Search the Community

No, I hear about extra hard difficulty the first time. Would it be possible to add it in the UI of the game, so that those who want a challenge can try them? To the frustation thing: yes and no. It might make someone rage more and maybe swear but I think its still less frustrating because its easier to get over it and just forget a loose. I have seen such modes in Elder Scrolls Legends and Hearthstone. I dont have any numbers but I think they are still well visited. To random decks: they shouldnt be completely random, not like frostmage and mine in the same deck, that wouldnt work. But for example master archers instead of frost mage or even both instead of frost glyphe. There should be a system behind the random decks. First step would be to choose the orbs, that could be done completely randomly. Next only all cards are filtered by those, that can be played with the orb constellataion. After that you should get at least 1 unit by tier. The units should be one that can be played alone in a tier (like windweavers, magma hurler, shadow phoenix). Units like frost sorceress would make it necessary that you get another unit. Maybe a unit ranking should be involved. Then you should get some spells, not necessarly 1 per tier, but here should be also a ranking involved. If you have creeping paralysis, curse of oink should be very unlikely to be put in the deck, too. And so on. And a few slots, maybe 4-6 are completely randomly chosen among the playable cards.

Well there are other roles to fulfill then clearing level 9 and 10 camps. For example speed doesn't play a role when there's a defensive position to hold, wich is a part of a lot of campaign maps. Constructs in their current state fit that role perfectly. It can't all be balanced to be viable in rPVE, most of T3 for example will never be - cause T3 isn't as important in rPVEs as T1 or T4 for wich most of the slots are used usually. And like others said, constructs can also keep up in rPVE with the help of netherwarp or deepcoil worm tunneling.

