Duelyst Forums

The state of Vanar & An overview of recent Vanar history

#1

I hate to call for nerfs or for buffs but this is the first serious time, I can still win but Vanar doesn’t feel like a deck anymore but an engine, control is painfully mediocore and SnowHai is degenerate. Any decks that feel like Vanar decks have too many problems, while the best Vanar deck is more like a neutral deck with Razorback as a wincon.

Vanar’s best assest was it’s removal, they then lost evere good option: Fox, CCold, Cryogenesis and Frostburn, the later 3 where nerfed into oblivion and Fox just feels underwhelming. Frostburn being bad is acceptable if they had good single target removal but Vanar doesn’t anymore, they relly on Hailstone Prison now. Now let’s see how many where neccesary? Fox and CCold: Reflection Faie was strong but those cards weren’t the problem. Cryogenesis? Yes, absolutely but now I would argue that it’s old version is fair nowerdays. Frostburn? It was fair to nerf it because Vanar had strong AoE but what did they do later in that patch?

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That was the patch which single handedly killed Vanar’s strongest asset.

Next we could relly on 2 strong aspects of Vanar: The ramp and the disruption… They killed them bothe in patch 1.6, Frigid Corona was killed and MDG was killed. Wispy Bois aren’t enough to keep Vanar alive, Vanar is a dying faction.

What bothers me the most is that Vanar wasn’t even that good, Mid Faie was too hard to play for it to be common and I am the only player playing SnowHai. A nerfed Aspect of Shim’zar wasn’t big enough to warrant Vanar losing everything, even when Aspect of Shim’zar was at it’s prime Vanar was good but not over bearing (except for Reflection until that got nerfed.)

I would also like to talk about the Seraphim nerf: Seraphim doesn’t limit nearly as much design space as people make it out to be as it’s already so expensive all you had to do was add a limit on the attack of the target for Reflection and make it cost less. Again, uneeded as it was the wrong nerf.

Vanar’s shitness really needs to be addressed with buffs, Vanar feels really uninteresting and is just god awful, my opinion is really unpopular but please CPG, please buff Vanar. Try to make them interesting, at least make them effective, give them their options back or give them new ones that feel flavourful and actually work.

My opinion is unpopular as people still have PABSD (Post Ancient-Bonds Stress Disorder) but please here my plea.

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State of Vanar, Volume III: Faction Identity & My Wishes
#2

Agree, it seems from hard to play faction we came into the state of no deck got the tool to deal with top tier decks mana for effect ratio.
We both played vanar for very long so give me a meh faie deck and i’ll be able to manipulate it.
But it is not there anymore.

The only two decks i run is vespyr and ilena sotw because these are the only decks that rely on minions to break the opponent back.
And thoses two are hell to master so no new player will enjoy them.

It is ashame.

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#3

We can only hope that this thread becomes popular enough, when I get home I will post it to reddit as it has a wider audience (I can do it sooner if someone gives me an imgur link of that image!)

But we need to get DO on this as that is how CPG listens most.

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#4

I agree with a lot of what you said particularly:

I think the case with Vanar is very similar to what is going on with Songhai not in that they both have mediocre decks as Songhai does have decks that are very good, but in the fact that CPG as well as the Duelyst community is afraid to give anything new to either factions in fear of a tier 0 meta.

I dunno how the problem can be fixed, there is sure to be members of the Dev team that will notice the state of Vanar, but my opinion of the dev team at the moment is that they are too small and the devs they have are not experienced enough in every faction in order to make good design choices. This seems most self evident in the Immortal Vanguard Expansion where Saurian Finality was a card.

The only thing close to a solution I could possibly think of is redesigning the factions somehow and my reason for that is because of how similar some factions are, there is very small design space allowing new things in each faction without making something too similar to what another faction already has if not better. An example of this is Blood of Air and Dark Transformation or Sandswirl Reader and Hailstone Prison.

But I am sure that is a solution way too extreme. That is just what I can make of it at the moment.

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#5

This exact patch killed Vanar for me. Reflection was the only toxic thing at that time since Shimzar+Thunderhorn still was and is a gamble.

