Welcome to “The Changelog”, a place where we discuss new rule revisions for our tournaments.
Anytime we make revisions to the Rules document, we’ll use this page as a way to compare and contrast, provide context, as well as give our reasoning as for why we made our changes.
Note: When we initially release the Rules document along with signups, there usually will always be changes that we make based on further testing, player feedback, or due to new updates to the game. Rules become “locked in” and can no longer be changed once we’re within 7 days of the tournament.
In the Luau ’19 scenario, the last time the rules may be changed is on Friday, June 21st at 11:59pm Eastern. Once that date passes, you can expect the rules to be final and officially in-play for the tournament.
To see a list of the full tournament rules, click here!
The Changelog – Thursday, June 20th
The following spell specific rules have been added:
- Beguile has been BANNED.
- Due to a bug where Beguile can last for 2-3 rounds instead of 1 round as the spell was intended. We feel that this could easily be abused in the tournament in place of a stun.
The following situational rule has been added:
- Scion of Death can ONLY be used if the participant does not use Bad Juju for the entirety of a match.
- Bad Juju can ONLY be used if the participant does not use Scion of Death for the entirety of a match.
- All Death participants MUST declare prior to the start of each match whether they would like the option to be able to use Bad Juju OR Scion of Death.
- If you do not declare prior to the start of the match and use either spell, you will be disqualified.
- Scion of Death is still limited to one single use per game.
- This situational rule was introduced simply due to a strat brought up by the community where a Death can simply use Bad Juju in order to meet the 33% health threshold and complete their Scion of Death x2 condition. Putting a cooldown on Bad Juju probably would not be helpful whatsoever in this case since the intent is to get yourself at 33% to meet the Scion of Death x2 condition and then potentially follow up with a Headless Horsemen. We figured it would be best to destroy this strategy immediately so it doesn’t become abusive.
- If you do not declare prior to the start of the match and use either spell, you will be disqualified.
The following spell specific rule has been revised:
- Headless Horsemen’s cooldown has been increased to 2 rounds instead of 1 round.
- When we introduced the 1 round cooldown on Headless Horsemen, we figured it would be fine. We honestly underestimated how powerful Headless Horsemen can be. We realized that it is one of the most powerful “Lore spells” in the game. By placing a 2 round cooldown on the spell, we truly believe that it wouldn’t get abused as much but we didn’t want to limit it since Death doesn’t have much to work with anyway.
Semifinals/Finals Format Re-Revision:
- Each player will still have the opportunity to go first in a match.
- The turn order for the third and final match will now be completely random.
- As expected when making one of the most controversial format changes, we received tons of feedback and disapproval of the change we had introduced last week. Originally we felt that there should have been an option on who specifically should go first in the final match. Many of you have told us that you’d rather leave it up to RNG to decide. So we decided to change that specific part of the format rule while still allowing for each player to go first in a match.
- The turn order for the third and final match will now be completely random.
The Changelog – Thursday, June 13th
The following spell specific rules have been added:
- Ice Bird has been capped to 1 per GAME.
- Many of you have expressed your concern since the spell provides a 40% Ice blade while a spell such as Storm Beetle provides a 25%/30% blade. Instead of banning the spell outright like Fire Beetle, we figured capping it at 1 per GAME would be fine.
- Link / Powerlink may not be heal enchanted with Primordial / Radical
- We felt that it is a powerful recovery tool for Fire that can potentially get heavily abused. You could almost make the argument that it falls under the “turtling umbrella” rule in a sense but we felt that instead of banning the spells itself, we figured banning the enchant is the better move.
- Stun block now has a 2 round cooldown after a successful use
- This change was simply made due to Scion of Myth’s x2 condition. Since the opponent cannot control the x2 condition unlike other Scion spells, we felt that having a 2 round cooldown would lessen the burden.
The following spell specific rules have been removed:
- Winter Moon – 2 per reshuffle
- Usually, people often use the spell for stun utility. We figured that the spell wouldn’t get abused in our ecosystem so we decided to remove the limitation.
- Single dispels are limited to 4 TOTAL successful per game
- This was a rule that we originally implemented into our tournaments prior to the introduction of dispel shields. We figured it wouldn’t be an issue if we removed the limitation since dispels aren’t typically a problem in competitive PvP anymore.
The following spell specific rules have been revised:
- Manaburn has now been capped to 3 per GAME from 3 per Reshuffle
- We figured that by revising the rule from 3 per Reshuffle to 3 per GAME, we would strengthen the limit since previously, it felt like a “soft limitation” that wouldn’t necessarily impact the tournament. We simply don’t want the spell to be abused as much since it allows for heavy pip-control.
- Loremaster now has a 2 round cooldown after a successful use
- This is one of the other most common complaints that we’ve gotten lately. We too felt that the spell wasn’t limited enough with its’ 2 per reshuffle limit. We hope that the 2 round cooldown negates the utility aspect of Loremaster.
- Headless Horsemen now has a 1 round cooldown, no longer has a 2 per reshuffle limit
- We originally wanted the spell to be limited so that the spell doesn’t get spammed and abused. We felt that replacing the reshuffle limit with a 1 round cooldown will solve the issue at hand.
Semifinals/Finals Format Revision:
- Each player will have the opportunity to go 1st in each match.
- The player who goes 2nd in Match #2 will have the opportunity to go 1st in the final match.
- This is hands down, one of the most controversial changes we’ve discussed. We tried to make the Semifinals and Finals gamemode turn order as balanced as possible. The format is best-of-three so unfortunately, everyone cannot equally participate first unless the round ends prior to the 3rd match.
- Originally, players would’ve had to have both won from first or both won from second. Having the loser choose, wouldn’t necessarily matter in that scenario.
- There’s a slight advantage to going first in Match #2 because in Match #1 you’re grasping a feel for your competitors playstyle.
- We think that if you went 2nd (regardless of the Match #2 result) and have the choice in the deciding match, it may be more positively impactful.
- The player who goes 2nd in Match #2 will have the opportunity to go 1st in the final match.
Additional clarification on the new “cooldown” rule type:
Originally, we had a gameplay restriction where you could not cast the same spell twice in a row. We absolutely do not want to bring that gameplay restriction back because the rule is too complicated and strains our staff.
However, we feel that there DOES need to be a “cooldown” in a sense for certain spells. For the most part, this rule is to prevent spell abuse. We may end up going more in-depth in a separate article or for #AskDuelCircle in the near future.