Pure Nature 2.0 - Main Thread

[WindHunter 289]

As we announced in our recent Nature Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass on Nature cards. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for all Nature based discussion. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such are subject to change. 

Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes

The following cards/topics have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads.

• Abyssal Warder
• Colossus
• Forest Elder
• Grove Spirit
• Mind Control
• Primeval Watcher
• Shrine of Memory
• Spore Launcher
• Sylvan Gate

Minor Changes

Tier 1:

Fountain of Rebirth: 
1. Healing: Regenerate 15 / 18 / 21 / 25 life points --> 20 / 23 / 26 / 30 life points every 3 seconds

Treespirit: 
1. Reduce power cost: 60p --> 50p
2. Reduce Gifted/Tainted Thorns damage: 100 up to 150 damage total --> 78 up to 117 damage total
3. Reduce life points: 880 health --> 730 health 
4. Green Affinity: Fix poison bug, increasing total poison ticks from 4 --> 5.

Tier 2: 

Healing Well: 
1. Initial Capacity: 0 --> 1500 (50%) healing capacity
2. Recharge Rate: 20/sec --> 50/sec

Sunken Temple:
1. Orb cost: 2 Nature --> 1 Nature, 1 Neutral

Spikeroot:
1. Power cost: 120p --> 110p

Parasite: 
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral --> 2 Nature
2. Reduce power cost: 100 --> 80
3. Increase Damage:  60 / 60 / 60 / 66 per second --> 70/70/70/80 per second
4. Increase max targets: 4/5/6/6 --> 8/9/10/10

Tier 3: 

Promise of Life: 
1. Reduce Tier: 3 Nature, 1 Neutral --> 3 Nature 

Thornbark: 
1. New Passive, "Strong Supporter" - Unit counts as 3 connected entities for the sake of determining root network supports while out of combat. 

Wheel of Gifts: 
1. Change effect to aura to allow it to reapply if disenchanted. 

Tier 4: 

Lifestream: 
1. Life Link:
   A. Absorption limit: 10000 --> 20000 damage
   B. Duration: 35 seconds --> infinite (until 20000 damage has been absorbed)
   C. Range: 200m --> 300m

Noxious Cloud: 
1. Changes Pending

 

[WindHunter 289]

The announced changes are not yet on the test server. 

 

[JarodDempsey 8]

Let's start with the good:

• Forest elder, primeval watcher, abyssal warder, and shrine of memory are mostly all solid changes. 
• healing well changes are all around great

The questionable:

• abyssal warders requirement for 3 smaller golems to reassemble is clunky as best. Promise of life also ends up being rather meh in nature and building warder around it just seems like a nerf to its potential just to provide a place for pol at the detriment of warder.
• wouldve liked to see a bit more come out of forest elder buffs due to its extreme cost and rather lackluster combat performance. Green still has excessive overlap with wheels and shadows passive will be underwhelming vs bosses. I'd like to see shadows passive work on poisoned units as well. 
• im not a huge fan of the targetable watcher ability as this will make it a lot slower to use, especially in groups. it wouldve been nice to have the aoe increased instead.
• parasite seems all around kind of odd. the deep dive says t2 struggles vs flying but with the strength of windweavers it will be very hard to justify an entire slot just for a spell that doesnt look like it will scale much if at all into t3, idk maybe this is mostly for pvp.
• lifestream stills seems pretty meh. i dont remember for sure off hand but doesnt it not stack with revenge? in any case i dont rlly c being able to fit it in a deck with so many useful cards nature has to offer.

The bad:

• root network is not great overall. Tree spirits are being nerfed to unusability, living towers are still left to underperform, howling will still be mediocre at best as ive already described in my post when we last discussed it. 
• spore launcher changes are wholly insufficient. Slow removal is ok i guess but inability to hit air means it still wont be practically viable at t4 vs enemy encampments with air units. If we compare to moloch strat we can see moloch is still viable since fire has so many easy access damage spells but nature would have to either crutch one of the t4 ranged units (none of which are root units so there goes viability of thematics if thats what youre aiming for) or blow mind control. Especially against lost dragons who disable mode change even with bene mo buff, not being able to hit air will be a huge detriment to their viability as an offensive unit (especially considering all the tedium of maintaining their support network as they move around).
• mind control will not be reliable to counter buildings. I think the changes to it are nice overall but framing it as a counter to structures is simply not reasonable. Between random enemy units and random positions in relation to enemy structures as well as potential damage incurred and costs associated with mitigating damage to the mc unit so it can survive long enough to destroy the target as well as the costs from the mc spell itself just makes this entire strategy look extremely flimsy. I think at a minimum the cc immunity needs to last 15 seconds, if you mc a melee xl and even if it just has to turn through a few enemies and position next to a structure it is already near it can still take 5+ seconds and chance are it will have to hit at least twice. Not to mention if the mc target doesnt happen to be directly next to the priority structure. 
• dont waste dev resources on grove spirit changes. having to micro an L unit especially when one of the main unit comps in 3+nature will be xl swift will just feel bad. The 4 orb nature spell option to counter zappers seems like the best direction. green tide sounds interesting but i feel like it would just cause headaches for balancing (think infect 2.0), pricing (also infect 2.0), and  healing (all the trash units will eat up the heals meant for real units).

