I'm actually kinda in favour of HoFing Leeroy at this point. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with the OP - Leeroy really isn't as prevalent as is implied, at least at higher ranks.
But, as has been stated in the past, certain cards restrict the design space because potential new cards would be blatantly abusable. Leeroy, given his stats and charge, certainly fits that description. And removing him would, I feel, allow for more interesting aggro cards to be released (maybe even burn cards, since the automatic pseudo-fireball inclusion is gone).
That said, I'm not particularly fussed either way. Not an aggro player, and never really had an issue with Leeroy except when he's topdecked on an empty hand :P
Assuming we're drawing a direct comparison to League, the answer would be that you get nothing, but you'll wind up using those cards in three months anyway as the revolving door of 'balance' changes comes around :P
Maybe it's the old elitist in me talking, but... I don't believe heroic should be accessible to newer players. Normal mode absolutely should be accessible to pretty much anyone with a vaguely reasonable collection, but heroic should be an apex challenge that you need to play very well - and build very well - to beat. Naxx isn't a good comparison in my opinion because it was their first time trying to balance these things and there are some encounters in there that were as much about luck as they were about skill (I'm looking at you, Sindragosa), but if you're beating them first time without even making a bespoke deck then they're far too weak.
Playing big, powerful spells MUST have an opportunity cost beyond just the mana expenditure. There MUST be an inherent risk.
Deny is that risk. Any change that obviates that risk is a non-starter. Making it so Deny works only on cheap spells is out of the question.
They do have inherent risk. There's always inherent risk in playing any high-cost card, which is that they have a high probability of being dead draws on any given turn. Even when you've got the mana to play them, there's often other demands on your mana expenditure which can effectively lock them off as options. And that's the only risk they need to have - look at HS as a comparator here. Since Counterspell is pretty telegraphed (and rare), there's no other opportunity cost on high cost spells - and it's not like they're exactly flooding the meta.
Thought about it as well.. there's no way Riot doesn't have anything planned for that point it should happen approximately in 2.5/3 months where the first player will max out his regional rewards.. I guess the vault is always a progress to be made.. in league as you have all champions you can still use BE to buy new ones AND to buy cosmetics twice a year.. so even I who play since 2012 still don't have around 100K spare blue essence (league's normal currency)
I did have about 250k BE - then discovered the chroma store and that all went away :<
The mana cost of rush is about 1 on average, Militia Commander being the only exception this card is obviously OP.
Good example is the Amani War Bear which has rush and taunt for a 5-7 beast body. It costs 7 mana; should yield 15 stats but its 12; add 1 for taunt, add 1 for rush and add 1 for beast tag.
That example doesn't even come close to a mana cost of 1 for Rush O.o.
5/7 statline equates to somewhere in the region of 6 mana vanilla - you're paying 1 extra mana for rush, taunt and beast. Given taunt tends towards a mana cost somewhere between 0.5-1.0 on a neutral minion (plus a beast tag, but that's usually worth very little), you're paying very little for the Rush tag itself on Amani War Bear.
On that image they have a separate crest for zaun so maybe eventually they will separate them
Honestly I struggle to understand why they conflated the regions in the first place. Each of the release regions only has four champions associated with it, after all, so unless they're trying to keep them all even over the long term - which is tremendously unlikely for the Void unless they start inventing new champions - they could easily make them separate. The only explanation I have, really (aside from the evenly-numbered thing) is that they really struggled to translate champions into cards and so went with their four best designs
I wonder then if that is the only way to achieve a tie. Because every other scenario has a predetermined order. And if that is the only way to achieve a tie in this game, I gotta say that they made some pretty robust systems. It aggravated me in the moment, but it makes sense once you put it into words
Maybe if I have 1 HP and attack you with a big overwhelm, and you have a chump blocker and either Phantom Prankster and/or the chump blocker is Legion Grenadier: I could see the game logic applying the special effects to damage my nexus should be applied simultaneously as the carry-over damage to your nexus from my overwhelm and ruling that game a tie. I've thought about this a lot actually, but I haven't actually had the opportunity to confirm.
