Legends of Runeterra
The Demacia Problem
This is something that I wanted to talk about for a while. If you look at some of the recent top tier decks that used Demacia ( Sivir/Akshan, Poppy/Zed, Pantheon) you notice that it is is mostly used as a support region, you basically use Demacia whenever you need the following cards ( Single Combat, Concerted Strike, Golden Aegis, Sharpsight, Brightsteel Protector ).
Barring a few exception Demacia's followers and champions don't seem to make it into competitive decks, the reason for that is, well at least in my opinion, is because Demacia lacks finishers unit's that can ignore chump blocker to deal damage directly to face, most of Demacia champions and followers are good at trading but they struggle with closing the game.
Regions like Shurima, Targon and Ionia tend abuse the above cards because they have access to unit's with overwhelm and elusive. If you opponent use a Cataclysm on Jarvan IV that just mean your going to lose a unit but a Cataclysm on Pantheon usually mean that you will lose the game.
Taking all of that into account it's no surprise that the Demacian champion who had the most success in the competitive scene is Fiora because she had an alternate win con, that also why Jarvan/Shen could never be as dominant as Fiora/Shen despite sharing 90% of it's card with that deck.
So how do we fix this problem? how do we give Demacia finisher? Well the obvious answer would be just give them unit's with elusive or overwhelm. But that just seem to be a lazy fix to me, plus elusive does not make sense from a lore perceptive ( Demecia is know for it's big mighty army, that is as far from stealthy as it get's ).
The first one is fearsome Cithria the Bold is one the few, good Demacian finisher having seen play in both MF/Quinn and Fiora/Shen and what does she do? she give your board fearsome plus a stat boost, plus it fits from lore perspective big armies are fearsome and let's no forget about the anti-mage secret police that kingdom have.
The other mechanic that comes to mind is the very underused give unit "can't block," Demacia is know for petricite a substance that nullify magic, mageseekers use it to restrain mages preventing them from defending themselves similar to how "can't block " prevent your opponent from using his unit's to defend his nexus.
Anyway this post ended up being longer than expected, so what do you guys think?
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This is something that I wanted to talk about for a while. If you look at some of the recent top tier decks that used Demacia ( Sivir/Akshan, Poppy/Zed, Pantheon) you notice that it is is mostly used as a support region, you basically use Demacia whenever you need the following cards ( Single Combat, Concerted Strike, Golden Aegis, Sharpsight, Brightsteel Protector ).
Barring a few exception Demacia's followers and champions don't seem to make it into competitive decks, the reason for that is, well at least in my opinion, is because Demacia lacks finishers unit's that can ignore chump blocker to deal damage directly to face, most of Demacia champions and followers are good at trading but they struggle with closing the game.
Regions like Shurima, Targon and Ionia tend abuse the above cards because they have access to unit's with overwhelm and elusive. If you opponent use a Cataclysm on Jarvan IV that just mean your going to lose a unit but a Cataclysm on Pantheon usually mean that you will lose the game.
Taking all of that into account it's no surprise that the Demacian champion who had the most success in the competitive scene is Fiora because she had an alternate win con, that also why Jarvan/Shen could never be as dominant as Fiora/Shen despite sharing 90% of it's card with that deck.
So how do we fix this problem? how do we give Demacia finisher? Well the obvious answer would be just give them unit's with elusive or overwhelm. But that just seem to be a lazy fix to me, plus elusive does not make sense from a lore perceptive ( Demecia is know for it's big mighty army, that is as far from stealthy as it get's ).
The first one is fearsome Cithria the Bold is one the few, good Demacian finisher having seen play in both MF/Quinn and Fiora/Shen and what does she do? she give your board fearsome plus a stat boost, plus it fits from lore perspective big armies are fearsome and let's no forget about the anti-mage secret police that kingdom have.
The other mechanic that comes to mind is the very underused give unit "can't block," Demacia is know for petricite a substance that nullify magic, mageseekers use it to restrain mages preventing them from defending themselves similar to how "can't block " prevent your opponent from using his unit's to defend his nexus.
Anyway this post ended up being longer than expected, so what do you guys think?
I don't think Demacia needs more mechanic for finishers, mainly since they have Rally which is arguably the strongest type of mechanic in the game. I don't know how many times I've won a game against someone who has a Lucian leveled up pretty early. I think the main issue is more of how the support synergizes with one another as they don't really help the Champions as much as they help Champions from other regions. Demacia has the best Barrier cards but there isn't really a Demacian Champion that uses Barrier other than Fiora and J4. Elites also don't really help Jarvan as much as you just want to run units that can Challenge and help Challengers.
