Duelyst Forums

Anyone else dissapointed with this games devolpment?

#1

This game used to be alot about positioning and smart plays.Even the metadecks required quite some gameknowedge and outplaying (im talking about the last year…i dont know how songhai used to be at launch but i heared it was terrifying).
Now the meta has evolved into something very unbalanced which is not very interactive

The reason for that is that the expansion brought way too much powercreep(a very cheap way to sell expansions)

Alot cards without real counterplay got added because thats ,fun, to play

Lets have a look at Vaath first

Lavaslasher is a massive temposwing and way too effective.Its so incredible good that you dont even have to think much about it and if its worth keeping in your hand.Lavaslasher is always good to play.At the same time he represents the wrong path this meta is taking:the removal of positioning importance and outplay potential:There isnt much you can do to play around lavaslasher early on
Ragebinder has also way too much for 3 mana

Now lets have a look at Arcanysts(mainly Faie for her removal)

Arcanysts are a massive problem right now(mainly faie followed by lilith) and shows the lack of boardinteractivity again
Early on its owlbeast sage answer or die
Later on its praying that the arcanyst player has no good combo in his hand.
If he has he will swarm the board with so many highhealth minions that theres no way for you to turn that.Theres no counterplay to that lategame(and there are more than enough tools to delay the game)
Death knell is also a problem.8 mana with such a gamewinning effect which cant be outplayed(minions are going to die throughout the game)So even if you somewhow manage to withstand the arcanyst snowball lilith can just destroys you lategame by playing death knell(vanar can also get it with Conjurer).
Again way too less counterplay.Its even worse than Variax lategame unless lilith plays right into something like Decimate

The metadecks are just so powerfull right now that everyone who uses them can steamroll through the ladder without much thought.The lack of counterplay for the cards of the metadecks also causes the highlevelduels to become snowballmatches which get deceided in a few turns by carddraw and cant be turned around anymore…skill doesnt matter as much anymore as it used to

This is a very unfourtanate devolpment and i realy hope that the devs will change the balance so that magmar and arcanysts(mostly faie)arent used in 90% of the highladder matches and that not every archetype except ventruvian and magmar has to use arcanysts to be succesfull with the ladderclimb

The last balance patch was very nice…maybe theres hope that this game returns to the skillrequirement it used to have

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#2

What are you talking about? Faie is incredibly fun and interactive If you’re playing keeper faie :wink:

In all seriousness though, here’s what I have to say on this:
Arcanyst Abbysian is fine. I’ve never gotten angry or triggered at someone playing it and I don’t even see it that often (Diamond 3/4 right now) I think the real problem with faie is circulus. It should NOT trigger off bloodborne spells and in general I think it’s too powerful. Blue conjourer should also not trigger off of bbs, but even if it’s a tiny bit overpowered it isn’t nearly as broken. Magmar got hit pretty hard with the recent nerfs so while I think they’re still very viable I would argue that they aren’t top tier like faie now. Owlbeast isn’t always answer or die, too. It’s often played in the backline and decks with basically any decent burst can often push for lethal before it gets a chance to do much.

Also, the incredible lack of grammar in your post makes it painful to read. Sorry, I’m fairly pedantic and I think it won’t matter to most people.

#3

Are you talking about the almost full year of brainless hurp durp face decks, with nothing but reva and argeon? The aggro meta was the worst ever.

We finally have a control meta, and with the latest patch the game is pretty balanced. Now while I don’t fully agree with how they went about balancing since they missed the biggest problem cards like circulus, and hit some staples instead. But regardless the nerfs brought the oppressive factions back in line and every one is close to the same level.

Not sure why you think the game has become less skill intensive. While Lavalasher has a little bit more health then it probably should, you can still avoid its affect with good positioning. And with the nerf to thumping they have to work a lot harder to close out a game so its not as bad. A slower meta leaves a lot more room for strategy and planning, unlike aggro metas.

