Duelyst Forums

Fanmade Balance Patch for Abyssian

#1

Hello, there. My name’s LuckyDays. Duelyst rookie & F2Player. The following are fanmade balance patches that I came up to make swarm/ramp abyssian deck more viable. I’ll also list them in an order with goes from “totally need to implement” to “don’t really have to”.

1) Blood-Moon Priestess
From Cost 4 & 3/3 to Cost 3 & 1/5
Ability remains the same.
Reason: Since this is the life-blood of Abyssian swarm, it would make sense for players to keep BMP away from any damage sources as possible. But even so, it is still vulnerable to Phoenix Fire or any card that deals 3 damage, like Saberspine. Also, lets not forget that swarms of wraitthligs are SOOO easy to get rid of these days. That is why I decided to tune its stats to 1/5 so its effect remains on the field longer.

2)Wraithling Fury
Effect change to "Choose one of your Wraithling. It becomes 5/5"
Reason: Giving one minion +4/+/4 is dispel-able & this is more viable.

2)Arcane Devourer
From Cost 7 & 8/4 to Cost 4 & 2/4
Ability change to "At the end of your turn, put one Darkfire Sacrifice into your hand,"
Reason: More consistent Ramp-ing. Also, this card is a replacement spelljammer.

3)Nightsorrow Assassin
From 2/1 to 4/1 OR 2/3
Ability remains the same.
Reason: 4/1 stats is to make your opponent think twice in attacking this unit & bait out removal. 2/3 stats is to make sure that you still have something on the board other than weak 1/1.

4)Gloomchaser
Everything remains the same. However, Wraithling summon is no longer RNG-based, instead, it’s like Reva’s Bloodborn spell.
Reason: More strategic placement.

5)Dark Seed
Rework: Spell effect change to "Give all of friendly minion in a 2x2 space “Dying Wish: Deal 2 damage to all nearby enemies.”"
Reason: The original effect is too situational & doesn’t fit the Abyssinian theme, in my opinion. And since the sprite for this card is a black “seed” exploding, I figure it would make sense that some kind of explosion effect. However, I soon figure that giving ALL minion would be too OP so I decided that it would effect a small number of minion.

The cards below are categorized as “Interesting ideas” & their implementation is optional.

Mouth of the Rift (OC)
Cost 5, 3/5
Minion, Uncommon
Deathwatch: Draw 1 minion that cost 3 or less from your deck.
Appearance: A giant grotesque frog with a mouth that spits out monsters.

Midnight Ritualyst (OC)
Cost 3, 1/5
Minion, Rare
When you replace an Abyssian card, lower the Cost all minion that Cost 6 or more in your action bar by 1.
Appearance: A little girl in cultist attire, floating with several books besides her.

Wraithling Abomination (OC)
Cost 16, 8/8
Minion, Uncommon
Deathwatch: Lower the cost of this card in your deck or action bar by 1.
Appearance: A walking clusterf*** of corpses with a gargantuan, “meaty” right “Bruiser” arm; a skinny left arm with giant claw; giant “Grasshopper” hind legs & arms for front legs.

Deathfire Zaitan (OC)
Cost 5, 4/4
Minion, Legendary
Frenzy
Opening Gambit: Give one nearby friendly minion “Deathwatch: Gains +2/+2”.
Appearance: A centaur version of Deathwatcher with huge dual-hookblades, similar to that of Lilithe.

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#2

the way to make abyssian great again isn’t to make it incredibly OP. just saying.

9 Likes
#3

I like that you like the game such that you put time and effort into this. :slight_smile:

I do think it would be wise to avoid statements like “totally need to implement” because any one person can overlook things in a complex game as Duelyst, and balancing such a game for all possible situations is an entirely other level of complex.

Anyway, let me take a look:

  1. BMP: I do not think she needs to be tougher. Consider playing against BMP with Vetruvian for example: how will you remove her? It’s already hard enough. Also, hypothetically assuming your point is valid and she would need to be made harder to remove then you have just made it really easy for Magmar to do so. With 1/5 she’s a goner with Natural Selection.
    My point here is that balance needs to consider all situations. Also Faction Identity and Faction Strengths and Weaknesses.

  2. WF: You have just nerfed the card in regards to stacking, and it being dispellable is a good thing when fighting against it. Lilith can make two of those for 1 mana… If they can be buffed that much without a counter that would be silly, imho.

  3. (sic) AD: I kind of like the idea, but I do not like the idea of it being such a copy of Spelljammer, stats etc. But it’s an interesting idea.

