As OldManSanns explained, a leveled-up Fiora only needs 2 more kills to fulfill her win condition.
And it's also correct that combat order can play a deciding role in scenarios like these. I don't think greenhat is correct in saying that Fiora's win condition takes precedence over a win via nexus kill; whichever occurs first according to combat order should determine the winner. The game always plays out the attack animations for all attacking units, even if the defender is already eliminated after the first unit's strike (However, as soon as the nexus health reaches 0, a "SKIP" button appears at the bottom of the screen, so you can skip the rest of the combat animations and leave the match).
Oh, it does? I wasn't even aware since I got used to using my desktop clock. Good on Blizzard, then. I know they've had an in-game clock for Diablo 3 for a long time, so it makes sense they would've implemented it in Hearthstone (But seriously, still no borderless window mode after several years?).
As far as I know (from last week) you will continue your expedition and it won't count in 3 expeditions per week count.
I haven't tested it myself, but this would've been my assumption, too - that the expedition counts for the week it started in, not the one it ended in.
I'm with you there. It always bothered me that Hearthstone didn't have a borderless-window video mode, but in hindsight, this led me to play it windowed and thus always have my computer's clock in sight. Of course, an (optional) in-game clock would be the ideal solution.
I get that it can be a bit frustrating for those who would like to invest large amounts of time into the game. Trust me, I was in the same boat for the first weekend after the open beta released. But in the end, as OldManSanns mentioned, I think it's for the best that Riot gives out the bulk of the rewards for the first couple of games played each day. This way, players can keep up with their collections while not having to dedicate all their free time to Runeterra.
1-) Change Kinkou Lifeblade into "Strike: Restore 2 health to our nexus." Instead of Lifesteal like how some other aggro cards deal just 1-2 damage to nexus like Legion Saboteur.
You know, after reading this, I thought quite a bit about it. I find myself thinking again and again how powerful of a mechanic Lifesteal is in general, in a game with only 20 nexus health that can evaporate quite fast. Especially, as someone pointed out in a different thread, the cheap cost of Lifesteal is at odds with the immense cost of spells that recover nexus health.
So honestly, I could see the Lifesteal mechanic as a whole get changed to always recover 2 nexus health on strike. It may seem odd at first to make the healing amount independent of the unit's power, but in the same vein, Riot decided to settle for a fixed threshold for the Fearsome mechanic (2 or less attack). So I'd say it's very much in the realm of possibility.
Aha! I was wondering why "draw 1" didnt have the "play" keyword.
I don't think the "Play" keyword is the deciding factor. That was my assumption at first, but the bartender guy that heals 3 also starts his effect with "Play," and he doesn't trigger a skill.
I know that by right-clicking a card, I can view all cards associated with it, which includes potential skills they trigger (like Chempunk Shredder). However, I would like to be able to tell at a glance if a unit's effect triggers right away (like a Burst spell) or if it uses a skill, which I could then respond to with spells of my own. I know, first-world problems and all, but it'd be a nice quality-of-life improvement. Unless I'm missing something and there's already a way to tell.
Also, what are your thoughts on NOT being able to buy what you want in the beginning to essentially make all possible deck combinations? I've seen a lot of people complaining that they can't build certain decks yet.
Is this a actually a serious question? I loathe money-grabbing F2P models as much as the next guy, but giving every card away for free from the get-go sounds completely ridiculous. It would significantly reduce the incentive to keep playing for a large portion of the playerbase (myself included). Not to mention it'd make no sense from a business perspective. Riot is already being more than fair to us with Runeterra's progression system. I'm perfectly happy with what we got.
Good point on those 2 champions, I agree they're definitely among the weakest of the bunch.
The only card that comes to mind right now for me is Trueshot Barrage. Only 6 damage for 7 mana on a slow spell seems absolutely horrible to me. Being able to split up the damage is kind of nice, but can also turn into a hindrance in cases where you want to target a big enemy with a lot of damage. I'd say the cost definitely needs to be reduced to 6 to make it an even remotely viable choice for a damage spell.
