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Long post? TL;DR: 1- New card affinities. 2- Guilds. 3- Adding lore. 4- Potion consumables. Concept: If creating new cards is out of reach, why not make use of the available things we have access to? Like creating new game systems/mechanics out of thin air with minimal work, just like quests; it's a glorified database with a tracking system, but will that alone be enough on the long run? Ideas: 1 - Creating new type of affinity(s) (if plausible): Just stick another random affinity color; same card model, different in-game effects. 2- Increasing the ecosystem that have little to do with the actual game mechanics: Take Minecraft servers for example. They create something out of nothing with a gamemode like King of the Hill; it's the same game mechanics of Minecraft, but with some spicy Java plugins that track each player's movements, give them points, give them EXP, and so forth. So this brings us to the next point: Why not create Guilds? Why not implement Guild PvP Wars? If you think about it, it's just /guild in the chat to message your guild, a new tab in the Friends window labelled 'Guild', and a leaderboard. As evident by the Quests tab, it appears that you have quite a bit of control over the client editing with graphical drawing (the green reserve thing). 3- Adding some spice: Everything in the game has a lore, so why not give Quests lore? Say for example, they are missions given by Moon or Mo, and when completing a quest, it would display a dialogue box with either of their pictures, like they are informing you that you completed said quest with a sound effect? "Good job Skylord, you assisted us greatly" - Moon says, filling the empty void in my heart. It's all for the sake of adding familiarity and character to the game, instead of being just a bunch of text about what reserve BFP is or whatever. What even is BFP? Why would a Skylord need that? Give me lore! Give me context! Another idea: "Hey Sykole, I see you lost the map Empire twice. Skylords know no defeat! Make sure to do XYZ, it might help you pass the map!" - I see after the welcome screen in a dialogue box said by Moon, for example. 4- Consumables and Collectables: Only reason I would open a gold chest is either for a quest or ... nothing else really, I get 4k+ gold every 15min of playtime in rPvE, why care about a 100gold chest? So, instead of just gold, introduce consumables and collectables. A whole new concept to the game. Potions: Arranged in slots just like the in-game deck cards, but on the right side for example. One is called the Time potion, reduces your recasting time by 15 seconds. Want an additional layer to the mechanic? Enter levelling, where the higher your in-game rank, the longer your potions last/increase in power. You could have healing potions, strength potions, anything really. They just have to be rare, untradable and orb-neutral. Enter; collectables: People and myself included love trophies, so just add random icons next to ours names. Complete all the achievements and you get an icon, right next to your PvP rank, or temporary colored names much like that of mods/gms. Why stop there? Add event passes. Each month/season you can purchase a pass with 3000 BFP. This pass lasts for until the end of the season. You get 10% more gold, you get slightly better booster chances, slightly more EXP and so forth. Even get your name highlighted in gold, for example. Note: Those are just quick examples off the top, they are not literal but I find that if they are properly implemented (I do not know what your limitations are when modifying the game), the game will thrive even more and will give it more purpose than just collecting the most promo harvesters.

Hey, because you have a lot of slots and this is the only decent healing that you have, also her summons are pretty good on t2. Greetings, Toggy

Hey, I played something like this in the open Beta, it worked for pretty much the entire campaign on advanced and rPvE 9: You usually do not need that many towers (but beginners might like it) and if you do not have shrine of war you can remove some spells. If you lack charge upgrades maybe add another T3/t4 unit. Otherwise you should have enough slots open if you cull oyur T2 a little, I never liked Skyfire Drake for PvE due to its low hp pool. Greetings, Toggy

Patch #400024 Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolk, with this patch we bring an end to the promotional code and booster discount from the shop which lasted from release until now. We also added a DND feature and slow-mode to public chat. Most of the remaining changes and bug fixes are minor as we are focusing more on the server with the sudden increase of players. Event Removed promotional code PROM-OMOU-NTAI-NEER from the shop. Ended 100BFP discount to all boosters in the shop. General changes Added Do Not Disturb (DND). This can be toggled in the Contacts window in-game. When a player is in DND they don't receive any requests, cannot be whispered and cannot receive mails from other players. More specifically, the requests they don't receive are: Trade requests Show deck requests Request deck requests Group invites Added slow-mode to public chat channels in-game. Players can now only send messages every 10 seconds. This does not apply to whispers. Adjusted the description of some achievements in French. Improved error messages received when purchasing a booster fails. Added localization for the match desynchronization message. General fixes Fixed error when certain characters were used to search for achievements by name in the achievements window. Fixed map goals not updating when changing slots. They now change accordingly to reflect the goals of the player in that slot. Post patch notes There seems to be an issue where slow-mode also applies to group/team/match channels. Until this is fixed, the slow-mode time has been decreased to 1 second.

