The first time I broke past rank 5 was back in Journey to Un'goro, back when I never really wanted to try to climb to legend. Built Quest Warrior on day one and went from rank 9 to rank 1 in a single unbeaten streak. That felt GOOD.
I'm not really clear on why people want the dust system revamped - not criticizing the point, I honestly just don't see a problem with it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
The most interesting part of these statistics, in my opinion, is what you can infer from them blind. I haven't played ranked HS in quite a while, so I'm a little rusty on the meta - but from these stats I see:
- Two of the highest winrate cards are boardwide AoE. That implies Mage is more likely to be behind on board at any given late-game turn, though a part of that winrate is likely due to the tempo shift of giving you a turn of empty board development. Blizzard being on the list itself supports the idea of being behind on board, given it's more potent from the freeze effect than anything else
- Yogg's Box being up at the #1 slot is kinda damning really; although it has a SLIGHT positive bias due to some spells specifically targeting enemy minions, it's still obviously very random
- Surrender to Madness being up there implies Mage is running either few minions, or expensive ones, or both. Losing three crystals (while not good, obviously) isn't THAT bad when you're at 10 mana by default; the pay-off not being worth it suggests the benefits are minor (or that you're already so far behind on board that the tempo-loss is backbreaking)
- Myra's being on the list indicates Mage should obviously be running Chef Nomi for the outsider play. Clearly.
I feel like you should have spaced 'cast rates' there, because I can't help but think of a different word when it's written that way... though I suppose that IS kind of the effect of a Myra's pull :P
But you have to keep in mind the developers' stated intent to do frequent balance patches -- far more frequent than other card games I've played. How much do you expect the meta to settle amid that constantly shifting landscape?
So far, it seems like Riot is basing their decisions mostly on hard data, with player sentiment possibly giving a nudge when they are on the fence about something. I don't think there's any reason to get too stressed out about players calling for nerfs if you truly believe something isn't a problem. If it is a problem, it will show up in the data; if it's not, Riot may put it on the watch list but probably won't change it without reason.
That's actually touching on a concern I have about LoR in the longer term. Looking at League as a reference, Riot have tended to make balance changes frequently and constantly. They're usually fairly small, with only a couple of major changes per patch, but they still happen. That, generally speaking, is a good thing specifically in a MOBA environment - the player-base there tends to be quite trend-chasing, and people will pick/ban whatever's perceived as the strongest around at that time without going deeper on counters. Riot's balance strategy there does work fairly well to continually mix up the meta.
The trouble is, that doesn't really translate well into a card game sphere. Often the buffs Riot hands out on League are small enough that they don't make a significant functional difference, but are more of a prompt to make people play different things. That kind of interventionalist approach works well in MOBAs, but I don't think it translates well to card games because people are a lot less happy to drop the deck they lovingly created (well, let's be honest, lovingly netdecked :P) to play something else just because Riot decided to mix it up.
For clarity - the above is supposition, and obviously I don't know Riot's overarching goals when it comes to balancing LoR. And, in fairness to them, they've been fairly good at restricting their intervention in TFT, so presumably they're aware that different genres require different levels of intervention - I'm just hoping they don't get into a habit of making changes for change's sake, and that their intervention tails off over time.
That said, that's not what my previous post was about. My previous post was, more than anything, a plea to the player base. The first few thoughts you should have (in my opinion) when meeting a strong deck or seeing a powerful interaction should be 'how do I play around that in future' or 'how do I counter that'. Maybe even 'I want to try that for myself'. I really don't want people to jump straight to 'that should be nerfed!' because that restricts creative thinking and has a deleterious effect both on the game itself, and on the community around that game.
P.S. One of these days I'm going to learn to restrict myself to not posting essays...
I think a major part of this card (along with its counterpart, Feral Mystic) is that you're not really getting much for the Enlightened effect. You're getting more stats, sure, but by default you're at 10 mana when that happens - there's plenty of big stuff you could play. So what you're really getting is tempo, but since card draw sources are pretty light in LoR so far your hand is going to be fairly limited by that point in the game anyway. The one thing it does let you do is combine it with a big spell on the turn you play it - but there aren't many decks willing to run a significant number of big spells right now.
Well... that and the fact that the meta is still quite fast at this point. That doesn't help either.
I don't think I'd call Frostbite a problem child. Then again, I wouldn't have called Fearsome-centric aggro OR Elusive decks problem children either. An archetype being strong isn't a problem; the problem comes when one archetype gets too overwhelmingly strong such that it either chokes out or entirely defines a metagame for an extended period. If the final point of the meta's evolution becomes 'either play this or hate-pick for it', that's when you've got a problem. We've reached that point in Hearthstone a fair few times now.
