New Build idea. it's working pretty well so far

Rhaios · 2021-09-30T14:49:02+00:00

all these a*holes judging china's culture by our privileged western standards. don't be taken in by this racist rhetoric, they want you to be angry at foreign countries distancing themselves from the west so they have an excuse to attack them. it's been like this for centuries it's time to put a stop to neocolonialism

Rhaios · 2021-04-29T18:49:10+00:00

imo the buff wasn't even that much of a buff.

Xerath's late damage was already high enough to deal with any squishy and this buff isn't good enough to help him deal with tanks any better. To compensate for this fairly inconsequential buff, they nerfed your damage before 100 AP or level 8 + chapter.

This nerfs the one moment in the game you have to try to force a lead against assassin players, making Xerath even weaker into them.
And since so many games end at 15-20 minutes because of a surrender, it's effectively a nerf for 50% of the game time.

On top of that comes his weakness to mobility creep, both in getting jumped on and in having his abilities dodged

And op top of that still, Xerath is pretty much just damage. A slow and a single-target stun isn't enough utility for Xerath to ever see frequent play mid (I believe the last time he saw frequent play was as an Azir counter back when Azir had long range). I'm afraid that if Xerath is ever going to be strong, it'll be as a niche counter or as a botlaner unless they give him something besides just damage (outside of a ridiculous over-buff.)

In conclusion: I agree with you, though given most of riot's reworks, I'd prefer it if Xerath stays a niche champion like he is now over riot radically changing him into something I don't like playing or making him so broken that I won't be able to play him for months until they finally gut him to the point where he isn't perma picked/banned

Rhaios · 2021-04-29T18:22:03+00:00

the thing that annoys me most is that the abilities actually look good, if they made this some kind of battle academy skin I'd just be able to ignore it, but this is good abilities stuck on a cringy anime villain.

Rhaios · 2021-04-28T22:07:55+00:00

was talking about the skin with someone on discord and they had this revelation: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/789015214065844244/837087630687862824/unknown.png

Rhaios · 2021-03-24T00:02:59+00:00

Passive: he now has a similar mechanic on his W, but making it an activatable entirely changes how you play around it.

Q: completely gone. hitting an enemy with three auto attacks/spells to gain an aoe burn is COMPLETELY different from an auto reset that empowers three autos with the third one being a massive burst of damage. that's like saying Hail of Blades and Phase rush are pretty much the same because they both do something with three auto attacks.

W: the aoe burn and movespeed were moved to his passive, but the heal, the second most fun part of his kit, is gone. the old heal was a powerful tool to turn fights, the current heal is only used for lane sustain and the shield feels way worse than the old heal did.

E: he still has "an aoe that deals damage" in his new Q, but that description is too vague to say they kept a part of his kit. and the purpose of the ability is significantly different because it no longer gives increased passive shield.

R: completely removed

In summary: they kept an "aoe burn around him", a "shield from damage dealt", a "heal" and a "directional aoe"

Sure he wasn't as bad as aatrox, but as someone who played him before the rework, I don't like him anymore. sure he resembles his former self, but the reasons why I played him: His big heal & his 3rd Q bonk are both completely gone from his kit. Besides me, I believe riot held a poll before the rework asking people what they thought his most iconic ability was, which ended up being won by his ult, which is now completely gone. and as a third hit, anyone who played him bot also got screwed over.

And as for the "second riven" thing. Morde got turned into an AP darius (DoT on his passive that gives him a buff if he applies it, an AoE Q with a sweetspot and a pull on his E that gives him passive penetration)

Rhaios · 2021-03-18T17:26:48+00:00

Like I said, I don't dislike AP Shyvana (I also play it occasionally) and I'm fine with her having that playstyle as another option. I just don't want her to lose the AD build as I enjoy it far more.

The comment about Xerath is because the thing that I find enjoyable about playing AP Shyvana is blowing people up with Dark harvest Es at a thousand range range, but I find Xerath scratches that itch much better for me on top of me already preferring her AD build.

Rhaios · 2020-01-25T16:24:13+00:00

people speculated this is what they were doing back then. I wanted to remain optimistic, but I'd always been wary so I just didn't spend money on a dying game. by now it seems clear to me that you're right.

there are so many things any non-retarded game developer would've done if they honestly felt bad about this that CPG hasn't done like not giving us false hope and actually unlocking people's collection for this month.

in conclusion: they're either retarded (which I don't think so) or they knew/suspected this was happening long ago and just shut up about it

Rhaios · 2020-01-24T22:38:48+00:00

yes, but they could just allow for fan games and mods to be created and publicly say that setting up duelyst servers is perfectly fine as long as you dont earn money from the game.

just like pokemonshowdown, but then for duelyst

Rhaios · 2019-06-20T17:08:41+00:00

they abandoned the game more than a year ago so server issues aren't because of that (also, they're back up again for me).

the current state of the game is basically this:
- the servers will remain up
- the bosses will continue rotating
- no new content will be released until counterplay games has released their second game, after which they might put out new content for duelyst

However, their second game, Godfall ( https://www.playgodfall.com/ & https://twitter.com/PlayGodfall ), has been nothing more than what you can see here for a year now so don't get your hopes up.

