I agree with you on the quality of the peanut butter (US kids love their sugar). And I respect you very much for your game community work. That said, I am shocked that you are such a n00b when come to how .gif is pronounced. Maybe it is the cold? Too much hokey without a helmet as a kid? Maybe it has to you being Horde?
How do you pronounce 'glorious' or 'graphics'? I know you Canadians talk funny and all... but sheesh. :)
Nah, I think he'll just go to the zoo and see some giraffes. Hopefully he won't get lost on the way there, but I think his geography skills are pretty decent. Then he'll probably go home and drink a glass of gin.
Its not brain dead because you actually had to build a high synergy deck for your champion.
Any deck has to have synergy to be even mildly competitive, that's just like the ABC of deck building, it doesn't take genius to know that if you have Ekko in your deck then your gonna need a couple of predict cards, but when your deck is all about turbo leveling a champion then you usually repeat the same play patterns during every match and that is pretty braindead.
A good example of that would be lurks, lurks needs high synergy to work but it's one the most braindead deck out there, play unit attack, rinse and repeat and hope you high roll Pyke of Rek'Sai in your predicts or top decks.
As for plunder midrange, her a little bit of fact on the deck, it did existed since the Bilgewater expansion but back then it was a tier 3 at best, It didn't became top tier until patch 2.11.
Reason that it fall down the tier list are both the buff to Vengeance and the nerf to Monster Harpoon, the former is a good counter to it's champion who are the deck main win condition, the latter was an essential tool for deck to stabilize during midgame since plunder is bad at trading because most of your unit's have less than 3 power.
Hey Flux you gonna go watch Juardians of the Jalaxy later on? Hope you get many jifts for your birthday. You jonna jo home then, pet your jolden retriever, feed your jolden fish? Jrab some jarlic bread, eat it with jround beef!?
Throwing my own hat into the ring, I take the stance that there is no single right way to pronounce "gif" (or any other word for that matter); any pronunciation that is understood in context is fine. There are far too many accents for there to be a 'correct' pronunciation of anything in English, and recent additions like gif are no exception. It doesn't matter what the person who invented it had in mind, because every word starts with a single pronunciation (since they start in the mind/vocalisation of a single person), but all evolve as they move through time and space.
Now, if you have a language that does enforce specific pronunciations then there is an argument to be made, but English ain't that language.
Its not brain dead because you actually had to build a high synergy deck for your champion.
Like if you lost to Malphite coming down on 7 I' sorry but youre the brain dead one.
Its just also happens to simultaneously be a terrible card that will never ever happen.
Same thing with Fiora, or Tf or any other card that made players go waaaah I had 8 cards in my 0 synergy greed list and lost anyway thats unfair!
How can I be small brain me big big brain?
Case study: I got to diamond easily one season with Renekton like literally considered one of the worst Champs. I did it by feeding exclusively off greed with fast paced high synergy overwhelm list that included interesting card choices.
Now try running Renekton go ahead just try value trading into the beefy game winning commons every deck is made up of now...I'll wait.
Reality check: plunder midrange is at 51% guys like literally the top tier bilgewater deck that has been around for as long as I remember. Want to know why? Too champ focused commons aren't strong enough to win games even when they literally steal your opponents deck? Like come on the writings on the wall.
It is quite unfortunate that a crappy brand of peanut butter (why is it so damn sweet) shares the same name sound as the glorious web animations image format.
(That's obviously not a soft "G", therefore the only acceptable pronunciation is "gif". On behalf of all of us here capable of telling between the right and wrong, official apologies to everyone offended by Flux's blatant slip.)
Now it's oh your champ leveled I don't care cuz you're dead, stop questing and get back to playing Runeterra at its most vanilla and brain dead version ever.
Variance is fun folks, strong champions auto winning games is fun…otherwise it's just nail dragging value wars and its boring. Synergy is dead, deck building is dead, Champs are dead, strategy is dead.
Champion auto wining on level up is exactly the kind of braindead play patter that you claim to be against, because that mean you just play a game of solitaire were the goal is turbo level your champions, but more importantly at no point of this game was that ever a thing.
Sure they were many champions who could win the game if left unanswered but that is not the same as auto winning take pre-nerf Sion when he level up and attack he would usually win the game but they were many ways your opponent could deal with him including silence, stunt, frostbite, obliterate, recall. Sejuani could perma-freeze your board but that did not win you the game in itself you needed another cards like Gangplank or The Dreadway to finish off the opponent plus any hard removal could deal with her.