Unresolved:

• Forest elder heal does less if you use more than one at the same time. I brought this up quite a while back but cant find the post on here or discord and didnt save my excel sheet but if you have 2 or more elders and they use their healing at the same time it will actually end up healing less than a single elder although if i remember correctly it gets slightly increased as you have more elders so i think there might be a point at which numerous elders can match or exceed a single elder but it was very unrealistic. Please see if this could be fixed or offset.

[Draconnor 11]

As long as most of changes are nice - im not a fan of nerfing the treespirit. Current PvE is already too much about Windweavers..,. and too less about anything else option of slightly cheaper buff to Spikeroot on t2 isn't worth it.

And parasite still won't kill healed flyer Maybe lets second Spirithunters block heal instead of ignoring shields?

Edited April 9 by Draconnor

[chickennoodler 20]

>>New Primeval watcher changes will not work.

The buff is not significant enough to address the slow turtle waddling ground movement and overall unfixed mechanical problems from rpve and campaign silence and ranged attack debuff trolling to then shove it from 2 green orbs req (okay territory) to >>>trash tier<<< 3 green orb requirement.

 

Adding more paralysis capability won't do any good here, that won't solve the problems, if anything the current Watchers already paralyze what they can too well. (melee XL, melee trash spam etc) and combos well with Warp + Mo statue *white protection mode.

 

>Parasite spell change is too weak to justify pure 2 green. The card as a whole kills too slow, t1 pve ai healing

is too strong and counters it. A few extra damage won't help, so increasing orb req definitely won't help here.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Rest of changes are okay or need testing.

 

 

Edited April 12 by chickennoodler
changed my mind

[JarodDempsey 8]

Where is access to a willzapper counter? That was the most important change that pure nature needed and yet it is nowhere to be found. I asked on balance discord but i think that place is deserted now.

[WindHunter 289]

Not all Nature changes made it into this patch. Additionally, the discussions today show that the balance discord is still very much active. 

[Draconnor 11]

New Sunken Temple is nice - but could be great after removing unit count from bugs. Its annoying when i cant recruit units becouse of "defensive structure".

[WindHunter 289]

We are very happy with the initial Nature changes but we still have a few more lined up, including ones which failed to make it into the last patch. The threads for Forest Elder, Mind Control, Colossus, and Primeval Watcher have all be updated with new information, while Spore Launcher and Grove Spirit are both still awaiting implementation. Other minor changes which were missed or are upcoming can be found below.

Nature Iteration 2 Changes

Tier 2:
Sunken Temple:
1. Add Mode-change, "Hibernate" - "Pest Creepers enter a state of dormancy and are not longer summoned. Has an initial cooldown of 30 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds."

Tier 3:
Wheel of Gifts:
1. Change effect to aura to allow it to reapply if disenchanted. 

Tier 4:
Noxious Cloud:
1. Initial damage: 10 / 10 / 10 / 13 (3750 total to a single-target) --> 21 / 21 / 21 / 24 damage every second (5640 total to a single-target)
2. Time between damage increase: 2 sec --> 3 sec
3. Power cost: 290 / 275 / 250 / 250p --> 270 / 255 / 230 / 230p

[Sopwith 3]

I've been trying pure nature on rPVE, and minus the multiple trainwrecks that come from willzappers, I've noticed a problem with pure nature that doesn't happen with pure fire/shadow/frost: Enlightenment to summon the 4 orb card. The downside of using enlightenment to summon pure cards as opposed to going pure 4 orbs is that it isn't practical for building an army or for using spells. You don't really gain anything from building an army of Forest Elders, so why should I bother going 4 nature orbs when I can go 2 nature orbs, use enlightenment to summon a forest elder, then use the other two splashes to support with other factions. Unlike other factions, Nature doesn't have a 4 orb card that can justify going full nature rather than just using enlightenment to summon forest elder. Yes, using enlightenment would require an additional deck slot, but I'm not sure if pure nature has that problem.

