. The mountain also looks interesting because i cant quite tell if it is is the way the snowfalls or if there is something in the front of it either a huge winged creature or maybe theres a big cave entrance, I also think it could be cool like maybe this is one of the last bastions in the timeline where the lost took over from empire. The swords in the foreground really make me wonder though like the middle one looks like a warlord sword and the others look like maybe vigil swords but at the same time warlords would be huge and vigils would be in the air, maybe in the future there will be another lost unit with a sword (or maybe im just forgetting one lol). ============================= My opinion on the promo cards: Firstly it should really be twilight or lost (or even amii) because theyre the factions without a promo yet. Deathray is definitely out because shadow already has three promos. I like skyelf but they already have t4 promo and it would make sense if they had a promo at t3 or t1 (plenty of great options imo) so id say shes out too. Manawing imo is also out because its just going make even more strong the various manawing strats at t1 which really need to be balanced against anyways. This leaves fire. Personally id vote for moloch because A it would look cooler than sunderer and B would provide parity with frost vs construct.

This is my rpve9 pure frost deck. I dont personally use any t2 units or homesoil but they are good strategies. Looking at your second deck (imo you dont need regrowth or the amii monument tho monument could save a little power vs 4th orb if u have the room to keep it) Id probably get rid of battleship in favor of construct. Unless youre running primarily a battleship deck it's not all that worth keeping in the deck. In my case ill probably get rid of it once new t4 ice shield spell comes out. With construct you can summon 2 at at a difficult boss to chain cc it. If youre running ironclads id recommend getting more charges asap and consider using the other affinity as well for quicker access to more charges as youll want a lot quickly to get your t4 moving. With regard to ice age i wouldnt really consider it good enough to be your healing spell, if you are comboing ww and dreadnought you should have plenty of sustain already but you can still use ice age to extend winterwitch shields. Also on your t3 you dont really need 2 units but if you have room like me i like to include both. I use avatar on easy camps like if there is one in middle of t4 orb camps bc u can just coldsnap and then he can be left alone to clear it in most cases. Dredges i like to use 2-3+ward of north if t4 orb camp is stacked in lost souls because they can kill buildings quickly and tend to last longer than avatar in that case. Mostly t3 is personal preference. Also i hope you are using frost shard and shatter ice to kill spawners super quick when you enter camps. For Me: T1: i use 2 frost mages and 6-12 archers (usually 8 but 12 vs ls) but since you use homesoil u probably only need 6 in most cases. I usually focus priority targets but especially if the enemy forces is just s units without steadfast u dont need to focus anything if you dont want. I also use wintertide blue which is a good defensive tool at t1. T2: pretty much just t1+ cold snap when assaulting a camp i coldsnap then kill spawner then depending on how much help my ally gives i use wintertide. If vs ls it is helpful to make heavy use of wintertide and area ice shield. Depending if there are vigils and if they are shielded and where they are it may be better to focus buildings in the camp. Ideally with the initial assault you want to kill the spawner plus either the vigils or the buildings (which greatly weakens the vigils and prevent regen on all enemy units if battle ceases for a period of time) but adjust your strategy with your ally as necessary to do the most damage. T3: For me is similar strategy to t2 except in cases where my t1 units have died off i usually spawn avatar or a dredge or two depending on how the t4 camp looks and what my ally is doing. T4: My t4 strategy is 1 dreadnought + tempests usually i shoot for at least 8 but since their buffs i can start moving much sooner at 4-6 solo or 2+ if moving with an ally. My main strategy on most camps will be to maelstrom the whol camp while moving tempests in range to hit everything and moving dreadnough within range to cover all the tempests. Usually once im close enough i use frost shard then shatter ice on the spawner and any nearby structures to kill them immediately. Then quickly i mode change my dread and tempests while everything is frozen then pick off priority targets until theres just cleanup and i let the tempests finish. It can be helpful to use ward of the north while the units are entering a camp before dread is up to protect stuff. I occasionally use area ice shield to heal dread and a couple nearby tempests but i dont usually need much heals. (If youre using martyrs be ure it is active shortly before approaching the camp or at least before maelstrom freezes stuff) Usually zero if multiplayer as people have war shrine which is better plus frost is pretty expensive so if you dont have to bind the power into your own shrines then thats ideal. Usually tho if im the only one running shrines i build 2 unless it is late in game when i notice or we are very behind and i need more power for units quickly. Really depends on how much power u tend to cycle when killing a camp but id say most people would like to use 2 so they can always have one active when needed.