How to play Nature T1 - a PvP Guide by RadicalX - -General talk- Okay I'm almost finished with the entire T1 section. I'll say the the same stuff as I did before, with this guide I want to provide information for newer players (Stuff like: Which cards do I use against which color), but also for the ones who are already dedicated veterans (going for in depth analysis here). Again I want to remark that every statement I make here refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 works in a different way (especially for nature because in 2v2 you can cover up most of its weaknesses while benefitting even more from the strengths nature offers). Let's just start with a short summary of what nature is good or bad at: + Nature T1 has a good scaling in extended T1 fights (it outscales Shadow & Fire units by a wide margin and can get really opressive due to free sustain) + Many people, even some of the top players, have no clue how to play against nature T1, because they never play against strong nature players. Since nature has a very different playstyle compared to other factions this can be a massive advantage for you. + Nature T1 spells scale well into mid/late T2, which opens up for very strong mid game options + Nature T1 is simply fun to play and practicing the micromanagement is really rewarding - Nature units don't scale into T2 at all with the exception of Dryad (playing T1 vs T2 with nature is also quite hard and requires alot of experience) - The deck is hard to play as it requires very crisp decisionmaking (can be good for you if you invest alot of time into practicing) - Nature has no clean answer against Phasetower (resulting in a matchup that is really hard to deal with and you need Primal Defender in your deck to survive). But Phasetower is disgustingly strong in any matchup. Nature has some weak points that can be exposed. The units are expensive, which makes you vulnerable for cross map action and aggressive T2's. You usually just want to avoid playing Nature as Shadow and Fire usually bring up much more stability to your decks. People who mastered their respective T1 could actually abuse nature T1 heavily. That said most high ranked players are very inexperienced when it comes to playing against nature. Even the “average Prime” from the old days would hide himself behind Phasetowers & instant T2's to get throught this early matchup regardless of strategic advantages. Deck building Let's start to take a look the cards, that are available in Nature T1. I'll simply set up groups like in my other guides to give you an overview of what cards I'd consider as strong or ... well not so strong. S - Tier Dryad (blue): Super essential card with an insane ability and passive. Definitely must have in the traditional nature deck. Does synergise well with pretty much everything your T1 offers and as an ranged M unit with splash damage almost perfect. Her damage often gets underestimated as her card description is wrong (should be 660 attack and not 550 since the splash damage is not part of the calculation). The additional crowd control can be used to very high value in micro trades. Ensnaring Roots: Super essential spell, one of the main reasons why you want to play a nature splash - it is useful in every stage of the game against almost every type of melee unit. Synergises really well with the wide arsenal of ranged units, that nature can bring on the table. Hurricane: Very powerful mid game spell, helps alot against S units in T1 fights and allows you to survive against stronger S units like Darkelf assassins in T2. Surge of Light: Grants you extra safety against AoE damage and makes your opponent think twice, if he wants to nasty that Dreadcharger into your full hp units. In addition to that this spell is almost always useful throughout the game, especially on open fights. It empowers very simple attacks (Playing Deep One + perma heal can put your opponent onto a massive amount of pressure in the later stages of the game). A – Tier Shaman: Also very important in a good nature T1 deck. The sustain it offers leads to great importance of micro, which gets rewarded heavily (saving these 1 hp units is so damn satisfying). It's super important for nature mirrors and overall useful in many ocasions. Clearly a must have for extended trading. Windweavers: The double shot ability makes them super useful in big fights and against squad targets. Windweaverspam beats out Nox spam, which is quite important, when playing against Shadow. Just struggles against knockbacks (Firesworn, Hurricane, Frostmage) so spamming it against anything else than shadow is rarely useful. Swiftclaw: Technically the best swift unit, if you're interested in playing an aggressive T1. If you want to avoid fights or save deckslots for stonekin, a different swift may be the better option. Its high dps is very useful against Frost players (Swiftclawspam can punish greedy early well choices) and also good as a front liner in early (!) nature mirror fights. Useless against shadow though, but still worth a deck slot most of the time as the high dps also brings up potential threatening to early T2s by your opponent. Spearmen: Very Important in alot of matchups. Their high hp pool makes them easy to micro, which leads to a very high heal efficency. Very good in dazed fights against Shadow and they also make the difference in early nature matchups. Underrated card, which is sort of similar in its function as skeleton warriors are in Shadow T1. In their M-Counter form they also get a little bit of extended range, which allows you to safely attack rooted melee units without taking damage by yourself. Primal Defender: Helps you alot to slow down phasetower-players on dangerous maps like Whazai and can slow down the game in general. Provides alot of safety and is a very good addition in your deck. I recommend playing it and at a certain point it is even a must have card. It also allows you to stall out at certain choke points against aggressive Frostmagespam in order to survive the early stage of the game. Treespirit: Destroys every type of healthy gameplay (has arguably the highest cost efficency out of your T1 units), but sadly doesn't help you against the real threats nature has to face (Mortar, Phasetower, Frostmage) as you can soak up damage rotations. Treespirits always just hit the closest target, which is an exploitable weekness, so while I see alot of people try that “only Treespirit T1”, it doesn't work out well. The card is insanely good, if you are weak at T1 looking to slow down the game to survive for later gamestages, but is very slow when it comes to transitioning into offense. B - Tier Amazon Blue: Very good, if you look for a fast T2, because its an L counter and its ability is deadly against Nightcrawlers (You can swap and activate them immediatly afterwards). Therefore it simply scales better than Swiftclaw, but is inferior in T1 fights. The beast damage reduction can be useful against some creatures (Swiftclaw, Treespirit, Sunderer). Mark of the Keeper: Defensive Building, which can be very strong in certain spots on the map and deadly against some decks, that rely to much on mid range units & spells. But usually you fall to far behind to protect every single base since 70 power is quite a huge price. Aura radius is too small to block Phasetower from attacking so it doesn't work as a replacement for Primal Defender. Evenom (red): Very good to support your army in T1 vs T2 fights. Helps alot to bring down skyfire drakes as it is a soft counter to ravage. Can be used to play out and punish instant T2s of fire splashes (don't do this against pure Fire though!). C – Tier Dryad (green): Synergises well with an endless amount of cards, which is very nice to have, but rarely useful enough to justify the 60 power investement. Can be nice to cheese your opponent with some sort of Darkelfassassins burst combos or and also denies small debuffs and anti magic areas. Werebeasts: They cost 75 power which is slightly less than the other swift units ... if you want to go instant T2 to safe 5 power this is your choice! Also a potential choice to swift start against Shadow T1 even though their combat ability is still lackluster. Mumbo Jumbo (both affinities): Cheese card that has to be used on an isolated unit, otherwise it has pretty much no effect. This card belongs to rPvE bossfights. Manawing: Troll card, which is fun to play and microing the teleport ability is super fun. But its hp pool is just too small to make serious use of it outside of the PvE area. All T1 factions do have good anti air units in their basic composition, which makes the air unit stat malus pretty bad for you. That said you can still use it to bring down annoying cliff mortar attemps (I'm looking at you DasToggy). Stranglehold: The card has huge damage and provides huge safety, but the cost is too high. Also doesn't hit buildings, which is very bad vs Phasetower/Mortar. D – Tier Amazon Green: The blue version has a damage reduction, which makes it just straight up better than this version, that does almost nothing. Evenom (purple): dps is too low to justify its power cost. Fountain of Rebirth: PvE card, does litereally nothing for you due to its initial cooldown. This is my T1 I use most of the time when playing nature T1: Swiftclaw Dryad (blue) Shaman Windweavers Spearmen Ensnaring Roots Hurricane Surge of Light Primal Defender Even though 9 slots look like a huge investment you need to keep in mind, that nature has alot of key spells (Root, Hurricane, Surge of Light) that scale very well into later stages and will be strong through the entire game. If you look for higher slot efficency you may consider cutting Spearmen. Matchup Discussion 1 Nature vs Shadow 1.1 General matchup discussion 1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam 1.3 how to deal with Dreadchargers 1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam 1.5 How to punish beast Shadow T1 players 1.6 What to do against instant T2 1.7 How to rush greedy power wells 1.8 Map advice 2 Nature vs Frost 2.1 General Matchup discussion 2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam 2.3 How to punish early wells 2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers 2.5 How to deal with early T2 2.6 Map advice 3 Nature vs Fire 3.1 General Matchup discussion 3.2 Dryad spam dicussion 3.3 How to play the classic matchup 3.4 How to survive the early game against Wrecker 3.5 What to do against Mortar 3.6 How to deal with early T2 3.7 Map Advice 4 Nature Mirror 4.1 Swift unit starter 4.2 Swift vs ranged starter 4.3 Treespirits 4.4 Playing against early T2 1 Nature vs Shadow I want to start with the matchup against Shadow, because I think it's pretty easy to understand the dynamic from the nature perspective for a basic level. I want to describe how to beat the average Shadow T1 player: There are multiple scenarios you will encounter, when playing against Nature T1. I will go through all of them. First of all I will show you how the average Shadow T1 player plays & how to demolish him with ease. Then I'll go further to discuss what to do against dangerous unit compositions and strategies and how to survive against the overpowered Phasetower. 1.1 General matchup discussion Nature has a general strength, when fighting against S Units due to Windweavers double damage bonus & Hurricane. This makes Forsaken less effective, espcially in a spam they are absolutely weak against Hurricane. On the other hand nox troopers make your Swiftclaw/Amazon entirely useless as you want to get off max value out of ensnaring roots. Starting with your swift unit may result into an autolose, which leads me to one of the golden rules, when playing nature T1: Always let your enemy spawn his first unit before you. This gives you the information about his T1 therefore you can react properly. The matchup against Shadow is probably the easist one to learn at the beginning, which is my main reason why I'm starting right here. 1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam This is quite an easy task. All you have to do is spamming Windweavers and pull back that unit in a fight, which gets focussed. Most of the time your Windweavers will survive, because Nox Trooper need extra hits to kill squad units. Therefore you can save multiple units and heal them with surge of light. Even with motivate there is no way you're gonna lose that fight if you micro properly. Tip: You can select damaged units on the small screen at the right side. This allows you to pick your targets faster and more precisely. 1.3 How to deal with mass Dreadchargers Some people may try to circle around you with Dreadchargers, which is a little bit harder to defend. Spearmen do a good job though to protect you. Against a massive amount of Dreadchargers it's quite useful playing a second squad of Spearmen. The important part in this scenario is to avoid open areas in the early stage, because you may get crushed from multiple angles. Just hover around choke points and punish overagressive pushes by using ensnaring roots (best case scenario is to catch 2 units, who are close to each other so multishot of windweavers increases your damageoutput during the cc time). 1.4 How to deal with mixed unit combinations Probably the most effective way to play Shadow T1 is a combination of 1 Forsaken squad (to finish of S squads, because Nox struggle with this) and an equal amount of spammed Dreadchargers/Nox Troopers. You need to be careful with your micro and a good amount of Windweavers are necessary to eliminate threads quickly. Always try to kite back up until you have a big army and some additional power to support with your spells effectively. It should be easier to stay safe as Nox & Forsaken aren't that fast. Just be careful and don't fall back too far, otherwise a straight wellfocus into T2/Phasetower defence may put you far behind. 1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam This card ist probably your worst enemy when playing nature T1. It destroys windweavers with its absurd splash damage and has an insanely high cost efficency ... pretty much a cc immune long range high dps tank. You will face Phasetowers in 2 possible occasions (Defensive and offensive situations). If you are trying to rush against a phasetower player (because he picked up a greedy power well or something like that), keep in mind that you're still going to lose an engagement. Try to set up your mobility advantage to and walk up to the main base to bait out a Phasetower, then walk back to the extra well. This way you can soak 60 additional power out of your opponent's power pool. Keep in mind it simply doesn't work on large maps like Haladur. Phasetower will always favour the Shadow player unless he makes major mistakes. Maps like Whazai are even worse, because a straight phasetowerspam in the middle can reach your powerwells just after 2 ports. You need to set up a primal defender defence before your enemy gets to port in. Otherwise the game is just lost. 1.5 How to deal with a Shadow T1 Master This will be really tough. Your goal is early survival. The Shadow player has some ways to create massive advantages within the first minutes to build up big advantages. I'll show one of these powerful early attacks, that will end up with a clean 80+ power advantage for the shadow player most of the time. I'll give Yrmia as an example (Your opponent starts with a Dreadcharger. You have to respond with Spearmen or Windweavers . The game is over if you make one single missstep. You opponent will just start picking up a power well ... 1) Now you can decide if you want to rush him. If you decide to rush him he plays a defensive Phasetower, that can port to the main base if you try to switch (even though it takes more damage there, fighting at the enemies main base will be hard, because the Monument will also constantly attack you with its splash damage and finish off squads before you can heal them). 2) You take the well by yourself. This lowers the early voidlevel and leaves you open for a split attack which favours Shadow. An immediate double attack at your well and your main base will follow soon with 2-3 units per base. Shadow units are more effective without additional support while the expensive nature units need to synergise with each other and their support spells. In addition to that crowd control is nearly useless (1Dreadcharger, 1 Nox, 1Forsakensquad), because you won't be able to cc multiple units, you don't have enough crowd control in your base to make the cost investement worth it & you lack the units to kills cc'd units. If you try to overwhelm your opponent at one spot, he can just spam units at the other spot and get your powerwell over there (especially when he motivates the unit from the weaker side). You lose at least 1 powerwell. 3) Instant T2. If your opponent mimics your movements early and stays on the same side as you do, there is no way you can reach an orb fast enough with your slow first unit. If you decide to start swiftclaw, your opponent will read your plan in about a second and won't pick up the power well, so he can rush your T2 immediatly if it's needed. You can't go for a dazed fight anymore, because Nox Troopers demolish Swiftclaw/Amazon and winning a fight while being 80 power down this early into the game is just not compensable just by good micro. Shadow T1 is very powerful at the start of the game and you definitely need to respect that. But don't worry to much, you won't meet such a strong shadow T1 player on a regular base. Most of the time people do make mistakes, so you can pick off some units with your cc or simple do favourable damage trades that keep you alive until you start to scale up. You will still face turrets and instant T2's alot, but you can survive that by using primal defender or picking up instant T2 by yourself. In the best case scenario you may be able to rush your opponent. 1.6 Rushing an opponent who plays instant T2: 1.6.1 Pure Shadow Pure Shadow: Very hard to deal with. Rushing is only a good decision if you're close to your opponent's orb already and even then it may be close. You need spearmen as tanks and M counters to deal with Shadow Mages, who will destroy your units faster than you may think. If you are not in position there is no way to rush that, you need to be in position with your spearmen, when the T2 is finished already. 1.6.2 Bandits Bandits: Actually easy to rush if you are close. That is a big 'IF' since you can't start swift vs Shadow and this gives Bandits more space. Just split against crowd control, play 1-2 dryads and sleep incoming drakes. Bandits has no crowd control, so you can even rush over a decent distance. If your opponent is to far away, picking up a power well with primal defender (that thing demolishes drakes) is also fine. Just make sure to defend proactively & keep an eye on nightcrawlers aimed for split attacks. you need to catch units before they get close to your power wells (rallying banner attacks are annoying). I recommend practicing this, if you are a pure nature player, because Bandits has the upper hand in this matchup due to cards like windhunter and powerful rallying banner attacks. 1.6.3 Shadow Nature Shadow Nature: Don't overstay your welcome T1 against Shadow Nature. This deck is probably the deadliest out of all against T1 units. Cheapest high dps units + cheapst crowd control. A common strategy with this deck is to sacrifice entire T1 armies just to get a powerwell and then defend counterattacks with Oink + Phoenix (+Nightcrawler-Nasty). Don't fall for this bait 1.6.4 Shadow Frost Shadow Frost: Hard to rush, easy to defend against. You can just pick up a powerwell and defend early attacks with good micro. Just don't push to aggressively, as Shadow Frost does really well at defending power wells and orbs (but that should be well known). From a defensive spot you won't be surprised by any Lyrish Nasties or some stuff like that. 1.7 How to rush against greedy power wells This is a pretty common scenario when facing unexperienced shadow players. Most of them will put up very aggressive extra powerwells without the needed ressources to defend them. If you want to punish that, you still need to keep an eye onto two things. First of all you need to be in range to punish a potential defensive tower. Secondly you still need at leasty 3-4 combat units and some power to make good use of your support spells. Even with a 100 power lead an early engagement may be very bad for you, because Shadow units work much better on a very low power level. So taking like 20-30 seconds to build up your army in the first place might be a wise choice if you don't have enough units in the mix, but as I said you need to be at least somewhat close to 1.8 Maps (Tips and spots to watch out for) Lajesh: With the walls it's a great map for you as it blocks any early action and you control the only attack areas with your crowd control. Allows you to scale up to critical points, that allow you to take control over the game. Elyon: Phasetower or instant T2 by your opponent may lose you mapcontrol right from the start on, you need to fight from an uncomfortable position. At least the wall protects your main base, so you won't be pressured early, which is good for you to scale up safely, especially when playing pure nature. Haladur: Your main base is far away from the center of this map. This means you are open to get split attacked. Defending that on equal power level can be very tough, escpially due to the strength of motivate. Centered fights will be in your favour unless Phasetower is played. Yrmia: As seen above, this map gives you alot of trouble due to multiple spots to get flanked from, if your opponent mastered his T1. Phasetowers from the center position are very dangerous. Small entries can be covered by ensnaring roots though, which may a possible opening for you. Whazai: If you see your opponent starting with Phasetower you need a primal defender at your entrance to the center of the map, otherwise you will be destroyed by phasetowerspam. They just need 2 ports to attack your powerwells. Even T2 isn't enough to stop this. If phasetower isn't played you should be fine though, Windweavers are more valuable than spearmen in this scenario, because they can attack the powerwells at the main base over that cliff. Uro: Troublesome map. Gives you some issues due to the high distance between wells since you have to start with a slow starting unit, but it's not as bad as the Frost vs Shadow T1 matchup on this map since you've got a chance to win the dazed fights. Fast T2 is valuable for you on this map unless you win early trades. Simai: The is somewhat fine to play, but you may lose entire map control upon playing an extended T1 agianst Phasetower. So early T2 is somewhat necessary if you see your opponent prepare anything at the center of the map. Apart from that you've got 2 power wells next to you main base, that are somewhat safe to take, which is pretty useful. Generated maps (small): Similar problems as on Elyon. You may lose mapcontrol, rushing against instant T2 or phasetower is hard, but not always impossible. You make your decision based on your distance to your opponent if you want to rush or play the game slowly with less mapcontrol Generated maps (big): Games most likely shift to the T2 stage before anything dangerous may happen. You should be careful about sacrificial well focus strategies by your opponent as you can't counterattack over such a wide distance. 