No one is saying that Bilgewater is totally balanced, I don’t know why you insist on pretending that it’s some rebel stance on the issue. At this point, “Bilgewater OP” is not a new or helpful stance and adds nothing to the conversation. Either suggest specific nerfs or just wait until the next balance patch to see if the issues are resolved.
I think everyone agrees with you that Bilgewater makes up more of the meta than it should and that there is a wide variety of viable Targon decks, but the way you’re presenting your points makes everyone downvote you. Also, there will be another balance patch in two weeks in which Riot said that they’ll address at least one Bilgewater card (Petty Officer) and buff a lot of underplayed Targon cards (the gem cards and Rumuul). The changes just didn’t happen in this patch because patches take so long to test and localize to all the different languages that they based the nerfs and buffs on only around the first week of the expansion, at which point it wasn’t super clear that Bilgewater would be dominant. In the next patch they will definitely nerf Bilgewater and buff Targon because they now have the data to definitively say that Bilgewater is overtuned. P.S. Sejuani has seen play in so many decks (Endure, Braum/Sejuani, Ashe Sejuani, etc) that shecan’t really be said to be a Bilgewater card. If you’re trying to level her up then Bilgewater is the best, but she’s so baseline powerful that she ends up in a lot of decks
I wouldn’t worry too much about Standard Gauntlet becoming less popular, since right now it’s basically just ranked with a slightly different rewards payout, so I don’t think it was all that popular. Now it’s a significantly different game mode, so maybe people who love the Bo3 format will enjoy playing it a lot. This also lets them test how interested the community is in a Bo3, so they can decide whether it should be added as another game mode or stay a part of Gauntlet.
I think that your posts might come across as mean because what you’re essentially saying is “I blame the player base for being too casual and ruining the game design,” which will make people annoyed because they are being blamed for something outside of their control. Also, I would argue that LoR isn’t looking to capture the super-casual crowd of HS (the Initiative system by itself makes LoR ill-suited to becoming a very casual game), so I think that argument doesn’t necessarily work here.
Your point about LoR card design becoming more random/swingy and having less strategy is also probably not the best explanation for the mechanics of this expansion. Let’s go over the mechanics of this expansion and see if they’re more random/swingy than in the Foundations set.
1. Nightfall: Forces players to plan out turns in advance and save non-Nightfall cards to combo with. Pretty strategic.
2: Daybreak: Mostly just exists for flavor reasons. Doesn’t really add much.
3: Support: Creates interesting decisions about what units to support and in what order. Pretty strategic.
4. Spellshield: Helps devalue removals. Not particularly strategic or non strategic.
5. Gems: Forces preemptive plays and considering what actions the opponent will likely take. Fairly strategic.
7. Invoke: Adds decision making in terms of which Celestial to pick, but also creates extreme variance. Probably the most swingy/RNG mechanic we’ve seen outside of Bilgewater.
8. Fury: Interesting keyword that adds strategy about whether or not to block Fury units.
From my analysis (feel free to disagree or inform me of any mechanics I missed), it seems like a majority of this expansion’s mechanics add strategy rather than swinginess. Therefore, I think it would make more sense to deduce that Riot wants to add strategy and decision making than that they want to add swing plays. I actually think that the biggest flaw in Riot’s design is Flavor, since they seem to have made mechanics like Daybreak and Invoke more to fulfill the flavor of the region than because they thought they’d be the best for the game. Daybreak and Invoke aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just not quite as amazing as keywords like Vulnerable, Plunder, or Frostbite in terms of what they do for gameplay.
Yeah, definitely take your time and see if you feel better off not playing a card game. And maybe keep tabs on some tier lists to see if non-frustrating decks are tier on
@Meisterz39 My thoughts exactly: ASol isn’t overpowered, he’s just a badly designed card. His level up should be “Round End: Your Allies have 25+ Power” and his level 2 effect should be “your Celestials cost half as much, rounded down.” To compensate for the decrease in power level, he could honestly be brought down to a 9 mana 9/9. Due to his level up he’d be level 2 around the same time Karma is (but requiring some board setup) and he’d be on a similar power level to karma (halving the cost of Celestials instead of doubling the effect of spells). I know he’s supposed to be this huge space dragon but putting him at ten mana forces him to have to be broken to be Competitively viable (as shown by the fact that he’s insane in the late game but still not a top-tier card).