Some interesting ideas in this thread. I'll share my 2 cents:
Limiting it to only countering spells which cost 3 or less would ruin the card in my opinion; at that point, you may as well not bother. 5 or less sounds more reasonable.
Only allowing Deny to be used against Fast spells is a neat idea, although I'd estimate that would reduce its usability too much. Add skills to that, however, and it might be a happy middle ground. I could see this being a decent way to balance it.
Tying it to an allied unit at the time of cast seems rather inconsequential. Most of the time, it's easy enough to retain at least a minimum board presence. It'd be a minor nerf at most.
I'm in the camp of players advocating an increase to 4 mana cost for Deny. You always need to remember that it can turn into a dead card if the opponent's deck simply doesn't use any super expensive spells; in that case, the Deny player feels pressured to always set a portion of their mana pool aside without getting anything out of it (or having to make a sub-par trade by cancelling a cheap spell).
Piltover & Zaun does suffer from the fact that spells in Runeterra are relatively expensive compared to units. I agree that this makes the early game a pain against aggressive decks.
However, I think the combo potential in the mid-late game somewhat makes up for it. In my most recent Exploration trial, I got to 6 wins with an Ezreal/Lux spell deck. It was an absolute blast to play, too. This might be harder to pull off in high-skill ranked matches, but I'd caution against overreacting at this point.
Seriously, though, Trueshot Barrage is pretty badly underpowered. Reduce its cost to 6 and it turns into an OK card. Maybe.
Yeh I can't help but think LoR removal are outrageously pricey especially when units can attack the turn they're being played (given you got attack token so it feel a bit less unfair)
While it does contribute to the problem of dealing with elusives, I generally like the overall higher cost of spells in Runeterra compared to other CCGs. I prefer units having a bit more staying power instead of being insta-killed by a spell that costs less than the unit iself. In my mind, units which benefit the most from the lack of cheap removal - like elusives and permanent value generators (think Dawnspeakers) - should be dealt with via cost increases / stat decreases instead.
As an off-topic question: When I mark a card via (runecard), how can I make it show up as a tooltip (on mouse-over)?
I don't mind as long as it's not systematic to the best decks, otherwise it would mean champions are not impactful enough on a general manner.
A valid point. As long as there are just one or two specific popular decks in the metagame that work without champions, it doesn't prove anything regarding champions' power as a whole. If such decks become widespread, it's a different matter.
I'm actually not wholly against the idea of increasing its mana cost, personally. [...]
Making it more expensive would throw off the cost-benefit analysis a little, since at a baseline level countering a 4 mana spell with a 3 mana one is a 'win'.?
I'm with you there. I will make the claim that you can't always rely on countering a high-cost spell with your Deny: Sometimes you have to 'waste' it on a low-level card because you're struggling to survive / your opponent outplayed you, and sometimes their deck may simply not contain any high-cost non-burst spells. So I don't think a cost of 5 is justified quite yet; 4 seems like a very reasonable compromise to me. Test it out from there and see if it's still to strong.
I also agree with KANVAS' assessment that champions are, in most respects, simply more powerful units than followers which otherwise function mostly the same way. The mere fact that Riot restricts the total number of champions in a deck should be evidence enough that they are powerful by design. However, I'm absolutely against making them even stronger - that would only reward people who invest more time/money to get the exact champions to bolster their deck strategy, and it would make good vs. bad draws more lopsided.
As for champion-less decks, I say more power to the players who build them. I don't see it as a problem at all. Yeah, champions are kind of designed to serve as thematic cornerstones for specific decks, but that should be a general guideline, not a requirement, in my opinion.
- I agree that rewards being semi-random is rather off-message for the goal they were apparently going for with the game's reward system, but personally don't have an issue with it
- I would also like to voice a little support for 40D here because goddamn, dude was very clear he was looking for consistency rather than whining about a lack of drops - and people jumped on him worse than most of the actual whine-threads we get around here ¬.¬
I think you're raising some interesting points, but I'm mostly in disagreement.
