Hello everyone,
As evidenced by the screenshot, I’m a relatively new player who took the time and effort to get into the game and see what it had to offer - of course, I’m perfectly aware that Diamond League isn’t anything to brag about, but I think I’ve encountered most netdecks by now.
Just to tell you guys everything you need to know in order to appreciate my feedback, for what’s it’s worth, I’m a Vetruvian main; I play a midrange-ish type of deck that I built myself; I thought the game was cool enough to spend around 30 bucks during one of those “diamond bonus” week-ends.
I currently own the full Bloodbound and Ancient Bonds sets, as I found them to hold the most value for new players - having 3x and lots of epics/legendaries really helped the deck. I’m starting to have a fair bit of Unearthed Prophecies and most of my packs now hold between 10 and 50 spirit.
Okay, enough with the introduction! Let’s jump right into it.
As far as the core mechanics of the game go, it’s a solid 9/10 for me: from the positioning to the cycling of unwanted cards in hand, Duelyst does a fantastic job at offering plenty of strategic possibilities, which makes you really feel that you’re in control of the game. For someone who used to play Hearthstone like me, and was disgusted by the omnipresence of RNG in card texts, it’s a genuine pleasure, and the RNG elements involved are limited to a small array of very specific cards that don’t see too much play. While the random summons of Vetruvian Dervishes can be a bit aggravating at times, you can manipulate the available spaces around your summoning unit well enough - and so can your opponent! I think it adds more depth than anything else, so even if, in the end, I might be maining an “RNG-heavy” faction in this regard, it’s something I can live with.
The mechanics added by several expansions are another matter, however, and the reason why the mark went down one point: Sentinels and Battle Pets are clumsily implemented, with rule inconsistencies for the former and plainly stupid AI for the latter. This makes for some infuriating situations and awkward balance; some Battle Pets, like Ooze, seem atrociously over-statted to make up for their predictable behaviour, and their reduced cost isn’t always warranted in my opinion: often, sending an over-statted Battle Pet straight to its death is actually the correct play, and it all boils down to the question “is this Battle Pet a good suicide bomber”. This limits the design space for Battle Pets heavily, which thus feel like they could have been an integral part of the game but will always remain in this weird niche.
In short: code optimizations for both Sentinels and Battle Pets would be great.
The economy model is a mixed bag. It’s undeniable that Duelyst is very generous as far as cards go, and since cards are quite obviously the heart of a CCG, it would be rather petty to say that Duelyst is a P2W game - but man! These cosmetics are horrendously expensive! 1500 spirit for an emote? 1000 spirit for a tiny avatar that disappears after the mulligan phase? I have to actually PAY to play on some maps? Really? I don’t know for how much longer I’ll have to accumulate spirit to unlock those maps, but it’s certainly a bummer not to be able to see all this great content the art team apparently spent so much time on. I don’t care much for emotes, avatars and alternate general skins, but the maps should either be unlocked by finishing the solo content or for much, MUCH lower prices in my opinion.
Onto the match-ups and my thoughts about the netdecks in general:
Lyonar: The heal-heavy decks are generally fun to fight against; there isn’t anything broken about them as far as I’m concerned, considering the fact that they need to get their synergies going to work. This creates interesting matches with lots of positioning involved. Now, the OTHER KIND OF LYONAR DECKS… Did they draw into their three Holy Immolations? Get rekt. Oh, they didn’t? They get rekt. It’s neither fun nor particularly intellectually-engaging, like any other deck that can repeatedly smack you down with out-of-hand damage.
Maybe Lyonar was intended for Swarm/Mass-Buff decks as well, but the mere presence of extremely punishing board clears available to pretty much all factions, and of EMP golems, is enough to make this idea pointless.
Vanar: Probably the most infuriating faction to play against, Vanar isn’t the most powerful however. Not that it really matters; I just don’t think that Vanar promotes interaction between both players. Their ridiculously broad range of removals, stuns and other irritating spells, combined with walls - EXPLOSIVE walls, mind you - and the infamous, horrible, despicable Aspect of Shim-zar/Thunderhorn combo, make Vanar the absolute fun-destroying queens.