What? Aurelion Sol isn't even in any Tier One decks. He's a Ten Cost card that doesn't win the game the turn it is played, compared to Riptide Rex or even Swain + The Leviathan he is so much slower. He is very powerful against other control decks, but he is definitely not a broken card. However, he may be a poorly designed card, since his level two is just "I win," which isn't particularly interesting or fun. Maybe he should have "Your Celestials cost half as much (rounded down)" and Living Legends could be replaced with another spell, but other than that he is a mostly fine card. Honestly, the new 1 drops seem like a far bigger issue to me than a card that wins on turn ten (the 1 mana 3/3 and the 1 mana 4/1 Fearsome).
Also, I don't think that a deck needs to be particularly aggressive to beat ASol. A Midrange deck like Bannerman or Sejuani can often kill opponents before turn ten. If you're playing a meme combo deck ASol will crush you, but in general he's not a problem for most decks.
Thanks for the response! I assume that you probably stopped playing during one of the elusives metas before Rising Tides, because since then they have introduced a lot more card draw and removals. On card draw, Bilgewater and Targon both have a considerable amount of it, and more card draw was added to Ionia, PnZ, Freljord, and Shadow Isles (if you include the new cards that tutor specific champions that also includes Noxus). At this point, Glimpse Beyond is a fair and balanced card, that’s how much more card draw there is. In terms of removal, Noxus now has a deal 3 spell, Freljord has the Vulnerable keyword to take out units, Bilgewater also has Vulnerable, and Targon can generate removals with Invoke cards.
In what ways do you think that LoR is based on swing plays? The only example of that I can think of is “They Who Endure” and maybe “Swain/Leviathan.” I do agree that in general there are relatively few removal options compared to the number of threats, but I think that makes gameplay interesting because your power cards don’t get removed the turn they are played. I’d love to hear your thought process because that problem wasn’t even really on my radar.
I think that you’re both right in your own ways. I think that Invoke cards basically work as a single card that is split into two smaller cards that can be played at different times. Once you play both “halves” of the invoke card (the invoke card itself and the Celestial it produces), you are down in card advantage in the same way that you would be by playing a single, expensive card. However, when you play the first “half” of the Invoke card you haven’t yet lost out on card advantage. Invoke cards are different from normal on-curve plays in that they take far longer to lose card advantage, but they are also far different than a pure late-game card like Tryndamere in that the two halves of them can be split up at different early parts of the curve, removing the downside of “bricking out” that late game cards have.
If you’re talking about the constructed meta game I would say that it isn’t really being overrun by Targon since many non-Targon decks are still very viable. Also, Targon being super prevalent is more because it’s a new region that people want to play with and not that it is necessarily overpowered.
For expeditions, there is actually an increased chance for people to be offered Targon cards because the region was just added. In a few weeks Riot will move the probabilities back to normal and Targon won’t be as prevalent. However, I do agree with you that Targon is very powerful in expeditions, so hopefully they nerf some of its buckets so that the region is on a similar power level to the others. Overall, I would advise you to just wait a few weeks for the hype around Targon to settle down and for the meta to return to normal. You can also check out sites like Mobalytics to find budget decks that you have the cards to play.
On the point about new champions preventing Riot from expanding on old keywords, I would actually say that this isn’t a problem, because new champions can use old keywords. For example, Aphelios would make a lot of sense as a Nightfall Champion, which could allow them to add more Nightfall cards. Also, Plunder in Bilgewater has been used for the support cards for lots of different champions. For example, TF’s Nab cards require Plunder despite TF not being a “Plunder” champion. Both of the Bilgewater cards in this expansion either have plunder or are meant to trigger Plunder, which provides encouraging evidence that Tahm Kench or some of his support cards might use plunder.
On Daybreak, I honestly hope that they rework it to “the first time I see you gain an Attack Token, gain X Bonus effect.” It’d be far more interesting, even if it doesn’t fit as well with Nightfall.
