I don't abuse the timer myself, but I actually love that it sends impatient people into fits of screaming baby-rage.
It's not that much time. If you simply cannot stand to wait through that timer, you deserve all the unhappiness you are causing yourself with your own impatience. That's right -- you are the one pissing you off, not the other person.
Remember: You can't control other people's actions. You can control how you react to them.
Anyone who thinks they definitively know what the best deck is has no idea what they are talking about. All deck-tier lists for this game are educated guesses -- and what's worse, those guesses are strongly influenced by the listmaker's personal play style. What works well for that person may not work at all for you. And that doesn't even mean one style is better than another -- LoR is a game with room for many different "correct" ways to play.
That said, Swain + Twisted Fate is a very solid archetype. I've had a lot of success with it, and I find it troublesome to play against when I'm using some other deck.
Overall, as others have said, taking a break always works for me. But to your specific points:
1. The meta shifts drastically at least once a month. I don't know what more you expect. Anyway, it's about to shift even more drastically, so just take a break until the end of August and all will be well.
2. If you truly believe "made hand scenario" is a thing, you could always try to come up with a counter for such predictable plays.
3. Make friends who agree to play off-meta decks. Play Expeditions. Play Labs.
4. In a world where nearly every other CCG in existence takes loads of crap for being too expensive to play, you cannot seriously be complaining about having all the cards. I'm not even going to dignify this one with advice.
5. This one is pure projection. You have no idea what your opponent is feeling. The solution is to stop assuming you know what's going on in other people's heads.
6. This is just another version of items 1 and 3, and the solutions are the same.
As the old saying goes, "Only boring people get bored." If you can't figure out a way to have fun in this game, play something else for a while. You can rest assured LoR will be significantly different when you come back.
Comparing this to Plaza Guardian is understandable, but you have to remember that Overwhelm is about a million times better than Quick Attack in the endgame, when you're more often trying to deal lethal, not just fight for the board.
Anyway, there are plenty of decks already in existence that would have this costing less than 5 in short order. Targon doesn't need to bring more to the table in order to make this good, but I'm sure it will anyway.
A support-themed deck seems like a rather delicate house of cards (pardon the pun).
Shen is the most obvious Champion to use, and he's actually an extremely good body for this effect, not to mention great curve synergy. Maybe that's all you need for this to be amazing?
I seriously have no idea what you guys are talking about. I've seem this combo ONCE so far at top 100 and it was SUPER slow, its hard to set up Kalista and the guy i faced still lost even playing the combo.
And even if the combo were a real problem, the card to complain about is Rekindler, not Kalista.
I was willing to defend Rekindler before I knew about the Kalista rework, but now it makes no sense to have a card like that if they are going to have Champions that can revive units.
thing is, Blizzard actually improve over time, Riot has been around for 10 years and they haven't llearned a thing and only gotten worse at it.
Did Blizzard not immediately deal with Galakrond Shaman when it became too strong? Did they not do multiple balance patches in the last year that ultimately ended up with a meta that's actually quite balanced (if you ignore SHaman being dumpster tier)
The thing about Hearthstone balance changes is that they actually do their job. If a card is OP a balance change will fix it..and if it's still a problem later they'll just do it again.
Say what you want about Baku & Genn, but they were addressed when it was needed and nobody can tell me that playing against Holy Wrath Paladin with a 2-mana Equality would have been fun.
Did Blizzard not immediately deal with Galakrond Shaman when it became too strong? Did they not do multiple balance patches in the last year that ultimately ended up with a meta that's actually quite balanced (if you ignore SHaman being dumpster tier)
The thing about Hearthstone balance changes is that they actually do their job. If a card is OP a balance change will fix it..and if it's still a problem later they'll just do it again.
Say what you want about Baku & Genn, but they were addressed when it was needed and nobody can tell me that playing against Holy Wrath Paladin with a 2-mana Equality would have been fun.
You don't even have anything to say about Kalista; you're just here to trash talk Riot. Never mind that this is their first card game, and never mind that it's still in beta, ffs.
I invite you to pull out a calendar. Mark every balance patch that fixed a terrible card, and then mark off every day going backwards to when that card was introduced. This includes dumb shit like bringing back the Wild nonsense that made the game utterly unplayable for over 2 months.
Once you've marked off all the days when the meta was full of terrible decisions, you'll see that it makes up the majority of the year.
It’s not that I feel Runeterra’s system is not generous enough, it’s just that it feels unnecessary to give people the bad experience of opening multiple duplicates just because they got unlucky. Duplicate protection also encourages card crafting, since you no longer have to worry about crafting a card and then getting a ton of copies of it the day afte
I agree on all counts, but why not go a step further by removing the feels-bad moment of getting cards you don't care about?
