I’d rather hear from a s rank player because although there having problems in whatever division there in with whatever style deck the way its usually brought up in the forums is the game as a whole so hearing insight from someone with more experience imo eases the community just a little. They may not be on a pedestal but its no arguement there doing something right.
Tempo Lyonar still broken
Regarding “unpleasant”, you are right. Ideally the game should enjoyable for everyone (or at least for as many people as possible), regardless of ability level.
Regarding game balance you are wrong. If someone is stuck in any rank bracket other than S they are stuck there for a reason. They are not good enough at the game/lack the required understanding/lack the evaluation skills to meaningfully contribute to balancing discussions. Of course things seem too strong when someone is not a good player with a not good deck and they’re losing a lot. But that’s on them, not on whatever it is they’re losing to. Balancing decisions should be SOLELY based on the highest level of play and with the assumption that players are playing perfectly or at least exceedingly well. Someone making mistakes and losing does not make what they are losing to “imbalanced”.
No it shouldn’t. Balancing decisions should be based on what is best for the state of the game overall and not just on one section of the player base. S Rank players may play the most or have the highest win rate, which is why those people are in S Rank, but ignoring the vast majority of the player base doesn’t sound like a good decision. People below S Rank are more likely to complain about certain cards or things about the game, but that doesn’t always make them completely wrong or not have a valid criticism when it comes to card balance.
Card power and player competency aren’t intertwined. The best players can make lackluster cards shine, while developing players might still have trouble using seemingly-broken cards. Not to say there are all sorts of broken cards/decks running around, but using a player’s skill to judge cards/decks isn’t enough on its own.
S-Rank players tend to have more experience, and often are able to make more educated judgments than lower-ranked players. But there has to be reasoning behind those judgements. Saying “I’m S-Rank, so I’m right.” doesn’t explain your opinion. I reached S-Rank last season, and I know I still have more to learn about the game. If you can explain your reasoning, then more power to you. If a player in Bronze can validate their reasoning for why a card is too strong, more power to them.
At the end of the day, each player has strengths and weaknesses, so there will be complaints coming from all angles. We’ve already witnessed this with the latest patch, and all of the varying opinions people had on it. So you’re welcome to express your thoughts (That’s what the forums are about
). And if you truly believe your reasoning to be more valid than someone else’s, then I’m sure you don’t need to use your S-Rank title to prove it.
Why should there be changes?
Holly immolation is easily countered by positioning.
Circle of life is 5 mana clear spell that more often than not can’t clear abyssian juggernoughts, and is the only counter lyonar have to kelaino. (Except dispell)
There is grasp of agony that is basically 1 mana holly immulation for abyssians (maybe weaker a little but costs 1 mana and still clears the 2/3, 4/3 easy enough).
Not to mention if he spamms those spells the game likely will go into 9 mana turns (as those aren’t good tempo plays) so you can just spamm ‘skill’ revenants + neither summoning like every other cassiva player.
Of all factions lyonar are least toxic. they have very little out of hand damage, you can clear their board if you want too, position around holly immolation and tigers. what is a tiger compared to illucidator + thumping?
i find abyssians most toxic of all, many of their cards are extremely hard to counter yet very rewarding.
I also make S rank consistently now, but that doesn’t mean I’m good at design. It also doesn’t mean humans (the tourney player who released this absolute mess of changes) was good at design, either. It also doesn’t make you the god of balance decisions that you enjoy heralding yourself as.
The devs have specifically stated before that they look at all levels of play when making balance decisions - S rank players form less than 1 percent of the overall playerbase. If they didn’t pay attention to the vast, vast majority of their players, they would no longer have a game.
That said, while I don’t think Lyonar is “broken”, per se, I do not enjoy the fact that an unreasonable number of games are decided solely on the number of immolations they drew.
Alcuin his Holy Immolation 
do you have statistics for that number? what do you even consider reasonable number?
the game is quite complex. and becomes more complex with each added card. new mechanics are introduced, new cards are added. some cards like immulation are situational, there are situations where they are good and situations where they are bad. one has to know to identify those situations and prevent the opponent from getting most value of it.
when i started out i got to diamond without even realizing how to deal with holly immulation or makantor. later on i learned, it is essential if you want to get anywhere near s rank to know atleast to play around flag faction cards such as this one. sure for one who has no idea how to position those cards may seem strong maybe even OP, but once you know when to expect them and position properly suddenly they aren’t even scary. thats why you need to take low ranked player’s opinions with a grain of salt, sure it might not be fun to play against it if you just play into it all the time. the problem more often is a mistake made by the player than an actual problem with the card.
currently healnar is on the rise and is arguably stronger than tempo argeon, holly immulation has nothing to do with their strenght, their synergyes are just stronger than it, sunriser + double heal does 4 AoE damage and you can proc it every turn, (not limited to just 4 damage as well) unless it’s dealt with. compared to that holly immulation isn’t too impressive as it is.
if you really care of lower ranked players so much, you probably should start with asking variax to be removed. it is insanely OP in lower ranks, it has no counter and when games are going to 9 mana turns all the time as it happens in silver or low gold it’s just brutal.
Here you go.
Edit: tundranocaps’ post on extrapolating out Bronze numbers:
I’m not going to get into the rest because you can’t seem to get over any Abyssian cards despite what you just wrote about playing, and it’s off topic.
Well said. Just because its not broken does not mean its not bad for the game. Not everyone is playing this game seriously and if a card is annoying to most players, then they should address it, regardless if its broken or not.
Take for example reflector mage in magic the gathering, its not broken but it just annoys the heck out of most players; so it got banned; making the majority of the player base happy.
CPG actually released statistics which supports @maelrawn’s claims. https://news.duelyst.com/duelyst-rank-distribution-chart/
So yeah. Good luck to CPG if they only support the concerns of the .3% (not even 1% haha). I do sure hope that .3% pays well.
i actually meant number of played holly immolation / per win statistics, not number of players in general.
i have seen those statistics when they were published, by definition hightest rank a chievable will have the least players as it is hard to get there. no reason to bother getting there if it isn’t hard to begin with.
just watched the replay of my last lyonar game, i played 0 holly immulation and still beat a cassiva in rank 8 game, i admit it wasn’t exactly the best cassiva i’ve ever faced i still had about 20 hp in the end. all that thanks mostly to just proper positioning and forcing her to take unfavorable trades.
again those are not the statistics i was interested in.
have you seen a game that makes balance changes according to lower brackets of play?
i sure haven’t.
nonetheless variax is considered weak (becose is inconsistent) by most s rank players, yet it was nerfed in the last path. why? to make it a little less opressive in the lower ranks. so yeah they do take into consideration opinions of lower ranks players as well.
According to what you said in your next sentence, apparently one valid answer is: Duelyst.
I fully agree that they should pay a lot of attention to what less than S players ENJOY.
I just disagree that they should pay attention to what less than S players think is BALANCED.
Just my personal opinion.
No it’s not. You know why? Because they often chose to play it just for that 4 face dmg and a minion heal (which is equal to more face damage).
Who tf plays Holy Immo if you aren’t clearing at least a minion, healing a critical unit or using it for lethal? That’s a terrible play, leaves you without an answer if they start to surround you
Well it someone is playing dumb slow decks like me, the face damage from Hollyimmo is the biggest concern.
is it worth 4 mana? i doubt it, most argeon’s minions don’t even have 4 hp for the heal to take full effect, ziran could do better for 4 mana. it sertainly is one of the worst possible ways to use it.