With Windweavers and Ensnaring Roots, you already have powerful T1. Shaman greatly helps at that, however, I believe you can get rid of Spearmen. Consider getting rid of one T2 unit - you do not need 4 squads here. On T3 you could consider having either Church of Negation, or Necroblaster. Both are awesome, but they fill the same role. Add on T4 Giant Wyrm - it's a great card, and consider adding Unholy Power. With free deck slots, you could add some powerful spells, however they tend to be expensive, so I am not going to give names. When I play Campaign maps, I use 1 tower to cover T1-T2, and sometimes add one more tower to cover T3-T4. You usually do not need towers for each tier.

More XP for the LVL 10 rpve map. Also, if we win a 4 players rpve/campaign map at 2-3 players, we could gain the XP of empty slots.

Pve is a wide field in BF/SR. If you try to run one deck for all you will prolly never have a good deck for any purpose. Indeed there are some campain maps, that work quite good with an allrounder, but for most maps it will make sense to bring a customized deck, because it makes things much easier. Please take this statement with a grain of salt. For some campaign maps where defense is important, 4 towers (especially if they are distributed over the tiers like yours) can make sense. For other missions or rpve it would be 5 towers too much So far I can only think of 2 general statements about this deck in terms of PVE: You have way too many units in any case and the ones you have don't fit together well in some cases. For example, you have 2x T1 ranged units, which both get their strength by stacking. Here 2 slots serve exactly the same purpose, something you should always avoid. Are you sure, that you know how juice tank works, as there is a missunderstanding for most people? Juice Tank does not make that your wells provide more engergy, it does make them only run longer. Its a very special card, that makes only sense for very special purpose imho

That could be a nice addition IMO, especially for rPVE when I see 5 games of 9/10 opened at the same time with 2-3 slots on each. But I'm not sure the playerbase is big enough for this feature to be worth it... Yet.

Hey mate, sorry for the late reply First: Your deck does not look that bad for first steps in BG10 I think - I see worse everyday. Additionally your Deck is close to the meta which in any case indicates a certain knowledge of the subject I take your text and add my thougts: Embalmer Shrine - I do not feel this is very useful for the main and only use with Shadow Phoenix. For the most BG10 one player taking Embalmers will be close to mandatory But speak with your group who is taking what buff buildings, don't waste card slots here. Furnace of Flesh & Decomposer - Also using Shadow Phoenix, which most of the time cannot be sacrifices and with the base units of 5x Windweavers and 1x Dryad, I feel like this is cumbersome and could instead use a much better replacement. Most of the time, it would only net in 200-300 void and takes up 2 slots of my deck. Can be valid, in certain speedrun matchups, but in the most cases the Voidreturn should do this work, a.k.a. ASAP Sow. Matter Mastery - I bought this for Willzapper buildings of Twilight, but found they are not that useful. Most of the time I am already paralyzed before I can take over the building. But this might also because I might do something wrong. It works but needs a little practice. Take the spell on your cursor before you see the first towers of a camp. Assume for the later camps one Willzapper in the first row on either side. As soon as you can see, spam the spell on the tower while running into the camp. Usually you can get the Zapper before it gets your Units. 2x lvl 1 orb CC Spells - I have both Ensnaring Root and Hurricane. I find both to be useful in different cases, but I am aware Hurricane is useful in very specific cases For BG9 I would recommend to take one out, for BG10 I would usually take both and even add Dryad Blue and/or Mark of the Keeper in your T1. For random BG10 I would love to have both. Cards I am thinking of adding: Incredible Mo - Mainly for the third buff so spells are not blocked As Embalmers above Aoe spell - Anything like Earthshaker or Thunderstorm Both great spells, always good "fillers" (and there are more such spells, that fit situational to most decks) If you got more questions, please feel free to ask Greets Volin