  4. NA: 3/2 would be more in line with how the card feels for me, survives ping and can kill other 2-drops. I can see it getting a small buff to be honest, but is it really needed? Haven’t got a real problem with it. Maybe 2/2. It is kind of weak. Ability is very good though. Dunno.

  5. G: Would be too powerful for a 2-drop imo.

  6. DS: 4 mana for 8 damage in 4 different 3x3 areas by choice? Waaaaay too OP. I think we will see more Abyssian hand-effect cards in the future. Agree it’s not a fully fledged theme atm, but it still fits the ping/damage style (they have a leech/drain spell for general damage as well, and it’s in line with that, to me).

MotR: Deathwatch is pretty crazy for card-draw. It would be a kind of drawback of the card. Feels weird.

MR: OP. Consider this: you drop this turn 1 as player 2, replace. Turn 2 you replace again and without taking any mana orb you summon a Klaxon.

WA: Deathwatch doesn’t trigger in the action bar, but ok, I get the gist. It’s a tougher Mandrake that’s slower. I don’t know. It kinda could be done, but consider that Wraithlings die by the dozen and do not count towards Mandrake. So I think this will see play sooner or at least around the same time as Mandrake, so I would make it cost more, but it would require much testing, idk. Don’t like copying another card of a different faction either.

DZ: you just doubled the DFC count in decks, and while it’s more expensive I think 3 hidden dangers is quite enough :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

Maybe you should start out with WHY Abyssian needs these drastic changes. I personaly don’t feel they are epecially lacking compared to other factions.

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#5

I think the card which needs more balancing in the list is the Assassin. It has a nice effect and I would love to see him played in Control Abyssian. With 1 health, however, it is just ignored by players. Having at least 2 health may probably make him a little better.

Most of the other suggestions are way OP. I don’t think Abyssian is a bad shape at the moment.

#6

Yeeeeea-no. I’ve done a couple of these suggestion threads about making bad cards functional- but most of this is waaay over the top. It doesn’t make Abyssian have any more angles of play- just makes the faction more of a monster truck (and realistically, it’s already one of the better factions atm.)

Why do any of these cards need a buff anyways? Each one of them gives Abyssian access to a unique style of punishment or advantage. As in, contextually speaking Dark Seed might not be a very powerful card, but it does have support in Spelljammer, Void Pulse. and now Decimus.

#7

you make good points but “already one of the better factions atm” i would like to disagree with this.

#8

Elaborate, it might help the thread and the OP.

(incidentally, I agree that Abyssian is one of the better factions.)

#9

in my honest opinion every other faction excluding Vetruvian are better than Abyssian, abyssian is too slow, they can be countered by the smallest of things like skorn and plasma storm. and when a single faction can be ruined by a single spell i honestly think they won’t be the “better” faction.

you simply can’t make Abyssian fast enough, yes you can make an aggro abyssian then again every other faction are better at, why bother play abyssian? now Abyssian strength lies in their swarm and currently that “swarm” is just the saddest thing because believe it or not, Kara is a better swarmer than Abyssian, at least her minion sticks, has reliable health pool and lot’s of win condition.

of course these are all opinion, which is why i disagree instead of saying he was wrong.

edit: forgot to mention i’m talking about Lilithe, Cassyva is fine and fun, also i’m pretty sure OP is also talking about Lilithe judging from the things he wants to “patch”

#10

If you’re basing the overall performance of a faction on one of their generals, surely Magmar is the worst with Starhorn? :stuck_out_tongue:

#11

starhorn is better than Lilithe, because he has access to amazing cards like Makantor, Thumping wave and the likes.

i don’t understand, do you think OP is in any way talking about Lilithe? nothing in his patch note even remotely related to Shadowcreep. everything is swarm, unless i missed something (lethal) i think i’m right by judging that he is talking about Lilithe.

#12

I like pretty much all of the ideas, particularly Dark Seed but a lot of them seem a little bit on the strong side. I think slight buffs would be nice to help out some of the underwhelming cards, but Abyssian is in a decent spot right now.

Gloomchaser change would be 100% accepted by my book. If Keeper of the Vale, Fractal Replication and plenty of other cards can choose, it should be able to as well.

Also, I am pretty sure that if you dispel “Becomes a 5/5” they still return to their original form because the text is added underneath the card when you hover over it.

#13

his point is that you’re arguing for only one of the generals when Cass is pretty high up as far as tiers go, hence the Starhorn reference.

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#14

Don’t worry. These are just suggestions & all the arguments posted here have really helped me, in terms of understanding Abyssian more. Thanks for the posts.

