Piltover Spell Decks

Let´s get straight to the bussiness.... Piltover sucks. It´s extremely slow and dependant on drawing very specific cards to win AND 90% decks you will play against have 3x Deny in their decks, as Ionia is completely broken region with elusive units, aggro, control, spells ... well , pretty much anything. 

Piltover is supposed to be THE spell control region, but it has almost the worst spells in the game ( For example, Piltover is the only region without hard removal spell like Vengeance, Culling Strikes and Noxxian Guillotine , the best thing you get is 3 damage for 7 mana in Piltover :D ) 

Deny needs it´s cost increased to atleast 4-5,  so Ionia decks won´t be allowed to counter anything for 3 spell mana. And Piltover cards like Assemly Bot needs buff ( for example, decrease it´s cost to 2 ) ,  Piltover has no viable 1-2 cost units except Eager Apprentice so your deck becomes viable at turn 5+, where you can start comboing with Heimerdinger etc. , but in this meta there is no way you survive that long.

Piltover & Zaun does suffer from the fact that spells in Runeterra are relatively expensive compared to units. I agree that this makes the early game a pain against aggressive decks.

However, I think the combo potential in the mid-late game somewhat makes up for it. In my most recent Exploration trial, I got to 6 wins with an Ezreal/Lux spell deck. It was an absolute blast to play, too. This might be harder to pull off in high-skill ranked matches, but I'd caution against overreacting at this point.

Seriously, though, Trueshot Barrage is pretty badly underpowered. Reduce its cost to 6 and it turns into an OK card. Maybe.

You forgot Mystic Shot and Get Excited! the cheapest cards that can damage the nexus, Thermogenic Beam probably one of the best removal spells in the game in terms of flexibility.

but out of those 3 I think [Hearthstone Card (mystic shot) Not Found] is the best damage spell in the game, it's flexible, fast can be generated by ezreal, helps ezreal complete his level up quest just an awesome spell.

The region's spell strength is it's the ability to end the game from hand, no other region has as many direct damage spells, other regions spells are restricted to unit damage only. most of them were free targeted but got nerfed by how good it is was to damage the nexus from hand.

P&Z are probably gonna get builds further in the meta when people get their hands on multiple copies of Ezreal and Heimerdinger more and experiment with them (and of course the inevitable Deny nerf).

Also I played jinx + draven discard aggro during the preview patch that deck is insanely strong,  it requires Draven and Jinx (probably ALL 6) and 3 Augmented Experimenters.

So that's a list we will start seeing probably next week/ 2 weeks from now more commonly that deck is probably the most aggressive one can be so it should counter elusives real good.

Edit: another aspect you totally missed out.. you don't HAVE to play P&Z spells.. that's why you can mix regions so have the hard removal from other regions and the piltover spell lovers.

I think part of the problem is that P&Z decks require a much larger collection than most players have right now. During the preview patch my favorite deck was an Ionia/P&Z spell deck, mainly built around Heimerdinger, Ezreal and Karma. It was by far my favorite deck during the preview patch and it felt pretty strong at the time as well because of its high flexibility in play style and win condition. That is why I've chosen P&Z as the region I first wanted to level because I wanted to get heimerdinger and Ezreal, but sadly I got Jinx and Teemo from the champion capsules. Still, only one Heimerdinger and Ezreal are still not enough to build a deck around them.

And as DoubleSummon already mentioned, Mystic Shot and Thermogenic Beam are both among the most flexible spells in the game.

Quote From DoubleSummon

You forgot Mystic Shot and Get Excited! the cheapest cards that can damage the nexus, Thermogenic Beam probably one of the best removal spells in the game in terms of flexibility.

I didnt forget about other spells , but Mystic Shot is still just 2 damage, Thermogenic Beam is really good, BUT it´s a slow spell which is a huge disadvantage , it costs all of your mana, and if enemy has Deny ( Which he most probably has )  you can surrender. And let´s not bring up Get Excited, as it is for Zaun discard decks like Jinx Draven.

Quote From DoubleSummon

The region's spell strength is it's the ability to end the game from hand, no other region has as many direct damage spells, other regions spells are restricted to unit damage only. most of them were free targeted but got nerfed by how good it is was to damage the nexus from hand.

You might end the game from hand, but Shadow Isles can do that aswell and theyre much better at it. And my point still stands, that Piltover sucks in the early game, which is the most important thing right now - you need early game and setup your board. Which is nearly imposibble, as Piltover doesn´t have early game followers and if they do, they are weak with some sort of a twist usually. If you play Piltover against Ionia or aggro , you can surrender as you have very slim chances of winning.

I tried different combinations of regions and decks for Piltover to make it work, the best I got was 44% winrate. In comparison, when I played meta decks like Isles + Noxus, Ionia + Isles , I was always around 90% winrate... It´s insane.

