Legends of Runeterra
Commander Ledros ought to round down
Submitted 4 years, 10 months ago by
meisterz39
Title says it all. If you can manage to defend yourself despite having your life total halved (perhaps more than once), you've earned the win. Having Commander Ledros deal lethal damage at 1 HP means that if you don't have something to meaningfully diffuse his effect (e.g. Mageseeker Investigator), or if you're not already way in the lead, you're screwed.
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Title says it all. If you can manage to defend yourself despite having your life total halved (perhaps more than once), you've earned the win. Having Commander Ledros deal lethal damage at 1 HP means that if you don't have something to meaningfully diffuse his effect (e.g. Mageseeker Investigator), or if you're not already way in the lead, you're screwed.
I dunno, man. Late game epics are suppose to have a huge effect. And honestly, its pretty slow: if you are at 10 HP when your opponent plays it the first time, assuming no other damage or healing, that's 10 -> 5 -> 2 -> 1 so 4 times I have to replay him. Compare this with a She Who Wanders, Warmother's Call, Captain Farron, or The Harrowing: those will all probably end the game a lot quicker than Ledros.
I agree with oldManSanns, but I think riot will increase his mana cost to 9 or 10 to make it harder to play, or remove fearsome to make it so you can block it with tokens. (the card should stay as a finisher, but reduce his power level..)
I am ok with such card existing.. it costs a lot and it should be impactful.
He has to be nerfed either in stats or in cost.
It's a ridiculous endgame win condition that's barely counterable. Outside of purifying or freeze/stun stalling you can't really deal with him.
And ofc he has fearsome so you can't even chump block him.
He's basically a champion with an epic tag
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
I think I would remove fearsome from him. Right now you're totally screwed if you don't have high attack minions because all your opponent has to do is play Ledros and attack with him to deal a minimum of 18 damage in a minority of situations (your nexus has 18+ health) or just kill you in all the rest. That is just too much for one epic card. And then there's the combo with Atrocity which you can only prevent with Deny or by killing Ledros with fast and/or burst spells.
For what it's worth, I think cutting your life total in half is already a pretty huge impact, particularly since you max out at 20 HP and Ledros is an 8/6 that keeps coming back. If you only have token minions, his Fearsome will kill you, and if you have large minions, you'll be stuck trading your board away while your opponent gets to drop Ledros each round.
Now, perhaps my suggestion that he should round down is not the right fix, but there's a whole host of ways he could be changed to make the effect more reasonable. I saw one suggestion on Reddit that changes his last breath effect to shuffle him into the deck rather than returning to hand, and having him lose Fearsome or changing his stats and/or cost because right now he's mostly an uncounterable win condition.
The counter, at that point, is that your opponent is spending eight mana on a burn effect and an 8/6 fearsome.
If you're still losing the board when they're doing that with their turns, you'd be losing either way. 6+ mana effects are phenomenally powerful in this game, and this one is entirely a burn win condition. As to the thread title - as above, really. If you're at 1 HP, literally any burn will kill you. Who cares if it's an 8-drop, you're dead to a stiff breeze.
Honestly, in a meta where aggression and Elusive are strong, to be complaining about a phenomenally slow, inefficient burn mechanism is endlessly confusing to me.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
except if you could actually remove him you wouldn't be in that situation. By the time you get to 8-mana most decks are usually running on topdecks, even the control ones, so being faced with an 8/6 that you can't get rid of is kind of ridiculous. His win condition should be his effect not the absurd amount of stats he brings for the cost.
Right now you can put that thing in a spider aggro deck and he works fine as a lategame out against slower decks
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
I'm not suggesting you remove him. I'm suggesting that when your opponent is running an extremely inefficient 8-drop onto the board, your corresponding board play should be stronger. If it isn't, the burn effect is doing little beyond clocking you one turn faster - you're still going to lose to the board. Similarly, if you're losing because you're both down to topdecks and he can bounce Ledros as well as play off his deck, you're again not losing to the burn - you're losing to the bounce. In either circumstance, the burn is entirely incidental - it's the other parts of the follower that are causing you problems, but you're targeting the burn as the part to be concerned about.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
The idea that this 8 drop is an inefficient follower is simply wrong. The average stats for an 8-drop in LoR is about 7/6. So, Ledros is slight above average in terms of stats, he can't be chump blocked, his play effect is very powerful, and he bounces on death. There are certainly faster plays you can make with 8 mana (such as Battle Fury or Progress Day!), but that doesn't make Ledros inefficient.
This is kind of a ridiculous argument, as the bounce enables the burn that your opponent might not otherwise be topdecking.
