Glad at least one person here is making reasonable suggestions instead of just suggesting to throw it in the trash bin out of frustration. Personally I think there’s things in the game with FAR less counterplay and a much higher frustration potential - but for the first time in ages Lilithe is actually not just a gimmicky DFC delivering system and people fail to respect that I guess - although they’ve been more than happy to just destroy most of her decks with skorn before.
Grandmaster Variax
2 Likes
Yes, now that there isnt a one card complete shut down like before people just start complaining.
And by the way, to the people that say “It is not fun to play against”, that is YOUR opinion, dont generalize because you are annoyed, you dont look very good doing so.
1 Like
Does it matter?
When you go for top 10 position you do it for respect, you really get nothing else as far as i know and if you play tacktic that is considered OP by most except a few abyssian players. who is going to respect you?
not to mention top 10 players are good enough to win most games with just whatever deck they like anyways.
i’ve seen many claim that its not OP and easy to deal with, and desided to give it a go, thinking maybe i’m just a noob and don’t see any way to beat it with reasonable effort:
mind you abyssians are my least played faction with about 20% win rate mostly from when i was silver and just started playing. I went and casually played the kolos “cancer” deck in rank 3 (i dropped to rank 3 after facing many abbyssians around rank 1) the results so far:
game 1) opponent khaleos, i actually didn’t draw variax untill 8 mana turn and only played it on 9 mana turn with no ramp. won with 16 hp remaining…
game 2) opponent fae, i got good hand and double ramped variax on turn 2 (4 mana), he just rage quit. win again.
game 3) opponent zirix got variax on 5 mana turn, i kited him for a few turns, got kaleino, got furosa, by the end of the game i had 8/8 wraithlings swarming the map and still was at 25 hp.
game 4) opponent reva, she did some shenanigans with buffing spelljammer with backstub and innerfocussing it + ranged minions combo. obviously i had variax on 5 mana turn. and won the game
this time only 7 hp left but if not for his ranged minions it wouldn’t be so close. generally was a good game i guess, way closer than i expected.
game 5) opponent ziran - i was slow on drawing the variax so only got him out at 6 mana turn.
nonetheless next turn he was followed by 5 6/6 wraithlings and he was just one shot from 23 hp at the 8 mana turn.
game 6) opponent cassiva - i was unlucky and only draw variax by 7 mana turn. luckly enough i had 5 wraithlings and bloodmoon priestess on the field and 18 hp, he just conseeded.
game 7) opponent lilithe (s-rank top 60, multiple tournament winner) - i got the variax a turn sooner, and managed to outspam him.
game 8) opponent lilithe - he outspammed me, first lose and to pretty much same deck. does it even count?
game 9) opponent fae - didn’t draw combo in time and lost
game 10) opponent fae - draw the combo in time and swarmed the half the field with wraithlings, he managed to stall for a couple of turns but had little to burst me down throught the kaleino healing i had.
TLDR: i’m a complete abyssian noob with 8:2 so far playing abbyssian “skill” deck in rank 3-2
1 Like
4 Games sample size is nothing
Also “a tactic considered OP by most”. Just because you and a few more say that does not mean most say that. And nobody is going to respect any less a top 10 player for playing which whatever faction thet got there with, what you said makes no sense.
Anyway, I’m done with this thread. If you dont care to improve and prefer to simply nerf whatever you dont like then feel free to insist.
heard hsuku say its a little too strong.
grincherz(tournament winner and holder of most faction ribbons as far as i know) and kolos(multiple tournament winner and the creator of this deck) said so as well.
if there is a way to beat it i hope someone shows me, sure i expect the said top 10 or even top 50 players to beat me playing it. given i’m pretty much a noob when it comes to this faction and probably make many mistakes that i’m not good enough to notice yet. worst case i’ll just get a free s-rank this season or next season if it isn’t nerfed, wouldn’t complain about it i guess.
It isn’t fun to play against.
It’s cancer.
Keep at it though, logic str0nk.
I don’t think the problem with Variax is that he’s too strong per se. As many people have said, he is on the slower side of the spectrum and many decks kill before or quickly after he hits the board.
What bothers me with him is that he is too strong in his role. He makes all other control decks obsolete because those can’t compete with him and he even forces mid range decks to be much more aggressive than they usually want to. That, to me, is what makes him problematic. He is too restrictive when it comes to the kind of decks that counter him.
If you enjoy aggro decks, then you probably won’t be bothered by him, but if you like slower decks then to you he might very well be OP.
I certainly stay away from my slower decks now that he’s a thing.
Which is sad.
I like control decks.
9 Likes
The chances that this hits the board early are fairly low, and demand quite the sacrifice to be made. It’s late game power is very real, and essentially means that we either kill them before they get there, or find another way to finish them off when they have this power activated.
I do not think this card is an issue. It is slow and can be played through, just like you can play through Nimbus and the story of many obelysks. I still have a Lyonar deck that is teched against this with Dark Nemesis and Aegis barrier.
I think their battle sister might make this a bit too difficult though. Abyssian has amazing tools at staying alive and it makes me wish that the sister was as fragile as the souldancer. Still, I do not see an issue here. Most of my decks mob them up before they can get to this phase, and the ones that do not have direct damage to kill off the general before the awesome (and expensive) BBS really kicks in.
Do you mean Duelyst needs better removal options? 
Welcome to the club. There’s complimentary cheese and crackers on the table. Poetry night is Thursday.
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Here is a hightlight from my 7th game as lilithe with kolos deck.
we both played variax but not every day you get such a game on ranked ladder, just felt i had to share it.