Yeah, Noxus decks need more ways to tutor and/or protect Darius for Apprehend to be reliable enough. If Darius gets his own tutor card like the Leviathan for Swain I could see Apprehend being playable.
You can also see them in the client under the “special categoriess” section of the card search menu thing. It’s under the part where you can filter cards by expansion.
I think it’s an issue with the new sets system that they are implementing. Initially I liked the idea of sets to spread out content more, but the fact that some regions won’t have a significant amount of new cards for up to 4 more months (or around 8 months if you count from when Rising Tides was released) makes me much less of a fan. I wish that they had distributed the release of cards a bit more evenly, even if that means giving champions a little less support in the expansion that releases them. I think a minimum of 4 new cards per each region per expansion would be good.
What I dislike about Cosmic Inspiration is how it shuts down the ability for the opponent to every really attack into you, since whoever plays Cosmic Inspiration just has an an almost always unkillable board. The change I’d like is to make it grant +2|+0 so that Cosmic Inspiration doesn’t make your board more durable. This would keep the synergy with ASol’s level up and most Celestial units, but would make the strategy more fragile to high power enemy boards.
I think that Celestials overall are pretty balanced cards. Them being all slow basically means that you play the same way around all of them by just open attacking. I do however agree that the grant +2|+2 to allies everywhere card should bet nerfed because it’s swingy and not very fun. I think it should just effect allies on the board and in your hand, so that it doesn’t just win the game if played early. It could also be changed to grant +2|+1 so that it doesn’t make your board invincible.
All that being said, would it make sense for Celestial cards to always be revealed in hand? It would help make it easier for the opponent to play around them and it would nerf the keyword a bit.
Zenith Blade would be a great addition to this deck, it can win games if played on Vi. If you want to go even more into the Vi route you could add Bastion to protect her. Mechanist Zevi also tends to be powerful in these sorts of decks (especially with Rummage).
@Nifty129
No one is saying that Bilgewater is totally balanced, I don’t know why you insist on pretending that it’s some rebel stance on the issue. At this point, “Bilgewater OP” is not a new or helpful stance and adds nothing to the conversation. Either suggest specific nerfs or just wait until the next balance patch to see if the issues are resolved.
@Nifty129
I think everyone agrees with you that Bilgewater makes up more of the meta than it should and that there is a wide variety of viable Targon decks, but the way you’re presenting your points makes everyone downvote you. Also, there will be another balance patch in two weeks in which Riot said that they’ll address at least one Bilgewater card (Petty Officer) and buff a lot of underplayed Targon cards (the gem cards and Rumuul). The changes just didn’t happen in this patch because patches take so long to test and localize to all the different languages that they based the nerfs and buffs on only around the first week of the expansion, at which point it wasn’t super clear that Bilgewater would be dominant. In the next patch they will definitely nerf Bilgewater and buff Targon because they now have the data to definitively say that Bilgewater is overtuned.
P.S. Sejuani has seen play in so many decks (Endure, Braum/Sejuani, Ashe Sejuani, etc) that shecan’t really be said to be a Bilgewater card. If you’re trying to level her up then Bilgewater is the best, but she’s so baseline powerful that she ends up in a lot of decks
I wouldn’t worry too much about Standard Gauntlet becoming less popular, since right now it’s basically just ranked with a slightly different rewards payout, so I don’t think it was all that popular. Now it’s a significantly different game mode, so maybe people who love the Bo3 format will enjoy playing it a lot. This also lets them test how interested the community is in a Bo3, so they can decide whether it should be added as another game mode or stay a part of Gauntlet.
@RuneterraTV
I think that your posts might come across as mean because what you’re essentially saying is “I blame the player base for being too casual and ruining the game design,” which will make people annoyed because they are being blamed for something outside of their control. Also, I would argue that LoR isn’t looking to capture the super-casual crowd of HS (the Initiative system by itself makes LoR ill-suited to becoming a very casual game), so I think that argument doesn’t necessarily work here.
Your point about LoR card design becoming more random/swingy and having less strategy is also probably not the best explanation for the mechanics of this expansion. Let’s go over the mechanics of this expansion and see if they’re more random/swingy than in the Foundations set.