I want to prepare for rPvE lvl 10 but feel the deck that I am currently using for lvl 9 has a lot of gaps. I observed the following, in order of how strong I think the cards should be replaced: Embalmer Shrine - I do not feel this is very useful for the main and only use with Shadow Phoenix. Furnace of Flesh & Decomposer - Also using Shadow Phoenix, which most of the time cannot be sacrifices and with the base units of 5x Windweavers and 1x Dryad, I feel like this is cumbersome and could instead use a much better replacement. Most of the time, it would only net in 200-300 void and takes up 2 slots of my deck. Matter Mastery - I bought this for Willzapper buildings of Twilight, but found they are not that useful. Most of the time I am already paralyzed before I can take over the building. But this might also because I might do something wrong. 2x lvl 1 orb CC Spells - I have both Ensnaring Root and Hurricane. I find both to be useful in different cases, but I am aware Hurricane is useful in very specific cases. Cards I am thinking of adding: Incredible Mo - Mainly for the third buff so spells are not blocked Aoe spell - Anything like Earthshaker or Thunderstorm ------ Any advice is welcome

I'd invert this. In Ranked, it should be skill that decides where you end up on the leaderboard. Not capacity for grinding. And the reality is that if you fight with a non-optimized deck vs an optimized, you WILL run into situations where you lose against fairly simple unit spams because you don't own a specific key card for that matchup, or it simply isn't upgraded high enough. Also, talking for myself and my friend group of 4 people who play RTS together from time to time, we play games longer if they're balanced and fun. Grinding purely serves as a barrier to entry. It's much more satisfying to notice how you actually get better at the game and thus win more, as opposed to winning more because you have plainly better cards. Tbh I have a hard time even understanding the sentiment of wanting grinding for PVP. I can understand liking grinding in PVE, because there you're playing against a (rather dumb) AI and thus balancing makes no sense - if it was balanced, you'd win everytime. But in PVP, adding grinding just means that you're forced to play uninteresting non-games. I remember back when BF was still an EA game and I started out with lvl ~60, reasonably decent shadow/frost deck on low ladder. Roughly a third of my games, I'd play against a clearly terrible lvl 30 or so deck and completely stomp the opponent, even though I wasn't much better in terms of micro etc. . Another third of the time, I'd play against a lvl 100+ netdeck (often pure fire) and get completely stomped myself and again, not because I necessarily played worse. Actually interesting games, against OPs with similar deck lvls that are similarly optimized, seemed like the minority of matches. Only after I got lvl 100+ myself, reached a higher rank and had all the important cards, games were decided by skill. I don't mind getting stomped if the OP is actually clearly better. But if I had as little time back then as I have now, I don't think I'd have persevered until then.

I have really strong doubts new Battleship will be a smash hit card with these changes. In case anyone missed it, here are my thoughts. --------------------------------- Battleship orb change is now in restrictive 4 blue orbs. Without enlightenment, this essentially means Frost has a dead XL flying cardslot now only useable in pure frost. Like Dreadnaught, new battleship will likely see almost no usage except with Enlightenment. Frost as a whole just lost it's only XL flying creature card. And, there's more. ------------------------------------ The card slot efficiency to maximize the new Battleship abilities.... is terrible. Much like the Frost Crystal tower, It takes additional slots just to get a slow unit at Flyer fast speeds on equal footing to pretty much anything else. A handicap. 2-5 slots required Minimum to make Battleship fast shield strat feasible. +1 to 3 Ice shield creating card slots +1 Ice age (Probably needed to use well, most people will still likely cut this anyways.) +1 The Zoom zoom zoom battleship itself. ------------------------------------------------- If i need 4 blue orbs to run a Battleship, 2-5 card slots for Battleship speed ability usage and I still need to power income dump for shields repeatedly per individual Battleship just to be on par with the other Flying t3, t4 units that I remind you I don't need to micro. Why would I do it? I would go Wyrm, Spirit ship, Skyelf Commander, Fallen Skyelf, Bahir, Swamp Drake or stick to ground for Pure Frost like Iron clads and Dreadnaughts on . ----------------------------------------------------------- Then there's barrage. I am completely convinced Barrage spamming Battleships like inferior worldbreaker guns will be what most people will actually try using the New Battleships versions for because that's cool. The problem being these card niches are infamously held by Worldbreaker guns and Constructs, which Frost has much better synergies and better orb requires with hands down.

I think the opportunity cost is fine. One shadow orb and two deck slots to have vastly increased T4 charges if you need them.

