Legends of Runeterra

And not because of Elder Dragon himself at all - it's because of his Origin effect.

Specifically, Heisho is totally busted. With ramp and/or sigils, Heisho can be played on turn 6. And then another Heisho can be played immediately for free. And then another <=9 cost unit can be played for free as well. 

If you enjoy thrashing your opponents with absolutely gargantuan units, this is your time to shine. I don't know how long Heisho will be left alone without a nerf - probably until after Worlds though. But I expect a swift nerf as soon as Worlds is over.

I've been messing around in Masters over the past few days (around 150-200 LP) and I just thought it might be helpful for others to know what seems pretty good right now, for my taste.

1. Scouts - this really destroys some of the decks that rely on certain units, because of the many ways to apply challenger. And, of course, challenger works really, really well with Miss Fortune.

2. Targon Elusives, ft. Teemo - this one can highroll pretty well, but man do you have to count out your damage carefully. There is high potential to just get overrun by your opponent before you can piece together enough elusive damage. And removal decks absolutely wreck you, if you're playing this deck. Side note - Teemo is literally just a 1-drop elusive in this deck, nothing more.

3. Kennen Jinx - This one seems strong when I've played against it, but I haven't tried it yet myself. Relies heavily on flooding the board and then burning out the opponent. Any significant lifesteal will defeat this deck almost instantly.

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okay so this is about as memey as it gets right?

where you just pitch all your champs for value, and then actually win with thralls and landmark value?

so yes we run 2 sump and 2 hallowing abyss so we can prevent the opponent from making us unalive on top of our tavern keepers?

seems good no?

 so I don't have to do the akshan tahm kench thing which is a little old school?

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Bard is often considered one of the worst Champs in LOR

And that reputation is in some respects well deserved and others not so much

Pros:

He levels easily

Cons:

Leveling doesn't really help you win games

So logically the best Bard decks are decks that can essentially win on their own and Bard is just a supporting piece along for the ride

Obvious synergies with cards like Siren song will be ignored we don't want to be that sweaty 

So what else we got?

Well Demacia basically

Using 6 mana cythtia to buff our full board of junk we don't care about and swing to place chimes deal dmg etc

And single combats allow us to "cash out" on our over stated units

Honestly Bard is probably fine for what he is

He doesn't win games he just gives you a little numbers boost to your midrange deck and thats all he needs to be

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It's strange some days you play lor and just everything triggers you.

Xolati lands and you dont have answers

Someone turbos a massive lifesteal elusive 1 drop with Siren song

You get aggroed down

You get ramped

You draw dead

Just nothing is working out like some haggard metaphor for life

And sometimes you just get to win all night meming with shromes

Idk I'm done saying x deck is good x deck is bad

I'm fairly certain I shouldn't be winning non stop with 3 ava 3 Corina for otk lethal

But hey whatever if the wins fit

Maybe it doesn't matter that there are 700 people begging for a siren song change

Maybe at the end of the day it just take 1 good r and g day where your opponents don't have the perfect hand state every game

And you get to press buttons, play cards, do the gamer thing

Maybe we all just need 1 good day

https://masteringruneterra.com/meta-tier-list/

rather than saying the obvious like how every single standard deck in LOR is now massively eclipsed by siren song fizz and how we've never seen anything like this before in LOR

where one deck is so lopsidedly dominant that every other deck might as well go home

I just thought I'd build something equally broken for eternal

so we can all suffer together

feel free to use this deck and emote spam after every undeserved siren song win till people start complaining more than they already are

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Before siren song I climbed to masters with a deck just like this

so now I can climb twice as fast in 3 months

again remember to emote spam it's important to spread the good word

of how balanced and appropriate siren song is as a card in LOR

thank you :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/14ulav1/my_changes_to_siren_song/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

To be fair these ideas are awful

The siren song fix is literally very simple

1 make it 5 mana

2 make it so it doesn't buff xolani

People will say oh no that will slow xolani down significantly

but my response is when did Xolani become the number 1 finisher in every deck ever?

