The Patch According to Discord: 0.2.23

Introduction

Welcome to the fifth Patch According to Discord post. Like the Meta According to Discord, this is a crowdsourced endeavour from various players of mostly a fairly high level; thanks to everyone who filled out my survey.

How It Works

I asked respondents to rate changes that weren’t clearly direct buffs on a three point “scale”: “Buffed”, “Nerfed”, or “Situational”, and requested a comment (especially for “situational” responses).

For the buffed or nerfed cards, I asked respondents to rate the changes from “Not Impactful” to “Impactful”, on a scale of 0-3.

The Fun Factor is a rating on a scale from 1-5 whether the change makes the game more or less fun to play overall, so 3 is effectively “no change” and 1 is -2. I’ve included quartiles to give an idea of how the mean is influenced by outliers who love or hate the change.

For the faction standings, I asked players to rank the factions from best to worst, allowing ties if they felt they were equivalent. I then averaged the rank assigned to each faction and ranked the average. There are other ways of interpreting the data, which might produce different results, but this is close enough.

Faction Standings

1. Vanar (1.73)
2. Lyonar (1.96)
3. Songhai (2.34)
4. Magmar (3.19)
5. Abyssian (3.77)
6. Vetruvian (4.54)

Summary Infographics

All images courtesy of the excellent ZeroUnderscoreOu.

Breakdown

40 Card Deck Limit

Average approval on a scale from 1 to 5: 3.69 (Quartiles: 3 / 4 / 5)

Mixed Adjustments

Divine Bond

2 Mana: “Set a minion’s attack equal to its health” -> 3 Mana: “Give a minion +Attack equal to its health”

Buffed (24): It does more damage. And you can cast it twice to do a lot more damage. It’s extremely important to be able to answer a 5 mana 3/10 again.

Situational (4): It does cost more now, so in some cases it will be harder to work it in.

Nerfed (1): No comment given.

Overall: Buffed.

Impact: 1.52 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2) Fun Factor: 2.48 (Quartiles: 1 / 3 / 3)

Oserix

7 Mana 8/8: “Blast / Your General deals double damage.” -> 7 Mana 9/8: “Your General deals double damage. Your General takes no damage on your turn.”

Buffed (19): It’s got more immediate effect and helps with removing threats. It might have use in a midrange type deck now. Frankly, it’s hard to be worse than it was before.

Situational (7): It’s still probably mostly leaning into setting up OTK turns. Losing blast makes Oserix itself less useful, even if the General is better.

Nerfed (0).

Overall: Buffed, but that doesn’t mean good.

Impact: 0.88 (Quartiles: 0 / 1 / 1) Fun Factor: 3.19 (Quartiles: 3 / 3 / 3)

Nightsorrow Assassin

3 Mana 4/2: “Opening Gambit: Destroy a nearby damaged minion.” -> 3 Mana 3/1: “Opening Gambit: Destroy a nearby minion with 3 or less Attack.”

Buffed (11): This effect is a huge choke on Lyonar openings specifically, and early game plays more generally. Some bulkier minions with lower attack will also struggle. Not needing a ping to activate the effect makes it more generally applicable. Abyssian benefits more from a stable early game than from the late game utility.

Situational (11): It’s great early, especially in specific deck matchups like Obelysk Vetruvian, but now lacks the use against big bodies later on.

Nerfed (6): In the matchups where it’s bad, it’s bad. The old version was a more efficient way to remove large threats than Dark Terminus or Ritual Banishing, so there’s much less flexibility.

Overall: Buffed, but very swingy.

Impact: 2.46 (Quartiles: 2 / 2.5 / 3) Fun Factor: 2.43 (Quartiles: 2 / 3 / 3)

Twin Fang

2 Mana: “Your General has an additional +1/+0 for each time an ally takes damage.” -> 3 Mana: “Your General has an additional +2/+0 for each time an ally takes damage.”

Buffed (24): It does a lot more damage. Twice as much, even. Maybe even more than twice, in effect.

Situational (3): Magmar currently isn’t really in a good position to build around using the effect.

Nerfed (1): No comment given.

Overall: Buffed

Impact: 1.94 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 3) Fun Factor: 2.96 (Quartiles: 2 / 3 / 4)

Elucidator

4 Mana 5/4: “Rush / When this takes damage, deal 2 damage to your General.” -> “Rush / Opening Gambit: Deal 4 damage to your General.”