Can we get a more clear UI? For example: 1. How much maximum unit capacity we can have. 2. How much a unit takes up capacity. 3. The actual damage numbers on the units themselfs (i know if you hover over them you can see the damage and how often they shoot but the "attack value" left of the "health value" is kinda missleading when you see something has 500 AV but then in the unit it says "every 2 seconds it deals 50 damage". Why not put this information as the attack itself? Alot of Melee units don´t even have that information. It just says 880 AV and thats it. Why is it written as 10x the value? To make it consistant with other card games where attack and health are in similar scope? In that case why is the shadow pheonix 1500 AV while it´s attack description says 500 per unit upwards of 2000 total damage. It´s not an average and it specificly says that it´s a suicide bomber and can´t attack like other units. The values are inconsistant and should be changed so that everything is clear from the start. 4. Lost launcher: Increasingly more damage the longer it attacks. By how much? Is it multiplicative for every successive hit or is it additive? Is there a cap or is it infinite? Now we come to something spicey: I´ve tested recource booster and juice tank. If you put juice tank on a powerwell (PW) then everything works fine as intended, the ticks take 110% longer to happen while recource output is the same. However when i put a recouce booster on a PW then every tick takes 3 instead of 1 recource, which is expected but instead of a 35% more recource output it seems to only give 17%. What i´ve done for testing is start at a chosen recource count and then start the timer, after 2 min i stopped it and counted how much it gained. I did the same with the recource booster, both tests multiple times and it never went even close to 20% and stayed around the 17% mark which means either the building itself is bugged or the description is wrong. Now i put both of them onto a PW and it gave again, 17% more output but instead of doing 2 3 3 ticks (thinking the -55% is additive) It actualy went 1 1 2 ticks which is insane and definatly not intended. So the juice tank reduces the entire 300% by 55% not just 300%-55%. That is not clear that recource booster has priority. Next up: Hitboxes. They are unclear and gigantic. I want to click on a unit but since some hitboxes are so huge they click on a building and i have to spam it until i actualy hit the unit since units move obviously. I´ve posted a screenshot of it where unfortunatly you can´t see my mouse cursor but i´ve marked the position where it was. And it constantly marked the building on the left while i aimed barely outside of the right one. This is a frequent happening and it annoys me. Especially since in alot of cases i want to prioritize a unit in a group but it keeps clicking on the hitbox of a larger one that i don´t want. So can we get more commands for units like patrol and follow target unit? It would be amazing to be able to let healer units like the crystal fiend follow a friends army while i concentrate on another part of the map. What is also up with the chests in this game? Why are they build so that melee units need to not be occupied for 5 days to be able to claim them? Why not just grab them when a melee unit is near and be done with it? There are alot of things that need to change to make it a better game because right now it´s clunky and unwieldy. The units already have a turn radius, command delay and get slowed by enemy units near them, there doesn´t need to be more clunky things.

Nature splashs are usually easy to play and successfull. Nature Frost (Stonekin) is very safe but also limited in terms of speed which is a factor in rPvE (obviously). Meanwhile Nature Fire (Twilight) decks are less resistant but also have more access to damage. Here's my usual setup for Twilight rPvE level 9 maps. Cards with name [Nomad (nature); Sunstrider; Vileblood (fire); Twilight Creeper (shadow); Abomination (frost); Shrine of War; Mine; Eruption; Disenchant (nature); Curse of Oink; Lavafield; Twilight Warfare (shadow); Thunderstorm; Inferno; Earthshaker; Twilight Pestilence (frost); Cluster Explosion (fire); Cluster Explosion (shadow); Equilibrium (frost); Regrowth)] For a slightly more beginner friendly approach you might want to take in Skycatcher in t4 instead of Twilight Warfare and maybe consider a nature t1 start instead of fire (someting along the lines of Windweaver; Dryad (frost) or Shaman; Surge of Light; Ensnaring Roots instead of Nomad; Sunstrider; Mine; Eruption. In terms of priority cards that are not easily accessable: 1. Shrine of War; 2. Mine (if you play fire t1) otherwise Cluster Explosion (fire); 3.Thunderstorm; 4.Abomination; 5.Earthshaker. If you plan on playing level 10 consider opening up another 1 or 2 deck slots for cards like Gladiatrix.

All Charge abilities - show all the relevant numbers: the colldown in seconds, and total damage done to the target. Affected Cards: Strikers, Enforcer, Giant Slayer (iirc that's all). Healing Well - doesn't state that it has 0 initial healing pool, neither does it state at which rate it refills. Hammerfall - doesn't it state at which rate it refills the Shield/Healing Pool. Max Capacity is stated only for (Green) affinity.

I haven't really tried it since open beta started, as a lot wasn't working then and with the incoming reset I didn't want to invest to much time. But now that the reset is finally coming, and reading the progress you made, I am really greatful for your work and that you made it possible to play this gem again. (Especially after Blizzard took away WC3). One question I have though, is how strong are your servers? While I don't expect a flawless first day when many players try to login simultaneously, will there be enough capacity to support x-fold of player numbers compared to the stress tests? Or is capacity calculated moderatly, and increased depending on player numbers.

