I think duels is pretty fun, I play it a lot. The idea of having really overpowered decks and combos is something that I can't help but laugh at and makes me play. I think there's some core issues like the starting decks being too similar and some classes being too good from the go (rogue, druid, warlock), though I don't think that can be helped.
Some changes I'd like to see:
-Ban C'Thun, the Shattered. This thing is just everywhere and obnoxious in the early games with sub-20 cards, giving you a free win condition in one deck slot. Especially good with warlock/priest drawing power. Decks would probably be more interesting if this didn't over-centralise control games.
-Ban Tour Guide: imo considering most duels hero powers are insane by design, tour guide usually breaks them by cheating them out way faster than intended. Turn 1 harvest time or turn 2 nerubian egg with a deathrattle hero power is often game over already in the early matches where people don't have enough health to take a beating. There's a lot of hero powers that break with this guy and I think the mode would be better without it.
-Dark Arts reduced to a pick of 2 cards. This hero power is just busted with such a large selection of cards, the downside needs to be higher. Dark arts at 2 mana was rubbish, but at 1 mana it's plain silly especially with synergies. Which brings me to..
-Killmox, the Banished One: Lifesteal removed. Treasures are supposed to be good but this thing is flat out ridiculous. Provides a discard target? Check. Instant board presence? Check. Saves you from the brink of death and swings the game? Check. It'd still be great without the lifesteal, just not this cheese treasure that your opponent knows they can't do anything about except... not play minions? It's a swiss army knife that does too much.
-Harvest Time!: Treants changed to 2/1s, can only target friendly minions. Good god I realize duels is supposed to be overpowered mode but this hero power is plain toxic and not enjoyable to fight unless you have 10 board clears and laugh at their sadness. If you're unlucky enough to not have any board clears you get run over like every card in their deck is Grimmer Patron. To top it off, it's a destroy a minion on a stick. The treant swarm needs to be more easily controlled with pen flingers, pings, etc.
-Demonizer: Demons cost (2) less instead of (3). Not sure why this isn't (2) less like the totem and dragon versions, it's mega swingy at the moment and can be copied with felopsophy.
-Cannibalism: Needs to go, or be changed to +1 attack to a random friendly minion and not all. Token based decks with cannibalism are the strongest decks around, god forbid you're against a cannibalism harvest time druid or death games hunter. This passive is so oppressive it's unreal, turning every single minion into a snowball card and harming you if you clear enemy minions. It's just too strong and unfun to fight against.
-Mysterious Tome: Can no longer generate rigged faire games. As we all know from wild with turn 1 RFG, it's not fun. Mysterious tome is a good treasure but suddenly becomes god tier if you score RFG while emoting laughing your ass off.
-Deathstrider: Changed to 5 mana. Why on earth is this thing 2 mana?! Kinda blows my mind, this thing is so obscenely powerful compared to all other hunter treasures. Also stop it from freezing the game please.
Shadow Word: Void: Increased to 5 mana. Just too good of a card for a 3 mana destroy a minion, create a board and deal some face damage all at once.
I'd also note that Embercaster should be kept a close eye on due to its ability to easily go infinite but it doesn't seem to be seeing much use right now.
Buffs to bad treasures to make them see play:
Ferocious Flurry: Changed to 1 mana hero power. Probably the worst hero power in the duels format.
Moonbeast: 4 mana 4/5 -> 2 mana 3/3. Would allow comboing eclipse spells easier.
Demonology 101: Changed to generate a soul fragment for ALL minions destroyed.
Enrage: Removed. Literally the only point of this is a combo with Doomhammer. One card from a single class.
Robes of Shrinking: Cost reduction increased from (1) to (2). A really crap version of the (1) reduction on first spell and worse than sticky fingers, needs something to make it worth picking.
Elixir of Vigor: Changed from ultra rare to pool 2. It's not exactly gamebreaking but it's very very fun to play with and sad that you rarely get to use it. Has its own drawbacks too, stagnating your deck with bad draws if used incorrectly.
Supercharge: Removed. A neutral totemic might, wonderful.
Loyal Sidekick: Could stand to be +2/+2 per opponent defeated. It's pretty bad and severely outdone by Loyal Henchman.
Hyperblaster: Moved to pool 2 ultra rare. Definitely one of the best treasures out there, always gets a 4 for 1 and stops midrange/control decks cold. Too good for a common treasure imo.
Sadly not, faced it multiple times yesterday. Still broken as hell. Cannibalism dude paladin/token DH are just insurmountable decks, it feels like cheating.
C'Thun is very strong but it's only played in 2 classes (rarely also in mage or warrior) and I don't think the card is particularly problematic. If you haven't beaten your opponent by the turn C'Thun comes out, you would have probably lost anyway. You can often even play around getting killed by it by having a board yourself. I don't think a change is necessary.