2 Nature vs Frost 2.1 General Matchup discussion Frost is an uncomfortable opponent for you, because Frostmagespam is negating your scaling power, therefore you can't sit back and scale up safely like in other matchups. You either need to be more proactive to get early advantages or try to use defensive buildings to stall out up until later stages of the game. That's easier said than done. The Frost player can fall back and also use its Ice-Guardians, but with strong micro plays you can force good early fights and create very nice advantages for yourself. 2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam There are 2 options for yourself to deal with a Frostmagespam. You can either go for a Swiftclawspam, that is beating Frostmagespam very early into the game. You can try to force an early fight, if the Frost player oversteps. But you aren't guaranteed to get the fight you want if your opponent stays at his main base up until he scales up. If you play stonekin an aggressive T2 position may be an option due to the high amount of M knockback in, but as a pure nature player I don't recommend doing such things. The Frostmages S-knockback is negating the option of using spirit hunters & ghost spears to full effect. On bigger maps you can take an early well to force a response to create an easier target compared to the main base (keep in mind an orb also does formidable damage). It also lowers the void level which delays the big Frostmage burst breakpoint. A less aggressive strategy would be mass Dryads/Shamans against the magespam and hope, that your opponents splits up his mages a little bit too far. Then you can use ensnaring roots to pick up mages, that are placed too far from the main group to get your advantages. If your opponent picks up to many mages, because he doesn't allow you to outtrade him early, you need to rely on a more defensive strategy. Turrets work quite well in this case, because once the mage army gets to big the turrets will buy you some essential time. Frost units are too slow to run around your bases, therefore you are safe for a while with the option to prepare your next move. If you get to kill some Frostmages early on, you may be able to win this in the late T1, because Frost Mage charges are limited, while you have access to two combat units with the Shaman & Dryad. The mage player is still favoured in this matchup, but the homesoil nerf at the last patch in 2013 was apparently beneficial for the balancing in this matchup (I guess that was the only good thing about that nerf). 2.3 How to punish early wells On maps with big well distances like Haladur I recommend going for an aggressive early game. Swiftclawspam is an option here. You can switch targets once your opponent spent alot of power into Ice Guardians. They are too slow to follow your units when there is a great distance between power wells. You simply run away from the Ice Guardians while destroying the undefended power wells. If your opponent wants to go for a Frostmagespam, you can simply pick up an early powerwell to open up a spot to attack if the Frost player responds by taking a well on its own in the center. On a low void level the Frostmagespam is vulnerable to heavy aggression. Tip: Keep an eye onto the Glyph of Frost. Always try to anticipate it and try to bring up less predictable movement patterns on the board. Even though that seems a little random sometimes, it may be harder for your opponent to predict your movements correctly. 2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers This is probably an easy task for you. If Frostmage isn't involved you win the scaling game since you ranged advantage over Ice-Guardians and the Hurricane against a potential Master archerspam are simply way to effective. Just keep in mind that you need a good amount of units on the board to make your crowdcontrol worth its use as Frost units are very tanky. In the early game you need to be on point with your micromanagement in order to keep your units alive (Shaman heals, Dryad cc, kiting) before cc starts winning these trades for you in the late game. Frostbite is very dangerous here, you might lose units, that are out of position! Keep in mind to stay in an aggressive stance when commiting to an attack. Your opponnent might tech up and suddenly your poor Shamans are infront of a War Eagle, which is a situation you probably do want to avoid. 2.5 Playing against instant T2s I mostly would recommend picking up T2 by yourself in that case because you should have strong T2 options, when playing pure Nature here. Frost Fire, Frost Shadow & Pure Frost are very good T2 matchups for you and instant T2 give you an optimal position to gain leads over Energy parasites. Stonekin is pretty difficult to rush with nature T1 as Stonetempest is super effective against your M heavy unit composition. You need to be very close to be able to rush this effectively (getting a tempo lead by dealing damage to the orb during its construction time). 2.6 Map advice Lajesh: Again the walls are very valuable to block Frostmages as they can't shoot through them. If you get into a leading position here, you may consider trying to get mapcontrol as this blocks T3 for the late game. You always have the option of playing safe if anything goes wrong. Elyon: I usually recommend looking for an early T2 in the corner on this map. Your mainbase is safe, but you can't contest the center in an extended trade against Frostmages. If you're playing pure nature your opponent will be forced to go T2 by himself as he can't defend Energy Parasites with T1 and doesn't reach your T2 orb in time. Haladur: The big distance betweeen the main base and the center are always and advantage against Frost. Taking an early power well is your best bet here. Lowers the void and can't be rushed effectively as long as you've got a defensive building as back up. You've got at least a minute to prepare yourself before the Frost player gets into a meaningful range to do something useful. Yrmia: Very small map and very dangerous against Frost. It's really hard to safely aquire any position on the map here. The wall segment gives a 75 power boost for both players, which favours the Frostmage spam as your opponent will reach his critical mass earlier into the game. Wazhai: Keep in mind that melee units are less effective here due to the cliff. Going aggressive with Dryad + Shaman can work out pretty well, as most people will be nervous and overcommit into an early engagement, that nature wins due to the Shaman sustain. Against experienced Frost players a Primal Defender behind that cliff can block early center aggression. Uro: If you play Stonekin, you can go instant T2 against aggressive magespam. You most likely identify your opponent's itention as he either needs to take the long path in oder to get wells or the short path in order to fight. I think playing against this as a pure nature player is dangerous, because Magespam can rush early T2's and it's hard to defend any position apart from your main base. Simai: You can take that early well to create a big tempo lead in your advantage. Low void level, big map with walls to intercept Frost players for a good amount of time. Should be fine to play this matchup here. Generated maps (small): You most likely lose map control on these maps, which is a little unfavourable for you. But sometimes you can go for a swiftclawspam due to the big distance between center and main base. Generated maps (big): Early advantage for you as Swift units are very valuable here. You can try very aggressive Swifclawspam into T2 as there is no option to counterattack in time for non-swift units. The distance between both players is huge. Keep in mind that Frost T1 players usually play super strong late game decks so getting an advantage pre T3 can be very important for you. 3 Nature vs Fire 3.1 General Matchup discussion The matchup against Fire is very interesting and there are alot of ways this could play out. There are some easy & effective strategies, but also some advanced ones, that are way harder to execute, but more useful in the end. Fire T1 is often played differently dependend on the deck you are facing because there is a big variety in deckslots that are invested in T1 within the Fire deck. Pure Fire can throw 8-9 cards into its T1, while Fire Nature will simply use 4-6 cards, because it requires way more slots in T2. Some cards like Wrecker & Mortar turn around matches heavily and you need to know and respect their specific power once they are used. Before going into specific T1 fight discussion I need to warn you here. Fire players tend to skip T1 against nature quite often and nature units are very weak against T2. So keep in mind to avoid binding power into to many units while being in a passive stance. This frequently leads to frustrating losses and you want to avoid that. 3.2 Dryad Spam Discussion I would say this was a very famous way to play the matchup from the nature perspective. Alot of players would simply spam dryads to scale up to a point where they simply outscale the opponent. I agree with the fact, that Dryad is a very powerful card with good stat cost efficency and especially against Fire T1 the damage reduction is huge because of eruption. A double Eruption doesn't kill units anymore and its damage gets reduced to 225 per target (from 300). Anyways you need to be careful when to use this strategy. You lose alot of mobility and versitility, which makes you weaker against early T2 and Mortar tower. These are strategies you will face quite often and this is why I don't consider spamming Dryads in this matchup unless your opponent tries to go for a Fireswornspam. Dryad has a superior stat cost efficency and Firesworns can't use their ranged advantage or S knockback against such an army. 3.3 How to play the classic matchup The classic unit composition you will face is built around 1-2 scavengers combined with Sunstriderspam and maybe 1 Firesworn. Your opponent will try to fight on an open field or at least attack from multiple spots at once, so you can't use your cc onto all units. On most maps I recommend a Swiftclaw start to match the speed of Scavenger, because especially on mid centered maps Fire can pick up a well + mortar or instant T2 which is very unpleasent to play against. In rare occasions you may consider starting with a Dryad. In order to win this fight you need at least 2 Dryads, because you need the damage reduction against the Eruption on all of your units. Before you manage to do that try to avoid every possible fight. Tip: Spawn order is an important here. Your Dryads need to get spawned early on, because they need to be undazed to switch their mode for damage output. Shamans on the other hand are incredibly good dazed as they already heal for full value. This is very important to know to win extended trades. 3.4 How to play agianst Wrecker Wrecker has insane M damage. I think it's the best basic cost stat efficency out of all T1 units if you simply look at its damage output. This is something you need to respect in this situation. Most of the time only pure Fire players will carry Wrecker in their decks, because they do have the slot left to use them. But sometimes Fire Frost also goes for the Wrecker, because it has a weak T2 against pure Nature. They most important part in this case is your use of crowd control. Because Wrecker has the ability to allow undazed summons so your CC can end up being used against you. If you use ensnaring roots onto a wrecker, he can use the ability and spawn undazed melee creatures out of the root range while his sunstriders will be placed inside the root area, because they are immune to knockbacks over there, which is a safe spot against Hurricane. In addition to that Wrecker empowers split attacks by alot. Bringing up an undazed Sunderer or multiple Wreckers right front of your powerwell is a huge threat and you always have to respect that. 3.5 How to deal with early T2s 3.5.1 Pure Fire Don't rush this. It doesn't work unless you get a big gifted lead. Enforcer and Wildfire are a powerful defense against T1. Pure Fire will completely roll over you, you have to respond with T2 by yourself and avoid having more bound power in your T1 units. The pure Fire matchup is very unforgiving to play, so be on guard! 3.5.2 Fire Nature Fire Nature is a threat for you, but not as bad as pure Fire. As long as you are close to your opponent's orb, you can attempt to rush it down. If you won a trade beforehand it should be even better. Your biggest task is keeping all units splitted against cc, while keeping the dryad buff applied to all units. Make sure to sleep any T2 unit immediatly. Skyfire Drake is especially Dangerous. Envenom can work as a soft counter to Ravage here, as it is unlikely to kill a skyfire Drake without it. Always try to be ready for a lavafield. The Fire Nature options are powerful, but there is only limited power and time available for him and that can be your advantage. Keep in mind that a missed rush onto a fire nature T2 always means game over. So be careful. 3.5.3 Fire Frost Probably the easist deck to rush as Coldsnap is useless against nature. The 50% damage reduction is very good for your shamans. Still don't underestimate the power of Skyfire Drake and a potential Lavafield. You need tempo to force protects or cc to keep down the powerlevel in order to prevent a lethal strike. Think twice if you really want to run into the risk of rushing against Fire Frost when having a favourable T2 matchup anyways. 3.5.4 Bandits Nobody plays Bandits and we talked about that earlier in the guide. 3.6 What to do against Mortar This card is probably the most dangerous one for you in this matchup. Completely blocks any form of aggression. Once you lose map control and a mortar is up, the position is fone forever. In addition to that Mortar eliminates the ability to basetrade effectively as his damage/cost efficency is even above T2 level. Try to avoid mortar in every way. Cliff mortar attacks also can be difficult to defend once you fall behind, that's why I always recommend playing the game on a low risk level when playing nature in its current state. That said you can't get into a super passive stance as aggressive Mortars may force you into a fight. 3.7 Map advice Haladur: Bad map for you. Split attacks from the side paths are very dangerous. Defending a Sunderer in your main base isn't just dangerous and expensive, it also leaves alot of bound power in your main base making any center position very exploitable. Elyon: You can take fights if your opponent agrees on going for a T1 Battle. Center position to fight over, you should win extended trades, but lose early circle engagements. Be careful about instant T2 though. Lajesh: you can stall, but you won't be able to attack effectively either. Don't lose control over the postion close to your main base. That can end up pretty ugly when playing against pure Fire. Yrmia: You either have to be aggressive to pressure against potential instant T2 (with extended void power extremely dangerous!) or try to set up T2 at the other side of the map. T1 trades should be manageable, because you should be able to reach your critical amount of units pretty early. Uro: Big map, so keep an eye onto split attacks. Apart from that you should be fine by contesting the center position. Whoever gets it in the end will be at a massive advantage as it is a great setup for both players (split attacks for your opponent and EP management for yourself). Wazhai: Cliffmortars everywhere … super tricky to play against it. I would even consider playing manawing in a tournament to prevent this … When Mortar isn't used you should be able to play very aggressively as the wells at the cliff are very vulnerable, even when your opponent picks up early T2. Simai: Slow starter. As long as you don't lose map control entirely you should be fine for the early stage of the game. Be careful about welling up too much as this leaves you open for split attacks. Generated (small): Center rush + Mortar is disgusting to play against. Fire is clearly favoured on these type of maps due to this and you should try to bait out an early fight even though it may be difficult to win. Center control is key on alot of small generated maps. Generated (big): Just make sure you don't bind too much power in T1 units as this makes T2 pickups much more juicy for your opponent. Should be difficult to apply serious pressure here. 4 Nature Mirror I still feel like Nature mirrors are one of the most fun matchups in the entire game. Especially since Treespirit got nerfed and doesn't destroy the faction entirely anymore there is alot of room to show of crazy skills in this matchup. There are 3 ways to play out the game and I will explain the basic concepts right here. 4.1 Swift unit start Probably the most common way to play this. Swiftclaw or Amazon start into spearmen into dryad into shaman spam. This is the most effective unit composition in the early stage. You will try to use your dryad to keep as many units cc'd as possible while Shamans will switch between attack and healing rotations. Keep in mind, that it's your priority to keep your units alive. Important note: Don't use any spells in the early game! Your Shamans are more than enough to keep your units alive in the early game. Spells are wasted power, because once you use them your opponent can just play another Shaman while keeping his other units alive during the cc duration. At some point it may be useful to add a second Dryad to increase the damage output and protect your other Dryad from burst rotations. Shaman & Dryad micro is key in this matchup. Switching between damage and support modes while maintaining correct unit focus is incredibly hard and really allows you to show off your skill with the deck. Keep in mind that Swiftclaw will me more dangerous than Amazon, because Amazon damage reduction doesn't work against other units even though she can take on the Swiftclaw in a simple 1v1. Her damageoutput isn't sufficient in extended trades. Using the ability onto the Swiftclaw is a NoGo by the way! Dryads could just cc the swifclaw resulting in 65 power being almost wasted. In addition to that the unit ends up getting unbound, which is a huge advantage for the 4.2 Swift unit vs ranged start The second way to play this matchup is the Dryad start. You can't fight your opponent in the early game, because your dps is way to low and Swiftclaw + Spearmen are a huge thread to your units, but once you have 10+ units you can try to burst them down with crowd control. The melee units are somewhat useless, because they don't reach your units anymore while there is no way to heal them against the burst rotations in the late T1 anymore . But as I said if you get into a fight to early you will lose, because the Melee units do way more damage and Shamans will be able to sustain through your damage output, especially with a Dryad in the mix. In addition to that the lack of swifclaw reduces your pressure onto early T2s. EP spam vs Nature T1 can be a huge turning point. 4.3 Treespirits This is the third and probably the easiest version to play out the matchup is Treespirit spam. Beats out the dryad spam due to the high dps, but struggles alot against Spearmen, because they can soak up the damage early and get healed by Shamans later on. I feel like playing them is less effective after the damage nerf, because the sustained dps version beats them now unless you get enough Treespirits to Burst down Spearmen with one rotation (and you need many of them). Keep in mind, that you need to use your Dryad wisely here. Using the sleep animation just after a Treespirit used his attack is useless, because it has up to 10s cooldown between his attack rotations. Treespirit spam is even worse against early T2s though, that has to be considered here. Tip: Amazon takes 50% less damage against Green Treespirits and soaks up burst rotations aswell. 4.4 Rushing an opponent who picks up instant T2 4.4.1 vs pure Nature This isn't a big deal, because pure Nature doesn't have any high dps units do deal with your natural Sustain. Also you do have good cc tools to deal with Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters. With many ranged units it should be easy to kite Deep One and apart from that there isn't too much pure Nature can offer in T2. If a pure Nature players goes instant T2 at least somewhat close to you I recommend to attack immediatly. Adding up 1-2 S units into the mix may be valuable as they deal well with the S units pure Nature can bring into the fight. Defensive T1 vs T2 is not recommended as Energie Parasites are impossible to defend with Nature T1. 4.4.2 vs Stonekin Way more difficult but still possible if you are close to build up a tempo lead by damaging the orb (preferably with a swiftclaw). Razorshard/Stonetempest can be quite annoying, so you need to make sure, that your unit split is perfect, but in the end there is no “burst combo” that can take you out, so there is nothing you need to be afraid of as long as you play your game perfecly. Spearmen can be really useful to support your unit composition in this matchup. 4.4.3 vs Nature Shadow Nature Shadow has huge potential against your T1 and is pretty big in the early T2 stage. Pretty dangerous to play agianst, but pretty unpopular deck. 4.4.4 vs Nature Fire Rarely played with nature starteres, but somewhat troublesome. At least Natures Swift units are more expensive than scavenger, so your opponent won't be able to use his power as effective as in the Fire T1 version and may be more open to an immediate rush. So that's it for now. I may be able to add some replays for some matchups later on. Thanks for reading this wall of text and I really hope to see some new nature starters in the future! Feedback's always welcome! Best regards RadicalX

