I smile every time I see people praise HSBG; it's honestly the least interesting or enjoyable form of autobattler I've tried, and I can only assume people who are big on it just haven't/don't play other autobattler games.
As for the meta, if you go back through various forum archives you can see a thousand threads that are essentially identical to this one. All of them whined about some deck or other which was allegedly brainless, unbeatable, what have you. None of those decks, and none of those threads, bore out in truth.
So, what's more likely here - that somehow the current meta is the one that managed to actually manifest an utterly broken deck when no previous one has... or that you're just salty and whining about it? A little self-awareness is all.
I don't think you'd need good allegiance cards to enable monotype - at the moment a lot of decks go to dual type more from a lack of viable cards than from preference. More cards in any given region will likely mean more support for a specific game plan (given regional identities - e.g. if a bunch of new Freljord cards come out, chances are some will have Frostbite on them).
More cards from any given region being viable in turn makes that region's Allegiance more consistent, as you say - but that's a much bigger deal than you're indicating. True consistency is the holy grail of card game decks, and cards which have a failure rate are often underplayed unless their success-case is extremely high (or their failure is non-impactful). That's particularly true in LoR, in my opinion, given the small health pools mean games can be ended faster when one side gets the advantage.
It was hard to tell during the closed beta because participants were given a bunch of freebies to be able to build decks for the purposes of testing. I had no issues building a bunch of different decks on a whim, but I'm pretty sure entirely for that reason.
That said, champion cards aren't as important as you'd think. Few decks, if any, ran at the max number of possible champions included. Unlike HS, where some decks can run to 10+ legendaries included, you're more likely to see 3 copies of (say) 2 champions, included specifically because both of them complement the same game plan, coupled with a deck that maximises that game plan.
So yeah, difficult to say really. Wait and see I guess?
While on the subject of LoR features - just noticed there's a chunk of achievements linked specifically to HS (deckbuilding, commenting on HS decks, etc.) - I assume it's already on your list, but just in case, it'd be worth extending this to LoR as well (or creating a separate chunk for them too).
I don't really care for achievements, personally, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who do!
Nice work putting this together. I wasn't aware there was a deck tracker, although it being made by Mobalytics makes me hesitant (they tend to be pretty amateurish about things in my opinion; their resources for TFT are woefully ill-informed). Still, might be worth a punt if it correctly interfaces with Expeditions.
Trouble is, while Demacia's Allegiance card is good, it's also the only region (possibly excepting Freljord) that has enough decent, splashable cards to really consider going monotype. The keyword doesn't even need any support - all it needs is more cards to be released before it gets stronger. It does feel like something of a potential balance ticking-time-bomb...
I think monthly seasons are unlikely, but I'm purely basing that on their approach to League and TFT. For League, a second is an annual thing with a midseason break and two pre-season periods - this is to tie-in to League's professional scene, so I'm not expecting this to be a huge influence on LoR, but it's still something a decent chunk of the LoR player-base will be used to.
TFT has an entirely different approach which seems to be based on 'sets', with seasons essentially lasting the duration of a set. This isn't tied to any particular event, and is presumably just linked to Rito's new content and when they want to release it. As such, I can certainly see LoR following that trend.
Rito definitely trend towards longer seasons, though, because they like the investment that gradual progression between the varying tiers gives. A monthly season is enough for HS because you're mostly just looking at specific barriers (15, 10, 5, L) and the individual ranks between them don't matter all that much. When you're looking at Bronze-Challenger, you'll find people care a lot more - people feel a lot better about being, say, Gold I than Gold IV.
But, as noted in the other responses, this is all just conjecture and extrapolation from what we have. In the end, we don't know yet.
I'm torn. Part of me wants to be making snarky comments all over the place about how Apple sucks... the rest reminds me continually not to encourage the factional divides prevalent in so many areas of geekdom.
You typo'd in the first line, FYI. Missing the word 'region'.
I wouldn't normally post for something like that, but since it's a factual point it feels necessary. Plus you seem like the sort of person who'd care :P
(For the record, the actual definition is still clear from the context of the rest of the post, but y'know...)
As noted on the news post (in more detail) - I personally recommend SI if you like to play aggro decks, Freljord if you like control decks, and Demacia if you want to sit on the fence.
I'll be testing my SI/Noxus 'undying aggression' deck first and foremost. After that I'll probably want to branch out into Demacia and Freljord as a control player at heart (read: too greedy and too easily bored to spam aggro games for long).
Honestly just looking forward to exploring a new card game. The shiny 'new game' lustre will fade pretty quickly, but it's still one more place to go for my card games fix.
Shame Ezreal got nerfed. First champion I looked at and really liked.
Rekindler and Avarosan Hearthguard both sit in the 'tiny nerf that needs to be bigger' camp. I expect a further nerf to both over time. Rekindler sits in an odd camp in that it seems pretty weak for constructed because it's sitting in Shadow Isles, but is phenomenally strong in Expeditions.
