MArcomage

The last few times I've tried playing water elemental it has dealt no damage, despite my definitely having higher resources.

Screenshots please.

One of the games was against me, and like I told Loki there, the cost of the card is subtracted from your resource total before the attack is calculated. This put him below my total resources, and thus an attack of 0.

yep i have playe that card a lot of times and i have to tell that is worthless... you must have an extraordinarie diference of resources to make this card valuable as a rare card, counting that you just for playing it you have 19 resources less so you must have 38 resources at least more than your opponent just to cause him 19...

obviusly this card is only for resource decks and for decks with a lot of facilities... any way, this card is not very usefull for being a rare card there are more powerfull cards for less cost or for a very low diference of cost and causes more damage or have more good points...

Not true, it is one of the cheapest cards to completely destroy a wall. All you need is one more facility than your opponent. The attack is a nice bonus if you can pull it off, but the wall reduced to 0 is really powerful, and easy to achieve in many different decks, not just a resource building deck.

As Masked said, the damage dealt is your "your total resource - card cost(19) - opponent total resource"

The card is not worthless, just situational. Other good things not mentioned above:
1. Unlike Storm of Bricks whose damage is limited by one kind of resource, you can include all
2. Unlike Storm of Bricks or All Elemental Attack, you don't actually use any extra resource to deal the damage other than the initial 19 gems

I have won several matches with this card. Additionally, there have been times that I have used it for only one of its two effects (destroying a tall wall with no additional damage / high damage without first destroying the wall). Worthless? You've got to be kidding.

It's an excellent part of any Unliving deck. Generally, I end up with several quarries and a massive stockpile of recruits and considerable gems late in the game making it easy to play this card for both effects.

Regarding the thread topic, it's worth noting that the stock is calculated after the gem cost is subtracted and before production occurs. It can be confusing afterward to try and calculate how much damage was done when you have to remember to subtract the just-produced resources.

Yeah, some sort of visualisation would be nice - but we haven't considered a feature like that yet.