Let's Talk Shrine of Greed

[WindHunter]

This is a card near and dear to my heart. I used it as a crutch to get 12th on the ranked ladder at a time where everyone said it was useless. Before I go farther let's remember what it does:

Shrine of Greed: Tier 2, Shadow/Shadow, 100 Power Building

Transfer half of the void pool to the power pool instantly. For the next 30 seconds, no void power flows into the power pool and any power that would normally flow into the void pool is instead permanently lost.

This debuff means that for 30 seconds if you use a spell, lose a building, or let a unit die you permanently lose the 90% power that would normally be refunded. The debuff is so crippling it makes the upside, gaining half of your void pool instantly, not worth it. The lose of a single nightcrawler means permanently losing 54 energy. Lose two nightcrawlers and it is worse for you than building a power well and instantly destroying it. The issue is, the debuff is so bad that you will lose far more than 100 power in the 30 seconds it is active.

But, did you know Shrine of Greed's (SoG) debuff is tied to the building itself? If you destroy the building immediately after activating it, you lose the 90 power bound into the building but instead get half your void power instantly. This is clearly a bug but it makes the card incredibly interesting to play and gives Pure Shadow a way to run an incredibly long t2. Rediscovering the bug from another Pure Shadow player Eljyn(?) is what vaulted me into the top 20. It lets you turn a match you are losing into a game where you have 2 buffed harvesters on the field. If you have ever played me and wondered why my micro is below every other top player's, reading this should give you a hint.

For 1v1 PvP

In my opinion the card is balanced. If given the chance I'd redesign it to bring back Pure Shadow's old school t2 turtle into Harvester or 5-card T3 without requiring the player to abuse a bug every game. Once someone knows you have this in your deck(or is given the impression), they can punish you hard when you build it. I typically had to go one Power-well down when I built it and if I didn't get major value the game was essentially over. It is a true high-risk high-reward card and fits well in the Shadow faction.

For 2v2 PvP

This is the important part of this post. The widespread use of this bug had a detrimental effect on 2v2 in the later years of BattleForge. The issue is that both you and your ally get back half of your void power instantly and only one of you suffers a -100 power penalty. In 2v2 where there is more power already in the game, this gives a team with a Pure Shadow member an unfair advantage in the mid-to-late game. Assume all four players in a 2v2 match have 1500 power in their void pool. One team is capped at +20 void power per second with 1500 in their void pool while the team using SoG pulls out 750 power instantly and still gets 15-16 per second. This isn't healthy for the 2v2 scene and as time went on and knowledge of the bug grew, more and more teams started incorporating a Pure Shadow member.

And that's why I'm making this post. I've seen talk of balancing and if we are going to be making balance changes it is very important for us to look first at cards that hurt the overall playing experience of the PvP communities and this is a card we need to focus on first. Discuss.

 

[Ggoblin]

I agree that losing 90 power to get half your void power back is interesting and I think that to balance it for 2×2 you just need to make it only affect the player like shrine of memory. It's still a bit weird that the best use of the building is to sacrifice it so maybe change it a bit?

Not sure if it's acceptable to reopen such an old post but this does seem important.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Ggoblin

[Hans275]

I think its fine. Its like destroying one of your wells for that. So for a attack powered by shrine of greed you need to destroy our enemy 2 wells otherwise it doenst pay off.

So its a Risk that what shadow is about. Shrine of Memory is weaker, works also for 2 players and only one has to bind 100 energie and no risk. 

I dont see why it should be broken. 

[Ggoblin]

Doesn't shrine of memory only work for 1?

[xs0ulLess]

I can't test right now but I'd like to know whether SoM works for two. As for SoG, I hope it's well known across Devs or whoever makes decisions, so they can consider working on it or leaving it.

Edit: Sorry for necroing, but I think the forum's gonna grow more active anyway

Edited December 20, 2019 by xs0ulLess
Necro

[RadicalX]

SoM used to work for all players in the team, but it got nerfed as it was overpowered in 2v2.