That also goes for decks that built around a single champion like Anivia she did not auto win on level up since you needed to kill her multiple times then play The Harrowing to get a board full of Anivias and finish the game.
Even Twisted Fate who had one the most powerful level up in the game ( If not the most powerful ) mostly served as a powerful control and value engine, you needed either Pack Your Bags ( for TF/GoHard) or elusive unit's ( for TF/Fizz ) to actually win the game.
Honestly, if Champs aren't wincons they have no place in the game.
They are chronically under-stated by design therefore if they arent questing wincons they essentially serve no purpose at all and come with a massive build around cost to boot.
Like look at just streamers covering the game Swims gone, Mogwais gone they are too afraid to articulate why the game isn't fun anymore because they'll get bogged down in discussion.
I'm not afraid of that ineffectual Champs that can't win games are ruining Runeterra and so is over nerfing Champs in favor of over-stated followers.
I should be scared when a 7 mana champ hits the board I shouldn't be scared when a 3 mana common names white flame hits the board I just shouldn't.
It should be the card I play that delays things till I actually win with my champ it shouldn't be the main win con on its own. It's just too bland and vanilla. Also the main dynamic of Runeterra is protecting Champs with burst spells well you ain't gonna do that if they generally suck.
Champs are supposed to win games guys its literally the reason they are in the game.
you guys seem to forget but it used to be if a champion leveled you would just auto win.
I agree in general about the importance of Champions to the game, and I definitely think the following two things should always be true about LoR:
Leveling up champions should matter. There have been lots of decks where the Level 1 version of a Champ was more than good enough to act as a win condition, and I think that spoils a key aspect of the game. Often that means the L1 version is too good.
It should be extremely hard to build a deck that isn't made better by including some Champion(s)
All that said, the idea that Champs should be auto-wins is clearly a bad design goal, for two major reasons.
First, it emphasizes linear gameplay. You need look no further than Quests and Questlines in Hearthstone to see exactly how building your deck around a hyper-specific win condition makes the game overly linear. Admittedly, the Hearthstone examples are more egregious because you always start with your Quest in hand, but the basic premise is the same - a deck built around drawing and leveling a Champion for the sake of some auto-win is going to ultimately lead to linear games where each player is just trying to outdraw the opponent. It might have been okay in the earlier days of LoR, but as more and more card draw is introduced to the game, this becomes more and more streamlined and miserable to play against.
Second, it fails to really suit the diverse roles of a given Champion. LoL has a wide array of Champion classes which describe how that champion functions at a high level. Braum is a great example of doing this right - he's a Tank/Warden champion, so he should be highly defensive and more useful as a support tool than a win condition. That's manifested through his high health/low attack statline and his challenger and regeneration keywords. He can win you the game over time by generating a ton of Mighty Poros, but he's more likely to just help you push damage to face by challenging your opponent's biggest blocker and forcing them to make bad trades.
There are probably classes of Champions (e.g. Slayer/Assassin types) that should auto-win the game, but I don't really think that should be broadly true about Champions.
"Synergy is dead, deck building is dead, Champs are dead, strategy is dead."
Alright who told you that nonsens? Champions ARE still meaningful. Champions ARE better than their follower cards by a lot.
Champions no longer go unanswered and if that is something that bothers you you better go complain about HushMinimorphVengeance and the likes of them which are the reasons why the role of champions changed.
And a good example of deck building not being dead is the latest Hextech Handler swarm deck. I mean yeah it's kinda silly to play against and it's kinda broken but it's a quite unique build that hasn't been seen in the past (as far as I know)
I prefer Wave of Ooze from the 3 options, its simple and sweet. Twilight Hammer's Den is a cool idea, but it seems a bit weak and low tempo, there aren't any C'thun buff cards that don't provide some board tempo. Sigil of Momentum scares me a tad too much since DH ca pretty easily reach very high Attack values, especially considering it just doubles down on weapons baseline. It's also hard to word it that the Attack gained is temporary.
Wailor
If you go for Glimmer, I would say that 2 turns is more balanced, but you could also stack more keywords like Taunt or Lifesteal to the summoned thing if you want 3 turns. Irondeep is simple and effective, but perhaps a smidge niche given how little card draw Hunter has. Also, how is it intended to work with targeted draw such as Barak Kodobane? Is it a generic extra draw, or another targeted draw?