Buffed (13): Copy effects, like Deja-Vu Engineer, bypass the self-damage now. It buffs Araki Headhunter. You take less damage if your opponent pings it to death.

Situational (6): You will sometimes take more damage, sometimes take less damage.

Nerfed (8): You can probably expect to take more damage on average. You don’t get to do 15 damage on 5 mana with Twin Fang.

Overall: Buffed

Impact: 1.56 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2) Fun Factor: 2.89 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2)

Fenrir Warmaster

3 Mana 3/2: “Dying Wish: Summon a 3/4 Ghost Wolf on this space.” -> 3 Mana 3/3: “Dying Wish: Summon a 3/3 Ghost Wolf on this space.”

Buffed (24): 3/3 into 3/3 can potentially absorb a lot of attacks, because a lot of things do 2 damage. Most other comments touch less on why it’s good and more on it being possibly the best 3 drop in the game, or being unpleasant to play against.

Situational (2): “Change to stats depends on match up”

Nerfed (1): No comment given.

Overall: Overwhelmingly Buffed

Impact: 2.69 (Quartiles: 2.25 / 3 / 3) Fun Factor: 2.29 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 3)

Archon Spellbinder

6 Mana 8/7: “Your opponent’s spells cost 1 more to play.” -> 6 Mana 6/9: Text unchanged.

Buffed (21): Better Flash target, better Divine Bond target, better heal target. It doesn’t need the attack as much as the health. Nice.

Situational (3): “why”

Nerfed (2): No comment given.

Overall: Overwhelmingly Buffed

Impact: 1.73 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2) Fun Factor: 2.74 (Quartiles: 2 / 3 / 3)

Buffs

Sundrop Elixir

1 Mana: “Restore 4 Health to a unit.” -> “Restore 5 Health to a unit.”

This change on its own is minor, but if Lyonar casts several copies of Sundrop (which is very possible), it creeps up from “just one extra health” to 4 or more extra health, which can make a difference in longer games. Its playrate is still likely to be decided more by the meta than by its own power level, though.

Average rating: 1.63 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2) Fun Factor: 2.38 (Quartiles: 2 / 2.5 / 3)

Sunriser

4 Mana 4/4: “Whenever anything is healed, deal 2 damage to nearby enemies.” -> 4 Mana 3/4, text unchanged.

It dies to Nightsorrow Assassin. That’s about it.

Average rating: 1.56 (Quartiles: 1 / 1 / 2) Fun Factor: 3.26 (Quartiles: 3 / 3 / 4)

Tusk Boar

2 Mana 3/3: “Rush / At the start of your turn, return this to your hand and deal 1 damage to your General.” -> “Rush / At the start of your turn, return this to your hand.”

This adds to the polarisation of “playing Songhai and drawing Boar / not drawing Boar.” While the impact is small, it’s likely not to actually be negligible. It was useful to have a cue to newer players that letting Boar bounce is frequently a good play. It does allow more free play with artefacts, but it was also possible to play artefacts with Boar before.

Average rating: 1.7 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 2.5) Fun Factor: 2.21 (Quartiles: 1 / 2 / 3)

Panddo

(created by Onyx Bear Seal) 0 Mana 0/1: “This cannot be attacked.” -> 0 mana 0/2, text unchanged.

It survives Gotatsu and Ghost Lightning. This isn’t likely to matter, though, as almost no-one plays Onyx Bear Seal for other reasons.

Average rating: 0.59 (Quartiles: 0 / 0 / 1) Fun Factor: 3.11 (Quartiles: 3 / 3 / 3)

Hamon Bladeseeker

5 Mana 8/8: “At the start of your turn, deal 1 damage to your General.” -> “At the start of your turn, deal 2 damage to your General.”

This is a noticeable downside compared to 1 damage per turn. However, there aren’t really any decks running Hamon at the moment, so it’s unlikely to have much effect.

Despite this, several people rated this as having reasonable impact, so I’m not sure what to make of that.

Average rating: 1 (Quartiles: 0 / 1 / 2) Fun Factor: 3 (Quartiles: 2 / 3 / 4)

Hatchling

(Created by Progenitor) 1 Mana 2/1 -> 1 Mana 2/1: “Frenzy”

Hatchlings struggle because they die before acting or are out of range, not because they need more damage opportunities. Hatchlings also struggle because Progenitor is much weaker than competing 4 drops Magmar could run, so they never even get to make it to the point of dying to pings or AoE.

