I think I also saw someone say on these forums that Bilgewater is going to be the next new region but I could be wrong about this.
There have been no public announcements, but the patches include a lot of new unused data and some people like to datamine it and speculate if/what its future usage will be. One such datamine implied 6 new regions include a crest that strongly resembles Bilgewater's; there was an OutOfCards news post about it:
So I just went 6-1 on my Expedition. Not just 6 wins--literally undefeated until game 7. ;-) That's never happened to me before. I've had some good campaigns, some bad campaigns, but even when I'm doing "good" that's more like 60% win rate. I've never had one that was so good that it didn't drop any games--so you can imagine my surprise when I got shut out on the final game.
My deck was basically straight aggro: Draven + Lucian with lots of early game aggro, tons of Noxius 1-2 drops, battlecasters, and 3x brothers bond. It was surprising effective (side note #1: don't neglect your early game when drafting, guys!) Final Boss was a wonky P&Z/Frejlord deck with Anivia + Ashe + 1 other champ (don't exactly remember; he never played any); I was even doing OK until he dropped a Chempunk Shredder on curve (side note #2: when's the last time you've seen one of those played?) which completely cleared my board. From there on, it was an uphill battle with me top-decking and him with card advantage and plenty of good answers. I did manage to get him down to 1-HP and threaten next-turn lethal, but he managed to get me to exactly 0 the round before.
I can't really complain--I imagine my deck seemed like super-cancer to all my previous opponents, plus 6 wins is still pretty good--but that last game just got me. It was my first trial, but I need to take a mental palette cleanser before attempting trial #2 so I thought I'd post here. I hope everyone is doing well!
EDIT: meant 6-1, not 6-0 lol. Sorry; I guess I was more worked up than I thought!
How feasible is it to fully unlock the vault each week? I've been playing since last Tuesday and pretty much done all quests/ pvp'd every day and I'm at the tier 12 vault, but it seems kinda tough to fully unlock the vault. Is it X number of games a day and completing every quest each day?
"Feasible" is a subjective word. Almaniarra's math is spot-on, but I will warn you the man is machine when it comes to time-played so I'll append his numbers with these thoughts:
The difference between a Platinum Chest and a Diamond Chest is 1 capsule. In other words: Level 10 is a soft-cap; after that, every additional 4k XP only will award you one additional capsule (equivalent to 1 HS pack), so don't feel obligated to max out.
Every chest has a 20% chance of upgrade (but Diamond is the max), so even if you stay at 12 you have a 1:5 chance of getting 3 Diamond Chests anyways. Incidentally, this is exactly what happened to me this past Tuesday.
The most important thing is getting at least Level 10 every week, which is only 13k. That's when you get the expedition token, which in turn gives you 1 champion plus the potential for lots of bonus XP and cards. Anything beyond 10 is the proverbial gravy.
As far as I understand the rule, regardless of whether you dust that second copy now or after the rule gets added in, that lets you open another copy in packs. Unless for some reason it’s different than the current rule for legendaries, then the game only counts cards as “already obtained” if you currently have them, not if you opened them at some point then dusted them (opening a legendary and dusting it won’t protect you from opening it again)
I don't think any non-Blizzard employee knows yet but I would guess it's like Meteorite says: that getting the golden copy essentially "spoiled" your chances of guaranteeing 2 non-golden copy through the protection mechanism, and that when you dust it won't have any effect.
But you can always roll the dice, dust it now, and pray the "already obtained' list hasn't been tallied yet.
One side note: you write that Cabal isn't a meta card, but between the new Scarlet Subjugator and the buff to Shadow Madness there's a chance that "MC Priest" will see some play this expansion. At the least, I know there are several priest players who are chomping at the bit to try it out Day 1.
I'm a little surprised they're doing it like this. It seems like this would be the perfect opportunity to pilot virtual fireside gatherings (i.e., not restricting the group to just your physical LAN). Or barring that: just make everyone natively capable of opening packs and playing AoO cards from April 3-6 instead of forcing them to go through the aforementioned exercise. I'm guessing both the aforementioned would require more software adaptations than they have time to implement, so I will at least give them props for being so proactive and communicative.