Demonxz95
Voodoo Grounds spooks me as a 3-mana un-interactable Brann Bronzebeard effect. Snowfall Graveyard is fine because Deathrattles are inherently slow and Rogue only has mediocre Deathrattles. Shaman has powerful and cheap Battlecries. Sleetbreaker and Primal Dungeoneer alone would create huge amounts of card draw, but then you have crazy value or threats like Granite Forgeborn or Snowfall Guardian, and that's not even to say the absurdity in Wild.
Basil Anguis
I would consider quitting the game if they printed a card like Buried in Ice. It is just too frustrating. Pacifism is neat, although I still worry about Rogue having too much access to weapon attacks and burn damage to stop them from abusing the easy card draw. MAssive fan of Cover Fire though. Really flavorful and a nice way to support slower Hunter decks.
AeroJulwin
Clairvoyance I think provides too much consistency for Mage while they are still pumping out OTKs like no one's business. I could see it being limited to the first draw on a turn and being fine, though it could be dropped to 1-mana if that's the case. Otherwise, I might consider another small overhaul.
Lee Sin is literally a 51% winrate champ focused win con and one of the only ones left in the game.
Is he an outlier absolutely because every single champ that win on level up has been nerfed into the ground and I guess he's soon to join them.
Yes card games need variance. They need variance in terms of the power between the cards aka legendaries are better than commons, and they need variance in terms of win conditions and play patterns.
Like of we talk about MTG tournaments I remember top deck glory bringer because it's a cool card and it was very strong at the time.
If this was Riot we're talking about they would nerf on a common scale so any rare or legendary or champion card that out performs a common needs to get slapped.
The only cost to pay is that champions have become redundant and useless foe the most part.
Like is Pantheon the card that wins nah its white flame, does Sion win nope its Zaunite urchin. In fact you don't even see many level ups these days, why would you if you're just gonna lose anyway.
Edit: you guys seem to forget but it used to be if a champion leveled you would just auto win.
1. Tf carding things to oblivion
2. Sejuani chain freezing at burst speed
3. Fiora OTK
4. Deep board flooding
5. Azir extra attacks
Now it's oh your champ leveled I don't care cuz you're dead, stop questing and get back to playing Runeterra at its most vanilla and brain dead version ever.
Variance is fun folks, strong champions auto winning games is fun...otherwise it's just nail dragging value wars and its boring. Synergy is dead, deck building is dead, Champs are dead, strategy is dead.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
I agree with you on the quality of the peanut butter (US kids love their sugar). And I respect you very much for your game community work. That said, I am shocked that you are such a n00b when come to how .gif is pronounced. Maybe it is the cold? Too much hokey without a helmet as a kid? Maybe it has to you being Horde?
How do you pronounce 'glorious' or 'graphics'? I know you Canadians talk funny and all... but sheesh. :)
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Sinti, how do you pronounce the letter 'G'?
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Nah, I think he'll just go to the zoo and see some giraffes. Hopefully he won't get lost on the way there, but I think his geography skills are pretty decent. Then he'll probably go home and drink a glass of gin.
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
Any deck has to have synergy to be even mildly competitive, that's just like the ABC of deck building, it doesn't take genius to know that if you have Ekko in your deck then your gonna need a couple of predict cards, but when your deck is all about turbo leveling a champion then you usually repeat the same play patterns during every match and that is pretty braindead.
A good example of that would be lurks, lurks needs high synergy to work but it's one the most braindead deck out there, play unit attack, rinse and repeat and hope you high roll Pyke of Rek'Sai in your predicts or top decks.
Same for Daybreak the deck need to be synergistic to work but it's pretty one dimensional you start with Solari Soldier turn 1, a Solari Shieldbearer (or another Soldier) turn 2, a Solari Priestess (or another Shieldbearer) on the turn 3, Leona on four, Rahvun, Daylight's Spear on five
As for plunder midrange, her a little bit of fact on the deck, it did existed since the Bilgewater expansion but back then it was a tier 3 at best, It didn't became top tier until patch 2.11.