Tour Guide, on the other hand, is a pretty big problem and should indeed be banned from the format.
We can talk about Dark Arts going to "discard one of 3 cards in your hand", but 2 makes the hero power completely unplayable because you will always have the choice between two of your win conditions and that's self-destructing in any slower match up.
Regarding Killmox and Demonizer, they could ban Felosophy (which will probably be too much of a nerf, though, because warlock is not the super oppressive class most people think it is) or remove the Demon tag from Killmox. However, I think that KIllmox is already fine as is. 7 mana is a lot in Duels...like A LOT! I recently had a token DH run with Cannibalism and turn 7 never happened after I was at 7-1.
Changing Harvest Time to summon 2 2/1s seems fine, not being able to target enemies is probably too much. The hero power is extremely powerful, the deck is probably still the best in the format, but people have adapted to it and if you nerf it too much, weapon rogue will be all over the place (which btw you didn't suggest any nerf to?).
I like your change to Demonizer.
Speaking of the token dh Cannibalism run, Cannibalism single-handedly got me to 12-2 and I had 8+ wins games that were literally not loseable. I would even say that this passive should be removed from the format. Double Time is another good candidate for that.
I generally agree to Mysterious Tome being a bit problematic. The passive has a very low lowroll, though, so I am not too sure it needs a change. RFG is also a drawback in slower grindy games, especially against bomb warrior and even more so early in the run. Maybe, they can just rotate RFG out of the format in 4 weeks, but not sure.
Deathstrider should be 4 mana. 5 is too late and everything below 4 is crazy dumb. I have literally seen turn 1 Studies into Nerubian Egg into Strider for 5 4/4s (I played the treasure that gives both players mana and a card because I was token druid with Gibberer in my opening hand and I assumed that 6 tokens would be enough on turn 1, it wasn't).
I really hate Shadow Word: Void and kinda support your change because the card seems too swingy. Also, too much face damage if you can't answer a board.
Embercaster seems fine. Going infinite is not very tempo-y, so that should be alright, I guess? I have never seen it outside of copying a Frostbolt, though.
Flurry is crap and will be crap at 1 unless we get substantial attack buffs.
Same for Moonbeast unless we get at least 3 new impactful eclipse spells.
Wand of Dueling is completely fine and needs no change, and certainly no buff
Tasties at 8 would change the meta in favor of mage. It would be very cheap at the end of your run and the card is usually not needed early in the run, so you still have a bad card early, but a pretty broken card later in your run. You can even reduce its cost further with quite a lot of treasures, so just imagine a Double Time 3-cost Tasties...yeah, no, thanks
Scion of the Deep: Your change limits design space for big priest spells by too much. Turn 3 Scion - Renew - any big game-winning spell that craps on your opponent is a pretty devastating line of play. Free from Ember at some point, maybe Mind Control...Pretty sure most people don't want to experience that. Sounds quite a lot like Barmes to me.
Gift at 5 is reasonable, Gift at 4 seems a little ambitious but maybe that's what the card needs. Gifting a Strongman + Tickatus (or Clown) would be sick, though.
Demonology is already played at times, the card needs definitely no buff.
Enrage is not that bad with Lifesteal weapons, but I generally agree to it beeing too weak. It's probably not necessary to remove it, though, because people need to have bad options as well. The format has to be random or else, the very best players could just go crazy with rewards.
Robes is fine. It can reduce several cards in one turn if you have extra draw. So it's not much worse than the 1st Scrying Orb if you have enough draw (like warlock's hero power).
Yeah, it would be cool to see more Elixirs. I always liked it. However, you would need to nerf warlock to the ground first, because every single win condition of discardlock goes crazy with it (Tickatus, Envoy, C'Thun even, Killmox would all be insane as 1-costs that you can play 3 times per game).
As I said, the game needs bad treasures like Supercharge, but yeah, that card is so terrible that even I would remove it. Ironically, the card can actually win token druid mirrors or be used in priest to go crazy with the 3-cost 2/5.
Your Sidekick buff seems reasonable, I thought about making it a 3-drop, but that's pretty strong later in your run and there is already such a card that gets bigger for each spell you play.
Regarding Hyperblaster, Locusts, Wand, Ancient Reflections, etc. are also in that bucket, so Hyperblaster is probably fine. Maybe -1 durability, but that's already questionable imo. The card does too little in the current token/low cost minions meta.
-C'Thun, the Shattered: I'll grant you that it kind of makes control decks feel samey. However, I don't know if control-oriented playstyles can really work in Duels without this card, and Duels would be poorer without the option to play a slower deck.