My understanding is that Overwhelm damage is simultaneous with ally damage, while ally effects (if they have a specific trigger) resolve immediately after the strike but before the next strike in combat. I haven't done any testing, though.
it's NOT COMPLEXITY...it's just convoluted counterintuitive retardness...it actually makes the step by step battle system (a BRILLIANT MECHANIC BTW-and something I have been waiting for a long time in a cardgame) completly redundant...
I realy can't undestand how complacent and jaded people can be...to support this...and I am enraged that this utter idiocy ruins a game that is otherwise PERFECT!
I would argue that the issue isn't with Rush, nor even with Rush being too common - as a keyword it helps promote a board-centric trade-heavy style which tends to be interesting (to me, at least).
The problem is that all keywords should be appropriately costed, and Rush simply isn't. Far too many of the Rush minions which have been released have had good stats, inappropriately-costed downsides, or archetype-specific benefits. In most cases, the reason behind undercosting seems to me to be due to class premium and/or archetype premium - Oasis Surger being the obvious one, but even cards like Militia Commander being good examples. Trouble is, when you give too much weight to class premium and then give every class those cards, you wind up with an inflated set.
So yeah, I'd argue the issue goes all the way back to the overarching design decisions underpinning every expansion since Witchwood. No single major mistake, but lots and lots of tiny ones adding up over time.
Quick explanation of keyword costing for those unfamiliar with the concept:
Show Spoiler
Almost by default, a card with a keyword should either have worse stats than a card without that keyword, should cost more, or should have some additional downside. The alternative is that you're getting that keyword for 'free', which leads to that card being overly powerful relative to other similar cards. The question of how much weaker/more expensive/etc is the 'cost' of that keyword for that card, and applying a rough-and-ready average across other cards with that keyword gives the keyword cost in general.
I also have no idea how to counter Shark Chariot. The only cards I can think of from the top of my head are Detain and recall cards like Will of Ionia, which are all incredibly mana inefficient if used on a Chariot (and they don't even fully remove it).
Purify and Mageseeker Investigator would be my go-to choices for Chariot hate - though noting you'll need to kill it since you'll be removing Ephemeral as well. And now I stop to think about it, I'm not even certain they'd work - unsure whether removing the text persists after follower death. I'd have to test it.
For the record, all-out aggro tends to beat Ephemeral decks on average (both sides are largely reduced to just flinging raw damage at face, but Noxian aggro decks have more damage to throw unless the Ephemeral deck pulls a god-draw). The issue is that Noxian aggro decks tend to lose against basically everything else, wheras Ephemeral decks are actually well placed to fight against the all-encompassing Ionian Elusives that have been flooding the meta since release.
To be clear - Burst spells happen instantly, Fast spells (when cast during combat phase) happen before combat resolution. It's exactly the same as when you Mystic Shot an opponent's minion during combat - the Mystic Shot happens before the fight happens, so anything that minion was blocking (or being blocked by) will not be hit by it and will not take damage.
The spells resolved, you took enough damage to lose. Then combat resolution happened.
Honestly a lot of these difficulties would be avoided if Rito had decided to just end a game as soon as someone loses rather than letting animations play out. Personally I prefer it this way since it allows for entertaining end-of-game happenings, but certainly it would lead to fewer people getting confused.
I don't know. A month is longer than Artifact lasted, isn't it?
I mean, maybe I'm wrong. It's been known to happen (rarely :P). But I don't see their published rationale as holding up, so I'm forced to look at alternative views (and, y'know, it's what I'd do in their position, albeit in a different form).
Re: your point on cosmetics, that's pretty much where League's been at for a few years now. Though in my case at least, they sorta shot themselves in the foot; I don't think I've spent anything on League since they made it possible to get skins through regular play (though that may also be due to not playing as much as I once did...).
Oh, one more to add to the collection - a year or two back, I decided I was tired of having every card on day 1 with nothing to work towards. I also knew I was too weak to simply stop myself from buying a huge number of packs. So, I decided to implement an alternative rule - I was only allowed to craft golden cards from then on. That way I wouldn't have enough dust to make every card and would be forced to work towards some of them. Perfect idea!
..Except I misjudged my own stupidity, and the only real result was I just bought more packs. I am the worst.