I also think that the meta is way too fast. Grindy control decks hasn't really been THE meta for a very long time. So obviously some of the cooler finishers in the game have been too slow to come out. Cithria, Lady of Clouds, Brightsteel Formation, Tianna Crownguard, and King Jarvan III are all honestly pretty decent finishers. They end the game when they're played more than 50% of the time. However, I think they're too slow or costs too much and often when you fight decks that go that late, they have some sort of way to deal with them. Cithria the Bold and Genevieve Elmheart are honestly barely able to make it for Demacia.
The reason why J4 isn't as good as Fiora is also because of this. If J4 is 3 mana and Fiora is 6 mana then obviously J4 would be better. Also this goes for Tianna Crownguard. Why run an 8 Mana unit for Rally when you can just use a 4 Mana spell for it.
That said, I wouldn't be opposed to more finishers in Demacia. I really liked Cithria, Lady of Clouds. Mainly because you could opt for another way to build your decks around. More finisher = more decks imo and I think that's great. I think we can be certain that we'll get another couple finishers for Demacia in the next expansion.
Take my words with a grain of salt. I'm unranked and only play casuals lmao.
We might be in a situation where they could revert the nerf to Relentless Pursuit and let it be fast again. That could be one way to make Demacia champs more relevant (especially Lucian, since it's literally his champ spell). Poor Lucian sitting in the bottom half of all champs, with just under a 48% winrate overall. He's seen better days.
The problem with giving Demacia better rally is that other region are going use the mechanic way better than Demacia. Recently Relentless Pursuit got bumped into 4 mana because of rally elusive. Golden Aegis tend to be a fair card in Demacia because you still need to have a big board to win the game, but with other region the card tend to borderline busted because they just need one big elusive or overwhelm unit to do the same. Like what used to happen with pre-nerf Ruin Runner or Pantheon and Wounded Whiteflame for more recent examples.
As minuano said, you can't buff the spell because then it still gets used as support for other regions. (i.e. Splashing Demacia into another regions deck instead of vice versa). The power needs to go into the champions themselves, not the support cards for those champions otherwise it just helps promote other strategies
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I think it's worth challenging the premise that Demacia is only used as a support region. If you trust the Mobalytics tier list, then there are two competitive decks that feature Demacian Champs: Pantheon Dragons at S Tier with Shyvana and Laser Gate at A Tier with Lux. While it's certainly true that other meta decks use Demacia as pure support, and it's true that you could build a Pantheon deck and a Jayce deck without those champs, it's not fair to say that Demacia is strictly support.
What's interesting about these decks, and perhaps what's at the core of your criticism, is that these Demacian Champs aren't really the stars of the show - they end up in the deck because of the obvious synergies they share with the important cards. It makes a lot of sense to include Wounded Whiteflame and the Demacia support package in a Pantheon deck, at which point it probably makes sense to also run Dragon's Clutch to fetch your dragon and/or give it Overwhelm, and at some point you hit a critical mass of dragon synergy that leads to including Shyvana. Similarly the payoffs of Jayce and Albus Ferros are compelling enough that you end up including a lot of 6-drop spells, which leads to including Lux (and maybe some Mageseekers) in the deck.
Compare these relevant Champs to the other Demacian Champs and you see that the others are generically pretty strong but don't have meaningful synergies with any particular strategy; it's just a lot of "I've struck" or "Allies blocked" or "You've attacked." They can fit in all kinds of decks that run Demacia, and in certain metagames they might be very relevant, but they're also generic enough that any highly synergist deck is likely to pass over them in favor of doubling down on its synergies.
This is sort of the double-edged sword of Champ design in LoR - many of Demacia's Champs are well-designed from a traditional CCG standpoint, but that often renders them less compelling because of how synergy focused LoR is. They fit the regional identity very well, and offer powerful effects that exceed follower cards (persistent bonus Rally's, persistent free Barriers or challenger units to make for high value trades, etc), but the high-synergy champs end up being more relevant precisely because they'll find a home when any part of their synergistic deck is strong. When synergy is the primary driver for deck building, you end up with more narrow deck-building options and linear game plans, so there's just no room for a generically strong midrange Champ like Garen because he doesn't do enough to progress your main strategy. For what it's worth, I don't think this is strictly a problem for Demacia, but it may be true that it's a bigger problem for Demacia than other regions because the region is built for board-based, midrange playstyles.
