Fog of War hiding is just a terrible mechanic to start with. Some sort of ranged dust elemental would be much cooler and losing an Air and Earth for something tankyish and with good range would be an amazing combination to have access to in the early-mid game. Your Air could be halfway dead and with incomming arrows and being able to combine THEN into the dust elemental would feel so rewarding.

Yeah, maybe in a game with larger maps like starcraft fog of war hiding would be a valid strategy.

About the dust guy, I feel elementals already has enough tankyish units. I suppose all the combinations should be a bit tankyish though since they're 2 units in one. I consider 3 health bars to be the minimum tankyish (makes no sense I know).

I was thinking of a slow unit, slow ranged unit with abilities would be a cool mix. Could be a speedy unit but there's already cycloid and water (V can teleport too). Maybe it could separate into dust particles for some kind of self buff. Create a dust storm to slow units down maybe? At this point it's just dreaming, I still hope that they replace blind gate for some dust elemental. It was one of the combinations I was looking forward to and they gave us blind gate.

Ele already has so many stun/freeze abilities, adding slow would seem unhelpful on so many levels - earth stun, charrog stun, cycloid stun, water freeze... It also already has I think more AoE attacks than the other empires (tornado, dragon thing, fire storm thing, unit explosion)... order has two? Chaos has three?

So on that level also unhelpful.

Scorch and dragon are quite negligible. Charrog stun too.

Besides it was just a little suggestion from brainstorming, if dust elemental really does appear it'll be a while before that happens as it was confirmed that no new units will come with stick war 3.

your wrong on scorch and dragon, I play ele players often, and they are used often, especially to prevent order from being able to mine or to attack albows (which especially in laggy matches, works only too well). Both chaos and ele have the ability to bottle order up and prevent mining for a time, order has no such matching ability. Both ele and chaos have explosions that can wipe out large amounts of units early game, again order has zero matching ability.

Quote from alternate

your wrong on scorch and dragon, I play ele players often, and they are used often, especially to prevent order from being able to mine or to attack albows (which especially in laggy matches, works only too well). Both chaos and ele have the ability to bottle order up and prevent mining for a time, order has no such matching ability. Both ele and chaos have explosions that can wipe out large amounts of units early game, again order has zero matching ability.

Yet, mystery, myself, wyzDM, and several others have no severe issues contesting with chaos and ele at most times.
The bombs gives chaos an option vs the dps of swords relative to crawlers. Numbers of swords vs numbers of crawlers is in favor of swords should they group into packs of 4 as the swords (which they will.) order has blast, poison spray, elec wall superior range vs ele, merics, shadows. Not much you can complain about if you know the matchup besides the few problems we have brought to attention as it stands at the moment. Oh and order has the best turtle. Ele doesn't have a turtle but then again it doesn't really need it in the same sense. Chaos turtles require the 3 key to be mashed like crazy in conjunction with turrets and jugs into whatever they feel if they can stall properly.
Scorch allows ele to deal with swords that approach units ele intends to protect. If it somehow catches archers and/or wings all the better.

Inferno Vastolis is useful for positioning and trapping in conjunction with its other spell, meteor rain.
Charrog stun is not even a thing worth mentioning.
Charrog needs its health reduced but retain its armor.
Basically since ele has no real turtle option, all of the units are thusly tanky in some sort of fashion.

Yeah perhaps a slow moving ranged dust unit from Air+Earth, it could be a bit like a dead but instead of poison it could have slowing debuff attacks. That could help out Ele with catching retreating opponent units too, especially wings.

Quote from Skeletonxf

Yeah perhaps a slow moving ranged dust unit from Air+Earth, it could be a bit like a dead but instead of poison it could have slowing debuff attacks. That could help out Ele with catching retreating opponent units too, especially wings.

is fixing units with more units the answer?

Do we want a ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS approach to balancing?

Quote from Sevarus

is fixing units with more units the answer?

Do we want a ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS approach to balancing?

I think he means replace blind gate.
I still think blind gate should be a buildable via chompler. They can't do anything atm.

Quote from AsePlayer

I think he means replace blind gate.
I still think blind gate should be a buildable via chompler. They can't do anything atm.

And changing how you build it won't make it suddenly useful.

Quote from Skeletonxf

And changing how you build it won't make it suddenly useful.

If it's cheaper it might be viable if you tweak it so archers cant shoot unless something passes it. Then ele can get into their second row unless opponent runs a spear through or something fancy like that

I like the idea of this dust elemental. At 600 | 100 I imagine it should have 4 bars armored or so and more attack damage then a dead.
Elementals don't have any decent late-game ranged units.
Order archer mass is very very powerful, and albows in conjunction with giants is also effective.
Chaos has a high-dps dead build that is pretty tanky, along with eclipsor mass being very powerful.
Elementals, have, lets see...over priced fire elementals that are worse than archers late game...and a air unit that takes forever to switch targets. Airs also suffer terribly against an archer mass unless you can simultaneously micro them for three to each archer, while still maintaining cycloid/v spell micro and consistent macro for charrogs or trees, all at the same time.
With the dust elemental however, ele will have essentially 3 ranged AND 4 spellcasters. Seems a little overkill with only one melee tank besides trees, which are not effective late anyways because of pop consumption. I propose perhaps fire could be turned slightly more expensive into some sort of early-mid tank? Not entirely sure how this would work but if elementals is 1 tank, 3 ranged and 4 spellcaster that is kind of silly. Anyway I'm rambling now so I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

Because Ele lacks a good late game ranged unit the dust elemental would have to have good damage as it would cost 2 archers and half your queues. I think it would be better off on just 3 bars of hp so it can have really high damage with its projectiles.

Comparing the ranged units side by side isn't exactly going to work. Elementals can deal with ranged units and late game just fine.

I feel like this dust elemental should fill the gap of the blind gate it would replace, assuming dust guy does come into the game. I was thinking some support abilities with debuffs similar to blind gate, maybe some dust storm that inhibits vision or speed?

Little less damage than an albow. It'll be a kind of supporting ranged unit, not the kind you'll mass like archers. 3 bars of health minimum for combinations, but no armor. Maybe long range?

I don't want this elemental to be that strong, the combinations we have are already quite powerful.