Vetruvian is killing duelyst

[deathsadvocate]

Vet its self is not the problem, they are very strong yes, but that is not a bad thing, however Kha is a massive problem as not only is it crazy strong with their main deck it is singelhandedly removing things like vaath, lancer, and artifacts from the meta creating a power vacuum being filled by things those decks usually counter, leading to a narrow rock paper scissors meta.

The problems with the game from a design perspective due to leading to toxic playstyles/warped metas are Kha, Wanderer, and Gate/Mantra. These are the least healthy aspects of the game, and desperately need to be addressed. Deci/Spikes is also pushing it but is the least offensive of the bunch.

From a balance standpoint Rag and Ziran are a bit overtuned, although if the design problems get addressed the natural predators/tech counters to the decks will return making it less bad, but they are still likely a bit to much.

Abyss/Vanar are a little behind although both do have at least a couple good things going for them, and if both the design/balance issues were addressed they would probably be fine, or alternatively leave the overtuned decks alone and give the others a small buff but either way the design issues still need to be fixed.

[saltystabwound]

Reading this makes me
ANGERY

[deathsadvocate]

Cries in the Abyss.

[zerounderscoreou]

I do argree that Vertruvian fraction is too srtrong now, Hurbet maj be right.

Sor, couldn’t help it.

[ryousen]

the funniest part is that he’s probably not saying this because he met a lot of fault rae

Do ziran next

i second this

[terrarius]

Where does all that zir,an hate come from
If you play wanderer camp in your corner of the field…ifyou don,t fight her she can,t heal for synergys.Should buy you enough time to get wanderer out
If you play mag camp in your corner until plasma
If you play vet camp in your corner until fault.If you use obelysks you can actually zone her off very well (just don,t damage minions you can,t kill.Infact don,t even damage zir,an…damaging her just gives her something else to heal)
If you play kaleos camp in your corner until zendo and AOE shenanigans

She facerolls aggro and burndecks which only target her HP…but anything else can deal with her by playing slow and waiting.Playing correctly vs zir,an makes for some realy long and boring games sometimes…but you will very likely win if you avoid fighting as much as possible

[halcyon98]

Where does all that zir,an hate come from

From a salt mine.

[atheistmantis]

It’s very possible that they’re going to do something about the Rae+Fault combo, which I think is the real issue with Vet right now.

@deathsadvocate I agree on your other observations, but I don’t think Kha would be such a big deal if wouldn’t be for the Fault combo, which is what makes it so broken.

[improbableblob]

it comes from ziran being one of the best decks in the game for over a year now, with one of the most awful playstyles I have had the misfortune of coming up against. she is far from as easy to beat as you are making out if the ziran player knows what they are doing, which fortunately is very rare as the skill ceiling for the deck is really high.

[deathsadvocate]

Yes fault certainly super powers Kha, but Kha is still scary with the many other sources of dervishes as well.

Rae fault has existed for ages and was not even meta until kha. Fault is a strong, powerful, snowball card but it is fair and has counterplay, I would hate to see it changed.

IMO I think Kha is definitely the issue. Rae certainly pushes the decks power as well, but without Kha it rarely feels unfair.

[improbableblob]

rae fault did exist for ages and was strong and meta during that time, I remember facing it many times in tournaments, but it was not a popular deck on ladder for similar reasons for why it is not popular at the moment. the only time fault was not meta was when rae was rotated, the obelysk/fault/ka deck you made in that time was good, but it was far from the strength we see from current fault decks.

looking at it this way it seems to me that the problem is rae, not ka

[zanestheargent]

Battle Pets in general, given how they were envisioned, were a mistake, and Vetruvian always was one of the best abusers of them, side-by-side with Vanar. Undercosting stuff for effects hoping this ‘lack of control’ would justify it, specially given they more often than not (except Ace and Ion) do exactly what you want… Yeah, one can see where it all went wrong.

For as much as increasing Rae’s cost to 1 already would help wonders (and maybe change its effect to a discount/limited Eph. Shroud to compensate), one thing i’ll forever stand here is also to review the idea of the tribal as a whole, or at least make their AI a little more complex than “MAD RUSH AT WHATEVER IS CLOSEST”.

[halcyon98]

I actually really like the idea of Battle Pets, but they were executed poorly. Most of the times, they are of use not because of the fact that they are Battle Pets, but because they are cheap. You can see how CPG attempted to achieve the former when looking at cards like Zukong or Calculator.

[zanestheargent]

Very much agreed, yet while they have some attempts at being more than cheap clones/upgrades of other cards, much got shot down both by them and by us - a lot of the design around the neutral/token ones is just cheap slotmachinery. Worse as from what i heard, we drove some of it into full slotmachine mode as the cards that drew on them once had specific lists, but were poorly worded (thanks Discoverable).
Ironically the best battle pet spell, imo, is in the worse battlepet faction: Crimsom Coil illustrates the sort of design they needed badly.

[trulster]

Kha to non-flyer seems the easiest fix to make him at least a little less no-brainer.

[halcyon98]

This is what we need, folks.

[terrarius]

*fun and interactive intensified

[atheistmantis]

Considering that this is the first meta where Rae, Kha and Fault are playable together, I’d rather see a nerf to Rae than to Kha.

Having Rae costing more than 0 would force players that want to cast Fault at 6 mana to use an alternative system (Reassemble/Wind Slicer): this means that the whole archetype would change, making the deck slower and more elaborate as the players have to build the deck around cards that can get you the 0 mana minions, limiting the choice of cards, and making the whole archetype easier to deal with.

Khanuum-ka is really cancer only to those generals that like to go buffed-face (basically Vaath, Zir’an).
If the Fault-Rae-Kha wouldn’t have the same ramp as it has now, Kha would really just be an annoying minion which at 6-7 mana could be dealt with aoe and dispels.
Sure fly and rush together is nasty, but it’s still a 3/3: too thick to die to most generals, and not too strong to single handedly kill the big boys.
To really function at best it needs in fact to die at every attack to transform a dervish, granted you have enough to clean the board/kill a buffed general. Also, side note, the whole animation* is quite long, considering also the the transforming dervish is random and when you have many can be tricky to keep track and use the minions efficiently.
Would you have some ideas on how Kha should be nerfed?

*I know from your streams that you use the speed code, but not everybody use it or want to use it, so I think it’s right to mention the slowness of the animation as a downside of the card .

[deathsadvocate]

But even during rotation when Rae was not a thing Kha/Fault was meta warping. And again before Kha, Vet and Fault were strong but not problematic. The way it completely shuts down things like Vaath really causes an issue.

It ether needs to lose flying and maybe get an Attack buff to compensate, or have something like “Kha’s may only attack a general once per turn.”

[terrarius]

There are many things of the combo which can be nerfed but i think kha should be the one to be nerfed.The extend to which he counters general atkbuffs is just not healthy to the game in my opinion