-Tour Guide: Yeah... this card most likely needs to go. It enables oppressive levels of tempo if you have it in your opening hand, and aside from limiting hero power design space by making things too good, its existence makes the 1-mana hero powers much less worthwhile.
-Dark Arts: 2's a bit too restrictive. 3 sounds more appropriate.
-Killmox, the Banished One: Fixing this card any more than it's already been fixed by making it 7 mana would most likely require that the card be completely redesigned. There might be merit to completely redesigning it, but I'm not entirely sure.
-Harvest Time!: If Token Druid still is a problem without Tour Guide, I think the main solution would be to tone down the win more options available to Druid rather than weaken the hero power.
-Demonizer: Honestly, I barely see this treasure being played. I think the reason it discounts by 3 is because there are more garbage demons than there are garbage cards of the other specifications.
-Cannibalism: To answer the other poster's question, this treasure wasn't removed but instead moved to pool 2. You can still find it, but you're choosing it over such goodies as Emerald Goggles, Khadgar's Scrying Orb, and From the Swamp. It's a good passive treasure 2, but not so much stronger than the alternatives as to be a problem.
-Mysterious Tome: Generating Rigged Faire Game is certainly a high-roll, but disallowing it would make the card do something else from what it says it does, and I don't know a clean way to change the card text to remove that possibility. You could remove Rigged Faire Game from the random generation pool altogether by banning it from the starting deck, since the random generation pool is the set of cards you can put in your starting deck, but that'd have too much collateral damage. I think it'd be best just to put up with the highroll potential because there's no particularly clean fix.
-Deathstrider: I've got a better idea... when I first read this card, I thought it meant trigger X DIFFERENT friendly minions' deathrattles, thereby smoothly transitioning from Play Dead to Feign Death over the course of the run. That'd be better-balanced as well as more intuitive.
-Shadow Word: Void: It's definitely really strong. Priest isn't great right now though, so if you're going to take this away you should probably give something back.
-Embercaster: Agree. This card definitely has the potential to be a problem child.
-Ferocious Flurry: Yeah, I don't think making this hero power 1 mana would break anything. It probably would still be bad, but at least it wouldn't be unplayable.
-Moonbeast: I've never tried this treasure, mostly because I don't have Kiri, Chosen of Elune, but yeah, I think scaling it down would be more appropriate.
-Wand of Dueling: Agree. It's barely even a passable treasure with its designed companion, Wyrm Bolt. More charges would help substantially.
-Scion of the Deep: Two spells is too easy, but I agree that this card is too finicky as is. I'd rather move it to costing (2) rather than mess with the textbox.
-Gift of the Old Gods: As cool as this card is, I'd rather it stay bad. I don't want games to be decided based on whether or not you drew Strongman, Carnival Clown, and Tickatus before you could play Gift and corrupt them for free.
-Demonology 101: Honestly I'm not sure why they designed it to only give Soul Fragments based on enemy minions destroyed. It's not like it matters for Soulcial Studies; that card gives you one Flame Imp no matter how many fragments are shuffled simultaneously. It just makes the card unnecessarily complicated.
-Enrage: The pool 1 active treasures are supposed to be only slightly above average, while fulfilling an important niche that some decks might want. This card does that just fine. Most decks can only use it as 6 damage for 3 mana, but hey, that's basically a 3-mana Fireball!
-Robes of Shrinking: Agreed. If it's not safe to make it discount by (2), just remove it altogether.
-Elixir of Vigor: It'd be a bit risky, but I think Blizzard might just be able to get away with that. They'd have to keep a close watch on it though, and be willing to put it back at ultra-rare if people start abusing it somehow.
-Supercharge: Comparing it to Totemic Might really isn't fair. Since totems have 0 attack, they can hardly ever make much use of extra health. Being able to use it on minions that can defend themselves, and on minions that are easy to spam (totems aren't), makes this card better. I'd compare this card instead to Grim Rally or Storm's Wrath, with the downside being "+2 health is usually slightly worse than +1/+1" instead of "destroy a friendly minion" or "overload: 1". That puts this card as costing 1 cheaper than a card that could be printed in constructed. I don't think that's SO bad as to merit removing altogether.
-Loyal Sidekick: If you really want to buff this, make it 3 mana. The issue with moving it to +2/+2 is that after your ninth game of a run, the game starts offering you a whole lot of active treasures, mostly from pool 1. You can easily find this card at a point at your run where you already have a lot of wins for your Sidekick.
-Hyperblaster: As the other poster said, being a pool 2 treasure means it has a lot of competition. I could see this going to 3 durability but that might not even be necessary.
Grommash's Armguards: Increase discount to (2). You just can't stuff your deck with weapons the way you can stuff it with dragons or spells. Even if you can find all the weapons, you can only use one at a time. If Dragon Affinity is allowed to discount by (2), I see no reason this can't be the same.