Reason that it fall down the tier list are both the buff to Vengeance and the nerf to Monster Harpoon, the former is a good counter to it's champion who are the deck main win condition, the latter was an essential tool for deck to stabilize during midgame since plunder is bad at trading because most of your unit's have less than 3 power.
Still the deck is by no mean bad now.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Hey Flux you gonna go watch Juardians of the Jalaxy later on? Hope you get many jifts for your birthday. You jonna jo home then, pet your jolden retriever, feed your jolden fish? Jrab some jarlic bread, eat it with jround beef!?
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Throwing my own hat into the ring, I take the stance that there is no single right way to pronounce "gif" (or any other word for that matter); any pronunciation that is understood in context is fine. There are far too many accents for there to be a 'correct' pronunciation of anything in English, and recent additions like gif are no exception. It doesn't matter what the person who invented it had in mind, because every word starts with a single pronunciation (since they start in the mind/vocalisation of a single person), but all evolve as they move through time and space.
Now, if you have a language that does enforce specific pronunciations then there is an argument to be made, but English ain't that language.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
"(pronounced "Jif")"
On opposite day.
You pronounce it like "gift" without the t. Otherwise, you're just unevolved.
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
Its not brain dead because you actually had to build a high synergy deck for your champion.
Like if you lost to Malphite coming down on 7 I' sorry but youre the brain dead one.
Its just also happens to simultaneously be a terrible card that will never ever happen.
Same thing with Fiora, or Tf or any other card that made players go waaaah I had 8 cards in my 0 synergy greed list and lost anyway thats unfair!
How can I be small brain me big big brain?
Case study: I got to diamond easily one season with Renekton like literally considered one of the worst Champs. I did it by feeding exclusively off greed with fast paced high synergy overwhelm list that included interesting card choices.
Now try running Renekton go ahead just try value trading into the beefy game winning commons every deck is made up of now...I'll wait.
Reality check: plunder midrange is at 51% guys like literally the top tier bilgewater deck that has been around for as long as I remember. Want to know why? Too champ focused commons aren't strong enough to win games even when they literally steal your opponents deck? Like come on the writings on the wall.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
G-squad assemble! This is more important battle than Alliance vs Horde! Js need to perish!
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
It is quite unfortunate that a crappy brand of peanut butter (why is it so damn sweet) shares the same name sound as the glorious web animations image format.
Persia's 12 Wins Pirate Warrior
It's unhealthy if they're oppressive beyond repair, which is not the case (not in all three, at least).
Questlines being unfun is strictly subjective: not that I disagree with you, but you cannot really bring this argument to the table.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
They are kinda sorta definitely creepy. It's their faces; more specifically, the eyes.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Jiff is a brand on peanut butter in the U.S.
The graphic standard is pronounced with a hard "g" like, you know, graphics.
Hope this helps our brothers to the great North.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
I hope you get banned. I hope everyone who says gif with a soft g gets banned forever.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Well met, good boy Huffer.
(That's obviously not a soft "G", therefore the only acceptable pronunciation is "gif". On behalf of all of us here capable of telling between the right and wrong, official apologies to everyone offended by Flux's blatant slip.)
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
Tiny Huffer! Oh and Rexxar. These are adorable.
Blizzard Adds Hearthstone Hero Stickers & GIFs for Social Media to Giphy
My thoughts on this
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
Champion auto wining on level up is exactly the kind of braindead play patter that you claim to be against, because that mean you just play a game of solitaire were the goal is turbo level your champions, but more importantly at no point of this game was that ever a thing.
Sure they were many champions who could win the game if left unanswered but that is not the same as auto winning take pre-nerf Sion when he level up and attack he would usually win the game but they were many ways your opponent could deal with him including silence, stunt, frostbite, obliterate, recall. Sejuani could perma-freeze your board but that did not win you the game in itself you needed another cards like Gangplank or The Dreadway to finish off the opponent plus any hard removal could deal with her.
That also goes for decks that built around a single champion like Anivia she did not auto win on level up since you needed to kill her multiple times then play The Harrowing to get a board full of Anivias and finish the game.
Even Twisted Fate who had one the most powerful level up in the game ( If not the most powerful ) mostly served as a powerful control and value engine, you needed either Pack Your Bags ( for TF/GoHard) or elusive unit's ( for TF/Fizz ) to actually win the game.
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
Honestly, if Champs aren't wincons they have no place in the game.
