- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.
- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage
Don't have a ton of energy to respond to all your responses at the moment, but I'll respond to these as they stood out the most to me.
My issue with certain regions is less their "overall power" in a vacuum, and more in their power and strength to be splashed or used as a baseline. Ionia has some magnificent spell counters that people tend to splash into their other decks (like mentioned in the thread, Will of Ionia, Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, etc).
To me the biggest issue is that regions have strengths and weaknesses. Clever deckbuilding and region combinations can shore up some of those weaknesses, however Ionia (and to a lesser degree Shadow Isles) seem to be used because of their strong controlling aspects, without any real penalty for using those regions as a splash region. I know that's part of the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, but at a certain point if certain cards are *consistently* used in every deck that has Ionia, then those cards neeed to be adjusted or force a decision to be made that balances their region strength, against their cross-region strength.
In short: this is what the purpose of allegiance cards was... creating strong cards that either encourage mono, or allow you to base your decision on the number of cards from that region that you put into your deck. Something similar to that needs to be brought to bear on the more "often used" cards. If they won't straight up nerf them, then they need to de-incentive them from being splashed. (or make you roll the dice on the cards power like allegiance would do in non-mono decks).
As for elusives, I unfortunately disagree. They were overstated in beta. Nerfed countless times, and still continue to be a problem. Fundamentally elusive cards create a very polarizing gameplay...either you have your own elusives to counter them (and not many regions have as many options as Ionia) or you have the spell removal to counter them, or you don't. It's very rare to force an elusive card to trade with a non elusive card (act as a blocker) unless you are threatening lethal. I understand that the original purpose of elusives was to force chip damage in. But as it stands now, there is more card draw in the game then there was in the beginning of the game and the resource management that was in the game in the beginning is starting to wane even more.
A better comparison for Tristana might be that vanilla 3 mana Demacia epic the buffs your board every time a card dies, only all you have to do is play your followers for the effect, and the card itself gets bigger.
I've had to abandon my work on my custom expansion for the time being as I'm finding it difficult to get past some mental creative block. I had an idea for a much smaller scale project that I can come back to as when I want.
I've decided to undertake creating Hearthstone boss fights for random boss battles in WoW or possibly even for Hearthstone-original characters like the Boomsday Project scientists. I want to stay fairly faithful to the fight mechanics from WoW, which I've taken from WoWPedia.
For the first one, we're heading to the Scarlet Monastery to face off against High Inquisitor Whitemane.
Hopefully this'll be the first of many more to come. These only take me like half an hour to do, so they're perfect for when I just have a little bit of time. Any feedback on this fight will be much appreciated and I'll try to implement any criticism moving forwards with this idea. Have a good day and thanks guys!
The expansion just got released and I feel that it's too early to be making such post but to answer your issues :
Problem 1:
Are new champions being pushed ? Yes. Are old old champions being forgotten? No I mean in the last patch before the expansion Karma and Hecarim both got buffed, Teemo just got a lot of support and many champions from the beta are still competitive Ashe, Jinx, Draven, Ezreal, Zed, Shen, Elise, Tresh. Some champions like Garen don't see play (even though elites keep getting plenty of support ) not because they are weak but more because their play style is just so boring and linear.
Like you said not every champion is going to be meta that's not just a realistic expectation to have. The most important thing to me is to make sure that meta deck/champion aren't too strong so that if you choose to play non meta you can still find success as long as you play better than your opponent.
Problem 2:
I don't believe that Ionia is a problematic region I believe that it has some problematic cards (Hello Lee Sin).
- Ionia doesn't have too much draw. The only (playable) draw cards in the region are Deep Meditation, Rivershaper and Shadow Assassin. and your can't use them all in the same deck, deep meditation is played in control/combo and rivershaper in midrange decks, shadow assassin is played in aggro but do see play in some Karma decks. Regions like P&Z, Targon and Shadow Isles have better draw engines than Ionia.
- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.
- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage
If anything annoys me from the ionian arsenal it is the duo of Will of Ionia and Concussive Palm their ability to take units out of the fight no matter the size is really nasty to deal with but one can live with it afterall.
There is no doubt that Ionian has been on the strong side in the recent past but given it's nonexistence for multiple months before I think it's okay for the region to be good.
When it comes to nerfs I can't say about any archetype right now if he deserves a nerf since the meta is far from settled.
