Why ruby yak needs to be reworked, or removed entirely from the game

Balance Discussion
#1

I would like to say sorry beforehand if this comes off as a unproductive and possibly aggressive thread, but i see no possible nerf or work-around for Ruby yak, it needs to be reworked or removed in it’s entirety. Or possibly made into a legendary like sky whales were.

TL:DR - Ruby Yak is just as ruinous for the game as sky whales was, how spirit theft is, and how groundshaker still is even after a lack luster nerf. if you want specifics, please take the time to read some or all of my reasoning.

Ruby yak has imo been the worst card design i’ve seen from any of the new cards in the fall of everlife dlc, it’s on the same scale as the whale in oversky was, and here’s why:

It is basically a counter to any non hard removal in the entire game, the only cards you can get ‘value’ by using against it is: Frogify, last nightmare, doomsday, crystal flower, and phantasm (which is a rubbish trade off) and if you get it low enough on health (which would’ve cost you a few points of hp) stuff like soul drain and emperor’s command.

ANY aoe clear from cards like the new rakoakopter, garudan, hellfire, firestorm, plague bearer, emerald salamander, and blazing salamander, is basically a slap back in your face if you try to get a ‘value’ play on a board full of yaks. Even stuff like wind soldiers, the new hunt down, deepwood stalkers, frogtosser, and probably plenty of other cards, never feel like they’re quite worth it.

All of that would’ve been reason enough for a rework in my book, but it gets even worse: It basically does what burn decks have been doing for a long time, just better, cheaper, and faster.

It makes any deck that would’ve run or thought about running cards like bloodstone sprite and blood singer useless. Since it has a better statline that is incredibly hard to deal with for a lot of decks, a better ability with just a little yak synergy splashed into a deck, it only costs 1 mountain, same as the sprite, but the sprite needs a very aggressive playstyle and has to either collect from enemy wells on it’s own, or have other creatures for that purpose.

Ruby yak has a much looser requirement, and has almost endless potential in how much dmg it can give in a round, where sprite can only give 2 dmg at most, per sprite on board.

All of this even without talking about the absurd sapphire yak synergy you can get with it. 1 collection, and it’s a 6/7, which you can get incredibly fast with the low land requirements.

Sorry for the wall of text, and the blatantly aggressive atmosphere of my post, but i’m honestly sick of bad card designs that ruin so many possibly deck variations, and the meta. All because of 1 card getting added that should never have left the drawing board in the first place.

Case in point: Sky whales, spirit theft, even an old favorite of red decks like groundshaker.

1 Like
#2

I think your issue is that you play too slow

#3

This card looks like a toned down version of old Lord of terror

#4

I think you’re missing a few steps of logic there. Lord of terror never applied to other creatures, ruby yak does.
So any yak you play is a potential 1 dmg to the enemy’s face per 1 point of dmg they take. Let’s say you have 3 yaks on board, which is not unreasonable, if you then play a ruby yak and let’s say use a completely unused card like famine, thats 4 dmg to the enemys face, with only 1 ruby yak on board.

Let’s take it up a notch and say you already have 1 ruby yak + 3 random yaks on the board and do the exact same play, thats 10 dmg to the enemy’s face, for only 7 faeria, basically a guarenteed hellfire +1, with no rng involved.
And you’re still free to attack with your yaks, and give even MORE dmg to the face. That has absolutely no counter whatsoever, and is a 2 turn lethal with 2 famines in the same scenario, or an OTK for just 2 more faeria for the second famine in your turn.

The same logic goes for any aoe the enemy would’ve liked to use for a value play board clear. And my original points are still valid which you never commented on.

#5

I have this otk deck
2 roby
1 yak attack
2 famine

gg

#6

I’ll just kindly point out that the ruby yak’s ability only deals one damage to the opponent whenever a yak is dealt damage. Don’t confound it with battle rager’s ability, which specifically says “deal that much damage to the opponent”.

