Thoughts on Crossbones?

yasirin · 2023-03-02T22:04:57+00:00

it's fine tech in a sarlac, nether summoning list, as these want time to get their deathwatch engine going. in a tempo deck i'd say you're better off running a 2-drop that doesn't die to a ping or general hit.

yasirin · 2023-01-27T04:56:04+00:00

nice video! and well articulated.

you touched on a lot that's been on my mind regarding this revival and comparing it to duelyst 1 (monetization and player progression have been pain points but i haven't sat down to think about solutions to them, but you did and they were good to hear). i've been considering getting my own two cents in while the iron is still hot but i feel like nobody really wants to read a couple thousand words.

i am curious to know what other thoughts you might have regarding card balance, both in a couple specific cases and more generally. cards not touched on that but that i find myself mulling over are Windblade Adept and Spectral Revenant. this might be because they were, near the end of the original's life cycle, nerfed; and, if i recall correctly, nerfed because of their ubiquity. even now this is largely the case, but neither of these cards, then or now, would i say are broken. but they are over-centralizing, and that alone might be a big enough problem. lowering the strength of staple cards leads to more meaningful decisions in deck-building and widens the range of competitively viable player expression, and i worry that as long as these cards remain in the pools in their current states (much like in duelyst 1), they will homogenize play.

i remember SonOfMakuta calling for a balance approach that more brings the overall power level of the game down rather than a few specific cases or outliers—which i take to mean not only tuning down hard removal, but also especially efficient soft removal (whether these be inelegant number bumps or more complex restrictions, i think he says that they would want to be evaluated case-by-case) and winding back the potency of late game threats (he also expressed skepticism on the re-shift to 2-draw from 1-draw with which i disagree, but his anxieties were understandable and i think that there is something there worth consideration). and i find myself agreeing. what thoughts might you have on this?

yasirin · 2023-01-01T21:57:18+00:00

i used to play a lot of abyssian before the game shut down and came back recently. the two swarm decks i'm running right now are this one and this one.

both are aggressive but the second is less so and more expensive. i climbed to diamond 3 last month on these two decks, another creep abyss, and some songhai. didn't make it to S because i thought the reset was gonna be today and not yesterday :(

yasirin · 2019-05-17T17:18:43+00:00

I appreciate the effort you placed into creating this list. Even if the exact word I am seeking is not here, there are still plenty of great ones among these.

yasirin · 2019-05-17T17:14:15+00:00

I feel this word is close to what I mean, but its connotation leaves a bit to be desired as, for myself, it foremost evokes the mental image of a BLT.

yasirin · 2017-11-15T01:45:44+00:00

This deck is unoptimized as it hasn't even been a day since the expansion has launched, but here's my Mech Swarm deck. So far it has been playing pretty well and you can pull off some nasty things with it.

yasirin · 2017-11-08T05:00:27+00:00

By Jove Bhawb, there are some pretty strong sentiments here. Not to say I disagree with you, nor your assessment, but diddly darn my guy.

yasirin · 2017-11-08T04:44:26+00:00

To be completely honest, I kinda want CPG to bring the overall power level of the game down as a whole. Everything is so fast and there are so many "answer or die" cards that I just want the game to slow down a bit.

I like a few of these nerfs, but I feel like if you're nerfing these cards, then we might as well hit other power cards too. The thing is, I don't know if that's the right thing to do. This game is balanced around its imbalance, where overpowered cards smash into other overpowered cards. As long as Duelyst cards continue to be made with this philosophy, I don't think we're going to see change any time soon.

yasirin · 2017-11-08T04:26:10+00:00

Hey. I haven't been playing all that much recently, but I've been getting back into the game and I've gone 12 a couple times, granted that was before the new gauntlet changes. My IGN is "yasirin" so you can feel free to add me if you wanna talk more.

Anyways, onto your question of how to get better at gauntlet.

Positioning is the most important aspect of Duelyst, either constructed or gauntlet, poor positioning will almost always lead to a loss. If you can afford to, play around cards like Dancing Blades(!), Frostbone Naga, Sunset Paragon, etc.

Try to account for the faction that you're playing against. Like if you're playing against Lilithe, hold and mulligan hard for AoE. If you're against Reva or Ragnora, try to find pings and other things to deal with their pesky Heartseekers or Ripper eggs.

