Old LoL player who currently plays Hearthstone. How is Runeterra different?
Short answer: its better in every conceivable way. :-P
Ok, ok, trying to be serious:
It's WAY more F2P friendly. You get the equivalent of 6-9 packs from vaults and then let's say another ~4 packs + legendary from region rewards + expedition rewards every week for ~5 hours playtime. Cash is mostly for cosmetics, although of course it does help accelerate your collection if you're impatient. I'm probably at ~60% of the collection right now 8 weeks in and I haven't spent a dime.
It's much more strategic, much less RNG. Every little decision matters.
Riot is committed to making very single card viable (although not necessarily top-tier), which is impressive. Compare to HS e.g. when Galakrond Shaman was too powerful it just got nerfed into oblivion, meanwhile archetypes like Chavala and Hack the System are totally forgotten after Week One.
Getting to float mana between turns is huge--it turns an experience that just feels awful in HS to a powerful catchup opportunity in LoR.
Things are reactive. Where as in HS, if you put something like an emperor or Brann out its almost guaranteed to get killed before your next turn, in LoR you can actually react to your opponent's removal with your spells to counter--and then he can counter back--etc. It's a bit like if you could actually control when a trap goes off instead of being forced to trigger it whenever the game decides.
This will be debatable, but I'd say its easier to go off-meta. Every week on reddit someone will hit top-10 and share a decklist which looks very different from anything else I've seen.
Honestly, man: if you've got a couple of hours, install it and give it a whirl. What do you have to lose?
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…Besides hours of your life as you get hopelessly addicted to this fantastic game, of course.
Actually, I was thinking the complete opposite: this totally guts priest's classic toolset. No more draw from cleric or PW:Shield and no more divine spirit shenanigans is HUGE, the mana decreases to unpopular cards are nice but I don't think any of them will be enough to push them to meta, and besides SW:Ruin all of the new cards are complete garbage. Answers are meaningless without a win condition. Hopefully priest gets some new toys with the expansion; otherwise, its going to replace shaman as Dumpster Tier as soon as the rotation occurs.
The one thing I don't like about it (or rather do like about it, since I don't play it myself and therefore only find myself on the opposite side of the board) is that its very predictable and linear. I'm impressed that both the games you highlighted were control matchups and you handled them fine, but I do have to wonder how much was misplay by your opponents. The Garen deck is highly dependent on wide board and leveled Garen, and if its deprived of those 2 objectives it has zero catchup capability.
They buffed LOTS of cards that i run in my spider token OTK deck!!! I managed to reach rank Master 35 with it last month... i wouldn't be surprised if token spider becomes a S tier deck now.
The Kalista rework. Honestly, she might be a little too good now, but as much time as she's spent in the dumpster Girl could use a little time to shine. The best part is: it's not just good, its novel. My mind is already spinning on all the ways to possibly abuse her L2 ability.
Mageseekers rework. The whole "discard a card" thing was really discouraging, so I love that they dumped it and now made it more fun. Props for making them all reactive, too, since pretty much every 6+ cost spell is something you want to play at the right time and not just as an activator.
The Rummage change. It sounds like a small thing, but honestly most successful Jinx decks will cut this card because it absolutely sucks to "lock up" your hand. But even bigger than the specifics is how they are proactively bandaging this very niche scenario. It shows a familiarity with how an off-meta deck performs and nourishment to want to essentially "unburden" it without necessarily buffing it.
I liked
The down-tuning for Black Spear, Crowd Favorite, Chump Whump, and MotI. All essentially went from "Why wouldn't you run 3x of this card?" to "Are you sure this is the best card for you?", which is exactly what you want from a balanced card game.
The up-tuning on Brood Awakening, Poro Snax, and Iceborn Legacy. The latter 2 are opening up new possible archetypes; the former is giving some deckbuilding flexibility to what is currently a very narrow archetype. Kudos all around.
In general: how this was a regularly scheduled balance patch that shook things up, and now I'm already excited for / dreaming up totally new deck archetypes. Compare this to other CCG games' who will remain nameless' balance patches, where effectively announcing which Tier One decks are now dead and leave me waiting to see what inevitably fills the power void.
I'm not sure about
Pack Mentality. I do like that its less confusing now, but this is really just feels like a variation on For Demacia. It's uninspired brute force. Plus: I'm still not sure who's actually going to run it. Decks that run wide, sure, but that's usually not Frejlord. Maybe someone that wants to make use of Unscarred Reaver and Scarthane SteffanBADCARDNAME outside of a subpar Vlad deck?