It's probably worth mentioning that Scouts is currently one of the better decks in the meta as it smashes Kennen Ahri and Elusives in general and historically has a good match up into the SI/Freljord which there is a ton of right now. The decks primarily features Demacian Scouts and Challengers and yes that includes Genevieve Elmheart. I'm not sure why it's not on Mobalytics but they do have the data on it.
Take my words with a grain of salt. I'm unranked and only play casuals lmao.
I said that Demacia is "mostly" used as a support region not "only".
This is not the issue with Demacia or the issue that I was trying to highlight. Champion requiring specific synergies to function is not Demacia's problem.
To illustrate my point let's compare some follower, for an 8 drop finisher Demacia has Tianna Crownguard she has tough which makes her good at trading but she can't finish the opponent by herself for Tianna to be useful you need to already have a board of unit, attack clear the your opponent's board with trades then play Tianna to rally and win. that a lot set up and Tianna just end up being a win more card but the worst part is that your opponent can counter you easily with just a chump blocker like Spiderling
Compare that to Noxus 8 drop finisher Captain Farron, he doesn't care about you having or no having a board with 8 overwhelm damage and another 8 burn damage he is more than capable of finishing the opponent all by himself and the opponent can't just survive with a mere Spiderling.
Rally is supposed to be Demacia way of finishing the game but because Demacia has no may to deal damage directly to the nexus the mechanic end up being just decent in Demacia and completely broken in any region that has Elusive or overwhelm, even scouts one the only few "real" Demacian deck use Miss Fortune to compensate for that weakness.
As far as I'm concerned, what you're describing isn't a design flaw, it's just a design choice. Regions are not going to excel at the same things, this is intentionally not a strength of Demacia.
Demacia isn't a region that's about big finishers - they're about skilled, disciplined armies winning in a fair fight through superior strategy and strength. They're good at getting value trades and building board advantage over time thanks to Challenger, Barrier, and Tough keywords. (44% of cards with Challenger, 50% of cards with Barrier, and 50% of cards with Tough are Demacian.) They've also got Dragons whose Fury keyword emphasizes value trading, and their removal tools are mostly based on striking. As a result, their big payoff cards aren't about directly blowing up the enemy, they're about capitalizing on what Demacia does best - build and maintain a board over a series of turns. This is well-emphasized by For The Fallen and Reinforcements whose payoffs come from building and trading an Elite army, but all of their 8+ cost followers do this too - their value scales directly with how wide your board is when you play them.
In many ways, I think you could actually argue quite the opposite of your original point - that Demacia is a fairly healthy region. It has three competitive decks that feature its Champs, all of which have varying playing styles (Laser Gate Control, Pantheon Dragon Midrange that focuses on buffing single units, and Scouts Midrange that focuses on going frequent attacks with wide boards). Even in decks that feature Demacia in a limited support capacity, you see key elements like Fleetfeather Tracker and Brightsteel Protector, a combo which is fundamental to what Demacia is good at, as well as splashes of Vanguard Sergeant to capitalize on a wide board or Ranger's Resolve to out-value your opponent on board.
Obviously (from what I've said previously), I don't think it's a completely healthy region. I think it's correct to criticize the design of a number of Champs in Demacia. Their lack of synergy frequently makes them irrelevant because of how powerful synergy is in LoR. I consider that a broad design flaw in the game because powerful synergies regularly crowd out more traditional board-based decks, and that almost certainly hampers Demacia to a greater extent than the other regions. It's also true that expensive Demacia cards don't see much play, but I see that as a biproduct of this central synergy design flaw. When your plan comes down to hypersynergistic, linear play, the best thing you can do is turbo through your deck and that keeps your opponent from getting to the late game. That further hinders the slow-and-steady, board-based approach of Demacia, but it diminishes cards in other regions as well. (I think it's pretty telling that the Mobalytics tier list has zero S-Tier decks that include a 7+ cost card, and only three from A- and B-Tiers contain more than one 7+ drop card. Expensive cards in LoR are outclassed by early game synergy across the board, whether or not they're big, impressive finishers.)
At the end of the day, you're talking about a game where decks are (almost always) made up of cards from two regions. The whole point is that you can pair regions to shore up weaknesses, and I think it's a pretty reasonable design choice to make direct nexus damage a weakness for Demacia so that you have to think about how it pairs with other regions to deal with chumps.