“This is literally adding flavour text. The hatchlings will never ever frenzy something. They take so long to spawn that the opponent will be able to put in their last will and testament “play around frenzy” and the officiants will be able to do it in time.” ~ Smarty

Average rating: 0.31 (Quartiles: 0 / 0 / 1) Fun Factor: 3 (Quartiles: 3 / 3 / 3)

Anachronize

4 Mana: “Destroy minions summoned since your last turn.” -> “Destroy minions summoned since your last turn. End your turn.”

Less good in the late game, but still fine in the early game if it was all you were doing with your turn anyway. You can still equip artefacts or play other spells before playing it at 4 mana. You can’t copy it with Alcuin, either. Play rate may well be driven down by the 40 card limit reducing the prevalence of slow Magmar decks, but the nerf still matters.

Even though at least one person rated it as “overnerfed”, no-one rated this change below 3 on the fun scale.

Average rating: 2.48 (Quartiles: 2 / 3 / 3) Fun Factor: 4.14 (Quartiles: 3.75 / 4 / 5)

An Overall Note

Because people have been talking about this patch a lot:

The overall fun factor is 2.89. The overall fun factor excluding the change to Anachronize is 2.80.

This is the first time a patch I’ve done a survey for has had an overall negative fun impression.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to:

.	.	.	.	.
Zabiool	Smarty	ZeroUnderscoreou	Crimson	Wastrel
Virshuam	BaldEaglePC	solobruiser	krackocloud	Eddie
Scuttle	buyingcoats	TOPDECKTIMMY	Wirox	GSValhalla
EurasianJay	Deathremar	Navy Seagull	Mr T	calvin
pkp	Toastie	Krazed	abracadani	…and 4 anonymous respondents.

Hot Takes

Take	Owner
They hated Blatm for speaking the truth.	Anon
I think that someone at dream sloth went through a rough break up with a white-haired goth baddie and this is why they did this to my girl NSA	Smarty
make more 3 drops. Looking at the curve we have an overwhelming number of good 4 drops but when it comes to 3 the choices are very very slim. As the game is right now you want to be impactful on the first turns, there’s no one that juggle around waiting to cast good 7 drops, unless they win you the game on the spot. It’s not like you can’t see this. Don’t make more cards that create spells in your hand. Discovery exists in Heartstone and it warped the game to the point where almost every card and every faction can create cards in their hand. This effect is too strong when you can manipulate the outcome, and it is frustrating when it’s random like Double Agent stealing clutch cards.	Anon
Reaper of the 9 moons should ALSO have an airdrop. Also as an Abyss player, there’s too many unusable cards in Abyss can we have them reworked or just give them the most minor change to let them be relevant.	Crimson
Mana Vortex is the primary card that should be looked at for Songhai nerfs/changes and the fact that we end up on SSS or IF is actually wild to me. Also DSS could be 1 mana and it would be a largely irrelevant power bump you cowards.	EurasianJay
Remove dbond and make it into a nuetral minion that is like 2/2 but when hp is buffed attack follows. Lynoars other spells are removing health to make into attack. Doesnt seem to fit that they have dbonds too, especially when they have celerity targets. Waiting for AHS + debond minion :)	Wastrel
Increase the deck limit to 100 for ladder.	Virshuam
the “Sloth meta” was the healthiest the game has been since I can remember, gameplay and player-count wise	BaldEaglePC
Making content patches, high frequency, low cost. Hire me!	ZeroUnderscoreou
Boar’s Tusk is fine, just get on with your life!	solobruiser
Bring back Astral Phasing reeeeeee	Scuttle
I like the game right now!	TOPDECKTIMMY
A game should aim to make all cards more or less equally powerful. If a developer acknowledges one card is better than another and doesn’t want to ever do anything about it, it’s a sign of bad design.	Wirox
Dark Nemesis needs a buff	Krazed
Blatm was right about Replace Lyonar. It’s painful but true.	GSValhalla
tusk boar should be a 4/4 for 3 mana	humans
Unilaterally buffing what devs have considered “the best card in the game” is lazy.	Anon
Bring back larger deck size limits and the original Double Agent (I mean everything else was reverted so why not DA)	Anon
for the love of god just revert nsa i don’t even have a hot take just revert nsa please god nobody likes this change	calvin
The power level dream sloth games wants Duelyst II to have is fundamentally incompatible with the reasons most people like Duelyst	Navy Seagull
Keeper of the Vale is nuts.	Toastie