Troop of Elnuks. The chance of a complete whiff on this card (not adjusting for what you've drawn or if you've copied) is roughly (34/39)^N, where N is the number of cards, so the change goes from a ~25% chance to a ~44% chance. I'm guessing that's enough of a swing to scare off meta decks from just splashing it, but it doesn't feel comforting. I do like that they identify preservation of the counterfeit coin strategy, but honestly if that trick wasn't working at 10 cards I don't think it will get any more popular now.
Flash of Brilliance. The bigger thing to me was the free mana, so I'm really disappointed they didn't at least make it a 4 cost spell.
I'm disappointed with
The Vanguard Lookout "buff". Boring, and ironically he probably still isn't going to see play because there are better 2-drops for elites. If you want to make people play him, he needs some interesting tag or ability.
I can't beleive
That Hecarim "nerf". He's even more disgusting on a Harrowing now, I don't think reducing his damage by 2 is going to slow him down. Really should have been either an increase to 8 mana or a removal of Overwhelm tag IMHO.
Rekindler. I actually really like that you can rez champions; what I don't like is that this is so often double-digit stats for 6 mana--raising to 7 doesn't hurt the bottom line enough. IMHO, should either be a smaller body or changed to rez the weakest champion so you need to build your deck more carefully if you're just going to cheat out infinite Hecarim / Garen / Ashe / (Kalista ;-) ) etc.
No change to Shadow Assassin. This card is just disgusting, and its the lynch pin of all elusive cancer decks. I do appreciate that they at least identified it and played around with some of the numbers, but not converging on any actual changes is a huge miss IMHO.
Hey guys! I've been having a lot of fun on ladder with this deck, and I thought I would share it because one of the key cards, The Rekindler, is ~80% likely to get nerfed tomorrow. (Side note: if you're missing cards, wait until after the patch notes before crafting any of the expensive stuff!) The basic core is the same Champion -> Rekindler -> The Harrowing stuff you've probably seen a million times with Hecarim. Here's where things get fun, though: we do it with Ashe. If you've played her, you know how frustrating it is to keep her alive...well, we're totally OK if she dies! The goal is to get at least 3 in the res pool with and at least 2 points of progression, then on our attack turn we play The Harrowing and attack all-in: the legion of Ashe will frostbite most of their board, level up, AND prevent any frostbitten units from blocking! But the catch is: you need enough board space for the summoning, so you actually need things to die off first--I actually lost games this evening because I didn't block "bad enough" the turn and had some 3/3 spiders instead of bigger units.
Anyways, its a lot of fun, it's very off-meta, and I think most opponents have no idea what you're doing so you can surprise them. If you have the cards (or don't mind spending a few wild cards), definitely give it a spin before the Tuesday patch.
The main issue I see with this is that champions like Teemo and Ezreal wouldn’t work as well, so these champions could be reworked or given “can only be blocked by elusives” instead of elusive.
The first part of this sentence is a great line of thinking--any proposed change to the elusive mechanic shouldn't kill Teemo and Ezreal. (And I'm talking about "expedition style" Ezreal, not that degenerate OTK combo deck lol). Unfortunately, the second part of the sentence is essentially trying to make a "super-Elusive" tag. I think that's a red flag. Any proposed change should be comprehensive, not potentially add in new problems.
Part of me thinks the problem will solve itself if the cards are just tuned a little bit--i.e., no change to the mechanic itself, just mana costs and stats. Consider for a minute the hyper-aggro decks--you know, the ones that run Boomcrew Rookie and Grenadier and triple Get Excited! etc. Those decks are almost as "non interactive" as elusives--lots of damage is by skills and direct spells, and they can usually put 2 units on board for your 1 so while you can technically block its not better. But nobody really thinks they're a problem because they aren't ridiculously successful and they don't have a lot of late-game gas. Elusives do both the aforementioned.
If she keeps the bond mechanic, I'd really like to see her mana cost change too--e.g., 4 mana for 3/5 stats. One of the big problems with using her in practice right now is that you need the bondmate on the board, and even the best targets at 2- mana (i.e., the turns before you can play Kalista on curve) are fairly low impact: Elise, Lucian, Sentry, and Omen Hawk are probably the best I can think of. At 3 mana, you open up a lot of possibilities: Skitterer, Shadow Assassin, Undying, Used Cask Salesman, Braum, Ezreal, and Draven just to name a few.
Alright, so I am DETERMINED to make Corina playable/competitive in some sort of deck prior to another set coming out.