some other good frost/nature solo rPVE cards: - frost bite (good against bosses) - crystal fiend, preferably green - thunderstorm - equilibrium - wheels of gift (expensive and more of a luxury than really needed, especially because grinders already heal themselfs up anyway) - giant wyrm (cheap to buy and upgrade, a flying T4 makes it easy to take out spawcamps, grinders for example often get stuck in traffic) - revenge or stone shell or ward of the north (all three do the same job) - ice tornado - grimvine (a cheaper alternative than grinder charges) - construct (only as temporary support for strong bosses like twilight infestor, you only need one for constant knockback) Like Flrbb said, T3 is a little too big unitwise, your T2, too i think, otherwise it looks solid. You could get free slots for useful spells by replacing all the units except one T3 and maybe one T2 unit - archer and mage spam with home soil already clears a lot of bases.

for lvl 9 forsaken are better becaus you mainly encounter small troops which take Nox-Trooper forever to kill ( they have to shoot every member of the squad once, even when the squad has 6HP total) I recommend using shadow mage at t2 instead of harvester. Harvester mightve more style but you are severely limitied with just 1 unit. Those always feel very clunky to me. I value flexibility of focussing different targets at the same time muh higher. Depends on your level of play though (which i can not judge). I would recommend to either play deat ray or grim bahir but not both. Death Ray you would run with ray of light and healing gardens for insane heals for permanent leach weapons in combination with regrowth and other spell support. Consider adding rifle cultists and offering (nature) for more death rays as thats your main attack unit while depending on game stage 1-2 overlords function as your ground presence for the spell support. Offering also helps to get a 2nd rotation of t3 spells(infect soulshatter frenetic assault and maybe thunderstorm) For grim bahir you the same holds true with the exception of healing gardens and ray of light which are unneccassary in that deck. I would consider adding equilibrium though. Consider adding Incredible Mo for lost souls and twilight maps. The benevolent Mo helps you massively there as your main force in both t4‘s are ranged air units (against lost souls to counter the dragons and against twilight to counter the blind of twilight whisperers) Frenetic assault nature affinity is better than shadow affinity as nature affinity can target buildings. Units generally clump around buildings, especially artillery buildings in the center of the camp so with nature you can hit much more units with cc. It is well worth the minor decrease in damage. Decomposer i generally find very lacklustre for rPvE especially. Ashbone Pyros are unneccassar but nice to have. With all the spells you wont have any issues with just cultist masters tbh. Would add maybe thinderstorm as mentioned above and probably unholy hero. I didnt keep track of exactly how many slots you have left but you should end up at around 20 again. When i am home i will maybe create 2 deck lists for what i would use. I hope this gave some insight of possible options already though

