Card Design: An attempt at a comprehensive guide (A community effort I hope)

[Zaealix]

Let's begin with the bolts. Fire bolt costs 2 , 1 when upgraded, and does 3 Damage per 10  . This spell is most known as a TTW/Resiliance reducer.
Life drain,  's bolt is rather simmilar, but it trades 1 Damage per 10  for the vampire passive. So while it is notably weaker in the TTW/Resiliance reduction area, it increases TTW for the opponent by how much damage it does. Ice bolt is  and is more comparable to fire bolt, as it has the same reduced TTW/Resiliance reduction, but it's TTW reduction works differently from Life Drain, in that it has a chance to freeze the target, and thus prevent it from doing damage, and in the case of creatures, stops abilities temporarily, as well as opening up strategies for utilizing the frozen status (So far, none of them involve the creature surviving, so we can mark that under Resiliance reduction). So overall here's the final data.
Fire bolt-2 , 1 when upgraded, 3 damage per ten  TTW/Resiliance reduction.
Life Drain-2 , 1 when upgraded, 2 damage per ten  TTW/Resiliance reduction, TTW increases by amount of life stolen (damage-overkill)
Ice bolt-2  , 1  when upgraded, 2 damage per ten  TTW/Resiliance reduction. Possible Target Power reduction/Resiliance reduction for 3 turns, 4 when upgraded?
Fire is the strongest TTW/Resiliance reduction.
Darkness has slightly limited TTW increase.
Water has a powerful Power Reduction/Resiliance reduction, but does not always work.

[OldTrees]

Simple Elemental Bolt Comparison
Casting Cost: 3 |1
Effect: 3 points x (1+1 per 10 worth of stock quanta) (stock quanta of some elements is easier or hard to come by. Adjust as appropriate.)

1 point: 1 damage +1 damage per stock quanta threshold
1 point: 2 healing +2 healing per stock quanta threshold
1 point?: Freeze 30% + 10% per stock quanta threshold (creature or weapon)

Problems?
Ice Bolt costs 2 . (comparing unupped casting costs is more accurate than comparing upped if the pattern from creatures is to be believed)
  quanta is harder to stockpile than  .

General categorization of quanta stockpiling
tier 1
tier 2
tier 3

Assuming the problems are not significant:
Conclusion 1: Heal 2 ~= Damage 1
Conclusion 2: A closer comparison between Damage vs Freeze might explain Lighting vs Freeze.

[Zaealix]

No problems, now for healing spells.
Heal-3 for up to 20 HP of TTW increase, upped is 2 .
Holy light-1 for 10 HP of TTW/ Resiliance increase, or 10 TTW/Resiliance reduction on creatures, and Shard of Sacrifice(too specific?), upped is 1 (not sure which one to use for generic quanta.)
Purify-1 for 1 HP per turn/current poison negation of TTW increase. upped is 1 ?(don't quite remember, personnally considered it UP)
Lucifern-2 for 10 HP of TTW increase, Power increase of  generation.
Liquid Shadow- 4 ?- for Hp per turn of TTW increase=Target Creature attack power, Target Creature loses Resiliance. 3 when upped?

[OldTrees]

From now on I will convert normal spells (ones that cost a draw) into theoretical cantrip spells for cost comparisions (aka the costs below are +1elemental quanta greater than in the game)

Heal 4   20 healing
Holy Light  10 healing and can target
Luciferin  10 healing and teach Biolum

Regeneration (LS and Purify) is different from Healing

PS: check the wiki for costs. Do not guess

[Zaealix]

