Regarding The Rekindler, I don't think it would be appropriate to nerf it unless you can come up with a couple of other decks where it's truly oppressive.
If Hecarim is pretty much the only time Rekindler is a problem, that points to the real problem being Hecarim. In fact, Rekindler could make a good canary in the coal mine for detecting troublesome Champions in general.
I've been trying desperately to dream up a way to combo Darius -> The Rekindler -> The Harrowing into a board full of 10 attack overwhelms, but I just can't do it.
There's lots of things to try and learn in this game, and FrostyFeet and DoubleSummon have already given some nuggets so I'll just build upon specifically talking about champions. The way I see it, there are 3 types of champions in this game:
Those that you need to build your deck around to get value (Lux, Yasuo, Thresh, Fiora, Ashe)
So the secret to good deck building (and I assume you're going to be homebrewing decks for a couple of weeks until you get some vaults and rewards under your belt) is understanding how each card--champions especially but this applies to all cards--is synergizing with the rest of your deck. Don't feel like you need to spend wildcards yet to improve your first-week decks; I think you'll be much happier hobbling along for a few weeks and then making a competitive deck rather than trying to make a mediocre deck less mediocre.
Also, one bonus tip: watch streamers! You learn so much by watching other people play. In particular, I recommend MegaM0gwai, Saucy Mailman, and Swimstream.
This isn't really a spiders deck; its your typical midrange SI wraithcaller deck. If you're trying to play it like a spider deck (i.e., trying to level Elise), you're probably piloting it wrong
Most of these decks are running The Harrowing; its pretty much broken when you rez mulitple Hecarim
They also tend to drop Rhasa entirely and often Ledros too and just focus on attacking with/resurrecting Hecarim until they pull of huge Harrowing.
...There. I've taught you how to be a filthy netdecking meta player. I need to go take a shower now; meanwhile, enjoy the remaining 2 weeks until the inevitable Hecarim nerf--at which point you'll need to netdeck a new strategy. :-P
You DEFINITELY need to sort this out with Riot's support team.
Be considerate of the fact I think they all work in US Monday-Friday, so you probably aren't going to hear back from them for the next ~40 hours. But in my limited experience, when they do finally get around to responding, the guys seem pretty friendly and understanding.
But ... but ... if you admit Kalista is garbage (and she definitely is), why not just put in literally any other Champion, or even a strong follower, instead of trying to make her work?
Truthfully? Because I have opened 3 Kalista, 23 Thresh, 1 Elise (not counting the starting 2), and 0 Hecarim. :-P And I've also opened 0 Anivia and 0 Tryn, so Thresh isn't really an option.
I will say that I like Kalista better in this archetype than the traditional Darius--Darius is definitely better value, but he's also 6 mana and I think this deck usually wants to go faster than that. And she is better than most low-cost followers: compare her to a Wraithcaller for 1 less mana or a Arachnoid Horror for 1 mana more but adds 3 more attack to the board.
UPDATE: got my 3rd Thresh. At this point, I'm pretty sure there's some hidden algorithm that biases random champion drops against the active population--i.e., it doesn't want to give away free Hecarim with some many players crafting him. :-P
It looks like you're relying heavily on Zed for your deaths--how consistent is that? If not very: you might want to consider Silent Shadowseer.
I think Vanguard Redeemer is must-have. If you're getting consistent ally deaths it should be a 3/3 plus draw for 3 mana; if you're not getting consistent deaths, you probably want to retool your deck until you are as its so critical for Lucian.
Finally, Silverwing Vanguard might be worth consideration. You don't have any hand/deck buff, but the fact that there's 2 of them plus you can get some interesting interactions (e.g., snipe a troublesome elusive, or if there's a single big blocker that would kill your Lucian you can use them to chain-challenge it).