They are chronically under-stated by design therefore if they arent questing wincons they essentially serve no purpose at all and come with a massive build around cost to boot.
Like look at just streamers covering the game Swims gone, Mogwais gone they are too afraid to articulate why the game isn't fun anymore because they'll get bogged down in discussion.
I'm not afraid of that ineffectual Champs that can't win games are ruining Runeterra and so is over nerfing Champs in favor of over-stated followers.
I should be scared when a 7 mana champ hits the board I shouldn't be scared when a 3 mana common names white flame hits the board I just shouldn't.
It should be the card I play that delays things till I actually win with my champ it shouldn't be the main win con on its own. It's just too bland and vanilla. Also the main dynamic of Runeterra is protecting Champs with burst spells well you ain't gonna do that if they generally suck.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: dymar#2641
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you first
Shirvallah Paladin - Wild Hearthstone Full Deck & Detailed Guide on the Wildest of Wednesdays
He's been on my "would be nice to craft" list for a while, so maybe I will just pull the trigger soon!
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
I agree in general about the importance of Champions to the game, and I definitely think the following two things should always be true about LoR:
All that said, the idea that Champs should be auto-wins is clearly a bad design goal, for two major reasons.
First, it emphasizes linear gameplay. You need look no further than Quests and Questlines in Hearthstone to see exactly how building your deck around a hyper-specific win condition makes the game overly linear. Admittedly, the Hearthstone examples are more egregious because you always start with your Quest in hand, but the basic premise is the same - a deck built around drawing and leveling a Champion for the sake of some auto-win is going to ultimately lead to linear games where each player is just trying to outdraw the opponent. It might have been okay in the earlier days of LoR, but as more and more card draw is introduced to the game, this becomes more and more streamlined and miserable to play against.
Second, it fails to really suit the diverse roles of a given Champion. LoL has a wide array of Champion classes which describe how that champion functions at a high level. Braum is a great example of doing this right - he's a Tank/Warden champion, so he should be highly defensive and more useful as a support tool than a win condition. That's manifested through his high health/low attack statline and his challenger and regeneration keywords. He can win you the game over time by generating a ton of Mighty Poros, but he's more likely to just help you push damage to face by challenging your opponent's biggest blocker and forcing them to make bad trades.
There are probably classes of Champions (e.g. Slayer/Assassin types) that should auto-win the game, but I don't really think that should be broadly true about Champions.
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
"Synergy is dead, deck building is dead, Champs are dead, strategy is dead."
Alright who told you that nonsens? Champions ARE still meaningful. Champions ARE better than their follower cards by a lot.
Champions no longer go unanswered and if that is something that bothers you you better go complain about Hush Minimorph Vengeance and the likes of them which are the reasons why the role of champions changed.
And a good example of deck building not being dead is the latest Hextech Handler swarm deck. I mean yeah it's kinda silly to play against and it's kinda broken but it's a quite unique build that hasn't been seen in the past (as far as I know)
Keep On Ticking - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Late feedback:
Up To Date Winrates Post Patch
Lee Sin is literally a 51% winrate champ focused win con and one of the only ones left in the game.
Is he an outlier absolutely because every single champ that win on level up has been nerfed into the ground and I guess he's soon to join them.
Yes card games need variance. They need variance in terms of the power between the cards aka legendaries are better than commons, and they need variance in terms of win conditions and play patterns.
Like of we talk about MTG tournaments I remember top deck glory bringer because it's a cool card and it was very strong at the time.
If this was Riot we're talking about they would nerf on a common scale so any rare or legendary or champion card that out performs a common needs to get slapped.
The only cost to pay is that champions have become redundant and useless foe the most part.
Like is Pantheon the card that wins nah its white flame, does Sion win nope its Zaunite urchin. In fact you don't even see many level ups these days, why would you if you're just gonna lose anyway.
Edit: you guys seem to forget but it used to be if a champion leveled you would just auto win.
1. Tf carding things to oblivion
2. Sejuani chain freezing at burst speed
3. Fiora OTK
4. Deep board flooding
5. Azir extra attacks
Now it's oh your champ leveled I don't care cuz you're dead, stop questing and get back to playing Runeterra at its most vanilla and brain dead version ever.
Variance is fun folks, strong champions auto winning games is fun...otherwise it's just nail dragging value wars and its boring. Synergy is dead, deck building is dead, Champs are dead, strategy is dead.