Abyssian Hosts need to be nerfed

#1

Abyssian hosts are disgusting with what they can do. They can go aggro, control, and swarm within the same deck. Its ridiculous what they can do and there is little counter play besides hoping you draw the few answers you have in your deck. Even then, your answer could just all be easily countered with cards that generically just good in their deck.

Just some random highlights that show how dumb this can be. I had a board of 2/3, 3/5 provoke, and 4/3 monster. In one turn the opponent summoned 7 wraithings with a artifact, blood born spell, and another spell. Activated the death +2 attack on her general the next turn, and just simply activated a card that gave her wraithling +2 on the field. In total thats 21 damage from the wraithlings alone and a 16 damage from her artifact.

How could you possible think this was a good idea to do. They get so much advantage, and only more from destruction spells that give them +1.

This also doesn’t count time I actually did have tempest to wipe the field of wraithlings. Only for a last second placed death watch minion would summon all the ones I killed. Or the several times, I seen them throw spell after spell at me. Only to stock their hand full with a 5 cost draw full.

I never felt so much hate for a type of deck in any card game. I don’t like it, but just on sight seeing one just means I’m in for a frustrating time. I might as well just throw my hands up in defeat, and if I some how win by some lucky draws or bad decisions on their part. I still feel infuriated by playing against them.

#2

cough cough cough

#3

Still better than songhai where you dominate the board the entire game then he kills you from 17 health out of hand with literally an empty board.

#4

I don’t know what your circumstances are, your skill level or anything else besides that you played Lyonar. Ergo, I’ll make the assumption that you play Lyonar for the most part and that your collection doesn’t have access to higher-cost pieces.

Countering Swarm Abyss is about proactive management of the swarm. While the Abyssian player may spawn a lot of minions, they are for the most part very weak, and you should take the effort to kill them off - even with your general - unless you are going for the kill that turn.
If you have to kill a large number of small minions, you have access to Tempest as Lyonar, but you also have access to Blistering Skorn.

[details= Blistering Skorn]

3 mana 3/4
Common
Opening Gambit: Deal 1 damage to all minions and Generals.[/details]

Blistering Skorn not only kills 1-hp minions, but also takes off durability of almost any artifact. You can also could consider playing Bloodtear Alchemist

[details= Bloodtear Alchemist]

1 mana 2/1
Basic
Opening Gambit: Deal 1 damage to an enemy general or minion[/details]

Bloodtear Alchemist not only kills off minions with 1 hp, but also assists in destroying artifacts. It also can be a target of buffs spells or abilities at a very competitive price point.
Between your attacks, Tempest, Blistering Skorn and Bloodtear Alchemist you should be able to deal with the swarm. On the other hand, you still have to deal with it’s supporting elements which are generally a little more durable.

Enter Sun Bloom

[details= Sun Bloom]

2 mana Spell
Common
Dispel a 2x2 area of the board[/details]

Dispel effects don’t get rid of minions, but it does remove the text. This is important - decks such as swarm Abyssian are a great big machine of moving parts that manufacture your defeat. However, they are finely balanced machines - remove one piece and the machine grinds to a halt. Support minions such as Bloodmoon Priestess, Shadowdancer and Shadow Watcher are all lose value when they don’t have their text - they are instead understatted minions. And as Lyonar, your minions are all at least on curve or far above the power curve compared to their counterparts.

[details=Bloodmoon Priestess]>4 mana 3/3

Rare
Deathwatch: Spawn a 1/1 wraithling nearby this minion.[/details]

[details=Shadowdancer]>5 mana 4/4

Rare
Deathwatch: Deal 1 damage to the enemy general and heal your general for 1 health.[/details]

[details=Shadow Watcher]>3 mana 2/2

Basic
Deathwatch: Gain +2/+2.[/details]

Now onto the topic of Abyssian card draw. This is possibly the hardest part of any card game - the management of your resources. Mana is a resource. Cards are a resource. Life is a resource (except for the last one - you need that!). Just because they can afford to fling spells at you does not mean that you should as well. If you need card draw, cards such as Blaze Hound are fine.

[details=Blaze Hound]>3 mana 4/3

Common
Opening Gambit: Both players draw a card.[/details]

Between your overstatted minions and the damage from your spells and abilities you can usually put pressure on your opponent and beat them before they can set up their plan.

I apologize if this post comes off as dismissive or condescending of your opinions. However, Swarm is very beatable. All decks are beatable, you just have to understand the game. I hope this helps.

Though a well-piloted or lucky Songhai will always be frustrating

#5

so what did you do on your turn when 7 wraithings were on board and you had a 2/3, 3/5 provoke, and 4/3.

