What do you think about the Monuments of power expansion?

How do you guys experience it? 

Do you like sorakench? Do you like dragons and the new landsmarks?

There wasn't much talk lately so i wonder how active everyone is in LoR right now...

For me this expansions was quite disappointing.

The heal package -while having clear counters- is just absurdly powerful against damage oriented decks and is very polarising imo. Some cards like Soraka and Star Spring seem undercosted for their effect and while Tahm Kench is not op in my oppinion, he is just soooo annoying as a concept (4 mana removal engine). In general runeterra went much into a an value-engine-oriented way, causing more grindy games. If we for example take The Howling Abyss Vaults of Helia The Slaughter Docks and Noxkraya Arena we have 4 different landmarks that create very huge value over time, which encourages to play control oriented decks and in general slow gameplans. Decks build in that way feel really boring to play agains although i got to admit that the Vaults of Helia at least enables neat combos that are more interesting than the other 3 landmarks. 

While many players hate it and ask for a rework, I really like the The University of Piltover which really embraces the flavour of experiementation. While it is weird that it is a Jinx support card it actually can lead to weird and hilerious plays and takes more skill to use than people give it credit for (since you got to make up a plan for the random cards gained every turn) also it clearly has decks where it is good in (discard aggro).

About dragons i don't need to repeat my oppinion that i gave already...

But what do you guys think? Is the "new" meta cool? Do you like the games you play and would you change something about the new cards? 

I'm really curious what you have to say :)

I think the expansion is fine so far. I'm neither excited nor disappointed. 

Just a quick comment about The University of Piltover - you said it would work in discard aggro. I can tell you that I picked up discard aggro for the first time last week, just after the release of Monuments of Power (ironically, since it has no cards in it from that expac). I have been playing that deck exclusively for the past week with no changes. And I can say with some certainty that The University of Piltover would make the deck worse. If I slotted it, it would take up a board spot (in a deck that needs to go wide to win), and it would have to replace Augmented Experimenter, who does basically the same thing, but is a 3/3 body that deals 3 damage to something when he comes down, and draws three cards from my own deck, which is vastly better than 3 random ones. Discard aggro does not have time for The University of Piltover to do it's thing, and Jinx usually does not stick long enough for her to get value from it either. 

TL;DR - The University of Piltover doesn't do enough to synergize with discard aggro. Discard aggro is aggro first, discard second. The discarding provides a means of going very wide, very fast, but just adding more discard does not automatically make the deck better. I've never found myself saying, "Hmm, if I only I could discard my whole hand right now, then I'd be in a much better place in this game."

The current batch of cards was extremely underwhelming for me. Reason for that being that the entire meta is warped around Lee Sin targon vs. The world. The latter being mostly discard aggro.

Them taking another two weeks to fix our overtuned monk doesn't really help much either. By that time many people have already lost most of their 'new cards hype', so we see a lot less of experimentation.

So all in all I'm not disappointed in the new cards, there's plenty of fun stuff there, but in the fact that they left the meta tyrant untouched whilst releasing these new cards.

Quote From sto650

I think the expansion is fine so far. I'm neither excited nor disappointed. 

Just a quick comment about The University of Piltover - you said it would work in discard aggro. I can tell you that I picked up discard aggro for the first time last week, just after the release of Monuments of Power (ironically, since it has no cards in it from that expac). I have been playing that deck exclusively for the past week with no changes. And I can say with some certainty that The University of Piltover would make the deck worse. If I slotted it, it would take up a board spot (in a deck that needs to go wide to win), and it would have to replace Augmented Experimenter, who does basically the same thing, but is a 3/3 body that deals 3 damage to something when he comes down, and draws three cards from my own deck, which is vastly better than 3 random ones. Discard aggro does not have time for The University of Piltover to do it's thing, and Jinx usually does not stick long enough for her to get value from it either. 

TL;DR - The University of Piltover doesn't do enough to synergize with discard aggro. Discard aggro is aggro first, discard second. The discarding provides a means of going very wide, very fast, but just adding more discard does not automatically make the deck better. I've never found myself saying, "Hmm, if I only I could discard my whole hand right now, then I'd be in a much better place in this game."

Then I have a different view of the university than you apparently ...

To me is drawing 3 cards in a discard deck as valuable as drawing 2 cards in a usual deck since the cards in discard are primerily mana efficient and not at all card efficient. That you deal 3 damage and play a 3/3 hardly matters at turn 6 so the most times that you play Augmented Experimenter in a spot where you are behind on board you are going to loose anyways. The University of Piltover  however lets you switch to an infinite but random arsenal (a little bit like experimental frenzy in mtg) which is not really reliable but also absolutely unpredictable and potentially very powerful + that you start with rockets in hand every round if you got Jinx.

