Why do I create this thread, well, I need to analyze what makes Zilliax a 5 mana, had so much effects with a 3/2 body. Being a neutral card is too much I think.
Discuss away..
Well honestly Zilliax is probably too good--hsreplay has him in 60% of all decks right now, and he's pretty much been like that since release. If he was a classic card, he'd probably have lost divine shield years ago to make him a little less auto-include. As is, I suspect Blizzard intentionally overtuned him because they wanted a big splashy magnetic legendary to promote Boomsday and they knew he'd rotate out of standard before too long so they didn't worry too much about how "fair" the card was compared against others so long as he didn't unbalance the meta--which he technically didn't, since he's a neutral and his effect is more of a prolong-the-game rather than close-it-faster.
I really meant this to be more about the abstract sensation you get when you try to improve a deck and it ends up feeling worse. :-P But since people are interested in the specifics, I'll share.
The first week of the open beta, I barely had anything so I threw together my versions of the 3 starter decks (including exchanging Ionia/Zed for Noxus/Darius in the Jinx deck). Lots of mismatched odds & ends that just happen to be around the right mana cost/function, right? Ugly, but they win games--let's say 50-50. And I'm not really one for fiddling with decks, so I just leave them. So this week, I decide after my vault I'm going to go and revisit them and finally spend a few wildcards crafting a few essentials for my favorite, the Jinx deck. I take out Darius and some of the 3-cost stuff and focus on discard-synergy, nexus damage, and cards that are easier to cycle for rockets--we can debate whether that's a good deck building strategy, but at least its *a* strategy, right? And I go something like 1:5 that night. So I figure maybe I'm just off or maybe its some unfavorable matchups; I try again this evening and again go like 0:3. Then I swap back to my oddball Jinx deck and its like 2:1, and then I go to my oddball Braum/Garen deck and it goes like 2:1.
It's like the harder I try in building the deck, the worse my games go. My rationale brain realizes the aforementioned is very poor sample size and that there was an inherent trade-off building so heavily around Jinx--all the same, though, my emotional brain is saying that to just forgot about deck building and keep playing the crappy oddball decks until they break entirely. :-P
From what I see streamers play, it looks like most successful decks are Ionia + Damacia that never fully commit to Fiora's win condition and keep up pressure by just beating down via elusives--e.g.:
Biggest trick is remembering what burst options an opponent has (e.g., Stand Alone), as you don't get the opportunity to counter-play with your cards, even if they are burst too.
This is actually much more complicated than you imply. There are many champions that you would never include unless you build your deck around them (e.g., YasouBADCARDNAME, Ezreal) and some which you can use as well-statted followers that can drop into any compatible deck in a pinch (e.g., Kalista, Garen, Zed). I'd recommend heading over to the forums and creating a thread, listing what you have and soliciting advice.
In the general: if you don't have much beyond the starting cards, you're probably looking at the following deck options:
SI / Noxus spiders featuring Elise
Ionia / Demacia elusives; no champs needed but you can through in Zed for fun
P&Z / Noxus discard featuring Jinx
Frejlord / Demacia control featuring Braum; you can include lots of 1-of's
As you pick up cards, you might be able to branch out into new archetypes: Dawnspeakers -> SI / Demacia spiders, Rhasa the Sunderer -> SI / anything control, etc.
Quote From frankyI'll give you a practical example why this card needs some changes. I had a game where opponent was with a full board of tokens/creatures max power 2. He was at 15 health, I was at 5 and I only had 1 unit on my board. I was gonna lose, as simple as that. I dropped Ledros, I attacked, I won. It's kinda not fair.
She Who Wanders would have basically had the same effect, no? :-) Perhaps it would have taken a few additional rounds, but I'm guessing it still he had no way to recover from that play effect.
Overwhelm also punches through barrier--i.e., if he didn't have JudgementBADCARDNAME and you had blocked the Ancient Yeti with something and then gave it barrier, then your blocker would take no damage but your nexus would receive 5. (Not sure if that's as intended or not, but that's how it currently works.)
