https://lor.mobalytics.gg/meta-tier-list

We see pretty major tier list adjustments this month.

Basically every single control or combo deck has dropped down to the lowest tier.

Thralls, darkness, Lee Sin, Jayce etc.

While aggro still sits at the top, and plunder is there for some variety. The truth is that it should probably be replaced by pirate aggro if we are going strictly by winrates.

So is aggro a problem? It hasn't changed or gotten any better as of late, the lists are the same, the cards are the same, there could be an argument that control decks are being squeezed out but I don't see that as the case.

The way control is being built lately is that it typically just cycles and delays the game instead of teching in actual answers in the form of spells. Darkness being a perfect example where you can't play the box, or a withering wail or a vile fest, you have to play 2/2 into 3 mana darkness that right there might be too slow, and veigar on 4 is a death sentence.

I think this more than anything is why aggro and tempo decks are winning, because control decks are't really control decks with answers, they are cycling or combo decks with high synergy.

Just play good control cards and I bet the winrates for this archetype improve.

I know Majin Bae a pretty all right player is running a full 3 control/combo deck line up to the next tournament so it will be interesting to see how he does.

I would say better than the tier list would suggest that's for sure.

Just curious to hear some opinions. Mine are:

Token DH will not be good. Instead, a token package will be run in DH similar to the "discard" package Warlock is running now in standard.

Pirate Warrior will stay meta.

Mage and Shaman will not have a place in the meta.

Hello guys,

Just wanna know what you feel about the direction Blizzard will take on the next expansion?

will they keep on Adding pirates and murlocs?

should they add demons which actually is a poor archetype? 

i personally think they should add some attackers because caster dominate the game 

i would like to see Grull and Kurtus like type of mercs more often. Specially a human killer.

the fel class should be reinforced and maybe some frost And arcane abilities which are too rare.

Some legendary Mercs at the bottom of the E rank should also find party mates to empower them ( Jaraxxus, Edwin, Thrall)

And I want to see more Dragons : where are Deathwing, Nozdormu, Malygos, Ysera. 

Balance the race is important too me, Beast , troll, undead, Tauren , elfs... stop adding humans and Orcs. 

What are you thought?

So this isnt about who's your favorite cheese in the mercs game mode. But rather whos your favorite merc outta the characters we've met this year? Personally my favorite is Varden they're pretty neat and I like their dynamic with the rest of the group of what we saw em do in mercs. Bru'kan the funny chicken troll is definitely second though.

I thought this would be an interesting question:

What are cards in the game that you deem worthy of being champions? My example would be Atakahn, Bringer of Ruin. He is such a fun, strong end-game card. There are a lot of cards that counter him, but he is really fun to play around with.

What would be your choice of cards that deserve a promotion? 

https://mobalytics.gg/blog/lor-7-seasonal-tournament-decks-between-worlds/

Nothing exciting or interesting going on here, not seeing any control decks period because they are harder to pilot.

Not seeing deep or ledros control or any the other "tournament" deck options availible, no dragons either yeeesh, very little pure midrange.

Honestly, if everyone sticks with decks from this exceptionally safe list this tournament is gonna be about as boring as worlds was.

Gotta say one thing for the days of mtg professional play, but those guys had definite decks and styles of decks they preffered and were pretty easily distinguishable from one another because of it.

How else would of the hall of fame system worked if they were all essentially the same person?

For me I'm gonna scan the stream to look for the single bright spark that decided to pilot something interesting, hell I would take lisandra Thralls as a breath of fresh air at this point.

The best decks right now pivot from early game to end game effectively without being to dependent on individual game plans.

Lurk can be agressive but it has big overwhelmers.

Jayce acts like a spell control deck but has insane late game swings.

Bandle tree plays a bunch of agressive dudes and then otk's you out of nowhere.

Following that trend is my new landmark aggro - syke slay control deck.

Plays very scary big dudes in the midrange lots of 5/3 and 5/4 and 3/4 3/3 type of stat lines.

But all of that is a ruse for you to trade your cycle creatures into them and spend spells to finish them off.

Now rampaging baccai is active he kills heimer for free, we have rite of arcane to kill him, and minimorph if things get out of hand. After all that plays out then - then we play a big Nasus good luck out valuing that every game.

And honestly sometimes you just win with the landmark stuff, it happens you burn em down with zigs, or your instant 3 body play for 4 mana can be too much for some decks to deal with.

Baccai sandspinner is a tech choice I value it slightly higher than gifts for Renekton ;) if you aren't just playing it for the Sivir value.

Seems to be a lot of confusion around this concept so I thought I'd help out.