#15

Thanks for the detailed post. Your arguments are very good.

#16

Lillithe does need a little help here I think. Not a whole lot though-- void steal has been treating her very well, and zyx might help her cause-- although zyx is also a threat to gloomchaser’s claim to a right to exist, so that card in particular does need a little help right now… (the only differences between the two are that zyx has a better stat distribution between its bodies and synergizes with Locke and Mirkblood and gloomchaser gets a wraithling-- but wraithling synergy sucks, and the Locke/Mirkblood synergy is quite good, so zyx feels better for much worse :confused: ).

Problem: most of your proposed changes are OP as hell, and Lilithe only needs a little help.

more detail,
Bloodmoon: This is already a quite powerful card, and its ability is much, much better than sojourners (whose statline and cost your design mimics). Not to mention, having 3 attack was a very important thing up until a season or two ago when Zen’rui was changed and tbqh sojourner is going to turn out to be a super common and valuable card on the ladder now that Zen’rui is gone. At 3 and 1/5 in a world where Zen’rui and plasmastorm are uncommon, bloodmoon would be waaaayyy too good.

Wraithling Fury: YES. WHY ISN’T THE CARD THIS WAY ALREADY. Seriously, it pisses me off that wraithling fury isn’t a transformation. The sprite changes!!! All other sprite changes are transformations!! And now that abyssian has echoing shriek, there’s no ‘it doesn’t fit the faction’ argument to be had. gdi.

Arcane Devourer: Super OP. Darkfirce sac is an amazing card with one drawback, and I mean ONE drawback: it takes away a card back when you use it, and at 0 mana and requiring a combo, it’s a great way to burn your hand (the ‘it takes a body to use’ drawback is pretty much negated between gor and lilithe’s bbs). This rehash of devourer would give you darkfire’s not out of thin air, essentially negating the card loss drawback. Getting one card of any kind, even if it’s shitty, is already great (see l’kian). I understand this is at eot but that is no where near enough of a drawback. Also, current devourer is really just on the edge of being amazing, I’d expect it to see a lot of use in the future, it’s a classic sleeper card: really powerful effect, with juuuust not enough support to be used much right now.

Nightsorrow: yeahhhh this thing is a pos. It should be a 1/3 or something, idk. or just cease to exist and continue reminding me of when it was a staple card and face lilithe was the most powerful deck. oh how the nerf hammer killed you carrot ninja ;.;

Gloomchaser: sounds good.

Dark Seed: Doesn’t need a rework- already a good card that will see a lot of use in a control meta-- if we ever have one of those again (sigh). Also, your version is like grasp of agony on steroids and would be really hard to play around/with.

The cards you made are variously too complicated or competing with existing cards too much, except for mouth of the rift which is actually a neat concept imo. I like cards that fetch other cards conditionally in card games. A specific like, and one mostly unsatisfied in duelyst. As written, your version is too easy to proc and fill your hand, but also sort of overcosted in comparison with the other things you could do with a board of minions that can die, of which there are many in abyssian and most either push lots of damage or heal your general a ton or both at once, which mouth wouldn’t compete well with. Maybe as an og or dying wish?

#17

i am only arguing about Lilithe and if anyone argues about Cassyva then i think they don’t understand just how viable she is.

you see, people seems to think that it is not right to argue based on 1 general, but why? are you saying that you can play swarm with Cassyva? obviously not right? and OP is talking about swarm right now, in which part was my argument wrong?

#18

saying “abyssian” is explicitly different from saying “lilithe” which is what this goes back to.

as for the cards, I think the dark seed one could be really cool, and the arcane devourer change is absolutely ridiculously strong.

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#19

Here are my feellings about this very interesting post!

Nop, Blood Moon is good like this. Even slighty buff it can be too much powerful. (like aeruniel said)

For the WF i think it’s a very good idea 'cause actually it’s not a good card… And a little buff like this seems well. (i loooove this card)

Love the idea of AD but don’t like the stats who made a copy of spelljammer.
However, i’m fine with the actually “the next minion cost one less”. It’s juste that AD cost too much mana… So it’s very hard to be useful.

NA is not that bad but really hard to include in a deck for now. Eventually made it a 2/2 but more would be too much, i think.

GC: it’s very good like this. If we can choose the tile of the wraithling it’s too much. I like the way that some card are weaker because we don’t choose where it actually appear (but i understand that some players hate this, RNG)

DS: it’s a very good card for now, just need the good deck to fill. I love this effect.

#20

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