Elusive Keyword Rework Idea

One of the major problems with elusives is that they cut down on the interactivity within the game, and early elusives can just keep hitting your nexus every turn with no way to prevent it. However, elusives do serve a purpose of providing direct nexus damage to close out games, which needs to be preserved in a rework of the elusive keyword.

My solution would be to change elusive to “This unit strikes the enemy nexus before its blocker, if the blocker does not have elusive”

This way, elusives would always be able to get at least one hit on the enemy nexus, but they would be vulnerable to being removed by enemy units. It also still keeps the flavor of elusive because it would be like the elusive units are able to evade their blocker and hit the enemy nexus first. The main issue I see with this is that champions like Teemo and Ezreal wouldn’t work as well, so these champions could be reworked or given “can only be blocked by elusives” instead of elusive.

This would essentially make elusive a better Overwhelm that is weaker if your opponent is running elusives

doesn't really fix the issue

If anything we need the "Can't Block" featuree added to more elusive units so they aren't as easily abused with permanent buffs and the like.

Or just do the Navori Bladescout thing and have most of them lose Elusive after one turn.

The phrase "strikes the enemy nexus before the blocker" doesn't really make sense because it would seem to be some kind of inverse overwhelm, where you only deal damage to the blocker if you have excess damage after killing the nexus. Is a fair rewording of your rule "This unit deals damage as though it is not blocked, unless its blocker has Elusive"? This would mean they can only deal attack damage to enemy units with Elusive, and may often get killed during a block despite dealing damage to the enemy nexus.

If my rephrasing is a correct understanding of your meaning, I actually think that's a fairly creative reworking of the keyword. I do wonder, though, if that starts to look a bit too much like Ephemeral with respect to how that deck archetype intends to play out, where the one-turn Ephemeral units are replaced with disposable face damage that frequently gets blocked to death the first turn it attacks.

What I meant was that it behaves like Double-Attack, except that the first strike hits the enemy nexus. So if a 3/3 elusive was blocked with a 3/3 without elusive, the elusive would first deal 3 damage to the enemy nexus, then it would attack the blocking 3/3 and they would both die

Quote From CursedParrot

The main issue I see with this is that champions like Teemo and Ezreal wouldn’t work as well, so these champions could be reworked or given “can only be blocked by elusives” instead of elusive.

The first part of this sentence is a great line of thinking--any proposed change to the elusive mechanic shouldn't kill Teemo and Ezreal.  (And I'm talking about "expedition style" Ezreal, not that degenerate OTK combo deck lol).  Unfortunately, the second part of the sentence is essentially trying to make a "super-Elusive" tag.  I think that's a red flag.  Any proposed change should be comprehensive, not potentially add in new problems.

Part of me thinks the problem will solve itself if the cards are just tuned a little bit--i.e., no change to the mechanic itself, just mana costs and stats.  Consider for a minute the hyper-aggro decks--you know, the ones that run Boomcrew Rookie and Grenadier and triple Get Excited! etc.  Those decks are almost as "non interactive" as elusives--lots of damage is by skills and direct spells, and they can usually put 2 units on board for your 1 so while you can technically block its not better.  But nobody really thinks they're a problem because they aren't ridiculously successful and they don't have a lot of late-game gas.  Elusives do both the aforementioned.

Quote From CursedParrot

What I meant was that it behaves like Double-Attack, except that the first strike hits the enemy nexus. So if a 3/3 elusive was blocked with a 3/3 without elusive, the elusive would first deal 3 damage to the enemy nexus, then it would attack the blocking 3/3 and they would both die

Okay, that's very different from what I thought you meant. Now that you've clarified, I think that's an awful plan. Elusives don't need to be able to get free hits in on the Nexus more than they already do, and it certainly wouldn't be fair for them to be dealing 2x their attack power simply because you tried to block them.

How about rework Elusive as units that can hit ONCE as "Stealth" units and just create that last tag for units like Teemo or Ezreal. Stealth should be the current Elusive.

I think that will solve must of the current elusive issues.

I keep mulling all these things over, and my mind keeps going back to just tuning. 

Specifically: I would remove some of these low-cost Ionia elusives from the game entirely so its impossible to build an Ionia deck with ~80% elusives.  There are many other non-Ionia elusives (Daring Poro, Intrepid Mariner, Amateur Aeronaut, Silverwing ScoutBADCARDNAME, Jae Medarda) that we don't even see, yet its impossible to go more than 5 games without seeing the usually suspects of bladescout, conspirator, greenglade duo, shadow assassin, and lifeblade.  I would also include Silent Shadowseer in my list of "don't see", except I know the only reason we don't see it is because Ionia already has 2 other 2-drop that deal more consistent damage.  As soon as either conspirator or duo get bad enough to not want to play, shadowseer's dropping straight into their slot.

I think if you gut that archetype's early game elusives, they start needing to either cede games to aggro or find non-elusive answers to early board--and if they are doing that, then they can't simultaneously chip away at your health while waiting on Hatchling, so now they need to be more committed to the big risk-big-reward strategy of having a big swing late game.

I actually put my thoughts on elusives on the other page, instead of changing elusive why not add a new thing to fix the elusive problem.

If we were to break down Elusive to MtG. It would be Flying. Flying isn't a huge issue in MtG for several reasons. We can start by adding "Reach" creatures to the game. Cards that can block elusives, but can't attack as elusives. We can call them Sentinels.

I know I'm late to the party here but as someone still relatively new but spending a lot of time playing I feel like I can weigh in now...

Elusive (as a Runeterra keyword) and "Evasive" (as the Hearthstone unofficial keyword that they refuse to actually make a keyword...lol) they actually have fundamentally opposite designs which I find very odd but fundamentally I find them trying to fill the same niche.

In hearthstone "Evasive" is associated with units that are "untargetable" by spells, but can be targeted by "play"/"battlecry" effects.  

In LoR it seems that the devs created Elusive as a form of anti taunt.  Since "Taunt" doesn't exist and every unit can block damage at will, I think they figured on creating an "anti blocker" card.  except it's warped the meta.  Instead I honestly feel like it's Runeterra's version of Hearthstone's charge keyword. (easily abused, overused, etc).  

Honestly it feels almost overtly obvious that they change Runeterras Elusive to be similar to Hearthstone's.  Make units untargetable from spells.  However, the way the game is coded I get the feeling that would also indicate "spell like effects" (aka play effects).  So I'm unsure how well this would work out, but I get the feeling it would work out better.  Obviously changing the way a mechanic works is a hefty chore, but something does need to be done.