With no skull damage reduction or life/armour buffing traits, I’m not sure I’d use “tanky” to describe it! 
But I guess you meant it has good stats?
Anyway, it’s pretty useless as far as I’m concerned, but maybe it’s ok early in the game where burn + Pyromania is genuinely effective? Although lava elemental is still the king for that particular tactic IMO due to stoneskin
Salamander’s durability is above average. It can tank more enemy casts than average, hence tanky.
I have to agree, its a very useless Epic…
Split damage troops: could definitely use some better magic scaling so they are more relevant later. However, this would require retuning their magic levels at low level.
Salamander: Hes pretty bad even as an early game rare with the guaranteed burn, Chimera being much more efficient but maybe super early game he can - er… whats that? Hes an Epic?
I have no idea what this troop’s design is intended to be, outside of burn the first troop, then set up itself for double skull damage. It does this extremely poorly with no board mod. It has a gigantic mana cost for what his spell does. Its not even all that threatening at early game with the other options that are available.
Ordinarily I try my best to respect the original design, but I think this guy need a lot more help. Even “and triple damage if they are burning” would barely bring it to the edge of viability at mid/late game given his spell’s damage is too low and cost is too high to do repeated pokes with another status applier.
It would take exceedingly poor judgement to waste 8 arcane stones traiting this guy at early game.
Oops… when I wrote my post I thought he was ultra-rare not epic! Wow. Even worse.
Lava elemental is ultra rare, does 5 more damage, explodes a gem, has stoneskin AND costs 3 less mana
Lava elemental could have been the mother Lizard lol 
Power creep at its finest.
Scorching Blast
Explode all red gems and burn all enemies.
The spell name is unchanged, as it now even makes more sense.
Let its spell have 11 mana cost. Change Fireproof trait with Impervious. Troop is ready to rock!
Actually, explode Magic+3 red gems and burn 2 random enemies, would be balanced for a 13 mana cost IMO
Edit: Also, just adding a summon to its ability would be OK too, like summoning a Fire Lizard, or a Sunsail
Explode all red gems and burn all enemies, looks quite fair for an epic and 11 mana cost. Take a look at Herdmaster, he is an UR that explodes 18 yellow gems and cleanse all allies for 12 mana cost. Poison Master is another one that explodes 17 random green gems and poison 2 enemies for 12 mana cost, hes also an UR. So lets disagree.
Just looking at the other troops that were released around the same time, it isn’t even so much power creep that made Salamander bad as it had a pretty weak profile from the start. Chimera used the same colors, cost less mana, and did significantly more damage (although I’m not sure when it got changed from entangle/poison to burn/poison) at the cost of only targeting strongest. At early game, chimera would also often net a kill by the time burning wore off. Salamander meanwhile would need to double-tap even a weak target, can’t take advantage of traits because their cost is way too high, and overall has a way too high of mana cost.
I’d rather not everything devolve into an explosion extravaganza. I don’t think this change would do much to push us past where we already are in that regards, though. Herdmaster is functionally pretty weak as an exploder being reliant on his own color and dealing no direct damage. Dial it back to explode red gems scaled by magic and burn and I think we’d be okay, at 12 mana cost. He can be used as a generator, damage over time for early game, and set up into Elemaugrim casts.
Thats not the case here, how many great exploders do we have? 4-5? I wouldn’t mind to see 10 great exploders or more out of 400 troops, as long as most of them use differently mana colors. Would you?
As far as I was aware chimera always did poison and burn. I am probably wrong though but uses him early game but if the ps4 version came out a bit after the pc one it could have been different beforehand.
Currently, Skullbeard is the only mass exploder for green day guild wars, adding another would be useful IMO
I think this draft of Salamander would be fine balance wise, being limited to his own color, and I don’t think he would rock the boat too much. I was just speaking in general. I don’t want exploders to become oversaturated to the point where the core gameplay, at all levels, is “find some exploders to spam back and forth and maybe throw a damage in there”. I’d rather the best options be the ones that you need to think about when or how to use, that you have to aim in some way and be aware of how the board will shift after you use it for it to be fully effective. That already really isn’t the case now, but I’d rather not head further down that road.
Its mostly explorers ones with strong other effects that are the problem. Your draft of Salamander is mostly fine, because burn is fairly weak at endgame and at early game you still need other damage to net a kill. Your draft of Autumnal Imp the other day, on the other hand, dealt about 60-120 damage (more if it also kept split damage, and its trait wouldn’t make sense if it didn’t), threatened a kill in two casts, had a link trait and filled in two matches, and having the chance to self fill with extra turn because of cascades - more than Infernus, a 22 cost mythic that doesn’t have a link trait. That would have been a problem.
So far there has been some excellent suggestions. Thank you all! 
I just feel that Tankbot 2000s spell is a little meh, hes an Epic and imo one of the cooler looking Mechs.
I think maybe a mana drain part with his ability or drain some attack.
Yeah, good idea!
Let him take armor, deal true damage instead of normal damage and then drain the troops mana.
