I think elusives can be fixed by printing counters to them in every region. For example, they could add a Keyword that lets units block Elusives without having elusive (let’s call it Vigilant). Then other regions could have a lot of fairly statted cards with this keyword. Riot could also print elusive counter cards like a 5 Mana 5/6 with “Elusives have Vulnerable” to solve the problem. As long as every region has a few good elusive counter cards, the Keyword can remain balanced.
True, the biggest problem I see is that mechanics are naturally supposed to be stronger in some regions, and weaker in others. For example "Tough" is a mechanic you'd expect to see in Demacia, but not something you'd expect to see in Shadow Isles.
Elusive has some smattering of units in each area. But for reference:
Demacia: 1
Freljord: 0
Ionia: 10 + 1 spell that grants elusive
Noxus: 0
P&Z: 5 + multiple other cards that grant elusive through various means.
Shadow Isles: 0
To VictorVonVox's point, this kind of asymmetry is okay - you want each region to feel meaningfully different, much as the colors do in MTG.
Point being that the region restriction is both LoR biggest draw as well as it's biggest weakness. Want to counter elusives? Guess you have to run Ionia as 1/2 your deck.
I'm not even sure at this point how they balance some of the stuff (not even talking about elusives at this point) because it seems like they've dug themselves into a corner.
This is really the big problem. It's fine for mechanics to be stronger or weaker in different regions, but you can't have a mechanic that is simultaneously concentrated in a small subset of regions and inherently stronger than other mechanics (mostly because Ionia has counters and burst speed buffs to protect their largely untouchable units from the few answers that exist today).
Most CCGs would solve this in simple ways (higher mana costs, lower stats for Elusives, etc.), but Riot seems reluctant to do that broadly for fear that they'll make Elusives too weak/invalidate a large part of the Ionia identity. In that way, I agree that they've put themselves in a corner, but only for Ionia, not for the game writ large.
This is why I think they need to just print a lot more cards - either to add other things to the Ionia identity so that they can reasonably nerf Elusives, or to make lots of real counters across other regions so that they're not inherently oppressive.
I think the introduction of more cards into the game will solve the elusive concern. We just have think elusive as "flying" in terms of mtg. MTG doesn't really have a single minded "flying" deck because all the colors have solutions.
White - Hard removal Blue - Bounce and counterspells black - Hard removal red - direct damage green - reach and direct damage to flying units only
His concept of a Quick Defense to block elusive units is a good idea. I'm all for this being introduced to new cards. I had similar idea in another thread, I called it Sentry, i think.
Another idea is direct damage to elusives only. I am a bit less of a fan of this idea, but it is an option.
I do have growing concern elusives are going to be worse with the new set. Scout on top Elusive on top of Rally seems like a really bad idea in the making.
Also a Deny for a unit would be nice as well. Even though I dread the concept of control players getting another tool.
When Blizzard decided to roll our Demon Hunter, I think we can all agree on the fact that they may not have thought things through well enough. One thing that have a thought on is Genn Greymane's interaction with the deck. The benefit of running this minion in your deck is that it lowers that cost of your Hero Power at the cost of restricting the cards that you put in your deck. However, with Demon Hunter, the standard Hero Power is already 1 less than every other Hero Power.
What I am curious is how other people feel about what I would like to see. Instead of making your Hero Power cost (1), having an Even Deck with Genn Greymane would be errata'd to state, "Your Hero Power costs (1) less". Doing this would have no impact on the game with other classes, but would make playing an Even Demon Hunter a possibility.
With Raza the Chained, we have all seen what can happen with a (0) cost Hero Power. However with that deck you are forced to play Highlander to get the benefit, whereas Even Demon Hunter doesn't have a card that would reset the Hero Power like Shadowreaper Anduin.
I am curious to see what other people feel the potential impact to the Wild game would/could be if this errata were to take place? Personally, I love to play the game for the entertainment. I'm not a league player and I'm a far cry from being pro. But playing fun decks that change the way the game is played is entertaining to me. What are everyone else's thoughts?
Challenger keyword is half an answer, cause you can only activate it when you are attacking, we would be looking for "Taunt" keyword that can be specific to "challenger on the defense" of an elusive attack, which is the same as having an elusive unit as your block.
As for something that have the same mechanic as Elusives, you can check the game "Eternal" and their "Flying" units that can only be blocked by other Flying units, the only difference is, all regions/class/factions have access to their own plethora of flying units.