4 fire orbs can build an army of Batariels and Molochs, while still having access to fire dragon and fire sphere. 4 shadow orbs can build an army of Shadow Worms, while still having access to death rays and plague. While building an army of Dreadnoughts isn't much better than building an army of forest elders, 4 frost orbs gives access to two different kinds of coat of protection, while still giving access to ironclad and shatter ice. So, in any of those cases, going enlightenment to summon the 4 orb pure cards doesn't necessarily justify using it over building the 4 orbs.

Things that utilize three nature orbs like mind control and colossus doesn't solve this problem, because then I build three nature orbs, enlightenment a forest elder, then use the last orb to give me access to earthshaker or matter mastery.

The reason I can see going 4 nature orbs in rPvE without enlightenment is to play a heavy micro-support where you do build an army of forest elders, but instead of going off on your own, you have each forest elder follow a different player. Which is fine, but the success will heavily be dependent on the competence of the other random player. Also having a forest elder follow a batariel-solo player doesn't benefit them much other than using the healing ability because i'm not sure if the green forest elder's buff ability stacks with unholy hero.

I think nature will need a new 4-orb spell in order to bypass this problem, preferably one that can deal with buildings.

Edited July 25 by Sopwith

[Lans 49]

@Sopwith So I played pure Nature because of Force of Nature / Promo Mana Wing achievement and I am totally confused by what you are saying about Enlightenment. I had avoided Enlightenment for the Convoy cPvE event that we had (I had enough BFP saved up for it for a while already) but that was pretty much the only instance where I felt I "had" to use Enlightenment (it probably could had been done it with a proper 2 player full Nature with one using the charges for heal and other for freeze).

 

The paper "advantage" of having T4 access at T3 appear to be powerful but really you pretty much need the same power as if you had built 4th orb (ok maybe 40 power less). You actually need more power in long run due to 10% void power lost each time.

 

All you said is exactly why I think Enlightenment is like 99% of the time not meant for pure Nature but a mixed color deck.

 

 

[Sopwith 3]

Achievements aside, I'm not saying to use enlightenment in pure nature. I'm asking why should I play 4-orbs of nature instead of playing 2 or 3 orbs of nature with the rest being splash, and using enlightenment for making forest elder? Enlightenment is good at getting a single unit (ie batariel), but it is not practical for repeated use (ie an army of batariel or using coat of protection). The advantage that 4-orbs of nature has over 2 or 3 orbs of nature + splash + enlightenment forest elder is that with 4-orbs of nature, you can build an army of forest elder more practically than if you tried to enlightenment out an army of forest elder. But forest elder's abilities don't stack, so building an army of them isn't much better than building an army of colossus or grimvines.

 

[WindHunter 289]

Hello Sopwith,

We appreciate the constructive feedback and we agree with you on this topic. Forest Elder is intended to be a facilitator unit, even more so than Dreadnought (which is actually strong enough to be spammed due to Shattering Blow). We plan on adding a Pure Nature T4 pay-off spell similar to how we added Coat of Protection to Pure Frost, alongside major buffs to cards like Mind Control and Colossus.

We mentioned this new spell in our recent Deep Dive in the design of the Pure Nature faction, which you can read here: Pure Nature Deep Dive

[Lans 49]

I don't think it make sense to compare an Enlightenment deck to other decks because that is simply too broken for everything but be at the power level. It takes a while but Offering + Enlightenment + other T3 spells (for example Frenetic Assault etc) is viable. All in all, talking about Enlightenment is a distraction and has nothing really to do with pure Nature (except it being a Nature card/spell).

 

Back to pure Nature discussion, the only reason why I went with Nature for 3rd and 4th orb was simply for achievement and I didn't really use anything that really needed more than 2 Nature orbs. I definitely don't feel like Abyssal Warder/Promise of Life or Colossus/Mind Control/Forest Elder (stuff that requires more than 2 Nature orbs that I can remember considering) provides enough additional benefit over going splash (even without having to bring up Enlightenment -- for example just my limited knowledge of other options for dealing with Willzapper: Suppression/Comet/Frenetic Assault/World Breaker Gun/Matter Mastery/Stampede with Juggernaut/Bloodhorn etc and yeah with pure Nature Willzapper was painful and I could mainly just spam units and worst was having to deal with Willzapper on T2 but I suppose I might been able to use Mana Wing in some of those instances looking back).

[Cocofang 296]

Nature is in an unique situation because with Enlightenment it can bring out its apex cards without actually having to commit to the color restrictions those ought to force. So it has to have a peak card to make it worthwhile to commit to this restriction but at the same time it shouldn't make sense for the card to be Enlightened. Something that you can only fully utilize when actually committing to pure Nature.

Past flavor, all the pure factions need reasons to actually build 4 orbs of the same color. For Nature, because of Enlightenment you only need 2 to enjoy the most alluring benefits right now.