In my view, Vanar is sitting in the Hearthstone Mage position, where the prime goal of their strategies involves using an infinite amount of removal to stall the game, until some cheap, answer-or-die-immediately combo comes up. You can argue that it’s their “faction identity” all you want: it’s not fun to play against. I’m sorry, it just isn’t. As I said, they don’t seem to be the most broken faction because there are some tricks you can do to evade their constant board-wiping and walling-off-your-general-to-make-it-go-boom, but jeez! I’d rather play against Infiltrate-heavy decks than this crap.
Vanar seemed to have a lot of situational cards going for it as part of its core identity; I believe it would greatly benefit from a rework that makes those more viable.
Abyssian: On average, Lilith decks are as interesting to play against as Lyonar heal decks for the same reasons. My main gripe is Aggro Cassyva, because, well, it’s the Duelyst equivalent of the nefarious Face Hunters/Pirate Warriors. I get it: you’ve got to have aggressive archetypes to create a healthy meta. This midrange Vetruvian deck of mine is probably one of the most vulnerable to Cassyva, given the fact that I have no heal to speak of - then again, what heals do we have as Vetruvian? I’m not wealthy enough to craft Aymaras and their dying wish needs to trigger. The neutrals I see in my collection heal for very low amounts.
I do feel like three cards are really problematic: Desolator, Necrotic Sphere, and Spectral Revenant, from least to most. I see the point of Desolator; it’s designed to put your opponent on the clock. Did it have to also heal your own general for the same amount, though? I think the health swing is a bit too wild and, when you’re desperately trying to end the game before Spectral Revenant annihilates you, Desolator shows up and suddenly, you’re the one at low health and having to run away. Abyssian already has lots of heals at its disposal; if Cassyva combines Desolator with Ritual Banishing, there’s really little you can do as a Vetruvian: she’ll just nuke your scarabs/grand-masters and summon the Desolator again.
Necrotic Sphere is just amazing. I… Yeah. It’s an easy way out of any dangerous situation. Since you’ve got to murder the fu** out of Cassyva before the two other broken cards come up, it’s not POSSIBLE to play around it - at my fairly low level at least, but still, how would you play around something like that? Two-health minions die to the riposte, of course. Three-health minions will just create more shadow creep. Four-health minions are still in that straight-up-better-Staff-Of-Ykir artifact range, whose name I have conveniently forgotten because it was causing me nightmares. What do I send against Cassyva, then? If small to medium minions get either mowed down or even ADVANCE Cassyva’s battle plans, and large minions simply get turned into - enemy and synergistic - 1/1’s, how do you do it?
Then there’s Spectral Revenant. A 6/6 Rush for 7 that - of course - deals more damage to your face, even if you placed your minions right. Yeeeah… So it’s either Blood of Air or lose on the spot, I guess?
It’s such a shame, because when I open my collection, I see all those very cool Abyssian cards that are never played; they have lots of synergies, lots of interesting effects that go beyond the asinine way Cassyva is played. I’d probably want to try out Abyssian if it wasn’t for all this face crap.
Magmar: Makantor warbeast is a noob-wrecker, but it’s really fine as it is because you can actually PLAY AROUND IT. That’s the whole thing: Magmar is challenging without being annoying; you can expect certain things at certain mana thresholds and, all in all, most of their cards are nicely statted for their cost. I’d be tempted to believe that Flash Reincarnation and Kujata limit design space and create unfair scenarios when they work “a bit too well” - you probably all know what I’m referring to -, but such cases were very rare for me and I don’t think Magmar needs anything other than a buff to some of its underplayed cards. I’d argue that Lava Lasher is the only card that would deserve a nerf; it would either need a change in its opening gambit, less hit points, or to lose its tribe tag. As it stands, Lava Lasher is a staple in any Magmar deck, and while cards like that DO define factions, I believe that it largely outclasses any other Magmar mid-sized drop, especially the 4/3 that leaves an egg behind.
