Vetruvian Card Tweaks and Suggestions

[thebravetoaster]

Hey everybody! I’m a Vetruvian main who has been saddened by the overall state of my favorite faction for a while, but especially since RotB hit. I’d like to see them get a little love to bring them back up to a less fragile state. To that end (and thanks to Bagoum’s card creator!) I’ve made a few minor tweaks to a couple existing cards and designed a few of my own. I welcome discussion on these suggestions.

Please note that I don’t think these changes are all that is necessary to fix Vetruvian’s weaknesses, but they are a place to refine the conversation. In particular, I haven’t addressed the faction’s lack of ranged removal.

Tweaked Cards

Fountain of Youth

Fountain of Youth in its current state is arguably the worst card in Duelyst. I suggest that a reworked version of this card remove the dispelled state from friendly minions. Vetruvian is especially weak to dispel, since cards like Obelysks and Portal Guardian are essentially useless after they have been dispelled. The ability to restore card text (but not pre-existing buffs) to dispelled minions fits the flavor of the card and gives Vet a useful (and unique) utility.

Entropic Decay

I’ve long been of the opinion that Entropic Decay is one of the weakest removal spells. Dispelling its target is a minor buff to bring its power level in line with other removals like OBS and Egg Morph without sacrificing the near-General requirement.

Divine Spark

Divine Spark introduced in RotB gives Vetruvian some much-needed card draw, but pales in comparison to the almighty Trinity Oath. Drawing two cards at the end of turn helps keep the power level of this card in check (3 mana to draw 3 cards immediately seems too strong), while also playing into two of Vetruvian’s faction identities: Cards which cycle themselves, and value-generation. My suggestion results in mana-efficient card draw, at the cost of a delay in using the new cards.

New Cards

[details=Portal Overload]

Full disclosure: I’ve also submitted this card design in this month’s Design Contest. More in-depth explanation can be found there.

Since the untimely death of Siphon Energy, Vetruvian is short on removal. This card provides removal to the Structure archetype, while forcing the opponent to be more careful around your vulnerable Obelysks.
[/details]

Sands' Blessing

I have always liked the Blast mechanic, and am sad to see so little support for it in the faction. This card aims to give Vetruvian a way to have more Blast minions on the field, but without the perils of the old Scion’s Third Wish. Exhausting the target minion raises the skill ceiling on the card while reducing the amount of burst damage available from the mechanic.

Alternatively, this card could serve as a reworked Cosmic Flesh instead of a new card.

[jkmaikhoi]

Nice idea your Decay and Spark seem fair enough. That Fountain of Youth must be 4 mana, cuz the effect is too strong.

Portal should be changed into ‘Deal damage equals to the Obelysk’s health’, 2 mana is too cheap for that massive clearance.

I’m also looking forward to a card that gives vet minion Blast

[thebravetoaster]

I think 4 is a little steep for Fountain of Youth. It could conceivably cost 3, but I think 2 mana is justified because it’s a very situational effect, is reactive, and tempo-negative.

I had considered your suggested effect for Portal Overload, but I would like to defend my design decisions. Consider a similar effect with Holy Immolation: Both are effectively AoE clears costing 4 mana at minimum. (Because you must have an Obelysk on board already!) Overload doesn’t do face damage, while HI does, and cannot be ramped out like HI + Slo. Additionally, Overload requires you to sacrifice a potentially valuable Obelysk on the field for its effect, and punishes you if you’ve positioned poorly. Additionally this card is only useful for a couple archetypes. Sajj and Midrange Zirix don’t run Obelysks at all.

Thoughts?

[paralykeet]

Please, please do not change Divine Spark. Even though yours is better essential value, it fundamentally reduces the amount of play that the card actually provides.

As for Fountain, I would much rather it just be a Vetruvian variant of Concealing Shroud, or some kind of reliable damage mitigation/lifegain. I think Vetruvian could certainly use a card which encompasses the idea of “reawakening” through anti-dispel, but it would be reckless to do so before reinforcing the core of what makes Vetruvian strong. Rather, FoY is better served as an additional proactive tool, that is situaltionally good as a reactive one- but not as one that is solely reactive.

While I fundamentally like Sand’s Blessing- it is still broken by Tiger, like nearly every other similar effect that could be produced. In a world without Tiger, a 2 mana spell that simply grants a minion Blast would be fine- but even with the exhaustion clause, it would only serve to break the faction and leave more collateral damage than intended.

My suggestion thread had 2 that stuck in my mind especially well…

Wind Slicer
2 mana MINION 2/3
Your general can move as though you control all units on the board

Sand Howler
3 mana DERVISH 3/3
Wind Dervishes enter play as Sand Howelers

I thought to display these here, because I feel that when suggesting errata, it’s terribly important to not make changes based on the power level of a faction, but on the amount of play each of them grants a faction- rather, while the Sand Howler suggestion can blow back on the Vet player rather spectacularly- it allows Vet decks to become more flexible to their needs as the game develops, without necessarily improving all of their utilities all of the time. Rather, the idea is to encourage adding play, and tools that encourage different methods to disrupt or build advantage- without doting on the idea that the faction is underpowered/overpowered- which itself lends to suggestions that do not improve the game- but simply the power level of a given faction (which is always in flux)

[thebravetoaster]

I don’t understand why you think Sands’ Blessing is broken by Tiger. Could you elaborate? The whole point is that you can’t cast it and then use the Blast effect on the same turn.