In limited this card singlehandedly wins games and in constructed its really not bad, just unpredictable what many players dislike 

@TheTrifarianGeneral -

As I said, I've played a lot of discard aggro. You don't play Augmented Experimenter because you're behind on board and already lost. You play him to tempo your way to lethal. Remove a pesky guy that was in your way, draw into discard + Vision, draw into Get Excited! (either the actual thing or a second Jinx) ... it's your last gasp to find a way to win before the opponent stabilizes for good.

The current versions of discard aggro have no time to wait for value from University. It's waaaaaay too slow. And it's utterly useless without Jinx on board.

Edit - I don't think it actually matters much at this point, because the meta has caught up to discard aggro. When I started it, I was winning about 80% of my games. Now, I'm actually losing more than I win. It's not a good deck anymore at the moment.

I agree with The University of Piltover being a bit too slow. I had thought it would be a pretty good resource engine against hard control decks and after playing about 15 games with it I came to the conclusion that Augmented Experimenter is much better because most of the time it just gives straight burn options and ends the game before the control player could draw their heal or board clear. Tho I will say just because it discards the hand and draws 3 random cards doesn't really mean it's bad. If it does come to a situation where Discard Aggro can't burn fast enough and has to play more for the late game, The University of Piltover could be seen as a 1 of. Honestly, I've been running it as a 1 of nowadays and it's doing decently well. About 60% WR in Casual.

I opened my Vault last Thursday and haven't touched the game since.

Lee Sin didn't have to happen in the first place. They could have reverted it weeks ago but did not. They didn't even mention it until the patch notes of the Monuments expansion.

One of the nice things about this game being so consumer-friendly is that I don't feel the need to play when they make the game suck for over a month. I feel so sorry for the content creators who don't have that luxury.

I’m actually more excited about the balance patch than the actual expansion. There are so many CotM cards that haven’t found goods decks (such as Taric) that I think a balance patch that nerfs all of the top decks would essentially “add” a lot of content and make the game feel more fresh even than when CotM released. However, the last few patches have been pretty bad, so it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen. Getting the 5 new KDA cards could also help change the meta a bit.

Quote From CursedParrot

Getting the 5 new KDA cards could also help change the meta a bit.

If that's the thing that "fixes" the game, I will be extending my break indefinitely.

I did not like this expansion when it first dropped and struggled to find what I wanted to do with it after losing countless games with the deck that carried me to gold last season, I nearly quit. Then I built a deck specifically to deal with star spring bullshit and I’ve won 70% of the games against star spring since then. I feel comfortable against every deck if I draw the right cards I can beat every match up. Most loses are still to aggro but there are less of them.
I have howling abyss in my deck I didn’t think much of it at first but the free extra card per turn just pushing me over the top my goal is to stall my opponent and then grind them down. Had to add some aggression to my deck after getting 3 +20 round games but now I am able to knock down deep and Sol decks and live long enough to mostly stall aggro. I built to fight star spring didn’t think I would enjoy that but i am.

very thankful for the Hush and Bastion nerf.

Landmarks feel very powerful to me. But with star spring reducing the appearance of aggro decks I guess I’m ok with it

Quote From Forgottenslayer

I did not like this expansion when it first dropped and struggled to find what I wanted to do with it after losing countless games with the deck that carried me to gold last season, I nearly quit. Then I built a deck specifically to deal with star spring bullshit and I’ve won 70% of the games against star spring since then. I feel comfortable against every deck if I draw the right cards I can beat every match up. Most loses are still to aggro but there are less of them.
I have howling abyss in my deck I didn’t think much of it at first but the free extra card per turn just pushing me over the top my goal is to stall my opponent and then grind them down. Had to add some aggression to my deck after getting 3 +20 round games but now I am able to knock down deep and Sol decks and live long enough to mostly stall aggro. I built to fight star spring didn’t think I would enjoy that but i am.

 

very thankful for the Hush and Bastion nerf.

Landmarks feel very powerful to me. But with star spring reducing the appearance of aggro decks I guess I’m ok with it

What deck are you using that uses Howling Abyss and is able to deal with star spring decks?  I find star spring decks IMMENSELY annoying to deal with because they just sit there grinding out wins with Tahm and Soraka, and then use sorakas wish to either prevent clears or to win instantly.  

Just play a deck with Divergent Paths and a Landmark or play Scorched Earth. Then you just cheaply destroy Star Springs. Noxus in general is pretty good because they have Culling Strike, Scorched Earth, and high-Power units that are hard for Tahm to eat. You can probably also look up a counter deck on Mobalytics.

Even if you destroy starspringBADCARDNAME with Scorched Earth you will technically get behind because you invested 3 mana to remove a 2 mana card that also healed already some of the opponent's units.

In general i believe that archetypes should be as unpolarising as possible so that a large set of archetypes can beat it/beaten by it and that as few hardcounter matchups as possible exist.

Therefore there shouldn't be archetypes like Sorakakench that have specific hard counters but who rule against the rest because you can pretty much be only on one of the sides who eighter hard loose or hard win.