First of all you need to go to the archetype stats this will aggregate all the winrates of a certain deck category. This is helpful do get a proper view of how certain champ combinations are actually perform outside of tech choices like oh I added two rite of negation and shifted my winrate by 2% its like okay but you could do that in any deck so who cares...always look at the aggregate for the archetype.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/archetypes

The second thing is aggro performs on average 5% percent better in LOR due to punishing greedy decks which they will ocassionaly que into and auto win against. Free wins are massive when we are calculating overall stats.

So for example Zed Poppy might have an aggregate winrate of 59% making it the best deck in the game, but in a tournament setting where every deck is built properly to deal with aggro you can expect it to win closer to 54% and on par with control/midrange

The second thing is a control or midrange deck that wins 54% of the time is fully optimized, so Lux Jayce, Darkness, Dragon, Discard, Lurk they all share this magic number.

The third thing is if a deck is listed on mobalytics and is winning 50% of the time its essentially a tournament deck that is built poorly for ladder, I would make heavy adjustments before taking it online for a spin

Thats Lor meta stats in a nutshell, 59% for aggro is good, 54% for everything else, and 50% means adjust before taking online.

Competition Theme: Expensive Tastes

It's time we catered to a more high class clientele - so make sure you're bringing your mana for these cards!

• You must create a minion that costs more than (10)
  • While unplayable under normal circumstances, I'm sure you can figure out how to sweeten the deal for them

Neoguli is asking for some more expensive cards this week - and we're not talking about Wallet Warrior!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Nov 15 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Nov 20 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Nov 20 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Nov 21 16:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Nov 21 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Mon, Nov 22 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/meta-tier-list

So all the top decks are aggro or burn, and some would say that Gangplank Sejuani is midrange but they are still damaging you every turn so it sure feel agressive. So thats S tier.

A tier includes Jace Lux, Dragons, Thralls, Shadow as potential counters that play a little slower. Now is this actually representative of the games current balance or a response to all the greedy Heimer bs people were playing and instead got effectively  💩 on.

I would say likely more the second thing, like its not hard to tech in tavern keeper, and all different forms of healing that exist in the game to greatly improve your performance.

Even something like deny to crowd out burn plays are high effective. Personally I love when I see aggro decks because you literally know every play they are making before they do so any loss is a failure of deck building creativity vs a failure of play. So overall good meta, F you Heimer and learn to build decks that beat aggro? 

*** When sharing IDs, please include which shard you are on (i.e. Americas, Europe, or Asia). ***

Well I couln't find #id stuff at first so I think someone might have problems like me;

If you couldn't find your #id and your friend's #id here it is;

As you can see here; The golden EUW text is my #ID, when you hover over your profile picture in friend panel, it will show this screen.

So my full id would be; TitanlarınYavası EUW

Feel free to add me btw. :)

Edit: I have changed my id into TitanlarınYavaşı LoR

So a while ago I got enough coins to craft Baron Geddon, nice! I'm missing a couple of epics and legendaries, but when I opened a pack recently and saw the purple glow I got an alternative portrait for Geddon instead of a new epic. I now that they messed up with the duplicate protection for pre-orders and didn't account for the diamond portraits, but since my crafted Geddon is the base version this shouldn't happen? Or have I missed something?

So I wanted to see real quick if the archetype is as bad as all the complaints make it seem.

The answer is no its still great it's not the aggro monster it used to be and that's good because it's a combo deck.

So I just teched in shifting sands this is removal, and levels Azir, and provides aggro/blockers to devalue counter swings. 

Great card not using it for this archetype is wrong, and the second thing is chimera it devalues counter swings and prevents you from getting raced down.

So yeah Azir Irelia still a great combo deck as long as you aren't a meta slave and push it a bit into the sustained midrange space.

So quick run down, cycling referring to every time a card draws back into itself, whether it is a creature or spell.

Tutoring is when a card gives you a specific card you are looking for.

With that let's take a look at Ferros Financier and how tutoring itself is the problem more so than bandlewood specifically. Like you can run Lux Heimer instead of Heimer Jayce and you dont even miss bandle.

1. It can grab ruination (board clear)

2. It can grab reckoning (board clear)

3. It can grab "mega avalanche" (board clear)

4. It can grab progress day (oh my 2 mana tutor just drew me 3 how fun and balanced

5.  It can grab shock blast (board clear/burn)

6. It can grab glorious revolution (luuuulz this one's for you guys because tutoring for it is 100 times better than main decking because it's a free card) and you get the blocker

7. It can grab summon two 3/3s and summon two 3/2s that buff on attack, and summon two 4/4 s (hey my two mana card gave me massive free board presence)

8. It can grab single target removal like harpoon, it can basically do anything

 All of this for two mana, now how is this different from targon, A you have to spend 3 mana, and invoke cards are actually kinda bad now without Asol to make them free. 