I don't think it would be justified. Part of the game is suppose to be supporting tech choices--e.g., Dragonmaw Poacher in DoD or Golakka Crawler in Un'Goro (although that card arguably should have been included in MSG as a possible answer to Patches). If the opposing tribe is overly popular then players will slot in "hate" cards to tech against it; if its not, then they won't. It helps keep the meta healthy.
I kinda wanted to build a deck like Saucy Mailman's Ephemeral Kalista. Unfortunately I have 0 Hecarim, I can't think of a viable way to make an ephemeral deck without Hecarim, and I feel like crafting Hecarim is just dirty and morally objectionable. :-(
So you think they belong to the shadow isles? but they don't have any connection there anymore nothing in their operations or origins says "the ruined king" or the shadow isles they are just demons that roam the lands and kill humans for their essence.
No, I was sharing it because I think it was a great graphic, but unlike the author I'd say it would seem off to put Shaco, Fiddlesticks, etc in with Hecarim, Elise, Kalista, etc. I believe he was working under the assumption that each region will get equivalent amounts of play with a rotating roster of champions, but that as there are ~20 champions affliated with Piltover and/or Zaun but only ~8 with Mt Targon. What I'm kinda hoping is that they have the current 6 regions and the "main" factions and then append/rotate in smaller factions, applying artistic license and focusing more on what feels right rather than geographical lore. For example: I could see them create a "peacekeeper" faction and join people like Caitlyn, Vi, Quinn, Kayle, etc. And since they don't see as much play, its OK for them to have smaller rosters than the big 6.
Yes, they do have a precedent, but with P&Z there's not much difference theme-wise. OK, I know Zaun is supposed to be like Piltover's dark underbelly, but in practice Jinx and Heimerdinger both fit a "wild crazy stuff happens" scheme, as do the spells and followers for P&Z. Teemo is actually from Bandle City, so it's not like they were even strictly limiting themselves to standing cannon.
Perhaps the most interesting question is: exactly how deep do they expect the rosters for each of these regions to be? Currently, there's ~20 champions affiliated with P&Z combined which implies that The Void would need to shore up its roster to be comparable--however, the same would be said about Shadow Isles. My suspicion is that they are going to continue on with what they did with P&Z and Teemo: doing what feels right in-game rather than restricting themselves to existing lore and keeping all factions' rosters roughly same size. For illustration, here's some charts that I'm totally stealing from Reddit:
My guess is that this symbol is demons + void as they all share the trait of being "monsters".
I hope not. Not that I hate your idea, but I think The Void is strong enough--in terms of lore, theme, and champion roster--to be its own region, so I think it would be a mistep to try to couple it with another region. I'd much rather see them release it as its own thing and the rest as their own thing--perhaps a demon region which isn't so much a geographical location as it is a shared origin / culture.
Plus, just logistically: I see Fiddlesticks, Tham Kench, Evelynn, Nocturne, Shaco, and Brand fitting together well and I see Cho'Gath, Kai'Sa, Kassadin, Kha'Zix, Kog'Maw, Malzahar, Rek'Sai and Vel'Koz fitting together well, but I don't really see the 2 groups intermingling well together.
Hey Fluxfashor. Is there any info if the new duplicate protection will be retroactive? What I mean is if I get some packs now until that patch goes live and save them, will I benefit from the protection when I open them then? Thank you
I've heard that the rarity of each card in the pack is locked when you buy them but the specific card isn't picked until you open, so if that's true you should benefit from waiting.
I keep mulling all these things over, and my mind keeps going back to just tuning.
Specifically: I would remove some of these low-cost Ionia elusives from the game entirely so its impossible to build an Ionia deck with ~80% elusives. There are many other non-Ionia elusives (Daring Poro, Intrepid Mariner, Amateur Aeronaut, Silverwing ScoutBADCARDNAME, Jae Medarda) that we don't even see, yet its impossible to go more than 5 games without seeing the usually suspects of bladescout, conspirator, greenglade duo, shadow assassin, and lifeblade. I would also include Silent Shadowseer in my list of "don't see", except I know the only reason we don't see it is because Ionia already has 2 other 2-drop that deal more consistent damage. As soon as either conspirator or duo get bad enough to not want to play, shadowseer's dropping straight into their slot.