The Floor is Lava: Increase to +2 attack. This one bugs me so much... the downside is so crippling for such a small upside. Any 1-health minions you put in your deck become worthless if you pick this treasure, and most of the things you can do with this are done much better by Unlocked Potential. I've built decks specifically around Spiked Arms, and even THEN this is only "decent", despite being perfectly aligned with what that deck wants to do. Make it +2 attack so it's actually pickable, dang it.
Dragonbone Ritual: Revive after 2 turns. Even if your deck happens to have a lot of dragons, compared to the other passive treasure 2s, this one is soooooo sloooooooooow. Even with Dragon Affinity you'll easily get out-tempoed by decks built around some of the other passive treasure 2s. This should help make the tempo impact of the treasure more immediate.
Hagatha's Embrace: Make it "leftmost" instead of random, similar to Soul Infusion. If you have too many cards in your hand (which isn't always easy to prevent, especially if you draw badly), your buffs will be spread across so many minions that there's no way you'll be able to put them all on the board, and the other passive treasure 2s will run circles around you. This should make it easier to work with.
Amalgamate: Remove. There is just nothing good you can do with this card whatsoever. 10/10 of stats across 2-4 bodies is just better than a single 10/10 minion. The only thing you could say for this card is that it's a mild "noob trap" but Duels is hardly hospitable to new players anyway.
Coin Pouch, Creepy Curio, Old Militia Horn, and Surly Mob: Pick the three you like best and remove the last. The decks that draw enough cards to reliably see the second form of these cards are few, let alone all three forms. This niche doesn't need FOUR separate treasures associated with it.
Greedy Pickaxe: Increased to 3 attack. I can see how this card can get things done, but it's just soooooo sloooooow, and topdecking it at 10 mana feels really bad. I doubt it's safe to reduce the cost but at least we can make the weapon itself a bit more impactful.
Butch: Reduce cost to (3). Even Hunter and Druid decks seldom include enough beasts to make this even average even compared to your non-treasure cards, let alone good.
Coin Pouch: Increase cost to (1) or (2). Most of the other active treasure 1s are undercosted by 1-2 mana compared to actual constructed-printable cards. So how much would Coin Pouch cost as a constructed card? Let's look at Conjure Mana Biscuit. The Pouch gives you 3 mana rather than 2, so that alone probably makes it worth (3) instead of (2) like CMB. But wait – the Pouch's mana can be split between turns, and the Pouch gives you FOUR cast-spell triggers instead of two, AND actually lets you gain temporary mana crystals to play expensive cards early, whereas CMB only refreshes mana. With those factors in mind, it's more likely that the Coin Pouch would cost (4), putting it as undercosted by 4. That's... quite nuts, compared to most of the rest of the active treasure 1s. Let's tone it down a notch.
I disagree on cannibalism not being that much better than other pool 2 treasures. It's *miles* better than them and if anything, deserves to be moved to ultra rare like band of bees. Swarm decks like harvest druid, dude paladin, token DH, or even totem shaman can turn from 3 win decks to 12 win decks from it alone. It's incredibly oppressive and changes the whole dynamic of the match to panicking over clearing every single tiny minion otherwise you get run over in an instant.
I really think deathstrider is a huge issue right now and fully deserves to be all the way up at 5 mana to prevent early turns completely blowing people out of the game. Here's some screenies of turn 3/4 deathstriders just winning the game on the spot. It should also be mentioned that tonk+deathstrider is a 2 card OTK by itself, even against boards. It ramps up pretty fast to 4 triggers (32 damage in missiles) and in later runs it goes as high as 8 triggers (64 damage). You collect both of those cards, play them on turn 9 and instantly win. Seems a bit stupid?
Turn 4:
Even funnier, turn 3 (amazingly still won because I got the auto-win combo of band of bees+token DH):
Unless you have some absolutely broken autowin setup you don't come back from that.
Amalgamate: Remove. There is just nothing good you can do with this card whatsoever. 10/10 of stats across 2-4 bodies is just better than a single 10/10 minion. The only thing you could say for this card is that it's a mild "noob trap" but Duels is hardly hospitable to new players anyway.
To be fair, there is a pretty nuts combo where you amalgamate your board and then play Gnomish Army Knife to Windfury Charge your new big amalgam into the opponents face. But other than that one EXTREMELY niche 2 treasure combo, yeah Amalgamate is pretty bad.
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I think duels is pretty fun, I play it a lot. The idea of having really overpowered decks and combos is something that I can't help but laugh at and makes me play. I think there's some core issues like the starting decks being too similar and some classes being too good from the go (rogue, druid, warlock), though I don't think that can be helped.