First and foremost, I strongly disagree about spells being too strong in Legends of Runeterra. I'm not an expert, but I have played a number of TCGs in the past to a decent extent, and I honestly find most spells in this game comparatively weak relative to their mana cost. For instance, for 2 mana, I could quick-snipe an enemy for 2 damage - or I could play a 3/1 minion with Quick Attack. I'd argue the latter is a stronger option overall. For 7 mana, I could play Trueshot Barrage for a total of 6 damage - or I could play a freaking 7/5 follower that insta-kills two enemies upon entering play (with a minor requirement that's easy to fulfill for Shadow Isles decks). Those are just 2 examples, but I find that this trend holds true for most spell cards in the game.
Like most other posters in this thread, I was initially put off by the seemingly low 20 nexus health. But having played the game for a good 15 hours or so at this point, I don't think that's quite right. Yes, aggro decks can score some easy wins after just a couple of rounds, but many higher-cost cards provide insane (often permanent) benefits which aggro players simply can't keep up with. So yeah, the game is rather snowbally, but it goes both ways: You can quickly win with an aggressive deck, or you can quickly win after playing just 1 or 2 high-impact cards in the mid-late game, provided you manage to survive until then. I'm not sure 20 health is the perfect amount, but I don't see a pressing need to increase it drastically.
I think opening up the Deny effect to all regions would be a bad move. I'd rather preserve the thematic identities of the individual regions for as long as possible (I'm sure there will be more and more overlap as new cards are released). I can't argue that it's an extremely powerful card in its current state, although it's not nearly as ridiculous as Counterspells in Magic which are even cheaper and able to deny creatures, too. I think upping the cost to 4 and seeing how it goes from there would be a sensible move.
Holy cow - I went up against Battering Ram for the first time yesterday. I thought the +4 attack effect was temporary, and even then, I felt the card was perhaps a bit too strong. Luckily, I was able to silence it after the 1st turn, so I didn't notice that it was actually a stacking buff. That just feels grossly overpowered to me. As the OP argued, I think Vanguard Firstblade is in an OK spot because it's relatively expensive and you have a realistic chance to kill it in combat or via a cheap removal card early on.
I'd say make Battering Ram's effect only last until the end of the round, and possibly lower its health to 11 or 10 if it needs more fine-tuning.
As much as I know it isn't very sportsmanlike, I occasionally use the Braum emote on an opponent who takes foreeever to make their move - especially in situations where they clearly don't have many possible choices, such as in the early turns or in the late game with few cards in hand. I did the same thing in Hearthstone using the "Hello" emote. It lets me vent my frustration in a non-offensive way.
Other than that, I've barely used any emotes during the week I've been playing the game now. They are funny to look at, though. I kind of hope Riot will introduce new champion emotes to replace the existing ones; they could even make them paid cosmetic items.
As OldManSanns explained, a leveled-up Fiora only needs 2 more kills to fulfill her win condition.
And it's also correct that combat order can play a deciding role in scenarios like these. I don't think greenhat is correct in saying that Fiora's win condition takes precedence over a win via nexus kill; whichever occurs first according to combat order should determine the winner. The game always plays out the attack animations for all attacking units, even if the defender is already eliminated after the first unit's strike (However, as soon as the nexus health reaches 0, a "SKIP" button appears at the bottom of the screen, so you can skip the rest of the combat animations and leave the match).
Oh, it does? I wasn't even aware since I got used to using my desktop clock. Good on Blizzard, then. I know they've had an in-game clock for Diablo 3 for a long time, so it makes sense they would've implemented it in Hearthstone (But seriously, still no borderless window mode after several years?).
I haven't tested it myself, but this would've been my assumption, too - that the expedition counts for the week it started in, not the one it ended in.
I'm with you there. It always bothered me that Hearthstone didn't have a borderless-window video mode, but in hindsight, this led me to play it windowed and thus always have my computer's clock in sight. Of course, an (optional) in-game clock would be the ideal solution.
I get that it can be a bit frustrating for those who would like to invest large amounts of time into the game. Trust me, I was in the same boat for the first weekend after the open beta released. But in the end, as OldManSanns mentioned, I think it's for the best that Riot gives out the bulk of the rewards for the first couple of games played each day. This way, players can keep up with their collections while not having to dedicate all their free time to Runeterra.