I hope you all like the PvP decks. If you have any questions regarding specific card choices, feel free to ask! I will try to provide our reasonings for the decisions. Our priorities during deck construction were the following ones: -> Create beginner friendly decks, that immediately perfom well in PvP games without any changes and don't require high end micro to be playable in 80k-110k base elo range -> Create competitive decks, that can be played in 110k base elo and above with no to few adjustments -> Provide a solid overview about the current meta, so players get an idea about powerful choices in the realm of PvP and things to care about -> Avoid promoting too many toxic strategies (hello Curse Well) -> In some very difficult occassions we prioritized card rarity* *(Mountaineer vs Lost Reaver is something f.e., that comes down to personal preference in deck choice, but Mountaineer is incredibly hard to buy & upgrade and alot of players were unable to use the card during the Stress-test for a very long time) @Eirias Fixed T3 patterns would go against our principle, where we try to make the decks as competitive as possible. In many occasions there is a clearly superior T3 path and we tried to follow that one. In the case of Lost Souls Cultist Master T3 is, while being very powerful, alot harder to execute than the current Timeless one T3 counterpart. Giant Slayer is almost always better than Fathom Lord considering that Fire Nature usually wants to use earyl T3 to quickly end games. In Shadow Nature Cultistmaster + Heal is way too powerful to be contested by anything else. Fire Frost does allow a 4 card T3 with the Fire T1 path, but ends up being more slot intensive with the Frost T1 start. Considering that double Fire works really well on 2-3 T3 slots, while TImeless one T3s often start to perform better around 4-5 T3 slots it doesn't make sense to follow a fixed pattern here, which might weaken the deck on both ends. @Cocofang In regards to no T3 choices there are decks like Fire Nature, that could work really well without a T3 and we also discussed this aspect, but it requires a certain amount of strategic experience (what map positions and power wells do I need contest to punish T3 accordingly) and a solid level in terms of micro management to execute these type of strategies. We did not think this is beginner friendly enough to be proposed for everyone. The "small T3" choice still performs very well in high elo games, but makes games much more consistent in mid to low elo matches, therefore we wanted to stick with that. Stonekin has alot more tools to fight against T3 though even without the highest level of micro. The deck also has many viable cards in T2, therefore the extra slots generated by cutting T3 work extremely well here. If you have some personal preferences the edit function will be very valuable of course and quickly provide a playable deck for everyone without too much effort in terms of gold/bfp grinding.

Greetings, cutting straight to the chase. Some cards in the game either have very vague or confusing card descriptions, that make understating attacks or abilities hard to understand or leave out important details. Some statements are also simply wrong. Church of Negation Disintegration values. Commandos States they attack each second, which should be every 2s. Curse of Oink Doesn't state radius of 15m. Change debuff description to avoid confusion with Twilight Transformation. Dryad Wrong attack time - 2.5s instead of 2s. Emberstrike List radius for Fiery Birth (15m). Energy Parasite Change description to "enemy power well". Fire Stalker Attack time is 4s instead of 5s. Fire Worm List radius for Percussive Birth (15m). Frost Shard Show number of targets affected (currently 7). Giant Slayer Change "Stalwart" to "Steadfast" for consistency (identical functionality). Hammerfall Doesn't state at which rate it refills the Shield/Healing Pool. Max capacity is stated only for Nature affinity. Also Typo: "Last" instead of "Lasts" for blessed affinity. Healing Well Doesn't state that it has 0 initial healing pool, neither does it state at which rate it refills. Hurricane Knocks units off walls. Isn't stated. Lifestream Has unlisted damage mitigation cap. Lost Evocation Show units stats. Lost Grigori Disintegration values. Lost Launcher Change description from unit to building on "Infused Rage". Mindweaver Doesn't state post mind control immunity of 10s. Neutral Cards State in the description that only one can be played per team. Promise of Life Typo in description. Ressurect instead of resurrect. Protector's Seal Clear up, whether it absorbs incoming damage on affected targets or prevents damage dealt by affected enemy targets. Rage Show values for Fire Dragon, Rageclaws, Giant Slayer, Lost Launcher (Fire), Blaster Cannon (Fire), Flame Crystal, Abyssal Warder (Fire), Volcano (Fire). Revenant's Blessing Typo: "Last" instead of "Lasts Revenge Has an unlisted damage mitigation cap. Rioter's Retreat States it attacks 3 targets as baseline, even though this is only true for upgrade level 3. Bandit faction trait: Lifestealer German description has a typo: "Gebäute" instead of "Gebäude". Second Chance Doesn't state that revived units have an immunity to revival, which lasts for 30s. Shadow Worm Disintegration values. Shrine of War Global buff description shows wrong values. Snapjaws German description for the debuff of "Infused Dilution" on opponents wrongfully states that they take less instead of more damage. Soulshatter Doesn't list a maximum limit of 10 targets marked for explosion. Soul Splicer Consumption on infused affinity. Stormsinger German description for ability doesn't state it has to be an enemy flying unit. Time Vortex Void Power thresholds. Voodoo Shack Show average damage. Volcano State that Lava Sea only affects ground units. White Rangers State ability attack time. Wrathgazer Disintegration values, fix value or state it is premitigation damage on "Pain Link". Long term goal Show correct DP20 values for ranged units.

