First, as you collect more cards and play a wider variety of decks, you may no longer feel like a certain strategy is oppressive. It may just be the thing that counters the one or two decks you played when you first started.
Yes, but let's judge them in a few years and see if they keep this up...the whole game is new.
Or let's compare Riot now with Blizzard during Hearthstone's beta. I wasn't in the Hearthstone beta, so I can't say, but I know for a fact that Runeterra balance is already a million times better than HS balance ever was. Furthermore, the "no bad cards" philosophy and commitment to player agency (both in collection and in gameplay) show that Riot is operating on a whole different level.
Another big problem with Shen is that you cannot get enough Barrier cards into the deck without Demacia. Shen with any other region is going to have to rely on his own ability to level up, and he just doesn't have enough health for that.
Maybe change him so that he shields himself if he's not supporting another unit?
I think a huge chunk must have gotten cut out of the summary there. If you read the actual blog post, the part that is mentioned at the beginning of that sentence is nowhere near the part mentioned at the end. The two separate points are:
They are paying more attention to the timing and length of animations and their effect on the game flow.
They don't want random effects to have a larger impact on the outcome of a game than player decisions (i.e., yes, Troop of Elnuks is a very poorly designed card).
Further evidence that this is a bug (or inconsistent at the very least): Other units with Quick Attack and the attack token do not survive Single Combat.
Does Katarina recall after Single Combat if you do NOT have the attack token? This is not something that would naturally get tested if the player assumes she would die.
If she does recall, it sounds like there's a mixup in checking for death from damage caused by this spell vs. Katarina's recall. It makes sense that the Ephemeral check should come after the recall check, but death from damage should surely come before any of that.
I've been wondering how they intend to "curate" the collection. E.g., let's say the first expansion launches on September 1st and they introduce 2-6 new regions: what happens to the existing 6 regions at that time? Is it 6-in, 6-out? Do the current 6 form an evergreen set and that each expansion expands upon? Do all regions come and go each season a la HS Battlegrounds heroes?
My guess/hope is that it's more like HS Battlegrounds -- a different mix every season with no evergreens.
I don't see any need for evergreen regions, given the way deck building works in this game.
As for the Region Road:
I always thought of this feature as a catch-up mechanism for new players. Obviously, it hasn't been exactly that for most of us since the game is so young, but I think that is the intent moving forward. For this reason, I wouldn't expect it to be tweaked or enhanced as an ongoing source of cards for free players.
What really needs to happen is to make boards, guardians (and sleeves/card backs?) purchasable with shards. As of now, my Vault contains mostly shards, with an occasional epic that I never bothered to craft. I know I'll be able to spend a lot of those shards on expansion cards, but it would be a smart move for Riot to add a shard sink (like cosmetic items) to the economy before we get a chance to do that. People will be more likely to spend cash on new cards if they've squandered all their shards on fancy boards and such.
I agree with everything on your list except for the Minotaur change. At least, I'd reduce his attack to 5 along with the cost decrease.
I could see that. My main thought was: how could we help out Yasuo without just super-buffing him? And honestly, now that I'm remembering Mogwai's fae spinner / katarina deck which ran minotaurs but no Yasuo, I'm not sure that's the right play.
Yeah, Minotaur is already basically auto-win with Yasuo.
I think it's Yasuo himself that needs the rework. As Mogwai pointed out, his ability is somewhat redundant with its trigger -- you are already removing the target from combat, so the damage doesn't really add anything in the moment. Yes, it's an overall tempo gain for future rounds, but that's not usually what the deck needs at that point in time.
The patch a week from tomorrow is supposed to be a hard-hitting balance update. What are your hopes and dreams for it? What will be nerfed? What will be buffed? What will be totally redesigned?
There is already a thread about HecarimBADCARDNAME, the low-hanging fruit of this topic, so let's take that one as given and not bother discussing it here.
Besides he-who-must-not-be-named, what else do you expect to see changed?
I'll start! Even though I'm seeing more Kalista lately, she still doesn't seem good ... like, at all. I wonder if she might see a buff.
Small caveat: If you get a lot of losses in an Expedition, it's much closer to breaking even. I'm not sure if you can actually fall behind with maximum losses, but it can't be by much. (I don't remember if you get XP on an individual loss in Expeditions.)