No one would ever feel bad about getting duplicate wildcards. ^^
I have 3 copies of all Demacia Champions, and Demacia is my active road.
I just opened a platinum chest at level 18, and one of the capsules upgraded to Champion. I figured the Champion would turn into shards, but no! It became my second copy of Ashe instead!
So there you have it: a Freljord Champion from a Demacia chest when no more Demacia Champions are needed.
Random rewards are stupid, period. If they are so keen on player agency in both gameplay and collecting, they should just rework the system to hand out only wildcards. They might have to give fewer cards overall, but at least you'd always get something you want.
Maybe also let us trade wildcards for coins, even at a super steep exchange rate, so we can use them to buy boards and stuff.
Riot is in a better position than any player to know which decks and cards are overperforming. Maybe you don't trust that, but I have to believe the Shadow Isles issues were impacting the game far more than Elusives. If that were not the case, I'm sure we'd be seeing heavier Elusive nerfs today.
I know this will be a moot point in a few hours, but it's driving me crazy. A lot of people are misinterpreting the text or are just puzzled by it, when it seems pretty clear to me.
"Once you've cast a 6+ cost spell this game" is a binary condition. Either it has happened, or it has not. It doesn't have to happen while the Mageseeker card is in play. Once the condition is met, it affects all Mageseekers in your deck or in play for the rest of the game, but only once. The effect does not repeat if you cost more big spells.
If you cast a 6-cost spell on turn three, every Mageseeker/Voltician you ever summon will come into play with the kicker activated.
If you play a Mageseeker/Voltician before casting a big spell, it doesn't get the kicker until you do. Obviously, if the unit is killed before you can activate the kicker, it doesn't matter for that particular instance of the unit.
In summary, casting the big spell only needs to happen once, at any time during the game, but casting more spells does not reactivate the effect.
I don't play LoL, but looking at her over there, I don't really see a ton of similarity to her LoR incarnations, past or present.
Her LoL abilities that stick out in my mind are Sentinel (bonus damage when striking same target as Oathsworn) and Fate's Call (Teleport Oathsworn to Kalista and give it a dash attack with knockback).
Sentinel kinda sorta translates into the +2 attack she gives now, but obviously the "attacks the same target" part can never happen unless you're talking about the nexus. Maybe make it so when her target strikes an enemy, Kalista gets a free strike against it? Maybe only if both are attacking? This would be more balanced if her stats were 2/4 as others have suggested.
The teleporting/dash thing seems like maybe after she levels up, her Oathsworn gets Quick Attack?
Her current level up quest is generic and boring and used by another Champion, so it definitely needs to change. Maybe "My Oathsworn strikes two times"? I feel like it should definitely be predicated on something the Oathsworn does.
Or maybe forget all that and just don't make her level up before she gets to rez her Oathsworn. Let her do that right off the bat, but maybe restrict what can be designated as her Oathsworn.
I don't abuse the timer myself, but I actually love that it sends impatient people into fits of screaming baby-rage.
It's not that much time. If you simply cannot stand to wait through that timer, you deserve all the unhappiness you are causing yourself with your own impatience. That's right -- you are the one pissing you off, not the other person.
Remember: You can't control other people's actions. You can control how you react to them.
Anyone who thinks they definitively know what the best deck is has no idea what they are talking about. All deck-tier lists for this game are educated guesses -- and what's worse, those guesses are strongly influenced by the listmaker's personal play style. What works well for that person may not work at all for you. And that doesn't even mean one style is better than another -- LoR is a game with room for many different "correct" ways to play.
That said, Swain + Twisted Fate is a very solid archetype. I've had a lot of success with it, and I find it troublesome to play against when I'm using some other deck.
Overall, as others have said, taking a break always works for me. But to your specific points:
1. The meta shifts drastically at least once a month. I don't know what more you expect. Anyway, it's about to shift even more drastically, so just take a break until the end of August and all will be well.
2. If you truly believe "made hand scenario" is a thing, you could always try to come up with a counter for such predictable plays.
3. Make friends who agree to play off-meta decks. Play Expeditions. Play Labs.
4. In a world where nearly every other CCG in existence takes loads of crap for being too expensive to play, you cannot seriously be complaining about having all the cards. I'm not even going to dignify this one with advice.
5. This one is pure projection. You have no idea what your opponent is feeling. The solution is to stop assuming you know what's going on in other people's heads.
6. This is just another version of items 1 and 3, and the solutions are the same.
As the old saying goes, "Only boring people get bored." If you can't figure out a way to have fun in this game, play something else for a while. You can rest assured LoR will be significantly different when you come back.
Comparing this to Plaza Guardian is understandable, but you have to remember that Overwhelm is about a million times better than Quick Attack in the endgame, when you're more often trying to deal lethal, not just fight for the board.