I dunno, man. Late game epics are suppose to have a huge effect. And honestly, its pretty slow: if you are at 10 HP when your opponent plays it the first time, assuming no other damage or healing, that's 10 -> 5 -> 2 -> 1 so 4 times I have to replay him. Compare this with a She Who Wanders, Warmother's Call, Captain Farron, or The Harrowing: those will all probably end the game a lot quicker than Ledros.
I dunno man. I will definitely agree that Ionia is over-represented in the current meta, but that doesn't mean it's too powerful. Part of the reason why Ionia has so many gimmicks is because they don't have many heavy hitters. For example you mention barrier: the only time I've seen barrier outside of Expedition is with Fiora. And the only time I've seen stun used is the occasional Arachnoid Sentry or on Youtube when someone is trying to make Yasou work. If it wasn't for elusives--which admittedly are overtuned right now--then the only real win condition Ionia has left in constructed is to combine with another more powerful region.
I am curious to see what next week's patch brings. If this community is anything like Hearthstone's, then the very act of having the developer lower the impact of any Ionia cards will create a placebo mentality where everyone feels like the changes are more serious than they actually were and therefore flock to new, different archetypes.
so I started to play open play EXPS for the XP but i having such a hard time against noxus agro decks if i dont draw my early game i get crushed by my OP non blockers and legion mauraders katarina is so hard to deal, and i dont feel like my non SI decks have the healing to keep up, so lets make this thread the EXP tips and tricks central , deck building and gameplay tips to survive agro, i need help but i sure other will appreciate it too.
I'm below-average, but here are my thoughts:
Sometimes you're going to face an opponent who got perfect offerings, and there's just not much you can do about it. Accept that as a quirk of this game mode and soldier on
Avoid the trap of thinking any one strategy is best strategy. Every champion pair has multiple paths to seven wins, and the trick is spotting which is most viable based on the particular offerings you get.
Don't accept a trade just because its offered. Sometimes you're better off keeping what you have.
Try to keep a decent curve. It's not as important as constructed, but you can still get punished hard if you don't have a few early blockers.
Try to keep a good balance between your combat tricks & spot removal to your physical units--you don't want too many, but at the same time you want to be able to stop an things like an early Zed or a 6/6 Crowd Favorite.
Mono decks are just powerful in expeditions. Try to make mono decks in expeditions. Mono Demacia, Mono Shadow isles and Mono Noxus are good choices for at least 4-5 wins. Other mono decks are fine too but most poweful ones are these 3.
Demacia is one of the good choices for every run. Mostly for challenger units. Don't be trapped with the idea "if i can get elusives, i can win more." Elusives are good when you can buff them.
I got my 5+ wins with Demacia mostly so suggesting you to do the same.
Also, if you can get Heimerdinger in first choice, just grab him. Heimerdinger is one of the greatest champions in Expeditions. Grab some Demacia stuff with Heimerdinger and you will be around 4-5 probably if you are a good pilot.
So spider decks/shadow isles decks are definitely getting nerfed right? its such a non-interactive deck to go against. They puke spiders all over the board then buff their attacks and if you try to defend yourself they have cards like "3 mana if 3 followers died summon a 6/6 with fearsome" you literally get punished for defending yourself which restricts the kind of decks that you can play. or they flood the board with Noxian overwhelm followers. It's so boring.
I would expect Shadow Isles in general to get some type of tune-down next Tuesday as they do seem overly popular, but I doubt spiders specifically will get reworked. I suspect you're at lower rank, and you're seeing a lot of spider decks because they're easy to build from the free collection. At higher ranks, spiders are practically nonexistent--they rely more on Hecarim, Mistwraiths, and Raza. In general: there are other decks which either put on more pressure faster, stabilize easily, or just put out bigger things.
Here are a few pointers about fighting against spiders:
They rely HEAVILY on Elise. If you suspect you're playing a spider deck, try to mulligan hard for something that can take her out: Get Excited!, Black Spear, challengers, or even just an early 3-attack minion like Academy Prodigy.
