Are Skills in Duel Links healthy?
Created Date: 26 Feb
What are Skills?
In real life Yu-Gi-Oh!, Skills are seen as Skill Cards. Think of them as like a Deck Master function that you can invoke after satisfying a certain activation requirement.
These Skills have special aspects to them of note:
- They override the game state, so cards like Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure do not affect Skills.
- Skills cannot be responded to.
- Your opponent cannot activate cards or effects on resolution of a Skill activation.
What Skills have stood the test of time?
If you have played Duel Links since the beginning, these are some of the Skills that are still pretty good, despite being really old, and/or having several revisions, or being fairly simple:
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- Destiny Draw was historically one of the most broken Skills of all time... until better Skills came out.
Guess what? It used to not be once per Duel, so Stall decks were abusing it. Even a few years ago, cards like Battlin' Boxer Veil and Kiteroid became abusable, and players wanted the Skill to be hit because of those cards (but it really just never got hit beyond this displayed erratum). - Endless Trap Hell underwent several revisions, and after terrorizing the landscape through its usage in Amazoness, Stall, and Paleozoic, became a Skill that is still fairly usable, especially if your Deck still nets a lot of card advantage over time.
- Mind of the Plana is a really good counterpick in side-deck-legal tournaments against decks that banished a lot, such as Ritual Beast and Shiranui, or was good for decks that banish your opponent's cards a lot, such as Burning Abyss or S-Force.
- Sealed Tombs is still worth considering today, despite several revisions in the past, as it shuts down decks that banish from the GY or summon from the GY, such as Crystron, Shiranui, or Vampires.
As you can see, good Skills don't have to be paragraphs long, although Konami does not seem to like straying from formulas that have worked today! Oh well.
What Skills have historically performed well recently?
In Duel Links, these are the kinds of Skills that have been invented as new support for archetypes as of late:
This Skill can be used if your Deck is built in a certain way.
- Return 1 card in your hand, OR send 1 archetype card from your hand to the GY, to add 1 archetype card from your Deck to your hand, once per Duel.
- Pay a "cost" to Set an archetype monster from your hand OR outside your Deck, but it can be Flip Summoned this turn.
- Bonus effect depending on the archetype
Some of the effects are once per Duel, some are once per turn... really depends on the archetype. Two examples of this kind of Skill would be:
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- Until the moment Yubel received crazy support in the TCG, in Yu-Gi-Oh!'s history, there had not been a good meta for Yubel except in Duel Links in recent years.
In Duel Links, Eternal Bond makes Yubel remain as borderline Tier 3 today, since all you need to do is Normal Summon Yubel or Neos, and you get an instant search, and can set backrow. It's a simple deck to pilot, and this Skill is more-or-less the current standard for Skill design.
- Synchron has never really been meta, as despite being very playable going first, it historically had trouble going second unless it opened the Adventure engine to assist.
In Duel Links, Synchron remains rogue, but you'll see it on Ranked sometimes, and it does retain clear choke points, such as negating the Junk Synchron, or flipping it down on resolution.
What are examples of well-designed Skills?
There have been Skills that I personally feel were well-designed, and would be a good benchmark for Skills that don't necessarily follow the above formula (but could).
These are a few good ones that were not mentioned above, not overtuned to thrust the deck into meta contention, and not paragraphs of text long:
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These are digestible, right? They don't have too many effects, and they have once per turn/Duel on them.
- A Burning Roar was meant to imitate The Tie that Binds, which was used in Salamangreat since the deck ran well with no Skill regardless, but gave it Extra Deck space by supplying it with two free core Extra Deck monsters.
- Altergeist Overwrite seems underwhelming at first, but Altergeist players will tell you that if they have to make Artemis, the Magistus Moon Maiden or Knightmare Phoenix, it clogs their Extra Monster Zone, preventing further Link plays unless removed from the field. Also, certain cards like Altergeist Silquitous or Altergeist Kunquery, which are preferably in the Deck, can be shuffled back to give Altergeist Multifaker a stronger effect resolution.
- Code Talker Alive is simple enough - you can set a Trap that morphs Decode Talker into a different "Code Talker" monster in the same turn, provided that your entire Extra Deck contains unique monsters. A fun Skill to use, and it doesn't restrict you that much.
- Territory of the Sharks is great! It enables Rank 4 WATER plays, or changes specific WATER monsters' levels, depending on activation timing, to give you a cool WATER Synchro play. This enabled interactions that were not possible in real life, most notably triggering Atlantean effects with Abyss Dweller.
These Skills were easy to understand, easy to read, and easy to use, without too many effects. You can figure these out in less than 15 minutes.
What are examples of overtuned Skills?
There have definitely been Skills that were bloated with too much text, generally because Konami does not know what a deck needs to be meta, while also being fair. They design first, then the players test the Skills, then they fix the Skills after if they realize it. :-)
These are a few that I felt were overtuned, even if Konami did not adjust the Skills yet after a banlist, as of the time of this writing.
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Some of these just allow for exceptionally-easy OTKs, such as A Bond Illuminates the Future letting you replace monster(s) which total 2500+ original ATK with materials to make a Shooting Quasar Dragon, and some of these are more times per Duel than are appropriate for the Deck itself, such as Battle Chronicle (which really should be once per Duel) or Determination to Fight (which could be one less time per Duel, IMO).
These could easily be fixed by removing 1 aspect of them, or just making certain aspects of them once per Duel.
So are Skills healthy for Duel Links?
The concept is, in my opinion, healthy for Duel Links. It does let rogue decks shine where they otherwise wouldn't. However, I currently think the design philosophy of the Skills is flawed. While it is cool to support new releases with new Skills, the standard for the strength of Skills has risen too high.
As of this writing, the Skills that have been getting released are a mixed bag; sometimes unplayably bad (such as Quick-Emulatelf), sometimes good (such as Level 5 Reload), and sometimes overtuned (such as Sky Striker Mobilize - Contact).
It leaves me wondering whether Konami actually recognizes which Skills they have made are actually fair or not. Hm...