I really like the way they're committing to a balance patch every 4 weeks. Lately I've been feeling extremely off-put by Hearthstone due almost entirely to their herky-jerky approach to balance: they seem to only do it when it becomes a crippling problem, and then they nerf the strongest cards into unplayable territory and go back to radio-silent.
I'm easily maxing the vault for the second week in a row.
If anything? Runeterra's model is too generous.
I'm curious: how many hours would you say this took you? I would admit I'm finding it hard to miss the 13k XP limit for Level 10, but max vault is almost double this (25k). I'm finding myself in the 17-21 range for the second week in a row spending ~10-15 hours in-game
Until then I was also testing what works well and how the meta looks. It's even possible that Braum won't make the cut since he didn't perform very well in the deck...
Braum really needs a damage buff to shine; otherwise he's a nonfactor until he flips. You might want to consider adding Brothers' Bond: unlike most of your other combat tricks, its permanent.
Why only 2 copies of most cards? 3 of leads to more consistent game play, right?
For mana costs of ~6+, its dangerous to have more than 2 because they because they're unplayable until late game so getting 3x copies in hand can cost you the game. That said, I can't think of any good reason why for instance you'd have 2x of Blade's Edge, Elixir of Iron, Death Lotus, Culling Strike, Guillotine, AND Take Heart--if any 4 of those are a better fit in general than the remaining 2, then it does make sense to cut the 2 and use those slots to triple up the rest. I suspect that might have more to do with Leberschnitzel's collection limitations than a strategy. ;-)
Here's a Frejlord / Noxus poro deck from Phreak that basically relies on some early chip damage and the overwhelm mechanic from either Crowd Favorite, Fluff, or Trynd for a win condition:
Daily rewards too powerful compared to normal play
So you would like them to nerf daily quests from 1000 - 1500 XP to only 50 XP?
FYI, PvP wins are 200 XP/each for your first 10 wins + 400/200/100 bonus for your 1st/2nd/3rd wins, then they start to roll off. They did that so you don't feel obligated to play more than 1 hour per day and burn out quickly.
Only in store. You can keep what you have as long as you want.
This. Think of it as a "can't buy your way" limit: e.g. if Player A is F2P and Player B wants to spend all his disposable income on microtransactions, Player B still only gets 3 extra Champion wildcards per week.
1st trial: 0-2, 2nd trial 1-2. I did go 7 wins on my 2nd trial last week so I know I'm not a total n00b... That might have been what did it, actually--in that trial my deck was a Frejlord value deck and a lot of my success came from Yetis and +1/+1s and Anivia; I think I tried to force a repeat of that strategy. And this week, some of the decks I fought were just brutal including a Shadow Isles that went off on The Undying and a Noxus deck that played 4 Legion Saboteur over the first 5 turns.
On the bright side, I am glad to see the format at least supports multiple different strategies. I guess I'm just venting. :-P
So I want to give LoR a chance to prove itself (to me). I know some people already enjoy it. I've played quite a few matches vs. the AI to get my "feet wet". Building up XP and unlocking a few cards and some wildcards...not many though...I don't see this game, IMHO, being very generous to F2P. With that said, maybe I will get many more "Rewards" as I play more and begin to attempt to build decks.
So I took a starter deck and updated it the best I could. Went into play mode and got absolutely destroyed. The decks I faced were MUCH better than mine and they seemed to have an answer for everything. Granted I've only played a handful of Normal games and a couple of Ranked games; but I want to keep playing and see where I can go with the game.
If anyone has any good websites or advice for a beginning Runeterra player with other card game experience (e.g. me...LOL), I would be happy to listen to people that probably know a lot more than I do. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any assistance : )
Sorry to hear you're not having fun. :-( A few thoughts:
Definitely try to get the 13,000 XP for Vault Level 10 by Tuesday--it shouldn't be that difficult, especially with all the tutorial XP available to you, and then you'll get an infusion of at least 6 capsules (comparable to HS packs) plus an Expedition Token. That Token will yield at least 1 champion and a fair amount of XP; ideally you get into a weekly cycle of 13k+ XP -> Vault Level 10+ -> 2 Expedition trials plus completing daily quests -> XP -> Vault.
Do you think you're losing because your opponents have better cards or because they are making better plays? This game has a ton of finesse, even compared to MtG and HS. Do you start your turn with an open attack or do you play an additional attacker first, knowing it will give your opponent to play an additional blocker? Do you play on curve now or do you intentionally float mana so you can play an extra spell later? And then there's the whole "play around Specific Card X" on top of that... I've found the best way to learn is to watch streamers--personally, I've been watching a lot of Swim, Merchant, and Mogwai lately.
