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Legends of Runeterra | Posted by | 5 years, 11 months ago
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Anyone else getting STOMPED?

Last night, my thinking was that I would play around using my pre-expansion decks just to put in some XP into my new region rewards, waiting until after I get some freebees and some inspiration before crafting anything new.  I quickly made the following observations:

  1. EVERYONE was playing decks built around expansion champions, implying they heavily crafted immediately
  2. All my pre-expansion decks are very weak against these new decks:
    • My P&Z/Noxus aggro deck and SI/Frejlord control deck were both winless for the night. 
    • I finally had some mild success with Vlad + Braum of all things--still less than 50%, but at least I could grind out my bonus XP

Did anyone else have comparable experiences?

Assuming these are representative, I have mixed feeling.  On the one hand, it's probably good that the expansion cards are all powerful--I started playing M:tG right before Fallen Empire, probably the weakest expansion in their history, and it was overwhelmingly disappointing to be encouraged to buy all those shiny new packs just to find them easily beaten out by older cards and established decks.  And it is fair to draw comparisons to trying to use an "evergreen" deck in either Hearthstone or M:tG and being dominated by those using the full library.  On the other: I am very surprised that these cards were THAT much more powerful than the core set (assuming it's not just lack of ability on my end), especially considering this is the very first introduction of new cards.  It's a significant power spike overnight.  And I feel extremely sorry for any new players just getting started, trying to complete quests using starter decks.

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  • Last night, my thinking was that I would play around using my pre-expansion decks just to put in some XP into my new region rewards, waiting until after I get some freebees and some inspiration before crafting anything new.  I quickly made the following observations:

    1. EVERYONE was playing decks built around expansion champions, implying they heavily crafted immediately
    2. All my pre-expansion decks are very weak against these new decks:
      • My P&Z/Noxus aggro deck and SI/Frejlord control deck were both winless for the night. 
      • I finally had some mild success with Vlad + Braum of all things--still less than 50%, but at least I could grind out my bonus XP

    Did anyone else have comparable experiences?

    Assuming these are representative, I have mixed feeling.  On the one hand, it's probably good that the expansion cards are all powerful--I started playing M:tG right before Fallen Empire, probably the weakest expansion in their history, and it was overwhelmingly disappointing to be encouraged to buy all those shiny new packs just to find them easily beaten out by older cards and established decks.  And it is fair to draw comparisons to trying to use an "evergreen" deck in either Hearthstone or M:tG and being dominated by those using the full library.  On the other: I am very surprised that these cards were THAT much more powerful than the core set (assuming it's not just lack of ability on my end), especially considering this is the very first introduction of new cards.  It's a significant power spike overnight.  And I feel extremely sorry for any new players just getting started, trying to complete quests using starter decks.

    • Quote From OldManSanns
      1. EVERYONE was playing decks built around expansion champions, implying they heavily crafted immediately
      2. All my pre-expansion decks are very weak against these new decks:
        • My P&Z/Noxus aggro deck and SI/Frejlord control deck were both winless for the night. 
        • I finally had some mild success with Vlad + Braum of all things--still less than 50%, but at least I could grind out my bonus XP

       

      There was enough time to theorycraft decks before launch. Once the expansion hits, isn't getting the available rewards then use those to craft and have fun the standard thing to do? 

      P&Z/Noxus Darius is EXTREMELY strong if you include a few expansion non-champion cards. 
      SI/Frejlord is the deck i am still playing in ranked and destroying the majority of new decks, as i am taking advantage such decks are still not optimized.
      Warmother is sadly another history. It didn't receive a single useful card from this expansion, so its pretty much dead.

      IF new players are getting stomped, its a match making related problem and nothing to do with the expansion.
      Don't forget players also have the option to grind quests against the AI and friends.

  • I had a similar experience with my pre-expansion decks. Ultimately I crafted a Sea Monster/Toss deck last night because I wanted to play something new anyway, and that deck felt very powerful. I think it's far from optimal, but I wanted to conserve my wildcards/shards.