Quote From BlueSpark

However, I think the combo potential in the mid-late game somewhat makes up for it. In my most recent Exploration trial, I got to 6 wins with an Ezreal/Lux spell deck. It was an absolute blast to play, too. This might be harder to pull off in high-skill ranked matches, but I'd caution against overreacting at this point.

The problem is, you never get to mid/late game. With this deck, you are dead in first 5 turns more often than not. But I agree the combos are insane later on.

Quote From magvin

 

Quote From DoubleSummon

You forgot Mystic Shot and Get Excited! the cheapest cards that can damage the nexus, Thermogenic Beam probably one of the best removal spells in the game in terms of flexibility.

 

I didnt forget about other spells , but Mystic Shot is still just 2 damage, Thermogenic Beam is really good, BUT it´s a slow spell which is a huge disadvantage , it costs all of your mana, and if enemy has Deny ( Which he most probably has )  you can surrender. And let´s not bring up Get Excited, as it is for Zaun discard decks like Jinx Draven.

It's technically a piltover/zaun deck, but again I will mention that you don't HAVE to play the P&Z spells you can play whatever spell you want from other regions as long as you don't mix a third region so if you don't like the P&Z spells you can easily mix another region (including ionia which has Karma and Deny) to help you in your Ezreal/Heimerdinger build.

Get Excited! CAN be played in a pitch in such a deck if you have a lot of spell generation or tech cards, since you are trying to play a combo/control deck don't you?

I don't know if you play hearthstone but lets assume the current state of priest: it has no deck to play it kinda sucks, but you mix priest with mage and suddenly you have a win condition in priest while having so much aoe, in HS you can't do that.. but in LoR you not only can do that but you are intensified to do that...

Quote From magvin

Let´s get straight to the bussiness.... Piltover sucks. It´s extremely slow and dependant on drawing very specific cards to win AND 90% decks you will play against have 3x Deny in their decks, as Ionia is completely broken region with elusive units, aggro, control, spells ... well , pretty much anything. 

Piltover is supposed to be THE spell control region, but it has almost the worst spells in the game ( For example, Piltover is the only region without hard removal spell like Vengeance, Culling Strikes and Noxxian Guillotine , the best thing you get is 3 damage for 7 mana in Piltover :D ) 

Deny needs it´s cost increased to atleast 4-5,  so Ionia decks won´t be allowed to counter anything for 3 spell mana. And Piltover cards like Assemly Bot needs buff ( for example, decrease it´s cost to 2 ) ,  Piltover has no viable 1-2 cost units except Eager Apprentice so your deck becomes viable at turn 5+, where you can start comboing with Heimerdinger etc. , but in this meta there is no way you survive that long.

In what world does Piltover suck? Hemierdinger decks are great for lategame, and Jinx might be the best 4 drop champion in the game paired with aggro classes like Noxus or Ionia. Just because most of your special snowflake decks don't work how you like doesn't mean the class as a whole is bad.

OK, others have already covered the fact that P&Z has fantastic removal spells that OP forgot.

But there's another point to be made -- just having spells in its own lineup isn't the whole reason P&Z is the "spell" region. There's also the fact that it's the region that gives the best payoffs for building a spell-heavy deck. Two of its Champions have explicit perks for casting spells, and the other two are just generally good in spell-heavy decks.

On top of that, lets try to remember that mono decks are extremely rare in this game and not at all encouraged by the game's design. So it actually would not matter at all if P&Z lacked spells or had very few good ones. If you think another region has better spells, or has the specific spells you want, you are free to build a deck that includes that region. Heimerdinger won't mind!

Quote From magvin

Deny needs it´s cost increased to atleast 4-5,  so Ionia decks won´t be allowed to counter anything for 3 spell mana. And Piltover cards like Assemly Bot needs buff ( for example, decrease it´s cost to 2 ) ,  Piltover has no viable 1-2 cost units except Eager Apprentice so your deck becomes viable at turn 5+, where you can start comboing with Heimerdinger etc. , but in this meta there is no way you survive that long.

I actually disagree with this. Imagine casting Warmother's Call and your opponent plays Deny, you would be incredibly frustrated. Now imagine you are in the middle of combat and you play Rush, then your opponent plays Deny, you are not nearly as frustrated. Why? It is because Rush is a lot cheaper than Warmother's Call, you didn't have to spend your entire turn commiting to this one spell. I don't think you would feel very different in either of those situations if your opponent had to spend an extra mana or two.

I think a better change to deny would be to make it only able to counter spells that cost 4 or less. Then it wouldn't be able to stop your huge power plays, but it would feel more like any other combat trick.