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Deckathalons are hard period, but the balance deckathalon is the hardest, most infuriating, most UNBALANCED, and unfairest one. Enemies are spamming mana burn, casting 1300 damage hydras, casting -45% mantles, and -25% weaknesses. On top of that crazy pierce theyre given, they get boosted damage on their spells AND all we have to protect ourselves is a pesky -55% tower shield. I mean using a plague is a waste of pips because they mana burn spam and if you plague or juju you wouldnt have enough pips to do any hitting. Some of these changes need to happen. Balance deckathalon enemies need to not have any pierce at all. Spell damage needs to be nerfed. A special made balance shield needs to be put in the game. Or something! Anything! Dear developers The enemies are way too hard and a challenge is nice but this is extreme.
And for context, I have finished 3 deckathalons and I have a deck 5 trying to beat stage 6. Its been impossible

I have to agree with this. This is easily the most infuriating Deckathalon event just because of how much utility these enemies have, and how little you have to fight against it. Imo, enemies really shouldn't be stacking pierce in this Tower when all you have to defend yourself are 55% shields. On top of that, Elemental damage isn't even covered by your Deck for this Tower, so spells like Spectral Blast and Hydra just make the tower borderline unfair.

And again, the main issue I have with Deckathalons is so much more prevalent here: the fact that the later double fights in Stage 8-9 and onward are just needlessly stacked against the player. There is quite literally nothing stopping these enemies from popping Power Nova and Hydra on Round 1, killing you instantly, even through shields.

Since enemies are running like 20% pierce at this point, your best bet is to spam Plagues and V-Plagues, which are giving you 45% damage debuff at best, which isn't enough to prevent 2 Hydras from chewing your HP away in the same round. As of writing this, I am on Stage 9 of the tower, running Balance Deck 6 with a +27 Universal Opal. I run a full MayCast Heal pet with Frozen Kraken WillCast. Even with these precautions, there are instances where there is literally nothing you can do to prevent your death. No amount of debuffs, shields, or attacks can stop instances like these where enemies can outpace you because they have so many pips and stacked buffs that aren't accessible to you (pierce).

I've heard that Kingsisle is very comfortable with the way Deckathalons are right now, but as someone who also cares about these events a lot, I strongly think double battles need to be revised, in addition to the approach taken to the Balance Tower. I mean, consider all of the tools available to these enemies

- Mana Burn to prevent you from ever doing anything above 5 pips
- Hydra to bypass your shields (even then, wouldn't make a difference because of their ridiculous pierce)
- Mantles to prevent you from casting spells
- Your deck offers absolutely no protection against Elemental damage, which is used a LOT by these enemies.

These issues on top of the already existing problems I have with later Deckathalon battles make this Tower by far the most unfun of the seven schools in my opinion. I really hope it gets looked into, because I am not really okay with being limited to 3 tries a day for a tower this unforgiving.

Agreed.I played the life deckathalon then and found it very enjoyable, and a refreshing break from how full of randomness the game can be a lot of times. Being able to set against the opponents with shields and flat resist, trying to manage resources to get through a prolonged chain of fights, having boosted accuracy, and the discarding method all made the game mode feel very fun, and I got to stage 10 on the last day with a tier 7 deck and no will-cast and had a lot of fun fighting my way up.

In the balance deckathalon, the enemies really quickly started weakness spamming, and so while in the life deckathalon I could make it to about stage 6-7 before having to use minions and things, which made it feel a lot less grindy to go for runes on the lower levels.

The enemies force fizzles frequently with mantle, and at higher levels it's even worse with loremaster as well. The enemies will literally mantle me so many times that I keep fizzling 100% accuracy balance spells and they get the +25% global consistently, which is just not enjoyable.

While in the previous deckathalon I was able to get good mileage out of the set resistance on the deck, socketing a defensive jade when I was at higher stages, and packing 85% shields, in this deckathalon I have to use tower shields for balance hits. And the balance hits aren't even the biggest issue- spectral blasts are doing 700-800, hydras are lethal if I'm not shielded and still do 500+ if I elemental shield.

I'm on stage 8 of this deckathalon currently.I've tried a bunch of different strategies in this deckathalon- I made a will cast frozen kraken pet with may cast heals, I've tried frozen armor and spirit armor, I've brought dispels, I've wild bolted, I've brought virulent plague, I've used Talos and Brandon's, and I just consistently die in some unfun way. First round I dispel one of the 6+ pip enemies, and the other one one-shots me with a hydra, despite having 1k health and a 26 universal resist opal. First round I get mantled, the next round I fizzle and take multiple uncontested hits. The enemies cycle mana burns back and forth on me and I am unable to get beyond 1-2 pips. The way I made it from 6-8 was just by chucking wild bolts, getting lucky, and landing frozen krakens into feints.

I watched a video stream of a content creator for the game last night who was attempting stage 10 of the deckathalon, and it just looked so incredibly unenjoyable- and they weren't having fun either, the 2v1 second stage just gets absolutely ridiculous at the higher levels.

Personally I wish they would remove all elemental hits from the enemies, and remove mana burn. If enemies that are currently using spectral blast, hydra, and mana burn were changed to use things like sandstorm, savage paw, ninja piglets, or even some of the nastier balance spells like Ra or Artorius, the balance deckathalon would still definitely be one of the most difficult challenges to complete in the game, without being heads and shoulders above every single other deckathalon in the game.

Just my 2 cents. I really enjoyed life deckathalon and it was an enjoyable experience trying to get to the top. Balance Deckathalon is definitely my least favorite event in the game, especially because it feels like it would easily be so much more fun with a few adjustments.

I'd hate to see it nerfed too hard, as it is a fun challenge, but at the very least, dropping back on the enemy pips and pierce on the higher levels would be good. Upping base accuracy for players would help too.

It would also be nice if Mana Burn TC were available, so we could do it to them before they do it to us. At present, the only source is crafting using the very Runes we are desperately trying to get for the decks. Not practical.

When you go in optimized and still get killed on the first or second round THROUGH shields and plagues, yeah, brutal. The enemies are hitting us with Hydras and Lore repeatedly, while we struggle to get off a 4 pip attack through mantle and stacked weakness.

I don't want a cakewalk, but it shouldn't take perfect strategy AND outrageously good luck to get past level 8.