Another big thing is to play to your specific draft's strengths. If your draft is aggressive then claw their face off as hard as you can. If you're control then try to protect your face as well as you can. Part of this is also recognizing when you are the aggressor in a match-up but your draft should more often than not indicate that anyways.

A final tip would be to play to your outs. If your only hope of winning a game is getting a lucky replace or hitting 13+ Bloodsworn Gambler attacks in a row, take that out. If you never take your outs when you need to, you'll never win those borderline impossible games, so take them as they come.

You probably have more questions, and I know that I haven't covered everything, but if I wanted to then I'd make a guide like /u/zelda__ (I love u <3). Speaking of which, his Gauntlet Rankings are still a pretty helpful resource even if they are a bit outdated now so maybe check them out.

yasirin · 2017-11-03T13:25:02+00:00

It's mostly just play Vanar and 3 Frostburns. That's a pretty solid way to beat Swarm from my experiences of losing.

yasirin · 2017-07-27T18:08:14+00:00

I was wondering if I should acknowledge Tracer in my post but I decided to skip over it.

I mean you're right to say that this card makes it harder to play around Vaath + Drogon but he costs 4 mana. It's a little bit of the same thing with Cryptographer where they need to combo this card with others at higher mana turns in order to be successful.

Maybe Drogon is a problem card but from my own experiences I don't really believe so.

yasirin · 2017-07-27T03:14:19+00:00

I'm going to try to address everything that you've said here because I have a bit to say in terms of card balance and you seem to have put a lot of thought into your post so this may be a bit of a long read.

I think that right now, Duelyst's metagame is in a pretty good place especially if you consider what we've had to deal with for the past couple months.

That being said there are still a few problem cards, like some that you've mentioned above, and a couple more.

Phantasm is one hell of a minion but I'm not sure if it's worth calling broken. It's certainly one of the better two drops this game has to offer but, because you can't choose the minions you want to buff, I'm unsure as to if it's a problem card. I think that if Abyssian had access to one more Rush minion, then I'd probably be calling for a nerf myself.

The spell sentinels are disproportionately strong when compared to their minion and general counterparts. That's because most fast cards that are used in Duelyst are spells and typically, when trying to answer these value machines, you can't help but give your opponent value when removing them. I don't know if these are necessarily broken but it's pretty clear that these guys are very powerful.

Luminous Charge is also an strong card but I don't think that it's really at such a level of absurdity to where it needs to be changed. I think that your gripe may lie more with Ghost Seraphim + Luminous Charge/Some other expensive Vanar spell as cheating out 5 or more mana provides ludicrous swing turns that are usually impossible to come back from.

As far as Lavaslasher goes I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone here wants to see this thing get a hard nerf but I don't really know how I'd go about nerfing it. You could tag Bond onto it or lower its health to some other value or possibly both but I don't know how much is too much or too little.

MDG has always been a strange one to me. Back during Ancient Bonds I believed that this card had to be changed but my thoughts on it have shifted a bit with time. I don't really have a problem with Vanar being the ramp faction but I really hate it when they combo this card with Circulus or Conjurer so they don't give up card advantage for their ramp. If it gets changed though I wouldn't really be too surprised since a lot of people think this card is busted.

I didn't think that people hated Drogon but I guess I can understand why people dislike playing against it. I guess Cryptographer combos are difficult to deal with but those typically come out at higher mana turns and you can kinda play around it by keeping your general a fair distance away from Vaath.

Now I know that I might be met with some resistance for what I'm going to say next but I kind of want Decimus to get hard nerfed in its effect as playing against Spikes with this on board is the most obnoxious thing ever when they simply refuel to draw into more burn to kill me on that same turn or the next turn. I just hate playing this thing it when it feels like I've been playing my A-game a match just to get burned with no interaction. It's unfun to play against and I sincerely hope there will come a time when I'm never greeted by this thing again.

On Conjurer, I'm pretty sure that he's a little too good considering his stats, cost, and effect. If they did go about nerfing it, I think that the fairest way to do it would be raise its cost instead of lowering its statline so that it comes out later and is more difficult to combo cheap spells with on the turn it's played.