Wait are you trying to say an 8 mana card is a problem? Pretty much anything with that high of a mana cost, especially when you have to build your entire deck around it, is not a problem regardless of how powerful it is. Its very slow so you can rush them down, and or transforms really mess up its game plan, so not only is it slow and awkward it does indeed have counterplay. Also Abyss is far from a problem in general, they have been lower tier for awhile.

A well balanced deck tends to be consistent and is not really decided by draws, thanks to the replace mechanic bad hands are incredably rare unless you have a poorly constructed deck. There is an abundance of powerful removal and dispel so snowballing rarely happens, and its pretty much your fault if it does because that means your not packing the right tools to deal with it.

As of right now the game is in one of its best states since two draw.

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#4

Counterpoint, you need to clean the rose tinted fog from your nostalgia glasses because this game you keep reminiscing about never existed in the first place.

Control Magmar with pre nerf metamorphosis?
Songhai with double rng Celerity Lanter Fox?
4/1 Tigers?
+3+3 Blast Lasercat?
Rush BBS Zirix?
Old Songweaver?
3/3 Tuskboar?

Yes, those days absolutely reeked of interactivity (This is sarcasm in case I wasn’t being obvious)

This meta has clear faults, as did most before it, but to look back on those past meta’s and ignore the glaringly broken, non interactive gameplay they too were promoting at times is asinine.

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#5

I kind of agree with the OP in regards w/ positioning. What makes this game different compared to the other card games in the market right now is that it is played in a board. But there are only a few cards that actually used the board and positioning as part of its strategy. What I mean is most spells are "Choose a minion and (insert effect here) " or “All minions (insert effect here)”. Some cards like that should have an addition mana cost because it ignores positioning or they should have at least a positional requirement. That’s why I like spells that require positioning in order to activate its effect because it involves more strategy.

Another problem is minions w/ global effect. Those minions should also have a mana cost penalty for ignoring position or should only affect minions near it. For example Owlbeast, maybe it should only give health bonus to Arcanyst near it. And maybe Circulus, since it belongs to Vanar, why not adding Infiltrate to it for triggering its effects while upping its stats for compensation. Back in the days, Vanar is one of the most position-centric of all factions, but now it just melded w/ other factions in regards w/ ignoring position.

Positioning is also a great way to balance op or broken cards and should be applied to future balance patches. Stats, effects, and mana cost are not the only resources that should be considered in balancing a card, but also is positioning or positional requirement and hope devs can see that.

#6

I don’t really get what people mean by interactive, unless you are playing burn songhai or decispike combo you have to interact with the board in order to win, and even those decks interact for a lot of the game.

The game is still heavily reliant on positioning, if you watch a bronze or silver replay then they make tons of positioning mistakes, just because you do something without thinking doesn’t mean you aren’t doing it. You also have to realise that this game is not super deep and that getting to the top levels is not that hard, so if you get better then positioning will seem to matter less as fewer mistakes are made.

Also this meta is nowhere near as unbalanced as you are making it out to be, as an example Hsuku has been participating in tournaments and getting far with stuff like blood echos sarlac against some of the best players playing the meta. The difference between playing against meziljie’s arcanyst faie and the netdecks you see on the ladder is pretty massive, so i am not sure where you are getting the idea that “The metadecks are just so powerfull right now that everyone who uses them can steamroll” from. These decks require a lot of skill to use correctly, whatever your opinion might be.

TL:DR no, I like the way the game is developing and people who say the board doesn’t matter are wrong.

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#7

Things are bad, now, sure, but they’ve always been fairly bad. At release, Songhai was so dumb I dropped the game. Since then, it’s been a carousel of silly things. I played because I had some fun despite all of that, though I’ve stopped again now because Vaath/Faie are beyond tolerable. I’m not super disappointed because this is the direction the game has been hinting at from the very beginning. I got my money’s worth and don’t really expect more than that.

#8

I think the game is giving less emphasis to positioning and more space to RNG. I don’t have too many objections against controlled RNG, which is useful to keep the game fresh.

Positioning is obviously still important, but more cards which affect positioning or depend upon it would be very welcome. The last cards sound like cards of a generic CCG, rather than of a CCG with a board.