This is how it's supposed to work in theory in practice not so much. Either your opponent keeps throwing blockers at you which weaken your units and put them in removal range and when you lose your board in Demacia you just lose the game because the region lack good finishers or they stale long enough for their own win con to be online, you value trade then a Sejuani hit the board and start perma freezing your units... or Lee Sin oneshot you... or an Ezreal burst down your nexus... or an aggro finish you off with burn...
In a way you are wining the battles but losing the war.
Dragon are meta because they have access Dragon's Clutch a card that grant them overwhelm turning them from mere beatsticks into powerful finisher and that a Targonian card by the way. They also have Pantheon who is a finisher himself.
Lux/Jayce has Acceleration Gate to give your unit powerful keywords that let them finish off your opponent. Not only that but Lux herself has been recently buffed so that her Final Spark can target the nexus directly.
Saying that Demacia lack of good finisher is design choice to me is like saying the region isn't supposed to win with it's own champions/follower which not something that I consider to be a healthy design choice. Especially since no other region in game have this weakness and Demacia already plenty of weakness to begin with including poor card draw removal that require you to already have unit's on the board etc.
I'm not saying that the region isn't supposed to win with it's own champions and followers. I'm saying that you're constructing a very narrow view of what winning with your champions and followers means. In effect, you're arguing that if your champ or follower isn't the thing that blows up the enemy Nexus, then it's not how you won.
But that's way too narrow a view. As I said, the majority of aggro and midrange decks that include a Demacian package run Fleetfeather Tracker and Brightsteel Protector precisely because of how powerful that pair can be in the early game. These decks rely on winning the board in the early game so that in the mid game they can finish off the opponent (with Ionian elusives, or with a buffed Pantheon, etc.). Those followers don't close out games, but they're just as instrumental in winning games because they create the space to leverage those powerful units. It's also common to splash Vanguard Sergeant to get For Demacia! and take advantage of a wide board to win.
I think it's worth thinking about the height of Demacian relevance back in 2020 (pre Grizzled Ranger nerf) when Mono-Demancian Bannerman was one of the best decks in the game. It was the perfect illustration of what Demacia is built to do, and it still didn't run more than 1x of any high cost Demacia card because it was built to win in the mid game without flashy finishers. It achieved that victory by snowballing an early board lead with exactly the same early game Demacian cards that still show up in decks today, and to the extent that it had "finishers" at all, they were things like Vanguard Sergeant into For Demacia! which also see play today (albeit more limited).
The same core aspects of Demacia that made Bannerman powerful are still alive and well, but the meta is no longer "fair enough" to let a "purist midrange" strategy like Bannerman succeed. That's not great design on the part of Riot, but it speaks more to powercreep than it does to some design flaw unique to Demacia.
am i missing something or dragon clutch give dragons +1/+1 and not overwhelm? are you talking about a diferent card?
Out of Cards LoR card database isn't very up to date. Dragon's Clutch got buffed into grant +1/+1 and Overwhelm.
Take my words with a grain of salt. I'm unranked and only play casuals lmao.
oh thanks, now I know why it looked like you guys were talking about a diferent card. XD
Yes and that's exactly the issue, Demacia has lot's useful cards and they instrumental in wining but you don't have many cards that close the game and have to rely on other regions to do so. What's even worse is that these cards are better when paired with other champs/followers from other region than they are with Demacian champs followers.
Take Fiora/Shen for example yes the deck used cards from Ionia and they were instrumental in helping you achieve victory but in the end day it was Fiora or Cithria who won you the game and it cards like those two that Demacia is lacking because when you don't close the game anything you did before will amount to nothing.
I used play lot's Jarvan/Shen and most of times I would be ahead on the board and still lose anyway because you don't have many ways to leverage your board advantage, you just attack and try to outgrind your opponent with value trading. It's like control level of slow but without those insane power turns that control has. That not something that happen with Sivir/Akshan for example, Sivir ability to share key words mean you can just give your entire board quick attack, spellshield and overwhelm with the The Absolver, so you get to both value trade and push damage.
Anyway as much as I have been enjoying this discussion, I have the feeling that we have said all that could be said on this subject ( or at very least I did) and that we are kinda just repeating ourselves at this point so this probably going to be my last post here. Plus there are other subjects that I would like to discuses.
Haha, yeah, that seems right. Thanks for the discussion!