That's a big challenge, friend. My inclination would be to try a variation of the Ezreal combo decks with Corina Veraza moreso as a tempo reset (circa Reno the Relicologist if you play HS) than a primary win condition. I don't think you want to go the control route, as you're not going to get the same exponential payout from Corina as other control decks (e.g., L2 Karma, The Harrowing, Warmothers, Anivia -> Dawn and Dust, etc). And I don't think you need to go almost-exclusively-spells; most of the time, dealing 2 damage to everything is going to be almost as beneficial as dealing 5.
I too don't like adding quick attack to Kalista; she starts to feel like a variation on Lucian / Zed / Jinx / Draven / Yasuo.
I don't mind Kushinade's idea of making her function more like The Undying.
I could also see something like making her like a 4 mana 5/3, bond gives no immediate benefit, and has "If my bond mate dies, add its stats to me. Last Whisper: add my stats to my bond mate"--that way she still can still be fragile, but now at least there's some immediate recuperation.
A note about Vincent Grand's Vlad deck/video: if you are going to play that deck, DON'T do like he does and drop Take Heart and Transfusions at the same time you announce your attack! You want to at least try to bait out direct damage & damage buffs from your opponent and play your buffs in response; otherwise there WILL be games where you get punished and lose a critical unit that would have otherwise lived if you hadn't tipped your hand.
What do you all think Riot will do to her in the next patch, since they mentioned her by name?
If they decide to rework her, I don't think it will anything I'd expect it to be. I can tell you what I would like it to be, though:
Option A: cheap and aggressive a la Lucian & Zed
Remove the bond mechanic entirely and just replace it with "Support: Fearsome and +1/+0" because bond doesn't play well with rez/recall/detain mechanics and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel here
Change the level up requirement to global, e.g. "You've had 5 allies die" because Kalista is made out of paper plus SI has no inherent way to protect her so its cruel to try to force players to have her survive that long
Change the L2 effect to "Attack: summon a random allied follower who has died this game. It has ephemeral and is attacking." so that way the ephemeral and death-loving archetypes can get some love
Option B: backline value a la Heimer & Karma
She still bonds for +2/+0 on Played and still must see 3 deaths to level up
Change stats from 4/2 to 1/4 at L1, 2/5 at L2 because she needs to actually live to do the aforementioned. Keep Fearsome tag because why not.
Change the L2 effect to "At the start of each turn, if my bondmate is absent, resummon him and reforge the bond." so that it persists through recall & detain mechanics, doesn't require Kalista to put herself at risk to get value, and still gets value on rounds where you don't have the attack token.
I'm not sure this beats a turn 3 Solitary Monk + instant +3/+3....as well as another +3/+3 the turn after for a 10/9 beater that 2hits me and blocks anything i try to throw at him anyways.
It's not so much the Elusive keyword itself, but the fact that permanent buffs exist and damage is limited.
Round 1: they do nothing; you drop Pet
Round 2: they do nothing; you drop Elise and attack in for 5 (2/1, 2/3, 1/1)
Round 3: they drop Monk -> Stand Alone. Hopefully you have Sentry -> stun to forestall the attack, but otherwise any of the other spiders work here (2/1, 2/3, 1/1, 3/2)
Round 4: Elise levels. You have a 1/1 challenger for their sole blocker plus 7 attack on the board; they have 15 health so you need 8 more damage from 4-5 mana, depending on which spider you used the turn before. BB is 4/ea, MoiI and Might are 3/ea, Kalista is 6, Frenzied Skitter is 6.
Granted assuming Elise on curve is big, but so is assuming Monk -> double Standalone on curve plus attacking on odds. :-P In practice, most games will feature Bladescouts, Greenglade Duo, and Shadow Assassins, all of which line up poorly against fearsomes. The real risks aren't monks, they're either getting lucky on an omen hawk -> topdeck or Will of Ionia--both can stall out the game long enough for them to stabilize.
I would say Ashe is independently good but is having trouble finding a suitable deck right now. I think that's true of most mid-range decks in the current meta between elusives, Hecarim, and Elnuks its hard to control board before Round 10, and Round 10+ most decks have a finisher that provides a huge power spike.
I've actually been enjoying some success with Ashe in this SI/Frejlord "Korean" build--getting multiple Ashe from a Harrowing and then leaving their entire board unable to block feels super good.
funny because I was thinking of taking a break because of all the Elusive spam that fundamentally invalidates the core gameplay.
I guess we'll see in a week if they're able to correctly identify and address problems in the game.
I have a deck that's good against elusives too, but it's weakness is...basically every other deck in the meta. XD I'm definitely excited for Tuesday; we could use a good shakeup.
