Hey! Quick thoughts on the cards you listed:
- Freeze: We had a balanced Freeze (as in, within our acceptable use/win rates) for 2 months and it produced a pretty unfun meta. Freeze is a tough design to balance since there is no counterplay. It punishes you for doing exactly what you should do (playing cards to defend attacks) and thus isn't something we want to be as popular as Fireball. Its currently at a 3% use rate in GCs and I think thats about perfect for a card like that. It should be a rare surprise, not a meta staple.
- Arrows: We have looked into ways to buff it, but a lot of the mechanical additions (like adding a Snare effect) won't be happening because its a starting deck card. We don't want to confuse new players with a lot of mechanics, keep the focus on core health/damage gameplay. Potentially buffed in the future, likely either Damage or Projectile speed.
- Barb Hut: The biggest victim of the Barb changes, we are going to let them settle for a bit before addressing Barb Hut. 5-cost Barbs are still a bit strong (though still within acceptable ranges) so we just want to wait and see if we need to change Barbs anymore before we buff the Barb Hut.
- Mirror: We have spoken about this card a lot but nearly every proposed change would require a client update. This card needs more than just stat changes as the visuals can be confusing. Every single day we receive player support tickets about 'hackers' that turn out to just be Mirror users. So this is more than just a balance thing, but likely a time-consuming rework that makes the visuals/mechanics more clear.
- Elite Barbs: We have a rework/buff in development, won't be in the May balances but potentially over the summer and definitely in 2019. Like Royal Giant, this is a card that is very controversial and we don't want to have to make multiple passes at it. Better to playtest a ton and get it right than rush it out.
- Bomber: As other comments have mentioned... Bomber is kind of balanced. The stats are insane for the cost, the issue is that there has never been a meta without Air troops or Fireball/Poison to provide value. I wouldn't rule out a buff, but its somewhat difficult to just keep increasing the stats over and over again given how good it already is in the right situation.
- Wizard: A tricky card, like Elite Barbs. Its weak in Grand Challenge but the single MOST played Troop in the entire game. Players tend to "feel" use rates more than win rates, and when we buff popular (high use) but weak (low winrate) cards, the outrage is loud. Wizard, Witch, and Valk buffs have all been received poorly, like "why are you buffing a card I already see all the time". Wizard isn't really a weak card either - its very good in a wide range of situations and especially in variant modes like Draft or 2v2. But 1v1 constructed metas, like Bomber, have always been set up to deal with him via Zap/Fireball or Lightning.
- Rage: Like Freeze, this is a tricky design. It scales on time instead of damage/health, which makes it hard to buff in a way that makes sense with all the other cards in the game. Like many of the cards in this list, Rage isn't great in normal constructed modes but has a lot of value in other modes like Draft, Touchdown, Sudden Death, Triple Elixir etc. There are no plans to buff or rework Rage, but we did move it from an early Arena card to a late Arena card to prevent new players from getting too dependent on it.
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