Nerf threads here could really use a nerf
#6

Ignore them, duh, you can’t just be mean and kill the little weenie guys abyssian needs to win. Gotta give 'em a chance right.

#7

Uhh. No ? Abyssian does not need any nerf. You could say the same things about any faction, should they be properly played. Quit whining because you don’t have the guts to admit you made mistakes.

  • Not even an Abyssian main
#8

I hate Bloodmoon Priestess. Unless you get lucky and have an immediate answer on hand she will totally wreck you. 4 mana for an answer-or-die minion reduces the outcome of the game to mostly luck since the player has not enough time to draw into an answer and make the decision to keep it on hand for the purpose of removing exactly that big threat - what you could describe as skill. I would probably change the card to only proc on deaths of non-wraithling minions and adjust stats or cost accordingly. To be fair it is not the only offender of early game answer-or-die minions.

#9

I play Swarm Abyssian. It’s my favorite. That being said, @nullaurelian has some great points. It’s a strategy that is easy to throw off if you just use strategy instead of putting all your faith in your cards alone. That’s what Abyssian players do, because we aren’t basing our strategy usually off of two or three win conditions. The game is solid and I definitely win plenty, but I lose half of the time, because you have to rely on what you have on the board and in your hand working together. One gear breaks and the scenario falls apart rather quickly.

Just a little extremely unproductive side-note: @ezekeel, every time I see you on these forums, you are complaining. I have some pretty bad insomnia and I spend a good 4-6 hours a night lurking these boards and you are always so salty. You’re gonna lose every once in a while. You can’t have a perfect win ratio. It’s time to stop.

#10

I am giving constructive feedback in hopes of improving the game. The emotional state you read into my comments is just your imagination. I am sorry if I am ruining your forum experience but I think the ability for players to express their opinion supersedes you being entertained. If my comments are too unbearable you have my permission to put me ignore and I promise I will not even feel bad about it.

#11

No no, I never ignore people and think that is a sign of a feeble mind, and nothing can ruin my forum experience, or even my mood in general but myself (and I won’t even let me do that). I just saw you complaining again and wanted to complain about complaining in a thread about complaining.

#12

@intendant Not so clear memory, after so long of a post. But basically, she was low health but the minion swarm cut me off from hitting her. So, I did what was stated before in another post. Using my general I tried to clear the flood as much as I can and replace hoping to pull out the tempest. But no luck, my minions do the best they could to clear and move way to make a win. Then next turn, at 23 health I was knocked to zero.

@nullaurelian I play Lyonar as you guessed, sorry I’m not so clear on naming cards. But, I do play 3 tempest and I don’t have a place in my deck for the alchemist. Though, I could play the Skorn, I just took three tempests and Sun Blooms into the fight. HOWEVER, the Sun bloom completetly worthless in this situation and including the blood tear and skorn. She summoned the artifact with no ability for me to counter play on her turn and pumped up to that huge damage. I also did focus on clearing the board as much as I could keeping the lion as much as possible alive on the board just so he could help keep the stream of wraithlings down. She had a pretty much empty board until one moment, and the only issue I could see with my play is I trapped myself at bottom of board. Though with 23 health and a provoke. I didn’t expect such a burst of damage.

And my point to everyone here, is that whats the cost to resource ratio to this. A opponent who can summon 1/1’s to flood the board at any moment can just make them beefy monsters or use two mana to raise their stats to a huge number. A easy counter play to sun bloom is to just summon the monsters apart, and using the ability of just spamming the field with wraithlings easily keep them out of reach for just straight killing them. I don’t think these costs are right, and especially when with a cost of 5 mana. The opponent can just have filled their hand with cheap amazing cards. At turn six I could waste my entire hand, summon two minions and have an action bar full of cards to handle whatever an opponent has out.

At least with Divine Hands or the Vetruvians, if they want to pump their cards up. Its one target or structures that you can focus down or dispel.

#13

I also play Lyonar as main.
I tried swarm abyssian, but it was too unreliable to my taste:
Countering Abyssian swarm is easy. Tempest and Skorn do the job just fine.
Just don’t waste them if you don’t have to.
You have to expect that you will die if there are too many wraithlings in range.
Abyssian host is currently slightly underpowered (thanks to Skorn). I don’t think it needs nerfing.
Just actively fish for board clearing cards and dispel/removal(for blood priestess and shadow dancer).
As with every faction, you will die if you don’t get your answer cards, but it is not different from facing an Ironcliffe followed by double divine bond, or an Azurite Lion followed by Afterblaze+ Divine Bond.
Holw immolation kinds of works too, and is only 1 mana more than the 3 wraithling card.
Both situations requie you to make sure there is not much left at the beginning of your next turn.
You can also pull back from the wraithlings if you cannot deal with them now.

