Rather than yet another thread of me trying to offer several more game changing ideas, I want to just look at how far stat changes could actually work on their own without any structural or functional changes like revamping the entire combine system or adjusting the Cycloid tornado spell or making Trees able to become walking giants spawning scorplings.

So this isn't even a list of suggestions designed to totally or partially 'fix' ele, just me trying to see what stat changes and small tweaks could actually do own their own and if more drastic changes might still be needed. Of course I might make some huge oversights or something, so please do respond, but try to consider the overall effect of all these stat changes, rather than a single one which may be heavily offset somewhere else.

So time for the guesswork ideas

Objectives:

-Force and reward ele fighting pre mid game
-Make ele's matchups more interactive and reactive
-Make ele use more mana and less gold
-Give ele better options against an order turtle

What I'm not trying to do
-Make ele less in your face or death to kite -- this is really going to take an entire restructuring to ever happen
-Make ele less all or nothing -- a lot of spell changes are going to be needed for this to ever happen
(Raising mana costs on spell casters and buffing airs/fires should make ranged units more useful and casters less rushable before the enemy can prepare for them, however)
-Deal with the ele super late game --30+ smallish changes would adjust things like late game too much to gauge before testing them
-Just make ele more like order and chaos --frankly I'm looking towards the opposite in places, I think we can have a more interesting and fun ele without taking away from its uniqueness


Ideas:

>>Early/Mid game<<

My general goal with this is to allow ele to respond to Sworcher or Archer spam with:

Earth 'spam' (obviously less spammy with the queue change though) with a few Waters for Archer lock down and a gradual transition into Airs for a stronger anti archer macro as Order gets a stronger eco and can start buying Archers in a stream, and then go into the much more familiar Charrog/Tree mid game with Fires or Airs for ranged support to deal with Spearcher+Meric
And Earth spam into Airs for anti bomb streams against Chaos -- with the fire changes crawlers will still have meaning in early game and Chaos will have to play more conventionally and less 'oh hey this is your base and here's some bombs'


1. Increase earth queue time to 6 seconds
2. Halve earth transform time to chompler to 2 seconds
(Make Ele less able to rush out crazy amounts of Earths {nightmare for Order on small maps} or out eco Order/Chaos via having inbuilt faster Chompler building via earth queue stacking)
(This is of course a huge nerf to Ele's early game so wait for the other buffs to other units)

3. Increase Earth animation attack speed so archers and crawlers can't cheese the animation
(Make Earths more reliable and useful in fights, effective dps buff too)
4. Halve the Earth stun duration so it takes ~5 Earths instead of ~2/3 to stun lock (for less cheesy gameplay in general, and needed if Earths given an attack speed buff to stop Earths being too strong)
5. Increase Water movement speed (so waters can catch up to archers much more easily -- earths/airs still needed to get kills)
6. Buff water heal amount total and stop water counting itself as a unit to heal
(Waters have some potential to act as really good units for protecting an Air mass early/mid game when they are no longer effective as anti archer {not that they are now, but they would be somewhat with the water buffs above} but this is pretty wasted when the heal amount isn't worth buying)
7. Nerf CAir slightly so it can't 2 shot archers
(Promote Ele going for a Earth+Water early macro against sworcher by giving ele more reliable but less stunlocky responses to archers and swords)
(Make Ele forced to fight in the first few mins instead of turtle by nerfing Ele turtle options)


8. Give Airs an upgrade for 50|50 60 seconds that stops them derping by heavily reducing the huge delay on their auto attack target and increases Air damage and range slightly
(Airs with this removed by default could insta win short maps via Air start so this can't be given out at start game)
(This should make Airs somewhat effective anti archer in the transition to mid game but not before and allow Ele more attempts to snipe archers rather than turtle away from them, without making airs able to insta win a game or be anti archer immediately)
(This should also make Airs able to be anti-bomber because Air blast sniping would be a thing - which will make up fire changes below)
(Airs late game will also be soft assassins if massed well enough, which should help out Ele a little bit)

