Because they can easily kill you from full or nearly full, where healing just won’t help much.
I did not complain about them being overpowered, because teching healing can help, which I always do anyways since I hate loosing to aggro.
I am complaining because it is toxic solitaire, without counterplay, that ignores the most fundemental aspect of duelyst, the board. Having very little to do with you and dependent on the spellhais draws.
you call it “toxic solitaire” and yet for the early turns the deck does nothing but try and stabalise the board, how is that anything but interactive? Sure it has a burst finisher at around 8 mana, but how is that any worse than any of the other stuff in the game like rev, decispikes, mechs, titan, and seraphim which are unanswerable just because part of that combo needs to play a minon rather than a spell?
No offense but i don’t think you are anywhere near objective when it comes to Songhai^^.
I mean i got killed from 21 health yesterday by a Mantra Deck on his 8 mana turn but honestly, that doesn’t mean Songhai is broken or toxic. It just means that my Vale Ascension Ziran Deck is too slow. Had complete board dominance that entire game but still didn’t manage to kill him in 7 turns where he did essentially nothing.
I mean if you think that uninteractive combos are generally toxic, that’s fine. But in my opinion combo decks are a part of card games, a fun part even, and they are always “uninteractive”. Whats the point of putting a combo together if it doesn’t give you an advantage? They are only a problem if the get out of hand and that’s clearly not the case, not with 8 Gates and certainly not with Mantra.
All of those use the board, have counterplay, don’t outright win on their own, or are liniear.
Gates does none of those, and is consistent and versatile. The fact that it needs to stabilize is the only thing keeping it from being utterly busted. And it does a pretty good job at that considering how versatile it’s cards are.
I love combos and powerful cards. I am right here defending Azure and everything else Blob mentioned. But a combo needs to have counterplay and use the board like all of those do. Gates doesent. And again I have not complained about it being over powered, but simply toxic and out of place in duelyst. It is considered one of the top decks after the big 3, and it is utterly infuriating.
I would very much like to know the counterplay to flash deci double spikes, a 4 card 8 mana combo dealing 18 damage across the board, more than what 8 g8s can do at the same card/mana cost. not to mention it doesn’t even lose card advantage in teh process.
That is the only one of the carts you mentioned that I dislike. That would be the “liniear” thing I mentioned.
It is not versatile, it feeds your opponents cards, and costs you a decent amount of life as well so it’s at least fair. The situation you mentioned is an exceedingly rare one rather than common place as it is in gates. You are conviently overlooking the massive drawbacks of both pulling off and doing said thing, where as I have seen gates do more, frequently, without giving me cards or taking damage.
Then there is also the fact that it’s one of the few things that makes starhorn good and magmar is far from dominant at the moment so it’s really not a problem.
And the rest of your call outs do not come anywhere near the burst potential, have plenty of counterplay, and use the board.
Some quick ideas, I guess there are more elaborate ones, but just taking 30sec to answer :
This is a silly argument to make, the combo is still by your definition toxic, even if it is the only thing keeping starhorn in the game. You are also still complaining about mantra while it is significantly further from being strong in this meta.
seraphim frequently causes huge bursts of damage from very small boardstates, mech cannot be killed by all but a few cards, rev does face damage regardless of what it hits and can be buffed to silly levels by phantasm for more damage tha8 g8s/spikes, and titan creates boardstates that are impossible to recover.
something fairly important to ask at this point is what does using the board even mean? is it stoping your opponent from interacting via body blocking? playing minions? using removal? knowing what you mean by this is vital if this discussion is going to go anywhere.
Flash
Decimus
Spikes
Spikes
BBS
20 damage
Eight gates
Rock hurl
Phoenix fire
Phoenix fire BBS
Mantra
Death
Big difference.
the other big difference is one of them cost 12 mana 
Yea, by my definition it is still toxic. But again I think its fair due to being linear and not of really comparable burst or consistency. If you get starhorn low enough on life he just cant do it…unlike the many times I have lost to a reva at one health while I was close to full. Silly arguement or not, its just one more reason why its ok and Gates is not.
Seraphims burst is small and reliant on which side of the board she is on, and or on establishing an answerable board first, both of which you can play around and is again a fraction of the burst potential. Yea Vanar is a touch strong right now, but that is mostly Luminous Charge and Flawless fault, not ghost, and again you can tech to deal with those.