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#9

I can see what OP means- He doesnt like bombs.
Recently, I had a frustrating loss against arcanyst Lilithe. At a point, the enemy general was 2/13 with no board while mine was 7/23 with a 3/1 Saberspine on board. I dominated the game till she cast Death Knell, at which point, with Owlbeast’s revival, it all became too much to handle.

I am very tempted to disapprove of this, because I think one card should not hold that much game turning power. Like, even if there are “answers” (I can only think of Metamorphosis, CoD and Enfeeble), would decks and the game not be more fun if you molded your deck less according to opponent bombs and more according to your own strategy? Genuine question here, what is more fun, having to mold your deck with and against bombs, or building your own smaller-value deck that can do just enough to win a hard fought duel? I find high potential tends to be frustrating- Remove or lose. The infamous answer or die. And its not hard for this to be unfun for both sides of the coin.

Think of Sirocco- Im not sure if that is enough of a bomb to be game breaking, because vanilla 3/2’s are not as hard to answer as a bunch of arcanysts gaining 2 health each turn. You can solve it with some burn, Chain Lightning and Skorn, general pings, frenzy, Maw, Blast, and just having monsters. Its still “answer or die”, but there are more than just one answer. With Death Knell, you kinda need the exact one mass removal card you run two copies of in your deck to solve, or you’re likely gonna lose.

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#10

Well, I guess the logic is that, if your opponent was able to survive up to that point while playing crappy Abyssian arcanysts, then s/he likely deserved to win, right?

The health pool is a very poor way to estimate who is winning. In this case, you were only very slightly ahead of board, but you knew that Death Knell was coming. You should have either closed the game earlier or had more board to survive.

#11

Well, I dont think they deserved it- I answered ALL of their threats while dealing damage. They were 2/6 and I still 7/23 with a Grove Lion on the field when they hit 8 mana as P1- the only thing that allowed them a win was a strupid strong Knell. Just because I was aware it was coming doesnt mean its not unfair. Like, of all cards from all factions that could’ve turned the game around in their favor, I can only think of a flashed Juggernaut, which I, then again, think is also unhealthy for the game.

#12

This means that you were playing a reactive game against a deck which is slower than yours. This very likely leads to defeat.

Based on the information you provide, I guess you were playing Vaath. Even slower Magmar decks can do enough damage to burst down Abyssian before Knell comes out, so I suspect something was not done totally right from your side. Or your opponent just got lucky, which may just happen in any game, but I don’t see enough arguments in your posts to complain about Knell in general.

#13

I agree that there are some pretty OP cards right now, but just throwing my 2 cents in about Death Knell. I think of it as a Variax(Game ender, but not on the turn it is played)

It takes your entire turn unless you wait until 9 mana then you can also cast a void pulse or something.

Nothing it summons can ever deal damage or have rush(Trinity Wing lesson of something is the only exception) until the next turn.

If you ramp DK in early you probably aren’t getting more than 2 or 3 summons at the most. Nocturne is very MEH and abyssian doesn’t have access to many low cost arcanysts you will play.

Deck must be built specifically with Arcanyst Synergy in mind.

Yes it is extremely strong when you get a semi-decent DeathKnell but compared to many other win conditions it doesn’t seem all that OP to me. It is pretty slow and you have to build your deck around it(either slightly to get a good effect or completely to have mind blowing game winning plays.) Sunset Paragon and Lightbender are both excellent tools for anyone having problems against the card.

Lava Slasher is OP no doubt about it. BUT I am glad that Magmar has an OP card that doesn’t promote going full face retard.

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#14

Ehh, I almost don’t care how slow knell is, I don’t like it from a design standpoint similar to how I still hate Variax. It wins by taking a value-oriented tribe and smashing even more value into it so that even with transformations you can only delay the inevitable. Sometimes in card games in control matchups it’s important to recognize which player has to be the aggresor. Arcanyst lilith makes itthat decision easy for you since it takes the frustration of endless value from a blue conjurer and steps it up to the next level.