NAME: Game restricts taking a free starting position in a lobby, if it was taken by someone before. SEVERITY: 3 LOCATION: Lobby REPRODUCIBILITY: Always (quick hands) DESCRIPTION: >be in the group with host, >lobby is created by the host, >any single slot is taken by two people at a time, *wild west cowboy duel music on the background plays* >now one takes a slot, and second does not, obviously, >second tries to take a free slot, but get an instant "Unknown Error!" sys msge >cannot take any slots anymore, untill lobby is recreated, or player is reinvited (leaves group then gets back) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Possible to recreate if someone jumps from between slots, and you, so happens, click on a free slot, but it was actually a player (KONO PLAYE~RU DA! (yes a meme)). SCREENSHOTS/VIDEOS: "please, standby"

First of all I want to summarize some information about the Amii Monument as alot of arguments here are based on some missconceptions. 1. Void Level Amii Monument (U3) shrinks your voidlevel by 264. If the building gets destroyed and you are forced to reconstruct it you lose 39 power out of your voidpool. Classic T4 shrinks your voidlevel by 300. If the building gets destroyed you lose 100 additional power to reconstruct. Additional Information: - Amii Monument can be combined with Construction Hut to reduce the costs. - Amii Monument does not trigger the T4 entrance Barrier, so if you lose any orb you can't rebuild it as you need to spend 300 Power. In order to circumvent this you need to deactivate your Amii Monument, rebuild your orb as "T3 orb" and activate the Amii Monument again. This takes some time but reduces permanent power loss to 114. - Temporary Power losses are irrelevant in PvE due to the easy access to void manipultion. This leads to alot of misscalculations. 2. The market question (why is Amii Monument not as expensive as some other rare cards?) First of all the Market doesn't reflect a cards strength perfectly. Some prices are inflated like the Shaman as he's somewhat of a fan favourite without being super essential for PvE. You don't need charges in order to use an Amii Monument effectively as it is restricted to a single use anyways. This has great implications on the market as it reduces the demand. 3. Stategic advantages - You don't need to fight for your T4 spot (which is heavily guarded on some maps) - your permanent power loss is lower compared to normal T4 - As you skip T3, you can save multiple deck slots in your deck - Since you can build Amii Monument at a save place, you usually don't need to defend it, which makes it easier to keep up with your economy. - Specific map conditions like soultree T5 are somewhat pointless 4. Can skill compensate the Amii advantages? - The most skilled PvE players rely on Amii Monument in order to get top speedrun times on more than 60 percent of the maps. Without Amii Monument you can't compete with the top times. The data from so many months of speedrunning are crystal-clear in that regard. What change for Amii Monument is good from my perspecitve? - Increasing the bound power to a point where Amii Monument always ends up being more expensive than a classic T4 (400+). With that cost you would have a risk when playing the card while keeping its identity of granting early T4 access. In order to find a good power number it requires some stat cost efficiency analysis aswell as some testing in the first place. Once you removed the global Amii abuse fest you could lower the cost of the active ability to support strategic diversity based on orb switching a little bit.

