Legends of Runeterra
The Elusive problem and solutions
So everyone who have been playing Runeterra can't ignore the fact that elusives are a problem specially now as they are everywhere, the main problem with the mechanic is that you can't interact with it unless you are playing elusive units yourself or you deck is mostly spells and you have all niche removals.
It's much harder to deal with when they are buffed and they keep attacking you each round for a lot of damage.
To top it all off Deny is preventing skill/spell answers for the deck.
I posted one idea on one balance thread but I think this specific mechanic needs a dedicated thread.
So what are the options?
1. Make elusive one strike only, this will not only open additional design space but it makes total sense, if you are sneaking around or hard to catch, once you stroke you revealed yourself so you are no longer stealthed, add to Teemo that he regains elusive each round and buff Ezreal's health to compensate.
2. make elusive one turn only like barrier, you play an elusive unit? well you better attack with it/defend because it will lose it at the end of the round- I initially thought about this approach but it would destroy them and it's less thematic.
3. nerfs across the board, nerf all elusive followers hp or attack, make the mechanic have premium cost. because of the inevitable powercreep it's a short term solution
4. Nerf Deny, it will knock down the elusive decks enough.
So what do you guys think?
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So everyone who have been playing Runeterra can't ignore the fact that elusives are a problem specially now as they are everywhere, the main problem with the mechanic is that you can't interact with it unless you are playing elusive units yourself or you deck is mostly spells and you have all niche removals.
It's much harder to deal with when they are buffed and they keep attacking you each round for a lot of damage.
To top it all off Deny is preventing skill/spell answers for the deck.
I posted one idea on one balance thread but I think this specific mechanic needs a dedicated thread.
So what are the options?
1. Make elusive one strike only, this will not only open additional design space but it makes total sense, if you are sneaking around or hard to catch, once you stroke you revealed yourself so you are no longer stealthed, add to Teemo that he regains elusive each round and buff Ezreal's health to compensate.
2. make elusive one turn only like barrier, you play an elusive unit? well you better attack with it/defend because it will lose it at the end of the round- I initially thought about this approach but it would destroy them and it's less thematic.
3. nerfs across the board, nerf all elusive followers hp or attack, make the mechanic have premium cost. because of the inevitable powercreep it's a short term solution
4. Nerf Deny, it will knock down the elusive decks enough.
So what do you guys think?
They could also make it so elusive units cannot block (or at least add it to most of them).
Nothing feels worse than a deck that can beat your face in while also value trade into your attacks.
Deny needs to be nerfed either way, it's just stupid, especially in a game where card draw is an absolute luxury and denying your opponent any crucial play without a downside is just absurd.
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
So far i havent got a problem against elusives except when they drop empyrean. Elusive units should all be understated and small attack health. Empyrian is just way to strong and if u have dealt with other units and stabilise with 10 or less hp, which happens a lot to me and I end up winning or losing depending of if my opponent drops empyrian specially on curve is ridiculous
Challenger minions destroy them tho.
Depends.. if they are buffed out of range of those challengers you are kind of screwed..
I'm sure Riot is monitoring the performance of all top decks.
If it turns out that elusive-heavy decks (or individual elusive cards) are statistically overperforming, they will just nerf stats and/or mana costs.
Elusive as a game mechanic is nothing new. It is exactly the same as flying in Magic, so there's no way the developers aren't aware of potential problems. It's just tricky to tune the stats of minions like these in a brand-new game.
One thing they do in Magic is publish cheap removal spells that target flying units specifically, or have bonus effects when targeting a flying unit. That may be something to consider for the next set of Runeterra.
Elusive is a fine mechanic, it's the same as Flying in Magic and it's never been problematic in that game for nearly 30 years.