I'll give you a practical example why this card needs some changes.
I had a game where opponent was with a full board of tokens/creatures max power 2.
He was at 15 health, I was at 5 and I only had 1 unit on my board.
I was gonna lose, as simple as that.
I dropped Ledros, I attacked, I won.
It's kinda not fair.
Commander Ledros is an healthy card by an anti-control point of view, but it also has too many other extras: bounces back in hand as Last Breath, has pretty decent stats and has Fearsome.
Since it's role has tech card is perfect, they should lower its statistics or at last remove Fearsome (so that it may be blocked even by little creeps) in order to limit its flexibility.
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
There are plenty of ways you could have won that game with other cards if your opponent didn't have removal or purify. it's perfectly fair.
Board presence is not the only win condition, nor should it be.
Of course there were plenty of ways I could have won that match, but I didn't have those cards in hand, nor did my opponent had cards to counter my Ledros, as it happens in many matches.
Ppl lose matches because they don't have the right answers to win at the right time, or else, by your logic, everyone could win every match and every card is good as it is.... as long as you have the answers at the right time...
I never said that board presence should be the only winning condition, or else there was no use for burn spells to the Nexus, nor would Riot print burn spells targeting "anything", they would just target units (if board presence was the only winning condition).
Don't get me wrong, I understand your logic, but sometimes a Ruination saves your day.... but only if you draw it... if you don't... you can lose.
When I said "it's kinda not fair", it was what I felt, as the winning player, when dropping that card, it was way to powerfull on it's own... but obviously, that doesn't mean that there aren't cards to counter it, they exist... but you gotta have them in your hand, that's obvious.
She Who Wanders would have basically had the same effect, no? :-) Perhaps it would have taken a few additional rounds, but I'm guessing it still he had no way to recover from that play effect.
As a Hearthstone player, this card makes me think if Anub'arak was a good card, what would it's effect be? Granted the effect can be very effective in the right situation, in HS the 9 mana minion slow is often one where you either 1) have a powerful effect with an immediate impact or 2) use it as some sort of combo piece. Otherwise, it's usually too slow.
In essence, Ledros is kind of like this. The low health means it can die easily, but it has been given a very powerful effect! I have played him some for this effect alone, but have yet to play him with my opponent at 1 HP. Didn't know that was the result. However, now that I know that I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Going from 1 to zero isn't really cutting in half, it's dealing 1 damage. Perhaps the solution is just to specify "cut the enemy Nexus health in half, but not less than 1." So ultimately you get the same effect, rounding down UNTIL the opponent is at 1 HP.
But also, unless this becomes a very common strategy with people abusing the power of Ledros to win games at an impressively high win rate, or unless the entire meta of the game is forming around stopping Ledros, I'd say leave it. The Runterra team seems set on frequent balance patches and will likely make a change when, or if it's ever needed.
Quick! Someone give me something clever to write here.
Indeed, but that would have to be 2 turns later, where I would be dead already. And that would be 2 more cards to draw, where he could draw Decimate and Blade's Edge and in that case he didn't even need to attack or a board at all.
That's why I gave a practical example, and not an assuming one. Because when we enter the realm of assumptions, everything is possible ;)
While I don't agree with some of the reasoning in this thread, I have to concur with the overall sentiment.
If you look at all the 8-mana followers in the game, it's very obvious that Ledros is just plain super-crazy. As in, I can't believe they printed this crazy garbage crazy.
Even if he cost 10 mana, I might still consider him problematic.
If Anub'arak would cut the enemy hp in half, and had taunt(every unit that can block in runetterra has essentially taunt) be sure he would see play in Rogue.
While I have to disclaim that I've never played Ledros or had him played against me, from a theoretical standpoint, I'm definitely with you. Strong burn effect + strong statline with Fearsome + auto-recycle on death seems very overbearing.
Honestly, he'd probably be fine if they ditched his Last Breath effect entirely. Or at least have him halve his own stats every time he dies and returns to hand.
Another crazy idea: Upon summoning, after burning the enemy nexus, let him deal the same amount of damage to himself.
When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless. Anyone can come up with a scenario in which a card is gamewinning.
Moving on.
Alternative view:
- There are barely any 8-drops in the game, so stat-comparison doesn't really have much of a sample size. Small enough, in fact, that it's not unreasonable to ask 'okay, well, are the other 8-drops too weak rather than this one too strong?'. I would however note that he shares a mana slot with Ren Shadowblade, who literally sits on board saying 'your opponent now cannot develop a board, ever, until I'm removed'.