Anyway, there are plenty of decks already in existence that would have this costing less than 5 in short order. Targon doesn't need to bring more to the table in order to make this good, but I'm sure it will anyway.
It does a LOT of things Deny cannot do. It's not worse, just different. Very different.
A support-themed deck seems like a rather delicate house of cards (pardon the pun).
Shen is the most obvious Champion to use, and he's actually an extremely good body for this effect, not to mention great curve synergy. Maybe that's all you need for this to be amazing?
Tyari-Teemo meta incoming!
Stops Burst-speed effects if used preemptively. This is very important. We finally have some Frostbite protection.
"Nullifies the next enemy spell or skill" does make me think it cancels the whole spell or skill, just like the Fizz ability.
If that's not how it works, they need to rewrite the keyword definition.
And even if the combo were a real problem, the card to complain about is Rekindler, not Kalista.
I was willing to defend Rekindler before I knew about the Kalista rework, but now it makes no sense to have a card like that if they are going to have Champions that can revive units.
You don't even have anything to say about Kalista; you're just here to trash talk Riot. Never mind that this is their first card game, and never mind that it's still in beta, ffs.
I invite you to pull out a calendar. Mark every balance patch that fixed a terrible card, and then mark off every day going backwards to when that card was introduced. This includes dumb shit like bringing back the Wild nonsense that made the game utterly unplayable for over 2 months.
Once you've marked off all the days when the meta was full of terrible decisions, you'll see that it makes up the majority of the year.
Blizzard is demonstrably not getting better.
I agree on all counts, but why not go a step further by removing the feels-bad moment of getting cards you don't care about?
No one would ever feel bad about getting duplicate wildcards. ^^
I have 3 copies of all Demacia Champions, and Demacia is my active road.
I just opened a platinum chest at level 18, and one of the capsules upgraded to Champion. I figured the Champion would turn into shards, but no! It became my second copy of Ashe instead!
So there you have it: a Freljord Champion from a Demacia chest when no more Demacia Champions are needed.
Random rewards are stupid, period. If they are so keen on player agency in both gameplay and collecting, they should just rework the system to hand out only wildcards. They might have to give fewer cards overall, but at least you'd always get something you want.
Maybe also let us trade wildcards for coins, even at a super steep exchange rate, so we can use them to buy boards and stuff.
If you don't know how to play around Deny, I can see why you think Elusives are a problem. But that still doesn't mean they are.
Literally every single region has ways to deal with a buffed Elusive unit.
Riot is in a better position than any player to know which decks and cards are overperforming. Maybe you don't trust that, but I have to believe the Shadow Isles issues were impacting the game far more than Elusives. If that were not the case, I'm sure we'd be seeing heavier Elusive nerfs today.
I know this will be a moot point in a few hours, but it's driving me crazy. A lot of people are misinterpreting the text or are just puzzled by it, when it seems pretty clear to me.
"Once you've cast a 6+ cost spell this game" is a binary condition. Either it has happened, or it has not. It doesn't have to happen while the Mageseeker card is in play. Once the condition is met, it affects all Mageseekers in your deck or in play for the rest of the game, but only once. The effect does not repeat if you cost more big spells.
If you cast a 6-cost spell on turn three, every Mageseeker/Voltician you ever summon will come into play with the kicker activated.
If you play a Mageseeker/Voltician before casting a big spell, it doesn't get the kicker until you do. Obviously, if the unit is killed before you can activate the kicker, it doesn't matter for that particular instance of the unit.
In summary, casting the big spell only needs to happen once, at any time during the game, but casting more spells does not reactivate the effect.
I've used her reasonably well with Heimerdinger and (separately) Ezreal. Any deck with mostly spells can use her as a decent finisher.
I've seen at least two streamers make her work well -- Mogwai and ... sorry, I don't remember the other one.
I don't play LoL, but looking at her over there, I don't really see a ton of similarity to her LoR incarnations, past or present.
Her LoL abilities that stick out in my mind are Sentinel (bonus damage when striking same target as Oathsworn) and Fate's Call (Teleport Oathsworn to Kalista and give it a dash attack with knockback).
Sentinel kinda sorta translates into the +2 attack she gives now, but obviously the "attacks the same target" part can never happen unless you're talking about the nexus. Maybe make it so when her target strikes an enemy, Kalista gets a free strike against it? Maybe only if both are attacking? This would be more balanced if her stats were 2/4 as others have suggested.
The teleporting/dash thing seems like maybe after she levels up, her Oathsworn gets Quick Attack?
Her current level up quest is generic and boring and used by another Champion, so it definitely needs to change. Maybe "My Oathsworn strikes two times"? I feel like it should definitely be predicated on something the Oathsworn does.
Or maybe forget all that and just don't make her level up before she gets to rez her Oathsworn. Let her do that right off the bat, but maybe restrict what can be designated as her Oathsworn.