I do understand your concerns regarding ruby yak despite what I just said. I’ve played a red yak deck a few times, and it did fairly well. It will require more testing to see where it fits in the meta, and to determine whether it needs a nerf or not.

Edit: I just realised I might be dumb for saying what I said. I blame my poor social skills.

#7

that combo you mentioned requires 14+ faeria and +3 cards, if you let this happen you’re playing way too slow

#8

Thank you for that edit, good to know you realised your mistake yourself. :slight_smile: and if anybody wanted to know. I made a quick deck in less than 2 minutes, which i tested against the A.I (yes i know it plays like crap, but it was simply to prove to myself that ruby yak works as i wrote it does), and at turn 3-4 i had given the A.I 6 dmg to the face, from 1 famine + sapphire and ruby yak hits. This might make a few of you think “but thats not even a lot compared to the blood rain deck, or similar variants”, and thats correct, but this is not taking into account that i still had 3 seifers, 3 flame bursts, 2 ruby yaks, 2 hellfires left in the deck, and i could’ve added derelict towers, and even blood singer to the deck. (even if it’s not needed)

Another point i made to a friend of mine, the deck is so versatile because of the low land req, that you could basically splash any color in it with the color specific yaks, and profit. green gives it buffs for staying power, blue can give it sapphire yak buffs + auroras creation for even more ruby yaks, yellow for haste and hard removals, and so on… i honestely think i’ve made my point clear, and anybody who can come up with a proper counter argument that describes how i’m wrong, please feel free to take up the challenge if you feel like it.

1 Like
#9

such baby rage holy hell, all you have to is play blue jump and win, that deck is way too slow against Bjump and they can’t really do anything

#10

which of the comboes i mentioned requires 14 faeria?
the first combo i mentioned is: 3 random yaks already on board> you play a ruby yak for 5 faeria>into a famine for 2, that is 7 faeria.

The second one i wrote was: 3 random yak AND a ruby yak on board> you play a ruby yak for 5 faeria> into 1 famine for 2, again 7 faeria, and if you have another famine on hand, like i wrote. then it makes 9 faeria for an OTK

#11

there is no baby rage here, i make valid point, with actual arguments behind them, which you apparently don’t feel the need to. This deck is even less ‘slow’ than luuu90’s Blood Rain deck, and if you tell me he doesn’t know how to make a deck that can win against blue, i think you need to check your facts.

#12

To be honest, I’m not even close to being the best player in any way, but I’ll try to see if there is anything that beats ruby yak.

One of the first counters to burn that comes to mind is green in general, due to its high life creatures and healing. Problem is, those creatures can be used against green to burn them a bunch.

There’s also rush decks, but they don’t seem that great against the blood rain variant to me. I guess it depends on the rush deck.

Considering ruby yak decks seem like they want to be either midrange or control, I think midrange decks could work. You just really want to clear the ruby yaks early, so they don’t win the game for the opponent later.

So it looks like there are a few counters here and there. As for how effective they are, we’ll just have to test them and see for ourselves.

#13

if you hate those decks so much just play beast decks or grush

#14

It’s not that hard or broken, just don’t let them get a board, force their hand, and put lots of pressure, be sure to run commands, or guidance!

#15

I like your arguments and i agree partly with what you said about green and healing, but no amount of healing is going to save anybody from a OTK famine play. If it was possible to heal above 20 health then yes it would be very possible.
Also i think you’re focusing too much on the 1 specific play i mentioned. even IF you waste removal or clear the ruby yaks, you’re still going to take hits to the face, and you’ll have to heal almost immediately after losing as low as 4-6 hp, or you’ve potentially already lost the match.

Because a deck created around burning, would have atleast 3 flame bursts, which is a potential 9 dmg to the face on it’s own, then you have seifers wrath, which is 6 dmg to the face, then there’s hellfire’s, any splashed haste creatures if you’re going with yellow, then there’s blood singers, derelict towers, brutes and grim guards. Of course you can’t put all of the mentioned cards in 1 deck when you also need a few yaks, but you’ll still have more than enough burn to finish any deck that doesn’t run a heavy amount of healing, and already know your strategy before hand.