Against any Noxus deck, you also want to mulligan for at least 1 early blocker--especially for a Round 1 blocker if they're on attack so you don't get punished by a Legion Saboteur or Legion Rearguard.
It's often better to leave Hapless Aristocrat unblocked and take 1 damage rather than flip it to a spiderling.
Fresh Offerings can turn the game if it summons an early Vilemaw, but it also costs 3 mana. Spider decks really hate banking mana because they need early-game tempo. If you see them attack and they have 3 mana left, try to avoid killing more than 2 things. Conversely, if you're on attack and they have 3+ chump blockers, try either to bait them into spending their mana (i.e.., play your own units, preferably low-cost things so you conserve your own mana) or skip the attack entirely if there's no clear advantage in doing so.
Similarly, always expect they have a Black Spear in hand. Unfortunately this only needs 1 death so it's nearly impossible to prevent, but you can do things like only play champions at the start of your turn so you at least get 1 good attack out of them, or try to keep mana open for a combat trick.
Like all aggro decks, they are trading quick nexus damage now for less long-term impact. Therefore anything that stalls them--either heals, stuns/recalls/frostbites on their attack round, or gives value a la tough--is bad for them and good for you. Radiant Guardian is particularly good.
When they get low on gas, they'll often play Glimpse Beyond on a chump to draw 2 cards. It's often worth it to either Deny that or to interrupt with a fast spell that kills the chump first: the latter will cause the spell to fizzle and deny them the draws.
Good luck!
EDIT: Mobalytics / EG Swim just released their LoR meta report which has Dawnspiders as top-tier and SI/Noxus aggro spiders as just below that, so maybe I understated how prevalent they are at high ranks? /shrug. I'm ~mid-rank myself so I'm going off of what I see from streamers and youtuber vids. I do think the Fearsome / Hecarim deck packs a bigger punch than straight spiders, but that's just personal observation.
I would say its practically necessary to have at least 2 cards for unit removal in any deck, and if you have limited options Detain is serviceable. I would never call Detain an auto-include, though--if collection size wasn't a factor, there are are probably more well-rounded options (VengenceBADCARDNAME, Will of Ionia, Thermogenic Beam) and cheaper options with a small caveat (Black Spear, Culling Strike, Noxian Guillotine) for any faction combination. As BlueSpark says, it compares well to a 5-mana version of Vengeance with the drawback that the unit can come back. As Nighmare says, its less powerful if you don't have durable units and/or protection spells, but even then sometimes just treating it like a fast speed stun + buff reset is enough.
I personally haven't experienced anything like that, but this is an open beta. You could fill out a support ticket, but most likely its 1000 XP lost to the wind. :-(
I agree with BlueSpark. I think the thing now is that regions need a little fine tuning and that might not happen until the next expansion at this rate. You use the example of Frejlord: they actually have good challenger offerings too from Stalking Wolf and Rimefang Wolf, but they kinda feel like a weaker version of Damacia's. Ideally, Frejlord control decks would be able to rely more on its signature Frostbite mechanic, but as-is it feels really bad using Brittle Steel or a Icevale Archer just to prevent 2-3 damage.
I'm with FortyDust. Maybe I just don't get the mentality of today's playerbase (in Hearhtstone, for instance), but I think expecting compensation from a developer for nerfing a card that you own is the definition of entitlement. The devs aren't maliciously stripping your hard-earned cards of their power - they're balancing the game to bring it into a better state. If nerfs are handled competently, the affected cards won't become unplayable, they'll become fairer. A developer giving out refunds/rewards for that seems asinine to me, and I think it's sad that some devs feel forced to do so in order to retain customers.
