It’s happening! Later this month!
As a Lyonar player, this pleases me. It’s not a rework, but it’s a start at least. Is it going to be enough?
PC Gamer reports Divine Bond is getting nerfed! (M2-->M3)
Is this really worth it’s own thread?
More like a tickle than a nerf. Lyonar is looking very good so far.
4 Likes
Guess we’ll find out ;).
Well deserved nerf, even tho it won’t change the playability of DB , especially with the introduction of this abomination …
I’m curious how long it takes until I ragequit a game because of ironcliffe heart.
I’m not overreacting - that was just a statement.
(BTW: In combo with a 3 Mana DB it’s 7 Mana 13 out of hand damage if you have at least 1 minion in reach of opponent General.)
Many of the new cards seem VERY powerful. You can like it or not. It’s a new direction the game goes to.
Me, for myself, like tactical decisions more then absurd out of hand damage combos - and so I said this. But it was no overreaction in any way.
Peace!
Right - so we have the bane of humanity revealed -
https://forums.duelyst.com/uploads/short-url/l97IrHuKWHE52fpdRq7SYXfyPZk.png
My initial opinion of the card and its usefulness was a bit heated, so I took a deep breath and returned to analysing this sensibly.
What is the average Lyonar deck?
9 2 cost minions, Adept, Lion and Fist/Mystic
6 3 cost minions, Knights and Tigers
minimum 3 4 cost minions - out of Dioltas, Shieldmaster, L’Kian and assorted
minimum 3 5 cost minions - Ironcliffe, Dancing Blades, ZenRui assorted mix
So let’s take a look at Heart targets and how we might acquire them.
An Adept/Mystic/Lion that’s attacked once - so in total you spent 2 mana for initial summon, 4 mana for Heart - 6 mana and you gained a full health Ironcliffe and 0-7 extra damage (combined - not all on general) depending on how well the situation was.
Same goes for further - if anything its basically Upgrade! on a minion into a known statline + effect. Its actually not increasing the board presence in terms of numbers - so basically it changes from ‘remove this X minion’ to ‘remove this Ironcliffe’ a turn after - it’s a good card, no doubt. It’s not a game-breaking one.
Let’s take an extreme situation - you left a 3/1 Ironcliffe alive after taking off 9 hp off it - unfortunately for you the enemy Lyonar has Heart + Bond - 7 mana - refreshing the Cliffe and making it 13/10 - he swings at you and deals 13 dmg. Ouch.
BUT - this is almost possible now! Take this 3/1 Ironcliffe. Cast Holy Immolation on it, dealing 4 to your face, and making it 3/5. Give it a 3 mana DBond - 8/5 - and the combo dealt 12 dmg and leaves an 8/3 Provoke behind. It also dealt 4 dmg to any nearby minions.
Now you can argue that one leaves behind a 13/10 Provoke and the other an 8/3 Provoke. Wow V A L U E. But actually, if you survived the initial Bond swing, chances are you’ll remove the minion this turn. If you didn’t that’s no different to now.
No Different From Now
This is actually the underlying problem. What this card does, is make no change to the current one-track nonsense of big hp minion - bond - win or die trying.
The combo itself is mediocre. The fact that it reinforces Divine Bond as the win condition is the bigger issue.
We still have more cards left to be revealed, so we have to reserve judgement and see if Bond itself might get changed, not just its cost.
(I’m hearing these fanciful ideas of Bloodtears and Dragonlarks - well let me put it this way, if you run those 1 cost minions with the express plan of comboing on the 7 mana turn you wil lose due to lack of early presence. Not to mention we are seeing a great increase in incidental Area-effect damage. Good Luck leaving that Bloodtear alive when the enemy has a Battle Panddo or Skorn.---- Or be my guest and take over S rank 1 and multiple tournaments abusing this combo. Sure. Do that.)
1 Like
Dear Counterplay,
The issue with DB has nothing to do with mana cost. 
I’m no english native and that might be the reason you both @ZyX and @yodaprime misunderstood me.
I didn’d say and I didn’t mean the card is gamebreaking.
So, really: Peace!
(And thanks for detailed card analysis!)
1 Like
Dragonlark and Planar Scout have often been on the edge of viability in Lyonar though by enabling Holy Immo plays. Cassyva’s ping makes them less than ideal in the current meta, but post-Shimzar we may not be seeing much of Cass for a bit (my personal prediction based off of cards released so far-- maybe very wrong).
In any case, I think you’re underestimating the impact of Heart. The issue I see is the relative difficulty of counterplay. DB right now has so narrow a use-case at the higher end of the ladder that some dispell and a hollow grovekeeper or two is enough to counter it. After Heart drops, dispell and Grovekeepers will not be anywhere near enough.
13 damage at 7 mana with almost no setup isn’t unheard of- Bounded Lifeforce after 2 overloads gives 12 damage. But a quick comparison- avoiding being in reach of the enemy general is far easier than avoiding the reach of any of their minions, and at the cost of an extra card-back Heart-DB doesn’t leave your general with 8 health or less, next to the enemy, like Bounded Lifeforce. That means, unlike BL which has to be a finisher or else it’s too risky, Heart-DB is just a 7 mana burst combo that comes at a very low opportunity cost.
Beyond Bounded Lifeforce, something like 13 damage at 7 mana is quite unheard of. The only situations that happens in are ones where you lost the game already pretty much- very down on board presence for example -or were unable to stop some fairly obvious setup, like a Vorpal Reaver in range of your general, an Ironcliff in range of your general, or a Vetruvian general next to you with artifacts equipped. Songhai mayyyybe could draw super lucky and pull some insane 8gates nonsense after a lantern fox and abjugator play, but they would have to be luckier than satan. Looking over these situations, I think it’s easy to see a 7 mana 2 card combo for 13 damage that only requires any minion to be in range of damaging the enemy is another level of burst, better than anything we have right now.
Let me put it this way: think about the times you faced Lyonar players. You probably kept removal on-hand for Ironcliffes. Now imagine, starting at 7 mana and on, you needed to have removal for every minon your opponent plays near you or you face the same danger as you did from an Ironcliffe, even from a dragonlark in the far corner. Not as easy, huh?
In my opinion the only hope Heart has at not being broken with DB unchanged at 3 mana is its somewhat bad pricing. Arcalyte Regalia, Holy Immo, and Dioltas drop in at 4 mana, and are all realllllly good cards. But Heart is mainly going to be played at 7 mana or more, so it won’t screw with the curve too much imo.
1 Like