Duelyst Forums

DeathsAdvocate's Potential Community Run Ban List

#1

Edit: I have started forming a committee. If you are a many season S ranker/Top 50 player/Tournament Organizer please let me know if you want to join.

I have largely lost hope that we will be getting a balance patch in any near future. While we lack the ability as players to patch the game we could theoretically fix things up with a community recognized ban list.

Goal number one is getting a Standardized Tournament ban list. This is the most important aspect. It will already have a small effect on the ladder meta as people will want to test for it.

Goal number two is if we can actually put together the tournament ban list then we can talk about trying to do an opt in Top 50 project.

Goal three is that it simply takes off and grows on its own.

Considering both top fifty and all tournaments are community run, such a ban list would be pretty easy to enforce. Tournaments are super easy to enforce and the ladder is not to hard either with an honor system and or checking the match history of top fifty folks that have opted in to participate to ensure they are following the ban list, and we would only need to check if someone who opted in reported an issue. It would not affect folks that did not want to participate, and we could still publish a normal top fifty list as well. But hopefully we at least can get tournaments standardized, and then it may catch on with the ladder on its own.

Duelyst is in a big slump right now, but if we had a dynamic, well recognized, community driven ban list we could not only balance the game but also shake up the meta. Now given its going to be pretty hard to come up with a ban list everyone agrees on, but letting the community have input, and having a committee of folks to vote/make changes on a monthly basis, just like the power rankings, could do the trick. If we gathered the Duelyst Central crowd @rhacker93 @niklaren and others we could make this happen with the same process we used to make the power rankings.

Here is my proposed/dream ban list that would theoretically balance and remove the most toxic aspects from the game, targeting the least fun meta decks and the most un-interactive or swingy cards:

(Keep in mind this is just my two cents, right after it I will be posting the community generated list. The goal is not to get ALL of this banned, and many things would be an OR rather then AND. The goal is just to gather a list to be voted on, and hopefully we can narrow it down to only the things that folks agree on being the most problematic. We also really want to only be targeting the big meta shapers and not just stuff we dislike.)

Neutral:
Mythron Wanderer !
Abjudicator, Decimus, Grimes.

Magmar:

IF you play Ragnora: Egg Morph and Wild Inceptor are banned.

Vet:
Khanuum-Kha. (If a full ban is to much, we could only ban it from being used with Fault.)

Songhai:
Juxtaposition, Crescent Spear.

Lyonar:
Lucent Beam, Gold Vitriol.

Nothing for Abyss/Vanar. Although Malicious Wisp, and Underlord Xor Xull would be on a watch list.

Other cards for a watch list: (Stuff that might get out of hand after other bans.)
Grand Strategos
Sandswhirl reader
Alabaster Titan

Less is more here. We do not want to go over board as small changes can have pretty drastic ripple effects

Other Cards a committee could Vote on suggested by others: (Again many of these would be INSTEAD of my suggestions or others on this list.)

Rae
Cataclysmic Fault
Tectonic Spikes
Scroll Bandit
Owlbeast Sage for Shidai only.
Bangle of Blinding Strike
Greater Fortitude
Lava Lance
Sunrise Cleric
In the case of Wanderer escaping a ban, Darkfire Sacrifice, and Flash Reincarnation could be voted to be banned for Wanderer only.

13 Likes
#2

Rae
at any rate.

3 Likes
#3

I still firmly disagree on this one. Rae/Fault existed for a very long time before Kha, and while it was quite a good deck, it was never a problem or oppressive before Kha, so I would think hitting both would be overkill, and Kha is way more game warping then Rae.

I would also rather start small, and then go after Rae at a later date if it is needed.

But Rae would certainly be a card that could be added to the voting process as I know I am not of popular opinion here.

1 Like
#4

I don,t agree with you on nerfing songhai and lyonar harder than magmar. But im after good balance-you are just after ,decks that have some kind of interactivity,

1 Like
#5

I am not really targeting factions, more so specific problematic decks and cards. But on that note magmar got three, Songhai only got two.