Also having a free blocker on 2 is game changing against aggro trust me, it's why people hate love on telescope on conchologist and Shadow dude, it's like yes you get a free card, aaaaand you answer your opponents aggro play aaaaand you get to tutor what you want.

All of this leads to the fact that tutors aren't rng so much as they are a consistently game winning nuisance that is spreading across the game region by region and I think it's not stopping anytime soon.

I was trick or treating and noticed that aposteljoe did not seem to have his Forum title resolving. It just says COMMENT_COUNT_450_HS which doesn't seem like a proper Forum title.

I’m just missing sneed, Eudora and the other legendary from the last realize that I don’t feel Are essential as I play currently LK/Varden/Tavish + Geddon/Diablo/Cairne.

leveling up : beast team, Vol’Jin/Séline , Ragnaros, Anduin, Jaïna, Grull and Sylvanas In whom I see potential.

i just wonder if you guy think it’s a smart move . I do this essentially because I obtain a massive amount of coins for my already max out Mercenaries ( Antonidas, Tavish, LK, Cairne, Varden and Geddon) 

I play actually between 6800 and 7200 in Asian server. 

Though I can only name 2 mercs that do extra damage based on race, (off the top of my head), being able to prep for the possible trash fights can save some time in a bounty.

there are a couple of databases with the base info for the trash characters, but I can't find any info on which bounties they usually appear on. and they all show the level 1-30 info.

does anyone know what the system is for possible trash fight for a certain bounty?

(also, the 2 I can remember that deal specialized damage aregruul, Kurtrus Ashfallen

I think there was one that I can't remember the name of)

if there are more I can't think of, please name them

https://youtu.be/_TWFZuq3UCQ

Basically just says all the things I was saying months ago.

How infinite cycling limits deck variety, and how having decks filled with independent value generators limits decks identity

Gives the example that one of the best Jayce decks was obviously gonna be in bandle, I knew that we all knew that.

However, with the release of Jayce I've actually become hopeful that Riot will release Champs and cards that are on par value wise.

Shurima needs more landmark value, cards like the 3/1 that gives you dirt is sooooo bad into cycles as to essentially be -1 card in practice.

Ionia and Freijord need more control tools to remain viable.

Shadow is probably fine , just due to the event love they've gotten they have a lot of spell variety, I also think targon is fine, and so is Demacia and Noxious for what they do.

So again it's not that Bandle city is objectively op and better than everyone else, it's that they are as good if not better in every single style of deck ever imagined.

I know we all like to argue here about game design, card balance, etc, but can we all agree that the people who write and voice the characters in the game are super talented, creative and awesome? I always laugh at some lines, no matter how often I've heard them. I particularly enjoy Tavish's "My beard has FLEAS scarier than you!" and literally every single one of Squeamlish's lines from the Rise of Shadows adventure.

Sure, we've all hated sitting there listening to "Hey loser! ... Wasn't me!" over and over again, but even then it's still pretty funny.

Kudos to Hearthstone's creative writers and actors! I hope some of them see this post.

Gonna keep it real short, good news we get more Lux support, bad news they added more cycling at 2 mana.

We are basically in a situation where every single competitive archetype will need to have 2 and 3 mana cycling solutions or be soooo fast and agressive as to not care.

So it doesn't really matter if your 2/2 steals a card from your opponent, generated a 6 mana spell, creates more creatures, or invokes as long as you're trading on board and not loosing cards.

I kinda hate this from a long term growth perspective...like is Ionia gonna start getting 2/2's that generate cheap spells for Lee Sin oh wait they have Zoe and that still isn't good enough because they need like 10 more cards that do the same thing.

If I sound salty it's because I love this game, I love the Champs, I love the turn passing, I love the game flow...and infinite cycling destroys all of that.

It gets to the point where leveling Champs as part of a "quest" doesn't matter only wincons matter and infinite card advantage.

TLDR: It's good Jayce fixed spell control and now there is finally a solid tier 2 answer to all the hyper agressive decks

Legends of Runterra used to be a game defined by just playing your hard to remove Champs and swinging.

Zed into poppy, gangplak into Sejuani, midrange stuff into an Asol or a Sion.

But finally it does feel like the blindly develop recipe has been flipped on its head a bit. Like in terms of winrates aggro will always be top of the tier lists because it easier to grind ladder and for streamers to win consecutively to hit masters...but when decks are viewed on a optimal play scale it gets a lot more complicated.

For example a case study: 

Opponent plays Zed after banking mana followed by a poppy, I play my factory into a shock blast, they counter with twin to save 1 thing, but I can still potentially mystic or Thermo or whatever thanks to factory.

