Currently in Duelyst, at least two out of the six factions have some pretty viable forms of burn decks (I mean primarily non-creature based aggro, aggro is a different animal imo), that are near top-tier, or are top tier viable currently, in the first set. I believe this is a pretty damn serious issue that needs to be addressed for the overall health of the game.

The issue with burn, as I see it, is that it is at it's core a severely abusive playstyle that encourages the breaking of other cards in the game that aren't particularly issues. Take a look at Songhai: It has cards like Tusk Boar, Spiral Technique, Heaven's Eclipse, Inner Focus, Lantern Fox, Chakri Avatar, hell, the -entire faction- is focused on hitting your opponent's face with primarily out-of-hand damage, and ignoring positioning and tempo.

Abyssian is also a pretty strong offender as well, having cards like Nightsorrow, Reflection, Revenant, Void Pulse, not to mention the entire Shadow Creep set of cards.

Burn simply doesn't lend itself well to being a competitive deck in nearly any card game you care to think of. It frustrates players, because if the burn player draws well, there are very few responses to direct damage, especially vs decks like Songhai, where in later turns you can hit 0 from 25 general health. That's a very horrible situation to lose from, especially if you have board control and they're in a 'losing' position.

Even if you disagree with this being a problem, the fact that Songhai can do this already, in just the first set -does not- bode well for expansion content, where there will inevitably be cards that will be more powerful than existing ones, and potentially make games that much more snowbally, if the Songhai player has a critical mass of consistently good and efficient things to use in his deck.

Abyssian burn is a bit more creature based and over-time, but it's much more of a burn-heal situation, where they keep themselves out of killing range. Void Pulses mean they have 9 extra health, and you have 6 less. Throw in night sorrows, reflection, general aggression cards and some extra healing on their end, and you can get some pretty one-sided games.

Shadow Creep though is even worse, with Shadow Nova being a huge bomb that will win you games when you hit the late game. With Abyssian's overall heal and stall capabilities, as well as direct damage, if another creep generator is printed, the deck would probably become pretty overbearing and powerful, since there are more methods to pump shadow nova damage up. A 4 damage nova is just on this side of fine, a 6-7 damage nova on turn 7 is sickeningly devastating and one sided.

With beta here, and the inevitability of an expansion set, I don't know if Duelyst can afford to print cards on the same power as the first set, without hitting a critical mass of highly efficient, highly powerful cards that drastically speed up the tempo of the game. And if you slow down the tempo, then as it stands, burn still becomes that much more of an issue if existing cards are not changed, because then it just gives them more time to hit those game winning bursts of damage.

 If nothing else, this topic is probably worthy of conversation, because power creep is an ongoing issue in all card games, and in a game like Duelyst where there is a pretty high power to cost ratio, it can mean the difference between a healthy format and a disgusting one.