A few days ago, Hearthstone Developer Ates "Tabayrak" Bayrak was asked about the current state of Duels, afflicted by some issues related to certain Passive Treasures and (pretty much just like in Standard) fast combo decks. The tweet below is the answer that he gave us.
Quote From Tabayrak @Tabayrak #hearthstoneduels really hoping we can turn down the mana cheating with All Together Now/Rally the Troops/Meek Mastery (almost better than Captured Flag, why?). And adjust Mind Tether Priest, it’s essentially impossible to beat them game 1-3 if they know what to do. Sad we don’t see variety of decks:(Thanks for reaching out I will look into it. I appreciate it.
It appears that Team 5 is aware of the fact that Duels may have reached a critical point where some things may need to get addressed. Let's be clear: Tabayrak and ourselves did not say that Duels balance changes are coming, but rather that Team 5 is willing to listen to players' feedback and look into some particular interactions, which is a behavior we should appreciate.
What are the problematic Passives Treasures? How could they be fixed? In this article, we'll try to give you our humble two cents on the matter.
Adjusting Passive Treasures
Let's start with the Passive Treasures. Many pros have highlighted that some passives are far too prevalent and, more times than not, very crucial for the fate of the matches. Said treasures all have some form of mana-cheating mechanic in common, even though they relate to it in different ways.
All Together Now
Starting from the tier 1 Passive Treasures, I totally see why people have feelings against All Together Now: while it represents a solid passive, remember that Battlecry is the most common keyword and that most decks run a handful of them. For niche/meme decks, you can easily rely on it in order to get to a reasonable score and other archetypes, which are Battlecry-focused, can easily exploit it.
Think about Legendary Warrior, Elemental Shaman or Murloc Shaman. Almost all their minions have Battlecry and Incanter's Flow taught us how good it is to have your entire deck discounted by 1 mana - sure, your minions won't cost less than 1 mana, but is that really a worrying downside?
A suggested change I've come across on internet travels would be to split All Together Now in two different passives, one for the tier 1 pool and one for the tier 2:
- Tier 1 ATN would discount your first Battlecry card you play each turn.
- Much like Rhonin's Scrying Orb does with spells - we can even discuss about increasing the discount to 2 mana, but let's leave this topic for another time.
- Tier 2 ATN would be the current iteration of the treasure we're talking about.
Meek Mastery
When Meek Mastery got revealed a couple days before United in Stormwind's launch, many players lost their minds because it is a common tier 1 passive which is arguably better than Captured Flag, an Ultra Rare tier 2 Passive Treasure, which has a 1% chance (!) to be offered.
While I totally see Team 5's effort to provide a varied passive pool, and I appreciate the support for Neutral minions (I was a sucker for Battlegrounds' Tirion Fordring!), it is quite clear that Meek Mastery is a bit overtuned. You could easily remove either the cost reduction or the stats buff and it would still be remarkable for a tier 1 passive.
Rally the Troops
The fact that people are complaining about this passive is really indicative, given that it already received a nerf from 3-cost reduction to 2. The reasoning is very similar to All Together Now: despite the archetype you're building around, you'll almost always run a couple Battlecry units so having additional (and discounted on top of it) card draw is a plus no one would ever decline. If you already have lots of Battlecry minions this is what you're looking for, but in case you don't and the RNG gods don't offer you anything better... well, it's still pretty damn good.
Balancing for the second time Rally the Troops without either removing or killing it seems quite tricky, and my honest opinion is that it's not even the biggest problem right now: changing too many passives together may lead to counterproductive effects and create an even more unbalanced environment, which is no one's goal.
Mind Tether Priest
Now, the big elephant in the room: Mind Tether Priest. To begin with, the story behind this signature Hero Power is quite amusing. Back in the day when Duels was released, people preferred Shadow Mend over it, mainly because there weren't enough Miracle cards for it to be a concrete and viable strategy. For many months, Mind Tether was considered to be a meme, but what changed things? The answer lies in late March, when Forged in the Barrens and Journey to Un'Goro, as well as the Core set, got added to the Duels card pool.
