Suggestions

In the current state of the game, stubborn heavily dominates the meta. I don't think I have to go too in depth on why, it's been said a lot; but to make it short: In my opinion, the two issues are Ignores knockback, and with it half the gameplay on ring Basically acts as a permanent -1 damage in higher tempo play, which becomes even more problematic when combined with adamant. My suggestion is a radical rework; instead of reducing damage by 1, effectively rewarding you for dashing head on into structures, we make the dash faster, longer* and immune to knockback, but you take one MORE damage if you get hit by dashing. This would let it retain it's place as a really aggressive, rush stone, but reward weaving through your opponent's attacks at high speed instead of just tanking them, while still leaving the option open to avoid a ring-out or close that last bit of distance at the cost of hp. That way, stubborn would turn into a calculated tradeoff that you have to think about using (like most other stones) instead of making "dash into the incoming structure" the best option in a lot of cases. *I'm not sure if a longer dash would actually be good, let me know what yall think

In the game's current state, Vigor is perhaps the least used shiftstone, often getting discarded for adamant and stubborn for damage negation effects. Besides just making it heal more or requiring less damage (I'm gonna out some thoughts to these at the bottom, but they're not the main focus of this post), I think a good change would be to allow the healing to go over 20 HP. A problem that all defensive stones share is that they don't really do anything until you get hit. Stubborn, Adamant and Guard however at least interact with that first hit and reduce the damage. Vigor already has the downside of having a limited amount of healing to give each match (6 if the opponent isn't playing damage negation), so in some scenarios getting a 5 damage burst while staying at full HP - something that should feel great - can feel like you just lost 2 HP you could have healed to gain even greater HP advantage. On Changing the Numbers: I feel like a 3hp heal would be justifiable for how hard it is to proc, 4 would maybe even be too much. I'm against lowering the activation number, since that would completely change its current playstyle of going for two hits and follow ups to fishing for singular, strong hits with Walls and Grounded Cubes.

Explode ricochets have Volatile, flight has Flow, and I think other shiftstones to match with other advanced tech would be cool. A railgun based chiffstone that gives the adamant buff for a long time when you hit someone with a structure, for example. Mechanics/bugs-turned-playstyles like parry stasis and phasing should be encouraged!

A stone that allows you to see through the dust making it mostly transparent and a stone that makes explosive objects create a much larger, longer lasting smoke cloud scaled with explosive power.

Guard should be rebalanced to have an extra -1 self damage. so if you hit yourself with guard it will deal 2 less than what it would without, most guard gameplay relies on trades based on using guard to trade hp with your opponent and benefit from the -1 difference. A lot of guard play also require guarding your own structures to benefit from guards unique mechanics, so by increasing self damage reduction to -2 total it helps give guard the slight edge against the opponent by benefiting from the difference in damage dealt

TL;DR Stubborn is nerfed to be -1 damage and 50% knockback reduction on Dash/Jump, while full knockback/player hitstun negation is expanded to any time damage is fully negated --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a suggestion for: A nerf to stubborn A general addition regarding knockback + player hitstun negation --------------------------------------------------------------------- A nerf to stubborn itself Currently: "Dashing or Jumping right before you get hit will reduce the damage you take by one, and you will take no knockback." Changed to: "Dashing or Jumping right before you get hit will reduce the damage you take by one and greatly decrease the knockback you take." (Dashing/Jumping with Stubborn would cause a 50% reduction to knockback, halving knockback in general, and negating Volatile's 50% explosion knockback buff while somewhat mirroring the language used to describe volatile) A general addition When fully negating the damage a structure deals, its knockback and player hitstun is also fully negated. --------------------------------------------------------------------- With these changes in combination, Stubborn would still have knockback/player hitstun negation against disks (unless they are damage boosted through something like Surge), but so would Adamant, Guard (presumably), and possible future damage reduction shift stones, resulting in Stubborn not owning a monopoly on this. When combining any damage negation options, full knockback/player hitstun negation could only reach so far, allowing for larger/grounded/moving structures to still cause knockback/player hitstun even if part of the damage is negated. Stubborn would maintain a knockback advantage against larger structures, since it would have 50% knockback reduction. This would help maintain Stubborn's identity and act as a mirror to Volatile's 50% explosion force increase. Surge and possible future damage boosting shift stones could act as counters to full knockback/player hitstun negation since they could help with piercing through full damage negation. Due to an expanded range of knockback/player hitstun negation options, this may also act as a nerf/counterplay addition to Explode/Volatile explosions since the explosive force would presumably be fully negated if damage from the structure was as well, possibly encouraging the application of Explode on larger structures when facing players with more than one damage reduction stone.

I was thinking a shift stone that was helpful for flick would really spread out the meta of this game. The idea I had in mind was a stone that increases the damage (by one point) of whatever you have flicked if you swing it fast enough. Imo this would really help flick moves be more viable, so there's a reason to go for the risky flick flight moves so you can get that extra point of damage and brake through more anti air. Let me know what you all think!

just think it would be a nice little touch, simular to how grounded objects make a rumbling sound.

Using explode on an object that already has explode causes it to detonate either instantly or on a timer, i dont know which one would be better

Holding something slowly builds up spin. Longer you hold faster it spins. Either it builds spin slow enough that it doesn't matter if it gets fast, or it has a max rpm Lighter rocks spin up faster. Larger ones take time. Pros: Rocks that can roll and thus curve intentionally in a direction. Might help "waterbending" tech. Cons: Your held rocks are spinning if you don't release them soon enough. Could cause self damage if not mastered. Doubled edged, but so is volatile. (I keep thinking I've already made this post. (or maybe someone else has...my bad if so for making it again (searching on this site is not so easy)))