I think I'm with you and 40, but to attempt devil's advocate: say within a month, Fiora decks become super refined to the point where they have > 60% winrate in non-mirror matches and comprise 30% of all decks on ladder. You don't have a large collection and you're tired of constantly losing, so you channel the ancient adage for when you can't beat them, netdeck some winning decklists, crack your wallet to buy 3 champion wildcards and then use up them plus all your freebie wildcards to craft something that you can compete with. Then a week later, Riot announces that they dislike the prevalence and success of Fiora so they are going to nerf her win condition from 4 kills to 6, and as a result Fiora decks go to ~45% winrate and <1% playrate. You feel enraged, right? You just paid $10 USD plus most of your starter resources towards a deck that will never climb ladder--what are you going to do now? Not only are you out the cash, but you still don't have a competitive deck AND your out most of your wildcards. Maybe you even stop playing altogether. However if Riot were to allow you to convert your Fioras back into 3 wildcards, you have a path forward. You could pick a new archetype and swap over to that. You still might need to grind / buy some common and rare wildcards to field a full deck, but at least you have your choice of any three new champions, so that $10 doesn't feel "lost".
The above scenario assumes 1.) there's a hyper-broken strategy that suddenly dominates the entire meta, 2.) management over-compensates for said strategy rendering certain high-cost cards to be almost worthless, and 3.) said cards stay worthless for the foreseeable future. I feel like Riot has done an exceptional job balancing this game so far and that their commitment to regular balance patches and practice to include buffs as well as nerfs makes each of these conditions very unlikely, let alone all 3 simultaneously. That said: I'm also shocked it happens ever with veteran CCG companies who invest millions of dollars and labor hours developing balanced expansions **cough**Oko Thief of Crowns**cough**Galakrond Shaman**cough**.
I wouldn't exactly call getting Vlad lucky, Toad. He's probably the least-played champion in the game right now. :-P
Every expedition run ends in at least 1 random champion. Keep in mind that for 3000 shards--the same as the price of starting a new Expedition--you can craft a champion of your choosing, so it's not a great deal unless you either win a lot or you just enjoy playing the draft version of the game.
0 Win: Champion Card and 100 XP
1 Wins: Champion Card, 150 Shards, 300 XP
2 Wins: Champion Card, 350 Shards, 500 XP
3 Wins: Champion Card, 600 Shards, 700 XP
4 Wins: Champion Card, Bronze Chest, 600 Shards, 900 XP = at least 1 random Champion, 2 Common
5 Wins: Champion Card, Silver Chest, 600 Shards, 1200 XP = at least 1 random Champion, 1 Rare, 2 Common
6 Wins: Champion Card, Golden Chest, 1000 Shards, 1500 XP = at least 1 random Champion, 1 Rare, 4 Common
7 Wins: Champion Capsule, 3500 Shards, 2000 XP = at least 1 random Champion, 1 Epic, 3 Rare
Well honestly Zilliax is probably too good--hsreplay has him in 60% of all decks right now, and he's pretty much been like that since release. If he was a classic card, he'd probably have lost divine shield years ago to make him a little less auto-include. As is, I suspect Blizzard intentionally overtuned him because they wanted a big splashy magnetic legendary to promote Boomsday and they knew he'd rotate out of standard before too long so they didn't worry too much about how "fair" the card was compared against others so long as he didn't unbalance the meta--which he technically didn't, since he's a neutral and his effect is more of a prolong-the-game rather than close-it-faster.
I really meant this to be more about the abstract sensation you get when you try to improve a deck and it ends up feeling worse. :-P But since people are interested in the specifics, I'll share.
Week One Version:
Deck ID Not Found
This week's "improved" version:
Deck ID Not Found
Light rant incoming.
The first week of the open beta, I barely had anything so I threw together my versions of the 3 starter decks (including exchanging Ionia/Zed for Noxus/Darius in the Jinx deck). Lots of mismatched odds & ends that just happen to be around the right mana cost/function, right? Ugly, but they win games--let's say 50-50. And I'm not really one for fiddling with decks, so I just leave them. So this week, I decide after my vault I'm going to go and revisit them and finally spend a few wildcards crafting a few essentials for my favorite, the Jinx deck. I take out Darius and some of the 3-cost stuff and focus on discard-synergy, nexus damage, and cards that are easier to cycle for rockets--we can debate whether that's a good deck building strategy, but at least its *a* strategy, right? And I go something like 1:5 that night. So I figure maybe I'm just off or maybe its some unfavorable matchups; I try again this evening and again go like 0:3. Then I swap back to my oddball Jinx deck and its like 2:1, and then I go to my oddball Braum/Garen deck and it goes like 2:1.