I picked frost for a few reasons. They have a lot more cool buildings than other factions. Theyre the child element of winds and mists which is my favorite element. Theyre very durable. The humans of their faction have the most advanced society.

For some reason every time i make a new deck it makes invisible the first card on the second row (even when printing images) of the last deck i made but then the only way to fix it is to remove the bottom row then remove the last card in the top row so it then causes the hidden card to appear and then i can re add all the cards starting with the last card in the top row. Very time consuming every time i want to reference a saved deck to have to remake over half of it

So defense rpve.... 1. Firstly i have question how wise it is to make it using 8 enemy factions. I understand that due to the static nature of the map it might be beneficial ot have more enemy factions to prevent it from being stale but i cant help but think this will lead to problems of viability considering how much work has gone into (and still has to go into) making factions viable in rpve against only 3-4 enemy factions. 2. This immediately raises the issue of void return from buildings that must be destroyed every wave. I really hope part of the first option buff is a passive like 80% immediate return from building destruction. 2.5 Building charges as well may need some review after testing is done as there isnt really anywhere else that would require this kind of build destroy rebuild scenario. 2.6 Building size and map spacing will obvi have to be reviewed during testing as well since they wont likely be popular as the primary strat until at least t2 and by then youre wall sharing with an ally. It is hard to see how big the space will actually be from the image but it will definitely be a concern. 2.7 Long ranged enemies are still of significant concern due to the lack of buildings that can fight them i see a lot of the provided cards have longer range which helps but hopefully this is also provided for in every faction during the building rework in the future. 2.8 also there needs to be an effect of benevolence for structures if lost dragons or similar enemies are going to be encountered. 3. The cards offered at t2 are questionable. Obviously spot one is best for root networks but rl is solid in general. Skyelfs are best suited to buildings so frost or shadow would be the best option. Spot 3 would probably be best suited for nature bc of heals or maybe shadow due to ease of summoning feeder units or later combos via fallen elf and single target damage boosts. Spot 4 is mild range buff and mild damage boost, maybe good for idk bandits or twilight to combo with long ranged buildings or a non-root unit based defense. 3.1 I suppose depending on how ownership works these units could be distributed to other players but depending on how much their bonuses are built into the difficulty of the map their limited quantities could cause issues with multiple players wanting to use similar strategies which depend on them. Hopefully this is prevented with appropriate difficulty levels. 4. Similarly the outside camp cards dont all seem very useful. The vigil seems like the best via a solid addition to building based defenses likely from spot 2, especially for long ranged since few buildings have long ranges. The gemeye is probably second best since it is solid but not exceptional. The tortugun is very questionable imo because her upkeep still needs to be addressed. Tortuguns are often only used in deck built specifically around them and still require far too much input for their output so i dont forsee a normal tortugun being of sustained use in most decks. Twilight hag seems like a highly useless card. Sure she has aoe cc but it is male units only and shes not especially durable and brings nothing else special to the table, i can mostly see her being used as a sacrifical distraction to split enemy forces at best, hopefully she receives a significant buff. 4.1 similarly to #2.1 I hope these could be distributed to other players. Especially the vigils like the left side might not need 3 considering they already have razorleaf. 4.2 have you guys considered maybe dumping 3 kobold engineers somewhere? 5. It's a little disappointing that theres no defense without a wall. Like dont get me wrong walls are great but im thinking maybe later in the match there could be some option switch or something to spawn enemies from behind that then advance on you from an unwalled area so you have to defend without a wall for maybe more gold or maybe to weaken the boss or provide a different reward. 5.1 Another issue that happens is that amii ritual becomes quite strong/borderline op. Especially if multiple players run it and or glaciation it can trivialize defense with walls. 5.1.1 Similarly northern keep can be relatively op due to chainable damage immunity. Both of these effects may need nerfing if tests prove theyre unhealthy for the meta. 6. Dont make the bosses too op, similar to #1 the game isnt even well balanced for 3-4 enemy factions and if bosses require very niche strategies it will further make a lot of stuff useless (exacerbated by the complete disarray of current building strats). 7. have you guys considiered randomizing the provided cards aside from the shrines? Like the outside cards and the cards at t2 if randomized would prevent certain strategies from being best in slot and help to prevent the mode from being stale. I'm sure ill have more once wave compositions and bosses are released but these are all i can think of off the top of my head for now.