Alright, i'll use your format then PvE in battleforge is planned from a: RPG point of view, in which you simply follow the story of the game, not needing anything fantastic and you just have to go through the events having fun as they unveil. Optimized point of view, in which you can go for higher difficulties for the sake of challenging yourself and further improve your cards. Meaning that while you are trying to get the best possible numbers you may encounter ways to do unrealistic things, like ridiculous amount of damage, skip mechanics, events and finish maps in time record. This point of view disregards anything resembling balance as people will just find and exploit any little opportunity they find to do it, this is one of the ways the game can be played and it is not wrong. There will always be something to exploit, that is until the dev team focus most of their brain capacity into properly balancing the game (which is something Phenomic was trying to do), but it needs to work and needs to be complete before even considering that. Yes and no, i never said he was inexperienced, but I implied that he did not bear in mind the bigger picture. Anyone can focus on the smaller details, but it is how things fit in the big picture that those changes will make an effect on many other things. You change one piece, the whole thing changes, meaning more balance requests and more nerf this and that. Leaving things how they are until the game is complete, stable and working as it should will be better than doing this kind of things now. See my first point about disregarding mechanics. Don't be overly sensible and stay on the topic. I'm not here for your emotions.

Hi, i wonderd if it would be possible to increase the buffs you can see on the screen. Right now you are able to see max 4 buffs (one for each player) and debuffs from the enemy (With Incredible Mo). If someone has whell of gifts activated (and you are playing an 4 player map) then all 4 buffs slots on the screen are "full". And if you have for example Shrine of war then you dont see on the screen anymore when your buff is runnig out. Of course you can click on the shrine on the map and see how long it will last. But on the screen it would be more clear to see when i need to activate the second shrine. So for me it would be nice if i could increase the seen buffs on the screen. And to not force everyone to the same number of buffs i think it would be optimal if you could Change that number in the settings. Please let me know what you are thinking about this idea. ^^

Comparing some cards' cost and what they offer I've made a list with some cards that need changes and my suggested changes (all cards are coinsidered as being U3). Won't mention some cards that I'm either unsure of or that would be too controversial Before that I'd like to talk about 2 mechanics that I feel need some adjustments: Firstly destroying monuments under construction return 75 power, which is nice if you got the wrong orb but makes it less punishing to build an orb near a fire enemy that might have scorched earth or any enemy with huge dps. I propose instead of getting power back the destruction allows you to build a new monument in the next 10s for 0~25 cost. Secondly, some spells have such low costs that they cd is longer than their recharge time after you run out of charges, which makes charges irrelevant for them, so I propose spells take at least double the cd time to recharge. //T1 cards// 1) Envenom - useless at T1 because of high costs (higher than most T1 units) and the tainted damage is too low. Proposed changes: Infused: 50 cost and 30 dmg/s Tainted: 50 cost and 20~25 dmg/s, 20s duration 2) Executor - see below 3) Frost sorceress - has way too low damage, making her somewhat useable as a damage dealer would encourage putting her in the front line rather than keeping her back just for the shield. Proposed changes: 30 damage per hit/ 45 with splash. May need a bit higher shield cost in which case the damage may be even higher 4) Lifestealer - loses more health than deals damage to small units thanks to knockback. Proposed changes: damaged cannot be reduced by abilities, shields and damage is divided amongst all squad members of a hit unit 5) Mumbo jumbo - too costly for a spell that is mostly supportive, like frost bite. The cooldown is also weird as it's the same as the duration, which would mean that reapplying the debuff or the enemy playing a unit at the moment there's ground presence is a matter of who clicks faster and who has less delay. Proposed changes: 25 cost and 25s cooldown 6) Nasty surprise - offers burst damage to lost souls, which is supposed to be a risky defensive faction. Proposed changes: maximum 500 damage vs buildings 7) Nomad - a nice card but the sky catcher ability is too expensive to be useful. Proposed changes: sky catcher should cost 75 8) Offering(b) - worse than the gifted affinity in every way. Proposed changes: cost 30~35 9) Phase tower - too little risk in pvp as it's a 900/600 unit while vulnerable. Proposed changes: 50% damage while vulnerable but vulnerability only lasts 20s 10) Soul splicer(r) - irrelevant compared to soul splicer(g). Proposed changes: 40~50% bonus damage. Only affects units that remain in the area and consumes the same amount of corpses as bonus damage dealt. 11) Thugs+Strikers - looter is a strange ability that offers late rewards for immediate investment and is hard to balance. I think that immediate return for some late loss would be more interesting for aggressive fire tactics. Also notice that it's useless on pve which is bad considering they're the only non-swift s-counter fire has at T1. Proposed changes: looter returns the power bound to thughs/strikers back to the power pool. Returned amount is equivalent to 40% of attacked targets power cost relative to damage dealt to its health. Anything with less than 50 power cost will be considered as having 50 power cost so it's still useful in pve. (the change basically means that you immediatelly return part of the units bound power by attacking with it so that you can keep using spells and units. You do lose some power in the long run however due to the higher power cost of units with lotter. If you can't attack enough it's even worse) 12) Suppression - too expensive for a single target cc that only works on towers, even more so with every fire pvp decks and many pve ones having sunstriders. Proposed changes: cost 20~25 13) Surge of light - too strong on single targets with high health. Proposed changes: 1k max healing per unit (this change can only be done if pure nature gets a better T2. Doesn't change anything for nature T1) 14) Treespirit - bit too high health for a unit that is technically ranged. (might generate some discussion) Proposed chages: 720~780 hp 15) Werebeasts - bit too low stats/power (including the regen). Proposed changes: 660/660 16) Wintertide - a bit too expensive Proposed changes: 50 cost 17) Witchclaws - ability is too expensive and tainted one has too little impact. Proposed changes: 15 ability cost and tainted gets 270 unit damage per target/ 810 total //T2 cards// 18) Bandit sorceress - too little damage. The ability has the tradeoff of not being able to attack so it's no excuse. Proposed changes: 60 damage per target/ 90 total 19) Bandit stalker - not good enough against anything. Proposed changes: Gifted: target is slowed so it can counter beasts even better (as they are mostly swift at T2). 800 attack. Tainted: can't be useful without countering anything. Change ability to: 50% of all damage dealt to target can't be warded off, lasts 7s after attack. Possibly also the slow on attack. 800 attack. 20) Commandos - too little stats for the cost even with the toogle. Proposed changes: 800~860 attack 21) Darkelf assassins - active has basically no downside. Proposed changes: 15s of weakness 22) Deathglider - weird and basically useless unit. Proposed changes: ???/??? stats plus no death on infection (but 10 cost). Gifted affinity deals extra damage to walls. 23) Earthkeeper - too little attack. Proposed changes: 600 damage 24) Eliminator - the downside should be the hp loss rather than the cost. Proposed changes: 10 ability cost 25) Frost crystal - a building meant for cc that can't hit archers. Proposed changes: archer range on active 26) Gladiatrix(p) - gives up swift for increased effects on an ability that has a cost. The increment is simply not good enough. Proposed changes: 60 ability cost so you might use her instead of the gifted one if you want to focus on the ability. 27) Gravity surge - a tiny bit too expensive for what it does, even if flying units usually cost 100 at T2. Proposed changes: 45~50 cost 28) Healing well - no starting heal and incredibly slow charge speed. Proposed changes: 100 healing charge per 2s 29) Kobold laboratory: Could probably use a small buff. Proposed changes: 40 cost and 50% faster repair speed 30)Lost converter - should probably cost 50 really. 31) Lost priest - too low attack Proposed changes: ???/??? 32) Mountain rowdy - too low range on ability and unecessary 2 frost orbs. Proposed changes: archer range on the ability/ 30~35s cooldown 33) Razorshard - the knockback is too strong. Proposed changes: 5~7 radius 34) Skydefender - Do I even need to say anything? Proposed changes: cost 60 and higher damage 35) Slaver - too low stats Proposed changes: 1120 attack 36) Spirit hunters(p) - too low damage Proposed changes: 23 poison damage 37) Stormsinger(g) - has swift and a good cheap ability. I think it should cost more than the infused one even with the extra damage. Proposed changes: 40 cost 38)Twilight brute - the ability affecting own units makes it very weird. Specially considering it needs you to kill the enemy and the unit itself is meelee. Proposed changes: Ability only affects enemies and the daage is adjusted accordingly 39) Twilight curse - too expensive to be used effectively on enemy or own units. Proposed changes: maximum unit cost is decreased to 150. Power cost is decreased to 60~65 so that it can be used effectively on both its functions 40) Wallbreaker - could probably be a bit cheaper Proposed changes: 20 cost 41) Warlock - too expensive for a mono fire unit that does what it does. Proposed changes: 50~55 cost //T3 cards// 42) Corsair - too little damage and no counter. Proposed changes: ~76 damage per cannon 43) Drones - worse than silverwinds in every way even though they're basically the same unit for different factions. Proposed changes: stat/power similar to silverwinds 44) Dying breed - too expensive to be useful. Proposed changes: Tainted: 40 cost Gifted: 40 cost and no damage 45) Frontier keep - too expensive for little return. Proposed changes: 150~170 cost 46) Gunner(p) - has little to offer compared to other affinity. Proposed changes: attacked units can't be healed for 10s 47) Infernal machine - similar poroblem to frontier keep. Proposed changes: 200 cost 48) Lord cyrian - way too expensive for what it offers. Proposed changes: 330~350 cost 49) Mutating maniac - low stats for the cost Proposed changes: 2660/2450 50) Shrine of martyrs - 125 is still a bit too expensive for the amount of defense it offers and the restrictions of the card. Proposed changes: 100 cost 51) Stone launcher - ability costs way too much for such a specific card, not to mention that it can't attack the unit that it brought down. Proposed changes: ability cost 0. 52) Sylvan gate - could be a bit more useful considering the investment you have to make. Proposed changes: links the root network to each other sylvan gate 53) Treefiend - way too weak statted. Proposed changes: 1900/2100 (the attack is actually meant to refer to it's damage in rooted form) 54) Twilight hag - low stats and weird ability. Proposed changes: 1200/900 and ability is not gender restricted 55) Twilight warfare - too little impact to be useful. Proposed changes: 100 cost/ 40% for each affinity and the infused one increases damage dealt to anything/ units transformed in the area will have full health 56) Virtuoso - low stats per cost Proposed changes: 1900 health 57) Waystation - useless and doesn't represent bandits very well. Proposed changes: quick build (50%) faster. No duration outside of range for the infused one. //T4 cards// 58) Amok - a lot worse than frenetic assault even though it has so many restrictions. Tainted one is so slow it's useless. Proposed changes: Infused: up to 7 units affected Tainted: spreads to 2 new units every 5s 59) Bloodthrist - doesn't stack the more damage you deal like it used to, even though there are so many restrictions on it. Proposed changes: fix it to how it used to be 60) Colossus - the ability is practically useless even though it's a three nature orb cards. Could probably have better stats considering the high cost. Proposed changes: ability lasts 30s and has 25m range, also it's free (you lose dps by using it afterall) 61) Earthen gift(p) - a weird card with effects that don't really match each other. Proposed changes: friendly structures take 50% damage instead of enemy ones dealing less 62) Fire sphere - a triple fire spell that is delayed and has awful range. Basically useless. Proposed changes: at least give it a 25m effect radius since you do need 3F for this card 63) Infernal chain - too expensive. Proposed changes: 100~110 cost 64) Lifestream - not as useful as similar buildings, takes too much damage. Proposed changes: 50% of the damage is transferred 65) Lost spirit ship - has average damage; if it had 4 cannons instead of 8. Proposed changes: just nerf the damage really, it's undeserved 66) Magma fiend - too little health for a unit htat is practically meelee. Proposed changes: 4K health 67) Nightshade plant - requires one to be full twilight and has awful abilities and stats. Proposed changes: make it also affect units that hit it or that it's hitting. 5s duration for tainted and 15 for gifted (same duration on death) 68) Plague - very risky ability with just average damage. Proposed changes: 200 damage/s 69) Ravenhearth - too expensive Proposed changes: 300 cost 70) Tortugun - the storage capacity is too little. Proposed changes: up to 7.5K stored lifepoints