1 drop aggro deck xolani

midrange evelyn deck xolani

bilgewater poro deck? If it could fit xolani and siren song it would trust me

So maybe we just don't let xolani turbo off a card that buffs 1 mana units under the established mana curve?

crazy thought

maybe the game isn't supposed to have 1 mana 10/10s or 7 mana 32/32?

seems kinda unbalanced and borderline broken

maybe we don't do that at all?

maybe we see champ based decks see a massive resurgance in popularity?

maybe the 3 new champs released with this set actually matter?

crazy right?

If you guys havent noticed I have a bit of a knack for solving bad archetypes

and while it's true that sometimes leaning one direction or another can make a brew more volatile

it can also generally improve its rate of climbing

is it better to run age of dragons as a one off board clear meme?

probably not

is it better but more risky to run dragons in your age of dragons deck?

yes

but we can solve for that with frostebites, heals, clears, stuns, challenges etc.

simiilarly with ambush

is ambush a bad archetype?

absolutely!

can we solve the number and draw issues by spamming lucky finds and strikes?

we sure can!

what about pros 32%

no problem I can make poro king playable easy, just by removing the 1 drop spam when it literally gets beat out by every 1 other 1 drop spam deck

instead focusing on braum and that midrange value proposition

in each and every case we take the deck and yes we make it more "volatile"

susceptible to hard counters which is bad in a tournament setting

but in a ladder winrate setting every deck is grossly improved

like it's not even a competition

and if that pisses you off I really dont give a fuck

because it's true

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I spent the entire night winning in eternal with trash 1 drops

I feel filthy

Like I didn't level a single champ except by accident

I didn't even really build a deck

I did nothing really but go 6 wide

And that was it

six wide swing

Six wide swing

Six wide swing

All work and no play makes jack a dull boy

All work and no play makes jack a dull boy

All work and no play makes jack a dull boy

Anyways yeah six wide swing is a good deck you should try it today

Or you know don't, play anything else

But I guess if you want to win for free to masters in 3 months just play six wide swing

Riot ain't nerfing shit so enjoy

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Did I ever think I'd be running bitsy lizard in a transform deck?

Nope it's terrible in sejuani transform

But man in the ambush variant it's nuts

Highly recommend even after all this time I can say that ambush and poros feel good in eternal

Can't complain

Standard however just doesn't have the card support 

It's literally impossible to know if someone is running reckoning in a garbage fire deck

It is however very possible to dominate 3 games in a row with a well known archetype with the opponent knowing exactly what you're playing

The difference is competitive vs garbage

You could have built all 3 of those decks to win into that matchup but you didn't

So.instead you had to build an entirely new deck of garbage just to counter

Thats on you

On you for not building.your first 3 decks properly

On you for needing the counter

And on you for building a counter you can't play in other circumstances 

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Let's just take a moment to appreciate that while standard is a 1 drop spam garbage fire

Eternal is the bright light that shines the way

If poros can feel this strong after all my tweaking

What can't be competitive?

Ambush?

Bird lady?

Who knows

It takes a lot of games to figure out exactly the right balance for these archetypes

But I gotta say this deck is a 5/0 king right now

I took out pretty every meme card

Caught in the cold down to 1, it's fine it demands answers its proactive

Poro Smith on average isn't a great card for his mana cost not in this deck

Creating a shell that can sustain a card as expensive as porrialis is tricky

But I'm hoping that 3 three sister 3 harsh winds can get it done while we are usually okay on board early

Yeah just like for all the shit that everyone is giving Riot right now I try to remember that it's a standard problem

And standard isn't even a real format anyway

When one card like Siren song while overtunes can basically destroy every single deck and there's nothing they can do about it

At least in eternal you can jam braum on 4 get two bodies, play and inner beast or ping with spirits unleashed

Even a deck as uninteractive as freijord poros can feel interactive in eternal

But yeah in standard yah fucked

https://masteringruneterra.com/meta-stats/#!