Or this other game I forgot it's name, where blocking an enemy attack is based on the unit's "Speed", a unit with speed "3" can't be blocked by units of speed "1" or "2".
Just play a good spider deck to crush Ez decks. As an aggro/midrange player. I lick my chops at Ez decks when I play aggro. The reason Ez is rising is because Bannerman is, was/kind of the best deck. Bannerman is midrange and Control beats Midrange.
Aggro beats Control Control beats Midrange Midrange beats Aggro
It is a vicious brutal cycle, Ez is the result of Elusive Midrange and Bannerman Midrange taking tier 1 status. It was natural a control deck would become the solution.
I hate control players, but I understand the necessary evil. If there were no control decks. There would be no aggro decks and the only thing you'll have is midrange. I welcome Ez's rise, because it will mean the end of bannerman and elusives.
If you keep seeing Ez deck crop up. Build a Spider or Discard burn deck and make them wish they didn't play that deck. If you want to become a good player you have to adapt.
Adapt? Seems like a kinda conceited thing "If you want to be a good player, just carbon copy known good meta decks" is what you're saying. I'd hardly quantify that as a good player. Playing a deck well, knowing when to play counters is what makes a good player. There's a reason people call certain decks "auto-pilot" decks, because they are easy to play and provide high winrates. Holistically those types of decks are....that's right..."aggro/midrange" decks. Wait...what's that you pilot? Aggro/Midrange?
I jest. I jest...but seriously. Your response coming right after Hellcopter's response...
Personal opinion: I also dislike the very existence of OTK decks, because there is nothing that can be done exept: FINISHING THE GAME BEFORE THEY WIN! Just imagine there is reaper hidden in your match whispering: You only have X turns left before you DIE!
This concept sets a timer and puts a lot of pressure on the opponent. So in order to win, its necessary to build a deck in a certain way that allows to close games before X turn, where X is the average turn the OTK assembles their combo. This limits a lot of deck build creativity and pushes many decks out of the meta. For example, one of the reasosn i believe Vladimir doesn't see any play despite many recent buffs on the archetype, its because he lacks an explosive finisher so can't beat ez wich is pretty popular right now.
I am ok with OTK existing but as a guy who likes to build OOTB decks, i would probably be happier if they didn't.
See the bolded part?
Balance. The problem is that despite LoR having MORE control over phases of the game, ways to counter players...ironically as of late I've found it LESS and LESS interactive than hearthstone. Hearthstone may have RNG filled moments, but even as a control player up against an aggro Demon Hunter deck I feel like I have a chance.
But when I'm playing a deck in LoR, if I'm up against the currently stupidly popular Shadow Isle control deck, I know there's very little chance of me winning. The problem is that you can only have 2 regions in a deck. And some regions have little or NO tools to combat certain mechanics. This isn't hearthstone where I can just include a neutral tech card if I'm having trouble with removal or a big unit, or aoe. In hearthstone you can include Big Game Hunter in your deck if your deck lacks hard removal, in LoR unless you have Vengeance and are playing a shadow isles deck, chances are your removal only comes in the form of multi card combos (think Frostbite+Shatter for Freljord) . The problem I'm starting to see is that by restricting cards to regions and not having "neutral" cards, you end up obviating entire regions during metas.
If the entire point of the game is to have fun while playing decks that interest you, being forced to play certain regions because the current meta is angled in some way, isn't fun, it's restrictive. And that is going to do two things: One it's going to disenfranchise players from joining/playing. Two even if it doesn't kill the game or playerbase, it's going to restrict creativity. Neither of those prospects is good for LoR in the long term.
I never said to "net deck", my advice as to for spoons to build a spider or discard burn deck. I agree, Good players just play "net decks", Great Players create the net decks. And yes you need to adapt. If you play one deck because you have fun with it. By all means play it and have fun, but don't come whining to the devs that your deck sucks when it falls out of meta. If I wanted him to net deck I would of told him to go build this and link a deck list.
Now you do bring up a good point of the 2 region limit. It's a hard decision whether lock at 2, 3, or no limit. My only concern and counter to your argument is if there was no region limit, you would create super cards that would show up in every deck. I think 2 is appropriate for the moment. I can see expanding it to 3 o more, as more sets, regions and cards are introduced. Including introducing concepts that encourage multi-regions like. "Play: Unit gets +1/+1 for each unique region units have on the battlefield." For this card cost 1 less for each region in your hand. I do find there is plenty of creativity in the game right now, but I do agree some regions are way more popular than others. Compare Ionia/P&Z to Frejord.