You don't mention whether you're playing Ranked or Normal--whichever it was, you might want to try the opposite. Ranked obviously has more tryhard decks, but at Iron IV you might find more players with comparable card limitations as you. Conversely, Normal is less competitive in general, but since anyone can play anyone you actually might find yourself inadvertently finding harder matchups than on ladder..
You also don't mention which decks you're playing. I'd recommend either the starter Zed + Jinx, Elise + Darius, or (my personal favorite) create a new Jinx + Darius deck. The Damacia + Frejlord starter deck is a mess; I think they wanted at least 1 value / control oriented deck, but you just can't get there from the free cards.
Don't spend too much time trying to netdeck, and don't feel like you need to craft a card unless you think it would be useful to you. The game is still very young, so everyone is still figuring out what's actually good and what's not.. Also: I feel like overall the cards are fairly powerful than in MtG and HS, so its much more tolerant to substitutions--especially for aggro and tempo decks, and again that's what I'd recommend you try to play.
Which champions did you open? You don't mention exactly how much you've played, but I assume you've gotten through the Prologue which as I recall gives 2-3 and then you get 1 from each Expedition and 1 for each region track at Level 8. If you tell us what you've got and what you enjoy playing, then we can try to advise what decks to build & what to spend Wildcards on.
Why war chefs are bad? this deck has a lot of 1/1s that should be able to trade..
Because most opponents just aren't going to care about you turning a 1/1 into a 2/2--and if they do, it's probably not that hard for them to knock out the war chiefBADCARDNAME. I think War Chief really exists for synergies like Zed.
There's 2 basic strategies available: 1.) you can try to go wide and attempt to buff your poros into threats until you either get a killer Heart of the Fluft or huge Braum, or 2.) you treat your poros like cannon fodder. The difference between #1 and #2 is whether you try to keep the poros around for later value or you just try to cash them in aggressively. For #1 I actually do like Damacia, but I think you want things like Vanguard Sergeant and Redoubled Valor for your Braum. For #2 I think Shadow Isles as other have suggested, and you're looking for things like Fresh Offerings and Phantom Prankster.
Because I sure don't. Am I in Bronze? Or am I in Gold? Am I in Plat? Silver? Iron? Who the F knows. An even more impertinent question, why didn't the devs not just label the ranks with, you know, WORDS. Like every other competitive game ever made, including League of Legends.
LOL I was wondering the exactsame thing the yesterday.
We're 1 week in and there's already a bunch of threads debating whether or not Card X is overpowered or Y needs a nerf, so I thought it might be a Friday Fun topic to flip those conversations around and ask: which cards are you underwhelmed by? What do you think is unplayable and/or could really use a buff?
I'll start. I think Vladimir is the least impressive card in the set by a mile, followed by Kalista at a distant 2nd. Both are nonexistent on ladder. They're both champions--unlike say Mistwraith, where you can make the claim that the card is niche and isn't intended to be significant, these cards are suppose to be the high-impact tent poles that you build your decks around.
For Vlad: I like their commitment to theme, but in practice dealing 1 damage to ALL your attacking minions BEFORE the opponent declares blockers is extremely costly, and the benefit of dealing a little nexus damage just isn't worth it. He doesn't fit aggro strategies--he's too expensive--and he doesn't really fit tempo strategies because he just makes it too easy for your opponent to value trade. I have seen theorycraft decks where you try to leverage his effect across pain-loving Frejlord minions, but they're basically a lot of setup for the chance at one big swing--way too slow for any conceivable meta, and even if you do somehow pull it off you don't have overwhelm so you're vulnerable to chump blocks. They did at least buff him in the last patch such that his level up now includes damage to himself, but even if you level him he's just a 6/6 regen--basically a Level 2 Garen without the attack tokens.
For Kalista: her bond use to make her invulnerable but they nerfed it to just giving +2/+0 for as long as she's alive and gave her fearsome. The big problem here is that she still only has 2 health, so she dies to pretty much anything: challenger, mystic shot, avalanche, any blocker with 3+ attack, etc. I don't think she's as bad as Vlad as you can at least still slot a few copies of her in any aggro-oriented deck and basically just use her as a well-statted 3-drop, but as peoples' collections fill out and better options become available I think she stops making the cut.
Full disclosure: I have opened 1 Vlad and 2 Kalista from my champions modules, so I am definitely biased. :-P What cards do you think are "teh weaksauce"?