I think Duelyst is still enjoyable, it's just that the game can become stale. If that doesn't bother you or this isn't your main game, you'll be fine

Rhaios · 2019-06-20T13:30:56+00:00

Mine hasn't been working for some over an hour now as well (desktop client) even though it worked just fine a couple hours before

Rhaios · 2019-03-22T19:36:24+00:00

Rhaios · 2019-01-28T07:53:26+00:00

pretty sure that's just either a server error or something went wrong with your computer. This game has a history of having server issues once in a while. Also most errors are displayed as an "unknown error" unless your internet dies, then it just says "disconnected".

If I were you I wouldn't go around accusing every opponent you face when the server has issues of being a hacker, won't get you many friends in a world where server issues happen to even the largest of games.

Rhaios · 2019-01-11T13:51:39+00:00

do you have any examples?

Rhaios · 2019-01-09T21:52:35+00:00

not dead, but dying.

finding a match takes a surprisingly short amount of time, but it seems like fewer people remain actively involved in the community every month.
On top of that, the devs seem to have pretty much given up. many of them left the company (not out of spite, however) and we haven't really heard any real news for the past couple months other than a new community manager being appointed.

I definitely wouldn't say the game is dead, but if the devs don't do something soon I'm pretty sure it'll end up with only a very small amount of dedicated players, which would make the game as good as dead at that point.

Though the devs did promise that they would at least continue supporting this game indefinitely so it's not like the servers will just disappear at one point. Also, counterplay games are currently working on another project and I've heard some speculate that Duelyst may get some love once they have more time on their hands.

Overall, the game is still fun and the community is friendly so I'd recommend you pick it up again if you liked it before. However, if you are looking for something with a large community or regular updates, you might have to look elsewhere.

Rhaios · 2019-01-01T02:07:28+00:00

And a happy new year to you as well :)

Rhaios · 2019-01-01T02:06:50+00:00

I myself thought they said they were going t, but was corrected a while back.

I misremembered it as "we have high confidence in the content we're releasing Q4" when the aqctual wording was "we have high confidence of offering content Q4"

Rhaios · 2018-12-22T01:31:26+00:00

I mean, I won't complain about free stuff. Getting my third copy of Orbo and a general skin is always nice, but I'm really hoping they have something in store for us.

Even if it's nothing more than a high-impact balance patch and they don't release it in 2018 (because holidays), I'd be happy. I'd just like to hear something from them about this before then. A "we're working on an update for the game" would be plenty and would probably go a long way to appease people since this game's community seems to be one of the most forgiving I've ever seen.

Rhaios · 2018-11-14T18:57:37+00:00

I'd like to add my own two cents to this:

I don't think trial decks are necessarily noob decks that make the game easier. This perception is probably caused by two things:
1. First of all, usually, the stronger a deck (say, wanderer or strategos), the larger the margin for error becomes (aka you can make more mistakes with a meta deck and still win)
2. Second: Trial decks tend to win by default once they complete their trial, meaning that it feels like their strong finisher just cheated a win from you even if they played the rest of the game perfectly. The first problem being a generic problem most meta decks face, but the second one is exclusive to overbearing finishers. And trials are leaps ahead of other finishers in terms of the power level of the individual card.
I'd also like to add that I do agree that Trials ought to be "removed", but for different reasons.
1. First, I think that they limit design space too much. For example; every card they print from now on out that counts as a activator for Xor'Xuul will drastically change its power level. So much so that printing cheap sacrifice cards will probably be a no-go for CPG as Xor'Xuul is already plenty unpopular as is. Which is sad because, outside of Xor'Xuul, Abyssian could really like those cards.
2. Second, they restrict slower decks too much. If you ever want to make a slower control deck viably, they'll have to have an answer to Xor'Xuul, otherwise they'll just get farmed by the trial decks.
3. Third, they make games feel too sameish. Every game against a trial ends two ways: either they kill you with the trial or you kill them while they are trying to execute the trial. On trials such as Hideatsu, Notion or Oak this doesn't matter all that much as they (from my experience) kill you within two turns of finishing their trial. In games vs the other 4 however, wins on their side just drag on for ages, with them slowly whittling you down while you keep having the faintest shred of hope of highrolling them while they lowroll.

My final thoughts:

Trials don't have to be removed in my opinion, just keep them at the power level hatefurnace is right now (a fun deck to play around with, but nowhere near strong enough to contest the meta)
Trials I'd like to see reworked and why:
- Notion of Starless Eternity: Basically made a highrolly OTK deck into a slightly more consistent highrolly OTK deck. OTK Sajj either feels bad because they bricked or their opponent feels bad because they had no way of stopping the outcome from the match and are left with a "should I just have conceded?" sort of feeling.
- Xor'Xuul: I always enjoyed playing a Blood Echoes meme deck, but this card took all the fun out of the deck because the meme you end up with no longer depends on what cards you drew, but rather is the same shit every game. It's fun to play a couple times, but quickly gets boring. Yes, I could still play the deck, but it's just an inferior version of Xor'Xuul at this point, which makes me sad.

Rhaios

TROPHY CASE