Some changes I'd like to see:
-Ban C'Thun, the Shattered. This thing is just everywhere and obnoxious in the early games with sub-20 cards, giving you a free win condition in one deck slot. Especially good with warlock/priest drawing power. Decks would probably be more interesting if this didn't over-centralise control games.
-Ban Tour Guide: imo considering most duels hero powers are insane by design, tour guide usually breaks them by cheating them out way faster than intended. Turn 1 harvest time or turn 2 nerubian egg with a deathrattle hero power is often game over already in the early matches where people don't have enough health to take a beating. There's a lot of hero powers that break with this guy and I think the mode would be better without it.
-Dark Arts reduced to a pick of 2 cards. This hero power is just busted with such a large selection of cards, the downside needs to be higher. Dark arts at 2 mana was rubbish, but at 1 mana it's plain silly especially with synergies. Which brings me to..
-Killmox, the Banished One: Lifesteal removed. Treasures are supposed to be good but this thing is flat out ridiculous. Provides a discard target? Check. Instant board presence? Check. Saves you from the brink of death and swings the game? Check. It'd still be great without the lifesteal, just not this cheese treasure that your opponent knows they can't do anything about except... not play minions? It's a swiss army knife that does too much.
-Harvest Time!: Treants changed to 2/1s, can only target friendly minions. Good god I realize duels is supposed to be overpowered mode but this hero power is plain toxic and not enjoyable to fight unless you have 10 board clears and laugh at their sadness. If you're unlucky enough to not have any board clears you get run over like every card in their deck is Grimmer Patron. To top it off, it's a destroy a minion on a stick. The treant swarm needs to be more easily controlled with pen flingers, pings, etc.
-Demonizer: Demons cost (2) less instead of (3). Not sure why this isn't (2) less like the totem and dragon versions, it's mega swingy at the moment and can be copied with felopsophy.
-Cannibalism: Needs to go, or be changed to +1 attack to a random friendly minion and not all. Token based decks with cannibalism are the strongest decks around, god forbid you're against a cannibalism harvest time druid or death games hunter. This passive is so oppressive it's unreal, turning every single minion into a snowball card and harming you if you clear enemy minions. It's just too strong and unfun to fight against.
-Mysterious Tome: Can no longer generate rigged faire games. As we all know from wild with turn 1 RFG, it's not fun. Mysterious tome is a good treasure but suddenly becomes god tier if you score RFG while emoting laughing your ass off.
-Deathstrider: Changed to 5 mana. Why on earth is this thing 2 mana?! Kinda blows my mind, this thing is so obscenely powerful compared to all other hunter treasures. Also stop it from freezing the game please.
Shadow Word: Void: Increased to 5 mana. Just too good of a card for a 3 mana destroy a minion, create a board and deal some face damage all at once.
I'd also note that Embercaster should be kept a close eye on due to its ability to easily go infinite but it doesn't seem to be seeing much use right now.
Buffs to bad treasures to make them see play:
Ferocious Flurry: Changed to 1 mana hero power. Probably the worst hero power in the duels format.
Moonbeast: 4 mana 4/5 -> 2 mana 3/3. Would allow comboing eclipse spells easier.
Wand of Dueling 3 durability -> 5 durability.
Yogg-tastic Tasties: 10 mana -> 8 mana.
Scion of the Deep: Every third spell -> every second spell.
Gift of the Old Gods: 6 mana -> 4 mana.
Demonology 101: Changed to generate a soul fragment for ALL minions destroyed.
Enrage: Removed. Literally the only point of this is a combo with Doomhammer. One card from a single class.
Robes of Shrinking: Cost reduction increased from (1) to (2). A really crap version of the (1) reduction on first spell and worse than sticky fingers, needs something to make it worth picking.
Elixir of Vigor: Changed from ultra rare to pool 2. It's not exactly gamebreaking but it's very very fun to play with and sad that you rarely get to use it. Has its own drawbacks too, stagnating your deck with bad draws if used incorrectly.
Supercharge: Removed. A neutral totemic might, wonderful.
Loyal Sidekick: Could stand to be +2/+2 per opponent defeated. It's pretty bad and severely outdone by Loyal Henchman.
Hyperblaster: Moved to pool 2 ultra rare. Definitely one of the best treasures out there, always gets a 4 for 1 and stops midrange/control decks cold. Too good for a common treasure imo.
Thoughts?
Wait, wasnt canibalism removed already?
Sadly not, faced it multiple times yesterday. Still broken as hell. Cannibalism dude paladin/token DH are just insurmountable decks, it feels like cheating.