Have you seen how many new animations Vanar got in comparison to the other factions?

I just get the feeling CPG is either reacting too much on a former status Vanar had or they really have a bad relationship to the faction.

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#6

Yeah, it was really noticeable, I happen to be in a graveyard at the time so it looked like I was crying over my grandmother’s grave but in reality it was the death of Vanar.

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#7

I play mainly Vanar for two years now and whatever the meta was before, I could always deal reasonably with my opponent’s threats thanks to Vanar’s control tools. With the last couple balance changes Vanar’s control cards were almost all nerfed. Though I agree with how those cards were balanced, I believe Vanar’s identity took a hit.

What made me play that faction so much was it’s ice theme, infiltrate, and the ability to deal with almost any situation. And now Magmar has the best control tools.

Since I mainly play Vanar (not Faie), I do not know how other factions react to the meta, but my current games are either a constant struggle from start to end or I just high-roll my opponents. I remember playing a bit of Magmar and Vet for daily quests a few months ago and even at that time they felt so much stronger and easier to play than what I am used to with Vanar.

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#8

First of all, thank you for mentioning me:

(I’ve been exposed!)

But seriously, I agree, Vanar feels very underwhelming as of late with all the recent nerfs. It is a fact that in the past Aggro Faie, Vanar Arcanyst or even Kara kitties (if we can go that far back) were a problem yet that is no longer true. I have no issues with the nerfs they made. All of the cards deserved it more or less since they truly were a hindrance in future card design. However, what bothers me is that Vanar, as a faction, has some of the best potential of creating cool, fun, fair, uniqe and interactive archeotypes. What is going on with the Vespyr tribe? There seems to be some amount of support for them but is that really enough? Why can’t anyone created a good Vespyr deck or a good Wall or Token or Position based deck. Hell, even a deck with Ilena that doesn’t rely on neutral minions like Golems!? I keep seeing the same thing everytime a new patch or expantion is released. Keep only the few good cards and discard the rest. Vanar seems to have lost its identity. Much like @epicflygon said it has become a lacking, deficient faction which fills its void with neutral cards. We have factions that are so good they cant find room for even a single neutral card (for example Magmar). And then… we have Vanar. From the very beggining the faction relied too heavily in great neutal minions. They got Aspect of Shim’zar but would it be truly good if Thunderhorn didn’t exist? Can you imagine an aggro Faie without Bloodbound mentor or Flameblood Warlock? I think not. Even swarm or token relies on arcanyst sush as Prismatic Illusionist and Owlbeast Sage. I recently submited a card for the design contest that in my opinion is exactly what Vanar needs. Shameless self promoting Not necessarily STRONG, and OVERPOWERED cards but more SUPPORT. How can any faction be considered good if the individual cards aren’t even decent! To conclude this long post, Vanar ISN’T a weak faction… It is simply neglected and needs some love. And you are reading this from a damn Magmar and Vet main.

5 Likes
#9

The nerfs to CC and Shim’Zar is understandable. Unconditional dispel and 2 damage burn are both pretty decent effects, so it makes sense if either one of them is toned down. As for Shim’Zar, its synergy with Thunderhorn was at Makantor’s level of versatility, and Thunderhorn was already a pretty strong card in the meta, so yes, the nerfs aren’t completely unfounded. The Seraphim nerf wasn’t as reasonable, and so wasn’t Frostburn, but at least I could live with it to an extent.

What I do have quite some trouble processing are the nerfs to MDG and Corona. To take away Vanar’s best ramp tool and best stall tool really tells us something about the direction CPG is taking Vanar. I understand other factions also received nerfs in the patch as well, but they were mostly cards that were genuinely problematic in the meta and had risen beyond the status of a staple, like Accumulonimbus and LitD. Vanar received such a treatment quite some time ago, with the rotation of Shim’Zar and CC nerf. It honestly doesn’t need a second execution. With that, here are some of my personal ideas on how the faction could be recovered.