I agree with your main points about Fountain – fixing the faction’s fundamentals should be priority one. That said, my opinion is that this does shore up a weakness in one of Vet’s core identities, namely value-generators.

As for your final paragraph, I agree completely. That is an angle which I hadn’t considered. My point was not necessarily that “Vet needs a buff”, though I believe they do. Rather, my suggestions were intended to make some weak cards (FoY and Entropic) more viable for deck inclusion. (That, and I had some spiffy ideas I wanted to show off!)

[project2el]

I think that what vetruvian dont have is healing options and thats why is so hard to play sajj. What if fountain of youth is something like
3 mana
Restore 1 health to your General at the end of each turn

[paralykeet]

Honestly, it’s a combination a lack of removal and actual artifact support. Rather, Sajj either has to rely on either Ankh or Star’s Fury to deal with ranged threats- and delightfully awesome as they may be; Spinecleaver and Hexblade require life expenditure to use, given the lack of redundancy with damage shield effects. Rather, Vetruvian represents the concept of a super-general archetype, but the tools to make it work are only a few cards off of actually being pretty decent.

Rather, still- cards like Imperial Mechanyst and Aurora’s Tears are wasted design because they conflict with the natural flow of the game. Tears gives a 2-6 damage buff contingent on the number of artifacts in hand, but 6 damage damage seldom justifies a card expenditure, if that card up until that point is a relative brick. Why Mechanyst only has an opening gambit is sortof beyond me. The contentious 3 mana slot in Vet.

Vet and Magmar just sortof need overhauls in regards to many of their core set cards- because they are simply dysfunctional with the actual pace of the game.

[phoinexflame]

I’m a vet main too, and I like the way you buffed Entropic Decay. I’m not sure about the others though (actually, I like the idea of un-dispelling units but I don’t know if it is worth sacrificing FoY for it, because while Fountain is very situational, it can still prove useful on occasions.)

[Spirri]

I’ve had the idea for a “undispelling” spell for a while now, seems fairly OP for such a low cost and on so many minions though. I imagine its main use will be undispelling obelysks, but I can see other uses too. Other interesting card is the 2 mana +1+1 and blast, might be a bit broken at 2 mana, but I feel it would fit in at 3. Blast is a very powerful ability if not dealt with as soon as it is put into play, giving something the opportunity to get some damage out without the 1 turn wait would be nice. It might also help solve vets range problem, I would go as far to say that it’s their biggest weakness (however, i am quite new to the game so my opinion can not be counted on).

[thebravetoaster]

As far as Fountain of Youth goes, I think it is fine considering that usually there are only two or three friendly minions on the field at a time, and not all of them are likely to be dispelled. Additionally for Obelysks (which were my main focus) the opponent has a turn to deal with them before they start generating Dervishes again. The un-dispel mechanic might be a little problematic on something like Aymara Healer or Nosh-Rak, so I think an increase to 3 mana could be justified. But most of the time Fountain is going to be a dead card in your deck.

As for Blast, I also would like to see something get Blast without having to wait a turn. But the community consensus seems to be that is too powerful. I think Sands’ Blessing compares well to Prism Barrier: both Blast and Forcefield are worth 1 mana more than vanilla minion stats (Sunsteel vs Bloodshard Golem, and Scarab vs Hailstone). Prism Barrier costs 2 mana, but the affected minion can attack immediately. I added the +1/+1 to compensate for the fact that Sands’ Blessing requires you to wait a turn before attacking.

@project2el That is also an interesting idea, but what I think Sajj needs more than healing is damage prevention so artifacts don’t lose charges. Either that, or artifacts need re-balancing, since it feels like they are somewhat too expensive.

And thanks to everyone who has responded so far, I’m enjoying the discussion!

[belowski]

Before I came back to playing quite recently I seem to remember there being a Sajj list that ran grove lion to give your general forcefield to stop losing artifact charges, whether anyone has tried this again with the new RotB cards like zephyr I’m not sure, but I don’t have the cards myself to try (spinecleaver etc.). I can’t see it being to good though as Aymara Healer is too good of a 6-drop already.

I honestly hope they don’t keep pushing Sajj too far down that road as purely an artifact archetype as I don’t think it will ever be truly worthwhile outside of meme decks…they’re too easy to take off.

I thought a better effect for Saon for example might be flat damage reduction whilst she’s on the board as this would play into the super general archetype better than the measly +1 attack you get currently.

[seraphicreaper]

I like the Fountain of Youth idea, but personally if it’s 2 mana, it should completely restore 1 minion to it’s original status. Alternatively, up it to 3 or 4 mana to restore card text of all friendly minions (not getting the healing bonus).

For Entropic Decay, nope. I’d lower it to 3 mana, but that’s it for me.

Personally, Vetruvian needs just a complete overhaul on its cards’ balance. The keywords and obelysks are fine, but certain cards are awful, some are amazing, and some just provide a frustrating experience (on both sides).