I would argue the inverse - I'd say the economy throttle is doing exactly what it's intended to do, assuming I read the intentions correctly. That is, the actual intentions, rather than what they really have to say to avoid enraging fans.
Most of us here are card game enthusiasts, and I'd imagine most of us have dabbled in other card games. How many have risen in great acclaim recently? And of those, how many are still major players in the card game world? I would wager an answer to the latter question would be 'none'.
The true purpose of the throttle isn't really to stop the meta from getting stale or anything similar, in my view. It's simply to avoid the game becoming stale too quickly. I emphasize 'too quickly' because it's an inevitability that people will complete their collections (or at least as much of them as is necessary for full experimentation). People can be frustrated at not being able to quickly complete their collections - that's not going to make many of them drop the game entirely, though. On the other hand, it's very common for card game players (who, in my experience, tend towards the obsessive on average) to complete a collection very quickly, play themselves through, and then burn out.
So - the throttle is simply to keep people coming back to earn their rewards and unlock a collection more slowly. That way, the game can continue to have an active player base.
It has to be said, of course - CursedParrot's comment above, noting that future expansions wouldn't work well with the current limitations. That is 100% correct - but that's fine, because the limitation isn't intended to be sustainable, according to my interpretation above. All it needs to do is keep the game thriving in the short term. After a certain point - and the next expansion is a solid milestone for that - if a community is still strong, it will be invested enough that it'll keep playing without needing that kind of incentivization to sustain it. But in this short term period, I believe Riot is simply trying to ensnare its player base and keep them from wandering off - and they are 100% correct to do so, in my opinion.
Final point - I would add to CursedParrot's post that not only will this model be unsustainable for future expansions, it will be actively detrimental at that point. Not being able to buy a lot of cards is a good thing (for Riot) right now - but skip forward two or three expansions and imagine a new player coming in. It's bad enough on Hearthstone, having to deal with top-tier meta decks with a limited selection of cards. Imagine being in that same situation and you can't even buy enough cards to close the gap. All you can do is buy enough cards to complete maybe one third of a meta deck - a deck which, in three weeks' time, may well have dropped to the middle tiers or lower. That would make for an atrociously bad new player experience. So I would venture that the current model will be removed at some point - I'd guess sometime around the next expansion.
That's my guess, anyway... but then, looking at League, Riot have never been particularly good at the whole new player experience thing :P
e can go from LV1 to I WIN { she level up mid spell and count the rest of the units afterwards, of course that means judgment counts for killing with her at any point 0/4, 1/4, etc.}
Yeah, I've lost games to that before. Complete board dominance, opponent down to 2 health, he declares attack at the very start of the round, then chains Riposte into Judgment on my full board. I was torn between outrage, amusement, and cautious respect.
Given the provocative language and relatively new account, I'm entirely unconvinced that this isn't just a bait-thread. But for the sake of argument, I'd note that the mechanic is entirely intuitive once you understand and accept the premise. It also ensures that Overwhelm is appropriately powerful - it'd be a lot less impactful as a keyword if the same effect could be reproduced by basically any targeted removal spell.
I'm actually kinda in favour of HoFing Leeroy at this point. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with the OP - Leeroy really isn't as prevalent as is implied, at least at higher ranks.
But, as has been stated in the past, certain cards restrict the design space because potential new cards would be blatantly abusable. Leeroy, given his stats and charge, certainly fits that description. And removing him would, I feel, allow for more interesting aggro cards to be released (maybe even burn cards, since the automatic pseudo-fireball inclusion is gone).
That said, I'm not particularly fussed either way. Not an aggro player, and never really had an issue with Leeroy except when he's topdecked on an empty hand :P
Assuming we're drawing a direct comparison to League, the answer would be that you get nothing, but you'll wind up using those cards in three months anyway as the revolving door of 'balance' changes comes around :P
Maybe it's the old elitist in me talking, but... I don't believe heroic should be accessible to newer players. Normal mode absolutely should be accessible to pretty much anyone with a vaguely reasonable collection, but heroic should be an apex challenge that you need to play very well - and build very well - to beat. Naxx isn't a good comparison in my opinion because it was their first time trying to balance these things and there are some encounters in there that were as much about luck as they were about skill (I'm looking at you, Sindragosa), but if you're beating them first time without even making a bespoke deck then they're far too weak.