What do you mean by that? Strictly speaking there is no real price for cards unless you sell them directly in an official capacity and therefore set a limit to its market value. There is the relative rarity of a card compared to other cards and there is supply and demand. Also its usefulness. What are "prices of cards"? The average price over the last 30 days? Median? A graph? Something like this?

About the Warlock: A Pure Fire deck lacks the slots for additional "fun" cards, esp. in PvP. To include the Warlock into the typical pure Fire deck it needs to replace one of these units: - Enforcer - Gladiatrix - Skyfire Drake - Ravage (a heal can be seen to be sort of similar to a damage mod that the Warlock Spell provides) From my point of view the only cards that POSSIBLY could be replaced are the Gladiatrix and Ravage. And both come at a hefty tradeoff (no gladi = less reliable counter to air units with Spear + Eruption, no Ravage means much more problems at keeping Skyfire Drakes and Scythe Fiends alive). Overall, I doubt it would be played at all, even if you'd buff it with cheaper cost and QoL changes. The fire player has to sacrifice at least one major or even core card in his T2 to field a Warlock instead. Alternatively the fire player can choose to pick the Warlock over T3 Cards i.e. Giant Slayers or other shenanigans which nobody will do in a serious environment. This leaves the Warlock card to be used in non-serious games and "for fun" PvE decks. Which is where a minor change like -5 power cost or +5% ability damage boost won't change much, since it's not played for its efficiency but because the player likes the card. That's why I propose to remove it as a pure only card to a 1 Fire 1 Neutral orb. The damage boost/damage reduction is an interesting game mechanic that a lot of splash decks could make use of. It would become much more popular card since it would be waaaaaaay more useful in a lot of decks.

I would like to see 25 slots eventually, given that each faction was adjusted to allow for more diverse viable strategies - especially pure factions (with the exception of pure shadow to some extend, there is some build variety there) are quite reliant on must have combos. Right now, i feel that only universally strong cards are being played and more situational cards are maybe 2-3 slots at max in meta builds depending on the faction (for some faction this number is 1 at most...). With a more viable set of optional counters / combos, it will be much viable to adjust decks to personal preferences and slot-hungry t1s like nature t1 (and frost t1 if you would otherwise not play home soil/ice barrier) would be buffed by this change.

We might be able to talk about this in a few years, but right now it would create more problems than solutions for balancing. Only a few decks do have sufficient options, that really improve decks at higher slot numbers. If almost every deck has 35+ truly viable cards for PvP, an increase might be an option, but for now most decks would just overload their T3's or add oppressive conditional strategies rather than providing more interesting game dynamics. Stonekin is the only exception right now as it has many different unique and viable T2/3 cards, that are not used for slot reasons. Adding them would improve options in T2 and allow different game styles (Attacking f.e. can revolve around different core units, that work against specific factions: Burrower, Mountaineer, Stonetempest, Crystalfiend, Stormsinger, Razorshard) or stick with current options, but with an actual T3. Standard meta deck Lost Souls has a very solid core deck structure, that wins scaling games consistently once you are ahead of the curve. This playstyle would be totally unaffected by increased slots, you just increase the options of getting that little lead throughout the game by adding counter cards like Lost Reaver, Lyrish Knight, Skyelf Templar and solidify the raw T3 power level by slot increase (6 slots are really powerful). Some decks Like pure Pure Fire could add something like Global Warming or Spitfire, but these cards don't really add anything and don't reduce any core issues. Relative to other decks pure Fire gains nothing new, while facing some more versitile decks with specific counter units (Twilight Brute, Skyelf Templar) and much more oppressive attack patterns (heavily supported L units, undead army etc.). Playing off meta decks is always possible, but people usually prefer to stick with the most powerful and most well rounded strategies. 25 slots won't change this. They won't randomly start playing things like Tower of Flames + Architechts call even at 40 slots, because these things are bad and not situational sleeper combos, that are restricted by slot investments. Stuff like Enlightment + Earthshaker might be more realistic, but that's just another toxic basenuke. PvE implications are also huge on a sidenote, since it makes deck building much more efficient and alot of speedruns are affected by this too. Makes the game much easier in that department. Creating more strategic options through card balancing and removing opressive matchup imbalances should be current priority. If we ever reach that goal in a couple of years and get to a larger healthy card pool, slot increases might be reasonable as a result of this.

