Which of these cards is in the greatest need of a buff/rework? (November)

[destroy666]

Definitely Starhorn since it’s a general nearly unplayable in Gauntlet due to the nature of his BBS. Even if you draft a perfect aggro deck, there will still be even faster Faies which your BBS also fuels. Just look at the duelysthub stats - noone even bothers picking him and people that do end up losing terribly. So while you can take advantage of his BBS and buff it with new cards, it will still be terrible in the 2nd mode. Similar thing applies to Cass, except that she’s top tier in constructed and doesn’t need a buff, rather rarity balacing. CP really needs to start thinking about assigning rarities when it to comes to Gauntlet and realizing that one common threat (Abyssal Juggernaut) that synergizes with BBS isn’t enough, otherwise it’ll end up with card bans like HS did.

Then there are ranged battle pets - why their behavior hasn’t been changed yet? Noone except CP knows. Ofc making them smarter won’t make them playable since Battle Pets are terrible and the only 3 I still see played regularly are Pax, Ooz and perhaps Gro, but at least they’ll be pickable in Gauntlet.

There are many other cards that don’t make much sense - Sand Burrower, Flaming Stampede, Winterblade, Aerial Rift, Koan of Horns, Fountain of Youth, Echoing Shriek, Dark Seed, Mesmerize, Wind Stopper, etc. Also underpowered (no/low value most of the time) ones - Truestrike, Artifact Defiler, Mask of Shadows, Polarity, Prophet of the White Palm, Bastion, Soboro, Artifact Hunter, Tethermancer, Firestarter and so on or slow ones that will probably wait endlessly for a meta slowdown, mainly 7+ mana minions.

[karsticles]

Reposting from last month since my votes stayed the same:
I think that expensive legendary cards ought to
be faction-defining cards that have a huge impact on the game. Storm
Kage almost never has this effect. Today I played 15 matches with a
deck entirely designed to make Storm Kage work…and he was redundant. I
replaced Storm Kage with Bloodrage Mask, and the deck was better in
every way. He offers absolutely nothing to Songhai because:

1. He is
   a 7-mana minion. This just is not something Songhai does. Even
   Grandmaster Zendo, a card that would be played heavily in any other
   faction, is rarely used in Songhai. The faction aims to use high
   utility minions combined with spells to control the board. A big bulky
   cannon doesn’t fit the faction.

2. Kage Lightning is largely pointless in a large number of matchups.
   Songhai does not need more nukes to kill minions - it doesn’t win by
   clearing the board. It wins by clearing the enemy general (har har).

3. Kage Lightning’s animation needs a rework.

Storm Kage is my favorite card in Duelyst - thematically. I love
value minions, and I love burn. If a Storm Kage deck were viable, it
would be the only thing I ever played in this game. To make Storm Kage
viable, I think he should be reworked to something like:
5 mana.
4/5
Whenever a spell you cast deals damage, add a Kage Lightning to your hand.

Kage Lightning:
2 mana
Deal 1 damage to any enemy.

So it’s mana-inefficient, but massive value.

Alternatively, Storm Kage could add a Kage Lightning to your hand at the end of every turn.

My other votes:
I voted for Ace because he is objectively one of
the worst cards in the game. In an entire expansion based on Battle
Pets, it’s flat-out anger-inducing that Songhai doesn’t even have two
good pets. Xho is already questionable in value, but Ace is just
horrendous. They could simply make Ace immobile (he’s a turtle…moves
slow!) and it would be an improvement to a card. Is there any other
card that you can legitimately say that? Removing movement as an option
is a buff? I would love to get a viable Ace. If he can’t be ranged,
then make him melee - just make him usable.

Mesmerize:
This card is almost amazing. Make it amazing so Faie has something more than Hearth Sister to combo with in-faction.

If I had a fourth vote, I would vote Starhorn - he is a special kind
of terrible, and as a general, that deserves special attention. He can
only be viable by Counterplay Games shoehorning him in through cards
designed solely to benefit from him drawing excess cards, and it will
never go well.

If I had a fifth vote, it would be Mogwai, just because I really want
him to draw cards from spells that move him. He would be a great boon
to Backstabhai and what some are calling Movehai. He’s almost a great
card, and even as a great card he wouldn’t be too good. He would just
be another card draw option, and this game really does need more of
those.