If you include the per-win XP along with the end-of-trial bonus, you are still getting more XP overall than you would playing the same number of normal PvP games. There is absolutely nothing to complain about here.
In my opinion, Elusives should be like Stealth in Hearthstone, if they deal damage, they should lose elusive keyword because after all regions reach elusive keyword, We will find ourselves in a meta with full of elusives with different variations.
It might seem a little problematic for elusive champions like Teemo/Ezreal at first but there is also another solution, Make Elusive keywords permanent for champions like how it is right now and give follower elusive units a text like "After I deal damage, I lose Elusive." or something like that.
There is also another problem with Kinkou Lifeblade. It should have a text like "After I deal damage, I heal your nexus for 2." instead of lifesteal
I like the idea of making Elusive more like HS Stealth. For units that need to be permanently stealthy, just make a new keyword, maybe Invisible.
If Elusive is changed as you suggest, Kinkou Lifeblade does not need any additional nerf.
And Ephemerals are a completely different story, but I don't think making them even more fragile is necessary at this time. (Your suggestion seems equivalent to nerfing their Health to 1, by the way. It doesn't need to be part of the keyword. That way, certain units could be exempted more easily.)
No, I think you're right. Looking at the popular deck lists right now, I think the bigger problem is that the current card library lends itself to a beautiful curve moreso than any individual card. You've got 6 one-drops, 6 two-drops, 6 three-drops (choice of either Zed or Monk), 6 four-drops, plus if you do go off-curve you've got some great cheap support from Elixir of Iron and Twin Disciplines. You also get fantastic synergizes: both one-drops love being picked up by Navori Conspirator, Greenglade Duo gets extra damage from Zed, everything loves the buffs from Omen Hawk, etc. The whole thing is just a little too efficient for my taste.
All good points -- it's as if no one considered the fact that the Elusive keyword is already a huge bonus, so they packed in all these extra goodies without raising the mana cost.
If Navori Conspirator, for example, had originally cost 3 mana, people might say it's a terrible card, unplayable, what was Riot thinking?! Then, within a week, it would be in every Elusive deck, bouncing those Hawks and Mentors like super balls.
That last part is a little tricky because you don't specifically tell the spell to target the nexus, and I think you're right that if you wanted to get very precise and clear, you'd end up very wordy (e.g. "Target a unit and the enemy Nexus, and deal 4 damage to the unit, with excess damage hitting the enemy Nexus.")
Your last paragraph sums up my feelings.
All you've really done is write out the definition of Overwhelm without addressing the fizzle component that was the original complaint.
In fact, the more we talk about it, the more I admire the wisdom of putting the Overwhelm keyword on the card. Final Spark does exactly what Overwhelm does, and Karma's extra casting (which is basically Double Attack for spells) works exactly the way a Double Attack unit's damage works if it has Overwhelm -- all the damage of the second attack against a dead unit goes to the Nexus.
You're not alone in your confusion -- anyone who is new to card games with a stack will need a moment to get used to it.
But as you've probably gathered from the vibe in this thread, changing the way it works would be an extremely unpopular move.
Did you report the bug?
Can you re-create this behavior in a friendly game?
First, as you collect more cards and play a wider variety of decks, you may no longer feel like a certain strategy is oppressive. It may just be the thing that counters the one or two decks you played when you first started.
Second, there's a balance patch Tuesday, so ...
Or let's compare Riot now with Blizzard during Hearthstone's beta. I wasn't in the Hearthstone beta, so I can't say, but I know for a fact that Runeterra balance is already a million times better than HS balance ever was. Furthermore, the "no bad cards" philosophy and commitment to player agency (both in collection and in gameplay) show that Riot is operating on a whole different level.
Another big problem with Shen is that you cannot get enough Barrier cards into the deck without Demacia. Shen with any other region is going to have to rely on his own ability to level up, and he just doesn't have enough health for that.
Maybe change him so that he shields himself if he's not supporting another unit?
I think a huge chunk must have gotten cut out of the summary there. If you read the actual blog post, the part that is mentioned at the beginning of that sentence is nowhere near the part mentioned at the end. The two separate points are:
Further evidence that this is a bug (or inconsistent at the very least): Other units with Quick Attack and the attack token do not survive Single Combat.