But again, ideally this would be a voting process of a committee. I obviously have my biases, although I thought I had set them aside pretty well here.

1 Like
#6

We disagree on what problematic means as shown by your opinion about old finality vaath.

1 Like
#7

Sigh, here I am getting misquoted again. Finality was a blatantly overpowerd, meta-shaping card that was a problem. However I enjoyed the meta it created, and thus did not have the issue with it like I do the current meta, and a couple others. It was one of the few metas were I did not play a lot of magmar, and instead just teched to beat them.

That is also a very old discussion not relevant to this thread.

2 Likes
#8

Several points:

Neutral:

  • wanderer is fine imo. You’d be fine just banning flash, as that is the enabler for not only that archetype, but several more toxic ones as well.
  • agree with everything else

Mag

  • see comments on flash above. Not sure how to balance rag. Considered banning rebuke, as it deletes a ton of midrange decks (which, in fairness, are also punished by vet)
  • Spikes is mistake. It’s a huge budget option for card draw. Ban deci instead, as spiking to buff a vindicator or visionar should be fine for horn anyway.

Iyonar:

  • Disagree with lucent beam, but agree with vitriol. Cutting out most of ziran’s midgame ranged pings should be enough.

Vet:

  • dreamshaper and rae. Force vet to build a reasonable draw engine and knock out those massive swarm starts which enable it to beat many decks just by chaining readers and BOAs post turn 2. Also slows fault by a turn.
  • think kha is fine if fault is checked, allowing soft counters on vaath and ziran.

Hai:

  • agree with spear. Disagree with jux, as it would gut minion builds. If anything, just cut out owls and even scroll bandit to stamp out arc shidai and 4head kaleos /agRO rEva openers.

abyss:

  • XFHIOFHEIUJVNJNVLJFN#&^^ - Xor. Deck is annoying as fuck to play against and is literally a purple mantra which shuts out any deck which cannot go fast.

  • necrotic sphere. More off principle-- this card incentivizes people to be uninteractive and resort to backline threats. Playing many games as a straightforward argeon/brome tempo showed me this. You should not be punished for winning the early game and boxing out the enemy general.

** Vanar**

  • No idea lol. Hate the principle of wisp, but they’ve got very little outside of it.
1 Like
#9

I would go rather after Rae than Ka.

4 Likes
#10

agreed. Kha has some pretty cool interactions and requires strong positioning and sequencing to get the most out of him when the opponent isn’t vaath or ziran.

3 Likes
#11

Mag/Neutral:

Flash is fine, ban problems, not enablers and faction staples. If cards are balanced, enablers are not a problem.

Also wanderer is anything but fine, and even if it was fine balance wise, it has choked the meta for far to long and is one of the most universally hated cards.

I will change Spikes to Deci, and add spikes to the watch list. Rebuke is a staple with counterplay, again ban problems, not enablers/staples.

Without a patch to adjust rag, its his cheap out of hand burst that tends to be the problem thus my targets. The lategame variants are much more fair, and you would be able to expect/play around them without having to be worried about getting bursted from no where.

Lyonar:
If I had to pick one I would take beam as it has zero counterplay, but I do think both should go. And considering not every ziran list even runs both of them it wouldn’t be back breaking, while ensuring to take both variants down a peg.

Vet:

Again ban problems not enablers, and less is more.
@boronian
Kha is the most meta warping card we have ever seen, the way it shuts down Vaath/Lancer/Artifacts is just not ok plus it has little to no counterplay. It has been stifling the meta creating a power vacuum where Vaath/Lancer/Artifacts usually serve as a natural check and balance creating an unhealthy rock paper scissors effect. Without Rae, Fault would just switch over to the reassemble variant, or a slower control shell, and be just as oppressive with Kha.

Rae could also be banned if needed, but Kha for sure has to go.

Hai:
Jux is pretty crazy and having it and Mist at the same time causes a lack of interaction. While I would like to target owl that is unfair to every other faction.

