It changes over time, or more like season to season. As a tournament such as Meltdown still influence the meta. So basically, 8 gates Reva has raised in popularity due to Mez winning with it in the last Meltdown League.
Depends how you want to use the word oppressive. Are they still the top decks? Yes. Are they seen all the time? Not really. I haven’t seen Fault all that much in recent seasons. Ragnora still has Wanderer, which did die down a few months ago but has come back more last season and this season.
Been having 2-3 min queue times in Diamond/S-Rank pretty much all year. I see a lot of the same players but that’s because I play/stream at the same time each day.
There are new players around, but it feels like not many stick with the game beyond 2 seasons. While I also do look at the Top 50 S-rank list at the end of each season and notice different/new names up there from season to season.
But I will also say that I feel like some players are being carried by the decks rather than skill. What I mean by that is, I feel like Duelyst currently is missing a lot of the middle ground players, ones between new players and long term old players (or high skilled players). So some players are getting away with bad plays or positioning, but because the relative power of the deck they are using is high and there isn’t enough players with a sufficient skill level, they are able to get away with it and not being punished. So returning players who were already good at Duelyst will probably be able to come back and run through a lot of people.
I should also point out that I make a lot of mistakes and misplays, and I think I’m just an average diamond player at best, but I’ve been able to make it into S-Rank every season since March. Might have also finished Top 50 every month as well since March. I know I’ve finished as high as 20th at the end of a season but usually around 30th-40th most of the time, so that might give a relative indication of what ladder is like.