#14

the day has come where even Abyssian got complained about.

#15

Community growth, more people, more complains, sad but true :confused:
There is even a thread about it.

#16

But, you’re handling one creature and it has to at least be close to you unlike say Shaghoi or Abyssian. Abyssian makes the buffs on their turn. The Iron cliffe and Azurite are things that needed to be answer when they hit the board thats how this game is. But, if you kill that you killed a card that was important resource. Wraithlings come in mutliples and pop off early. Only with mass removal can you get rid of them, but at least Azurite and Ironcliffe can be at least a bit neutered with things like the Rejecter Beast, staple dispels, or basic creature removal.

Even if, you draw the magical card to answer them. If its just an early set up, you could play it only to need it the next turn as well. Again, they can go from 0 to 2,3, or 5 with just a single play. And, they have even outs to that.

I can see why people say there are answers, but the artifacts for them and the answers in their own faction is what really gets me. They have cards that make tempest a horrible play. They can then tack on artifacts that give them minions or let them go aggro early until they can set up their board. Just free advantage and sudden burst of damage that you can’t keep up with.

#17

See it this way, Lyonar relies on minions to win the board. If you are able to remove every single minion they play, they pretty much lose the game. Vetruvians have a similar playstyle, winning witha n overwhelming board. But if you are able to burst them down or remove most of their threats, they die too.

Vanar is known for having great tempo cards, plays and efficient removals. But the faction itself lacks any form of late game. Except for wall vanar, but wall vanvar is extremely susceptible to getting overwhelmed early on or AOE. Songhai is problematic but the clsoest way to winning them is either out aggro them with Tempo Lyonar or by healing (Ziran and Magmar). Or you can try to lock them down with provokes like vetruvians previously did and lyonar does it to a better extent too (with earlier provokes).

Cassy is an extremely slow deck and dies to early aggression or midgame tempo swings. If she is unable to stall till her inevitable win cons, she is basically as good as dead. Swarm Abyssians function with their wraithlings, killing them is of utmost priority. All their threats: shadowdancer, bloodmoon priestess (aggro swarm lilithe) unlike things like Ironcliffe, Aymara, Lantern fox. They do nothing on their own, they require wraithlings. If they drop that on an empty board or one with just 1-2 wraithlings, they’re as useful as the current energy siphon.

Winning swarm lilthe does tend to be hard when you dont draw AOE and they dump their ahnd to swarm you. But if you did draw AOE and kill them with their all in paly, there is basically no come back. Especially if you’re a Lyonar running tempest/ skorn. If you draw them and dont drop them pre-emptively, you’re almost guaranteed to win.

TLDR: Kill wraithlings vs Swarm Abyssian = rendering their deck ineffective.

#18

RE: card identification
No worries on naming the cards. I’m doing so because I don’t know your circumstances as I said in the earlier post. I can make assumptions based on what you say but the information I have is very limited and so I must craft my answer to work regardless of your experience or collection. Hell, you might be S-rank and I could never know.

RE: your rebuttal
I think that the situation would be untenable if you are trapped at the bottom of a board. Granted, I do not know what you would be doing at the bottom of the board - with three minions out I had assumed that you had board control and had been pushing face, at which point you would have tempo. Again, if were trapped at the bottom of the board the situation would be untenable unless you had access to AoE or removal effects.

Which brings me to the next part - could I see you list? You mentioned 3 Sun Blooms and 3 Tempests. The lists I seen others use have had less dispel. Could see your list to compare? I’d truly like to help and wonder if you there is something that could be done in the decklist itself.

The deckbuilder site I use is : http://manaspring.ru/deckbuilder/

If you could make a list for me or anybody else to look at, could you post it here? If you need more immediate assistance, also consider the Discord Channel. Many of us would be happy to help you find a solution.

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/0WbpmyLbu52aphyb

I am there under the same name.

If you don’t want to post your list, there are some lists floating around of high-level Lyonar decks. While you may have an aversion to netdecking, or even if you don’t have all the cards, these decklists are good guidelines and can provide insights. I use Grinder’s lists as examples myself when I’m not playing Control/Artifact Veteruvian or Wall Vanar.

Grincher’s list album - Lyonar: http://imgur.com/a/xksRt

Again, I hope this helps you.
And to anybody else who want to learn and haven’t already tried the Discord - join us! We may meme and salt all the time but if you have a question about Duelyst we will do what we can to assist you.

#19

wtf is going on. i thought i would never like to see the day where someone complains about abyssian. SWARM ABYSSIAN IN FACT

#20

God forbid a class is in a healthy spot and has multiple archetypes that aren’t even all that powerful…