Saturday Tournaments - Canceled

Saturday Tournaments are canceled until Ubisoft (Blue Byte) will show any interest about the game. Mostly because in current situation, we can't even be sure if prizes for tournament would be given.

[AoL] Ascension of Legends Finals - Stream

If you haven't managed to see yesterday AoL finals stream with commentary by CuCu99 and Uraxor, no worries!

You can find saved broadcast on CuCu's youtube channel.
Second part of broadcast will happen today on CuCu's twitch - 7 P.M. CET.

Announcement about future of M&M:DoC

Finaly we got long-awaited announcement about M&M: Duels of Champions future. However among news there are two types of them - good news and sad news... I don't know which news I should begin with, maybe we should hear out those good ones first? 

Well, looks like M&M: Duels of Champions has future and there are plans for further development of it. Blue Byte will take over M&M: Duels of Champions. Blue Byte is Ubisoft's German studio working on free-to-play games. As we know, they are already working on an update that will feature the draft mode. It's clearly a big change and big changes always seed shadows of doubt in our hearts... will new studio be competent enough to run project with so much potential as M&M: Duels of Champions has? I don't know, but for sure I'll stay with game to see if winds of change will bring for us anything good.

Now it's time for sad part. Our guide, our lighthouse and the most amazing among all Community Managers which ever were associated with M&M:DoC - Kimmundi, will be no more. May all baguettes of this world be with you in your journey across universe...

Road to Nowhere...

After short, really short stream with Sanctuary I've went insane... and promised not to play/stream DoC in near future with exception of Saturday Tournaments, because I've no more joy in playing in such imbalanced metagame. What's wrong with game balance in current Duels of Champions?

• Lack of equality. Even if factions got creatures with same stats:cost, that doesn't mean they are equal. For example all Inferno heroes got access to Fire, which makes Succubus much more powerful than Neophyte Lich, Kabuki Sentry or Arcane Sharpshooter. Conlusion: creatures among factions require rebalancing with taking into account all possible tricks and threats all factions have.
• Superior abilities reserved for certain factions, for example only Inferno is allowed to discard or deal direct damage which is just wrong. Both of those make Inferno superior to any other faction in multiple of scenarios. Conclusion: we need more important tools moved from certain factions to neutral section.
• Importance of early game. Without reliable early game resets (Earthquake, Forbidden Flame) and raising power of early game creatures, many games are decided already in early game (it's much less true for heroes with Fire or Earth). For example I consider Hatchling Breeder and buffed Lurkers in the Dark much more opressive in early game than Dark Assassins and Wolf Captains used to be year ago, yet we have less answers to those new threats. Conclusion: early game threats should be rebalanced or we should get more answers for them as fast as possible.
• New starting rules we got together with Dragon Crystal made in my opinion more harm than good. First, Invokers got overbuffed and are way too superior to other heroes. Second 1/1/1 heroes are pretty obsolete while going 1st with new rules (you can't even raise stats as 1st player). If we add previous point to this, we can judge outcome of many games just by seeing which hero player is playing and if he's going 1st or 2nd. Conclusion: 1st player should be able to raise his stats, Invokers need to be rebalanced again.
• With so much direct damage which can't be avoided we lack any proper healing. Conclusion: rebalance healing, and better make it neutral so games won't be decided just by faction picks.
• Fortunes are super crap compared to Spells. Conclusion: we need more strong fortunes, which would be on pair with spells.
• Lack of balance between spell schools. For example Fire is super strong, while Light is super weak. If we take into considernation that Fire is basic spell schools of Inferno and Light is basic spell school of Haven heroes, we may notice why Haven is much worse than Inferno, however thare are many other reasons in this case. Conclusion: rebalance power of spell schools, mostly buff stuff in weaker ones.
• In closing. Dear devs, you need to rebalance old cards, not just make new ones, because that won't ever fix our problems and game will continue its road to nowhere.

Downloads

I've added "Downloads" section, where you can find useful tools (actualy links to official threads on forums about those tools), which are:

• Replay Manager by Aranarth78
• Zenity's Modding Tool by Zenity Alpha

Deck Tech with hectoring - Ignatius

Hectoring published another episode of Deck Tech, this time featuring Ignatius.
I encourage you to check it out!

Popular Decks

I've added new page on blog called "Popular Decks". You can check top20 the most popular heroes based on Metagame Overviews with some example decklists for them. Hope this new feature will be useful for you guys!

Saturday Tournaments

Due to positive feedback of players participating in last Saturday Tournament, those will happen every week. You can find always updated info by entering Saturday Tournaments page. I've also added Hall of Fame, where entire top3 of each tournament will be memorized.

Metagame Overview [17/11 - 1/12]

You can download data gathered here. Keep in mind that this time post is based  on 1800+ replays.
		Kal seems be a bit less popular compared to how much popular he was two weeks ago (24,19%, now only 15,69%). However it's still the most popular champion.
		Since meta slowed a bit Ignatius  gained more popularity. It's mostly because his ability can give pretty decent amount of unavoidable damage.
		Shaar represent agressive Stronghold with ability to clear board with Insect Swarms and/or Arkath's Wraths. She can be played also in more defensive way with Stone Shields, clearly much better pick than Kat.
		I think Namtaru gained in popularity mostly due to performance of MnM_vs_Smarties during Road to Paris. It's decent hero with good spell schools to control the board, which like Kal has ability to finish with Time Jumps.
		Nahla is losing popularity due to rise of Ignatius, however I would also blame clunky gameplay of Time Lock.
		Not surprising that Kiril is played less and less, since control Kiril never was good in first place and in more controlish meta, Ignatius seems to be much better choice than Kiril in terms of agressive play.
		What really surprises me is Invoker Namtaru, for me completly overnerfed and overshadowed right now by her second personality.
		Same as Kiril, inferior to Ignatius in current metagame, which may explain popularity loss.
		Morgan seems to be natural counter to Ignatius. So I guess the more popular Ignatius will be, the more popularity Morgan will gain.
		Much less versatile than Shaar, has only one way to be played which is super agressive and has no ability to comeback after falling behind.