Hello everyone !
SKIP THE FOLLOWING PART IF YOU JUST WANT TO READ THE ALTERNATIVE
With the rotation, some cards became unplayable in ranked mode.
At first I thought that rotation was 100% pointless and was a terrible choice for the game. The arguments pro rotation from CPG were very weak :
“For competitive players it can be impossible to know what to play around. Meanwhile, for newer players it is a daunting task to try to learn the basics of the game while also trying to keep track of an overwhelming number of cards.
By limiting the card pool and periodically changing which cards are available, our aim is to ensure that matches in this format continue to remain fresh, interesting, and varied, while also keeping it accessible to everyone - new, old, and returning players.”
But my point of view somewhat changed after someone pointed out the fact that if, for instance, Songhai would get a few more damaging spells they might be able to make out a deck with only Phoenix Fire-like cards… Which seems somewhat broken.
However, with rotation, there is a really big problem. If we take a look at the current rotation, Abyssian lost all (or most) of the old shadow creep package, to gain another one. But when the Shimzar pack will be unrotated, Abyssian will have both the old and the new creep package, and it might be overpowered. This is just an exemple (and I’m honestly not so sure about Creepbyssian dominating the meta xD) but if rotations keep going then we’ll be back to square one… unless they rotates more and more expansions with every update which definitively sucks.
So I have another idea.
THE ALTERNATIVE
Instead of banning cards, CPG could merge them. What I mean is that cards would be in small groups of 2-3 cards who are very similar (or in no groups at all) and you would only be able to run at max 3 cards of a single group.
For instance, instead of having 3 phoenix fire, 3 thunderbomb and 3 Cobra Strike, you could only have 1 PF, 1 Thunderbomb and 1 Cobra Strike.
I’m not so sure about if Duelyst has enough cards to make this viable, and it would be extremly hard to select the groups carefully not to break archetypes but still preventing one to be too OP.
This way, it would be extremly simple to buff/nerf an archetype, simply by changing the groups some cards belong in.
What do you think about it ?