Finally, we got it so let's see what has changed.

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-2-9-0-notes/

They buffed Thaliyah and Malphite woo.

Its a 1 point stat change and the problem isn't the champs its their supporting package being too low tempo...boo

They nerfed blossoming blade by 1 mana that's huge yaaah, they didn't really do anything else and players think it's not enough...boo

Honestly, I've been having a good time climbing more recently. Early on it was all face face face and I had to do my overwhelm thing but now at Plat I can slow down and play spooky swain.

So I do feel of you're a committed deck builder you can squeeze by and.have fun, but there are very very few decks that are playable right now.

Also, Mogwai is pissed ;)

https://youtu.be/4DNivFzYeDA

If there's one thing I can't stand in card games its the ladder climb.

Unless I can brew an anti meta list that will win me somewhere close to 70% of my games so my time remains valuable.

I just jammed out to Plat in one small sitting using this anti meta overwhelm list.

It was easy as cake.

Feel free to try it out yourselves if you're feeling frustrated

--------------------------Big update--------------------------

Just hit diamond folks.

Destroyed all the meta decks at platinum level with this exact deck list

Hard to say, I was climbing very successfully with an overwhelming brew. It only slowed down once it was literally every matchup was Irelia Azir.

These midrange and control combo decks struggle to deal with certain lines of aggressive play.

Namely big overwhelm dudes backed up by cheap burst speed interaction, and high tempo early drops.

So let's start with nerfing the 60% winrate cancer deck and let's see how well deck variety rebalances.

so a month before there's any real news. That is a lot slower then they used to be. In a perfect world I'd like to see a higher range of champion viability that's usually the best way to evaluate a meta.

Right now it's very polarizing it's either plus 55 percent winrate or sub 40 percent

Like when is the last time you saw a slow value engine like Karma be viable

She is six mana and does nothing when she is played

If the game is slowed down enough for her to be playable again I'll know Riot is doing something right

We've all been waiting for Riot to address the turbo meta where every deck needs to basically be as pushed as possible to be viable now.

And sucessful deck brewing and changes to the tier list no longer happen.

Swim has taken a few weeks off and he's the poster boy for this "balanced and interactive" card game.

So do we have any idea what they plan to do and when or is this like a wait all summer thing?

I think back to how we used to complain about nab and it was like wow stealing cards from deck so op.

Or TF Fizz elsuvies you can't even block them thats so strong.

Those decks we hated would literally be nothing in this meta Legands of Runterra is just an entirely different game now, practically unrecognizable.

Well I guess if everybody is on the same page there's no news at all. Just conversation and discussion to pass the time

I consider myself to be a pretty casual ccg player usually hovering around diamond or platinum in a variety of ccgs depending on how much headway I can make with off meta brews and my general comfort or skill with the game.

That being said, I've gotten pretty good at spotting when metas have reached a standstill of "not fun" however you would wish to define that personally.

I'll give an example from MTG so it doesn't sound like I'm ragging on legends.

When throne of eldraine released you would have two decks cat oven an aggressive list that drained you from 20 -> 0 using a cheap artifact and fires of invention a list that controlled you out and bursted you down at the end.

Sounds a little like Irelia Azir and Ezreal Draven or Thresh Nasus they both function the same.

These polarized matchups create a dice roll system where you can be favored going onto one and not the other, and then you switch decks to try and compensate and only tank your winrate as a result.

This is meta lock frustration defined as clearly as possible without hyperbole. 😤

Now this is where as a digital game Riot should be able to compensate quickly to these shifting balance issues, but they for some reason choose not to.

Take one look at Mogwai's or Swims most recent videos to see they are talking about the game as opposed to playing it.

They are frustrated too so Riot should get off the couch and hot fix the game already.

Thats my rant over, let me know if any of you are facing similar issues with the game atm.

I dont agree that other meta decks are as strong. I like to play Malphite Thaliyah largely considered to be the worst champions or deck archetype (landmarks) and I feel fine going up again Nasus, Dragons, ez/Draven or every other aggro deck but Irelia/Azir I'd put myself down as 30/70 against me.

So if anybody follows the discussion around Irelia Azir on redit you'll know that Riot basically said its totally fine and there are no plans to nerf it because it's fun easy to play and brings in new players.

They also states that internally they believe it has a 52% winrate not sure where they got these numbers from because on mobalitics it's actually showing record high winrates the likes we've never seen before in this game.

I'm talking multiple variants with a 59 bordering on 60% win rate which has never happened before .

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks

Riot how is this okay?

One casual spin of ladder will have you facing this deck over and over and over again and sure you might be able to counter them perfectly one game, but they will roll you the next or the one after that till the matchup grinds you down and sucks the fun out of the game.

I'm not the only one who feels this way Swim and Mogwai have spoken out on how short sighted this decision was.

Riot nerf this deck seriously, it's token generation is simple too high

Xenotype is exceptionally important it turns your little dudes into bigger dudes over prolonged games, and given the fact that these units have such a low cost aggro can't out tempo you.

As for doombeast it's an uncounterable body plus healing which is everything you want against aggro also the drain helps you get closer to a pack your bags win.