They do have inherent risk. There's always inherent risk in playing any high-cost card, which is that they have a high probability of being dead draws on any given turn. Even when you've got the mana to play them, there's often other demands on your mana expenditure which can effectively lock them off as options. And that's the only risk they need to have - look at HS as a comparator here. Since Counterspell is pretty telegraphed (and rare), there's no other opportunity cost on high cost spells - and it's not like they're exactly flooding the meta.
I did have about 250k BE - then discovered the chroma store and that all went away :<
That example doesn't even come close to a mana cost of 1 for Rush O.o.
5/7 statline equates to somewhere in the region of 6 mana vanilla - you're paying 1 extra mana for rush, taunt and beast. Given taunt tends towards a mana cost somewhere between 0.5-1.0 on a neutral minion (plus a beast tag, but that's usually worth very little), you're paying very little for the Rush tag itself on Amani War Bear.
Honestly I struggle to understand why they conflated the regions in the first place. Each of the release regions only has four champions associated with it, after all, so unless they're trying to keep them all even over the long term - which is tremendously unlikely for the Void unless they start inventing new champions - they could easily make them separate. The only explanation I have, really (aside from the evenly-numbered thing) is that they really struggled to translate champions into cards and so went with their four best designs
Except you could say the exact same thing about Demacia and Noxus.
My understanding is that Overwhelm damage is simultaneous with ally damage, while ally effects (if they have a specific trigger) resolve immediately after the strike but before the next strike in combat. I haven't done any testing, though.
The irony consumes us all. [Emphasis added]
I would argue that the issue isn't with Rush, nor even with Rush being too common - as a keyword it helps promote a board-centric trade-heavy style which tends to be interesting (to me, at least).
The problem is that all keywords should be appropriately costed, and Rush simply isn't. Far too many of the Rush minions which have been released have had good stats, inappropriately-costed downsides, or archetype-specific benefits. In most cases, the reason behind undercosting seems to me to be due to class premium and/or archetype premium - Oasis Surger being the obvious one, but even cards like Militia Commander being good examples. Trouble is, when you give too much weight to class premium and then give every class those cards, you wind up with an inflated set.
So yeah, I'd argue the issue goes all the way back to the overarching design decisions underpinning every expansion since Witchwood. No single major mistake, but lots and lots of tiny ones adding up over time.
Quick explanation of keyword costing for those unfamiliar with the concept:
Purify and Mageseeker Investigator would be my go-to choices for Chariot hate - though noting you'll need to kill it since you'll be removing Ephemeral as well. And now I stop to think about it, I'm not even certain they'd work - unsure whether removing the text persists after follower death. I'd have to test it.
For the record, all-out aggro tends to beat Ephemeral decks on average (both sides are largely reduced to just flinging raw damage at face, but Noxian aggro decks have more damage to throw unless the Ephemeral deck pulls a god-draw). The issue is that Noxian aggro decks tend to lose against basically everything else, wheras Ephemeral decks are actually well placed to fight against the all-encompassing Ionian Elusives that have been flooding the meta since release.
To be clear - Burst spells happen instantly, Fast spells (when cast during combat phase) happen before combat resolution. It's exactly the same as when you Mystic Shot an opponent's minion during combat - the Mystic Shot happens before the fight happens, so anything that minion was blocking (or being blocked by) will not be hit by it and will not take damage.
The spells resolved, you took enough damage to lose. Then combat resolution happened.
Honestly a lot of these difficulties would be avoided if Rito had decided to just end a game as soon as someone loses rather than letting animations play out. Personally I prefer it this way since it allows for entertaining end-of-game happenings, but certainly it would lead to fewer people getting confused.
I don't know. A month is longer than Artifact lasted, isn't it?
I mean, maybe I'm wrong. It's been known to happen (rarely :P). But I don't see their published rationale as holding up, so I'm forced to look at alternative views (and, y'know, it's what I'd do in their position, albeit in a different form).