Does Katarina recall after Single Combat if you do NOT have the attack token? This is not something that would naturally get tested if the player assumes she would die.
If she does recall, it sounds like there's a mixup in checking for death from damage caused by this spell vs. Katarina's recall. It makes sense that the Ephemeral check should come after the recall check, but death from damage should surely come before any of that.
My guess/hope is that it's more like HS Battlegrounds -- a different mix every season with no evergreens.
I don't see any need for evergreen regions, given the way deck building works in this game.
As for the Region Road:
I always thought of this feature as a catch-up mechanism for new players. Obviously, it hasn't been exactly that for most of us since the game is so young, but I think that is the intent moving forward. For this reason, I wouldn't expect it to be tweaked or enhanced as an ongoing source of cards for free players.
What really needs to happen is to make boards, guardians (and sleeves/card backs?) purchasable with shards. As of now, my Vault contains mostly shards, with an occasional epic that I never bothered to craft. I know I'll be able to spend a lot of those shards on expansion cards, but it would be a smart move for Riot to add a shard sink (like cosmetic items) to the economy before we get a chance to do that. People will be more likely to spend cash on new cards if they've squandered all their shards on fancy boards and such.
Yeah, Minotaur is already basically auto-win with Yasuo.
I think it's Yasuo himself that needs the rework. As Mogwai pointed out, his ability is somewhat redundant with its trigger -- you are already removing the target from combat, so the damage doesn't really add anything in the moment. Yes, it's an overall tempo gain for future rounds, but that's not usually what the deck needs at that point in time.
The patch a week from tomorrow is supposed to be a hard-hitting balance update. What are your hopes and dreams for it? What will be nerfed? What will be buffed? What will be totally redesigned?
There is already a thread about HecarimBADCARDNAME, the low-hanging fruit of this topic, so let's take that one as given and not bother discussing it here.
Besides he-who-must-not-be-named, what else do you expect to see changed?
I'll start! Even though I'm seeing more Kalista lately, she still doesn't seem good ... like, at all. I wonder if she might see a buff.
Small caveat: If you get a lot of losses in an Expedition, it's much closer to breaking even. I'm not sure if you can actually fall behind with maximum losses, but it can't be by much. (I don't remember if you get XP on an individual loss in Expeditions.)
If you include the per-win XP along with the end-of-trial bonus, you are still getting more XP overall than you would playing the same number of normal PvP games. There is absolutely nothing to complain about here.
I only recently got my third Fiora ... this is exactly the test drive I was looking for.
For Runeterra cards, is there a way to link the leveled-up version of the Champion?
This Karma deck ... she make me crazy.
I guess that means I need to start using it.
I like the idea of making Elusive more like HS Stealth. For units that need to be permanently stealthy, just make a new keyword, maybe Invisible.
If Elusive is changed as you suggest, Kinkou Lifeblade does not need any additional nerf.
And Ephemerals are a completely different story, but I don't think making them even more fragile is necessary at this time. (Your suggestion seems equivalent to nerfing their Health to 1, by the way. It doesn't need to be part of the keyword. That way, certain units could be exempted more easily.)
I won't be mad if someone else wants to do that. I don't remember my reddit username and am very lazy.
All good points -- it's as if no one considered the fact that the Elusive keyword is already a huge bonus, so they packed in all these extra goodies without raising the mana cost.
If Navori Conspirator, for example, had originally cost 3 mana, people might say it's a terrible card, unplayable, what was Riot thinking?! Then, within a week, it would be in every Elusive deck, bouncing those Hawks and Mentors like super balls.
Your last paragraph sums up my feelings.
All you've really done is write out the definition of Overwhelm without addressing the fizzle component that was the original complaint.
In fact, the more we talk about it, the more I admire the wisdom of putting the Overwhelm keyword on the card. Final Spark does exactly what Overwhelm does, and Karma's extra casting (which is basically Double Attack for spells) works exactly the way a Double Attack unit's damage works if it has Overwhelm -- all the damage of the second attack against a dead unit goes to the Nexus.
Sorry to quote myself, but c'mon, you guys, gimme a break.