The last time i checked Conjurer was a 4/6 not a 6/6. Yes if your hand is full of illusions then this card might be useful, but in pretty much every other situation it’s not. As long as there is a single decent Arcanyst in your hand your basically not allowed to play spells since it might turn your Owlbeast or Trinity wing into a Sunseer. If you honestly believe a card like this would see any play then i don’t even know what to tell you.
Blue Conjurer Nerf Idea
A lot of cards are op and that’s the point. If you want to have a balanced game you need a lot of overpowered cards. Besides players that play ranked only use strong, no the strongest cards available to them.
Yeah, 4/6, that was a typo, sorry (trying to play and write simultaneously is not a good idea).
As for the rest, well, are you familiar with the term risk/reward? Because that’s exactly what it is. And the fact that this new BC would synergise better with a hand full of cheap spells and token minions would just make it more situational. That’s all.
And if this new BC, with a decent body and a decent yet risky/situational ability seems so useless to you, well, once again - and I’m really tired of this - it just speaks volumes about how OP the Arcanysts currently are.
I think Vanar spells are the problem. In my knowledge Abyssian or Songhai decks playing Arcanysts didn’t exactly rule the ladder. Their removal spells just don’t dispel, ramp or draw them cards while being cheap as chips to cast.
Er, no, you don’t? Besides, when about 50% of those silly OP cards end up in one faction there’s something wrong with the game.
(And I’ve no idea what you meant by players only using strong cards, sorry.)
Arcanyst Lilithe is also quite strong. But yeah, sure, Van with their ridiculous cheap spells (I mean, how is Aspect of the Fox still 1 mana?) is the best faction for Arcanysts, so if you want to run an Arcanyst list, you’ll probably go for Van.
While I agree with your overall tone, using Gauntlet as a argument point has never been relevant to any topic regarding game balance considering their history of complete disregard of the mode as far as balance is concerned.
Yes i know the term risk/reward but just because something has a risk/reward ratio it’s not automatically a good thing. Russian roulette with a 1 million dollar price money for the last guy standing is also risk/reward but would you do that?
This change is more than just situational, a situational card is a card that only gets good value under specific circumstances and little to no value in others. With this change however you would have a card that can be detrimetal to your gameplay to the point of making you want to not play cards at all for fear of hurting yourself with it.
If you want to rank up and aren’t just playing meme decks you need to play strong cards as well as strong decks. Isn’t it obvious? BC is a strong card and fits very well in almost any arcanyst deck. Is that really such a big problem? I don’t like nerfing or changing good and fun cards when it is not necessary.
It’s an absurd example and its link to the subject is tenuous at best; I don’t know what to tell you. After @elPatoPoderoso’s nerf Blue Conjurer could would, in certain circumstances, transform your shitty token minion into a Calligrapher; in others, it could transform your good card into a worse card, which 1) can be prevented by playing this good card before you drop the BC, 2) is hardly a cause for auto-concede (or a suicide, if we were to try and somehow refer to your Russian Roulette example).
And it’s not like it’d be something completely new for Duelyst to have your own tools potentially turn against you. From Panddos being used to body block to battle pets attacking Spectral Revs, from Dominate Will swinging the game to Hamon finishing off your own general, it’s not totally unusual - although not very common either - for your own combos/strategies to actively bring you down rather than just fail as in “generate almost no value”. That’s what risk/reward is about.
Ah, alright, you missed a comma there and I read it as “strong, not the strongest” and thought it was kinda odd. Well, top players tend to choose the best “strategies” rather than just throw in all the best “cards” they can think of. And the more ridiculously OP cards you have, the less variety there is.
Besides, if I thought BC was “good and fun”, I’d also oppose any nerf attempts. But the whole point of this discussion is that many people don’t consider this card “fun”. “Strong” doesn’t make the cards “fun”, not necessarily.
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I’ve picked an extreme example on purpose because you seem to think that any kind of risk/reward ratio is a good thing and that’s not the case.
You should read up a little on game and decision theory and how risk/rewards effect peoples decisions, maybe that would allow you to see why nobody in his right mind would play a card like that.
Your opponent using your cards against you is a completely different thing than having a card that actively hurts you without the opponent even doing anything.
Hamon trading 2 life a turn for an overstated minion that forces an answer from your opponent is one thing, not being able to play spells because it can mess up your hand is another. It would mean that BC won’t hit board in 9 out of 10 games because you still have other Arcanysts in hand that you want to play before that. That BC Version in an Arcanyst deck is more akin to playing Night Watcher in Obelysk Vet.
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Your whole point is that “risk/reward in this particular case is not good”. Which might very well be the case, but instead of providing some sensible argument you just start behaving like an arrogant toddler. “Read up”? Mate, I have some actual academic background in game theory (although, admittedly, just a bit); do you?