- Direct damage which is scaled to be incredibly inefficient as a finisher and strong if levelling a playing field; being burn in and of itself doesn't indicate an abundance of power.
- Historically, people tend to overvalue 'infinite' effects from my experience. Saw it a lot in HS - people tend to ignore the actual value of the card in favour of what can happen in incredibly obscure circumstances. While still relevant for balance purposes (of course), you're not going to see the card bounced more than a couple of times in the vast majority of games.
- Fearsome - sure. On the other hand, you're running at least 8 mana at this point - you can afford to block with something other than chumps. However, further point on this below.
Having thought further on the Fearsome point - generally speaking I don't value Fearsome all that highly, particularly on expensive cards (if you're getting that late into the game and still relying on chumps, you're having issues, is my usual feeling). However in this case, Fearsome has the secondary issue which I don't see anyone raising - top-heavy stats plus Fearsome plus bounce effect is a Catch-22 situation because you're forced into blocking with higher attack followers, which in turn makes the follower more likely to bounce.
Having considered that point now, I do agree that the Fearsome keyword is kind of problematic. Though I stand by my disagreement on the burn rounding up/down, because again, if you're losing to this card purely from the burn alone, you were probably dead anyway.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
I could see either dropping the Fearsome tag or (even better) lowering his attack from 8 to ~4 so that his OTK potential circa Frank's example is reduced from 15 HP to 9 HP--you're getting tons of value from his Played and Last Whisper effects; you shouldn't need vanilla stats as well.
It's literally 100 percent of the comparable population. Even if you add 9- and 10-drops into the mix, Ledros is still bonkers.
I don't think I'd agree with lowering his attack value because making him kinda garbage on the board leaves him with all his cost going to pay for the effect. Having him be top heavy but blockable by trash makes him more interesting by design - the opponent needs to make tough decisions as to how to block him.
I didn't say it wasn't the entire population, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable sample size. It just means the cards don't exist to compare it to yet. I don't agree on your point regarding 9 and 10 drops though - if you expand the pool out that way you're looking at Brightsteel Formation and She Who Wanders (much stronger statline), along with Minah Swiftfoot (who is even more gamewinning than this card, albeit requiring more setup) and Corina Veraza (who kinda sucks). Plaza Guardian and Scuttlegeist don't really count given their cost reduction which will mean they're effectively not 10-drops.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
You have to make comparison with what we have now, not what we could have in the future. Actually Ledros stats are on pars with all others 8-mana drops, on top of all his other abilities (which make him pretty strong).
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
You usually draw one card per turn, so your hand becomes empty pretty fast. So if you trade the board, the return value of Ledros is immense, because now you have 2 cards next turn to play from hand while your opponent has only 1. Also if you draw a spell, you can spend 2-5 mana instead of 2, depending on your extra mana. If on the other hand the enemy draws a spell, Ledros presents a vicious threat to his life. Most cards that would draw you extra stuff, are not suited to do anything against Ledros, because you have to pay highly for extra draws (shadow assasin and avarosan sentry cannot even block ledros) and the best drawing card is glimpse beyond, which is mostly run by aggro decks.
Next is Ledros rewards aggro decks for the enemy to have the right answers. Let us assume, the control player did really well and protected all 20 of his lifepoints. The reward for this is, that an 8 drop can instantly remove 10 of the well-protected life points and in case the mobilization mark is on the side of the ledros player, attack for potential 8 other hit points. The enemy cannot block it with weak creatures so he has to sacrifice a bigger creature or use a spell. Iconically, that is the point, that you pointed out the most, but in my oppinion is the least problematic. A control player should not have that many creatures of small size or if he has, they should be impactful in some way (otherwise we would not talk about control). Even more ironic is, that that is the good case. If the contol player manages to only protect 15 or only 5 life points and a stabilizing board, then Ledros proves as even more dangerous. The only situation Ledros seems pretty useless is against a sucessful aggro. He may be strong but he cannot block all attackers. Other than that, you have to run a cleanse (very situational card) or some freeze- she who wanders combo (13 Mana).
Ledros Statline is 2 higher in both attack and defense in comparison to Ren Shadowblade and one mayor difference is, that Ledros is an immediate threat, while Ren Shadowblade only has future effects. An 8/6 with an effect to set your Hp to 10 (maximum) is immediate lethal threat. Especially in the Later game where you have some removal, which would completly counter Ren, but not Ledros. Also Ren Shadowblade gets pretty much destroyed by cards that profit from the death of your own stuff (like...again... Rhasa). Also if you and your enemy already have 2-3 cards on the field Ren loses value, because the units on the board are not affected at all. With Ledros I am glad to attack/trade every turn I can, while Ren is card that needs to be protected to be useful. Ren is a card of the type " If you win, win more". Ledros is a gamechanger. That is why Ledros is run in every shadowisland deck (which to my experience is the most used faction) and Ren is as often seen as a unicorn (although Ionia is popular faction as well).