Literally every deck in the format has dropped to 50% or below other than 1 drop spam siren song fizz

When playing siren song And spamming one drops has supplanted every single deck in a format

We might be in a catastrophic situation

Gg Riot gg

Remember Annie Jhin the face of aggro?

Meme tier

Siren song 1 drop spam?

Real shit

At this point I assume a nerf isn't happening because.....idk mass hallucinations...number blindness...facts denial....911 non believers....the moon landing was a lie?

I'll be honest I don't know why siren song wasn't made to only buff husks like yesterday it's literally an emergency lol

Like balance failure on a massive scale

Like nobody is gonna play at this rate

It's untenable

Doggo board vommit elites are pretty bad right now, and honestly that's kind of a good thing

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I highly recommend burst heavy midrange elites

The new scrutinizing Sargent is kind of a straight up upgrade over 4 mana challenger birds

In terms of doing what elites want to do which is play beef two bodies at a time

Good deck, should probably get a meta listing in 3 months

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Hey look it's nothing but 1 drops, with 1 drop buffers and a burn finish

How amazing!

What a cool deck!

Thats soooo good

1 drop spam into decimate

Wow!!!

Its the best deck in Eternal now!!!

God siren song is sooooo fucking stupid

Plz kill the card Riot you don't want this being the face of eternal while siren song is also the face of standard

Took me literally 5 seconds to build this and because every 1 drop has 2 hp it'd literally ping immune and demands 2 mana per my 1 mana

You combine that with siren song and now it's even harder to remove your one drops

And then you play boat

And easy clap game over

And yes we run Samara and Annie and all the good stuff

I'm not proud of this deck it took 5 seconds to build and took one ounce of brain power

And you know what's worse

I bet it wins 55% plus

Gross plz nerf siren song

https://masteringruneterra.com/deck/CIDACBAGBUAQMBQ6AEDASEICAIDCQLQCA4DAGIIEAMEQ2I2JLABQCAQGHIAQGCIXAEDASIYBAEDASKY

This is Siren song 1 drop spam...the deck

It runs every 1 drop and every 1 drop buffer

And it runs xolani cuz duh

And a card to prevent blocks

There is fizz in there.but fizz is less a win condition or champion and literally just a 1 drop

And you know what's funny

This is the highest winrate deck in standard by a mile

59% and it's causing all the winrate drops across the board we talked about earlier

Cuz at the end of the day

If you can play buff 1.drops for 1 mana and responsed cost more.than 1 mana in standard

Why do literally anything else?

I dont know how many times I have to beg Riot for a Siren song and xolani nerf

But when every deck is literally a xolani and Siren song deck

And the best xolani and Siren song decks literally stop pretending to be decks and just cut all champion pkgs

Something is seriously overturned about this card

Like its literally destroying standard before our very eyes lol

It was supposed to be an Evelyn card and now the best Siren song decks cut Evelyn?!

Wtf?

Yeah nerf to the ground plz

Like right into the grave

https://mobalytics.gg/blog/lor-heart-of-the-huntress-thoughts/

Frankly, and I've said this multiple times we won't really know the true impact of the 3 Champs till Eternal ladder opens up

But yes as it stands in standard they numerically inferior in every way to what's good

Namely beater decks and aggro decks

Saying poro king is x good without braum is like saying Evelyn is x good without Siren song it just doesn't work or feel as strong

Similar things can be said about abush/ transform and its general reliance on pokey stick to flip ping based transform creatures or gnar

Bird lady might be the only champion we can definitely say is pretty meh and I will 100% agree with that

But thankfully the more cards that get printed thr better she gets absolutely she's a grower not a shower

But absolutely if you want to make the argument that decks with strong theme ingredients and build around conditions are generally bad right now in standard absolutely

Lurk is down to a negative winrate in standard...lurk the original Unga bunga is not Unga or bunga enough...for standard the format it's supposed to be good in

I dont like lurk I'm just saying somethings definately wrong there

Cuz if lurk can't get it up what chance does ambush have?