I think if you gut that archetype's early game elusives, they start needing to either cede games to aggro or find non-elusive answers to early board--and if they are doing that, then they can't simultaneously chip away at your health while waiting on Hatchling, so now they need to be more committed to the big risk-big-reward strategy of having a big swing late game.
Craft...decks? So how do I do that? Are there pre-built decks that I can craft or am I missing something here?
Also, zoolock/aggro has never appealed to me. Is there a good semi-control deck that is viable for low cost crafting? I liked the Braum/buff deck (plus I always liked Braum in LoL). Is there a decent Braum/Friejlord deck that is viable for low level usage while I'm still learning the game and stuff?
I would wait until after next Tuesday before seriously spending any resources: you'll have another vault, another expedition token = random champion, plus hopefully your first champion from region rewards, and that will go a long way towards deciding how exactly you want to go.
Regarding Braum: I don't think he's in any of the "top tier" decks, but he's definitely viable. Again: what's the best way for you to go will probably depend on exactly what legendaries and epics you open. As an example, below is my personal favorite use of him, my Braum/Vlad deck--this probably isn't a good use of wildcards, but I will say I enjoy it. I also saw a neat Braum/Kalista poro deck on Youtube last night. There's also some Decamia decks. Really: anything that can buff Braum can turn him into a threat.
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)
Respectably: I was devastated by how Blizzard handled the Galakrond Shaman debacle. First off, that deck just...I'm trying to think of an proper analogy that respectfully doesn't include diseases or pandemics but nothing is coming to mind so let's just say it was everywhere on ladder within 48 hours of the patch to the point where I didn't even want to play. Literally: I had actually taken vacation time to stay home and play Hearthstone, and I decided I'd rather go into work than keep facing that deck--that's how bad it was. I haven't personally seen this Kalista / Rekindler deck--I'm low rank and haven't played much so take that with a grain of salt, but anecdotally that's been my experience. Second: it took Blizzard 2 emergency patches to address the issue. The 1st one was probably the most pointless, "grasping-at-straws" patch they've ever done--all it accomplished was killing Shaman Murlocs and non-Galakrond Quest Shaman, encouraging MORE people to play the more powerful variant. And when they did finally get around to a proper patch, their solution was to just gut most of their core package, not give Shaman any alternatives, and then essential walk away when Rogue just replaced them as the "it" class the next day.
If you want to say you personally appreciated how Blizzard handled that incident, OK, but please don't assume everyone shares that sentiment. I have not been that disappointed by the actions of a video game company since I was a child.
The point of moving him to classic is so people don't have to keep playing the same deck and can learn different archetypes without building each recipe
This. Plus "competitive" is very subjective--historically the Tier 1 decks as defined by HsReplay typically show 4-8 legendaries, I'm extremely skeptical that Blizzard is going to just give away that much dust. It's more likely that you pick the class and then Blizzard will give you their choice (read: the cheaper option which only includes 1-2 legendaries) of two deck recipes they publish, so the comparison is more like losing access to all 18 Whizbang decks in exchange for owning your choice out of the worst 9.
Ionia can rely on Mark of Death and several Recall and Stun effects.
.
Please note that Death Mark will only work if you find a way to prevent her from striking--i.e., if she has ephemeral tag and is attacking, she will recall first, THEN ephemeral would go into effect except she's already safe.
Haha... like I said in my post: Kalista has been #24 out of 24 since the open beta started; I don't really mind her going 4 weeks as Hecarim's replacement. Hopefully they realize what they NEEDED to do this week--reduce Rekindler's stats, because rez'ing a champion for 6-7 mana is fine you don't need a midsized body to go with it--and don't just re-gut Kalista.
I didn't get to play much last night--any other new interesting Kalista decks? I predicted Rekindler and Arachnoid Host, and I've been scheming up how to make Avarosan Hearthguard work but that might be too wonky. Then there's Darkwater Scourge, which candidly just feels boring compared to all the other possibilities. And Tianna Crownguard--except I'm not sure if the timing will provide the "free" rally or not.
