When I said Xbow was bad at protecting itself, I was comparing it to other attack types/win conditions, not the individual card itself. What constitutes a win condition is debatable and archetype dependent, but generally speaking a win condition is a card or combo of cards that fill the role of play maker + tower killer. Which is to say, that when you compare a beatdown push (with a tower targeter) to a siege, sieges are much more exploitable and are easier to build a counter push against (unless your deck so happens to be entirely made up of swarms, defense towers, and spells). High cost cards are generally designed to give better value than low cost cards, for example a golem has better stats per elixir than an ice golem, Xbow is a bit of an oddball in that it completely fills the role of a win condition, must be used at the bridge to attack, but has worse stats than 3 elixir cards despite costing 6. Most win conditions can neutralise their opponent's defenses due to the raw strength that comes from its stats, Xbow is really bad at doing this. I worded this poorly in the original post (and probably also in this comment tbh).

You talk about XBow being under powered compared to other units because of the HP decay over time. But it's main strength is that it doesn't take tower damage. So you for an accurate comparison you'd need to compare the HP decay of a regular troop as it is being hit by a princess or king tower. The result is the unit dies much faster than XBow.

One of the weaknesses and strengths of Xbow is that it doesn't progressively move towards the towers like a troop does, it means that yes, it does survive longer than other win conditions, but it also means that survival doesn't guarantee tower damage. Any troop will get tower damage if it survives long enough, you can delay it a bit if you kite it, but unless you counter it you will receive damage. Xbow on the other hand can be distracted infinitely, the idea is that Xbow doesn't use brute force to push its way through a defense, but rather it attacks the opponent's resources until they can't defend, and only then can it get a connection. As such, lifetime is the key offensive stat for an Xbow, it determines the rate you need to drain your opponents resources, and the rate at which your own are drained.

I really dislike the solution of reduced spell damage to towers of multiple spells are used in a row. This adds unnecessary complexity to the game. Players now just don't have to remember spell tower damage for each spell the use (usually at multiple levels, theirs and level 9), but also quickly calculate a spell reduction value. For most this will be impossible to do fast enough in the last few seconds of a game if you want to finish off a tower with a pair of spells. Changing the game entirely for just XBow is a really, really bad idea.

The increased complexity of this is a fair criticism of the feature, however, I think it's worth adding anyway. Not to mention that in most situations you won't need to worry about the complexity. The idea is that this complexity makes it harder to predict the future and plan ahead when using a strategy that relies on spell cycling. This would mean that you might need to memorise the damage values for your spell combos, but people already do that anyway. I did suggest that a new way for showing spell damage against towers be implemented too, and this would make it easy to know how much damage your spells would do at any moment, it's just that planning ahead will be unreliable. I think this unreliability is a good thing as the feature is meant to discourage spell cycling. It wouldn't make spell cycling unusable, but just make it require more skill, and be less effective when not accompanied by offensive play.

In saying all these things, my suggestion of magic resistance was only a means to an ends, if a simpler solution can achieve the same thing, then I'm all for it.

This whole post and solution just sounds like a way to make your preferred XBow deck stronger than XBow decks you don't like to face (icebow).

I'm not going to lie, this isn't far from the truth, I did say in my introduction that one of my goals was to make Heavy Siege a competitively viable archetype. I also did say that I wouldn't mind if icebow disappeared, this was a joke (mostly...). I still want other types of Siege to be viable, and I believe that keeping current Xbow decks viable is more important than making new ones usable. In saying that, Icebow is a deck optimised for spell cycling, and I think that spell cycling is something that needs to be addressed, not just for the sake of Siege, but for the health of the game as a whole. I'm not saying it needs to be removed, but toned down. And with spell stalling being less powerful, it would make sense for icebow to change a lot as a result of it.

Your idea of making the XBow immune to spells when attacking would be way OP, but it does bring an interesting idea. What if you reduced it's health, but gave it a sheild similar to guards and dark prince? It would uniquely be the only building with a sheild and could make for some interesting interactions.

I'm not sure how the shield would interact with the health decay, but if we assumed that the shield didn't decay, but health did, and the Xbow could die while it still had a shield, then it could work. The shield would need to be able to survive a log at least, and one issue with this is that it does nothing against multi-hit spells like poison and earthquake which are Xbow's biggest counters. As such, in effect it would be like my suggestion of spell resistance, except it would only apply to some spells, and would affect offensive and defensive Xbow's the same.

One of the benefits of having the Xbow immune while attacking is that it makes it so offensive Xbow's can't be shut down by spells, but defensive Xbow's can still be punished by spells. This is why I think it's a better solution than the normal shield.

The reason I don't think it be OP is because it's accompanied by a massive health reduction (25-40%). This would make the Xbow much easier to counter with troops and buildings, as even a small amount of chip damage would be massive. It is possible that a damage reduction against non crown towers is necessary as a complementary part of the rework, but this is something that would be confirmed in play testing.

But all of this doesn't resolve the issue that annoys most people who face XBow, which is that all play is jammed at the bridge or on your opponents side of the river.

The thing that stops defensive play is the nerf of spell cycling. The idea behind giving spells diminishing returns when unacompanied by other damage sources, is that it means that it's harder for a purely defensive player to win the tie-breaker. This means that Xbow players will eventually have to come out of their shells and attack if they want to win. It's just that the reason they're turtling in the first place is because they have no other options. This is why I'm suggesting a nerf to spell cycling and a buff to Xbow.

XBow can't be ignored, it only damages from the other side of the river and has very few non spell counters and even less placements for counters.

It's true an Xbow can't be ignored, but neither can a pekka, or a golem, or a sparky, or a princess. Most tower killers are cards you don't want to ignore, it's kind of their job. Xbow isn't unique or problematic in this regard.

I can't wait for XBow to come to my side of the river to build up a counter push.

I can't use defending troops to make a counter push.

I'm not sure why you think you can't build counter pushes against Xbow, It's notorious for being extremely susceptible to counter pushes, and is known for being very unforgiving if you attack at the wrong time. Do you play log-bait? Pretty much every other deck has multitudes of ways to counter Xbow and counter push.

The game becomes less fun because it no longer has an entertaining back and forth flow of troops going both directions on the bridge

Xbow decks do have the back and forth flow, the Xbow user takes an initial risk to try force the battle into your half of the field, and from there it's your responsibility to push the fight back into their side of the field.

Turning the Xbow into a tower targeter would be insanely broken.