Re: your point on cosmetics, that's pretty much where League's been at for a few years now. Though in my case at least, they sorta shot themselves in the foot; I don't think I've spent anything on League since they made it possible to get skins through regular play (though that may also be due to not playing as much as I once did...).
Oh, one more to add to the collection - a year or two back, I decided I was tired of having every card on day 1 with nothing to work towards. I also knew I was too weak to simply stop myself from buying a huge number of packs. So, I decided to implement an alternative rule - I was only allowed to craft golden cards from then on. That way I wouldn't have enough dust to make every card and would be forced to work towards some of them. Perfect idea!
..Except I misjudged my own stupidity, and the only real result was I just bought more packs. I am the worst.
I would argue the inverse - I'd say the economy throttle is doing exactly what it's intended to do, assuming I read the intentions correctly. That is, the actual intentions, rather than what they really have to say to avoid enraging fans.
Most of us here are card game enthusiasts, and I'd imagine most of us have dabbled in other card games. How many have risen in great acclaim recently? And of those, how many are still major players in the card game world? I would wager an answer to the latter question would be 'none'.
The true purpose of the throttle isn't really to stop the meta from getting stale or anything similar, in my view. It's simply to avoid the game becoming stale too quickly. I emphasize 'too quickly' because it's an inevitability that people will complete their collections (or at least as much of them as is necessary for full experimentation). People can be frustrated at not being able to quickly complete their collections - that's not going to make many of them drop the game entirely, though. On the other hand, it's very common for card game players (who, in my experience, tend towards the obsessive on average) to complete a collection very quickly, play themselves through, and then burn out.
So - the throttle is simply to keep people coming back to earn their rewards and unlock a collection more slowly. That way, the game can continue to have an active player base.
It has to be said, of course - CursedParrot's comment above, noting that future expansions wouldn't work well with the current limitations. That is 100% correct - but that's fine, because the limitation isn't intended to be sustainable, according to my interpretation above. All it needs to do is keep the game thriving in the short term. After a certain point - and the next expansion is a solid milestone for that - if a community is still strong, it will be invested enough that it'll keep playing without needing that kind of incentivization to sustain it. But in this short term period, I believe Riot is simply trying to ensnare its player base and keep them from wandering off - and they are 100% correct to do so, in my opinion.
Final point - I would add to CursedParrot's post that not only will this model be unsustainable for future expansions, it will be actively detrimental at that point. Not being able to buy a lot of cards is a good thing (for Riot) right now - but skip forward two or three expansions and imagine a new player coming in. It's bad enough on Hearthstone, having to deal with top-tier meta decks with a limited selection of cards. Imagine being in that same situation and you can't even buy enough cards to close the gap. All you can do is buy enough cards to complete maybe one third of a meta deck - a deck which, in three weeks' time, may well have dropped to the middle tiers or lower. That would make for an atrociously bad new player experience. So I would venture that the current model will be removed at some point - I'd guess sometime around the next expansion.
That's my guess, anyway... but then, looking at League, Riot have never been particularly good at the whole new player experience thing :P
Yeah, I've lost games to that before. Complete board dominance, opponent down to 2 health, he declares attack at the very start of the round, then chains Riposte into Judgment on my full board. I was torn between outrage, amusement, and cautious respect.
For the sake of provoking more discussion, I'm curious what people think of alternative balancing measures, such as:
- Giving the opponent a card draw
- Refunding some or all of the opponent's mana expenditure in casting the countered spell
- Locking you (the Deny player) out of playing any other spells that round
- Stopping you (the Deny player) from banking any spell mana that round
- Can't cast it if you have any non-Ionian allies in play
I could go on. I'm not suggesting any of these are a good idea - just spitballing.
Given the provocative language and relatively new account, I'm entirely unconvinced that this isn't just a bait-thread. But for the sake of argument, I'd note that the mechanic is entirely intuitive once you understand and accept the premise. It also ensures that Overwhelm is appropriately powerful - it'd be a lot less impactful as a keyword if the same effect could be reproduced by basically any targeted removal spell.
Shame there wasn't someone posting specifically to point out that Embiggen wouldn't be a good card from the time it was announced... *cough* :P