It's like the harder I try in building the deck, the worse my games go. My rationale brain realizes the aforementioned is very poor sample size and that there was an inherent trade-off building so heavily around Jinx--all the same, though, my emotional brain is saying that to just forgot about deck building and keep playing the crappy oddball decks until they break entirely. :-P
From what I see streamers play, it looks like most successful decks are Ionia + Damacia that never fully commit to Fiora's win condition and keep up pressure by just beating down via elusives--e.g.:
Biggest trick is remembering what burst options an opponent has (e.g., Stand Alone), as you don't get the opportunity to counter-play with your cards, even if they are burst too.
Here's an recent vid from Swim (granted, he loses Fiora pretty early) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyN2Dub33U
This is actually much more complicated than you imply. There are many champions that you would never include unless you build your deck around them (e.g., YasouBADCARDNAME, Ezreal) and some which you can use as well-statted followers that can drop into any compatible deck in a pinch (e.g., Kalista, Garen, Zed). I'd recommend heading over to the forums and creating a thread, listing what you have and soliciting advice.
In the general: if you don't have much beyond the starting cards, you're probably looking at the following deck options:
As you pick up cards, you might be able to branch out into new archetypes: Dawnspeakers -> SI / Demacia spiders, Rhasa the Sunderer -> SI / anything control, etc.
It's kinda funny to see Noxus used in control decks. I don't doubt the effectiveness; it's just not what you think of for that region.
She Who Wanders would have basically had the same effect, no? :-) Perhaps it would have taken a few additional rounds, but I'm guessing it still he had no way to recover from that play effect.
Overwhelm also punches through barrier--i.e., if he didn't have JudgementBADCARDNAME and you had blocked the Ancient Yeti with something and then gave it barrier, then your blocker would take no damage but your nexus would receive 5. (Not sure if that's as intended or not, but that's how it currently works.)
Thank you so much, franky! That's been buggy me.
Yay Silver III.
I dunno, man. Late game epics are suppose to have a huge effect. And honestly, its pretty slow: if you are at 10 HP when your opponent plays it the first time, assuming no other damage or healing, that's 10 -> 5 -> 2 -> 1 so 4 times I have to replay him. Compare this with a She Who Wanders, Warmother's Call, Captain Farron, or The Harrowing: those will all probably end the game a lot quicker than Ledros.
I dunno man. I will definitely agree that Ionia is over-represented in the current meta, but that doesn't mean it's too powerful. Part of the reason why Ionia has so many gimmicks is because they don't have many heavy hitters. For example you mention barrier: the only time I've seen barrier outside of Expedition is with Fiora. And the only time I've seen stun used is the occasional Arachnoid Sentry or on Youtube when someone is trying to make Yasou work. If it wasn't for elusives--which admittedly are overtuned right now--then the only real win condition Ionia has left in constructed is to combine with another more powerful region.
I am curious to see what next week's patch brings. If this community is anything like Hearthstone's, then the very act of having the developer lower the impact of any Ionia cards will create a placebo mentality where everyone feels like the changes are more serious than they actually were and therefore flock to new, different archetypes.
Lol. Did you make it to 7?
I'm below-average, but here are my thoughts:
Some advice from Almaniarra:
I would expect Shadow Isles in general to get some type of tune-down next Tuesday as they do seem overly popular, but I doubt spiders specifically will get reworked. I suspect you're at lower rank, and you're seeing a lot of spider decks because they're easy to build from the free collection. At higher ranks, spiders are practically nonexistent--they rely more on Hecarim, Mistwraiths, and Raza. In general: there are other decks which either put on more pressure faster, stabilize easily, or just put out bigger things.