In particular, these three sets gave Priest card generation for Mind Tether to become a viable game plan:
- Thrive in the Shadows and Shadow Visions gave Mindrender Illucia valuable card generation;
- Xyrella is an excellent board clear, especially in combination with Desperate Prayer;
- Lyra the Sunshard has potential to fill your hand when you're short on resources.
What really might have pushed the archetype too much over the top is United in Stormwind and the 'Shadow Priest' package, consisting of the cards you see below.
- Twilight Deceptor is a 2/3 Novice Engineer after you cast a spell;
- Shadowcloth Needle is insane against aggro decks, especially Token Druid and Murloc Shaman;
- Void Shard is a Penance which trades more cost for more flexibility (as it can become a lesser Mind Blast when needed).
However, Voidtouched Attendant is the real deal. Turning each Mind Tether trigger into an unconditional 2 damage ping to the opponent's face is quite impressive, especially in a class with lots of cheap spells at disposal. For example, take the interaction with Bag of Coins, a usually decent but not broken Treasure. Casting it and the 3 Coins means 8 damage to your opponent's face while you gain 3 mana for another bunch of damage.
Turning a bunch of otherwise not very offensive spells into a remarkable threat is often devastating, especially in the very first games of each run where the health totals are not very high and therefore closing games with Mind Tether shenanigans is far too easy if the Priest player is aware of what they should do.
"How would you change Mind Tether, Avalon?" - you might ask. Even though I am not a game developer myself and I am not able to see the bigger picture, two changes came through my mind as I was writing this article:
The first one, which is also the one I am less convinced about, would be turning Mind Tether into a copy of Fireshaper. While this solution would tame the Hero Power's potential when it comes to face damage, it would just become a Passive Treasure, which feels quite... how I can say it... strange? wrong? You tell me.
The second one consists in applying to Mind Tether the Outlander treatment. Let me explain what I mean with that.
You may remember that Outlander was originally a passive Hero Power, which triggered automatically as you played a card in the Outcast spots. However, since properly built decks were able to generate impressive amounts of attack in the first few turns of the game (I still remember screenshots showing people getting hit by 20+ damage on turn 3 or so), Team 5 made Outlander a Hero Power you actually have to pay mana for.
This could be the same balance decision adopted for tuning down Mind Tether: making it cost 1 mana would definitely retain its damage potential, especially if you are able to set up cycle turns, but at the same time it would decrease the non-games many players are forced to play (and lose) at the beginning of each run.
What do you think about these potential changes? Let us know in the comments below!
If you want to try some Duels run and you don't know what to play, here are some fresh compilation of 12-wins starting decks:
Comments
Just so everyone is aware, mind tether does help accomplish that achievement in stormwind for dealing damage with hp as priest.
So before it gets nerfed or changed, that's the fastest way to grind up that 500 xp.
Bruising still triggers me, which might be due to many scars of going against duplicated legendary minions turn after turn.
I feel you badly: in fact, if I were to comment on a general Duels patch and not on that single tweet, I would've probably talked about Bruising.
I rather they buff weak powers and treasures. Most classes only have 1 hero power that doesn't suck complete ass, and 1 or 2 starting treasures. There is no variety.
That would help, but also pruning some active/passive treasures. And coming with up more than 3 choices offered (we know they have the tech for at least 4 and more). It becomes even more of a random luck to land something good when they keep bloating the total amount.
I feel like one of duels main issues from a design perspective is it reliance on mana cheat to do "big, cool things".
I'd be interested in if they could redesign it, without any mana cheating, and still make it have the "big, cool things"
Mind Tether definitely needs the nerf treatment, but I'm not sure how they can actually balance it without completely killing it.
Seeing how nothing in Duels is balanced whatsoever, would it really be that much of a loss if they just removed it altogether?
thank god, meek mastery is gonna get nerfed
We're not saying that Meek Mastery is going to be nerfed, but rather that the devs are keeping an eye on it.