Ledros is one of the reasons that there are no really good contol decks out. It is simply more rewarding to play aggro spiderlings, outdraw your enemy with glimpse beyond and in case of Lategame have Ledros as standalone to deal with the rest of the enemy life.
I would have much less problems with Ledros if he was a card, that would only be good in control decks, which are the only decks that should have a card of his effect in deck. Ledors should reward a control player for surviving and not give aggro/midrange another tool to finish the game.
There are not many cards that have this much unconditional power in the game at all and especially not at this time. The best comparision in my oppinion is Anivia. Anivia is a 7 drop with 2/4 and the relatively unconditional effect to deal 1 damage to every enemy when attacking. Anivia can level up upon becoming awakened, becoming a 3/5 with 2 damge to everything every attack. Also when Anivia dies she becomes an egg 0/2 and at the start of every turn if awakened, she turns back into the 3/5. So Anivia is easier to remove than Ledros and has a much weaker statline. If you play her before turn 10, you risk to lose her for nothing. And she rewards you with power after turn 10 especially power to deal with the aggro and midrange board.
So in comparison, Anivia needs 2 turns longer to be useful, has much less of an immidiate threat (although in the long run she can take over your board consistantly), can be contested easier than ledros. since her effect requires her to attack, you can kill her once by blocking and then with a spell, which is not card efficient but adequate for a lategame card, which is a brick for 9 consecutive turns. For her strong effect she hs to pay with a waek statline.
Removing Fearsome doesn't make blocking interesting, it makes it obvious. If Ledros didn't have Fearsome, you'd always chump block him to ensure he takes very little damage over time. This would be the best play every time to delay the inevitable bounce back to your opponent's hand.
All of which is an analysis of the card itself - the OP was on rounding on the burn effect. Throughout the entire thread I've not been saying that the card is bad - what I have been saying is that of all the things on the card to complain about, burn rounding is the very bottom of the list. It's not touched on at all in your post, either, so I assume you're in agreement with me and just vociferously disagreeing with points I haven't made :P
On a surface-level analysis, sure. The inverse (as is currently on live) is that you're shoved into an automatic lose-lose situation in which you either take eight to the dome or bounce him back in two turns max while losing a chunk of your board. It's hard to make something an interesting decision when either result is atrocious for you.
By contrast, removing restrictions opens up decision-making options. Entirely anecdotal example - I had a game last night in which I purposefully blocked a Ledros with a 6/5 spider rather than a 4/1spiderling, killing it intentionally. My reasoning was that my opponent had burned all mana for the turn and didn't have lethal, so I had the opportunity for counter-lethal if I could bait the Ledros play. Following round, he did indeed drop the Ledros - giving me 100% security that he couldn't then stop my play for lethal which would otherwise have been risky and depended on him not having counter-buffs.
Obviously, as I say, anecdotal (and something I was able to do with Ledros having Fearsome already, obviously). Point is, though, opening more options makes for a more involved decision.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
Bystekhilcar has a point in that we're kind of moving away from the original intention of the thread. However, I think examining the card as a whole has merit.
I really like a suggestion that I've read in a different thread (the patch predictions, I believe): Make Ledros bounce to the top of its owner's deck instead of their hand. Boom, suddenly the immense card advantage Ledros generates is gone. If your opponent keeps playing him turn after turn, they at least won't accumulate additional cards. He might still be a bit too strong and need some tweaking from there, but I think it'd be a great start to balancing Ledros while preserving his identity.
There's a real irony in dropping an anecdote shortly after saying "When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless." It's quite possible that your opponent played Ledros specifically because he or she had no counter-buffs, so Ledros was the only play left, and that your anecdote could just as easily have played out in your favor with a chump block instead. There's no way to know.
To be clear on this, I'm not against removing Fearsome - in fact, I think it's a good idea - but the idea that it will make blocking "more interesting" seems ridiculous. Giving your opponent more burn tools/card advantage in almost universally bad in card games. The trade you described in your anecdote only works when that burn can't kill you, or when you can attack back for lethal before your opponent does anything, so if anything it's the exception rather than the rule.