1. Revert the MDG nerf

Here’s the thing about nerfing cards like MDG. It’s definitely powerful, it’s an irreplaceable staple, and many people use it. But it’s not overpowered. Nerfing a popular card will obviously be a heavy hit for many decks, but it especially hurts more if such a nerf was done to a card that wasn’t too broken in the first place. Imagine nerfing First Wish the same way, I would’ve gone ballistic.

2. Rework Corona

I would say the best way is the revert the nerf, but maybe I’m asking for too much. I am still quite salty of how Frigid Corona now can’t be used as P1T1 stall, however. To fix this issue, my personal suggestion to rework the card is this:

Stun an enemy. If it was a minion, draw a card.

This way, it can now target Generals but has limited draw potential. If any kind of nerf was tolerable, this is about the level I draw a line.

4 Likes
#10

I highly disagree when every deck requires 1000 iq to win with, it’s not a good faction, the best deck maybe Vanar but it’s just a neutral deck that even then requires you to be playing that deck for months and be watching the next Rick and Morty season before it even comes out.

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#11

That is an additional reason for someone to fall in love with the faction. The complexity of each game, the meticulous planning, the execution of each strategy, the endless trial and error, the process of learning and the amazing feeling of achieving an almost impossible victory not by chance or luck but from decisive moves, are what makes Vanar, no, ANY deck fun. (for me). Maybe Vanar is weak now or maybe everyone else is strong. Regardless, the faction offers a different way to play the game and I enjoy that.

1 Like
#12

One weird notion about Vanar decks is that when there is a strong Vanar deck it’s “skill less” but they are infact the hardest decks to play, for example when I took a variant of Reflection Faie to S I learned a lot about Vanar as a whole, I went from hating them to falling head over heels for them, there was tons of Intricacies even in the mulligan. Playing Vanar made me a better player as I learned to think out my plays thoroughly but now that I have mastered Vanar I am still somehow unable to win with any deck that isn’t Mid-range or Snowhai.

The skill level is why I love the faction but they’re losing everything that made the faction good, the difference between Vanar now and Vetruvian then is that Vanar wasn’t consistently tier 0 and was meh a lot of the time and was shit before hand.

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#13

The proposed rework is garbage as if you want to stun an enemt general you’re playing a Beam Shock which costs 2 mana INSTEAD OF 0 so it’s just the current version.

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#14

At least we got Luminous Charge+ Skorn as well as Aspect of Shimzar back. I gotta try them both out with Mali wisp next season. Right now I am just tired of the meta at S. 75% Magmar ( Wanderer, Midrange, Burn) and Songhai (surprise… Wanderer, Midrange and Burn/Mantra)

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#15

It’s still far better than what got. :upside_down_face:

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#16

Vespyr is not dead thankfully, so is sotw decks mainly because of no minions getting nerfed.
However and it is a big one - vespyr (and i consider myself an expert on the matter of sotw and vespyr vanar) is really really really hard to manipulate to the extent of breaking other meta decks.
And sotw got nerfed a little with corona, now sticking diciple just got more expensive and it is a shame given that it’s just stall, no dmg and vanar don’t have draw to begin with for aggro decks.

I think that vanar right now is a faction for the advanced only with a hard hard ladder expirience.

The nerf for corona wasn’t justified.
The nerf for ravager wasn’t justified.
As for now mdg is only for vanarhai - and it wasn’t justified.

Most of vanar decks lost their identity, the faction lost her identity, even when i play vespyr or building a deck it is not fun anymore because everything is nerfed and nothing cover a synergy the way it should.

Vanar is first a faction of synergies, and these nerfs are killing it.

2 Likes
#17

I can go luminous + razorback for 20 max way earlier

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#18

You can clear board or kill the enemy general with luminous Skorn. People have the tendency to free themselves from the icy prison if you want to set up Razorback. I like a guaranteed outcome.

#19

9 mana, 2 cards, deal 6. :thonk:

#20

Deal 11 to the general if enough tiles are free. Also 3-7 damage to any bystanding enemy. I can ramp into that and its totally worth it.

1 Like