I read your comment, here my thoughts:
C'Thun is very strong but it's only played in 2 classes (rarely also in mage or warrior) and I don't think the card is particularly problematic. If you haven't beaten your opponent by the turn C'Thun comes out, you would have probably lost anyway. You can often even play around getting killed by it by having a board yourself. I don't think a change is necessary.
Tour Guide, on the other hand, is a pretty big problem and should indeed be banned from the format.
We can talk about Dark Arts going to "discard one of 3 cards in your hand", but 2 makes the hero power completely unplayable because you will always have the choice between two of your win conditions and that's self-destructing in any slower match up.
Regarding Killmox and Demonizer, they could ban Felosophy (which will probably be too much of a nerf, though, because warlock is not the super oppressive class most people think it is) or remove the Demon tag from Killmox. However, I think that KIllmox is already fine as is. 7 mana is a lot in Duels...like A LOT! I recently had a token DH run with Cannibalism and turn 7 never happened after I was at 7-1.
Changing Harvest Time to summon 2 2/1s seems fine, not being able to target enemies is probably too much. The hero power is extremely powerful, the deck is probably still the best in the format, but people have adapted to it and if you nerf it too much, weapon rogue will be all over the place (which btw you didn't suggest any nerf to?).
I like your change to Demonizer.
Speaking of the token dh Cannibalism run, Cannibalism single-handedly got me to 12-2 and I had 8+ wins games that were literally not loseable. I would even say that this passive should be removed from the format. Double Time is another good candidate for that.
I generally agree to Mysterious Tome being a bit problematic. The passive has a very low lowroll, though, so I am not too sure it needs a change. RFG is also a drawback in slower grindy games, especially against bomb warrior and even more so early in the run. Maybe, they can just rotate RFG out of the format in 4 weeks, but not sure.
Deathstrider should be 4 mana. 5 is too late and everything below 4 is crazy dumb. I have literally seen turn 1 Studies into Nerubian Egg into Strider for 5 4/4s (I played the treasure that gives both players mana and a card because I was token druid with Gibberer in my opening hand and I assumed that 6 tokens would be enough on turn 1, it wasn't).
I really hate Shadow Word: Void and kinda support your change because the card seems too swingy. Also, too much face damage if you can't answer a board.
Embercaster seems fine. Going infinite is not very tempo-y, so that should be alright, I guess? I have never seen it outside of copying a Frostbolt, though.
Flurry is crap and will be crap at 1 unless we get substantial attack buffs.
Same for Moonbeast unless we get at least 3 new impactful eclipse spells.
Wand of Dueling is completely fine and needs no change, and certainly no buff
Tasties at 8 would change the meta in favor of mage. It would be very cheap at the end of your run and the card is usually not needed early in the run, so you still have a bad card early, but a pretty broken card later in your run. You can even reduce its cost further with quite a lot of treasures, so just imagine a Double Time 3-cost Tasties...yeah, no, thanks
Scion of the Deep: Your change limits design space for big priest spells by too much. Turn 3 Scion - Renew - any big game-winning spell that craps on your opponent is a pretty devastating line of play. Free from Ember at some point, maybe Mind Control...Pretty sure most people don't want to experience that. Sounds quite a lot like Barmes to me.
Gift at 5 is reasonable, Gift at 4 seems a little ambitious but maybe that's what the card needs. Gifting a Strongman + Tickatus (or Clown) would be sick, though.
Demonology is already played at times, the card needs definitely no buff.
Enrage is not that bad with Lifesteal weapons, but I generally agree to it beeing too weak. It's probably not necessary to remove it, though, because people need to have bad options as well. The format has to be random or else, the very best players could just go crazy with rewards.
Robes is fine. It can reduce several cards in one turn if you have extra draw. So it's not much worse than the 1st Scrying Orb if you have enough draw (like warlock's hero power).
Yeah, it would be cool to see more Elixirs. I always liked it. However, you would need to nerf warlock to the ground first, because every single win condition of discardlock goes crazy with it (Tickatus, Envoy, C'Thun even, Killmox would all be insane as 1-costs that you can play 3 times per game).
As I said, the game needs bad treasures like Supercharge, but yeah, that card is so terrible that even I would remove it. Ironically, the card can actually win token druid mirrors or be used in priest to go crazy with the 3-cost 2/5.
Your Sidekick buff seems reasonable, I thought about making it a 3-drop, but that's pretty strong later in your run and there is already such a card that gets bigger for each spell you play.
Regarding Hyperblaster, Locusts, Wand, Ancient Reflections, etc. are also in that bucket, so Hyperblaster is probably fine. Maybe -1 durability, but that's already questionable imo. The card does too little in the current token/low cost minions meta.
-C'Thun, the Shattered: I'll grant you that it kind of makes control decks feel samey. However, I don't know if control-oriented playstyles can really work in Duels without this card, and Duels would be poorer without the option to play a slower deck.