I assume you're taking about the P&Z/Frejlord Ezreal combo decks.
The below deck melts those decks. They try to Mystic Shot / Thermo Beam one of your units? You burst its health high enough to survive. They frost bite your attackers? You sneak in damage anyways thanks to Vlad, Veterans, etc. It doesn't stand up nearly as well against The Harrowing or Karma, but against Ezreal decks it's tons of fun playing Jujutsu and turning all their own attacks against them.
I can understand Vladimir and Kalista having low play rates, but...Shen? One of the decks I see quite a bit is the Fiora/Shen barrier deck and it does quite well at that. Maybe they mean Shen being combo'd with other champions, but who knows.
Consider the following:
Many Fiora + Shen decks exist
Many Fiora decks that don't include Shen exist
Shen decks that don't use Fiora don't really exist
Doesn't it then follow that Shen's popularity will be at best a fraction Fiora's?
That said: they may have designed themselves into a corner here--I don't really know how you empower Shen outside of the obvious role as a barrier-giver to Demacia challengers. Maybe to help compensate for Noxus/SI units' weak bodies? Maybe with a big-buff Frejlord deck?
Short answer: its better in every conceivable way. :-P
Ok, ok, trying to be serious:
Honestly, man: if you've got a couple of hours, install it and give it a whirl. What do you have to lose?
Actually, I was thinking the complete opposite: this totally guts priest's classic toolset. No more draw from cleric or PW:Shield and no more divine spirit shenanigans is HUGE, the mana decreases to unpopular cards are nice but I don't think any of them will be enough to push them to meta, and besides SW:Ruin all of the new cards are complete garbage. Answers are meaningless without a win condition. Hopefully priest gets some new toys with the expansion; otherwise, its going to replace shaman as Dumpster Tier as soon as the rotation occurs.
The one thing I don't like about it (or rather do like about it, since I don't play it myself and therefore only find myself on the opposite side of the board) is that its very predictable and linear. I'm impressed that both the games you highlighted were control matchups and you handled them fine, but I do have to wonder how much was misplay by your opponents. The Garen deck is highly dependent on wide board and leveled Garen, and if its deprived of those 2 objectives it has zero catchup capability.
Gratz--what's your decklist?
I absolutely loved:
I liked
I'm not sure about
I'm disappointed with
I can't beleive
Hey guys! I've been having a lot of fun on ladder with this deck, and I thought I would share it because one of the key cards, The Rekindler, is ~80% likely to get nerfed tomorrow. (Side note: if you're missing cards, wait until after the patch notes before crafting any of the expensive stuff!) The basic core is the same Champion -> Rekindler -> The Harrowing stuff you've probably seen a million times with Hecarim. Here's where things get fun, though: we do it with Ashe. If you've played her, you know how frustrating it is to keep her alive...well, we're totally OK if she dies! The goal is to get at least 3 in the res pool with and at least 2 points of progression, then on our attack turn we play The Harrowing and attack all-in: the legion of Ashe will frostbite most of their board, level up, AND prevent any frostbitten units from blocking! But the catch is: you need enough board space for the summoning, so you actually need things to die off first--I actually lost games this evening because I didn't block "bad enough" the turn and had some 3/3 spiders instead of bigger units.
Anyways, its a lot of fun, it's very off-meta, and I think most opponents have no idea what you're doing so you can surprise them. If you have the cards (or don't mind spending a few wild cards), definitely give it a spin before the Tuesday patch.
The first part of this sentence is a great line of thinking--any proposed change to the elusive mechanic shouldn't kill Teemo and Ezreal. (And I'm talking about "expedition style" Ezreal, not that degenerate OTK combo deck lol). Unfortunately, the second part of the sentence is essentially trying to make a "super-Elusive" tag. I think that's a red flag. Any proposed change should be comprehensive, not potentially add in new problems.
Part of me thinks the problem will solve itself if the cards are just tuned a little bit--i.e., no change to the mechanic itself, just mana costs and stats. Consider for a minute the hyper-aggro decks--you know, the ones that run Boomcrew Rookie and Grenadier and triple Get Excited! etc. Those decks are almost as "non interactive" as elusives--lots of damage is by skills and direct spells, and they can usually put 2 units on board for your 1 so while you can technically block its not better. But nobody really thinks they're a problem because they aren't ridiculously successful and they don't have a lot of late-game gas. Elusives do both the aforementioned.