LoR has never actually reached that point. Elusive decks were already on the way out to Fearsome aggression before any balance changes happened, and given how quickly they got nerfed after that shift we never hit that point with Fearsome decks either. We're now only a few days past a balance patch which had a heavy impact on major meta decks - it's far too soon to say that any particular deck now needs balancing.
I will continue to disagree with the idea of reflexive nerfs before the meta has a chance to react properly, and will continue to express my frustration at the tendency of players to want to nerf whatever's currently doing well simply because it's doing well.
Thematically, I'd prefer it if the living shadow DIDN'T count as a summon effect and DIDN'T fizzle existing spells. The attacking unit should be transforming into an animated shadow golem the instant Shadowshift resolves, subject to all the physical and magical attacks that were previously aimed at it.
It's like in Naruto when they throw a dagger at someone, but then *poof* they're a log and the dagger impales into the log, right?
Lore-wise, no. Not 100% sure on the exact lore-mechanics of it, but looking at League, Shadowshift is essentially Zed's W (Living Shadow) - Zed creates a Shadow a moderate distance away from him (phrased in-game as 'Zed's shadow dashes in target direction'). He can then re-activate it to swap places with the Shadow.
Given that, the mechanic of swapping places does line up.
Impossible to know at this stage - if it's been announced at any point I'm not aware of it. Given the opponents I played against earlier when I queued unranked by mistake, though, I'm guessing there is.
If unranked does use MMR, I'm guessing it's not queue-independent. It probably just takes your ranked MMR and allows for a greater leeway in the opponent.
That's all speculation though, the tl;dr is 'I don't know'.
I've had success with him too, yeah. Lots of Will of Ionias is pretty brutal - though the nerf to Inspiring Mentor hurts.
In my opinion, a Yasuo run comes down to the first 3-4 games. During that time, your deck hasn't picked up enough stuns/recalls to reliably level Yasuo, and you don't have multiple redundant copies of him to a) ensure you find him and b) act as backups for the inevitability of his death. Once you're past that point, you're pretty likely to just flat out 7-win the run unless you walk into a bunch of hardcore aggro decks back to back.
On the other hand, a spell targets a specific unit at that position.
While I agree that that works as a way of thinking about it, I still think it's inconsistent with Stand United's design. You probably couldn't resolve it with card text without horribly bloating one or both of them, so personally I think a change is in order.
There's plenty of stuff in Naxx that wouldn't let that combo work either. Just because a specific deck doesn't work in a format designed to ask you to build a deck for each encounter doesn't mean the encounter is broken.
The +3/+3 from Jeweled Protector is also slow: you need to have the target in hand when you play him, and you probably aren't playing that target on the same turn so its a delayed effect. Contrast with Avarosan Hearthguard, who conceivably can give ~20/~20 worth of stats for that same 5 mana but because most of those stats trickle out he goes from auto-include 3x to worthy consideration.
Tbf Hearthguard was auto-3x until they nerfed Freljord control :P
Jewelled Protector has a major upside in that you can target it, though, which is valuable because some cards use the stats better than others. It's a lot more impactful to give +3/+3 to a Kinkou Lifeblade than to Icy Yeti, for example.
As you said, the metagame hasn't really solidified, so I don't think there's too much point in trying to nail down which cards to look out for. Maybe Chempunk Shredder will be the next big thing in Piltover & Zaun decks, so that's be a 1-health breakpoint. Similar story for Death Lotus if self-damage decks somehow rise to the top. You could basically add all direct-damage effects and Challenger units to the list. Unless you want to update the list constantly to reflect what's being played the most at the moment.
I do agree, but wasn't intending on making this a permanent thing. More just an aide to my own thinking around the current meta and what to play around/build around - and if it helps someone else, cool.
Shredder is a good point though actually - unlike a lot of similar cards, that can actually be a major play-around if it hit a bigger spot in the meta. Which, in turn, is likely if token-centric decks push forward. Hmm.
I also don't get what 8 is supposed to mean. There are plenty of ways to kill minions with that amount of health, especially considering stuff like Single Combat, Whirling Death, Atrocity, etc.