Here I am with another behomoth of a post The idea of a 25 card deck has come up now and again, and with recent interest in heavily reworking nature/frost t1 I think it's time to put together a full case of pros and cons, as well as gameplay analysis. I am personally in favor of increasing card slots, although I could certainly be convinced otherwise. Also, I'm not suggesting that we add 5 extra cards immediately; in the balancing discord there is some talk of a complete rework of multiple core cards in nature/frost t1--such a rework would take at least a year to get right, and if we are ready to tackle such a long-term problem, I'd like us to know if 25 cards is a possibility. For example there is talk of buffing the card tunnel. If you spend a deck slot for it, you need to get value from the card in every game. So the card is a bit underwhelming atm. But if you had room for it to be useful in the right situation, perhaps a buff isn't needed. Another example in regards to the swift problem that frost has, we might add a "shrine of swift" and "spell of swift," the spell only works if the shrine is built up so you would be sacrificing 2 deck slots in t1 to get 10-15 seconds of swift. Spending 2 deck slots in a 25 card deck is much different than spending them in a 20 card deck, so I think we should decide if a 25 card deck is something to consider when looking at super-long term balancing discussions. Pros of a 25 Card Deck It allows more balancing tools. In some cases, certain factions don't have good allround counters (stormsinger, wildfire, shadow mage, etc). To address this situation, we are usually either 1) buffing a card to be more multi-purpose, or 2). buffing a new card to fill the gap. Option 2 is often unsatisfactory because it requires a new deck slot which may not be affordable. With more deck slots, we can fine tune balancing without resorting to giving all buffs to the same essential cards. It allows more deckbuilding freedom. Most decks have, say, 2 cards that aren't required to avoid autolosses. Without the slots to try some crazy combo, you usually just spend those spots on extra t3 options, or a tech card which helps against a specific faction (like global warming). It allows more anti-meta plays, and counters to anti-meta plays. Suppose you play a church camp shadow. That's not a common playstyle (although in our small community we know which players are likely to play it) and it can be extremely effective if your opponent is not aware that you have a giant t3 and tiny t2. With more deck slots, you could play this anti-meta deck more safely because you'd have slots that aren't being sacrificed in the hope that your opponent thinks you have it. (I often skip firesworn because people assume it's in my deck and don't rush with sundy). Additionally, your opponent would have more tools to counter anti-meta plays. Earthshaker, inferno, and backlash are not used in fire decks, but with 5 extra slots, it may be worth taking one to stop church camping. It allows more consistent plays. If you are pure shadow going against pure fire, you would probably like to play undead army. However, that card is mostly useless against the rest of the decks, so most shadow players wouldn't waste the slot on a card that is strong in 1/10 games. However, with 5 more slots, this card might suddenly be very appealing: you have all the cards you need to avoid autolosses, and you could play a card that is extremely strong against one of the most powerful factions. On the other hand, fire players would know that undead army is a likely option, so they will play more proactively to avoid it, rather than being surprised when they see it. The same is true for scorched earth--scorched earth is not super common, so players will often gamble whether their opponent has it. If they guess wrong, the game is instantly over. With more cards, scorched earth will be normal to have, so taking an orb in range of scorched earth would be considered a stupid play, rather than a calculated risk. It allows more interesting t3 fights. Most factions can have about 3 units in t3: an offensive nuke, a swift unit, and probably another nuke that's used as defense. Some factions have more slots available for t3 which gives them an advantage, but the gameplay is still largely straightforward. A richer t3 experience, where both sides have 5+ cards (and defense is not so strong) would be exciting imo. And players could have the possibility for richer t3 fights without sacrificing their t2 or t1. Cons of a 25 Card Deck Possibly more intimidating to new players. Imo, 20 cards or 25 cards doesn't really make a difference here UI issues? I don't think there are any UI issues, although hotkeys would be a concern. Again, not an issue imo, but I'm curious if anyone else cares that much about hotkeys PvE will change. Zyna has mostly confirmed that 25 card decks would be a global change, not something he can change just for one game mode. I am not that qualified to speak about PvE, although I understand that speedrun strats rarely require even 20 cards (and