And you might be right about riot pushing new cards to be viable and more restrict but afterall that is what cardgames tend to do when their cardpool grows larger and they still want to sell their newest content. Its not creative and pretty lame at times but it's also hard to avoid if you don't want the likes of SejuaniGangplank ruling the meta all day.
Major egregious problems with LoR still remain. So much so that I honestly can't say it's any better than Hearthstone's meta at the moment. Both games appear to be in major balance dumpster fires at the moment.
(for those unaware, Questlines in Hearthstone were just released a few weeks ago and have been creating huge game winning conditions that are almost uncounterable as early as turn 5-6 on a consistent basis).
Anyhow, my two main issues with LoR (and this patch) at the moment:
Problem 1: Ooh Shiny!
Newer champions are being pushed hard, while older champions are eschewed and forgotten. Any competitively viability from older champions was either nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but instead of creating creative cards that could be potentially used in multiple archetypes with clever deckbuilding and play, they create forced archetype inclusions. One such example is Caitlyn Bombs/Teemo Shrooms. Forced inclusion archetype cards that without makes those heroes suck. Yes, I know to some degree all champions have those. For example Ashes needs Frostbite, but technically you could build an Ashe deck without any other cards and eventually she would level up on her own...
But when is the last time you saw Garen, Lux, or hell even Hecarim used? (and no bronze/iron does not count). I understand not *every* champion can be competitively viable at the same time, but it says something when nearly all the old champions are eschewed for newer ones. This isn't hearthstone. There is no yearly rotation (yet), and Champions are supposed to be more of a build around/win condition than Hearthstone legendaries. So why does it seem like Riot is just pushing newer champions for the last year with little to no support for older champions? The only time I can recall "older" champions making a huge comeback was when Scargrounds landmark was released it revitalized Vladimir/Braum style decks for a small period of time.
To put problem #1 in a nutshell: I think that we are being put on the "new expansion" train where the latest and greatest is pushed (as with any card game) so that way you either use up your wildcards, or you buy more coins to build all the new shiny decks. Most decks feel like they are "on rails" being pushed with new cards, and have very low skill caps to be effective. (Which is not what drew me to the game in the first place. If I wanted a low skill cap card game to play, I could go play Hearthstone.)
Problem 2: Ionia and beyond!
I truly believe at it's heart Ionia was created with great intentions, but very poor execution balance wise. In addition the biggest issues with deck building in general seem to come from 3 things: Elusive units. Rally effects. And too much draw. (A problem I believe is also plaguing Hearthstone at the moment as well, as too much draw effects allows decision making to be trivialized because you have multiple options and answers available)
I actually saw someone else point this out on reddit today in the competitiveLoR sub, and they got downvoted to hell. Granted, I understand gamers can be mercurial; and maybe the way they presented it wasn't the most contructive, but still...
I feel like the region identities are fine, but there's currently some very broken decks and cards out there that still haven't been touched (or if they were, the wrong thing was nerfed.) For anyone aware, I'm mainly referring to Sivir, and their respective region cards as being markedly broken. (Ruin Runner, Merciless hunter for Shurima as well as Ionia's usual cadre of Elusive cards and counter spells available.)
Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, but I'd love for some constructive feedback to see if I'm just drinking too much Kool-aid or of I'm on the money with my assessment of things currently. Thanks!
Sure the deck wasn't good if it would completely rely on the combo but I think the support package is on it's own quite strong and espeicially the likes of Mountain SojournersSparkleflyand Frightened Ibex can create strong lines of play even without the stars of the show.
I've been playing solely Fizz Nami and Bandle City allegiance but I can't imagine Tristana being good. Sure the deck does well but Tristana is just a more expensive Fae Bladetwirler most of the times.
Also yeah Poppy Taric is pretty strong but I don't think it's tier 1 material since it relies so hard on the champs that the gameplan falls off pretty hard if you don't hit then. It's also not impossible to beat as well since they have a huge moment of vulnerability that it could just auto lose to a lot of removals.
I can't say I played lots Battlegrounds in the last months (loving constructed since most of the stuff I didn't like rotated in March, and Duels has become my favorite mode), but I am happy to see a major overhaul.
Will definitely be there when the new toys will be released!
I think for my next trick I will try to combine Ziggs with Swain. The amount of stuns + burn triggers will proably be a Nightmare for opponent once you have a level 2 Swain on board.