-Tour Guide: Yeah... this card most likely needs to go. It enables oppressive levels of tempo if you have it in your opening hand, and aside from limiting hero power design space by making things too good, its existence makes the 1-mana hero powers much less worthwhile.
-Dark Arts: 2's a bit too restrictive. 3 sounds more appropriate.
-Killmox, the Banished One: Fixing this card any more than it's already been fixed by making it 7 mana would most likely require that the card be completely redesigned. There might be merit to completely redesigning it, but I'm not entirely sure.
-Harvest Time!: If Token Druid still is a problem without Tour Guide, I think the main solution would be to tone down the win more options available to Druid rather than weaken the hero power.
-Demonizer: Honestly, I barely see this treasure being played. I think the reason it discounts by 3 is because there are more garbage demons than there are garbage cards of the other specifications.
-Cannibalism: To answer the other poster's question, this treasure wasn't removed but instead moved to pool 2. You can still find it, but you're choosing it over such goodies as Emerald Goggles, Khadgar's Scrying Orb, and From the Swamp. It's a good passive treasure 2, but not so much stronger than the alternatives as to be a problem.
-Mysterious Tome: Generating Rigged Faire Game is certainly a high-roll, but disallowing it would make the card do something else from what it says it does, and I don't know a clean way to change the card text to remove that possibility. You could remove Rigged Faire Game from the random generation pool altogether by banning it from the starting deck, since the random generation pool is the set of cards you can put in your starting deck, but that'd have too much collateral damage. I think it'd be best just to put up with the highroll potential because there's no particularly clean fix.
-Deathstrider: I've got a better idea... when I first read this card, I thought it meant trigger X DIFFERENT friendly minions' deathrattles, thereby smoothly transitioning from Play Dead to Feign Death over the course of the run. That'd be better-balanced as well as more intuitive.
-Shadow Word: Void: It's definitely really strong. Priest isn't great right now though, so if you're going to take this away you should probably give something back.
-Embercaster: Agree. This card definitely has the potential to be a problem child.
-Ferocious Flurry: Yeah, I don't think making this hero power 1 mana would break anything. It probably would still be bad, but at least it wouldn't be unplayable.
-Moonbeast: I've never tried this treasure, mostly because I don't have Kiri, Chosen of Elune, but yeah, I think scaling it down would be more appropriate.
-Wand of Dueling: Agree. It's barely even a passable treasure with its designed companion, Wyrm Bolt. More charges would help substantially.
-Yogg-tastic Tasties: I'd rather this stay weak, honestly.
-Scion of the Deep: Two spells is too easy, but I agree that this card is too finicky as is. I'd rather move it to costing (2) rather than mess with the textbox.
-Gift of the Old Gods: As cool as this card is, I'd rather it stay bad. I don't want games to be decided based on whether or not you drew Strongman, Carnival Clown, and Tickatus before you could play Gift and corrupt them for free.
-Demonology 101: Honestly I'm not sure why they designed it to only give Soul Fragments based on enemy minions destroyed. It's not like it matters for Soulcial Studies; that card gives you one Flame Imp no matter how many fragments are shuffled simultaneously. It just makes the card unnecessarily complicated.
-Enrage: The pool 1 active treasures are supposed to be only slightly above average, while fulfilling an important niche that some decks might want. This card does that just fine. Most decks can only use it as 6 damage for 3 mana, but hey, that's basically a 3-mana Fireball!
-Robes of Shrinking: Agreed. If it's not safe to make it discount by (2), just remove it altogether.
-Elixir of Vigor: It'd be a bit risky, but I think Blizzard might just be able to get away with that. They'd have to keep a close watch on it though, and be willing to put it back at ultra-rare if people start abusing it somehow.
-Supercharge: Comparing it to Totemic Might really isn't fair. Since totems have 0 attack, they can hardly ever make much use of extra health. Being able to use it on minions that can defend themselves, and on minions that are easy to spam (totems aren't), makes this card better. I'd compare this card instead to Grim Rally or Storm's Wrath, with the downside being "+2 health is usually slightly worse than +1/+1" instead of "destroy a friendly minion" or "overload: 1". That puts this card as costing 1 cheaper than a card that could be printed in constructed. I don't think that's SO bad as to merit removing altogether.
-Loyal Sidekick: If you really want to buff this, make it 3 mana. The issue with moving it to +2/+2 is that after your ninth game of a run, the game starts offering you a whole lot of active treasures, mostly from pool 1. You can easily find this card at a point at your run where you already have a lot of wins for your Sidekick.
-Hyperblaster: As the other poster said, being a pool 2 treasure means it has a lot of competition. I could see this going to 3 durability but that might not even be necessary.