So yeah there is a problem with LOR and what works and what doesn't

And it isn't the champ design that's for sure

Keep in mind my big 10 brain solution for fixing midrange frostbite in standard was hmmmm what if I add more burst and put some big overwhelm wolves into it

And you know what it worked cuz or course it did. Part of it is the turbo ash ans leblanc tho so that is case where the Champs get to do some carrying in a non beater capacity which is nice

But 99% of the time I see people play ambush they don't turbo nadalee or try to preserve nar and if you arent doing that it says a lot about your faith in the current balance of power between champions and just hand vommit board state

I think this was a big problem that happened with gwent the minute gold cards or champions feel less important than say spamming pings till you play 3 6/6 bots

Or grinding stats till you have an exodia body and just playing a massive low curve 2/1 spam or anything else that's good right now

When that becomes more important than the Champs you're playing and the new Champs designed by Riot that's when the game stops functioning as intended

Ionia is a cool region, I once said that LOR is at its least fun when Ionia is strong

But maybe we are over compensating a bit

Pretty much every region had playable decks in standard and eternal right now

But despite the inclusion of what's on paper some of the best draw and even a 1 mana deny

They just aren't really getting anywhere right now

Do we want to see the return of Ionia allegience for kenin spam?

Or do they need more low curve options like dragon priestess

Either way it would be nice to see decks other than Evelyn, illoi, kaisa, scissors, and aggro be playable in standard

And it would be nice in eternal if ping spam wasn't the go to control solution for every deck

But what do I know I'm just the eternal king, who can win with hilarious brews in both formats

It just so happens that in one format that's a viable masters strategy and the other not so much things are too narrow

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this doesn't mean that I forgive Riot for turning standard into a beater format

but it does mean I get to play standard without gouging out my eye balls

because I found the perfect beater counter

frostbite lockdown is insane into the unholy trinity

namely evelyn, kaisa, illoi

aka the beater decks

not sure what it's like into jinx it's not really designed to counter that

but what it does great 100% of the time is counter numbers on board

and it turns out numbers onboard is 90% of standard ladder

so why not counter it and then make a 10/10 wolf

seems good to me idk

Also I forgot counters scissors so thats the unholy quadrilateral

Basically the I good at LOR cuz I open attack with big numbers decks

Which is like once again 90% of high winrate Champs in standard

Proper stats analytics is very difficult people spend their whole job learning it

For me I do marketing numbers ad metrics etc.

So I wont pretend to be the expert on meta stats but I often see things others don't

So with that out of the way let's get started:

1.  Evelyn down to 56% we are going to talk a little bit about why this is deceptive

2. Annie down to 53%

3. Pros keep going down 41% now

4. Ambush keeps going down 45%

5. Lurk down to 53%

6. Atrox down to 53%

7. Jinx aggro 57%

8. Niko down to 48%

9. Fizz down to 54%

10. Ash down to 48%

So typically when we see massive winrate drops across the board something is really wrong

Now you could say Jinx aggro too strong bro

And I would say Jinx is too strong?

Are you high Jinx isn't single handedly killing midrange frostbite

No what the issue really is that you A either go big in standard or B you go agressive

This means you're either playing Siren song Evelyn or you're playing aggro, maybe a little kaisa and illoi if you want to get crazy

So in this instance while there is an aggro deck in standard that can kill Evelyn before she plays Siren song twice in a row at 4 mana

Every other deck in the game can't

So in this instance sometimes you need to look deeper at the root cause that is throttling the meta and not just say durrr aggro exists

It's like yeah it dooooos gj for pointing that out

But the reason why midrange frostbite went from a decent deck to literally a terrible deck

And the reason every new deck is terrible in standard can be answered with one word

Siren song plz 5 mana riot