Why would he be moved to HoF? He is not a problem, never was.
I don't think the objections towards him are so much about his statistical average performance as much as the outliers--i.e., the possibility for a ridiculous big early Edwin that decides the game. Much like playing a MC Tech and hitting the one-out-of-four that will win you the game.
Subjugator feels really awkward on curve in all the ways cleric felt great. I admit I wasn't thinking of MC shenanigans so that might be a thing, but independently it just like an arena card more than constructed to me.
Conjurer is basically swashbuckler without any of rogue's thief synergies.
Natalie would be fantastic except I think the 8 mana is going to be cost-prohibitive.
Chaplain again looks like a fine arena card but too little impact for constructed.
To be clear: I hope I'm wrong and you're right. I would love to see priest to start supporting more board-centric value trading and investing in individual minions and less...whatever nonsense you want to call rez priest and combo priest. I'm just not seeing it.
There have been no public announcements, but the patches include a lot of new unused data and some people like to datamine it and speculate if/what its future usage will be. One such datamine implied 6 new regions include a crest that strongly resembles Bilgewater's; there was an OutOfCards news post about it:
https://outof.cards/legends-of-runeterra/767-legends-of-runeterra-new-region-datamined
So I just went 6-1 on my Expedition. Not just 6 wins--literally undefeated until game 7. ;-) That's never happened to me before. I've had some good campaigns, some bad campaigns, but even when I'm doing "good" that's more like 60% win rate. I've never had one that was so good that it didn't drop any games--so you can imagine my surprise when I got shut out on the final game.
My deck was basically straight aggro: Draven + Lucian with lots of early game aggro, tons of Noxius 1-2 drops, battlecasters, and 3x brothers bond. It was surprising effective (side note #1: don't neglect your early game when drafting, guys!) Final Boss was a wonky P&Z/Frejlord deck with Anivia + Ashe + 1 other champ (don't exactly remember; he never played any); I was even doing OK until he dropped a Chempunk Shredder on curve (side note #2: when's the last time you've seen one of those played?) which completely cleared my board. From there on, it was an uphill battle with me top-decking and him with card advantage and plenty of good answers. I did manage to get him down to 1-HP and threaten next-turn lethal, but he managed to get me to exactly 0 the round before.
I can't really complain--I imagine my deck seemed like super-cancer to all my previous opponents, plus 6 wins is still pretty good--but that last game just got me. It was my first trial, but I need to take a mental palette cleanser before attempting trial #2 so I thought I'd post here. I hope everyone is doing well!
EDIT: meant 6-1, not 6-0 lol. Sorry; I guess I was more worked up than I thought!
"Feasible" is a subjective word. Almaniarra's math is spot-on, but I will warn you the man is machine when it comes to time-played so I'll append his numbers with these thoughts:
I don't think any non-Blizzard employee knows yet but I would guess it's like Meteorite says: that getting the golden copy essentially "spoiled" your chances of guaranteeing 2 non-golden copy through the protection mechanism, and that when you dust it won't have any effect.
But you can always roll the dice, dust it now, and pray the "already obtained' list hasn't been tallied yet.
One side note: you write that Cabal isn't a meta card, but between the new Scarlet Subjugator and the buff to Shadow Madness there's a chance that "MC Priest" will see some play this expansion. At the least, I know there are several priest players who are chomping at the bit to try it out Day 1.
I'm a little surprised they're doing it like this. It seems like this would be the perfect opportunity to pilot virtual fireside gatherings (i.e., not restricting the group to just your physical LAN). Or barring that: just make everyone natively capable of opening packs and playing AoO cards from April 3-6 instead of forcing them to go through the aforementioned exercise. I'm guessing both the aforementioned would require more software adaptations than they have time to implement, so I will at least give them props for being so proactive and communicative.
I don't think it would be justified. Part of the game is suppose to be supporting tech choices--e.g., Dragonmaw Poacher in DoD or Golakka Crawler in Un'Goro (although that card arguably should have been included in MSG as a possible answer to Patches). If the opposing tribe is overly popular then players will slot in "hate" cards to tech against it; if its not, then they won't. It helps keep the meta healthy.