1. Nightfall: Forces players to plan out turns in advance and save non-Nightfall cards to combo with. Pretty strategic.
2: Daybreak: Mostly just exists for flavor reasons. Doesn’t really add much.
3: Support: Creates interesting decisions about what units to support and in what order. Pretty strategic.
4. Spellshield: Helps devalue removals. Not particularly strategic or non strategic.
5. Gems: Forces preemptive plays and considering what actions the opponent will likely take. Fairly strategic.
6. Behold: Creates interesting deckbuilding choices. Doesn’t really effect strategy too much.
7. Invoke: Adds decision making in terms of which Celestial to pick, but also creates extreme variance. Probably the most swingy/RNG mechanic we’ve seen outside of Bilgewater.
8. Fury: Interesting keyword that adds strategy about whether or not to block Fury units.
From my analysis (feel free to disagree or inform me of any mechanics I missed), it seems like a majority of this expansion’s mechanics add strategy rather than swinginess. Therefore, I think it would make more sense to deduce that Riot wants to add strategy and decision making than that they want to add swing plays. I actually think that the biggest flaw in Riot’s design is Flavor, since they seem to have made mechanics like Daybreak and Invoke more to fulfill the flavor of the region than because they thought they’d be the best for the game. Daybreak and Invoke aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just not quite as amazing as keywords like Vulnerable, Plunder, or Frostbite in terms of what they do for gameplay.
Yeah, definitely take your time and see if you feel better off not playing a card game. And maybe keep tabs on some tier lists to see if non-frustrating decks are tier on
@Meisterz39
My thoughts exactly: ASol isn’t overpowered, he’s just a badly designed card. His level up should be “Round End: Your Allies have 25+ Power” and his level 2 effect should be “your Celestials cost half as much, rounded down.” To compensate for the decrease in power level, he could honestly be brought down to a 9 mana 9/9. Due to his level up he’d be level 2 around the same time Karma is (but requiring some board setup) and he’d be on a similar power level to karma (halving the cost of Celestials instead of doubling the effect of spells). I know he’s supposed to be this huge space dragon but putting him at ten mana forces him to have to be broken to be Competitively viable (as shown by the fact that he’s insane in the late game but still not a top-tier card).
What? Aurelion Sol isn't even in any Tier One decks. He's a Ten Cost card that doesn't win the game the turn it is played, compared to Riptide Rex or even Swain + The Leviathan he is so much slower. He is very powerful against other control decks, but he is definitely not a broken card. However, he may be a poorly designed card, since his level two is just "I win," which isn't particularly interesting or fun. Maybe he should have "Your Celestials cost half as much (rounded down)" and Living Legends could be replaced with another spell, but other than that he is a mostly fine card. Honestly, the new 1 drops seem like a far bigger issue to me than a card that wins on turn ten (the 1 mana 3/3 and the 1 mana 4/1 Fearsome).
Also, I don't think that a deck needs to be particularly aggressive to beat ASol. A Midrange deck like Bannerman or Sejuani can often kill opponents before turn ten. If you're playing a meme combo deck ASol will crush you, but in general he's not a problem for most decks.
@YourPrivateNightmare
Thanks for the response! I assume that you probably stopped playing during one of the elusives metas before Rising Tides, because since then they have introduced a lot more card draw and removals. On card draw, Bilgewater and Targon both have a considerable amount of it, and more card draw was added to Ionia, PnZ, Freljord, and Shadow Isles (if you include the new cards that tutor specific champions that also includes Noxus). At this point, Glimpse Beyond is a fair and balanced card, that’s how much more card draw there is. In terms of removal, Noxus now has a deal 3 spell, Freljord has the Vulnerable keyword to take out units, Bilgewater also has Vulnerable, and Targon can generate removals with Invoke cards.
@YourPrivateNightmare
In what ways do you think that LoR is based on swing plays? The only example of that I can think of is “They Who Endure” and maybe “Swain/Leviathan.” I do agree that in general there are relatively few removal options compared to the number of threats, but I think that makes gameplay interesting because your power cards don’t get removed the turn they are played. I’d love to hear your thought process because that problem wasn’t even really on my radar.