The hardest ones to handle are these 'quirk' spells that do weird and various stuff.
Reverse time-2 to send a creature back to top of opponents deck. I'd call this TTW increase of Creature Cost/Power reducer of all boosting spells cast on creatures/Resiliance increase for being replayed.Blech, my system is inelegant for handling that spell.
Precognition-2  to see your opponents hand (strategizing? This has almost no purpose) and draw a card.
Chaos seed-1 to do random offensive spell to target creature. Resiliance/Power reducer depending on what you get.
Chaos power(so different that it deserves an entry of it's own.) -1  to increase Target creature's power/Resiliance by anywhere from +1|1 to +5|5.
Mitosis-5  for a power increase of target creature of possible summoning target creature once per turn for the creature's cost per summon until a TTW is reached. Inelegance again 
Adrenaline-4  to give target creature the adrenaline skill. Power increase by number of attacks the creature gets and any attack activated abilites.
Steal-4 to take target permanent. Effect depends on Permanent taken.
Nightmare-2 to give opponent Target Card X times, x=empty card slots in hand/increase TTW by 2 HP per card given.
Deflageration-2 to destroy target permanent. Effect depends on Permanent destroyed.
Rage potion-3 to increase target Creature's power by 5 attack and reduce resiliance by 5 HP.
Rain of fire-7 to do 3 damage of x Opponent creatures. Resiliance reducer.
Immolation-Target Creature's Power and Resilance for 7 and 1 to all elements.
Animate Weapon-1 to turn your Weapon into a creature. Resiliance modifier (since creatures are more vulnerable, but not against a deck that has low CC for high PC, and Weapons are not always frail) Power increase of freeing weapon slot without discarding current Weapon.
Sky Blitz-9 + drain all to increase power of all your creatures by double their attack. TTW Reducer of 1 turn if used.
Shockwave-2 to do 4 damage to target of Resiliance reduction, destroyes Weapon or Creature if target is frozen.
And what does it mean for a spell to cost a 'draw'?

[OldTrees]

We need to create a predictive system. That requires quantitative theory.
"TTW increase" is qualitative and not useful unless turned into quantitative.
How can we quantitatively compare the known card effects?

Sidenote: A card costs a draw if you had to draw it and it does not replace itself.
Examples:
Lightning costs 1 draw
Precog costs 0 draws
A spell with the effect "Draw 3" would cost -2 draws

The casting cost of a card is equal to Quanta Cost + Converted Draw Cost.
Converted Draw cost for 0 draws is -1quanta.

[tobybird1]

*Pulse* Type: spell (5 air quantum)
deals 5 damage to the target creature and 2 damage to all creatures on enemy field
set target creature to 0 for 1 t*urn

*Divine glory* Type: spell (2 light quantum)
heals target to full health and doubles attack power

*Divine wrath* Type: spell (2 light quantum)
deals 3 damage to target and halves damage

*Phantom* Type: creature 4 dark quantum
3|3 skill: possession- adds the target creature’s own N|N to its own and kills it- 4 dark quantum


i still need help with these, so please tell me to buff or nerf cards   

[OldTrees]

-snip-

Um. New card ideas are to be posted 1 thread per idea in the main Card Idea and Art section. The community will help those threads.

That said expect a PM from me with advice.

[Zaealix]

We need to create a predictive system. That requires quantitative theory.
"TTW increase" is qualitative and not useful unless turned into quantitative.
How can we quantitatively compare the known card effects?

...I'm stumped. The only thing I can personally think of is to find a way to Quantify a deck's average TTW and somehow break the damage down to the individual cards.That said, because the majority of damage comes from Creatures, and not spells, and because Spells are meant more to support, to stop the enemy creatures from attacking you while improving your creatures abilities to attack and damage the opponent.
However, as a meger attempt to begin this process, I calculate Sky Blitz as being equal to -1 TTW-poison and weapon damage. TTW normally is strictly dictated by the attack power of the Creatures versus their cost.

[OldTrees]

When I was investigating creature costs, I simply put all the current creatures in excel and looked for strong correlations. I found one between cost and attack and went from there. Why don't you try a similar approach to groups of spells and use linking spells (spells that fall in between categories) to compare groups.

Sidenote: a deck based approach might not work as well as a card based approach. Damage, CC, Stat Modifications are probably more useful than TTW.

[Zaealix]

Heal-3 for 20 HP, upped is 2 .
Holy light-1:light for 10 HP, upped is free.
Luciferin-2 quanta for 10 hp+ Biolumence.
heal-most bang for card amount.
Holy light-most versatile card.
Luciferin-splashable with light generation.

A small start to healing quantification.

[Pineapple]

Hope, 7 quanta, compared to jade 5, titanium 4, and shield 1.
Empathic Bond, 5 quanta, compared to sanc 4.
Sog, 3, compared to improved heal, 2.

Therefore, 1 heal is equal to around 4-5 turns of HoT
1.5 quanta = 10 hp unupped. -1 upped.
Empathic Bond is balanced to 6-8 hp per turn.
Therefore, Hope is balanced to 6-8 damage reduction per turn, so 6-8 critters except you can halve that and add the immaterial penalty because bioluminescense is situational.

No clue where I was going with this.