I think that Duelyst is an amazing game. I had a lot of fun playing this game. But there is one issue i cant overcome.
The meta in Duelyst is very fast. There is no denoying in that. Some decks are capable of consisltenly closing game on turn 8 or 9. Most decks dont even have minions that cost more than 5 mana. The main win condition of decks these days is destroying your general as fast as possible. Some songhai decks are capable of winning while investing all available recources in damaging opponentās general. But why there are no control decks that just outheal damage taken and slowly remove threats? Because cards that deal damage are far more effective than those that heal or handle little threats.
Let me illustrate my point. Take a look at these 2 cards: Exelsious and Spectral revenant.
While Exelsious deos not heal your general, i consider provoke as damage mitigation for this comparrison.
Exelsious is a 8-mana minion that provides on average 8/8 stats with provoke and ability to win on your next turn if unanswered but has no immediate impact ( by immediate i mean that it does nothing if removed).
And here we have spectral revenant , the aggressive counterpart of Exelsious. At first Revenant costs 1 less mana, which is crusial when you dont often live to turn with 8 mana.
Also it is a form of removal so it practicly mitigates the damage of a minion with 6 or less health. And it deals 4 damage tp your opponent and never dies after an attack into a minion. So you have mitigated 3-4 damage and left a threat that forces your opponent to use spell removal instead of minion combat.
And there is Exelsious who does not achive even part of qualities that Revenant does for 1 less mana. So if you would have an opportunity, you would run Revenant over Exelsious even i Healyonar because you usually mitigate more damage.
And that was an example of a card that sometimes cannot be played because you die before you have enough mana to play it or you are low enough to be killed by spells or Revenant. And Exelsious costs 8 mana, which means that is is one of the strongest cards in control arsenal in the whole game. Minions that rely on you having an established minion dont benefit control decks, as control relys on reactive cards instead of proactive. So control decks lose in the early game having a disadvantage to overcome in the late game.
The cards that support control early game are just good cards that are mostly seen in aggressive or tempo decks.
For example makantor warbeast or holy immolation.
Cards like Sunseer exist but lets be real, it does not mitigate the damage of agressive twilligh fox (while spells that fox gives you can be used to clear instead of going face) or other agressive minions.
Control decks have a lesser chance of capturing early tiles because they have more reactive spells and heavy minions.
And strong removal exists. Punish is good even against aggro decks and absolutly crushes control decks.
But its not like this game is not meant to support control decks. Cards like Rook or Grandmaster Zir exist, they are just not supported by slow early game minions.
My favourite playstyle is control. I dont enjoy plaing aggro, but im not against it being in the game. But due to the nature of duelyst i cant enjoy this game. So i and other control players sooner or later will just quit the game, which results in the loss of popularity of the game.
Also control players are those who invest the most money in the game as they unlike the aggro players build the decks that contain a lot of slow legendaries. Also as control decks take more time per match, control players are ready to spend more time on game.
I dont want to force CPG to slow down the meta or make control decks top tier. I just want to have them on the same powerlevel as aggro. And if the game is ment to be this fast i would like to be sure in that.
And what are your views on this topic? Do you think that Duelyst is supposed to be this fast? Will it always be this way?