I think that you’re both right in your own ways. I think that Invoke cards basically work as a single card that is split into two smaller cards that can be played at different times. Once you play both “halves” of the invoke card (the invoke card itself and the Celestial it produces), you are down in card advantage in the same way that you would be by playing a single, expensive card. However, when you play the first “half” of the Invoke card you haven’t yet lost out on card advantage. Invoke cards are different from normal on-curve plays in that they take far longer to lose card advantage, but they are also far different than a pure late-game card like Tryndamere in that the two halves of them can be split up at different early parts of the curve, removing the downside of “bricking out” that late game cards have.
If you’re talking about the constructed meta game I would say that it isn’t really being overrun by Targon since many non-Targon decks are still very viable. Also, Targon being super prevalent is more because it’s a new region that people want to play with and not that it is necessarily overpowered.
For expeditions, there is actually an increased chance for people to be offered Targon cards because the region was just added. In a few weeks Riot will move the probabilities back to normal and Targon won’t be as prevalent. However, I do agree with you that Targon is very powerful in expeditions, so hopefully they nerf some of its buckets so that the region is on a similar power level to the others.
Overall, I would advise you to just wait a few weeks for the hype around Targon to settle down and for the meta to return to normal. You can also check out sites like Mobalytics to find budget decks that you have the cards to play.
On the point about new champions preventing Riot from expanding on old keywords, I would actually say that this isn’t a problem, because new champions can use old keywords. For example, Aphelios would make a lot of sense as a Nightfall Champion, which could allow them to add more Nightfall cards. Also, Plunder in Bilgewater has been used for the support cards for lots of different champions. For example, TF’s Nab cards require Plunder despite TF not being a “Plunder” champion. Both of the Bilgewater cards in this expansion either have plunder or are meant to trigger Plunder, which provides encouraging evidence that Tahm Kench or some of his support cards might use plunder.
On Daybreak, I honestly hope that they rework it to “the first time I see you gain an Attack Token, gain X Bonus effect.” It’d be far more interesting, even if it doesn’t fit as well with Nightfall.
Yeah, Noxus decks need more ways to tutor and/or protect Darius for Apprehend to be reliable enough. If Darius gets his own tutor card like the Leviathan for Swain I could see Apprehend being playable.
You can also see them in the client under the “special categoriess” section of the card search menu thing. It’s under the part where you can filter cards by expansion.
Are you talking about Sunburst? Read the full text of the spell and that should explain it (hint: Sunburst Silences the unit before it damages it)
I think it’s an issue with the new sets system that they are implementing. Initially I liked the idea of sets to spread out content more, but the fact that some regions won’t have a significant amount of new cards for up to 4 more months (or around 8 months if you count from when Rising Tides was released) makes me much less of a fan. I wish that they had distributed the release of cards a bit more evenly, even if that means giving champions a little less support in the expansion that releases them. I think a minimum of 4 new cards per each region per expansion would be good.
What I dislike about Cosmic Inspiration is how it shuts down the ability for the opponent to every really attack into you, since whoever plays Cosmic Inspiration just has an an almost always unkillable board. The change I’d like is to make it grant +2|+0 so that Cosmic Inspiration doesn’t make your board more durable. This would keep the synergy with ASol’s level up and most Celestial units, but would make the strategy more fragile to high power enemy boards.
I think that Celestials overall are pretty balanced cards. Them being all slow basically means that you play the same way around all of them by just open attacking. I do however agree that the grant +2|+2 to allies everywhere card should bet nerfed because it’s swingy and not very fun. I think it should just effect allies on the board and in your hand, so that it doesn’t just win the game if played early. It could also be changed to grant +2|+1 so that it doesn’t make your board invincible.
All that being said, would it make sense for Celestial cards to always be revealed in hand? It would help make it easier for the opponent to play around them and it would nerf the keyword a bit.
Zenith Blade would be a great addition to this deck, it can win games if played on Vi. If you want to go even more into the Vi route you could add Bastion to protect her. Mechanist Zevi also tends to be powerful in these sorts of decks (especially with Rummage).
@Hellcopter
Why aren’t you running the Invoke cards in your pursuit deck? All the different Celestials help fulfill the pursuit requirement quicker.