[ezekeel]

I voted for Starhorn, Truestrike and Phalanxar.

Starhorn’s BBS is just rubbish except for extremely specialized gimmick decks.

Truestrike and Phalanxar are basic cards new players have to rely on when building their decks and they are both terrible and considering how important the new player experience is for the long term survival of any game these should be a priority over obscure legendaries.

Phalanxar is the worst basic faction 2-drop in the game and as a new player makes it really hard to build a Magmar deck with enough decent 2-drops, especially now that Shroud is nerfed.

Truestrike is one of the only basic Lyonar removal tools (the other being Martyrdom which also sucks and should be in that poll IMO) and it does too little compared to other basic 2-mana removals like Phoenix Fire and Chromatic Cold and also Lyonar’s own Lasting Judgement.

[excogitator]

More heals and Small minion removal.

Right now, cards that are good against Aggro are not bad per say, but are extraordinarily weak compared to the aggro cards themselves and cards that punish big minions.

Cards like Plasma Storm, Stars Fury, Breath of the Unborn and Emerald Rejuvinator, while not useless like some of the above listed cards, do little to counter aggro and are underpowered compared to the cards that they are supposed to fight against.

The small minion removal and heals that Counterplay does introduce are mediocre at best. Echoing Shriek failed spectacularly and Azure herald was not nearly enough. Powerful anti-aggro cards like Keliano and… Keliano are the exception rather than the rule while powerful aggro cards abound.

I chose Echoing Shriek not for what it does, but what counterplay wanted to do by printing it; provide a viable counter for aggressive minions.

[ballbagg]

Pantheran should really have been added to this list. It’s an unusable card with really nice artwork which is a shame. It sees play less than MANY cards on this list.

The number of people who actually play this card must be astronomically small. I’ve not seen it once, which is on par with only 4 other cards in this list (Oserix, winterblade, Crusader & Ace)

[orthoceras]

I’ll give my motivations for each pick:

• Zir’An: The BBS is fine in my opinion, what this General lacks is a strong proactive play that can’t be abused in a better way by her counterpart Argeon.
  Obliterate, Spectral Revenant, Spiral Technique, Elucidator+Thumping Wave, Makantor Warbeast, Bounded Lifeforce, Saberspine + Argeon’s BBS + Holy Immo, Saberspine + Wailing Overdrive, Mechaz0r + Spirit of the Wild; those are all highly proactive cards or two cards combos that can end or turn a game around on the same turn they are played.
  Zir’An currently lacks a powerplay on par with those others.

• Mogwai: Currently the weaker of the other four 3 mana card draw neutrals. Sojourner has a strictly better body, Blazehound has an immediate effect, and Spelljammer has both of them at the same time. The effect only procs if the minion itself moves, and not when it is teleported by spells or minion effects, a shame given that synergy with Kaleos BBS or any other positioning effects could have been a thing.

• Truestrike: A card that’s currently keeping hostage two cards at once: Sun Sister Sterope and itself. It’s a worse Phoenix Fire without any in-faction spell power synergy, the possibility of targeting the enemy General’s face or even removing a good vanilla 2 drop, and the fact that it doesn’t cantrip while others 1 mana spells like First Wish or Sphere of Darkness do does not help.

[maelrawn]

Not having seen something != it doesn’t get used.

As for Pantheran, there were some people using him in a list posted on these forums like a week or two ago, and having success. You have to keep in mind that even though something might be good, it can also just not get used because it’s alternative to the mainstream archetypes for a given faction. Pantheran exemplifies this because not only does he cost 1050 dust for a playset, you also need 2700 dust’ worth of cards just to enable that one other card in your deck, on top of being in a deck that doesn’t work the way most vet decks do, a leap of faith I don’t think anyone except very longtime players would be willing to make.

This game has a smaller community than similar games, as far as I can tell, and there is undoubtedly a whole load of as-yet uncreated archetypes that will remain so until someone has the disposable crafting materials and idea to experiment with them.