Perhaps removing the Fearsome tag is enough to rebalance Ledros' impact on the metagame, but the infinite burn is part of an overall massively OP package that suppresses even the strongest control strategies.
As in the other thread, I would agree with this change. It's less about card advantage, in my view, and more about having a significant trade-off to playing him - by doing so you're essentially locking yourself into a single strategy (particularly if your hand is otherwise empty). You're all-in, and your opponent can then formulate a strategy to counter what you're doing, in which case you lose. If they can't, you win. In that case, he would be no different to other game-ending cards.
There isn't at all, assuming you're reading analytically rather than just looking to snipe. I stated clearly that it was an anecdotal example. The difference between this and the earlier instance is that the earlier post gave no real argument or context - just gave an anecdote and said 'this is why it needs to change'. That's attempting to use an anecdote as evidence, which is worthless.
My use-case was purely as an example to better explain what I was saying. It wasn't intended to be supporting evidence - which is why I called out the anecdote myself, twice - it was purely to make it clear what point I was trying to make. By calling it out I was attempting to make it clear that I wasn't trying to hang any point on it, but apparently that was unsuccessful.
Incidentally, the anecdote itself was raised purely in the context of the Fearsome tag and whether removing it makes trades more or less interesting. It wasn't connected to the rest of the card, and wasn't used to make any point in relation to the burn effect or similar. Again, thought that was obvious from the discussion.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
It recently occurred to me that Ledros is stronger than a lot of Champions, so why not make him a Champion, subject to Champion deckbuilding restrictions?
They could significantly water him down in the pre-leveled version and give him a fairly difficult "quest."
For example:
8 mana 6/4 Fearsome, Play: Cut the enemy Nexus Health in half. Level Up: I've killed 3 units.
Leveled up: +1/+1, loses Play effect, Last Breath: Return me to hand.
This would still make a good Champion, but it's not great for aggro decks, and it's just a lot more fair to play against generally. Most important is that you do not get to keep damaging the Nexus when he starts bouncing. There is some incentive to run multiple copies because he probably doesn't survive to level up on the first try. (But note that he does not have to survive as he kills the units to increment his counter.)
Just make him into Exodia and have him require 10 regular mana and 3 spell mana and have him take the enemy nexus to 1 HP
I'm not looking to snipe - I just think you're treating your own arguments with a double-standard. I think franky's goal with an anecdote was to demonstrate how significant Ledros' burn damage can be - it, combined with Fearsome, literally flipped a game from a loss to a win by dealing 16 damage in a single turn despite being way behind on the board. You don't have to agree with the argument that the burn damage is the biggest problem with the card, but your anecdote is not somehow unique or better than franky's simply because you like your point of view better.
Your argument around blocking basically says that giving your opponent card advantage and extra burn tools doesn't matter if you're ahead enough on board and can get lethal before your opponent can react/burn you out. This is certainly true, and is the basic thesis for why aggro decks work. But this case requires board-centric play (which clearly doesn't always win you the game, as per franky's example), and it certainly doesn't address the way that the direct damage can be a death knell for anyone trying to play a slower, more controlling strategy that might otherwise beat the common Aggro + Ledros decks in the metagame but for his inevitable burn damage (which was the my complaint with the card to begin with).
Again, I'm willing to believe that removing the Fearsome tag could shift the metagame such that his inevitable long-game lethal will be made less oppressive by simply seeing less of him on the ladder, but his burn is non-trivial and suppressing in his current state.
Nerfed btw
All I know is, people still surrender as soon as I play him.
Also, if you can make it to turn 8 as SI, you can make it to turn 9. The nerf was not a nerf, but +1 power is a real boost.
He's still the worst-designed card in the game -- possibly even more oppressive now than he was before.
alright, how do you have three Ledros on board and your opponent's Nexus is still at full...with no cards?
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
he denyed it 3 times :]
I actually really like that concept, except I would tweak it a little bit. Specifically:
L1: 8 mana 8/6 with Fearsome, no "played" effect. If this unit would die, level up and return to hand instead.
L2: 8 mana 9/6 with Fearsome, Play: cut nexus in half, Last Whisper: return to hand
That way, he plays a bit like a cross between Tryndamere and Katarina.
Interesting, but I was intentionally trying to do away with the situation where he eats all of your big units while simultaneously whittling down your Nexus every time he's replayed. One or the other is more than enough inevitability, in my opinion.
He had a 16/16 life steal tough follower for 5 turns it was a very long game.
I had one ledros in the game but I casted harrowing which didn't get denied and got 2 copies of ledros, then I grinded him with ledroses.
Last boss in expedition btw.