I mainly play Zir’an decks. I know that these decks are not even close to top tier but they were good enough to get to rank 2. I have 4 cards that cost 7+. But if i play those against abyssian, they can casually remove them (punish) and play variax. Or better yet, if variax was already played, they can remove my threat, which costs as much as variax, summon some more wrathlings and get 4-5 5/5s. There is no winning with Zir’an deck against variax. The only solution of beating this card is kill your opponet before they reach 5 mana. I hate that this control card insentives aggro more than good aggro cards, as it beats any control deck and is only vulnerable to oceragressive decks. And this card is given to abyssian, the faction that already has the best late game and the best healing card. This card really breaks the game as it is so polarized. Either you draw it and win or you dont and you lose.
I think that Rise of the Bloodborn introduced the most problems to the duelyst so far. This expansion almost fully destroyed contol decks’ future( exept Cassyva) introducing the most usefull removal punish(again to abbysian) , adding more burst to magmar and giving unbeatable lategame to lilith. I really hope to see some changes to a number of cards but punish, variax and drogon are my main offenders.
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ok, after playing lots of abbyssians i found a few decks that actually good against it:
- burn reva possibly ranged seems to be able to kite nicely and optionally killfrom afar.
- burn starhorn, can be hard to beat with all their from hand damage especially if you don’t get early kaleinos or 5 mana or less variax.
- blast vetruvians, somewhat counters lilithe and can snipe from afar, nice burst potential especially with time maelstorm.
still most of the games i lose are games where i didn’t even draw variax or didn’t draw it before 5 mana or even 7 mana. seems very draw dependant, if you as abbyssian get bad or horrible hand and opponent gets good hand he can try to rush you and win if you get descent draw and get 5 mana variax very few decks can compete.
i did won a couple of games where i only draw him around 9 mana or later but it was much harder.
i still feel like the opponent needs to either build whole deck around countering variax, or go extreme aggro and/or hope that abbyssian player gets bad draws early. often even 9 mana variax can be gg if abyssian has some field left.
Sorry if I’ve overlooked this on one of the 150 something posts, but I haven’t seen anyone mention the obvious issues this card has in relation to card draw.
Basically, it’s the equivalent of playing 2 5/5s or a varying number of 4/4s. Late game, especially if topdecking, this can be devastating, as variax is also a 7/7 body that needs to be dealt with.
The most similar card i can think of is koan of horns, as it allows the player to fill the board with decent minions. However, if the board is cleared, unlike abyssian, a songhai deck would have to factor in other draw cards, whereas a variax deck would have their bloodborn spell and any card they draw.
Though lilithe’s bloodborn appears to be more reliable, it is still more likely that cassy’s will be more useful, which is because of the difficulty to dispel tiles. The fact that most cards don’t spawn shadowcreep on their own tile (e.g ooz and crawler) means that you also have to decide what to dispel, the minion or the creep. This makes any control deck struggle to keep creep off the board.
In its current iteration, I don’t think this card is anywhere close to balanced. If there were a 7 mana card that did what the bloodborn spell currently does, I still think it could see play. Even an increase in the mana cost would be useless, as, in the late game, 2 guaranteed 5/5s or some 4/4s will be way more effective than the average card in a deck (seeing as cards in most decks are between 2 and 4 mana).
Variax essentially creates a lock on the late game, preventing most decks from competing in the long run. This is normally not an issue, but Variax can be brought out fairly consistently at 5 mana, putting the opponent at a severe disadvantage, and preventing many mid-late game decks from competing in the long run. Furthermore, this change in game state cannot be reversed, and snowballs quickly.
It’s Koan of Horns on steroids; cheaper, easier to play early, more consistent, and with a far more minor disadvantage to it.
As such, in my opinion the issue with Variax is that it pushes out late game decks, forcing players to address it early on or lose. I’d even argue it does this more effectively than Aggro and Rush Vaath does, although this is of course debatable.
Still, those are my thoughts. Variax itself is extremely strong, and while that might not be a bad thing, the effect it has on the meta is.
EDIT: also, please don’t give the reasoning “just defeat the Variax player faster”; that’s a cop-out, and doesn’t at all address the problem I presented above with how they snowball and overtake other late-game decks. You can always overtake the Variax player before they generate too much advantage, but the issue is with how Variax locks out decks from competing in the long game specifically.
5 Likes
There you go, good solid stats. As you can see, lilithe is hardly top 3 played in the 1400 MMR bracket, and not even top 3 on the rest. Apart from that, her winrate is the 5th highest in 1600 (not counting the 1 zir’an game), second highest by a very slim margin at 1200 extremely close to a group of generals that have approximately similar winrates and third higest in 1400, where it is incredibly close between a few generals. None of these stats support that her deck is OP.
She completely shuts down zir’an, that is true. And what? It is just a fact that lilithe has a good matchup against zir’an, that is all. When lilithe got skorned/plasma stormed to oblivion it was no problem, why should it be now that one deck has a bad matchup against one card? Which I have to add to that is not even readily available to all factions.
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Doesn’t change that fact that Abyssian has many cards that are just outright OP and the only reason why she isn’t higher is because Magmar is dumping on everything. Also that graph does not show divisions so its info is mostly useless.
While I agree that Variax isn’t a big problem, these stats should be taken with a grain of salt because they include games from pre-expansion.
I cant believe the community has missed this glaring issue, in the 1600 mmr bracket, zirix has a 100% win rate, #nerfvet
9 Likes
top…i wanna tip 5 gold for comment =D
NERF VETRUVIAN 100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
These damn stats mean nothing when Vetruvian has 100% win rate.