I kinda wanted to build a deck like Saucy Mailman's Ephemeral Kalista. Unfortunately I have 0 Hecarim, I can't think of a viable way to make an ephemeral deck without Hecarim, and I feel like crafting Hecarim is just dirty and morally objectionable. :-(
No, I was sharing it because I think it was a great graphic, but unlike the author I'd say it would seem off to put Shaco, Fiddlesticks, etc in with Hecarim, Elise, Kalista, etc. I believe he was working under the assumption that each region will get equivalent amounts of play with a rotating roster of champions, but that as there are ~20 champions affliated with Piltover and/or Zaun but only ~8 with Mt Targon. What I'm kinda hoping is that they have the current 6 regions and the "main" factions and then append/rotate in smaller factions, applying artistic license and focusing more on what feels right rather than geographical lore. For example: I could see them create a "peacekeeper" faction and join people like Caitlyn, Vi, Quinn, Kayle, etc. And since they don't see as much play, its OK for them to have smaller rosters than the big 6.
Yes, they do have a precedent, but with P&Z there's not much difference theme-wise. OK, I know Zaun is supposed to be like Piltover's dark underbelly, but in practice Jinx and Heimerdinger both fit a "wild crazy stuff happens" scheme, as do the spells and followers for P&Z. Teemo is actually from Bandle City, so it's not like they were even strictly limiting themselves to standing cannon.
Perhaps the most interesting question is: exactly how deep do they expect the rosters for each of these regions to be? Currently, there's ~20 champions affiliated with P&Z combined which implies that The Void would need to shore up its roster to be comparable--however, the same would be said about Shadow Isles. My suspicion is that they are going to continue on with what they did with P&Z and Teemo: doing what feels right in-game rather than restricting themselves to existing lore and keeping all factions' rosters roughly same size. For illustration, here's some charts that I'm totally stealing from Reddit:
Regions/Factions already in:
Regions/factions not in:
I hope not. Not that I hate your idea, but I think The Void is strong enough--in terms of lore, theme, and champion roster--to be its own region, so I think it would be a mistep to try to couple it with another region. I'd much rather see them release it as its own thing and the rest as their own thing--perhaps a demon region which isn't so much a geographical location as it is a shared origin / culture.
Plus, just logistically: I see Fiddlesticks, Tham Kench, Evelynn, Nocturne, Shaco, and Brand fitting together well and I see Cho'Gath, Kai'Sa, Kassadin, Kha'Zix, Kog'Maw, Malzahar, Rek'Sai and Vel'Koz fitting together well, but I don't really see the 2 groups intermingling well together.
I've heard that the rarity of each card in the pack is locked when you buy them but the specific card isn't picked until you open, so if that's true you should benefit from waiting.
I keep mulling all these things over, and my mind keeps going back to just tuning.
Specifically: I would remove some of these low-cost Ionia elusives from the game entirely so its impossible to build an Ionia deck with ~80% elusives. There are many other non-Ionia elusives (Daring Poro, Intrepid Mariner, Amateur Aeronaut, Silverwing ScoutBADCARDNAME, Jae Medarda) that we don't even see, yet its impossible to go more than 5 games without seeing the usually suspects of bladescout, conspirator, greenglade duo, shadow assassin, and lifeblade. I would also include Silent Shadowseer in my list of "don't see", except I know the only reason we don't see it is because Ionia already has 2 other 2-drop that deal more consistent damage. As soon as either conspirator or duo get bad enough to not want to play, shadowseer's dropping straight into their slot.
I think if you gut that archetype's early game elusives, they start needing to either cede games to aggro or find non-elusive answers to early board--and if they are doing that, then they can't simultaneously chip away at your health while waiting on Hatchling, so now they need to be more committed to the big risk-big-reward strategy of having a big swing late game.
I would wait until after next Tuesday before seriously spending any resources: you'll have another vault, another expedition token = random champion, plus hopefully your first champion from region rewards, and that will go a long way towards deciding how exactly you want to go.