You know, after reading this, I thought quite a bit about it. I find myself thinking again and again how powerful of a mechanic Lifesteal is in general, in a game with only 20 nexus health that can evaporate quite fast. Especially, as someone pointed out in a different thread, the cheap cost of Lifesteal is at odds with the immense cost of spells that recover nexus health.
So honestly, I could see the Lifesteal mechanic as a whole get changed to always recover 2 nexus health on strike. It may seem odd at first to make the healing amount independent of the unit's power, but in the same vein, Riot decided to settle for a fixed threshold for the Fearsome mechanic (2 or less attack). So I'd say it's very much in the realm of possibility.
That actually sounds very plausible. Thanks for elaborating :).
I don't think the "Play" keyword is the deciding factor. That was my assumption at first, but the bartender guy that heals 3 also starts his effect with "Play," and he doesn't trigger a skill.
I know that by right-clicking a card, I can view all cards associated with it, which includes potential skills they trigger (like Chempunk Shredder). However, I would like to be able to tell at a glance if a unit's effect triggers right away (like a Burst spell) or if it uses a skill, which I could then respond to with spells of my own. I know, first-world problems and all, but it'd be a nice quality-of-life improvement. Unless I'm missing something and there's already a way to tell.
Is this a actually a serious question? I loathe money-grabbing F2P models as much as the next guy, but giving every card away for free from the get-go sounds completely ridiculous. It would significantly reduce the incentive to keep playing for a large portion of the playerbase (myself included). Not to mention it'd make no sense from a business perspective. Riot is already being more than fair to us with Runeterra's progression system. I'm perfectly happy with what we got.
Good point on those 2 champions, I agree they're definitely among the weakest of the bunch.
The only card that comes to mind right now for me is Trueshot Barrage. Only 6 damage for 7 mana on a slow spell seems absolutely horrible to me. Being able to split up the damage is kind of nice, but can also turn into a hindrance in cases where you want to target a big enemy with a lot of damage. I'd say the cost definitely needs to be reduced to 6 to make it an even remotely viable choice for a damage spell.
Some interesting ideas in this thread. I'll share my 2 cents:
Limiting it to only countering spells which cost 3 or less would ruin the card in my opinion; at that point, you may as well not bother. 5 or less sounds more reasonable.
Only allowing Deny to be used against Fast spells is a neat idea, although I'd estimate that would reduce its usability too much. Add skills to that, however, and it might be a happy middle ground. I could see this being a decent way to balance it.
Tying it to an allied unit at the time of cast seems rather inconsequential. Most of the time, it's easy enough to retain at least a minimum board presence. It'd be a minor nerf at most.
I'm in the camp of players advocating an increase to 4 mana cost for Deny. You always need to remember that it can turn into a dead card if the opponent's deck simply doesn't use any super expensive spells; in that case, the Deny player feels pressured to always set a portion of their mana pool aside without getting anything out of it (or having to make a sub-par trade by cancelling a cheap spell).
Piltover & Zaun does suffer from the fact that spells in Runeterra are relatively expensive compared to units. I agree that this makes the early game a pain against aggressive decks.
However, I think the combo potential in the mid-late game somewhat makes up for it. In my most recent Exploration trial, I got to 6 wins with an Ezreal/Lux spell deck. It was an absolute blast to play, too. This might be harder to pull off in high-skill ranked matches, but I'd caution against overreacting at this point.
Seriously, though, Trueshot Barrage is pretty badly underpowered. Reduce its cost to 6 and it turns into an OK card. Maybe.
While it does contribute to the problem of dealing with elusives, I generally like the overall higher cost of spells in Runeterra compared to other CCGs. I prefer units having a bit more staying power instead of being insta-killed by a spell that costs less than the unit iself. In my mind, units which benefit the most from the lack of cheap removal - like elusives and permanent value generators (think Dawnspeakers) - should be dealt with via cost increases / stat decreases instead.
As an off-topic question: When I mark a card via (runecard), how can I make it show up as a tooltip (on mouse-over)?