For context, I usually play for 1-2 hours ranked (hovering at gold 3-4 ATM) every night. Lately, it seems like I've been getting wildly different results every night. Like yesterday: I had a quest to frost bite so I was playing my Frejlord/Noxus battle scar deck but I could get a win to save my life. Then I switched over to my SI/Noxus spider deck and went something like 4-2. Tonight, it's been the exact opposite: I had a fearsome quest, spiders couldn't get a win, but battle scars were on fire.
I just found it amusing that I'm getting practically polar opposite results over such a short time period. Anyone else experiencing anything like that?
Very interesting. Bold choice skipping over Braum, but I don't think its wrong.
Do you ever try to answer elusives, or do you just start race them? Lately I've been using Noxian Guillotine and Whirling Death for that, but as their both Noxus cards that would contest your much-needed Outriders' allegiance.
So what do i do? I suppose i can freeze but that's just temporary and i use mana on a delay effect while the enemy builds the board. with cheap creatures that keep dealing chip damage on me.
If you wait until after they announce her as an attacker and then block and frostbite her, she'll die. She only recalls if she strikes, and she can only strike if she has >0 attack.
In general, though: don't loose board. Being able to rally multiple times doesn't mean jack for your opponent if they don't have the attackers to back it up. If they play 2 cheap units: you play 1 medium sized unit that can kill them both off. Before long, they'll run out of cards meaning they won't have any units besides Katarina who is a terrible blocker--then you punish them.
Me too. I really wish that was a viable combo in practice, but at 3 HP/ea they both are just way to easy to kill, and at 4/5 mana they are too expensive to YOLO it.
I can't get my head around this card. Is it meant as a buff? A debuff? A situational card that you include 2x and hope you don't draw it until that moment when you absolutely need it?
Yeah--mathwise, that sounds like a HORRIBLE deal. Any day of the year, you can get 7 packs for the same price; granted, those results will be scattered across all 9 classes, but it's 40% more cards for something that's even not "on sale". Normally, their deals are something like $20 for 25-30 packs. I'm afraid of what happens if this sells well.
Kripp seems to be impressed, and that's usually a good enough reason for some amount of optimism.
Yeah, but Kripp could also get extremely excited about something that most players would consider niche (e.g., improvements to Arena, tie-ins to Diablo, etc).
I've been trying desperately to dream up a way to combo Darius -> The Rekindler -> The Harrowing into a board full of 10 attack overwhelms, but I just can't do it.
Welcome to LoR!
There's lots of things to try and learn in this game, and FrostyFeet and DoubleSummon have already given some nuggets so I'll just build upon specifically talking about champions. The way I see it, there are 3 types of champions in this game:
So the secret to good deck building (and I assume you're going to be homebrewing decks for a couple of weeks until you get some vaults and rewards under your belt) is understanding how each card--champions especially but this applies to all cards--is synergizing with the rest of your deck. Don't feel like you need to spend wildcards yet to improve your first-week decks; I think you'll be much happier hobbling along for a few weeks and then making a competitive deck rather than trying to make a mediocre deck less mediocre.
Also, one bonus tip: watch streamers! You learn so much by watching other people play. In particular, I recommend MegaM0gwai, Saucy Mailman, and Swimstream.
Yeah--someone on reddit compared Garen's both-sides board to a toilet bowl and now I can't unsee it. :-P
Now that that's done, my comments:
...There. I've taught you how to be a filthy netdecking meta player. I need to go take a shower now; meanwhile, enjoy the remaining 2 weeks until the inevitable Hecarim nerf--at which point you'll need to netdeck a new strategy. :-P
In the future if you want to share a deck on this site, you should:
If you do that, you should get a result that looks like this:
You DEFINITELY need to sort this out with Riot's support team.
Be considerate of the fact I think they all work in US Monday-Friday, so you probably aren't going to hear back from them for the next ~40 hours. But in my limited experience, when they do finally get around to responding, the guys seem pretty friendly and understanding.