I acknowledge the problem here, but it's not tied to the mechanic itself imho:
- Runeterra has way less efficient removal spells than MtG. This is obviously getting fixed with time and expansions
- Elusive appears almost only in Ionia. Both Demacia and Freljord have just one (bad) card to block elusive attackers. MtG has answers in each color
More importantly
- The most used elusive cards are definitely undercosted
- Runeterra enables attacking in the same turn a follower is played. This specific ability in Magic costs +mana or -stats
Magic version of [Hearthstone Card (Shadow Assassin) Not Found] is a 2/1, and was printed after 25 years of power creeping and tuning
Magic version of [Hearthstone Card (Navori Conspirator) Not Found] costs 3 mana. There are also many worse versions
Magic version of [Hearthstone Card (Greenglade Duo) Not Found] costs four mana (and is a 2/3)
These are just examples of how the elusive mechanic went always well in a ~30 years old card game. Runeterra definitely needs to fix something about this mechanic
I don't believe Elusive as a mechanic is overpowered per se. In Open Beta, they have a little bit of wiggle room to play around with until they figure out what works and what doesn't.
I believe that Elusive would probably be easier to balance if it was more accessible to all regions. The reason Flying works well in MTG is because every color has at least a little bit of it, and there's specific counters to them. Even if Green has the fewest Flying creatures, they're also the best color at countering them.
I'm playing a Feljord/demacia at noob level and for now don't have much problems with elusive, early on Fleetfeather Tracker and Laurent Protege does the job just fine, or even a buffed braum. But I'm not encountering tailored decks yet so I guess it's not really counting.
I do think however than Shadow Assassin might provide a bit too much for its cost (2/2 + draw + elusive for 3). Even if you trade it, which isn't easy, it cycled itself.
Yeh I can't help but think LoR removal are outrageously pricey especially when units can attack the turn they're being played (given you got attack token so it feel a bit less unfair)
Right--but in Runeterra all minions have inherent haste and vigilance. Overall that's one of the things I love about this game as it opens up a lot more complexity and strategy for free, but as many players have discovered it disproportionately benefits these aggro elusive strategies. You can drop a Greenglade Duo followed up by a Navori Bladescout for 5 damage plus a chump blocker on Turn 3. Compare this with MtG, where you're lucky if you can get chip in 3 damage through fliers by Turn 3 and doing so probably leaves you without a single blocker.
Kinda like Demacia and Freljord have lots of Challengers, and Shadowed Isles is good at removal in general?
While it does contribute to the problem of dealing with elusives, I generally like the overall higher cost of spells in Runeterra compared to other CCGs. I prefer units having a bit more staying power instead of being insta-killed by a spell that costs less than the unit iself. In my mind, units which benefit the most from the lack of cheap removal - like elusives and permanent value generators (think Dawnspeakers) - should be dealt with via cost increases / stat decreases instead.
As an off-topic question: When I mark a card via (runecard), how can I make it show up as a tooltip (on mouse-over)?
I think some (but not all) of the elusive creatures need a bit of slight nerf.
I don't think there's any problem with Greenglade Duo for example. If your deck can't kill a x/2 or a x/3 after 1 or 2 buffs, then your deck deserves to lose.
Navori Conspirator seems a bit strong with a buff. Without this creature in the game, usually the best you can do on turn 2 is a 3/3 - a 4/3 is really above the curve and has few responses. Having 1/5th if your life taken off is pretty big. I'd say a 2/2 would be less punishing.
Shadow Assassin is too good. A 2/2 creature that flies and draws a card, in Magic the gathering, at common rarity would cost 4 or 5 mana. Why does it cost 3 for?
Kinkou Lifeblade looks balanced with a 2/3 statline, but even with 1 buff, this card is pretty nuts and puts itself out of challenger range, making it very difficult for non-elusive decks to deal with it.
I feel like Shadow Isles, Nox, and to a lesser extent, Freljord and Damacia since they have more challengers, could have some random "Reach" keywords thrown on to their units to balance out the Elusive mechanic. We don't need a lot of them either - just give each of these factions 1 or 2 "Reach" creatures. I find it difficult to believe that any of those 4 factions would refuse to develop defenses to an enemy threat that they have a major weaknesses against. I mean, if you wanted to destroy their civilization, you could just send a bunch of Elusive creatures at them and their civilization would be wiped out. It doesn't make sense.
For example, Legion Grenadier could say:
Last Breath: Deal 2 to the enemy nexus or an elusive follower
I think new cards need to get made that actually look like Ballistas or Archers or Magical stealth detectors to make reach cards make sense, as the existing card pool lacks reasonable options.