Build flexibility is through the roof, and while auto build lists like darkness and discard are very good, Ziggs and Xerath have yet to find perfect homes despite being great cards.
We can say the same thing about Catalyn.
Tristana was thought to be bad but is already in a 56 % winrate list along with Poppy.
And elusive decks are doing elusive things.
So thats 6 out of 9 Champs already putting in the work and the other 3 are likely being built wrong at the moment.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #27 - Next Year's Final Set Already in Development, Cross-Region Collections Not Likely, & More
EDIT: Ahh, never mind. 1st comment explains my confusion.
What does Iskar mean my this?
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #27 - Next Year's Final Set Already in Development, Cross-Region Collections Not Likely, & More
@Fluxflashor
"The random card back feature is currently on the backlog."
I think the intended message is that the random hero/coin feature is currently on backlog. We already have the random card back feature.
New Patch Is fun but...
Don't have a ton of energy to respond to all your responses at the moment, but I'll respond to these as they stood out the most to me.
My issue with certain regions is less their "overall power" in a vacuum, and more in their power and strength to be splashed or used as a baseline. Ionia has some magnificent spell counters that people tend to splash into their other decks (like mentioned in the thread, Will of Ionia, Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, etc).
To me the biggest issue is that regions have strengths and weaknesses. Clever deckbuilding and region combinations can shore up some of those weaknesses, however Ionia (and to a lesser degree Shadow Isles) seem to be used because of their strong controlling aspects, without any real penalty for using those regions as a splash region. I know that's part of the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, but at a certain point if certain cards are *consistently* used in every deck that has Ionia, then those cards neeed to be adjusted or force a decision to be made that balances their region strength, against their cross-region strength.
In short: this is what the purpose of allegiance cards was... creating strong cards that either encourage mono, or allow you to base your decision on the number of cards from that region that you put into your deck. Something similar to that needs to be brought to bear on the more "often used" cards. If they won't straight up nerf them, then they need to de-incentive them from being splashed. (or make you roll the dice on the cards power like allegiance would do in non-mono decks).
As for elusives, I unfortunately disagree. They were overstated in beta. Nerfed countless times, and still continue to be a problem. Fundamentally elusive cards create a very polarizing gameplay...either you have your own elusives to counter them (and not many regions have as many options as Ionia) or you have the spell removal to counter them, or you don't. It's very rare to force an elusive card to trade with a non elusive card (act as a blocker) unless you are threatening lethal. I understand that the original purpose of elusives was to force chip damage in. But as it stands now, there is more card draw in the game then there was in the beginning of the game and the resource management that was in the game in the beginning is starting to wane even more.
In The Frame: Hearthstone Fan Art Spotlight - Tiny Heroes! by Ivo Campelo da Silva
These are gorgeous.
New Stats Analysis
A better comparison for Tristana might be that vanilla 3 mana Demacia epic the buffs your board every time a card dies, only all you have to do is play your followers for the effect, and the card itself gets bigger.
Blizzard Confirms Hearthstone Battlegrounds Rating Reset Next Week - Tribes Overhaul Update is Coming!
I'm excited that this number that means nothing to me will continue to mean nothing!
Reminder: Out of Cards' Master Duelist Challenge 1 Ends Soon - Earn Site Rewards
When in doubt, just pick a Thing and forbid it.
No cards in your starting deck with bolded keywords.
No cards in your starting deck with artwork featuring orcs.
Or whatever.
And congrats! I'm sure I won't be snatching the lead away with a score like that!
Custom Bosses - A Continuous Small Scale Project
Hi guys,
I've had to abandon my work on my custom expansion for the time being as I'm finding it difficult to get past some mental creative block. I had an idea for a much smaller scale project that I can come back to as when I want.
I've decided to undertake creating Hearthstone boss fights for random boss battles in WoW or possibly even for Hearthstone-original characters like the Boomsday Project scientists. I want to stay fairly faithful to the fight mechanics from WoW, which I've taken from WoWPedia.
For the first one, we're heading to the Scarlet Monastery to face off against High Inquisitor Whitemane.
Special Cards
Decklist
2x Crimson Clergy
2x Holy Smite
2x Power Word: Shield
2x [Hearthstone Card (Condemn) Not Found]
1x Divine Hymn
2x Renew
2x Devout Dungeoneer
2x Velen's Chosen
1x Greater Healing Potion
2x Holy Nova
2x Lightsteed
2x Lightshower Elemental
2x Mass Resurrection
2x Deep Sleep
2x Scarlet Renegade
2x Monastery Guardsman.