Here's a few suggestions of my own, as well:
Grommash's Armguards: Increase discount to (2). You just can't stuff your deck with weapons the way you can stuff it with dragons or spells. Even if you can find all the weapons, you can only use one at a time. If Dragon Affinity is allowed to discount by (2), I see no reason this can't be the same.
The Floor is Lava: Increase to +2 attack. This one bugs me so much... the downside is so crippling for such a small upside. Any 1-health minions you put in your deck become worthless if you pick this treasure, and most of the things you can do with this are done much better by Unlocked Potential. I've built decks specifically around Spiked Arms, and even THEN this is only "decent", despite being perfectly aligned with what that deck wants to do. Make it +2 attack so it's actually pickable, dang it.
Dragonbone Ritual: Revive after 2 turns. Even if your deck happens to have a lot of dragons, compared to the other passive treasure 2s, this one is soooooo sloooooooooow. Even with Dragon Affinity you'll easily get out-tempoed by decks built around some of the other passive treasure 2s. This should help make the tempo impact of the treasure more immediate.
Hagatha's Embrace: Make it "leftmost" instead of random, similar to Soul Infusion. If you have too many cards in your hand (which isn't always easy to prevent, especially if you draw badly), your buffs will be spread across so many minions that there's no way you'll be able to put them all on the board, and the other passive treasure 2s will run circles around you. This should make it easier to work with.
Amalgamate: Remove. There is just nothing good you can do with this card whatsoever. 10/10 of stats across 2-4 bodies is just better than a single 10/10 minion. The only thing you could say for this card is that it's a mild "noob trap" but Duels is hardly hospitable to new players anyway.
Coin Pouch, Creepy Curio, Old Militia Horn, and Surly Mob: Pick the three you like best and remove the last. The decks that draw enough cards to reliably see the second form of these cards are few, let alone all three forms. This niche doesn't need FOUR separate treasures associated with it.
Greedy Pickaxe: Increased to 3 attack. I can see how this card can get things done, but it's just soooooo sloooooow, and topdecking it at 10 mana feels really bad. I doubt it's safe to reduce the cost but at least we can make the weapon itself a bit more impactful.
Butch: Reduce cost to (3). Even Hunter and Druid decks seldom include enough beasts to make this even average even compared to your non-treasure cards, let alone good.
Coin Pouch: Increase cost to (1) or (2). Most of the other active treasure 1s are undercosted by 1-2 mana compared to actual constructed-printable cards. So how much would Coin Pouch cost as a constructed card? Let's look at Conjure Mana Biscuit. The Pouch gives you 3 mana rather than 2, so that alone probably makes it worth (3) instead of (2) like CMB. But wait – the Pouch's mana can be split between turns, and the Pouch gives you FOUR cast-spell triggers instead of two, AND actually lets you gain temporary mana crystals to play expensive cards early, whereas CMB only refreshes mana. With those factors in mind, it's more likely that the Coin Pouch would cost (4), putting it as undercosted by 4. That's... quite nuts, compared to most of the rest of the active treasure 1s. Let's tone it down a notch.
I disagree on cannibalism not being that much better than other pool 2 treasures. It's *miles* better than them and if anything, deserves to be moved to ultra rare like band of bees. Swarm decks like harvest druid, dude paladin, token DH, or even totem shaman can turn from 3 win decks to 12 win decks from it alone. It's incredibly oppressive and changes the whole dynamic of the match to panicking over clearing every single tiny minion otherwise you get run over in an instant.
I really think deathstrider is a huge issue right now and fully deserves to be all the way up at 5 mana to prevent early turns completely blowing people out of the game. Here's some screenies of turn 3/4 deathstriders just winning the game on the spot. It should also be mentioned that tonk+deathstrider is a 2 card OTK by itself, even against boards. It ramps up pretty fast to 4 triggers (32 damage in missiles) and in later runs it goes as high as 8 triggers (64 damage). You collect both of those cards, play them on turn 9 and instantly win. Seems a bit stupid?
Turn 4:
Even funnier, turn 3 (amazingly still won because I got the auto-win combo of band of bees+token DH):
Unless you have some absolutely broken autowin setup you don't come back from that.
Cannablism needs to be either removed or be the last treasure offered, it makes any swarm or deathrattle hunter ridiciously strong.
And Dark Arts needs a nerf
Other than some buffs and what I mentioned above Duels is getting better.
I enjoy Duels from time to time too, but some of the classes are really unbalanced
To be fair, there is a pretty nuts combo where you amalgamate your board and then play Gnomish Army Knife to Windfury Charge your new big amalgam into the opponents face. But other than that one EXTREMELY niche 2 treasure combo, yeah Amalgamate is pretty bad.