imo it wouldn't be bad if this allowed better speedrun strats). For casual pve, I think more cards is strictly more fun, except for the new player. But I think there are much bigger issues facing new players. PvP balancing. Obviously I hope this is not a con, since the idea is that we'd start balancing plans for the long-term future were 25 cards is normal. However, adding 5 extra cards in the current pvp environment would affect things quite a bit. It would probably require at least some reworks to every deck. For example, stormsinger would be a good target for a nerf, since her role can be covered by 2 cards if deck slots allowed. PvP Changes If the devs suddenly changed the deck size tomorrow, how would PvP differ? Pure fire: this is pretty much a nerf. There are not enough pure fire cards worth using, so this deck gets less value than all others. Possible additions: global warming, red nomad, girl power, rageclaws, wrecker, spitfire, vulcan, virtuoso, magma hurler, earthshaker, inferno. None of these are especially interesting. I'd probably take global warming, magma hurler, wrecker, virtuoso, and rageclaws. These would help with pure frost, the worst matchup for pure fire. Wrecker would also be good against frost (and nature). Otherwise I'm not sure that the extra cards adds much, unless the meta shifted and I needed counter for a new meta card in a different deck (like mine, if undead warriors became meta?) Bandits: more cards would mean that bandits can use some of their overpowered combos (embalmers + phoenix +rallybanner, or super buffs) without sacrificing core defense. The deck would still need help, but it would be better able to use some of its extremely powerful combos. Fire Nature: this deck would get a full t1, mauler to counter stonekin, and maybe an extra t3 card or two, although it would still have the weakest t3. These changes would largely be QoL. Fire Frost: this deck would finally get to use some of the interesting combos like wintertide+ rageclaws, warden's sigil +termite, or tower of flames+architect's call. None of these cards are played in a regular fire frost deck because of slot issues. Additionally, there might be some fire frost players who start frost t1 to take advantage of a super large t1 where 1/3 of the cards translate into t2 (ice barrier, homesoil, wintertide, frost sorceress, lightblade, possibly even frost mage). Pure Shadow: this deck would get to use shadow phoenix, maybe embalmers for nice combos. It could have a 5-card t3 while also having room for knight of chaos and possibly undead army. Although church decks would be empowered, if they became more common then other factions would be able to afford 1 slot for t4 earthshaker or something, to close games. Shadow Nature: this deck is in a pretty nice place with 20 cards, but lifeweaving, burrower/ghostspear, and some t3 cards would make play a bit more consistent. Enlighten earthshaker might become a possibility! Shadow Frost: this deck has tons of good cards to choose from, but these cards would mostly be tech choices. Lyrish would be an obvious addition, maybe an extra t1 card and homesoil+rallybanner. I'd expect to see stormsinger nerfs coming, (stormsinger is not only a great card, but it saves deck slots) which would force this faction to spend slots on maybe templar or gravity surge. I'm not sure if 6 or 7 t3 slots would be much better than the standard 5 card t3. Pure Frost: glyph of frost would be standard, and possibly wintertide. that would be good for making frost a bit better in t1, and it would also feel like less cheese when you are surprised by one of these cards. In general pure frost doesn't currently benefit from extra slots as much as other decks though, in my opinion. Stonekin: more t1 for consistency, but this faction would become the strongest in the game, hands down. Currently there is a style of playing stonekin where you don't use t3 at all, just rely on superior t2 units to overwhelm your opponent when he goes t3. Stonekin has superior t2, so it's not like another faction can simply add a tech card to even the t2 matchup (mauler would help though). This incredible t2 combined with a solid t3 (stonekin also has a very strong t3, but usually not enough slots for it), would be oppressive in the current balance patch. Pure Nature: I'm not sure if deck slots helps this faction that much atm. It would allow root decks though, which would be a nice change option. It would also allow tunnel plays, and maybe timeshifter spirit. I made this post here so it can have a lot of thoughts in one place, since this will probably be a conversation that takes a long time. I'm curious what other people think, and if there are any pros/cons that I missed. TL;DR Let's talk about changing the number of deck slots from 20->25

Adding NPCs to empty slots would help practice a single map of 12 player games too, I quite like the idea. And I wouldnt have to make practice maps (which takes little time in most but not all cases) :^) I think its a quite simple but beatiful solution to a rather small problem which is nice.