1: I agree with Bini Inibitor about the need to addvalue to those useless camps. Additionally for standrad and advanced I would consider this the 2nd hardest multiplayer map. The time pressure is fairly crazy to the extent that you really have to consider if it is worth it to take any extra well camps or not because the time constrants are so heavy. This level of consideration is excessive for the lower difficulties. If a camp with a well exists between two orbs then it should always be worth taking in the primary strategy of a maps lower difficulties. This is also why i think the other solo wells need to be buffed somehow to make the reward more significant. As they are currently most of the edge wells are not worth taking in the lower difficulties due to the need to destroy the next camp which is far from guaranteed such as the case with an expert player playing on expert difficulty who knows exactly which enemies are where and uses specific cards in specific positions to take the camp. 2: The defensive options on the lower difficulty are a joke without using specific niche combos. The spawned waves are far too large in most cases to defend with any general use defense given the time and power constraints. I've tried to defend the 2nd wave (me at t2 wave at t3). Using timevortexes bolstered by kobold lab and skyelfs in combination with some archers but was assaulted by 2 bandit snipers 2 soulhunters at least 1 bandit drake and 2 other fliers plus a few other adds. Short of rushing a couple northern keep or dedicating part of your deck to cards specifically for this instance there arent enough viable defensive strategies which should not be the case for and advanced (or standard) difficulty. I also once tried defending the 1st wave and it spawned so many banditos and bandit lancers I couldnt even count. Even after defending successfully my force was so damaged it could never catch up adequately before the next wave spawned. I've also defended the third wave using lost horrors time vortexes and elf sages and even though my defense was successful it required a huge power expenditure. I've run into similar issues using pure fire and pure shadow mostly stemming from the time pressure preventing adequate army size without requiring specific counters and expert map knowledge (which shouldnt be required in advanced or standard). Overall i think that giving large power bonuses after liberating side camps would solve both problems. This would give purpose and solid benefit to side camps while also helping to ease some of the time pressure that makes this map so difficult. Alternatively lowering the strength of defensive waves or the time at which they spawn could be considered.

For standard and advanced this map is alright but in my experience has a couple problems. 1: I always play spot 4 and I have to say the difficulty of the t4 camp is excessive. It seems like it was meant to be played by 1 player and yet theres a path from the other side to possibly allow for a 2-player assault. That said the player in spot 3 is pretty much almost always busy attending their own side and unable to assist. Assuming you have a sustainable defense to build t3 (this could just be a large enough force to kill waves and then regen next to orb) you need to assault this t3/t4 ls camp using at most t3. I'm not saying this should be a super easy map as it is ls and the last in one of the later lines but in most cases this requires a very expensive force (or niche strategies) which can cause a very boring delay while you reach the unit cap. -1.1: One way to help this would be to remove the antimagic buildings as this would allow players on the lower difficulties to access spell support much sooner. As it is now the attack priority goes anti magic>spawner>vigils>(maybe those corpse poisoners if i remember right)>boss>adds. Having to kill an antimagic building and 2 large spawners while being assaulting by vigils and various other ls adds and a boss that deletes xls can be quite difficult if you cant use many spells for much of the duration. -1.2: give the player on the other side an incentive to assist in the assault so spot 4 doesnt have to spend so much time building an army -1.3: consider reducing the army size or number of support buildings or the boss difficulty 2: so many times ive seen people in spot 1 free the red king before spot 3 is even close to clearing the corner and then they have to take huge losses rushing to the corner to prevent him from dying. I propose preventing freeing the red king in the past until the future has the area clear for the lower difficulties. At the very least players need to be significantly notified so spot 3 at least knows to clear that corner asap.

This is probably my favorite map because it has a multiplayer defense component. That said we can't forget that this is tied with bh as the first multiplayer map players have access to so the difficulty shouldnt be excessive. For standard and advanced I think there should be no changes to any of the waves or difficulty. I've never seen anyone trap units on this map in those two difficulties as there is little pressure anywhere. This is acceptable because of how early players access the map. I cant speak to expert but for the lower difficulties i think this needs no changes though the buffed optional center area is perfectly welcome.

yeah i agree the ship is pretty much useless it needs a complete rework to be anything more thna redundant and im not a fan of increasing difficulty to incorporate a completely superfluous objective. Maybe give extra gold or more xp for freeing it or make it an achievement for now and then put it on the bottom of the list for map reworks.