I am also not particularly fond of Phantasm but you have every chance to react to, play around, and make sure you have an answer for it, and its a fringe case it multi buffs a rush minion, tiger is more of an issue then phantasm is. Rush in general can be played around with good positioning, provoke, and nightwatcher, and all rush minions use the board, and have fairly low stats to their mana costs so they are pretty fair, and again a fraction of the burst potential.
There are tons of ways to answer Mechazor, most of which are versatile cards that you ought to include anyways. Titan means your deck is handicapped without spells, is very position focused, and is reliant on developing an answerable field.
Using the board means anything you mentioned, or anything that is position oriented…not being to picky about that. Gates uses none of them.
Powerlevel alone is not the main reason why cards are broken. A faction can have (and pretty much all do) several very powerful cards and not be a problem if they are not dominating the meta, and or there are good ways to play around them. Gates reva is meta relevant, is not linear, and is unacounterable. Its a problem.
I wouldn’t include mantra in that list. But replace that mantra with one or two extra cheap spells and or a spear that can be equiped prior, and it is comparable or more damage for simmilar cost and number of cards, is easier to assemble since you have a ton of ways to put that together rather then needing 4 specific cards, and is a deck that is better at whittling down your opponents health.
Then dont forget the deci/spikes is also effectively 14 damage since that 6 health swing towards yourself is a huge deal, and often means you are not even able to do said combo even if you have it, on top of if they are not dead they now have a full hand.
One is fair, one is not.
there are actually a couple ways to counter gates, force the use of burst cards to clear your board or stay above the amount of burst they have.
as for using the board, you didn’t really help me understand your position here. Does removal count as using the board? is it simply anything you can play around? or it it just limited to minions moving about and being played?
I think I’ll open an “interactivity” thread so we can continue discussion there since I think we’ve veered away from Azure Summoning at this point. Definitely an interesting point of discussion. 
That has to be sarcastic. Literally no one has ever used abjudicator, the 3 drop to get any kind of good mantra combo, and can’t see that it has to be taken into account because you would always be using it? Okay.
I have, but my decks are never mainstream quality though.
This is second time I have seen you said this and you are so wrong on this
The cards are fairly costed,So to set up and executing the combo are ridiculously hard. So much so that your “toxic combo” isn’t used much and by your own words Songhai isn’t overpowered.
It is not uncounterable. Prophecy made card that when it was released Songhai players were cursing at counterplay. It is called Magesworn and it destroy the spell heavy deck.Songhai has all of one removal( Onyx bear seal) that can remove it permanently. As long Magesworn exists that deck will never be a thing
Side note:Duelyst is still very young card game and not all the tools need to completly deal with stuff are in the game for example
Skulling Giest- Destroy all one cost cards in both player’s hands and decks
Dirty Rat-Your opponent summons a random minion from their hand
Gnomeferatu-Remove the top card from a person’s deck
These are couple cards from Hearthstone they break combos,The only one that would really work in Duelyst is Giest but that is the type of cards you need for “noninteractive” card based decks. They already added Magesworn(Archon and Keshrai fanblade existed as well) It is not going to get better for this type of deck more these style tech cards will be added to the game at some point.
When Azure Summoning can summon lots of flying minions.
It’s fine.
When Mana Vortex only give your next one Spell cost 1 less and draw card at the end of turn.
Suddenly everyone lose their mind. (Rip old mana vortex)
Btw, it’s just a joke. But i still think Azure need a nerf.
Granted, October Reva absolutely had to be taken down a peg, and while the vortex nerf was the wrong one at the time (Blood Rage has always been offender number 1), that’s the change they settled on.
A more apt comparison is the late Ancestral Divination who only really was “broken” in the sense that at NINE mana, you could combo it with Koan of Horns.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
My experience in playing against or with azure summoning is rather limited. That said, I can think of other strategies that achieve the same effect on the board. I do not think this is busted at all. You need a pretty specific hand to pull this off early on, and each azure summoning costs a card in itself. Even if you play the full combo in the first turn on the right, you are stuck with two dead cards and your last unit doesn’t draw anything.
And the board you retain can get wiped/provoked with relative ease by most factions. And those decks cannot really run Nosh-rak unless if they want a dent in their consistency. This seems like it is explosive early on but beatable, and a fine play after turn 1. I do not think any change is needed here.