I do think for the longevity of the game, they do need to introduce cards at a faster pace. If you count the closed and this first season. We've had the same cards for nearly 16-18 weeks. If they want to keep the health of the game fresh and fun, they need to reduce the number of weeks between new cards.
While I will ignore the cheeky response of calling aggro players dumb, oh wait "auto-pilot" is what we are calling it. Control is not my play style, I do not like sitting around drawing cards and preventing the other player from play the game. But apparently my tiny aggro brain cannot understand your advance control play style concepts. Oh wait I do play them, I just don't have as much fun playing them.
Frostbite effects are generally temporary soft counters. You either play a unit that frostbites an enemy for one turn (in which case they just don't attack with it), or you use a burst spell to frostbite the enemy (in which case you still need your own elusive to actually kill it). We aren't considering combos like Frostbite+Shatter or Winter's Breath because then you're using MULTIPLE resources just to kill an elusive unit. (And barring super expensive setup end game combos like enlightened Karma+Winter's Breath) you should avoid using multiple resources just to kill a single card unless it's a champion.
In the circumstances where you use multiple card combos to kill a champion, especially one that is central to the opponents gameplan, like Ezreal or Teemo, then I agree it's fine to "waste" resources.
But in general discussion of elusives as a card mechanic on the whole, it's not a great idea to waste removal. Even in the circumstances where you use efficient removal of 1:1 ratios to kill elusives, you're then using your removal on relatively weak cards. The whole idea behind removal is that you are using it to efficiently control the state of the board.
As for challenger, Yes challenger can pull Elusives, but it's a mechanic that only favors attacking. Your challenger units can't block a buffed elusive, and in general if you're trying to counter elusives currently you need a mechanic that can be used for both offense and defense. (like spells for example) I've used challenger to pull and kill Elusives, but generally speaking it's hard to consistently pull it off, because often you'll get stunned/recalled. (i.e. stalled out) while they continue to progress their gameplan.
You're welcome to contribute, just saying my post this morning was because I know there's lot of contention about Elusive and it's effect on the meta. You don't necessarily have to agree with me, but there are times when I think the mechanic has caused more harm to the game because of it's design limitation, then it helps.
Tongue in cheek is one thing. Being a douchebag for the sake of raising a few eyebrows is another. While I understand why you voiced it the way you did... there are other words that could have been used to achieve the impact you wanted without venturing into the area of racism.
How did u never mention challenger units or frostbite effects is amazing to me.
Challengers, yes. But how does Frostbite counter elusives? I fact, I'd argue it's a lot less effective than against non-elusives (on which you can get free damage during combat).
I will say that the OP's idea for a new mechanic sounds really neat. But as Meisterz pointed out, there's no thematic link to the units which currently have the Elusive keyword.
It really is. I sincerely think that the R&D at Blizzard dropped the ball on this one.
...That... or they intentionally made it ridiculous in an effort to curve new players into the game with something that doesn't necessarily need a lot of cards or knowledge about play style to win.
True, the biggest problem I see is that mechanics are naturally supposed to be stronger in some regions, and weaker in others. For example "Tough" is a mechanic you'd expect to see in Demacia, but not something you'd expect to see in Shadow Isles.
Elusive has some smattering of units in each area. But for reference:
Demacia: 1
Freljord: 0
Ionia: 10 + 1 spell that grants elusive
Noxus: 0
P&Z: 5 + multiple other cards that grant elusive through various means.
Shadow Isles: 0
Point being that the region restriction is both LoR biggest draw as well as it's biggest weakness. Want to counter elusives? Guess you have to run Ionia as 1/2 your deck.
I'm not even sure at this point how they balance some of the stuff (not even talking about elusives at this point) because it seems like they've dug themselves into a corner.
I see this as a counter to removal for aggro-based decks. Think how Glimpse is used, but more damage to the face. It will be interesting if you run one over the other or both.
Just play a good spider deck to crush Ez decks. As an aggro/midrange player. I lick my chops at Ez decks when I play aggro. The reason Ez is rising is because Bannerman is, was/kind of the best deck. Bannerman is midrange and Control beats Midrange.
Aggro beats Control Control beats Midrange Midrange beats Aggro
It is a vicious brutal cycle, Ez is the result of Elusive Midrange and Bannerman Midrange taking tier 1 status. It was natural a control deck would become the solution.
I hate control players, but I understand the necessary evil. If there were no control decks. There would be no aggro decks and the only thing you'll have is midrange. I welcome Ez's rise, because it will mean the end of bannerman and elusives.
If you keep seeing Ez deck crop up. Build a Spider or Discard burn deck and make them wish they didn't play that deck. If you want to become a good player you have to adapt.
Adapt? Seems like a kinda conceited thing "If you want to be a good player, just carbon copy known good meta decks" is what you're saying. I'd hardly quantify that as a good player. Playing a deck well, knowing when to play counters is what makes a good player. There's a reason people call certain decks "auto-pilot" decks, because they are easy to play and provide high winrates. Holistically those types of decks are....that's right..."aggro/midrange" decks. Wait...what's that you pilot? Aggro/Midrange?
I jest. I jest...but seriously. Your response coming right after Hellcopter's response...
Personal opinion: I also dislike the very existence of OTK decks, because there is nothing that can be done exept: FINISHING THE GAME BEFORE THEY WIN! Just imagine there is reaper hidden in your match whispering: You only have X turns left before you DIE!
This concept sets a timer and puts a lot of pressure on the opponent. So in order to win, its necessary to build a deck in a certain way that allows to close games before X turn, where X is the average turn the OTK assembles their combo. This limits a lot of deck build creativity and pushes many decks out of the meta. For example, one of the reasosn i believe Vladimir doesn't see any play despite many recent buffs on the archetype, its because he lacks an explosive finisher so can't beat ez wich is pretty popular right now.
I am ok with OTK existing but as a guy who likes to build OOTB decks, i would probably be happier if they didn't.
See the bolded part?
Balance. The problem is that despite LoR having MORE control over phases of the game, ways to counter players...ironically as of late I've found it LESS and LESS interactive than hearthstone. Hearthstone may have RNG filled moments, but even as a control player up against an aggro Demon Hunter deck I feel like I have a chance.
But when I'm playing a deck in LoR, if I'm up against the currently stupidly popular Shadow Isle control deck, I know there's very little chance of me winning. The problem is that you can only have 2 regions in a deck. And some regions have little or NO tools to combat certain mechanics. This isn't hearthstone where I can just include a neutral tech card if I'm having trouble with removal or a big unit, or aoe. In hearthstone you can include Big Game Hunter in your deck if your deck lacks hard removal, in LoR unless you have Vengeance and are playing a shadow isles deck, chances are your removal only comes in the form of multi card combos (think Frostbite+Shatter for Freljord) . The problem I'm starting to see is that by restricting cards to regions and not having "neutral" cards, you end up obviating entire regions during metas.
If the entire point of the game is to have fun while playing decks that interest you, being forced to play certain regions because the current meta is angled in some way, isn't fun, it's restrictive. And that is going to do two things: One it's going to disenfranchise players from joining/playing. Two even if it doesn't kill the game or playerbase, it's going to restrict creativity. Neither of those prospects is good for LoR in the long term.
In terms of mechanics, having a defensive version of Quick Attack seems pretty reasonable to me, but from a flavor standpoint it's radically different from elusive, and feels more appropriate in a region like Demacia (which is a lot more focused on establishing a board of big, tough guys).
The fix for Elusive is ultimately to print more cards across regions that can deal with Elusive units (cheap removal, AOEs, challengers, etc.) so that the metagame can consistently re-balance itself when Elusives are a problem.
Some of the interactions in LoR aren't....let's say as refined as they should be. One of those being how people play and interact with Elusive creatures.
I kept thinking "well why didn't they just make it like Hearthstone's elusives, where they can't be targeted by spells" but then I realized that in a game where certain units can block, elusives in Hearthstone are like "anti removal". But Elusives in LoR are the opposite, they can't be blocked except by other elusives...
So then I thought. Well...that kind of makes them more like Hearthstone's stealth, but again...stealth isn't really a mechanic in LoR and it's not quite the same.
LoR is about a game where "ANY" unit can block....elusives requiring OTHER elusives to block makes no sense. It either promotes a meta of nothing but elusives, or nothing but removal. Neither of which is healthy. If a card dictates the meta that much there's obviously a problem.
Then I had a fantastic idea. Legends of Runeterra already has Quick Attack, which makes a unit on offense essentially able to get a free attack (stipulations obviously not considered here for brevity).
What if the Elusive mechanic was reworked into the opposite of quick attack. Kinda like "Quick Defense" Instead of Elusives requiring other elusives to block. Any card with quick attack is generally better on offense than defense. What if Elusive cards were better on DEFENSE instead of offense. Elusive could be reworked into something like "the first damage or spell this round is dodged". Meaning that an elusive card on offense would be able to be blocked by ANY unit (no longer requiring other elusives) but on defense it would not take any damage.
However, things like quick attack or double attack (Lucian/Senna) could bypass elusive. So in order to kill an elusive unit, you have to force them to use it on offense, or you have to use a "ping" type spell (like Mystic shot for example).
It would work similar to barrier in that sense, but barrier can be used both offensively/defensively, where Elusive would be a defensive only mechanic to be the opposite of quick attack.
Of course with all of this occurring in this hypothetical scenario, Elusive would become a much better Armor mechanic (which IMO is a crappy mechanic that hardly anyone uses, it rarely ever helps and probably needs to be reworked or buffed itself, or alternatively allow the Tough mechanic to stack...)
oh you mean Hooghout? (dw, he is basically a public figure at this point, no shaming here). That guy was great, I have never seen someone who manages to continuously write huge walls of text that all say basicaly the same thing...which was mostly nothing at all.
I just remember he once made a thread about how Temporus could possibly be used to counter Ice Block and then got extremely aggressive when pretty much everyone told him that the idea was completely ridiculous because giving Mage two free turns is basically suicide in 9/10 cases (which it is, obviously).
It got so bad that he basically discredited anyone who didn't agree with his very ill conceived points a troll...despite being pretty much objectively wrong.
Oh my.
After reading your post, I decided to search his thread history and find the one you are referring to. I browsed through the first five pages and stumbled upon another interesting thread about Southsea Captain and the things you said above checked out. :/
Now, I don't want to start a "name and shame" trend, because it's not the purpose of this thread (+ it's kinda against the rules), but I am just going to say, that I had met much much worse trolls back in hpwn. Like I remember a dude, who wrote walls of scatty text and sometimes they even compared hs to political scenes or to a certain psychological behaviour.
oh you mean Hooghout? (dw, he is basically a public figure at this point, no shaming here). That guy was great, I have never seen someone who manages to continuously write huge walls of text that all say basicaly the same thing...which was mostly nothing at all.
I just remember he once made a thread about how Temporus could possibly be used to counter Ice Block and then got extremely aggressive when pretty much everyone told him that the idea was completely ridiculous because giving Mage two free turns is basically suicide in 9/10 cases (which it is, obviously).
It got so bad that he basically discredited anyone who didn't agree with his very ill conceived points a troll...despite being pretty much objectively wrong.
Oh my.
After reading your post, I decided to search his thread history and find the one you were referring to. I browsed through the first five pages and stumbled upon another interesting thread about Southsea Captain and the things you said above checked out. :/
Now, I don't want to start a "name and shame" trend, because it's not the purpose of this thread (+ it's kinda against the rules), but I am just going to say, that I had met much, much worse trolls back in hpwn. Like I remember a dude, who wrote walls of scatty text and sometimes they even compared hs to political scenes or to a certain psychological behaviour. They went extremely off-topic.
Legends of Runeterra - Third Teaser for the Next Ionia Champion
I don't know anything about LoL, but I imagine that those ropes really hurt and are not that effective for combat.
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
I think elusives can be fixed by printing counters to them in every region. For example, they could add a Keyword that lets units block Elusives without having elusive (let’s call it Vigilant). Then other regions could have a lot of fairly statted cards with this keyword. Riot could also print elusive counter cards like a 5 Mana 5/6 with “Elusives have Vulnerable” to solve the problem. As long as every region has a few good elusive counter cards, the Keyword can remain balanced.
Legends of Runeterra - Second Teaser for the Next Ionia Champion
Cool art
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
To VictorVonVox's point, this kind of asymmetry is okay - you want each region to feel meaningfully different, much as the colors do in MTG.
This is really the big problem. It's fine for mechanics to be stronger or weaker in different regions, but you can't have a mechanic that is simultaneously concentrated in a small subset of regions and inherently stronger than other mechanics (mostly because Ionia has counters and burst speed buffs to protect their largely untouchable units from the few answers that exist today).
Most CCGs would solve this in simple ways (higher mana costs, lower stats for Elusives, etc.), but Riot seems reluctant to do that broadly for fear that they'll make Elusives too weak/invalidate a large part of the Ionia identity. In that way, I agree that they've put themselves in a corner, but only for Ionia, not for the game writ large.
This is why I think they need to just print a lot more cards - either to add other things to the Ionia identity so that they can reasonably nerf Elusives, or to make lots of real counters across other regions so that they're not inherently oppressive.
Turn 6 OTK!
Turn 6 OTK is possible with the deck, but not likely to pull off.
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
I think the introduction of more cards into the game will solve the elusive concern. We just have think elusive as "flying" in terms of mtg. MTG doesn't really have a single minded "flying" deck because all the colors have solutions.
White - Hard removal
Blue - Bounce and counterspells
black - Hard removal
red - direct damage
green - reach and direct damage to flying units only
@Sykomyke
His concept of a Quick Defense to block elusive units is a good idea. I'm all for this being introduced to new cards. I had similar idea in another thread, I called it Sentry, i think.
Another idea is direct damage to elusives only. I am a bit less of a fan of this idea, but it is an option.
I do have growing concern elusives are going to be worse with the new set. Scout on top Elusive on top of Rally seems like a really bad idea in the making.
Also a Deny for a unit would be nice as well. Even though I dread the concept of control players getting another tool.
Genn Greymane and the Demon Hunter
When Blizzard decided to roll our Demon Hunter, I think we can all agree on the fact that they may not have thought things through well enough. One thing that have a thought on is Genn Greymane's interaction with the deck. The benefit of running this minion in your deck is that it lowers that cost of your Hero Power at the cost of restricting the cards that you put in your deck. However, with Demon Hunter, the standard Hero Power is already 1 less than every other Hero Power.
What I am curious is how other people feel about what I would like to see. Instead of making your Hero Power cost (1), having an Even Deck with Genn Greymane would be errata'd to state, "Your Hero Power costs (1) less". Doing this would have no impact on the game with other classes, but would make playing an Even Demon Hunter a possibility.
With Raza the Chained, we have all seen what can happen with a (0) cost Hero Power. However with that deck you are forced to play Highlander to get the benefit, whereas Even Demon Hunter doesn't have a card that would reset the Hero Power like Shadowreaper Anduin.
I am curious to see what other people feel the potential impact to the Wild game would/could be if this errata were to take place? Personally, I love to play the game for the entertainment. I'm not a league player and I'm a far cry from being pro. But playing fun decks that change the way the game is played is entertaining to me. What are everyone else's thoughts?
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
Challenger keyword is half an answer, cause you can only activate it when you are attacking, we would be looking for "Taunt" keyword that can be specific to "challenger on the defense" of an elusive attack, which is the same as having an elusive unit as your block.
As for something that have the same mechanic as Elusives, you can check the game "Eternal" and their "Flying" units that can only be blocked by other Flying units, the only difference is, all regions/class/factions have access to their own plethora of flying units.
Or this other game I forgot it's name, where blocking an enemy attack is based on the unit's "Speed", a unit with speed "3" can't be blocked by units of speed "1" or "2".
ez karma...
I never said to "net deck", my advice as to for spoons to build a spider or discard burn deck. I agree, Good players just play "net decks", Great Players create the net decks. And yes you need to adapt. If you play one deck because you have fun with it. By all means play it and have fun, but don't come whining to the devs that your deck sucks when it falls out of meta. If I wanted him to net deck I would of told him to go build this and link a deck list.
Now you do bring up a good point of the 2 region limit. It's a hard decision whether lock at 2, 3, or no limit. My only concern and counter to your argument is if there was no region limit, you would create super cards that would show up in every deck. I think 2 is appropriate for the moment. I can see expanding it to 3 o more, as more sets, regions and cards are introduced. Including introducing concepts that encourage multi-regions like. "Play: Unit gets +1/+1 for each unique region units have on the battlefield." For this card cost 1 less for each region in your hand. I do find there is plenty of creativity in the game right now, but I do agree some regions are way more popular than others. Compare Ionia/P&Z to Frejord.
I do think for the longevity of the game, they do need to introduce cards at a faster pace. If you count the closed and this first season. We've had the same cards for nearly 16-18 weeks. If they want to keep the health of the game fresh and fun, they need to reduce the number of weeks between new cards.
While I will ignore the cheeky response of calling aggro players dumb, oh wait "auto-pilot" is what we are calling it. Control is not my play style, I do not like sitting around drawing cards and preventing the other player from play the game. But apparently my tiny aggro brain cannot understand your advance control play style concepts. Oh wait I do play them, I just don't have as much fun playing them.
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
Frostbite effects are generally temporary soft counters. You either play a unit that frostbites an enemy for one turn (in which case they just don't attack with it), or you use a burst spell to frostbite the enemy (in which case you still need your own elusive to actually kill it). We aren't considering combos like Frostbite+Shatter or Winter's Breath because then you're using MULTIPLE resources just to kill an elusive unit. (And barring super expensive setup end game combos like enlightened Karma+Winter's Breath) you should avoid using multiple resources just to kill a single card unless it's a champion.
In the circumstances where you use multiple card combos to kill a champion, especially one that is central to the opponents gameplan, like Ezreal or Teemo, then I agree it's fine to "waste" resources.
But in general discussion of elusives as a card mechanic on the whole, it's not a great idea to waste removal. Even in the circumstances where you use efficient removal of 1:1 ratios to kill elusives, you're then using your removal on relatively weak cards. The whole idea behind removal is that you are using it to efficiently control the state of the board.
As for challenger, Yes challenger can pull Elusives, but it's a mechanic that only favors attacking. Your challenger units can't block a buffed elusive, and in general if you're trying to counter elusives currently you need a mechanic that can be used for both offense and defense. (like spells for example) I've used challenger to pull and kill Elusives, but generally speaking it's hard to consistently pull it off, because often you'll get stunned/recalled. (i.e. stalled out) while they continue to progress their gameplan.
You're welcome to contribute, just saying my post this morning was because I know there's lot of contention about Elusive and it's effect on the meta. You don't necessarily have to agree with me, but there are times when I think the mechanic has caused more harm to the game because of it's design limitation, then it helps.
So Done With Hearthpwn.. Think I'm going here now.
Tongue in cheek is one thing. Being a douchebag for the sake of raising a few eyebrows is another. While I understand why you voiced it the way you did... there are other words that could have been used to achieve the impact you wanted without venturing into the area of racism.
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
Challengers, yes. But how does Frostbite counter elusives? I fact, I'd argue it's a lot less effective than against non-elusives (on which you can get free damage during combat).
I will say that the OP's idea for a new mechanic sounds really neat. But as Meisterz pointed out, there's no thematic link to the units which currently have the Elusive keyword.
Never ending beats
It really is. I sincerely think that the R&D at Blizzard dropped the ball on this one.
...That... or they intentionally made it ridiculous in an effort to curve new players into the game with something that doesn't necessarily need a lot of cards or knowledge about play style to win.
... I'll put my tin foil hat back on now.
Legends of Runeterra - First Teaser for the Next Ionia Champion
Didn't see that coming.
Legends of Runeterra - First Teaser for the Next Ionia Champion
The new champion will be Lee Sin, right?
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
How did u never mention challenger units or frostbite effects is amazing to me.
But good read nevertheless
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
True, the biggest problem I see is that mechanics are naturally supposed to be stronger in some regions, and weaker in others. For example "Tough" is a mechanic you'd expect to see in Demacia, but not something you'd expect to see in Shadow Isles.
Elusive has some smattering of units in each area. But for reference:
Point being that the region restriction is both LoR biggest draw as well as it's biggest weakness. Want to counter elusives? Guess you have to run Ionia as 1/2 your deck.
I'm not even sure at this point how they balance some of the stuff (not even talking about elusives at this point) because it seems like they've dug themselves into a corner.
New Noxus Spell - Noxian Fervor
I see this as a counter to removal for aggro-based decks. Think how Glimpse is used, but more damage to the face. It will be interesting if you run one over the other or both.
ez karma...
Adapt? Seems like a kinda conceited thing "If you want to be a good player, just carbon copy known good meta decks" is what you're saying. I'd hardly quantify that as a good player. Playing a deck well, knowing when to play counters is what makes a good player. There's a reason people call certain decks "auto-pilot" decks, because they are easy to play and provide high winrates. Holistically those types of decks are....that's right..."aggro/midrange" decks. Wait...what's that you pilot? Aggro/Midrange?
I jest. I jest...but seriously. Your response coming right after Hellcopter's response...
See the bolded part?
Balance. The problem is that despite LoR having MORE control over phases of the game, ways to counter players...ironically as of late I've found it LESS and LESS interactive than hearthstone. Hearthstone may have RNG filled moments, but even as a control player up against an aggro Demon Hunter deck I feel like I have a chance.
But when I'm playing a deck in LoR, if I'm up against the currently stupidly popular Shadow Isle control deck, I know there's very little chance of me winning. The problem is that you can only have 2 regions in a deck. And some regions have little or NO tools to combat certain mechanics. This isn't hearthstone where I can just include a neutral tech card if I'm having trouble with removal or a big unit, or aoe. In hearthstone you can include Big Game Hunter in your deck if your deck lacks hard removal, in LoR unless you have Vengeance and are playing a shadow isles deck, chances are your removal only comes in the form of multi card combos (think Frostbite+Shatter for Freljord) . The problem I'm starting to see is that by restricting cards to regions and not having "neutral" cards, you end up obviating entire regions during metas.
If the entire point of the game is to have fun while playing decks that interest you, being forced to play certain regions because the current meta is angled in some way, isn't fun, it's restrictive. And that is going to do two things: One it's going to disenfranchise players from joining/playing. Two even if it doesn't kill the game or playerbase, it's going to restrict creativity. Neither of those prospects is good for LoR in the long term.
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
In terms of mechanics, having a defensive version of Quick Attack seems pretty reasonable to me, but from a flavor standpoint it's radically different from elusive, and feels more appropriate in a region like Demacia (which is a lot more focused on establishing a board of big, tough guys).
The fix for Elusive is ultimately to print more cards across regions that can deal with Elusive units (cheap removal, AOEs, challengers, etc.) so that the metagame can consistently re-balance itself when Elusives are a problem.
This Week's Tavern Brawl is "Battle of Tol Barad" - Play Minions and Get Free Spells of the Same Cost
played tempo damage warrior, became Mind Spike Magni.
Good games
Elusive Balancing - Showerthought...
I had an idea this morning...
Some of the interactions in LoR aren't....let's say as refined as they should be. One of those being how people play and interact with Elusive creatures.
I kept thinking "well why didn't they just make it like Hearthstone's elusives, where they can't be targeted by spells" but then I realized that in a game where certain units can block, elusives in Hearthstone are like "anti removal". But Elusives in LoR are the opposite, they can't be blocked except by other elusives...
So then I thought. Well...that kind of makes them more like Hearthstone's stealth, but again...stealth isn't really a mechanic in LoR and it's not quite the same.
LoR is about a game where "ANY" unit can block....elusives requiring OTHER elusives to block makes no sense. It either promotes a meta of nothing but elusives, or nothing but removal. Neither of which is healthy. If a card dictates the meta that much there's obviously a problem.
Then I had a fantastic idea. Legends of Runeterra already has Quick Attack, which makes a unit on offense essentially able to get a free attack (stipulations obviously not considered here for brevity).
What if the Elusive mechanic was reworked into the opposite of quick attack. Kinda like "Quick Defense" Instead of Elusives requiring other elusives to block. Any card with quick attack is generally better on offense than defense. What if Elusive cards were better on DEFENSE instead of offense. Elusive could be reworked into something like "the first damage or spell this round is dodged". Meaning that an elusive card on offense would be able to be blocked by ANY unit (no longer requiring other elusives) but on defense it would not take any damage.
However, things like quick attack or double attack (Lucian/Senna) could bypass elusive. So in order to kill an elusive unit, you have to force them to use it on offense, or you have to use a "ping" type spell (like Mystic shot for example).
It would work similar to barrier in that sense, but barrier can be used both offensively/defensively, where Elusive would be a defensive only mechanic to be the opposite of quick attack.
Of course with all of this occurring in this hypothetical scenario, Elusive would become a much better Armor mechanic (which IMO is a crappy mechanic that hardly anyone uses, it rarely ever helps and probably needs to be reworked or buffed itself, or alternatively allow the Tough mechanic to stack...)
Anyhow...just my shower thought this morning...
So Done With Hearthpwn.. Think I'm going here now.
Yup, that's the one. :D
So Done With Hearthpwn.. Think I'm going here now.
oh you mean Hooghout? (dw, he is basically a public figure at this point, no shaming here). That guy was great, I have never seen someone who manages to continuously write huge walls of text that all say basicaly the same thing...which was mostly nothing at all.
Sometimes I miss the shitshow over there.
So Done With Hearthpwn.. Think I'm going here now.
Oh my.
After reading your post, I decided to search his thread history and find the one you were referring to. I browsed through the first five pages and stumbled upon another interesting thread about Southsea Captain and the things you said above checked out. :/
Now, I don't want to start a "name and shame" trend, because it's not the purpose of this thread (+ it's kinda against the rules), but I am just going to say, that I had met much, much worse trolls back in hpwn. Like I remember a dude, who wrote walls of scatty text and sometimes they even compared hs to political scenes or to a certain psychological behaviour. They went extremely off-topic.