9. Nerf death blossom so it deals less outright damage (keep the stun duration)
(again, promote more interactive play, deathblossum can be used for knocking up archers to then dive them with Scorps, Earths and Waters instead of just forcing Order to garrison weak archers by the high damage currently)
10. Decrease Water queue time to 10 seconds (from 12)
(two waters in response to two archers needs to happen fast, and late game this will help a bit against poison)
11. Decrease Air queue time to 12 seconds (from 20)
(Airs are not effective anti archer when they take 20 seconds to train no matter how good their attack)
12. Decrease Fire queue time to 14 seconds (from 16)
(Quality of life change for mid/late game to make teir 2 units easier to create)

>>Mid/Late game<<

Aiming here for more interactivity in places and more counters

13. Decrease charrog hitbox by a little (not giant charrog hitbox though)
(Allow for more interaction with sniping fires and airs behind charrogs without make charrog tanks irrelevant)
14. Make fires cost 350|100 gold|mana
(Shut down charrog rushes, reward Crawlers in early game, make fires more suited to mid/late game armies)
(Fires as a mid/late game ranged army will be much more affordable now)
15. Make charrog cost now at 500|100 by taking out mana combine cost and leaving combine gold|mana from fire + earths
(Keep in mind charrogs will be more useful anyway as ranged units and waters are buffed under my stat changes so we don't want charrog+water macro to become strong again but ele also needs usable mid game tanks)
16. Allow two charrogs to be combined into one Giant charrog as seen on TS2 for 100|100
(Charrogs will not be rushable early game as easily, still rewarding for mid game and become realistic replacements for giants late game with combination option 1100|300)
(using normal interface for combinations via repurposing the blind gate spot on the GUI)
(This will give Ele so many better ways for dealing with Order Turtles by having a real Giantesque tank)
17. Make the almighty blindgate a structure for chomplers to build for 100 gold and 100 gold to research
(BG is never going to be worth an Air and an Earth even if both get refunded)

18. Make Infernoes cost now at 750|250 via fire changes and mana cost raised to 150 for combination
19. Give Infernoe a working ranged attack (I believe it was meant to have one and for some reason can't use it, rather than it not having any ranged attack outright) and make it deal high damage so ele players don't feel like they just gave up two ranged units.
20. Leave scorch at the now 700|100 cost
(Keep in mind a water speed buff is going to help this land)

21. Raise cycloid mana cost by 50 so cycloid costs 750|150
22. Make protect cure the targetd unit AND remove all debuffs on the unit (including reap)
(so ele is less water dependent and doesn't feel so hurt by losing its water in the combination)(Cycloids are also now going to actually be able to tank for Airs because Airs will have uses in the mid and late game with the upgrade)
(This will give ele some options against Marrowkai without making them meaningless and give ele a slightly easier time against Order Magikill)
23. Increase cycloid armour (cycloids get melted by arrows but to be tanks for Airs they need to be able to take this beating without it translating into cycloids as able to tank Magikills)
24. Stop cycloids attacking walls
25. Allow cycloids to attack Giants

26. Allow Giant Charrogs (from combination + the ghost) to attack Giants
27. Leave V total cost at 1250|200 (a little bit better suited to late game now, right?)

28. Reduce tree pop to 6
(Ele won't be able to go Avoid fighting -> CAir -> Tree spam -> Taking tower because instant turtling would get nerfed by my changes, so removing the pop on trees will allow ele more room for other units later on, and won't make Tree turtling and stronger)

General aim here is to make ele have a higher mana emphasis and less gold costs so it can do better into mid and late game, without changing ele mid gameplay all that much.
The cycloid protect offering debuff removal will give ele a much better time in CvE, and ele will have more capable Airs for CvE, and with the cycloid armour buff, CvE should be much less weighted in Chaos's favour

>>Quality of life<<

29. Show pop costs of combinations on the GUI for managing 75+ pop with Ele
30. Stop the attack button cancelling V possess
31. Stop the space + a click cancelling V possess
(V possess should stop when you want it to, at which point you will select the V and move it via right clicking)
(This will be a huge buff towards almost all Ele players being able to macro manage while using Vs, which should help out late game)
32. Prevent Ninjas escaping Water freeze via Shinobi