Trynd, meanwhile, was a good nerf. It honestly won't change the card in any noticeable way - nine times of out ten the game is over when Trynd hits the board anyway - but removing unnecessary power is always a good move.
Everything else is so niche that buffs or nerfs won't significantly impact the meta as we saw it in the last round of playtesting, in my opinion, aside from the Catalyst nerf (and, I suppose, the Anivia rework).
While I agree with the above in terms of speed-of-unlocking, if you're instead looking for benefit-for-time-invested you should in my opinion lean towards either Shadow Isles (aggro), Freljord (control) or Demacia (mixed). These regions have, in my view, more splashable cards meaning you're more likely to want to use them in multiple different decks, while the other regions are more focussed (and so will see more use in single, specific deck archetypes).
Note that the above is my personal opinion and also entirely based on what we've seen of the game so far!
Thanks for the stats. I would however disagree with your categorisation to an extent.
We're looking at what is essentially 4 mana 'do nothing' as the weapon. Assuming you're only playing spells that you wanted in your deck in the first place (which is probably going to be the case given that maindecking bad cards to use alongside a one-of that can easily be removed would be highly suspect), you don't need any great outcomes - all you want to make the card worthwhile is a couple of chunks of stats. From a pure value-exchange perspective just a single 4/4 would be enough, but given the tempo loss from burning your 4 mana ahead of time you'll probably want more than that.
With that in mind, I would argue that any dumb block of stats with no potential downside (and big enough to have a board impact) is a hit. For example, in your 10 mana analysis (manalysis?) I would classify every card on the list except Hakkar as a 'hit'. Even if you pull Phaoris (which is probably the lowest roll available) you're dropping a 5/5 alongside the spell's effects, which is far from bad. And that's just one of your charges - if you dropped a 5/5 every turn on average, I'd class that as a definite hit from a 4 mana outlay.
I don't mean to overhype the weapon, by the way - it looks pretty good as a late game play, noting that ol' Medivh was a feature of several control decks back in the day, but far from gamebreaking - just noting that in my opinion your analysis tends towards undervaluing it a little.
I smile every time I see people praise HSBG; it's honestly the least interesting or enjoyable form of autobattler I've tried, and I can only assume people who are big on it just haven't/don't play other autobattler games.
As for the meta, if you go back through various forum archives you can see a thousand threads that are essentially identical to this one. All of them whined about some deck or other which was allegedly brainless, unbeatable, what have you. None of those decks, and none of those threads, bore out in truth.
So, what's more likely here - that somehow the current meta is the one that managed to actually manifest an utterly broken deck when no previous one has... or that you're just salty and whining about it? A little self-awareness is all.
I don't think you'd need good allegiance cards to enable monotype - at the moment a lot of decks go to dual type more from a lack of viable cards than from preference. More cards in any given region will likely mean more support for a specific game plan (given regional identities - e.g. if a bunch of new Freljord cards come out, chances are some will have Frostbite on them).
More cards from any given region being viable in turn makes that region's Allegiance more consistent, as you say - but that's a much bigger deal than you're indicating. True consistency is the holy grail of card game decks, and cards which have a failure rate are often underplayed unless their success-case is extremely high (or their failure is non-impactful). That's particularly true in LoR, in my opinion, given the small health pools mean games can be ended faster when one side gets the advantage.
It was hard to tell during the closed beta because participants were given a bunch of freebies to be able to build decks for the purposes of testing. I had no issues building a bunch of different decks on a whim, but I'm pretty sure entirely for that reason.
That said, champion cards aren't as important as you'd think. Few decks, if any, ran at the max number of possible champions included. Unlike HS, where some decks can run to 10+ legendaries included, you're more likely to see 3 copies of (say) 2 champions, included specifically because both of them complement the same game plan, coupled with a deck that maximises that game plan.
So yeah, difficult to say really. Wait and see I guess?
While on the subject of LoR features - just noticed there's a chunk of achievements linked specifically to HS (deckbuilding, commenting on HS decks, etc.) - I assume it's already on your list, but just in case, it'd be worth extending this to LoR as well (or creating a separate chunk for them too).
I don't really care for achievements, personally, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who do!
Nice work putting this together. I wasn't aware there was a deck tracker, although it being made by Mobalytics makes me hesitant (they tend to be pretty amateurish about things in my opinion; their resources for TFT are woefully ill-informed). Still, might be worth a punt if it correctly interfaces with Expeditions.
Trouble is, while Demacia's Allegiance card is good, it's also the only region (possibly excepting Freljord) that has enough decent, splashable cards to really consider going monotype. The keyword doesn't even need any support - all it needs is more cards to be released before it gets stronger. It does feel like something of a potential balance ticking-time-bomb...