And the burn player still has the choice of just hoarding resources for an otk, it might need a lot of faeria, but it’s doable like any other high cost combo deck. Also like i said, you can basically splash this into any kind of color combination and profit, since you don’t need a lot of yaks for the deck to work, and most of the yaks are neutral in color.

And my other points about it ruining deck building potential, being an automatic counter vs. any form of aoe dmg clear still stands, plus the yak player also has the choice of using aoe clear themselves unless they play against another ruby yak deck ^^.

#16

I think your definition of “it’s not that hard or broken” is very different from mine, and if your statement was true then please explain to me why they reworked Lord of Terror?

But atleast you put up some valid ideas for a counter play in this reply. But like i wrote in my latest reply to Nomisabeu, wont help if the yak player just hordes resources. And if the deck has a hard time against any kind of rush, it just needs to splash it’s own healing into the deck, and possibly a grim guard for taunt (or other taunters). Which again, is entirely possible because of yaks being neutral or low on land req. You need at most 2 mountains for the deck to work in any color combination. which is not a lot.

In most scenarios the odds are stacked against any deck that meets ruby yak burn, you need very specific colors, or counters to have a viable chance at winning.

#17

I just had my first game against ruby yak - I was playing blue/red bargain, I played slow, got control of both wells early, but died to 16 points of direct damage overall - the finisher was a 9 damage 3 yak famine once I started to threaten his orb. I missed one chance to kill a yak - could have played it better but wasn’t aware of the combo. I’ll have to play a few more games against it and see how a more direct approach fares.
The card itself seems like it would still be playable if you upped the land requirement to 2, dropped the stats to 3/4, or changed the text so that it only affects enemy controlled sources of damage.

#18

Very constructive post mate, and i totally agree it would help a lot if any of the changes you mentioned gets implimented, but it still works as a universal counter for any AOE dmg. But it would be a lot more manageable with what you suggested. Would actually be possible to play around it more easily.

#19

Wow, just played my 2nd game vs ruby yak. This time I was mono-green, I grabbed a side well then went for the orb - I placed 6 forests and 2 plains to reach his orb by this indirect route so 7 turns - I dropped a golem, turn 8 I swung for 8, then dropped a huge army on his orb to threaten lethal. It was still too slow - he had already got to about 30 faeria with a few blue tricks like failed experiment/stormspawn. He dropped 2 ruby yaks, used aurora’s creation for a third, did a double famine for 18 damage and finished me with a flame burst.

I want to beat this deck and I’m going to keep trying stuff out, the combo does seem a bit ridiculous though. Divine guardians might help a bit - but maybe not that helpful if the damage is applied point by point.

Compared to other games like Magic the gathering, I think Faeria has fewer tools available to deal with combo decks - you lack counterspells, hand destruction or resource denial. So when a very strong combo deck comes along, the only option is to rush his orb - unless a control deck can rush it becomes obsolete.

edit: I looked up the old Lord of Terror (deals the opponent 2 damage whenever he takes damage), here’s a thread I found with a similiar discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/faeria/comments/69g8zx/my_deck_was_murdered_any_tips_for_a_similar_one/

Some salient posts:

Angrybear52 3 points 1 year ago
It wasn’t really that they dislike burn (RY Burn seems alive and well to me), but as people experimented with the old LoT, they found that Red Burn got REALLY degenerate. Sadly, it just had to die.

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[–]DoigteurFou 2 points 1 year ago
If I may correct something, monored burn with lord of terror wasn’t really op. The blue-red lord of terror + mana engine deck was very strong however and I think the decision to change lord of terror was mostly based on this deck.

#20

Its not a healthy deck for the game imo. Its very uninteractive and with some good draw they almost auto win. There is very little counter play. Even rushing wont work a lot of the time.