It used to be no matter what you did you would loose this play scenario 75% of the time and its why Zed Poppy was the number 1 deck.

Now it's not as cut and dry, and reactive players can finally "play the game" on an even scale without having to rely on cycling tools and a parade of chump blockers...I don't like playing that way because it's no different than blindly developing as aggro.

In summary they didn't kill any of the brain dead auto win stuff, but shook things up enough so mtg players can actually enjoy the game  and do a little bit of that "no you" play style if they want to.

------------------

I already suspect there are gonna be some players that are salty that aggro advantage has gone from auto win, to just winning more and thats too damn bad. This expansion was absolutely necessary for the long term health and viability of the game on a competitive scale and it should make future tournaments a lot more fun and unpredictable to watch.

I've been trying to build an actually good Kindred deck since his release and have probably failed a dozen or so times.

But man I gotta say this deck is spicey, combining the strengths of veigar Senna, with undying vulnerable decks to create something will actually see Kindred getting to a 9/9 guaranteed.

So hard mull for like undying and veigard usually, pirate girl is nice on 2 a defensive counter swing play and ship Kind of works similarly on turn 4 but you drag with undying.

Really good, I think MOG would get a kick out of this one.

That sounds....questionable. Choosing between Alliance and Horde based on two legendaries who are most likely quite different in terms of powerlevel will most likely skew the outcome. Also not a fan of getting a Golden Legendary unless we also get to DE it (which would be awesome, but I doubt it's going to happen).

New Keyword sounds interesting and way better than Overkill.

Hero cards were a given, although I wonder what they'll do with Warlock now that Tamsin is dead (at least for now)

I bought all the bundles and bought the intro bundles after launch also. I’ve opened 170 + packs and have all the toons except 4. I could craft them with coins but what for?

I didn’t watch any of the pre-launch stuff and just dove right in.  After leveling 15 toons to 10 and going through most of the barrens content before I got bored I think the mode is pretty simplistic to play and doesn’t require much thought for a whale. You just outlevel the content and steamroll it

This mode will be bot fodder for f2p players because it’s very repetitive. 

Blizzard just took the coding from existing modes and tossed it together and voila! You have an addictive gacha with power level walls.

The higher level stuff does ramp up and you pretty much need level 2 abilities or the right toons to defeat the runs.

I average about 550-600 coins for every merc toon I have so upgrading isn’t an issue. The grind for an f2p would make me rather hit myself in the head with a hammer..

There is very little thinking when you outlevel the content and even if you didn’t there still isn’t much . 

I’ve spent the gold and upgraded the starting areas as far as I’ve gotten. The quests were a breeze to do and went quick. You do get a bit of rewards track xp so that’s a bonus. 

The best thing about the mode are the voice acting ,animations and interactions.  You get random treasures and bonuses that buff your party and the enemies as well to mix things up a bit.

I won’t bother to spend another dime on it and will just run through the quests and that’s about it. 

The mode is a welcome break to the boring state of the main game right now so that’s the biggest plus. The only way I foresee anyone really caring about this mode is if they introduce cross mode rewards that force players to engage the content. 

I foresee this getting old very quick and the rating rewards look abysmal.  

it’s pretty easy to power level new toons as they all get xp just for being in the party even if you don’t use them.

pretty much all of the battles so far have just been focus fire one enemy and burn it down, rinse  and repeat.  The mode will have to eventually support bigger parties and multiple phase matches to really have any thinking involved imo.

A welcome distraction that has potential but the gacha coins monster this is will have the community raging no doubt. This is exactly why I see it ultimately failing. The grind will be insanely boring which will just kill motivation to play, I think. The mode will end up being a whale fest mixed with tons of bots. 

We should see some time extrapolations soon based on re-running the same level content for the rewards I’d love to see just how much time 40 pack bundles save you from grinding.

Enjoy the new mode for what it’s worth. It has potential but as of right now I’d give it a 4 out of 10.

Competition Theme: Jurassic Card

We can't let Un'Goro Crater have all the fun - what could possibly go wrong bringing some more Dinosaurs out to play?

• You must create a minion that uses a Dinosaur in its art
  • We'll accept fossilised and mechanised Dinosaurs - or anything else a bit out there - so long as it's clearly recognisable
• Your minion cannot be from the Journey to Un'Goro expansion
  • We've seen what that expansion has to offer, so let's branch out a bit!

Nirast is looking for us to travel back in time this week, so bring your best prehistoric cards to the table!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Nov 8 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Nov 13 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Nov 13 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Nov 14 16:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Nov 14 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Mon, Nov 15 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.