If you want to discuss this particular card, in the context of this particular game, let’s. If you just want some space to do your best look-at-me-I’ve-read-game-theory impression, be my guest, but I’m not going to participate.
And no, in principle Hamon and this version of BC are not different at all. Both come with an active flaw, a downside that does not require your opponent’s input to bring you down. One has the potential to mess up your hand a bit, the other whittles down your hp - the only difference being the type of resource they affect. Do you want to (potentially) lose 2hp for the next few rounds or do you want to (potentially) mess up your hand by replacing a wrong card into another wrong card? Both are legit choices, and legit strategies; both require a specific deck to be build around them, in order to generate max value and diminish the chance of “failing”. Your “9 out of 10 games” is pure speculation, so, once again, I’ve no idea what to tell you here.
Then i honestly can’t understand how you can argue for a card like this to be playable. Even from a simple “Would i play the card in my Arcanyst deck” point of view the answer should be obvious.
Regarding the “arrogant toddler”, what kind of response did you expect asking a question like that?
Well, it was a reaction to this:
Anyway, sorry for escalating. I think it’s time to wrap things up. I don’t play Arcanyst - not because I think they’re overrated or anything, I just don’t like the out-of-hand, burst-ish playstyle they require.
I wouldn’t mind seeing BC nerfed to the point of unplayability, or removed from the game completely. I genuinely hate its design. This kind of nerf seems to me like a sensible rework, probably relegating it to a very niche, very situational, very techy card. To me, it seems preferable to leaving it as an Arcanyst staple. But it’s not like it’s the only nerf idea I can think of.
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What ever was the purpose of blue conjurer, it is clearly a very powerful card (broken, in my opinion). While it is an RNG card, it has access to good crossfaction arcanysts. It reminds me of another card, the Grincher, it has a similar effect only useful for a concrete archetype. However the pool of available artifacts is much larger and half of them are just not worth it at all. And this is an opening gambit effect with a 5/4 body, which is clearly much easier to remove.
Now there are more then one way to change Blue Conjurer in order to make it more balanced (previous and OP’s suggestions included), for example:
- opening gambit (or bond): draw a random arcanyst and rise the stats a little;
- opening gambit (or bond): draw a random arcanyst whenever you cast a spell this turn;
- draw an arcanyst when you cast the first spell each turn and rise the stats a little;
- let it draw at the end of turn and change the stats to make it easier to remove, like 5/4, 4/4, 3/5;
- make it not work with bbs and change the stats;
- or at least change the stats;
I didn’t see the video with the explanation, but for me the main problem with that card is the possibility to refill your hand every turn. With this possibility, you will almost certainly end up with some legendary arcanyst, which can win you the game, while getting big card advantage. It is not just an “answer or die card”, it is “answer or die and repeat a few times card”.
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The last two seem the most reasonable to me. The stats are clearly too good especially combined with such a powerful effect. The rest of your suggestions could potentially make great future cards.
How about you just release a bunch of antisynergistic cards with abilities like “neither player can cast a spell costing less than 2 mana” and then give them the arcanyst tag? 
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My biggest gripe about Blue Conjurer is that it takes the randomness of the effect, and puts that randomness in full control of the user. The user can choose to keep the card they got, or choose to replace it.
Meanwhile, we have the opponent, who has NO idea what you got from it, or whether or not that card is still in your hand. How do you play around it? Do you surround yourself with minions to prevent Sparrowhawk lethal? Do you go aggro because of potential Four Winds Magi? Maybe I should use my removal card on this. But they might have Archon Spellbinder now. Or Death Knell. Maybe I should avoid potential burst from Kindling or Firestarter.
In short, you can’t predict what can happen while your opponent could be stirring up a lethal that would normally be impossible. There’s a certain amount of predictability in card games that keeps the game competitive. And with regards to other random elements of the game (Obelysk spawns, Twin Strike targets, Cascading Rebirth etc.), both players get to witness the randomness as it happens rather than one player knowing the result with the other left in the dark.
When someone loses a Vetruvian vs Vanar match, and the winning card was a Sparrowhawk, it just feels bad. The loser got punished for not playing around a card that they NEVER could have predicted. They could have been playing very well, only to have a random, out-of-faction curveball steal the game. For the aforementioned reasons, Blue Conjurer is anti-competitive. Having a random card, and only having ONE player be able to abuse the randomness, is quite simply unfair.
At least with Grincher, the stat line is less threatening, it can’t be buffed by Owlbeast Sage, and the card quality is significantly lower. I don’t want the card ruined, just addressed to help keep healthy competition in the game.
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This card is going to be my fav 