Truthfully? Because I have opened 3 Kalista, 23 Thresh, 1 Elise (not counting the starting 2), and 0 Hecarim. :-P And I've also opened 0 Anivia and 0 Tryn, so Thresh isn't really an option.
I will say that I like Kalista better in this archetype than the traditional Darius--Darius is definitely better value, but he's also 6 mana and I think this deck usually wants to go faster than that. And she is better than most low-cost followers: compare her to a Wraithcaller for 1 less mana or a Arachnoid Horror for 1 mana more but adds 3 more attack to the board.
UPDATE: got my 3rd Thresh. At this point, I'm pretty sure there's some hidden algorithm that biases random champion drops against the active population--i.e., it doesn't want to give away free Hecarim with some many players crafting him. :-P
It looks like you're relying heavily on Zed for your deaths--how consistent is that? If not very: you might want to consider Silent Shadowseer.
I think Vanguard Redeemer is must-have. If you're getting consistent ally deaths it should be a 3/3 plus draw for 3 mana; if you're not getting consistent deaths, you probably want to retool your deck until you are as its so critical for Lucian.
Finally, Silverwing Vanguard might be worth consideration. You don't have any hand/deck buff, but the fact that there's 2 of them plus you can get some interesting interactions (e.g., snipe a troublesome elusive, or if there's a single big blocker that would kill your Lucian you can use them to chain-challenge it).
For context, I usually play for 1-2 hours ranked (hovering at gold 3-4 ATM) every night. Lately, it seems like I've been getting wildly different results every night. Like yesterday: I had a quest to frost bite so I was playing my Frejlord/Noxus battle scar deck but I could get a win to save my life. Then I switched over to my SI/Noxus spider deck and went something like 4-2. Tonight, it's been the exact opposite: I had a fearsome quest, spiders couldn't get a win, but battle scars were on fire.
I just found it amusing that I'm getting practically polar opposite results over such a short time period. Anyone else experiencing anything like that?
Demacia: 11/20
Frejlord: 13/20
Ionia: 8/20
Noxus: 11/20
P&Z: 8/20
SI: 17/20
Very interesting. Bold choice skipping over Braum, but I don't think its wrong.
Do you ever try to answer elusives, or do you just start race them? Lately I've been using Noxian Guillotine and Whirling Death for that, but as their both Noxus cards that would contest your much-needed Outriders' allegiance.
If you wait until after they announce her as an attacker and then block and frostbite her, she'll die. She only recalls if she strikes, and she can only strike if she has >0 attack.
In general, though: don't loose board. Being able to rally multiple times doesn't mean jack for your opponent if they don't have the attackers to back it up. If they play 2 cheap units: you play 1 medium sized unit that can kill them both off. Before long, they'll run out of cards meaning they won't have any units besides Katarina who is a terrible blocker--then you punish them.
Yeah, that was kinda my conclusion too--except its weird to me that 1 would be a clear reference and the other wouldn't.
Me too. I really wish that was a viable combo in practice, but at 3 HP/ea they both are just way to easy to kill, and at 4/5 mana they are too expensive to YOLO it.
I can't get my head around this card. Is it meant as a buff? A debuff? A situational card that you include 2x and hope you don't draw it until that moment when you absolutely need it?
That Hecarim + The Harrowing combo is pretty broken. Expect lots more Will of Ionia and Detains incoming.
Yeah--mathwise, that sounds like a HORRIBLE deal. Any day of the year, you can get 7 packs for the same price; granted, those results will be scattered across all 9 classes, but it's 40% more cards for something that's even not "on sale". Normally, their deals are something like $20 for 25-30 packs. I'm afraid of what happens if this sells well.
Yeah, I think its something like 1% chance per capsule (i.e., ~9% for max vault)
There is no refunding.
If you absolutely need a certain card:
I'm not seeing either. The associated URLs are a mile long; might be a character limit issue.
Yeah, but Kripp could also get extremely excited about something that most players would consider niche (e.g., improvements to Arena, tie-ins to Diablo, etc).