Elusive per se is ok, as others already said it's a common mechanic in card games so nothing impossibile to balance (if needed). The strongest thing is that the best Elusive minions are from Ionia and there you also have Deny, that basically protects them against spell removal making very hard to deal with them for Regions that doesn't have good Elusive creatures themselves.
The whole probelm will probably fix itself once counterspell will be nerfed or reworked, but I don't think that Elusive as keyword need any tuning itself.
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
The 4 million iq deck that uses heimderlinger is quite good vs elusive decks. Its on mobalitycs
So, you are saying that every single deck that isn't based on elusive or challenger minions deserves to lose? Well, that's terrible balance
Seeing as you think that elusive and challenger minions are the only options, I can see why you think that, but you're ignoring LOTS of other counters Riot put into the game, and don't understand how to counter them (as are the people that upvoted your post).
The following spells can kill Greenglade Duo, even when buffed:
With elusive options, challengers and the above cards, you CAN deal with elusives. Put some in your deck
In my opinion, There is not a problem with elusives. Elusive cards became problematic when they are buffed. Greenglade Duo, The Empyrean, Navori Conspirator and Shadow Assassin are just good cards and great with buff cards. The problematic one is Kinkou Lifeblade which has lifesteal with buffs.
That isn't a good balance if an aggro/midrange deck counters other aggro/midrange decks and decks with Kinkou Lifeblade counters all of them because of healing ability.
I think there could be 2 solutions for this deck;
1-) Change Kinkou Lifeblade into "Strike: Restore 2 health to our nexus." Instead of Lifesteal like how some other aggro cards deal just 1-2 damage to nexus like Legion Saboteur.
2-) Add elusive units this text; "After I strike, I lose elusive" for just followers, not for champions. (I'm not fan of this change because 1st solution will solve the problem mostly and Elusives should be in the game how they are)
Unpopular Opinion Incarnate
They actually dont care, i am sure of it, riot NEVER listened to player feedback and never will...
I think they just need to have a keyword like Reach in Magic (A keyword that lets the unit block elusives).
In terms of making it work thematically, the keyword could be Vigilant, which could be put on a lot of existing cards from a lot of regions (such as border lookout or any knight type cards)
You know, after reading this, I thought quite a bit about it. I find myself thinking again and again how powerful of a mechanic Lifesteal is in general, in a game with only 20 nexus health that can evaporate quite fast. Especially, as someone pointed out in a different thread, the cheap cost of Lifesteal is at odds with the immense cost of spells that recover nexus health.
So honestly, I could see the Lifesteal mechanic as a whole get changed to always recover 2 nexus health on strike. It may seem odd at first to make the healing amount independent of the unit's power, but in the same vein, Riot decided to settle for a fixed threshold for the Fearsome mechanic (2 or less attack). So I'd say it's very much in the realm of possibility.
No one is arguing that they cannot be killed or countered. But most decks don't have room to include enough counters to deal with the sheer volume of elusives in the elusive deck. To do so would make it impossible to perform the main function of the archetype you're trying to build.
After more play time in the elusive meta, I'm pretty sure Riot will have to raise the mana cost of elusive across the board at the very least.
That's the issue with that list. Run down it and all you'll see is a couple of very expensive AoE removals - which walk right into Deny - and a lot of single-target removal spells which are fundamentally inefficient in and of themselves.
Not going into detail on Elusive because I've already done so like twice in other threads, but to summarise:
- Elusive is a problem in the immediate due to a lack of tools to counter them for non-Ionian decks
- Them existing in the same region as Deny is a further aggravating factor
- The Magic comparison is a poor one because of the breadth and depth of tools available in that game and the different cadence of Magic over LoR
- The point most people don't consider when looking at Elusives is the design space. Is playing against Elusives fun, whether you have the tools to fight them or not? Is playing with them fun, relative to other decks? Probably not, in my view. The theory of Elusive (and more to the point, Flying in Magic) never actually played out, and the design purpose was never actually reached. It has instead become a checkbox, 'do you have answer for this y/n', and it's a poorly placed checkbox in LoR because those answers don't exist in bulk
Welcome to my world, in which even my tl;dr is long-winded -.-;
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I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake