Honestly, the whole economy experiment is making balance a whole lot harder than it needs to be. I think maybe they didn't factor in the impact of streamers and the extent to which influencers warp the metagame when they cooked up this throttled progression plan.
The original idea was that different people would progress in different regions, and the meta would be more diverse because of that.
The reality is that most people progressed in the regions streamers were showcasing, and certain archetypes became way more popular than they deserved, simply because yes, they were strong, but also because so many people locked themselves into those archetypes and had to open more Vaults before they could branch out. In fact, I'm sure a lot of free players are still stuck in one or two of those early flavors of the week.
Paying players have been able to branch out and try a lot of new things, but even so, very few people (if any) have a full set -- though it is technically possible at this point, with enough Expedition grinding to level up all regions.
My point is, what we see as overused, seemingly overpowered archetypes may in many cases have more to do with hivemind trends than actual power levels. When the vast majority of players sank all of their resources into very similar subsets of cards, it probably did not create an accurate picture of what's actually strong.
It recently occurred to me that Ledros is stronger than a lot of Champions, so why not make him a Champion, subject to Champion deckbuilding restrictions?
They could significantly water him down in the pre-leveled version and give him a fairly difficult "quest."
For example:
8 mana 6/4 Fearsome,Play: Cut the enemy Nexus Health in half. Level Up: I've killed 3 units.
Leveled up: +1/+1, loses Play effect, Last Breath: Return me to hand.
This would still make a good Champion, but it's not great for aggro decks, and it's just a lot more fair to play against generally. Most important is that you do not get to keep damaging the Nexus when he starts bouncing. There is some incentive to run multiple copies because he probably doesn't survive to level up on the first try. (But note that he does not have to survive as he kills the units to increment his counter.)
I heard that in SEA they play control more than lackey shit that I only face off against in my current zone. Is that true? Anyone know?
I'm a 4 hour drive from SEA and I play against nothing but Hunter, Druid and Rogue all day. No idea if you only face off against people in your time zone.
I do think they should have also upgraded her hero power animation since that is just an ordinary ping. You know, maybe more red or bigger ball that flies...or maybe some random color every time? Or add an option to choose the color you want the fire ball to be in? A little customization...would be nice. That's why I like the Medivh one: his fireball is purple and makes another kind of sound, more smooth / cool.
And with a fire mage portrait I also want more support for either Exodia mage / tempo aggro mage...although that new dragon minion has +2 spell power AND a discover and can be an amazing tool in tempo decks.
Just thinking, apropos-of-nothing, of specific health break-points to think about in LoR. Meta's still in flux, of course, but there are enough trends emerging that we can think of:
8 - Major Ledros breakpoint - >8 health means four plays required to kill you, guaranteeing you two attack rounds
Obviously I'm not being in any way comprehensive here, and am mostly trying to stick to the main meta points (e.g. Get Excited isn't on there because Jinx is basically absent from the meta so far)... but I'm still confident I'm missing stuff. Thoughts?
thanks guys, it would be cool if it negates but atleast now i know not to use it against recall it will be good against challangers trough.
Tbh it's not a great card at the moment. The meta trends towards buffs over big units; six mana for two Barriers feels steep in Constructed outside of specific Fiora setups or something. I find myself comparing it very unfavourably to Back To Back
d in a different thread (the patch predictions, I believe): Make Ledros bounce to the top of its owner's deck instead of their hand. Boom, suddenly the immense card advantage Ledros generates is gone. If your opponent keeps playing him turn after turn, they at least won't accumulate additional cards. He might still be a bit too strong and need some tweaking from there, but I think it'd be a great start to balancing Ledros while preserving his identity.
As in the other thread, I would agree with this change. It's less about card advantage, in my view, and more about having a significant trade-off to playing him - by doing so you're essentially locking yourself into a single strategy (particularly if your hand is otherwise empty). You're all-in, and your opponent can then formulate a strategy to counter what you're doing, in which case you lose. If they can't, you win. In that case, he would be no different to other game-ending cards.
There's a real irony in dropping an anecdote shortly after saying "When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless."
There isn't at all, assuming you're reading analytically rather than just looking to snipe. I stated clearly that it was an anecdotal example. The difference between this and the earlier instance is that the earlier post gave no real argument or context - just gave an anecdote and said 'this is why it needs to change'. That's attempting to use an anecdote as evidence, which is worthless.
My use-case was purely as an example to better explain what I was saying. It wasn't intended to be supporting evidence - which is why I called out the anecdote myself, twice - it was purely to make it clear what point I was trying to make. By calling it out I was attempting to make it clear that I wasn't trying to hang any point on it, but apparently that was unsuccessful.
Incidentally, the anecdote itself was raised purely in the context of the Fearsome tag and whether removing it makes trades more or less interesting. It wasn't connected to the rest of the card, and wasn't used to make any point in relation to the burn effect or similar. Again, thought that was obvious from the discussion.
The trouble with that argument is that Elusives aren't dominant anymore. And the fact that they were shifted from the top spot in a couple of weeks makes it clear that dominance is the result of a shifting meta, not power level. So why would Riot intervene in the meta to resolve something which isn't a power level issue? There's no reason to do so beyond silencing some whiners.
I think there's still a point to be made about the (at least temporarily) high success of Elusive decks. They may have dropped off now due to the emergence of Fearsome decks, but that's only one archetype that's apparently able to beat Elusives consistently. Rather than concluding that all is well and dandy this way, I think it'd be prudent to ponder if maybe Elusive and Fearsome decks (which, incidentally, both use mechanics to prevent the opponent from blocking) are a tad too strong compared to the rest of the game's (plentiful) deck archetypes.
I'm currently climbing a lot with it. It's susceptible to stun decks, but everything else is fair game or just get's owned very quickly. Surprise Overwhelm is very strong!
I am not salty I just see that those decks are way too dominant, and Elise is too good of a 2 drop, I play fearsome/spiders/hecarim for a while so I am asking to nerf the deck I am playing cause I feel it's too strong, losing stuff in the mirror.. well Elise is part of the mirror lol.
I prefer to predict more nerfs that not also I don't claim ALL card should be nerfed just predicting what Riot might do.
In league balance when Riot nerfs something they nerf a lot of aspects of that something, also sometimes buff other aspects in the same time (see: aatrox and akali nerfs).
I don't believe it would make the decks unplayable, currently fearsome decks are over represented in the meta (Around 40% pick in masters according to swim), if you nerf 3 cards in the deck the deck is still really powerful.
- Salt - The trouble with that argument is that Elusives aren't dominant anymore. And the fact that they were shifted from the top spot in a couple of weeks makes it clear that dominance is the result of a shifting meta, not power level. So why would Riot intervene in the meta to resolve something which isn't a power level issue? There's no reason to do so beyond silencing some whiners.
- Elise - Apologies, I wasn't clear. When I say she'd lose a lot in the mirror, I mean she'd lose a lot against non-spider SI decks. She'd find it difficult to find any window to attack at any stage of the game without relying on Fearsome alone to survive (which can be overridden with buffs, of course).
- Predictions - I'm not sure throwing out a couple dozen nerfs and calling them predictions - particularly when your OP doesn't say that - is really predicting...
- Unplayability - Nerfing several of the central cards to a deck is pretty much always going to drop it out of the meta. Using HS as an example, most decks will die off to a single nerf, and if they come back it's either a result of a subsequent meta shift or a new angle being taken. Single nerfs can have significant winrate shifts, and blanket-nerfing a significant chunk of a deck is far more than just a single nerf. Hell, if it's just three cards, that's still up to 30% of a deck nerfed in one go (and incidentally, assuming we're sticking with the Dawnspiders example from before, that'd be four cards nerfed. Five if you count Ledros as part of it).
- Riot nerf strategy - I wholly disagree with that statement, just looking at the empirical evidence. In any given League patch notes, you'll see one, maybe two big nerfs/buffs at most (usually one). You'll also see a dozen small changes which happen alongside it. Just looking at 10.3 as an example - major Akali buff (1x big), minor changes to Aphelios, Azir, Corki, Diana, Ekko, Ezreal, Galio, Leona, MF, Rumble, Sejuani, Senna, Sett, Sona, Yuumi (15x small), plus some assorted other changes. This, incidentally, is analogous to my point above (although I don't point to it as a true example because the games are wholly different genres) - these small changes are often, in themselves, enough to push a champion out of the meta for a time. Small changes can have big impacts.
Incidentally, given we're clearly both prone to large posts, I advise snipping quotes as I have done above so as to mitigate their length at least a little!
Rimetusk Shaman in generally is pretty gross right now. I kinda wish they either made its target random or dropped it to 4 mana but it instead targets "weakest" enemy. It's getting a TON of play right now, especially contrasting it to Minotaur Reckoner which has a better body and stuns which is strictly better than frostbite but because its effect is constrained to "smallest" it usually ends up getting chumped.
please don't introduce more randomness into the game. If anything it just needs to be easier to remove or cost more.
It's a 3 health follower for 5 mana. It's already as easy to remove as it gets
It is also strange that in the beginners' guide nothing is said about hand size limit of cards, the limit of minions on board, and for example that "Rally" can make you attack 2nd time on the same turn ...
What meisterz said. I started playing the game from the open beta launch, and I got confused when I read some card descriptions / guides online that said "Ready your attack," as that's not a phrase that appears in the live game.
it would be cool if stand united negates the spell but i agree with ya logically shadowshift should work like SU it would make more sense to me, but i guess the shadow is battle only right now.
In the SI cards' cases, it's because of the word 'to' in the text. You have to do the former to trigger the latter.
Good catch. I think it's kind of similar to cards like Get Excited! in this way, which says "To play, discard 1 card." It's not quite the same, obviously (For Get Excited!, discarding is the prerequisite to being able to play it in the first place), but I agree that the word "to" seems to be a key term here.
Legends of Runeterra Concept Art Spotlight - Ionia
We're supposed to be getting a balance patch, tomorrow, correct?
Relenless pursuit
You were probably going to win the game no matter what if you can cast both of those in the same turn and already have a board set up for it.
Relenless pursuit
It's good for all kinds of things. It's brilliant after For Demacia!, for example.
My predictions for changes we are going to see this Tuesday
Honestly, the whole economy experiment is making balance a whole lot harder than it needs to be. I think maybe they didn't factor in the impact of streamers and the extent to which influencers warp the metagame when they cooked up this throttled progression plan.
The original idea was that different people would progress in different regions, and the meta would be more diverse because of that.
The reality is that most people progressed in the regions streamers were showcasing, and certain archetypes became way more popular than they deserved, simply because yes, they were strong, but also because so many people locked themselves into those archetypes and had to open more Vaults before they could branch out. In fact, I'm sure a lot of free players are still stuck in one or two of those early flavors of the week.
Paying players have been able to branch out and try a lot of new things, but even so, very few people (if any) have a full set -- though it is technically possible at this point, with enough Expedition grinding to level up all regions.
My point is, what we see as overused, seemingly overpowered archetypes may in many cases have more to do with hivemind trends than actual power levels. When the vast majority of players sank all of their resources into very similar subsets of cards, it probably did not create an accurate picture of what's actually strong.
Commander Ledros ought to round down
It recently occurred to me that Ledros is stronger than a lot of Champions, so why not make him a Champion, subject to Champion deckbuilding restrictions?
They could significantly water him down in the pre-leveled version and give him a fairly difficult "quest."
For example:
8 mana 6/4 Fearsome, Play: Cut the enemy Nexus Health in half. Level Up: I've killed 3 units.
Leveled up: +1/+1, loses Play effect, Last Breath: Return me to hand.
This would still make a good Champion, but it's not great for aggro decks, and it's just a lot more fair to play against generally. Most important is that you do not get to keep damaging the Nexus when he starts bouncing. There is some incentive to run multiple copies because he probably doesn't survive to level up on the first try. (But note that he does not have to survive as he kills the units to increment his counter.)
81% WR Highlander Priest
I wanna play that deck, but i don't have Lazul, Mindflyer and Amet. They are mustinclude?
Relenless pursuit
It's really only good for elusives that want to double tap you. I've never seen anyone play it in an Ionia deck without elusives.
81% WR Highlander Priest
Very nice deck, goona give it a try later.
Breakpoints
Were you drunk when you made this thread?
Group Therapy! Need to blow off some steam? Mega salty? Here's the place!
I'm a 4 hour drive from SEA and I play against nothing but Hunter, Druid and Rogue all day. No idea if you only face off against people in your time zone.
Group Therapy! Need to blow off some steam? Mega salty? Here's the place!
In the salt thread it is also ok to just down-vote everyone because you are in a bad mood.
1000 wins hero rewards
I do think they should have also upgraded her hero power animation since that is just an ordinary ping. You know, maybe more red or bigger ball that flies...or maybe some random color every time? Or add an option to choose the color you want the fire ball to be in? A little customization...would be nice. That's why I like the Medivh one: his fireball is purple and makes another kind of sound, more smooth / cool.
And with a fire mage portrait I also want more support for either Exodia mage / tempo aggro mage...although that new dragon minion has +2 spell power AND a discover and can be an amazing tool in tempo decks.
Breakpoints
Just thinking, apropos-of-nothing, of specific health break-points to think about in LoR. Meta's still in flux, of course, but there are enough trends emerging that we can think of:
1 - Vile Feast
2 - Mystic Shot, Fleetfeather Tracker, Laurent Protege
3 - Black Spear, Grasp, Fiora
[3] - Culling Strike; Power not health
4+ - Ehhh...?
8 - Major Ledros breakpoint - >8 health means four plays required to kill you, guaranteeing you two attack rounds
Obviously I'm not being in any way comprehensive here, and am mostly trying to stick to the main meta points (e.g. Get Excited isn't on there because Jinx is basically absent from the meta so far)... but I'm still confident I'm missing stuff. Thoughts?
does united stand negates spells?
Tbh it's not a great card at the moment. The meta trends towards buffs over big units; six mana for two Barriers feels steep in Constructed outside of specific Fiora setups or something. I find myself comparing it very unfavourably to Back To Back
Commander Ledros ought to round down
As in the other thread, I would agree with this change. It's less about card advantage, in my view, and more about having a significant trade-off to playing him - by doing so you're essentially locking yourself into a single strategy (particularly if your hand is otherwise empty). You're all-in, and your opponent can then formulate a strategy to counter what you're doing, in which case you lose. If they can't, you win. In that case, he would be no different to other game-ending cards.
There isn't at all, assuming you're reading analytically rather than just looking to snipe. I stated clearly that it was an anecdotal example. The difference between this and the earlier instance is that the earlier post gave no real argument or context - just gave an anecdote and said 'this is why it needs to change'. That's attempting to use an anecdote as evidence, which is worthless.
My use-case was purely as an example to better explain what I was saying. It wasn't intended to be supporting evidence - which is why I called out the anecdote myself, twice - it was purely to make it clear what point I was trying to make. By calling it out I was attempting to make it clear that I wasn't trying to hang any point on it, but apparently that was unsuccessful.
Incidentally, the anecdote itself was raised purely in the context of the Fearsome tag and whether removing it makes trades more or less interesting. It wasn't connected to the rest of the card, and wasn't used to make any point in relation to the burn effect or similar. Again, thought that was obvious from the discussion.
My predictions for changes we are going to see this Tuesday
I think there's still a point to be made about the (at least temporarily) high success of Elusive decks. They may have dropped off now due to the emergence of Fearsome decks, but that's only one archetype that's apparently able to beat Elusives consistently. Rather than concluding that all is well and dandy this way, I think it'd be prudent to ponder if maybe Elusive and Fearsome decks (which, incidentally, both use mechanics to prevent the opponent from blocking) are a tad too strong compared to the rest of the game's (plentiful) deck archetypes.
MTG Arena - World Championship XXVI Winner
Yeah, but keeping that hand was so greedy. If he would it hit the land he would it for sure had a very good chance of winning.
Transfusion
also check out this one:
https://lor.mobalytics.gg/decks/bot56belnis88n3dlhe0
I'm currently climbing a lot with it. It's susceptible to stun decks, but everything else is fair game or just get's owned very quickly. Surprise Overwhelm is very strong!
My predictions for changes we are going to see this Tuesday
- Salt - The trouble with that argument is that Elusives aren't dominant anymore. And the fact that they were shifted from the top spot in a couple of weeks makes it clear that dominance is the result of a shifting meta, not power level. So why would Riot intervene in the meta to resolve something which isn't a power level issue? There's no reason to do so beyond silencing some whiners.
- Elise - Apologies, I wasn't clear. When I say she'd lose a lot in the mirror, I mean she'd lose a lot against non-spider SI decks. She'd find it difficult to find any window to attack at any stage of the game without relying on Fearsome alone to survive (which can be overridden with buffs, of course).
- Predictions - I'm not sure throwing out a couple dozen nerfs and calling them predictions - particularly when your OP doesn't say that - is really predicting...
- Unplayability - Nerfing several of the central cards to a deck is pretty much always going to drop it out of the meta. Using HS as an example, most decks will die off to a single nerf, and if they come back it's either a result of a subsequent meta shift or a new angle being taken. Single nerfs can have significant winrate shifts, and blanket-nerfing a significant chunk of a deck is far more than just a single nerf. Hell, if it's just three cards, that's still up to 30% of a deck nerfed in one go (and incidentally, assuming we're sticking with the Dawnspiders example from before, that'd be four cards nerfed. Five if you count Ledros as part of it).
- Riot nerf strategy - I wholly disagree with that statement, just looking at the empirical evidence. In any given League patch notes, you'll see one, maybe two big nerfs/buffs at most (usually one). You'll also see a dozen small changes which happen alongside it. Just looking at 10.3 as an example - major Akali buff (1x big), minor changes to Aphelios, Azir, Corki, Diana, Ekko, Ezreal, Galio, Leona, MF, Rumble, Sejuani, Senna, Sett, Sona, Yuumi (15x small), plus some assorted other changes. This, incidentally, is analogous to my point above (although I don't point to it as a true example because the games are wholly different genres) - these small changes are often, in themselves, enough to push a champion out of the meta for a time. Small changes can have big impacts.
Incidentally, given we're clearly both prone to large posts, I advise snipping quotes as I have done above so as to mitigate their length at least a little!
Shadowshift Cancelling Targeted Spells
Kinda agree. Either both spells should cancel out targeted effects OR apply to the new swapped-in target.
I present you, true sadness
It's a 3 health follower for 5 mana. It's already as easy to remove as it gets
Relenless pursuit
It is also strange that in the beginners' guide nothing is said about hand size limit of cards, the limit of minions on board, and for example that "Rally" can make you attack 2nd time on the same turn ...
Relenless pursuit
What meisterz said. I started playing the game from the open beta launch, and I got confused when I read some card descriptions / guides online that said "Ready your attack," as that's not a phrase that appears in the live game.
Shadowshift Cancelling Targeted Spells
it would be cool if stand united negates the spell but i agree with ya logically shadowshift should work like SU it would make more sense to me, but i guess the shadow is battle only right now.
does united stand negates spells?
Good catch. I think it's kind of similar to cards like Get Excited! in this way, which says "To play, discard 1 card." It's not quite the same, obviously (For Get Excited!, discarding is the prerequisite to being able to play it in the first place), but I agree that the word "to" seems to be a key term here.