The decks great only problem is that it looses to other  counter  deck of the freijord variety this is to be expected. You basically have a choice do I want to beat aggro, or do I want to beat everyone else and be the aggro.

For that I can recommend plenty of tempo lists that will absolutely destroy dragons, Nasus and whatever other midrange list is popular right now.

Its a really delicate balance figuring out how to counter swarming aggro decks that seem to be everywhere right now.

Some people claim braum does well but this doesn't work because you go around him.

Some people say you can out heal them with targon this doesn't work either because you can't out heal their tempo.

Some people say there is no counter and that felt wrong to me.

Finally I figured out a list that will beat every aggro deck thrown at it 9/10 games guaranteed.

Its only weak to big overwhelm dudes and even then there are lines of play to mitigate this.

I bring you Zillian Go Hard - with Elise of course as is standard.

It just turns out that time bombs are faster then red cards these days, especially if you pair it with all the draw in shadow isles  and healing.

We also have acess to deck buffing, and draw fixing which work great with pack your bags

Now out of all these cards you're probably looking at brood awakening and scratching your head, but it was a popular aggro  counter back when burn aggro was everywhere and you'd pair it with lux.  It turns out it works great during this aggro meta too, and gives sac fodder.

Yeah mtg is a good comparison.but there's already passage unearned meaning the game distinguishes between summoned and played units.

So as stated previously Irelia and Azir are only (overpowered) in the deck where they are both present.

Or more specifically when daggers spawn sandman effectively forming an extra full board attack with free resources.

Easiest fix - an attack consisting of summoned units can no longer trigger the spawning of summoned units. 

So daggers still work fine on their own, and sandman will work with scouts but Irelia Azir will no longer be quite as synergistic.

Not sure of this viable from a coding perspective but it would potentially fix everything without "nerfing" anything

I'll be honest this is so heavily reliant on jargan to be entirely uninformative. If you have a point make it, don't just slam a bunch of numbers and pretend you're bright...this ain't a measuring contest son.

Instead I'm gonna show you a clip from Graplr where he uses one of the worst champions according to swim in a TF Zillian list a concept I actually pioneered before him.

https://youtu.be/YUqjgKoHZ3I

So when I go to bat for these bad champions and say that everyone is just building them wrong thus far you'll believe me not because I slammed numbers but because I speak of objective truths and reality. Or I actually source my #### to put it more simple.

Yeah I might need to change my position.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/regions?src=home-menu

Looking at the most recent region stats Irelia Azir is the only tier 1 deck at 56% winrate and it looks like its forcefully dropped every other deck down which a sign of a hot fix waiting to happen.

I think people are singling out Irelia Azir unfairly if you look at mobalytics the far more concerning issue is that literally 3/4 of the tier list is aggro, punctuated by one or two midrange,  control, and combo decks respectively. That's very limiting in terms of deck variety.

Yeah more concerning then the winrates which are on.the high side of normal is the playrate of 20% thats a fifth of all games players que into. As such Riot will look at it, the problem is what can you change without destroying their performance in other decks which is pretty average and how do we stop a return to TF Aphelios?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkhbqXtNfSc&t=497s

So recently Swim has been delving into the newly released champion stats and talking about how low performing a lot of the new additions have been within this expansion...but is this really the case...I wanted to go in and talk about confirmation bias and how numbers mislead.

So who is the best champ with the highest winrate...Irelia or Azir right

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/cards?rarity=CHAMPION&sortBy=WIN_RATE&sortOrder=DESC

That would be wrong its actually Darius of all things with his tiny 13 percent inclusion rate

Great game solved lets all go home, all jokes aside it just shows us that aggressive champs perform very well right now even the bad ones

Alternatively slow champs are doing poorly TF and Aphelios once top tier are absolutely awful if you only look at their winrate

So what we are really seeing is less an objective way of rating the power level of cards, and more a measure of the meta

Fast is good, slow is bad...great and before fast was bad and slow was good...and around we go

I believe that changing the pace of play through balance and expansions is great for the health of Legends

Pretty soon nerfs will land and control will do far better and all of a sudden we'll see a huge influx of winrates as is always the case.

So don't judge champs on winrates alone its really not informative in the slightest

I think I saw grapplr doing the spectral matron big mama criteria combo it looks fun. Not too familiar with the other lists. Discard aggro too obviously long time top tier deck.

Hey there card game fans, I've been playing the expansion for a little while now and have finally caught up on Champs which means it's time for another off meta deck list roundup.

1. The landmark deck - very flexible with its option selection right now but primarily comes in 3 forms Malphite Thaliyah, Malphite Yassao, Thaliyah Lisandra. The goal is to A reduce countdowns in lissandeas case, two control things out with Yassao stuns, three turbo level landmark Champs.

2. The anti Irelia tech, there are some very strong deck options out there for beating Irelia Azir but the strongest by far I found to be shadow Irelia. 

3. Time bomb fun - the strongest version I found to be ezreal duplicate shuffling more bombs in and predicting that Tefari want to be. Although Swain time bomb works okay as a win con too, where you have access to flock

4. Finally new takes on old classics like lee sin and  plunder using the expansion options

Let me know what lists you guys are playing