Now, while I really don’t like death knell in terms of design, I think blue conjurer and circulus are the cards I dislike the most out of the set. Not being able to get any sort of card advantage while they’re on board, as a continuing effect, feels pretty ridiculous, not to mention the RNG from conjurer ibeing stupid too. EMP is another I was very disappointed to see, since it’s a ridiculous no-fun-allowed card that increases duelyst’s use of dispel as a catch-all. But I think CP mainly intended it to be a safety valve against the new arcanysts (and maaaybe blood echoes sarlac, if n case that ever became a thing), so I’m still more annoyed at arcanysts.

Honestly I’m still playing this game, it can still be fun, but I’m not going to do the s-rank climb this month, Partially due to reduced available time and competition from other games, but also because I didn’t like most of the design of AB.

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#15

To be fair, the design of Death Knell is completely different than Variax. You need a very specific deck to succeed and you need to prepare a setup, so you cannot ramp it.

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#16

I don’t think specificity is a good excuse for what I see as bad design. Whether or not you ramp into infinite value is completely beside the point. Infinite value engines of this strength reduce the nuance of playing for and against value in control vs control matchups. And it simply feels stupid to play against since such decks can pretty easily recover from plays like pandomonium spear ghost lightning. Blue conjurer by itself is not as bad as, say, hearthstone’s jade mechanic, but in concert with everything else attached to arcanysts I’d venture to say it’s almost as bad. Death knell definitely has that very mana-cheaty-not-much-you-can-do-about-it feel. And I actively play both games.

Anyway, that’s my opinion, there were a bunch of people in the old variax thread who thought it was ok just because it was slow but I disagreed with them too.

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#17

I see your point and I agree with you in general, though not specifically on Death Knell. It’s horrible to have a control deck which makes all the other control decks useless, because it generates infinite value. In this respect, the possibility of ramping out Variax is relevant, because you get the possibility of getting the strongest effect in the game before other control decks, which is a win-win formula.

Death Knell is strong, but slow, just like other late game bombs like Silithar Elder. This makes the fight fair.

#18

The entire point of control decks is to play passive in the early and survive until they can play their wincon and obviously win. If their wincon doesn’t have enough impact to win at this point, even when they are behind to some degree, then its not a wincon, its trash. Reaching 8 Mana in a tempo heavy fast paced game like duelyst is certainly not an easy thing to do, especially not as player one. So if your opponent gets to play his wincon, which doesn’t even win on the spot in case of variax or death knell and you still can’t manage to finish him off, then in all honesty, it’s an absolutely deserved victory for him.

His game plan worked out and won him the game, that’s how it’s supposed to be. The fact that you were ahead on board/life at this point means little, given your opponent played an lategame focused control deck it would mean complete failure on your end if he was equal/ahead in the early/mid game.

However, given how close the game was, you should really ask yourself if you couldn’t have done 6 more damage if you had played differently instead of just blaming Death Knell for your loss. For example, what if you hadn’t used that saberspine earlier to kill a Manaforger or what ever? You could have saved it as a finishing tool but you didn’t, was the minion you killed really that important?

#19

This is an unfortunate example of the game’s increasing tendency to obscure/obfuscate feedback. Removing an early Manaforger with a Tiger that lives as a 3/1 so that the other player cannot get discounted spells should almost always be the right play. Using that Tiger to go face for 3 damage should often be the worse play. Instead the feedback received is go face or lose to some unkillable board generator that generates higher value for the more opponent minions you destroy, so next feedback is don’t remove enemy minions because they’ll all be revived come 8 mana.

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#20

If he had used the tiger to deny the early mana tile/get cheap spells early on it would have been the correct play, but judging by his statement, this wasn’t the case

Also i am not saying it was the wrong play, i can’t tell since i haven’t seen the game. But if my opponent wins the game on 6 life i should always check twice if i really had no way to do 6 more damage during that game before i call some niche lategame card broken.

And yes, when you play against a deck with more lategame power then your own then the most vital ressource you have to account for is the enemy life total. This has nothing to do with “unkillable board generators” which Death Knell isn’t, this is simple strategy and Matchup knowledge.

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