To expand maybe a little bit more on my answer: I think you can always play around missing 1 card that is considered „Core“ or „Meta“ for factions. F.e. Abomination —> Play spell heavy with inferno, double cluster explosion, thunderstorm and then use Grimvine or Nightshade Plant with maybe Skycatcher. In that type of deck Abonination is still nice because it makes melee bosses and income much easier with its ability, but must play —> definetly not. SoL —> Play Shaman T1 archers —> Phasetower/Nox, Dryad/Mana Wing/Shaman, Mine/Nomad/Eruption/Blaster Cannon, Frost Mage/Home Soil. There are options to play around anything as long as you don‘t restrict yourself with too many things. I think it is fair to assume that there are Meta cards which if you don‘t have enough of them your deck becomes significantly less effective, because the workarounds often are at least a tad bit worse or require additional deck slots. If you consider any card isolated though there are however no „If you don‘t pick this, you‘re fckd“-cards

First, I would build up two different decks for random pve and campaign missions. At least within a four player random generated map you hardly will need any tower. (You could use Kobold Inc. to summon Wolrd Breakers, but that is a differnt story.) A big plus for your towers, though. Not more than a tower in each tier. Also, read the description of Juice Tank very, very carefully. The wells will last longer, thus giving more resources. But the given rate per time does not change. This means, unless you plan to play more than (roughly, because it depends on the capacity of the wells) 25 minutes, you will not need this card! Ice barrier is mainly for supporting Home Soil. Cobold Labratory is another card is another card I like to question. You strengthen your defense, yes. But is it that important to fill up a slot? Well, I do not have enough experience with that card but that is why I wouldn't use it. :/ I do wonder why Chrystal Fiends do not heal a Constuct. Are you sure? For most (basic) needs I'd use Skyelf Templar instead of the Kobold Engineer. He tends to run away too easily. You asked for advice on spells. Frost has not much to do with void (except Shrine of Martyrs), so take only what you really feel needed. I will point out some interesting ones: Home Soil (expensive, for more damage) and maybe Glyph of Frost (if you need some crowd control on T1). Coldsnap (very common crowd conrtol on T2), Matter Mastry is an interesting card, but expensive. Some people swear on Stone Shell, I do not use it. A Frost Shard is handy (instand freze, plus death). Another good one is Shatter Ice. Either use it together with Coldsnap or with Maelstrom. Northland Drake does not deal much damage, nor can take much, its special ability is hard to use (at least for my take). Core Dreadge is a good unit and fun to play. Most forst players do use Avatar or Rageflame (but both are expensive). The cheap alternative would be Stone Warrior. In my opinion, frost and stonekin have not much to offer on t3. In t2, for two frost orbs I like to name War Eagle (together with Ice Area Shield) and maybe White Rangers. For Stonekin I suggest Razorshard (green). They are cheap, do heal themselves and everything around them when in siege mode. These plus a decent t1 or Defenders if you like will give a good t2. I'd say Agrssor is a some sort of a mobile crowd control. They are nice, but cost a lot of energy and do not deal damage - but their knock back is really, really good. As you allready own Chrystal Fiend; yes, use them, too. Typical T4 units would be Wyrm (dunno, why you do not like them, they are easy and uncomplicated), Gemeye (prefer the purple one) and Grinder (any affinity) or Grimvine. If you stick to Construct, I'd use Battleship, too. Both are slow, but they fit together. But I cannot recommend both to you, when you want to play random pve. Maybe this wall of text will help you.

Ensnaring Roots you can use in t2 still as it is a very flexible skill and affects all ground units no matter the tier, soeven in t4 you can get some value out of it. Hurricane i would tend to avoid in higher tiers as the amount of archer squads, where Roots is worse than hurricane tend to become fewer and fewer and also less of a problem. Ensnaring Roots furthermore has inbuild synergy with Mines, it is at least worth thinking about. It depends a bit on which other choices you make and with how many open slots you are left after you got all the core cards and maybe a few cards for personal preference.