    That said, I'm not convinced that this is emblematic of some broad power creep in this new expansion (nor does it precluded massive power creep - it's just too early to say). A lot of the new cards and mechanics have pretty obvious builds - the Sea Monster/Toss deck, the Plunder/Face Damage aggro decks, etc., so I suspect some of this is just a combination of people being excited to play new stuff and the new stuff having a lot of obvious synergies. Once some meta starts to emerge, there may be more room to drop in older cards to shore up weaknesses of these new decks, or to counter them entirely.

  • 1) Of course people are playing with new champions on the first day of a new expansion.People wanna see the potential of those new cards and all the new synergies.

    2) It's also a new experience for you. Since you never played against those decks you don't really know what to expect and how to play around it. Plus with a new expansion decks are gonna get more powerful since there will be more cards to play with.

    So just keep on playing and if you see a cool champion combination you can choose to craft those and play with them.

  • Personally, I've had no problems crushing with my Midrange Bannerman.  I really like that deck because it seems like I can always find a way to get myself out of a doom situation.

    I haven't really scouted any decklists but I realllly want to make something work around Miss Fortune.

  • well ppl are just trying out the new decks with new champions and are burning through all their wild cards and shards. its normal. i barely played the last 15 days and i have a huge amount of wild cards and shards

  • I play a Natilus toss deck and haven't lost a single game yet. Played two games this morning and about 10 games yesterday. 

    I don't know if it's broken as aggro matchups can be really tough but a leveled up Natilus on t7 is just insane. Sometimes you drop 27/27 worth of stats on the board and most games just end there.

  • I know this isn't the main topic of this thread, but I think the biggest issue of not allowing/encouraging players to buy card packs when a new expansion hits is now very apparent, i.e. players who don't have many resources or who value them too much are discouraged to immediately start to play new decks. This becomes even more prevalent when combined with the fact that you need 3 copies (or at least 2) of a champion to build a deck around them. I personally have far more resources than I need to build a few new decks, but because I have no idea what I want to craft yet I am still playing pre-expansion decks or expeditions (which is not a game mode I enjoy very much). I'm not sure if many others experience it this way though.

    I don't know what they could do to about this. Maybe they could make some deck recipes centered around new cards (mainly champions) and allow any player to play those for the first week(s)?

    • Quote From GerritDeMan

      Maybe they could make some deck recipes centered around new cards (mainly champions) and allow any player to play those for the first week(s)?

      Isn't that part of what expeditions are for? At least regarding the new region. I mean, you only get 1 free token per week, so if you want to run more trials, you'll have to pay for them. But Riot purposely upped the probability of Bilgewater-based buckets to pop up for expeditions. This should give players a good chance to draft decks around the new Bilgewater champions.

      Disclaimer: I haven't started an expedition on the release patch, so this is all theoretical.

      • Quote From BlueSpark
        Quote From GerritDeMan

        Maybe they could make some deck recipes centered around new cards (mainly champions) and allow any player to play those for the first week(s)?

        Isn't that part of what expeditions are for? At least regarding the new region. I mean, you only get 1 free token per week, so if you want to run more trials, you'll have to pay for them. But Riot purposely upped the probability of Bilgewater-based buckets to pop up for expeditions. This should give players a good chance to draft decks around the new Bilgewater champions.

        Disclaimer: I haven't started an expedition on the release patch, so this is all theoretical.

        Expeditions are still a very different experience than playing with a 'normal' deck. And as I already mentioned I personally just don't enjoy expeditions very much but that's my problem. Right now I would prefer being able to play prebuild decks without getting any rewards for it over playing expeditions, because the former is 1) more enjoyable for me and 2) gives me more insight into what type of deck I would like to play and which cards I would like to craft.

        By the way, I'm not saying my idea is good. It's just an idea.

  • I do not play Runeterra but latest Hearthstone expansion introduced new class (Demon Hunter) which was so busted, beating ALL other classes, that Blizzard nerfed it within 24 hours. But powercreep is a bad thing in card games, makes your collection obsolete.