New Patch Is fun but...

Major egregious problems with LoR still remain.  So much so that I honestly can't say it's any better than Hearthstone's meta at the moment.  Both games appear to be in major balance dumpster fires at the moment.

(for those unaware, Questlines in Hearthstone were just released a few weeks ago and have been creating huge game winning conditions that are almost uncounterable as early as turn 5-6 on a consistent basis).

Anyhow, my two main issues with LoR (and this patch) at the moment:

Problem 1: Ooh Shiny!

Newer champions are being pushed hard, while older champions are eschewed and forgotten.  Any competitively viability from older champions was either nerfed into the ground.  Not only that, but instead of creating creative cards that could be potentially used in multiple archetypes with clever deckbuilding and play, they create forced archetype inclusions. One such example is Caitlyn Bombs/Teemo Shrooms.  Forced inclusion archetype cards that without makes those heroes suck.  Yes, I know to some degree all champions have those.  For example Ashes needs Frostbite, but technically you could build an Ashe deck without any other cards and eventually she would level up on her own...

But when is the last time you saw Garen, Lux, or hell even Hecarim used? (and no bronze/iron does not count).  I understand not *every* champion can be competitively viable at the same time, but it says something when nearly all the old champions are eschewed for newer ones.  This isn't hearthstone.  There is no yearly rotation (yet), and Champions are supposed to be more of a build around/win condition than Hearthstone legendaries.  So why does it seem like Riot is just pushing newer champions for the last year with little to no support for older champions? The only time I can recall "older" champions making a huge comeback was when Scargrounds landmark was released it revitalized Vladimir/Braum style decks for a small period of time.  

To put problem #1 in a nutshell: I think that we are being put on the "new expansion" train where the latest and greatest is pushed (as with any card game) so that way you either use up your wildcards, or you buy more coins to build all the new shiny decks. Most decks feel like they are "on rails" being pushed with new cards, and have very low skill caps to be effective. (Which is not what drew me to the game in the first place.  If I wanted a low skill cap card game to play, I could go play Hearthstone.)

Problem 2: Ionia and beyond!

I truly believe at it's heart Ionia was created with great intentions, but very poor execution balance wise.  In addition the biggest issues with deck building in general seem to come from 3 things:  Elusive units.  Rally effects. And too much draw. (A problem I believe is also plaguing Hearthstone at the moment as well, as too much draw effects allows decision making to be trivialized because you have multiple options and answers available)

I actually saw someone else point this out on reddit today in the competitiveLoR sub, and they got downvoted to hell.  Granted, I understand gamers can be mercurial; and maybe the way they presented it wasn't the most contructive, but still...

I feel like the region identities are fine, but there's currently some very broken decks and cards out there that still haven't been touched (or if they were, the wrong thing was nerfed.)  For anyone aware, I'm mainly referring to Sivir, and their respective region cards as being markedly broken.  (Ruin Runner, Merciless hunter for Shurima as well as Ionia's usual cadre of Elusive cards and counter spells available.)

Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, but I'd love for some constructive feedback to see if I'm just drinking too much Kool-aid or of I'm on the money with my assessment of things currently. Thanks!

If anything annoys me from the ionian arsenal it is the duo of Will of Ionia and Concussive Palm their ability to take units out of the fight no matter the size is really nasty to deal with but one can live with it afterall. 

There is no doubt that Ionian has been on the strong side in the recent past but given it's nonexistence for multiple months before I think it's okay for the region to be good. 

When it comes to nerfs I can't say about any archetype right now if he deserves a nerf since the meta is far from settled. 

And you might be right about riot pushing new cards to be viable and more restrict but afterall that is what cardgames tend to do when their cardpool grows larger and they still want to sell their newest content. Its not creative and pretty lame at times but it's also hard to avoid if you don't want the likes of Sejuani Gangplank ruling the meta all day.

The expansion just got released and I feel that it's too early to be making such post but to answer your issues :

Problem 1:

Are new champions being pushed ? Yes. Are old old champions being forgotten? No I mean in the last patch before the expansion Karma and Hecarim both got buffed, Teemo just got a lot of support and many champions from the beta are still competitive Ashe, Jinx, Draven, Ezreal, Zed, Shen, Elise, Tresh. Some champions like Garen don't see play (even though elites keep getting plenty of support ) not because they are weak but more because their play style is just so boring and linear.

Like you said not every champion is going to be meta that's not just a realistic expectation to have. The most important thing to me is to make sure that meta deck/champion aren't too strong so that if you choose to play non meta you can still find success as long as you play better than your opponent.

Problem 2:

I don't believe that Ionia is a problematic region I believe that it has some problematic cards (Hello Lee Sin).

- Ionia doesn't have too much draw. The only (playable) draw cards in the region are Deep Meditation, Rivershaper and Shadow Assassin. and your can't use them all in the same deck, deep meditation is played in control/combo and rivershaper in midrange decks, shadow assassin is played in aggro but do see play in some Karma decks. Regions like P&Z, Targon and Shadow Isles have better draw engines than Ionia.

- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.

- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage

Quote From minuano28

- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.

- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage

Don't have a ton of energy to respond to all your responses at the moment, but I'll respond to these as they stood out the most to me.

My issue with certain regions is less their "overall power" in a vacuum, and more in their power and strength to be splashed or used as a baseline.  Ionia has some magnificent spell counters that people tend to splash into their other decks (like mentioned in the thread, Will of Ionia, Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, etc). 

To me the biggest issue is that regions have strengths and weaknesses.  Clever deckbuilding and region combinations can shore up some of those weaknesses, however Ionia (and to a lesser degree Shadow Isles) seem to be used because of their strong controlling aspects, without any real penalty for using those regions as a splash region.  I know that's part of the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, but at a certain point if certain cards are *consistently* used in every deck that has Ionia, then those cards neeed to be adjusted or force a decision to be made that balances their region strength, against their cross-region strength.

In short:  this is what the purpose of allegiance cards was... creating strong cards that either encourage mono, or allow you to base your decision on the number of cards from that region that you put into your deck.  Something similar to that needs to be brought to bear on the more "often used" cards.  If they won't straight up nerf them, then they need to de-incentive them from being splashed.  (or make you roll the dice on the cards power like allegiance would do in non-mono decks).

As for elusives, I unfortunately disagree.  They were overstated in beta.  Nerfed countless times, and still continue to be a problem.  Fundamentally elusive cards create a very polarizing gameplay...either you have your own elusives to counter them (and not many regions have as many options as Ionia) or you have the spell removal to counter them, or you don't.  It's very rare to force an elusive card to trade with a non elusive card (act as a blocker) unless you are threatening lethal.  I understand that the original purpose of elusives was to force chip damage in.  But as it stands now, there is more card draw in the game then there was in the beginning of the game and the resource management that was in the game in the beginning is starting to wane even more. 

All I can say is that I've basically stopped playing both LoR and Hearthstone for the last week or so. Have been playing LoR for a year and a half, and I played HS for about 2 years prior to that.

It may or may not say something significant about both games that I'm currently getting into Raid: Shadow Legends for the first time ever, and enjoying it more than either of the above card games.

Riot and Blizz both have some work to do to fix their games.

So could you make clear what you mean by "fix the game"?

This phrase is about as vague as it gets and if anything you should make give a picture what you want for the game. 

Do you think the balance is so bad? Do you think we have too many effects too many cards that are breakable? 

Do you think certain regions are not fair? 

Do you think the game is too stale? 

I mean I am quite certain that the game won't return to it's glory days from beta/release.

Imo that is because LoR lacks novelty and deckbuilding becomes less and less a creativity task when there is an increasing amount of clearly best in slot cards for certain archetypes. 

And it is kinda necessary to print cards with certain archetypes in mind because an universal card like Will of Ionia is super difficult to balance in an environment with evergrowing possibilities.

You will have to make every flexible card weak, making the archetype specific cards stronger if you don't want every ionia deck to run 2-3 copies of the flexible cards but this limits on the other hand deckbuilding options a lot. But ultimately the increasing powerlevel is what keeps so many strategies and playstyles dead on arrival. 

If you take the latest versions of elusive decks it is quite obvious that your deck needs a strong elusive defence or a lot of removal ready to stop this strategy which excludes many lists that otherwise could be viable right now. 

Its less that new Champs > old Champs and more that there is a wider gulph opening between what Champs and decks are viable.

For example Sivir is basically a 60% winrate champ Lux is probably closer to 40%. So that range of 20% is the difference between can climb easily and can't climb at all.

I we are starting with the debate why certain champions can't be viable at a time then I doubt we come to constructive conclusion. 

I mean of cause Lux is a bad champion because her design and stats make no sense at all:

she doesn't have a great statline to fight, yet she has barrier

she is a 6 mana champion that can't level in deck and has a requirement that can be served very poorly in her region. 

No matter how you turn it: Lux sucks and there is no hope in her Archetype making sense other than reworking her theme from the ground or add a ton of viable spells to demacia. 

My suggestions would be: change the mageseeker requirement to: you have spent 6 spellmana this game instead of  casted a 6 mana spell and Lux level up as you spent 8 spell mana. 

She also should be a 5 mana 4/4 barrier with: "whenever I attack or block spend all spellmana to give me +1/+1 this round for each spellmana spent" 

Yeah I wasn't picking on Lux in particular I probably made one of the more viable lux lists and I consider her....fine. Entrapment or whatever is a pretty good card.

But I was just commenting on the threads subject on why the new Champs might feel op when compared to the vanilla lineup especially for new players.

If I knew why I don't find the game fun presently, I'd be happy to give criticism that is more specific and constructive.

Unfortunately, there is nothing clear that I can point to for why I don't find it fun anymore. Maybe it's just me, who knows.

(A response to TheTrifarianGeneral)