My vote went to, first and foremost, Astral; “card that is good if you don’t play it” doesn’t really work or make much sense. Maybe the buff could apply to all of the Astral Crusaders in your deck? I think that’d be awesome, simple enough (in a player-understanding sort of way), and solidify replace as a tier 2-1.5 deck.

Winterblade is just plain bad the way it is, (not killing something and wasting an artifact charge on it is pretty poor and likely disastrous for your life total), and Artifact Defiler is too situational to include, ever.

[cabbagecabbage]

Did you forgot you are comparing a class 2 drop to a neutral 1 drop??

[cabbagecabbage]

I agree 100% and was really happy to see your comment after I made a thread on reddit about this earlier today.

[bigfootmydog]

wait till the next expansion i bet mill starhorn comes out swinging

[3zekiel]

Lots of those have situational game winning power

[largebanana]

oh lord i just DE my prismatic Astral Crusader, i’ll go insane if he actually gets changed.

[paralykeet]

Sand Trap? Fountain of Youth? Wind Slicer? Orb Weaver? Mirage Master?

xD Like, in all seriousness (no kappa business like the first post-) Even the most optimal Wind Slicer plays don’t really go anywhere. While I’ve tried the Mirage Masters, you never want to copy your opponent’s stuff as much as your own- even though most of your opponent’s cards are better- making it just off of being a decent support card.

[karsticles]

Mirage Master isn’t meta friendly right now, but it’s not an inherently bad card. Same with Wind Slicer and Orb Weaver.

Fountain of Youth is definitely a card to consider. Sand Trap…it feels like Songhai would like that card more.

[paralykeet]

Mirage Master IS an inherently bad card, same with Wind Slicer, and Orb Weaver, but it isn’t clear until you’ve tried pushing them.

Mirage Master has the kind of effect that Vetruvian wants, except that you can’t clone your own things- and when you clone your opponent’s material, the Mirage Master is often damaged, and a turn behind your opponent’s developed tempo. If it healed itself, allowed you to clone your own things, or proc’d opening gambits on the way down- it’d be a completely different story. But as is, on average your expected plays are to clone a damaged provoke minion. Not exactly a way to effectively use 4 mana.

There are 4 cards that Wind Slicer effects, 2 are relatively unplayable, one of those is even detrimental to getting board control with Wind Dervishes (because their death at 2 health allows you to position your own units better.) So usually, the decks that want to pack Wind Slicer have 6 cards in the 39 that it helps cheapen. 3 of them don’t do anything impressive, leaving you with 3 cards in the 39 that Windslicer with effects that actually means something (making Star’s Fury or Whispers combos better.) The unreliability, combined with the lack of need for cost reduction on Obelysks makes the card pointless when held up to neutral standards like Primus Fist, Healing Mystic, and Rust Crawler- that reliably do more work in the same decks- not to mention in-class options like Pax.

Orb Weaver is a card that looks very appealing on paper, but plays out terribly. 3 mana is simply too much for a chain-summon enabler without cards that specifically support it (a’la Wraithling Swarm.) When I first played the card, I had thought it would be solid, 8 points of stat for 3 mana is Chaos Elemental value, right? Except that 2/2 divided into 2 bodies is probably the single worst way to slice that up, given that most standard 2 drops are 2/3s, and thus survive combat with a Weaver, and the opposing General can face-sponge one rather easily, consuming one of your cards for 0 of their’s. Ontop of that, while it obviously wants to combo with Inner Oasis, it’s a 6 mana combo, to develop a pair of 2/5s where any other standard 6 drop would be preferable. There’s simply no reasonable way to enable it, or justify playing it as a 3 drop (where Zyx, Bloodtear and Rae all create better chain summons, answer problems, and combo with Oasis on the cheap- further making the Weavers even more pointless.

… I’ve tried very hard to make Fountain work, especially with Nimbus. It just doesn’t. If you do any work with it, you were already winning so hard that it could have been any other card in the deck. Sand Trap simply doesn’t do enough. As far as soft-answers go, it’s even worse than Beam Shock. It just desperately needs some other effect stapled to it (but I’d rather reuse the art asset for a decent line AoE damage spell- which Vet is absolutely starved for.)

[karsticles]

I am closing the poll since the balance patch dropped.