­Lightning Helix variant. For mixes a shock and gain 4 life. Lifegain put first for flavour difference. Unsure if should be 'up to one' or 'may' but want the life gain to happen if target becomes illegal for flavour reasons.

Would prefer 'you gain 4 life' but templating issues means I'm stuck using a variant of Dark Salvation.

Gone back to simpler version that gets countered due to illegal target. No elegant solution found to keep the templating.

Replacing "You gain 4 life" with "Target player gains 4 life" would work, wouldn't it? Which is fine - see Heroes' Reunion.

Yeah, I like the balance of "Target player gains life // Target player loses life".

Okay then. Changing from "You gain 4 Life. ~ deals 2 damage" to this: "Target player gains 4 life" and "~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player."

The effects are weirdly disjointed. The strength of Lightning Helix as a design was that the effects were straightforward and joined by there common numerical value: 3 life for 3 damage.

I'm unclear on whhy this isn't worded like Lightning Helix. It seems grandfathered in from previous versions, but also just to avoid losing the life gain when there is no longer a valid target for the burn?

Was the damage amount previously tied to the life gain? Right now thiis could be:

> ~ deals 2 damage to any target. You gain 4 life.

Have you considerd scaling this up to Warleader's Helix?