I don't think that splashing the SoG is such a great asset. In such a configuration, it would seem more natural to use FireFly Queen, IMO. Secondly, It's always better to put 6 SoFree in the deck to make sure that the asset offered by this kind of shard will be used during the game; 4 is quite risky and it's too much luck-based.
The deck might work, but at this point you might want to change a couple of Owl's Eye with Jade or Druidic staff, for extra healing, and remove one Fog Shield, and 2 wind towers and replace them with 3 Air pendulums.
However, it would work much better as a mono-Air in AI4. You don't need the healing, if you are able to deliver enough damage before losing too much health.
Did some 100 games vs AI4 with 4 SoF, they are enough.
You will almost always get 3 by the time you win, more than enough to deflect single-target CC and bypass walls.
I recall maybe 3-4 games in which I had really bad luck with shards, but then again 5 would be my max.
Every time I tried 6 SoF (or even 6 flying weps) I got many games where I was flooded with shit hands/draws.
Maybe 5 is the all-proof number, but 4 is usually enough.
I kept records of SoG heals: on average I get from 60 to 120 HP per game (aka your EHP per game is 160-220).
Improved Heal heals for much less overall, but has the spike heal factor, although I found that would have been relevant in only a few games.
So SoG is more reliable than Heal in the vast majority of situations.
I also tried putting in my Jade Staffs / Vamp Daggs but obviously they conflict with the deck's whole strat due to taking the wep slot and needing Flying.
When animated, Staffs have too low damage to be worth the animating, and Daggers too low HPs to survive; also, animating one of them means you're animating one less Eagle which means 3 less CC and less damage.
So I found it's really down to SoG vs Sanctuary/Miracle when it comes to healing.
I did try a setup with 2 Sanct and a Miracle (+3 pends for the quanta), they work great too. Haven't found noticiable changes in win rate, except Miracle won me one game once against a big rusher deck.
Right now I'm sitting on 85-90% win rate vs AI4 with this:
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
5cq 5cq 5cq 5og 5og 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7ms 7n5 7n5 7n5 7n5 7n5 7n5 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 8pn
The only hard counter to the deck I found to be Shard of Wisdom+Phase Dragons in Silver/Gold arena, but haven't seen it in AI4.
Otherwise the only reminder is to wait for 3 SoF before animating when against Rewind/AM users.
I tried FFQ but the win rate is laughable.
And yes I tried without healing. Win rate drops by 15-20%, even if you use 4-5 Chaos Power to bump the damage.
W/o healing, stall + poison and basically any decks with strong healing/rushing will kill you before you unload the strat.
It's slightly faster, but I guess I'm just more obsessed with maximizing win rate than killing 1-2 turns earlier.
I'm trying FGs now, with some success:
But I found I need more healing for FGs to survive until the strat unloads, and +1 SoF due to steals / deflags.