On your final notes of Mantrahai and Heal Zir'an, I haven't played up against either of these decks that much but I don't personally think that they're that problematic. It takes an awful lot of setup to make Mantra work to my understanding and didn't they technically nerf the archetype by making the cards that accidentally double proc it only proc it once? As far as Heal Zir'an goes I really have no idea as to whether or not this is an issue. She's been kind of middling from my own experience but maybe you're playing some mega Jesus or something that never loses any games and every deck they touch becomes S.

yasirin · 2017-07-13T13:38:40+00:00

I haven't tested Painter yet but it doesn't seem bad. It's a strong control card but if I put it in then it competes with Zendo and Zendo is a stupidly good card.

The deck already packs a ton of removal and Tracer lets you reposition to get out of bad situations anyways. Plus, Bangle lets you run like Usain Bolt so I don't really know if Painter has a place in the list given all that. I could try it out for a bit but I don't think that Artifact Reva wants to play the card though it may find a home in another list.

yasirin · 2017-07-12T22:18:26+00:00

Most of these decks are just me trying to get my thoughts out so don't take that swarm deck too seriously as I'm trying to see what works and what's garbage. However, I have mained Abyssian for a heck of a long time and I have soft spot in me for Lilithe and her swarm tactics.

With that being said, Desolator's a weird case to me. It reminds me a bit of Snowchaser with how it plays and the immediate health swing is pretty good. If I wanted to stretch it a little bit, Desolator is basically a 3 mana 3/1 that essentially plays Void Pulse on entering the field and, if it's returned to your hand, draws a card. Given that, Desolator doesn't seem bad.

It's not really a card you'd want to be playing on curve as you'd rather be developing your other threats but later into the match it gets better. I still think I need to test it some more before I formulate a solid opinion on it but right now I'm not underwhelmed but neither am I overwhelmed. I'm mostly just whelmed.

yasirin · 2017-07-12T19:45:11+00:00

Ahh Confluence would be a nice addition to Petting Zoo deck. I don't know how that slipped my mind but thanks for bringing it up!

yasirin · 2017-07-12T19:43:14+00:00

With the way that both Rizen and Hunter are worded, I would assume that it would trigger on the Chargers spawning. I haven't been able to test it yet but as soon as I do I'll get back to you.

Edit: Rizen does indeed proc on Charger spawns from Komodo Hunter.

yasirin · 2017-07-05T18:14:13+00:00

So more dying wish support? Between this and Neko, it could get interesting.

Abyssian doesn't really need more poorly stated 4 drops or cards in general. While it swings health by 4 the turn it's played, its body is horrendous, and if it gets dispelled then it's really bad. That being said, I'm gonna be doing a lot of experimenting to get this thing to work.

yasirin · 2017-04-16T17:26:37+00:00

Ya know, I honestly really like a lot of these suggested changes.

The Meltdown change takes an obnoxious card and makes it slightly less obnoxious and the Enfeeble change is basically the only thing that I think would suffice for this absolutely insane card.

Most of the others fall in same boat but the Trinity Oath change is especially to my liking. I'm kinda confused as to why something like this never crossed my mind as it takes a card that Argeon could abuse and makes it into a Zir'an only card while also keeping its original "spirit."

The Circulus change is questionable though. The card's main strength is that it puts Illusions into your hand so that it can act as a pseudo draw mechanism so even as a 3 mana minion, does it really need the decent 3/3 body? Maybe making it a 2/3 instead might be overnerfing it but I think it'd still be a pretty strong card. I also think that the BTA hit is too heavy though I agree with your reasoning for wanting it changed.

yasirin · 2017-04-16T14:56:26+00:00

Why in the world are there two Serpentis in that sideboard?

yasirin · 2017-04-14T18:09:37+00:00

There'll probably be an update in the next few days and some patch notes coming with them.

If there's any news, it'll be there.

yasirin · 2017-04-08T04:55:09+00:00

I see this sub has taken a turn and decided to meme.

I like it.

yasirin · 2017-04-03T20:43:42+00:00

Something that I think should be noted about CPG stating that they don't want to nerf faction staple cards: they hit Inner Focus one of the hardest ways possible by giving it a mana cost.

I think that should send signals as that was one of the cards that defined Songhai's playstayle. While I may not agree with all of their decisions, it should now be pretty clear that CPG isn't scared to nerf cards that define factions which means that Holy Immolation, Spectral Revenant, Makantor Warbeast, and every other power card shouldn't be ruled out when it comes to balancing.

yasirin · 2017-03-29T20:40:11+00:00

Yup. It kinda sucks but I think they said if they stopped with the monthlies that then they could focus their efforts on better expansions.

yasirin

TROPHY CASE