Hopefully this'll be the first of many more to come. These only take me like half an hour to do, so they're perfect for when I just have a little bit of time. Any feedback on this fight will be much appreciated and I'll try to implement any criticism moving forwards with this idea. Have a good day and thanks guys!
In The Frame: Hearthstone Fan Art Spotlight - Tiny Heroes! by Ivo Campelo da Silva
I have the same feelings towards that Gnome Uther. Justice for Gnome heroes!
I mean sure it is a prototype of a deck but what does the deck try to do ?
New Patch Is fun but...
The expansion just got released and I feel that it's too early to be making such post but to answer your issues :
Problem 1:
Are new champions being pushed ? Yes. Are old old champions being forgotten? No I mean in the last patch before the expansion Karma and Hecarim both got buffed, Teemo just got a lot of support and many champions from the beta are still competitive Ashe, Jinx, Draven, Ezreal, Zed, Shen, Elise, Tresh. Some champions like Garen don't see play (even though elites keep getting plenty of support ) not because they are weak but more because their play style is just so boring and linear.
Like you said not every champion is going to be meta that's not just a realistic expectation to have. The most important thing to me is to make sure that meta deck/champion aren't too strong so that if you choose to play non meta you can still find success as long as you play better than your opponent.
Problem 2:
I don't believe that Ionia is a problematic region I believe that it has some problematic cards (Hello Lee Sin).
- Ionia doesn't have too much draw. The only (playable) draw cards in the region are Deep Meditation, Rivershaper and Shadow Assassin. and your can't use them all in the same deck, deep meditation is played in control/combo and rivershaper in midrange decks, shadow assassin is played in aggro but do see play in some Karma decks. Regions like P&Z, Targon and Shadow Isles have better draw engines than Ionia.
- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.
- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage
New Patch Is fun but...
If anything annoys me from the ionian arsenal it is the duo of Will of Ionia and Concussive Palm their ability to take units out of the fight no matter the size is really nasty to deal with but one can live with it afterall.
There is no doubt that Ionian has been on the strong side in the recent past but given it's nonexistence for multiple months before I think it's okay for the region to be good.
When it comes to nerfs I can't say about any archetype right now if he deserves a nerf since the meta is far from settled.
And you might be right about riot pushing new cards to be viable and more restrict but afterall that is what cardgames tend to do when their cardpool grows larger and they still want to sell their newest content. Its not creative and pretty lame at times but it's also hard to avoid if you don't want the likes of Sejuani Gangplank ruling the meta all day.
Reminder: Out of Cards' Master Duelist Challenge 1 Ends Soon - Earn Site Rewards
Please take the lead from me :D I have no idea about what to select on next challenge :D
New Patch Is fun but...
Major egregious problems with LoR still remain. So much so that I honestly can't say it's any better than Hearthstone's meta at the moment. Both games appear to be in major balance dumpster fires at the moment.
(for those unaware, Questlines in Hearthstone were just released a few weeks ago and have been creating huge game winning conditions that are almost uncounterable as early as turn 5-6 on a consistent basis).
Anyhow, my two main issues with LoR (and this patch) at the moment:
Problem 1: Ooh Shiny!
Newer champions are being pushed hard, while older champions are eschewed and forgotten. Any competitively viability from older champions was either nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but instead of creating creative cards that could be potentially used in multiple archetypes with clever deckbuilding and play, they create forced archetype inclusions. One such example is Caitlyn Bombs/Teemo Shrooms. Forced inclusion archetype cards that without makes those heroes suck. Yes, I know to some degree all champions have those. For example Ashes needs Frostbite, but technically you could build an Ashe deck without any other cards and eventually she would level up on her own...
But when is the last time you saw Garen, Lux, or hell even Hecarim used? (and no bronze/iron does not count). I understand not *every* champion can be competitively viable at the same time, but it says something when nearly all the old champions are eschewed for newer ones. This isn't hearthstone. There is no yearly rotation (yet), and Champions are supposed to be more of a build around/win condition than Hearthstone legendaries. So why does it seem like Riot is just pushing newer champions for the last year with little to no support for older champions? The only time I can recall "older" champions making a huge comeback was when Scargrounds landmark was released it revitalized Vladimir/Braum style decks for a small period of time.