LoR will not be out on mobile devices until later this year, according to various dev updates previously.
I think monthly seasons are unlikely, but I'm purely basing that on their approach to League and TFT. For League, a second is an annual thing with a midseason break and two pre-season periods - this is to tie-in to League's professional scene, so I'm not expecting this to be a huge influence on LoR, but it's still something a decent chunk of the LoR player-base will be used to.
TFT has an entirely different approach which seems to be based on 'sets', with seasons essentially lasting the duration of a set. This isn't tied to any particular event, and is presumably just linked to Rito's new content and when they want to release it. As such, I can certainly see LoR following that trend.
Rito definitely trend towards longer seasons, though, because they like the investment that gradual progression between the varying tiers gives. A monthly season is enough for HS because you're mostly just looking at specific barriers (15, 10, 5, L) and the individual ranks between them don't matter all that much. When you're looking at Bronze-Challenger, you'll find people care a lot more - people feel a lot better about being, say, Gold I than Gold IV.
But, as noted in the other responses, this is all just conjecture and extrapolation from what we have. In the end, we don't know yet.
I'm torn. Part of me wants to be making snarky comments all over the place about how Apple sucks... the rest reminds me continually not to encourage the factional divides prevalent in so many areas of geekdom.
What's am I to do ._.
You typo'd in the first line, FYI. Missing the word 'region'.
I wouldn't normally post for something like that, but since it's a factual point it feels necessary. Plus you seem like the sort of person who'd care :P
(For the record, the actual definition is still clear from the context of the rest of the post, but y'know...)
Yes, but that would get in the way of the vindictive rage, and we can't be having that, can we now?
MVP of the patch.
Hey, something's going in that grave. It's either the original occupant or the person who exhumed them. Dem's the rules.
As noted on the news post (in more detail) - I personally recommend SI if you like to play aggro decks, Freljord if you like control decks, and Demacia if you want to sit on the fence.
I'll be testing my SI/Noxus 'undying aggression' deck first and foremost. After that I'll probably want to branch out into Demacia and Freljord as a control player at heart (read: too greedy and too easily bored to spam aggro games for long).
Honestly just looking forward to exploring a new card game. The shiny 'new game' lustre will fade pretty quickly, but it's still one more place to go for my card games fix.
Shame Ezreal got nerfed. First champion I looked at and really liked.
Rekindler and Avarosan Hearthguard both sit in the 'tiny nerf that needs to be bigger' camp. I expect a further nerf to both over time. Rekindler sits in an odd camp in that it seems pretty weak for constructed because it's sitting in Shadow Isles, but is phenomenally strong in Expeditions.
Trynd, meanwhile, was a good nerf. It honestly won't change the card in any noticeable way - nine times of out ten the game is over when Trynd hits the board anyway - but removing unnecessary power is always a good move.
Everything else is so niche that buffs or nerfs won't significantly impact the meta as we saw it in the last round of playtesting, in my opinion, aside from the Catalyst nerf (and, I suppose, the Anivia rework).
Somebody fetch the holy water and a shovel, we got a necro on our hands here.
Honestly had no idea who this was since I only really dabble in Priest. Nonetheless, a shame to lose a valued member of the community.
While I agree with the above in terms of speed-of-unlocking, if you're instead looking for benefit-for-time-invested you should in my opinion lean towards either Shadow Isles (aggro), Freljord (control) or Demacia (mixed). These regions have, in my view, more splashable cards meaning you're more likely to want to use them in multiple different decks, while the other regions are more focussed (and so will see more use in single, specific deck archetypes).
Note that the above is my personal opinion and also entirely based on what we've seen of the game so far!
Thanks for the stats. I would however disagree with your categorisation to an extent.
We're looking at what is essentially 4 mana 'do nothing' as the weapon. Assuming you're only playing spells that you wanted in your deck in the first place (which is probably going to be the case given that maindecking bad cards to use alongside a one-of that can easily be removed would be highly suspect), you don't need any great outcomes - all you want to make the card worthwhile is a couple of chunks of stats. From a pure value-exchange perspective just a single 4/4 would be enough, but given the tempo loss from burning your 4 mana ahead of time you'll probably want more than that.
With that in mind, I would argue that any dumb block of stats with no potential downside (and big enough to have a board impact) is a hit. For example, in your 10 mana analysis (manalysis?) I would classify every card on the list except Hakkar as a 'hit'. Even if you pull Phaoris (which is probably the lowest roll available) you're dropping a 5/5 alongside the spell's effects, which is far from bad. And that's just one of your charges - if you dropped a 5/5 every turn on average, I'd class that as a definite hit from a 4 mana outlay.
I don't mean to overhype the weapon, by the way - it looks pretty good as a late game play, noting that ol' Medivh was a feature of several control decks back in the day, but far from gamebreaking - just noting that in my opinion your analysis tends towards undervaluing it a little.