I do like the thought of Targeting Bandit. Hitting it and Jux would be to much, and if I had to pick I would certainly pick Jux. But I tossed it in the “other cards to be voted on” section.

Abyss:

Your bias is showing. I would love to ban every bit of burn in the game, erase infinite range teleports, Artifhai, Gates, and Mantra. But I left them out because that is Bias. We need to be banning problems, not things that are annoying.

Vanar
Yea I know people hate the hate wisp, but it is carrying vanar and a lot of folks love it (myself included). But if Vanar started doing to well after other stuff got banned it would likely need to be addressed thus why I put it on a watch list.

1 Like
#12

so there is no problem with the things you enjoy? im going to run this stuff if i want to regardless of whether or not you guys vote on it. if i have fun, i have fun.

1 Like
#13

Wow way to take that out of context did you not see the:

And the:

1 Like
#14

Add lava lance to the “watch list”. It’s almost on par with lucent beam.

1 Like
#15

Duly noted with sphere, but I think you misunderstand me due poor articulation on my part. Also confused as to your concept of counterplay, but will save that and the former for when I have time for a longer, well-thought out critique to give your concerns the time they deserve.

As for immediate disagreement, jux and mds both have positional counterplay, nor do they fundamentally limit what an opponent can do in the deckbuilding phase. Conversely, scroll bandit and owl- specifically to songhai are the ones which punish too hard. To quote you: “punish the problems, not the enablers.” (though I personally disagree with this concept to a degree, but jux is not a fundamental enabler, which I will get into with my long comment later). There is no reason to lose the game turn 2 because you didn’t remove the turn 1 bandit and now have a 4/6 and 1/5 backstab vs your empty board.

For now, thanks for putting this together. Check out my thread for beating wanderer, as once you get over the flash blow-outs, you’ll find it quite reasonable to get around the deck’s linear playstyle.

2 Likes
#16

DA talked about the meta, not the card. Two different things. And this ban list discussion is about community run tournaments. If you use cards which are banned in these as a participant you will get banned. What you do on ladder is your decision.

1 Like
#17

It does not go face though, reactive cards are almost never an issue. But people do seem to point at it a lot, so I will add it to the vote section.

1 Like
#18

Jux/Mist do have counterplay, but you can not play around both and thus the problem. Without the ability to nerf Jux, it would be my target as it would take bandit and owl down a lot.

However I could agree to:

Ban Owl from Shidai, and possibly Bandit from songhai. While leaving jux in place.

I still just think Jux is nuts and the combination of it and mist put you in a crapshoot position that is really unhealthy.

Oh I have no problem beating wanderer, or anything in particular for that matter. But the decks high varience nature, and meta stifling are my problem. The rock paper scissors effect of you can not really prepare for wanderer, fault, ziran, and rag at the same time is what is killing the game for me. Mixed with the stale meta is what pushed me to making this.

@boronian Thanks for standing up for me, but small nitpick, it would also partially extend to the ladder as you would not be able to make it onto the community top fifty list if you played banned cards, allowing us to shake up the Ladder meta as players which is the closest thing we can have to a direct patch.

But it would not effect casual players either way.

1 Like
#19

I really like this ban list idea for tournaments that makes the game just a bit less linear, and having more thought being put into each card that goes into the deck. I agree with basically every card on the list (except I don’t see why abju is on, it’s great for so many combo decks, and is really only “toxic” in Songhai, and removing it makes basically every combo a bit harder to do).

I don’t like how Strategos works, especially with its interaction with Jax and how swingy it gets, while also being slightly difficult to play around for any faction not named Magmar, because it can be difficult to aggro through all the swarm, and its late-game can beat a lot of things, not to mention all the variations such as titan. Do you think it should at least be put on the watch-list for having a slightly linear play, along with packing a punch both in the early and late-game?

2 Likes
#20

play wizard horn/vaath/rag or all-in wake to see it abused in other decks.

2 Likes