3rd Trials - Phase 1 - Proving of Worthiness

[xdude]

Phase 1 - Proving of Worthiness
Phase 1 has ended

Post your decks/screenshots/links/card ideas/articles here.

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[QuantumT]

Random Wyrms (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19062.0.html)- ttw 9.48

Examination of Air's WoE skills

After spending some times examining air's skill tree, I'm convinced that it badly needs to be buffed. When compared with the skill trees of many other elements, air comes out sorely lacking.

One example of this is seen when air's assualt team skill is compared with aether's dimensional walk skill. Sure, dimensional walk is 1 tier higher, but it moves further, costs less, and can be done independently. When the tier 5 abilities of air and death are compared, air again comes out behind. Death's bonus will completely cancel air's and 6 additional cards and air's ability requires you to use a deck with at least 12 airborne creatures in it to even get the full effect.

Mobility
The only skill that it interacts with currently is Blizzard. So how useful this ability is will be determined by how many different environmental effects there are.

Assualt Team
Seems underpowered. It can only be used with a teammate and uses up the full turn's action points and doesn't go very far.

Bane of Earth
Stardard skill for this spot.

Rising Storm
Hard to say without having a good feel for how often you'll be fighting the same element repeatedly, but it doesn't seem like it would usually get higher than 2 or 3.

Calm Before the Storm
Basically means that you'll start the first battle of an engagement with 2 additional cards, after which it does nothing. Rather at odds with the Rising Storm ability as well, as generally the only time you'll fight the same element repeatedly the battles will be close together, meaning that the 2 skills combined will generally yield ~2 upped cards.

One possible buff would be to give 1 additional upped card for every turn you go without battling so that you can build it up.

Ambush
Effectively means that you always play first. Helpful to give you time to get setup (air doesn't rush very well usually), but I'm not convinced that it is a tier 3 skill.

Sniper
One of air's few useful abilities. Allows you to drain away the creature reserves of another player.

Given the weakness of air's tree in general though, it could be buffed by allowing it to be used multiple times a turn. If that's too strong, then it could be capped at just 2 uses per turn, or with each use increasing in cost.

Build a Windmill
Standard improvement skill.

Dust Cloud
The combined requirement of a relic and 3 action points, in addition to the fact that it doesn't even block all the damage, make this skill rather weak.

One possible buff would be to get rid of the relic cost. This would actually allow you to chain the ability to actually have a significant effect on the siege time.

Another possible buff would be to make it stop all the damage for a single turn, or to make it last longer than a single turn.

Cloud Rider
Another useful skill. Allows you to move around much more freely than before.

However, it's worth noting that it is still distinctly worse than time's Clock Maker ability, which can be used to generate the same movement as Cloud Rider, but can also be used for other things.

Storm Bringer
The effect itself seems quite strong. It allows you to force multiple people to discard a decent number of cards. However, whether it is useful or not depends on how many relics a person is likely to come across during the course of the game. If the number is too low, than skill is only of limited use.

Champion of Air
Seems incredibly weak for a level 5 skill. It's only useful when your deck is going to contain a significant number of airborne creatures AND you're going to want them to be upgraded (for example you don't even want upped queens in FFQ/Hope). Very few air decks will even come close to having the number of airborne creatures necessary to get the full effect of the skill.

Possible buffs to the idea are to remove the airborne or even the creature requirement for the upped cards. In the case that even that isn't enough, the number could be increased.

There's also the possibility of giving air a completely different champion ability that shouldn't be ignored either.

[truddy02]

Article on changing skills in WoE:
Much of the debate about skill tree balance revolves around air, specifically the skills rising storm and calm before the storm.  Rising storm has the potential to make a player very powerful early if they can string together a series of matches against the same element.  Calm before the storm is less powerful but is still fairly powerful but gives the ability to use two upped cards for not fighting battles.  Combined they give a player a handful of upgraded cards while still using only tier 2 skills.  There are a few ways this could be rebalanced.  The skills could remain mostly the same but weaker.  They could keep with the thunderstorm theme but change the way they work.  They could also be reformatted to fit a different part of the air theme, such as dive. 

Using option 1, both skills could be weakened by about half.  Calm before the storm could give only a single upgraded card.  While this doesn’t seem like much of an advantage it is only a tier 2 skill and if a player has a few other upgraded cards that 1 card could make a new deck possible or at least stronger.  With rising storm you could require 2 counters per upped card.  This would mean it would require a lot of matches against one element before it really became that much of an advantage.
Option 2 is to rework the skills within the theme of a thunderstorm.  Two new skills could be Lightning Flash and Thunder Roll.  Lightning Flash: Opponent must reveal to you one non-pillar card that they will use in their deck.  The idea is that during a flash of lightning you get a glimpse of your opponent’s deck.  I think this would be a fair skill because the opponent gets to choose which card you are allowed to see so they would probably reveal the card that gives the least insight into their strategy.  (Knowing your darkness opponent is going to have a devourer in his deck doesn’t tell you all that much).  Maybe this would be too much for a tier 2 skill, but it can also backfire if the opponent uses it to take a single card and uses it to divert your attention from their actual strategy.  Thunder Roll:  Aggressive attacks against you cost 3AP instead of the usual 2AP.  The idea is that the player is scared running right into a thunderstorm so it takes an extra AP to get the courage up.  It is a nice skill to have because players will be less likely to try aggressive attacks against you so you can elude them more easily.  If a player really wants to attack you though they can still use aggressive attack and use all of their action points for that turn.  These skills also give air some variety in a few different aspects rather than just a handful of skills that give you more upgraded cards.

The third option is to totally redo this section of the skill tree with a new theme.  I personally wouldn’t mind seeing something based on the ability of air to dive.  Some of the skills further up the tree continue to follow the storm theme so it would require at least changing the names so they continued with the theme.  While I would like to see dive skills in the tree, it would really create more work than is necessary to keep the rest of the tree within the theme.

I think the best option would be to just create 2 new skills to replace calm before the storm and rising storm.  Lightning flash and thunder roll were just some ideas I came up with.  I do not have as much experience with an event like this as some others in the community.  These may work as is, may be able to be tweaked to work, or may give someone an idea for some fitting skills.

Half-blood deck: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19257.new.html#new [nofollow]

[Hyroen]

HALFBLOOD DECK

• Halfblooder - Lair of the Great Wyrm (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19384.0.html)

CARD IDEA ANALYSES

• Card Idea Analysis 1 - Windswept | Windswept (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19070.msg262882#msg262882)
• Card Idea Analysis 2 - Tailwind | Tailwind (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11500.msg263139#msg263139)
• Card Idea Analysis 3 - Songbird | Nightingale (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19278.msg263404#msg263404)
• Card Idea Analysis 4 - Flying Sword | Flying Blade (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19180.msg263412#msg263412)
• Card Idea Analysis 5 - Squall Line | Storm Front (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,16846.msg263967#msg263967)
• Card Idea Analysis 6 - Scattering Wind | Scattering Wind (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,19225.msg263997#msg263997)

COMPLETE!!!

Go Air!!!  c:

Can't wait to see how Phase 2 is made! Good luck to all!