General Faie - Oppressively Overpowered?

[dorkatardduodenum]

Greetings Duelyst Community!

First of all, my emphatic gratitude to the Duelyst team for all your hard work in creating a highly enjoyable strategy-based CCG/TCG! Also, I’m going to try my best to avoid a flippant, juvenile rant - and instead address my concern with General Faie with earnest thoughtfulness. In addition, my concern lies mostly with my favorite Duelyst mode: Gauntlet.

Here we go! I find myself feeling frustrated, and honestly a little bored, with how oppressively overpowered General Faie and her abilities seem to be. 8 out of 10 matches (where I’m not playing Faie myself) against Faie are frankly unpleasant. Her overwhelming prowess consisting of numerous, cheap removal spells, combined with the insanely advantageous ranged Bloodbourne ability rob other generals from enjoying a hard-fought, grueling match.

Yes, I am a fairly inexperienced player - and yes, I am aware of specific cards that help to damper Faie’s wild power (Magesworn, high-octane aggro decks, etc.), but I am the type of player that prefers control and midrange Gauntlet builds without having to feel pressured to choose aggro decks just so that I feel like I may have a chance against the copious amount of Faie opponents.

If you’re an individual that loves to play General Faie often, THAT’S GREAT, I love to play as Faie myself, but personally I’d like to observe myself and others experiencing just as much satisfaction in the process of choosing many of the other Generals available.

So, as a community, I would greatly appreciate anyone’s time and opinion on this matter. A list of questions to mentally chew on are as follows: Is General Faie oppressively overpowered compared to MOST other Generals? Is anyone a bit tired of running into large amounts of Faie opponents in Gauntlet? If this is a valid issue that could use some attention, how do we as a community present a respectful voice to the Duelyst team for change? If this imbalance certainly exists outside of my subjective perspective, is it possibly harming new/inexperienced players participation in Duelyst?

In conclusion, I wrote this message with an attitude of desiring to see an excellent game develop into something even better that continues to attract and keep those of us who love this type of gaming!

Thank you all for your time.

[baharoth]

This game isn’t based around Gauntlet and hopefully it never will. In ranked she is perfectly fine.

[xhanx]

They’ve nerfed multiple Vanar cards recently so that they’re the top tier faction.

Faie is still my first pick in Gauntlet, but you’re less likely to face her now that there are more generals and you can only pick from 4.

[tsevech]

Faie is fine as she is. Her BBS is strong, but not enough to feel oppressive. Vanar can feel frustrating to play against, but different players enjoy different playstyles and it’s good to have them in the game…

[pfcmickey]

The problem is: you play gauntlet. That’s perfectly fine, but you have to keep in mind that gauntlet is not balanced. And yes, faie is top tier in gauntlet, but the game isn’t balanced around gauntlet, it is around the ladder, where she is fine.

What you want to achieve (play control/midrange in draft mode and have pleasurable matches against faie) is impossible. Sorry.

[nickDigger]

Not sure if I agree on the game being solely balanced around Ranked. Is there an official statement from the developers on this one? Otherwise: why would they forsake one of the only two game modes their game has?

On topic: yeah, Faie is pretty strong and her BBS kind of limits what you can do in terms of late game in Gauntlet. But it has been like this since the dawn of time and I doubt that CPG will change something as basic as her BBS at this point in time. If anything they would probably try to fix it by adding cards that counter her. But given the number of expansions that have already come out, I doubt that we’ll see a major change in direction at this stage of the game.

I certainly don’t want to discourage you from standing up for what you believe to be right, but I think it might be more reasonable to accept it for what it is and try to focus your energy on adapting to it rather than campaigning for a change that most likely will not come. And from my personal experience: she’s okay. She’s certainly one of the stronger Generals and the games where she just plays on curve and attacks you until you’re dead are pretty stale, but that’s card games for you.

[manamaniac]

Faie is great, but IMHO she is but one of a handful of very powerful generals for Gauntlet. The “big three” are Faie, Reva, and Argeon. I think you can make an argument for any of these being the best, and it depends a bit on your play style. I like Reva the best personally, as she tends to reward a more synergistic deck building strategy, while Faie relies more on individually powerful effects.

After those three there are a fair number of options that are still quite strong but overall a small step down. I’d put Vaath, Ragnora, Cassyva, and Zirix in this tier. These are all quite capable of going toe to toe with the big three, but on average are just a bit weaker.

Generally no matter what general you are running you want your deck to be able to handle a variety of opposing strats. You want to be able to exploit the weaknesses of your opponent’s faction/general. Faie has a lot of removal tools at her disposal, but each one needs to be answering a specific type of threat to be good. The Aspect spells are great against large single minions, but not so good against swarms, while Frostburn is the opposite. Chromatic Cold is a great answer to minions with ranged or other powerful abilities, but weak against minions with large natural stats like golems. Diversifying your threats against Faie can put you ahead, as can healing and simply staying in her face so she can’t run away and spam her BBS to victory.

Gauntlet is not completely balanced in terms of generals, but it doesn’t need to be. Faie is powerful, but not overpowered relative to the other options. In my experience she can actually have a pretty bad fail case, where if you don’t get those high quality removal spells you just die to the factions with better minions/board presence. Pre-nerf, Zirix and later Kara were omnipresent when you got to the higher win levels of Gauntlet, which is a sign of a truly op general. This simply isn’t the case with Faie.

[epicflygon]

again like everyone Is saying, you are playing the gauntlet and the game is not balanced around that, E.G BS gambler and EMP should not exsist in gauntlet, CPG does not care for gauntlet as much as you or i like.

[grismy]

Faie is the best general for gauntlet.

But if I remember correctly whenever she was not something else was oppressively overpowered. So it might even be a sign for a good meta.

That being said, if they make gauntlet more appealing to new players, I’m all for it.
And while nerfing Faie might not bring much, it could not hurt much either.

[epicflygon]

Nerfing faie in gauntlet, Reva will be the best, it will forever be like this;;

[nwardezir]

Nerfing faie in gauntlet, Reva will be the best, it will forever be like this;;

You can nerf any General, there will always be a best one. Unless you remove all BBS, Beta-style

[alplod]

there will always be a best one. Unless you remove all BBS, Beta-style

Even then. Not general but faction.

[nwardezir]

Even then. Not general but faction.

There is still RNG when picking a faction but when you pick your General in Gauntlet, the BBS is garanteed
Even if you choose the “strongest” faction, RNG can still deliver you the worst cards of it.

[epicflygon]

Then it comes down to technical play which is how it should be

[thematsjo]

I just think her BBS should affect everything in the enemy General’s column.