To put problem #1 in a nutshell: I think that we are being put on the "new expansion" train where the latest and greatest is pushed (as with any card game) so that way you either use up your wildcards, or you buy more coins to build all the new shiny decks. Most decks feel like they are "on rails" being pushed with new cards, and have very low skill caps to be effective. (Which is not what drew me to the game in the first place. If I wanted a low skill cap card game to play, I could go play Hearthstone.)
Problem 2: Ionia and beyond!
I truly believe at it's heart Ionia was created with great intentions, but very poor execution balance wise. In addition the biggest issues with deck building in general seem to come from 3 things: Elusive units. Rally effects. And too much draw. (A problem I believe is also plaguing Hearthstone at the moment as well, as too much draw effects allows decision making to be trivialized because you have multiple options and answers available)
I actually saw someone else point this out on reddit today in the competitiveLoR sub, and they got downvoted to hell. Granted, I understand gamers can be mercurial; and maybe the way they presented it wasn't the most contructive, but still...
I feel like the region identities are fine, but there's currently some very broken decks and cards out there that still haven't been touched (or if they were, the wrong thing was nerfed.) For anyone aware, I'm mainly referring to Sivir, and their respective region cards as being markedly broken. (Ruin Runner, Merciless hunter for Shurima as well as Ionia's usual cadre of Elusive cards and counter spells available.)
Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, but I'd love for some constructive feedback to see if I'm just drinking too much Kool-aid or of I'm on the money with my assessment of things currently. Thanks!
New Stats Analysis
Sure the deck wasn't good if it would completely rely on the combo but I think the support package is on it's own quite strong and espeicially the likes of Mountain Sojourners Sparkleflyand Frightened Ibex can create strong lines of play even without the stars of the show.
New Stats Analysis
I've been playing solely Fizz Nami and Bandle City allegiance but I can't imagine Tristana being good. Sure the deck does well but Tristana is just a more expensive Fae Bladetwirler most of the times.
Also yeah Poppy Taric is pretty strong but I don't think it's tier 1 material since it relies so hard on the champs that the gameplan falls off pretty hard if you don't hit then. It's also not impossible to beat as well since they have a huge moment of vulnerability that it could just auto lose to a lot of removals.
Blizzard Confirms Hearthstone Battlegrounds Rating Reset Next Week - Tribes Overhaul Update is Coming!
I can't say I played lots Battlegrounds in the last months (loving constructed since most of the stuff I didn't like rotated in March, and Duels has become my favorite mode), but I am happy to see a major overhaul.
Will definitely be there when the new toys will be released!
New Stats Analysis
I think for my next trick I will try to combine Ziggs with Swain. The amount of stuns + burn triggers will proably be a Nightmare for opponent once you have a level 2 Swain on board.
New Stats Analysis
Lot of good stuff coming out of this set.
Build flexibility is through the roof, and while auto build lists like darkness and discard are very good, Ziggs and Xerath have yet to find perfect homes despite being great cards.
We can say the same thing about Catalyn.
Tristana was thought to be bad but is already in a 56 % winrate list along with Poppy.
And elusive decks are doing elusive things.
So thats 6 out of 9 Champs already putting in the work and the other 3 are likely being built wrong at the moment.
Reminder: Out of Cards' Master Duelist Challenge 1 Ends Soon - Earn Site Rewards
Make yourself at home, and good luck with your runs!
Reminder: Out of Cards' Master Duelist Challenge 1 Ends Soon - Earn Site Rewards
Yep, I have been really busy and missed the original article, too. Definitely want to join in. Will look through the threads and take a crack at it.
In The Frame: Hearthstone Fan Art Spotlight - Tiny Heroes! by Ivo Campelo da Silva
Awww man, I wish Imp Gul'Dan wasn't only fan-art ; I would totally play as this Impressive Warlock!
New Stats Analysis
Taric Golden Aegis is such a fun combo, but it's honestly broken if we are being honest with ourselves.
They really need to do something about that interaction, or increase the cost so it can't happen so early at the very least.
Reminder: Out of Cards' Master Duelist Challenge 1 Ends Soon - Earn Site Rewards
Good to know that there are potential competitors out there that missed the original article!
I am glad we decided to publish a reminder :)
Our Top 6 Decks to Craft on Day 1 of Runeterra's Beyond the Bandlewood Expansion
Some of the deck code links don't appear to be working (i.e. all of them except Sion and Malphite decks).