The eight health breakpoint is Nexus health. If you have >=8 Nexus health, it'll take min. five Ledros plays to kill you (8 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1 -> 0) meaning if it's first played on the tail-end of your attacking round you'll have two attacking rounds (the second of which needs to be taken immediately) to end the game before you auto-lose. Important to think about when assigning early/mid game blockers against SI decks.
Added Culling Strike (though less relevant as you have less control over your units' attack than their health - you can't mitigate it by choosing trades). Vengeance has no breakpoints aside from mana, and nor does Frostbite, so not sure what I'd add them under I'm afraid.
One point of note - it's highly unlikely that each season will align with each new set precisely because both League and TFT have shown Riot like to have a grace period between seasons. It's possible they'll go a different route with this game, but that wouldn't match established formulae.
I mean... I'm not playing hardcore either, this past week was the first one I'd bothered to do anything but play Expedition to get my quests done, yet I have multiple competitive decks. Get a level 10+ vault each week, be decent at expedition and spend your wild cards wisely, you'll be fine
The first time I broke past rank 5 was back in Journey to Un'goro, back when I never really wanted to try to climb to legend. Built Quest Warrior on day one and went from rank 9 to rank 1 in a single unbeaten streak. That felt GOOD.
I'm not really clear on why people want the dust system revamped - not criticizing the point, I honestly just don't see a problem with it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Yup, assuming everything you posted is accurate, that's a bug.
The most interesting part of these statistics, in my opinion, is what you can infer from them blind. I haven't played ranked HS in quite a while, so I'm a little rusty on the meta - but from these stats I see:
- Two of the highest winrate cards are boardwide AoE. That implies Mage is more likely to be behind on board at any given late-game turn, though a part of that winrate is likely due to the tempo shift of giving you a turn of empty board development. Blizzard being on the list itself supports the idea of being behind on board, given it's more potent from the freeze effect than anything else
- Yogg's Box being up at the #1 slot is kinda damning really; although it has a SLIGHT positive bias due to some spells specifically targeting enemy minions, it's still obviously very random
- Surrender to Madness being up there implies Mage is running either few minions, or expensive ones, or both. Losing three crystals (while not good, obviously) isn't THAT bad when you're at 10 mana by default; the pay-off not being worth it suggests the benefits are minor (or that you're already so far behind on board that the tempo-loss is backbreaking)
- Myra's being on the list indicates Mage should obviously be running Chef Nomi for the outsider play. Clearly.
I feel like you should have spaced 'cast rates' there, because I can't help but think of a different word when it's written that way... though I suppose that IS kind of the effect of a Myra's pull :P
Wh- what is this 'fun' concept you speak of?
I... I'm scared...
That's actually touching on a concern I have about LoR in the longer term. Looking at League as a reference, Riot have tended to make balance changes frequently and constantly. They're usually fairly small, with only a couple of major changes per patch, but they still happen. That, generally speaking, is a good thing specifically in a MOBA environment - the player-base there tends to be quite trend-chasing, and people will pick/ban whatever's perceived as the strongest around at that time without going deeper on counters. Riot's balance strategy there does work fairly well to continually mix up the meta.
The trouble is, that doesn't really translate well into a card game sphere. Often the buffs Riot hands out on League are small enough that they don't make a significant functional difference, but are more of a prompt to make people play different things. That kind of interventionalist approach works well in MOBAs, but I don't think it translates well to card games because people are a lot less happy to drop the deck they lovingly created (well, let's be honest, lovingly netdecked :P) to play something else just because Riot decided to mix it up.
For clarity - the above is supposition, and obviously I don't know Riot's overarching goals when it comes to balancing LoR. And, in fairness to them, they've been fairly good at restricting their intervention in TFT, so presumably they're aware that different genres require different levels of intervention - I'm just hoping they don't get into a habit of making changes for change's sake, and that their intervention tails off over time.
That said, that's not what my previous post was about. My previous post was, more than anything, a plea to the player base. The first few thoughts you should have (in my opinion) when meeting a strong deck or seeing a powerful interaction should be 'how do I play around that in future' or 'how do I counter that'. Maybe even 'I want to try that for myself'. I really don't want people to jump straight to 'that should be nerfed!' because that restricts creative thinking and has a deleterious effect both on the game itself, and on the community around that game.
P.S. One of these days I'm going to learn to restrict myself to not posting essays...
I think a major part of this card (along with its counterpart, Feral Mystic) is that you're not really getting much for the Enlightened effect. You're getting more stats, sure, but by default you're at 10 mana when that happens - there's plenty of big stuff you could play. So what you're really getting is tempo, but since card draw sources are pretty light in LoR so far your hand is going to be fairly limited by that point in the game anyway. The one thing it does let you do is combine it with a big spell on the turn you play it - but there aren't many decks willing to run a significant number of big spells right now.