A valid point. As long as there are just one or two specific popular decks in the metagame that work without champions, it doesn't prove anything regarding champions' power as a whole. If such decks become widespread, it's a different matter.
I'm with you there. I will make the claim that you can't always rely on countering a high-cost spell with your Deny: Sometimes you have to 'waste' it on a low-level card because you're struggling to survive / your opponent outplayed you, and sometimes their deck may simply not contain any high-cost non-burst spells. So I don't think a cost of 5 is justified quite yet; 4 seems like a very reasonable compromise to me. Test it out from there and see if it's still to strong.
I also agree with KANVAS' assessment that champions are, in most respects, simply more powerful units than followers which otherwise function mostly the same way. The mere fact that Riot restricts the total number of champions in a deck should be evidence enough that they are powerful by design. However, I'm absolutely against making them even stronger - that would only reward people who invest more time/money to get the exact champions to bolster their deck strategy, and it would make good vs. bad draws more lopsided.
As for champion-less decks, I say more power to the players who build them. I don't see it as a problem at all. Yeah, champions are kind of designed to serve as thematic cornerstones for specific decks, but that should be a general guideline, not a requirement, in my opinion.
I fully agree with both of these points.
I think you're raising some interesting points, but I'm mostly in disagreement.
First and foremost, I strongly disagree about spells being too strong in Legends of Runeterra. I'm not an expert, but I have played a number of TCGs in the past to a decent extent, and I honestly find most spells in this game comparatively weak relative to their mana cost. For instance, for 2 mana, I could quick-snipe an enemy for 2 damage - or I could play a 3/1 minion with Quick Attack. I'd argue the latter is a stronger option overall. For 7 mana, I could play Trueshot Barrage for a total of 6 damage - or I could play a freaking 7/5 follower that insta-kills two enemies upon entering play (with a minor requirement that's easy to fulfill for Shadow Isles decks). Those are just 2 examples, but I find that this trend holds true for most spell cards in the game.
Like most other posters in this thread, I was initially put off by the seemingly low 20 nexus health. But having played the game for a good 15 hours or so at this point, I don't think that's quite right. Yes, aggro decks can score some easy wins after just a couple of rounds, but many higher-cost cards provide insane (often permanent) benefits which aggro players simply can't keep up with. So yeah, the game is rather snowbally, but it goes both ways: You can quickly win with an aggressive deck, or you can quickly win after playing just 1 or 2 high-impact cards in the mid-late game, provided you manage to survive until then. I'm not sure 20 health is the perfect amount, but I don't see a pressing need to increase it drastically.
I think opening up the Deny effect to all regions would be a bad move. I'd rather preserve the thematic identities of the individual regions for as long as possible (I'm sure there will be more and more overlap as new cards are released). I can't argue that it's an extremely powerful card in its current state, although it's not nearly as ridiculous as Counterspells in Magic which are even cheaper and able to deny creatures, too. I think upping the cost to 4 and seeing how it goes from there would be a sensible move.
Holy cow - I went up against Battering Ram for the first time yesterday. I thought the +4 attack effect was temporary, and even then, I felt the card was perhaps a bit too strong. Luckily, I was able to silence it after the 1st turn, so I didn't notice that it was actually a stacking buff. That just feels grossly overpowered to me. As the OP argued, I think Vanguard Firstblade is in an OK spot because it's relatively expensive and you have a realistic chance to kill it in combat or via a cheap removal card early on.
I'd say make Battering Ram's effect only last until the end of the round, and possibly lower its health to 11 or 10 if it needs more fine-tuning.
As much as I know it isn't very sportsmanlike, I occasionally use the Braum emote on an opponent who takes foreeever to make their move - especially in situations where they clearly don't have many possible choices, such as in the early turns or in the late game with few cards in hand. I did the same thing in Hearthstone using the "Hello" emote. It lets me vent my frustration in a non-offensive way.
Other than that, I've barely used any emotes during the week I've been playing the game now. They are funny to look at, though. I kind of hope Riot will introduce new champion emotes to replace the existing ones; they could even make them paid cosmetic items.