So what do the numbers above mean: Well, it means that if you want an unupped rush deck, Fire and Life are the best way to go. Even discounting the Ash Eater that is skewing Fire's highest number, EVERY SINGLE ONE of Fire's creatures have 1.0 or higher for A:Q ratio. (except fire spirit, and that grows) That means the LEAST efficient fire creature is MORE efficient than the MOST efficient gravity or light creature, and is equal to the best in air, darkness, earth, and entropy. (though graboids evolving in earth mean they are actually better than the A:Q ratio allows for)
(feel free to use those numbers in the previous post for anything you want later on: I probably will refer to it a lot)
Looking at Fire's creatures in more detail:
Ash Eater: This is theoretically the most efficient nonzero creature in the game. However, since it's so small, I think it's fair.
Crimson Dragon: At 1.2, this is the most efficient dragon. However, with its fragile hp, I think it is a balanced card. It can be killed in a lot of ways that don't apply to most other dragons.
Fire Spirit: This is the weakest grow/ablaze creature, but it is also the only one that can be used in a monodeck. It might see a lot more play if it weren't for Lava Golem.
Lava Golem: Not only is this an efficient creature at 1.0, but it has the growth ability. That makes it an extremely strong creature, indeed.
Phoenix: At 1.0, this is also an efficient creature, and with rebirth, it is also an extremely strong creature.
Combine fire's creatures with immolation (the best unupped quanta generator, giving even more quanta than nova), deflagration (the cheapest permanent removal), fahrenheit (the highest damage dealing weapon, if fire quanta >=25) and the most creature removal (though arguably not the most efficient ones; lightning bolt is more efficient than rage potion, for instance) I think it's fairly clear why people think of Fire as overpowered.
So... what are the problems?
Fire gets some of the most efficient creatures, and not only that, its creatures have extremely useful abilities. Fire also has access to both permanent and creature control, something that only darkness and entropy can also claim in mono. However, those two elements have much weaker creatures and their permanent removal is more expensive.
Fire also gets more cards that kill creatures. It gets Fire Bolt, Fire Shield, Rain of Fire, and Rage Potion, all of which are strong cards. The only elements with comparable amounts of creature control are Entropy and Water. Entropy's creature control is either situational, (Maxwell's Demon) random (chaos seed, pandemonium) or soft control. (antimatter; allowing healing but also allowing the creature to continue using its ability, if any) Water gets Freeze and Arctic Squid, and Ice Shield can arguably be put in this category as well. It also gets Ice Bolt for kill, and Toadfish if Air is used. Fire gets the most hard creature removal, it gets one of only a few MASS creature removal cards, and the only effective one besides pandemonium, which is both unpredictable and affects your own creatures unupped.
Fire also gets the best quanta accelerator, Immolation, which is the only quanta spell accelerator besides Nova. The only other unupped nonpillar quanta sources are creatures, most of which are rarely used unupped except for devourer due to their small size. Fire has the weapon that is capable of dealing the most damage, and it's one of the cheaper weapons to play.
Another point, which is more difficult to quantify, but I would argue is another Fire advantage, is that many of its cards gain a larger advantage from upgrading. It has several that become 2
cheaper, rather than just 1 like most cards. (I think Death is the only one that has a comparable number) I won't go into detailed examples here though, since we are primarily discussing the unupped pvp environment.
Now, let's look at Fire's weaknesses. (Yes, it does have them :p)-Fire has no healing or damage prevention shields. This turns out to be not particularly relevant. Unupped you have access to Luciferin, which all elements can use, and upped you have access to shards and holy flash. And fire shield will eventually kill most attackers in the long run.
-Fire's creatures have lower hp than any other element. I haven't worked this out quantitatively, but none of them have more hp than 3 (except the nymph and ash) so I'm pretty sure that if we did an HP:Quanta ratio, fire would have the lowest one. However, this turns out to be a nonissue against Earth, Light, and Time, because they either have no creature control (light; since holy flash doesn't work vs fire creatures) or have only soft creature control (basilisk blood, reverse time) that doesn't care what hp your creatures have.
-Fire has no soft control. This means that against creatures with very high hp, it can do almost nothing. It still has options; fire bolt can potentially become very powerful, and fire shield will eventually kill anything, but cards like colossal dragon are just plain going to be a pain in the ass for fire. However, most high hp creatures also have crappy attack, so fire can often beat those just by outrushing them and completely ignoring the high hp creatures.
In summary: Fire can do almost everything. The only two other elements that I would argue are also "complete", Darkness and Entropy, have worse creatures and take more quanta to do most of the same things. It has more efficient attacking creatures than any element except Life, and its creatures have better abilities than most other elements.
Having said all that, however, I'll add a bit of my own opinion. While fire does have a few cards, as I've already discussed, that are overpowered, if those were nerfed, I still think there would be problems. The reason is that I think the biggest issue is not that fire is strong, but that certain other elements are weak. You can take fire down a couple rungs, and it is still going to kick the crap out of light and life, for instance. Is fire the strongest element? Maybe. I'm not sure. It's definitely one of the strongest, and it might be THE strongest. It's definitely the easiest to play, which is one key reason why fire dominates top-ranked arena decks; the AI doesn't have as much trouble playing fire optimally. Fire definitely has counters; I remember one tournament where I beat several monofire decks with a water/fire duo, using fire only for steam machine activations and deflagration. I took advantage of the 6hp of ice dragon and steam machine; as mentioned above, one of fire's weaknesses is dealing with higher hp creatures. I haven't played in a lot of tournaments yet, about 6 in 6 months, but I haven't noticed fire dominating those, but I have noticed a few of the other elements are almost never used. I've discussed primarily the issues with Fire this morning, and there are some legitimate concerns here, as I have so wordily pointed out, but I think the more serious issues lie with the lack of power in some of the other elements. (which will probably be the topic of my next wall of text, perhaps this evening)
I'm hoping this is more along the lines of the format you were looking for, Mormegil. If not, feel free to adapt it to your needs.