Are eggs still even a thing? I would think not.
Some of the “growing” decks can get out of hand if left unchecked, but hey, that’s the whole point of the mechanic and the Magmar player is really putting themselves at a risk for trying to get it going, so… I don’t have any problem with those. Again, you might fall for it the first time around, and it’s easy to stomp a novice player on the defensive, but once you learned how those decks work, you stand a far better chance. That’s all I need to think something is balanced.
Songhai: It’s another faction that you might think is completely crazy and unbalanced at first, but the more you play, the more you understand how gravely you were wrong. While Songhai seems to be notorious for its “hand-vomiting” turns, like any other combo-oriented faction in any card game ever, there isn’t anything a Songhai player can do when they go into topdeck mode, and their lack of healing capabilities means that, contrary to Cassyva, you can actually recover from one of their amazing turns and put the pressure on them.
My only issue with Songhai is that, sometimes, they have a dream opener that you can positively do nothing about. The little “Inner Focus exploit”, which allows to reactivate a minion, even if casting the spell means it’ll go over 3 attack, might need fixing in my opinion. Killing Edge is also VERY POWERFUL for what it does, especially if you factor in the fact that, 50% of the time, the buff will be applied to either a backstabbing or a ranged minion. That’s why comparing it to Lyonar’s After Blaze would be unreasonable, or so I believe: Songhai minions benefit much more from buffs because of their mobility/range/immunities. I’d also tone down Kataras in some way, or make them more powerful and expensive, as their only purpose seems to lie in their synergy with dream-crushing opening hands.
Songhai players appear to also like trying new, wacky decks - more than other factions on average - and I thank them for that!
Vetruvian: I saved it for last because I’m not one of those guys who push their faction’s agendas. I saw what was going on with Azure Summoning - which I don’t play; it’s an epic I only have one of and I’m not a big fan of flying minions. I definitely support a nerf, or a complete change at least, because Azure Summoning doesn’t seem to do much, aside from creating an archetype that revolves solely around having the adequate opening hand.
I also think Falcius is a problematic card for several reasons, one of which being that it’s an auto-include, like Lava Lasher, because Vetruvian early game is utter garbage. Indeed, Falcius is a VERY powerful card that will most likely be played on a mana spring on turn 2, essentially putting down a 3/3 body for 2 mana and acting as a removal against anything below 5 health points - practically every early game minion in Duelyst. If Vetruvian needs something that insane, it’s probably because all of its other options are crap in comparison, and because Falcius makes the general immune until the end of your turn, it’s still viable in late game! Here again, we have a clear case of “let’s fix this faction by adding a broken card”. Falicus IS definitely over-powered in my book, but should it disappear, Vetruvian would collapse altogether. Blood of Air kind of falls into the same category; it’s just SO superior to Entropic Decay that the latter faded away completely.
Like Abyssian, there’s a ton of Vetruvian cards that look really cool on paper, but never see play because they’re crap or competing with much stronger ones for the same mana spot. On another note: Vetruvian artefacts are somewhat weird, being either too expensive for what they do or too situational to be included in a deck. I found myself using Autarch’s gift quite often because… well, you get two artefacts at the same time and, since most of them are situational anyway, it doesn’t matter that much and the combination of the two is more likely to be working… somewhat. They feel a bit clunky when you’re not playing Sajj, and you need the Ankh to make them work more often than not.
And that’s it! Thanks for reading. Please remember that these are my thoughts after playing the game for about 3 months before telling me to git gud or whatnot. I’m merely expressing the opinion of someone who saw the game, got hooked, and proceeded to play 4-8 games a day ever since. I’m likely to become a veteran one day, and I think that quite a few people like me might be experiencing the same problems with the game as it is!
(although you probably don’t have it yet since you are somewhat new and it is an Epic card, but if you get/craft one you should try it out, it can be quite the game swinger).