Regarding Braum: I don't think he's in any of the "top tier" decks, but he's definitely viable. Again: what's the best way for you to go will probably depend on exactly what legendaries and epics you open. As an example, below is my personal favorite use of him, my Braum/Vlad deck--this probably isn't a good use of wildcards, but I will say I enjoy it. I also saw a neat Braum/Kalista poro deck on Youtube last night. There's also some Decamia decks. Really: anything that can buff Braum can turn him into a threat.
Respectably: I was devastated by how Blizzard handled the Galakrond Shaman debacle. First off, that deck just...I'm trying to think of an proper analogy that respectfully doesn't include diseases or pandemics but nothing is coming to mind so let's just say it was everywhere on ladder within 48 hours of the patch to the point where I didn't even want to play. Literally: I had actually taken vacation time to stay home and play Hearthstone, and I decided I'd rather go into work than keep facing that deck--that's how bad it was. I haven't personally seen this Kalista / Rekindler deck--I'm low rank and haven't played much so take that with a grain of salt, but anecdotally that's been my experience. Second: it took Blizzard 2 emergency patches to address the issue. The 1st one was probably the most pointless, "grasping-at-straws" patch they've ever done--all it accomplished was killing Shaman Murlocs and non-Galakrond Quest Shaman, encouraging MORE people to play the more powerful variant. And when they did finally get around to a proper patch, their solution was to just gut most of their core package, not give Shaman any alternatives, and then essential walk away when Rogue just replaced them as the "it" class the next day.
If you want to say you personally appreciated how Blizzard handled that incident, OK, but please don't assume everyone shares that sentiment. I have not been that disappointed by the actions of a video game company since I was a child.
This. Plus "competitive" is very subjective--historically the Tier 1 decks as defined by HsReplay typically show 4-8 legendaries, I'm extremely skeptical that Blizzard is going to just give away that much dust. It's more likely that you pick the class and then Blizzard will give you their choice (read: the cheaper option which only includes 1-2 legendaries) of two deck recipes they publish, so the comparison is more like losing access to all 18 Whizbang decks in exchange for owning your choice out of the worst 9.
Please note that Death Mark will only work if you find a way to prevent her from striking--i.e., if she has ephemeral tag and is attacking, she will recall first, THEN ephemeral would go into effect except she's already safe.
Haha... like I said in my post: Kalista has been #24 out of 24 since the open beta started; I don't really mind her going 4 weeks as Hecarim's replacement. Hopefully they realize what they NEEDED to do this week--reduce Rekindler's stats, because rez'ing a champion for 6-7 mana is fine you don't need a midsized body to go with it--and don't just re-gut Kalista.
I didn't get to play much last night--any other new interesting Kalista decks? I predicted Rekindler and Arachnoid Host, and I've been scheming up how to make Avarosan Hearthguard work but that might be too wonky. Then there's Darkwater Scourge, which candidly just feels boring compared to all the other possibilities. And Tianna Crownguard--except I'm not sure if the timing will provide the "free" rally or not.
Yeah, the Finley one is weird to me. I do like that they made him much more on-theme, but in practice he's just a re-roll.
I don't think the objections towards him are so much about his statistical average performance as much as the outliers--i.e., the possibility for a ridiculous big early Edwin that decides the game. Much like playing a MC Tech and hitting the one-out-of-four that will win you the game.
Subjugator feels really awkward on curve in all the ways cleric felt great. I admit I wasn't thinking of MC shenanigans so that might be a thing, but independently it just like an arena card more than constructed to me.
Conjurer is basically swashbuckler without any of rogue's thief synergies.
Power Infusion looks like Power Word: Tentacles and Velen's Chosen, neither of which was that successful.
Natalie would be fantastic except I think the 8 mana is going to be cost-prohibitive.
Chaplain again looks like a fine arena card but too little impact for constructed.
To be clear: I hope I'm wrong and you're right. I would love to see priest to start supporting more board-centric value trading and investing in individual minions and less...whatever nonsense you want to call rez priest and combo priest. I'm just not seeing it.