Here are a few pointers about fighting against spiders:
Good luck!
EDIT: Mobalytics / EG Swim just released their LoR meta report which has Dawnspiders as top-tier and SI/Noxus aggro spiders as just below that, so maybe I understated how prevalent they are at high ranks? /shrug. I'm ~mid-rank myself so I'm going off of what I see from streamers and youtuber vids. I do think the Fearsome / Hecarim deck packs a bigger punch than straight spiders, but that's just personal observation.
I would say its practically necessary to have at least 2 cards for unit removal in any deck, and if you have limited options Detain is serviceable. I would never call Detain an auto-include, though--if collection size wasn't a factor, there are are probably more well-rounded options (VengenceBADCARDNAME, Will of Ionia, Thermogenic Beam) and cheaper options with a small caveat (Black Spear, Culling Strike, Noxian Guillotine) for any faction combination. As BlueSpark says, it compares well to a 5-mana version of Vengeance with the drawback that the unit can come back. As Nighmare says, its less powerful if you don't have durable units and/or protection spells, but even then sometimes just treating it like a fast speed stun + buff reset is enough.
If you know MtG: it's like Exile.
I personally haven't experienced anything like that, but this is an open beta. You could fill out a support ticket, but most likely its 1000 XP lost to the wind. :-(
I agree with BlueSpark. I think the thing now is that regions need a little fine tuning and that might not happen until the next expansion at this rate. You use the example of Frejlord: they actually have good challenger offerings too from Stalking Wolf and Rimefang Wolf, but they kinda feel like a weaker version of Damacia's. Ideally, Frejlord control decks would be able to rely more on its signature Frostbite mechanic, but as-is it feels really bad using Brittle Steel or a Icevale Archer just to prevent 2-3 damage.
I think I'm with you and 40, but to attempt devil's advocate: say within a month, Fiora decks become super refined to the point where they have > 60% winrate in non-mirror matches and comprise 30% of all decks on ladder. You don't have a large collection and you're tired of constantly losing, so you channel the ancient adage for when you can't beat them, netdeck some winning decklists, crack your wallet to buy 3 champion wildcards and then use up them plus all your freebie wildcards to craft something that you can compete with. Then a week later, Riot announces that they dislike the prevalence and success of Fiora so they are going to nerf her win condition from 4 kills to 6, and as a result Fiora decks go to ~45% winrate and <1% playrate. You feel enraged, right? You just paid $10 USD plus most of your starter resources towards a deck that will never climb ladder--what are you going to do now? Not only are you out the cash, but you still don't have a competitive deck AND your out most of your wildcards. Maybe you even stop playing altogether. However if Riot were to allow you to convert your Fioras back into 3 wildcards, you have a path forward. You could pick a new archetype and swap over to that. You still might need to grind / buy some common and rare wildcards to field a full deck, but at least you have your choice of any three new champions, so that $10 doesn't feel "lost".
The above scenario assumes 1.) there's a hyper-broken strategy that suddenly dominates the entire meta, 2.) management over-compensates for said strategy rendering certain high-cost cards to be almost worthless, and 3.) said cards stay worthless for the foreseeable future. I feel like Riot has done an exceptional job balancing this game so far and that their commitment to regular balance patches and practice to include buffs as well as nerfs makes each of these conditions very unlikely, let alone all 3 simultaneously. That said: I'm also shocked it happens ever with veteran CCG companies who invest millions of dollars and labor hours developing balanced expansions **cough**Oko Thief of Crowns**cough**Galakrond Shaman**cough**.
I wouldn't exactly call getting Vlad lucky, Toad. He's probably the least-played champion in the game right now. :-P
Every expedition run ends in at least 1 random champion. Keep in mind that for 3000 shards--the same as the price of starting a new Expedition--you can craft a champion of your choosing, so it's not a great deal unless you either win a lot or you just enjoy playing the draft version of the game.