If she keeps the bond mechanic, I'd really like to see her mana cost change too--e.g., 4 mana for 3/5 stats. One of the big problems with using her in practice right now is that you need the bondmate on the board, and even the best targets at 2- mana (i.e., the turns before you can play Kalista on curve) are fairly low impact: Elise, Lucian, Sentry, and Omen Hawk are probably the best I can think of. At 3 mana, you open up a lot of possibilities: Skitterer, Shadow Assassin, Undying, Used Cask Salesman, Braum, Ezreal, and Draven just to name a few.
That's a big challenge, friend. My inclination would be to try a variation of the Ezreal combo decks with Corina Veraza moreso as a tempo reset (circa Reno the Relicologist if you play HS) than a primary win condition. I don't think you want to go the control route, as you're not going to get the same exponential payout from Corina as other control decks (e.g., L2 Karma, The Harrowing, Warmothers, Anivia -> Dawn and Dust, etc). And I don't think you need to go almost-exclusively-spells; most of the time, dealing 2 damage to everything is going to be almost as beneficial as dealing 5.
Good luck!
I too don't like adding quick attack to Kalista; she starts to feel like a variation on Lucian / Zed / Jinx / Draven / Yasuo.
I don't mind Kushinade's idea of making her function more like The Undying.
I could also see something like making her like a 4 mana 5/3, bond gives no immediate benefit, and has "If my bond mate dies, add its stats to me. Last Whisper: add my stats to my bond mate"--that way she still can still be fragile, but now at least there's some immediate recuperation.
Ionia is definitely my least favorite region of the 6 due to pre-nerf Deny and elusive spam. It's gotten better, but I think I've been scarred.
Shout out to my favorite Noxus cards, Legion Veteran and Battering Ram. :-P
A note about Vincent Grand's Vlad deck/video: if you are going to play that deck, DON'T do like he does and drop Take Heart and Transfusions at the same time you announce your attack! You want to at least try to bait out direct damage & damage buffs from your opponent and play your buffs in response; otherwise there WILL be games where you get punished and lose a critical unit that would have otherwise lived if you hadn't tipped your hand.
If they decide to rework her, I don't think it will anything I'd expect it to be. I can tell you what I would like it to be, though:
Option A: cheap and aggressive a la Lucian & Zed
Option B: backline value a la Heimer & Karma
Round 1: they do nothing; you drop Pet
Round 2: they do nothing; you drop Elise and attack in for 5 (2/1, 2/3, 1/1)
Round 3: they drop Monk -> Stand Alone. Hopefully you have Sentry -> stun to forestall the attack, but otherwise any of the other spiders work here (2/1, 2/3, 1/1, 3/2)
Round 4: Elise levels. You have a 1/1 challenger for their sole blocker plus 7 attack on the board; they have 15 health so you need 8 more damage from 4-5 mana, depending on which spider you used the turn before. BB is 4/ea, MoiI and Might are 3/ea, Kalista is 6, Frenzied Skitter is 6.
Granted assuming Elise on curve is big, but so is assuming Monk -> double Standalone on curve plus attacking on odds. :-P In practice, most games will feature Bladescouts, Greenglade Duo, and Shadow Assassins, all of which line up poorly against fearsomes. The real risks aren't monks, they're either getting lucky on an omen hawk -> topdeck or Will of Ionia--both can stall out the game long enough for them to stabilize.
I would say Ashe is independently good but is having trouble finding a suitable deck right now. I think that's true of most mid-range decks in the current meta between elusives, Hecarim, and Elnuks its hard to control board before Round 10, and Round 10+ most decks have a finisher that provides a huge power spike.
I've actually been enjoying some success with Ashe in this SI/Frejlord "Korean" build--getting multiple Ashe from a Harrowing and then leaving their entire board unable to block feels super good.
I have a deck that's good against elusives too, but it's weakness is...basically every other deck in the meta. XD I'm definitely excited for Tuesday; we could use a good shakeup.
I assume you're taking about the P&Z/Frejlord Ezreal combo decks.
The below deck melts those decks. They try to Mystic Shot / Thermo Beam one of your units? You burst its health high enough to survive. They frost bite your attackers? You sneak in damage anyways thanks to Vlad, Veterans, etc. It doesn't stand up nearly as well against The Harrowing or Karma, but against Ezreal decks it's tons of fun playing Jujutsu and turning all their own attacks against them.
Consider the following:
Doesn't it then follow that Shen's popularity will be at best a fraction Fiora's?
That said: they may have designed themselves into a corner here--I don't really know how you empower Shen outside of the obvious role as a barrier-giver to Demacia challengers. Maybe to help compensate for Noxus/SI units' weak bodies? Maybe with a big-buff Frejlord deck?
Have you tried Rush in the Ionia/Noxus version?