Well... that and the fact that the meta is still quite fast at this point. That doesn't help either.
I don't think I'd call Frostbite a problem child. Then again, I wouldn't have called Fearsome-centric aggro OR Elusive decks problem children either. An archetype being strong isn't a problem; the problem comes when one archetype gets too overwhelmingly strong such that it either chokes out or entirely defines a metagame for an extended period. If the final point of the meta's evolution becomes 'either play this or hate-pick for it', that's when you've got a problem. We've reached that point in Hearthstone a fair few times now.
LoR has never actually reached that point. Elusive decks were already on the way out to Fearsome aggression before any balance changes happened, and given how quickly they got nerfed after that shift we never hit that point with Fearsome decks either. We're now only a few days past a balance patch which had a heavy impact on major meta decks - it's far too soon to say that any particular deck now needs balancing.
I will continue to disagree with the idea of reflexive nerfs before the meta has a chance to react properly, and will continue to express my frustration at the tendency of players to want to nerf whatever's currently doing well simply because it's doing well.
Lore-wise, no. Not 100% sure on the exact lore-mechanics of it, but looking at League, Shadowshift is essentially Zed's W (Living Shadow) - Zed creates a Shadow a moderate distance away from him (phrased in-game as 'Zed's shadow dashes in target direction'). He can then re-activate it to swap places with the Shadow.
Given that, the mechanic of swapping places does line up.
Impossible to know at this stage - if it's been announced at any point I'm not aware of it. Given the opponents I played against earlier when I queued unranked by mistake, though, I'm guessing there is.
If unranked does use MMR, I'm guessing it's not queue-independent. It probably just takes your ranked MMR and allows for a greater leeway in the opponent.
That's all speculation though, the tl;dr is 'I don't know'.
I've had success with him too, yeah. Lots of Will of Ionias is pretty brutal - though the nerf to Inspiring Mentor hurts.
In my opinion, a Yasuo run comes down to the first 3-4 games. During that time, your deck hasn't picked up enough stuns/recalls to reliably level Yasuo, and you don't have multiple redundant copies of him to a) ensure you find him and b) act as backups for the inevitability of his death. Once you're past that point, you're pretty likely to just flat out 7-win the run unless you walk into a bunch of hardcore aggro decks back to back.
While I agree that that works as a way of thinking about it, I still think it's inconsistent with Stand United's design. You probably couldn't resolve it with card text without horribly bloating one or both of them, so personally I think a change is in order.
There's plenty of stuff in Naxx that wouldn't let that combo work either. Just because a specific deck doesn't work in a format designed to ask you to build a deck for each encounter doesn't mean the encounter is broken.
Tbf Hearthguard was auto-3x until they nerfed Freljord control :P
Jewelled Protector has a major upside in that you can target it, though, which is valuable because some cards use the stats better than others. It's a lot more impactful to give +3/+3 to a Kinkou Lifeblade than to Icy Yeti, for example.
I do agree, but wasn't intending on making this a permanent thing. More just an aide to my own thinking around the current meta and what to play around/build around - and if it helps someone else, cool.
Shredder is a good point though actually - unlike a lot of similar cards, that can actually be a major play-around if it hit a bigger spot in the meta. Which, in turn, is likely if token-centric decks push forward. Hmm.
The eight health breakpoint is Nexus health. If you have >=8 Nexus health, it'll take min. five Ledros plays to kill you (8 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1 -> 0) meaning if it's first played on the tail-end of your attacking round you'll have two attacking rounds (the second of which needs to be taken immediately) to end the game before you auto-lose. Important to think about when assigning early/mid game blockers against SI decks.
Added Culling Strike (though less relevant as you have less control over your units' attack than their health - you can't mitigate it by choosing trades). Vengeance has no breakpoints aside from mana, and nor does Frostbite, so not sure what I'd add them under I'm afraid.
One point of note - it's highly unlikely that each season will align with each new set precisely because both League and TFT have shown Riot like to have a grace period between seasons. It's possible they'll go a different route with this game, but that wouldn't match established formulae.
Uh...
I mean... I'm not playing hardcore either, this past week was the first one I'd bothered to do anything but play Expedition to get my quests done, yet I have multiple competitive decks. Get a level 10+ vault each week, be decent at expedition and spend your wild cards wisely, you'll be fine