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

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

I honestly can not fathom the thought process behind t1 and t2 and the buildings at all. You are investing so many card slots in stages that are a fraction of what matters in rPvE. You really want to cut down on especially t2 and t3 units and definetly only take furnace of flesh and decomposer. Decomposer only if you can not afford Cultist Master or Shrine of War. Nightguard and Witchclaws have strengths that are mostly irrelevant to you in rPvE. Nightguard is an L-Counter and is mainly strong because of her ability. The ability is not worth on anything you face in t2 in rPvE 9's. Twilight Hags and Treefiends you can maybe make an argument for at t3 but thats at best a semi viability against 2 specific units. Witchclaws have their occasional use case in rPvE, but only in level 10's when the spawn building at t2 is very hard to reach, sso again nothing that you'd want to pick for your deck, especially not for one that is made for various use cases. If you want to start shadow t1 I highly recommend to either play Nox or Forsaken with Motivate and a presetup Soul Splicer. Alternatively Phase Tower with Dreadcharger or Skeleton Warriors are decent, you can probably play Witchclaws with that as well, though its not optimal. Let me be blunt your t2 is overloaded with units, but lets start with the good things: Lavafield is a good pickup as a card, decent AOE damage especially for a t2 spell. Windhunter is a theoretical option with Ravage but not my preferred one because. What I'd recommend doing is either go shadow phoenix with Embalmer's shrine (which is a choice purely based on efficiency). I would most likely run gladiatrix , the nature affinity though. Swift is a pretty big advantage over the shadow affinity. An essentially 2-3 card t2 is pretty optimal for rPvE 9 so either Gladi Lavafield or Phoenix Embalmers. Alternatively Windhunter, Ravage, Lavafield. Bandit Stalker is just a terrible card tbh. T3 basically same rules apply though to a lesser extent because you have access to cards that can have a lot of value even in t4. So the obvious unit to play here is Soulhunter and then add in Frenetic Assault, Infect and Soulshatter. To round out the combo you cna do Cultist Master + Furnace of Flesh to get back the power from spells used or Shrine of War for the same effect. I would definetly run Shrine of War for Bandits because it is a very spell intensive deck and therefor needs a lot of void manipulation in t3 and t4. CM + FoF are not necassarily able to provide enough of that, especially if you dont use the CM ability on cooldown. For t4 I'd run Bloodhorn, either affinity is fine, and maybe Rifle Cultists with Offering in addition to both cluster explosions and Earthshaker if you chose the shadow affinity Bloodhorn. In this deck it is CRUCIAL to use Bloodhorn's Stampede. It is your main healing tool. That would leave me with these cards for your deck: T1: Forsaken or Nox-Trooper (Phase Tower) Soul Splicer (Skeleton Warriors or Dread Charger) Motivate T2: Embalmer'S Shrine (LavaField) Shadow Phoenix (Gladiatrix) Resource Booster T3: Soulhunter Furnace of Flesh Cultist Master Shrine of War Frenetic Assault (nature affinity) Infect Soulshatter T4: Bloodhorn (shadow affinity) Cluster Explosion (fire affinity) Cluster Explosion (shadow affinity) Earthshaker Rifle Cultists Offering (nature affinity) That leaves you with 19 cards currently. The other card is up to you really. Some possibilities would be: Inferno, an additional t1/t2 card (like Gladiatrix in a Phoenix deck to deal with Lost Vigils f.e.), Nether warp for the utility it can provide. Blood Healing, if you have issues with healing alot (on Infect Crawlers or a Bloodhorn that you offer afterwards) Disenchant (nature affinity) Unholy Hero For any questions you might have about this deck, feel free to ask

Somewhere I've read that you plan more possible deck slots. Even with the current amount (not completely used from me) I do have problems finding the right ones. There is one divisor for the tutorial deck. Maybe you should add more categories like "PvP", "PvE", "rPvE" and "map specific".

NAME: You can't join this lobby, the match has already started! SEVERITY: 2 LOCATION: Join Open Games (bad harvest) 95% REPRODUCIBILITY: This happened at least 4 times now. Yesterday, tried restarting. Today restarted, it worked. On the map, click on bad harvest. There's 1 or 2 list. Click on a game, then click on join game. This happens likely, when I haven't play for several hours. Then when I open skylords, it happens. DESCRIPTION: This happened today and yesterday. I saw two open games for bad harvest. There both Standard or Advanced, made by different people. Open slots usually 2 or 3. I tried refreshing it, but still the same. I'n on the US. SCREENSHOT/VIDEO: Uploaded ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Maybe in the code, once game is started, remove it from list and refresh the list. Or im guessing its thinking the game has started, but not. So that code shouldn't show up when game is in the list that has less than 4 members. Anyways, just a thought. Thanks guys!

https://ufile.io/x8pnu - >fyre +2 spec slots https://ufile.io/mb4zi -> turan + 2 spec slots https://ufile.io/dnwwn -> danduil +2 spec slots

if i remember the cost is more than a normal t4 monument but this card save you time, deck slots and you can attack the normal t4 with t4 cards

I agree that curse well should be straight up deleted or must cost like 400 energy. The enemy loose 100 energy permanently for 150 energy but u will get 90%(?) back to void so its. u loose 15 energy permanent the enemy loose 100. The amii monument takes 1 slot, but it saves u several slots cause u not need t3 cards. Kind regards

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

Hello, First, i dont speak english, so please you to excuse me for this bad english language. i try writing simply. I try to read the forum but it is hard to understand all. I have this different problem : very often when, I host a party, after few min I loose the lead of the game and I think nobody can start the game, they can join, but the cant valid their deck. (crown on my name go in other player) (picture 1) often I cant join party with empty slot : nothing append when I click to join often I can only enter in party if 3 slots are empty really : freeze on game, nothing happened I must quit game. today I have nothing is the quest list, but I have error message in chat write in red color OK it work today Can you help me please ? (with simple words ;D) Thx you much.

Exactly. Thx Treim. Why I am against Frost Mage, its just a personal dislike. In my opinion is 1 Unit for each tier enough, except for T4. For the open slots you can add spells and some support buildings. So thats why I think MA are enough for T1-3 bases. And with Home Soil you eliminiate each base in few seconds, so no need for Frost Mage. But thats up to everyone self. I agree that Viridiya is awesome with Lost Shades and I really like that combo. But if you're attacking with T4 and are in the middle of a fight and you spawn Viridya, I think the healing isnt that big for T4 and Viridya dies to fast when you're in a base. So I decided to go with Blood Healing and Undead Army.

For nature as T1 starter I recommend Ensnaring Roots so your windweavers can easily deal with any melee unit (root, hit and run). Btw. dont forget to focus the attack with windweavers. If you choose ensnaring roots you wont need spearmen anymore. Maybe put primal defender in, it is situational but sometimes it can help at T1, T2 or when soloing. Shamans and Dryads are optional and shamans make you even slower but keep you alive. I would take only Surge of Light OR Shamans, not both. Ditch Frostmage for T2, there are better options or just keep your windweavers and build masses. But good other choices are: Defenders, Razorshards, Stone Tempest or Aggressor. Also you dont necessarily need Coldsnap and Curse of Oink, if you have to do to much CC you are doing something (to less units, to bad micro) wrong and CC will slow you down in this case (especially freezes). But keep it if you have enough spare slots. If you plan to go directly to T4 with Amii Monument you dont need Mo! If you are soloing Amii Monument is ok but in multiplayer you could have bad luck so that somebody else already built it or the other person have a problem because you already built it (which slows down the whole team). If you exchange it with a real T3, I recommend to use Stone Warrior Blue (then keep Coldsnap, otherwise take Curse of Oink). As Damagespell there is for example Thunderstorm, which can do some decent damage fully upgraded and if there are enough units and time. Also I would put in Revenge, this way you make also a little bit damage but the spell has a cap while Stone Shell hasnt. Put in both if you plan to fight Lost Souls and have problems keeping your units alive. Further I recommend Wheel of Gifts, it fits perfectly into your deck. The primary buff here is the 20% damage buff which is nice because stonekins dont have that many ways to improve damage, also the healing buff is nice for your Gemeyes because they sometimes take a little bit damage and you wouldnt have to heal them anymore that way. Btw. Adamant Skin, Stone Shell, Revenge and Wheel of Gifts stack all in damage reduction, the forumal should be: damage taken = 0,85 * 0,55 * 0,7 * 0,8 = 26 % (all effects, at max if I remember all factors right), this way your units will be almost invincible and you usually even dont have to heal them anymore. At T4 Grinder (only one affinity) and Gemeye (purple) are all units you need, put Grinders in one group and the Gemeyes in the other group. Let the Grinders (at least 3, later 4 or 5 if you run out of Gemeye charges and have spare energy or are fighting the last lost souls bases) move into the base and keep attacking with Gemeyes from distance, but let them come a litte bit closer so that they dont attack the first unit but shoot directly into the center of the base (or even the spawn building / stun building). To take full advantage of Gemeye you have to attack as many units as possible with its area damage over time. For taking T3 after you have T2 only one thing helps: a big army (so stay calm and wait a little bit more) and CC/heal at the right moment. At the end you will be quicker even if you need more time to get T3. I dont recommend Shrine of Memory as someone else recommend it to you. You need void manipulation only if you play many spells or loosing much units but for stonekins you only need very few uses of spells and you can easily keep the units alive (in most cases you even dont need to heal). If your army dies you will be done no matter you have void manipulation or not (because charges are a bigger problem here). So you wont have much void if you play Stonekin right and the Shrine would be a waste of energy and a deck slot. I play also other types of decks and some of them are built to use massively damage spells so that void can sometimes be several 100 or even over 1000 in a few seconds. In this case Shrine of Memory would be also of no use because it cant bypass the void recovery maximum of 20 per second (like warshrine for example can). To simplify everything: Try not to waste energy on spells (especially freezing spells because they slow you down), try to build as many units as possible and try to keep every of them alive (by using as less spells as possible), micro them right and you have a powerful but boring deck, that can (at T4) also be very quick (comparable to Bloodhorns, Cluster Explosion, Lost Soul Ships and Batariel) and works even against lost souls.