For anyone else who was scratching their head about this card: its the non-collectible, Expedition-only version of Purrsuit of Perfection, since the smaller decks of this format make the original 20 card requirement nearly impossible.
My personal take: I do like that it can be used to counter combat tricks, but I agree that cost of needing to bank 3 spell mana for the reward of canceling almost any spell or effect is probably too much. Even with MtG control decks, they were at least limited in what they could put on board if they needed to reserve mana for counterspells. Maybe if they limited its effect on spells to those that cost 3 or less? Or if it they made it so it only works on Fast spells--right now Slow spells aren't especially popular, but I could see that potentially changing if they didn't need to worry about Deny.
Elusive as a game mechanic is nothing new. It is exactly the same as flying in Magic, so there's no way the developers aren't aware of potential problems. It's just tricky to tune the stats of minions like these in a brand-new game.
Right--but in Runeterra all minions have inherent haste and vigilance. Overall that's one of the things I love about this game as it opens up a lot more complexity and strategy for free, but as many players have discovered it disproportionately benefits these aggro elusive strategies. You can drop a Greenglade Duo followed up by a Navori Bladescout for 5 damage plus a chump blocker on Turn 3. Compare this with MtG, where you're lucky if you can get chip in 3 damage through fliers by Turn 3 and doing so probably leaves you without a single blocker.
Also, how do you even know whether your opponent has Champions or not? I have played entire games with a 6-Champ deck without playing a Champion. You may assume they copied a budget no-Champ list, but that is just an assumption.
You see each Champion at the start of the match, and at any time you can click on your opponent's deck to see it again.
I really like the way they're committing to a balance patch every 4 weeks. Lately I've been feeling extremely off-put by Hearthstone due almost entirely to their herky-jerky approach to balance: they seem to only do it when it becomes a crippling problem, and then they nerf the strongest cards into unplayable territory and go back to radio-silent.
I'm curious: how many hours would you say this took you? I would admit I'm finding it hard to miss the 13k XP limit for Level 10, but max vault is almost double this (25k). I'm finding myself in the 17-21 range for the second week in a row spending ~10-15 hours in-game
Braum really needs a damage buff to shine; otherwise he's a nonfactor until he flips. You might want to consider adding Brothers' Bond: unlike most of your other combat tricks, its permanent.
For mana costs of ~6+, its dangerous to have more than 2 because they because they're unplayable until late game so getting 3x copies in hand can cost you the game. That said, I can't think of any good reason why for instance you'd have 2x of Blade's Edge, Elixir of Iron, Death Lotus, Culling Strike, Guillotine, AND Take Heart--if any 4 of those are a better fit in general than the remaining 2, then it does make sense to cut the 2 and use those slots to triple up the rest. I suspect that might have more to do with Leberschnitzel's collection limitations than a strategy. ;-)
Here's a Frejlord / Noxus poro deck from Phreak that basically relies on some early chip damage and the overwhelm mechanic from either Crowd Favorite, Fluff, or Trynd for a win condition:
EDIT: man, getting that deck BBCode right is NOT intuitive.
OldManSanns / moc
So you would like them to nerf daily quests from 1000 - 1500 XP to only 50 XP?
FYI, PvP wins are 200 XP/each for your first 10 wins + 400/200/100 bonus for your 1st/2nd/3rd wins, then they start to roll off. They did that so you don't feel obligated to play more than 1 hour per day and burn out quickly.
This. Think of it as a "can't buy your way" limit: e.g. if Player A is F2P and Player B wants to spend all his disposable income on microtransactions, Player B still only gets 3 extra Champion wildcards per week.
1st trial: 0-2, 2nd trial 1-2. I did go 7 wins on my 2nd trial last week so I know I'm not a total n00b... That might have been what did it, actually--in that trial my deck was a Frejlord value deck and a lot of my success came from Yetis and +1/+1s and Anivia; I think I tried to force a repeat of that strategy. And this week, some of the decks I fought were just brutal including a Shadow Isles that went off on The Undying and a Noxus deck that played 4 Legion Saboteur over the first 5 turns.
On the bright side, I am glad to see the format at least supports multiple different strategies. I guess I'm just venting. :-P
Sorry to hear you're not having fun. :-( A few thoughts:
Good luck!
I'm 99% certain tokensjust accumulate, like your unused wild cards and shards.
Because most opponents just aren't going to care about you turning a 1/1 into a 2/2--and if they do, it's probably not that hard for them to knock out the war chiefBADCARDNAME. I think War Chief really exists for synergies like Zed.
There's 2 basic strategies available: 1.) you can try to go wide and attempt to buff your poros into threats until you either get a killer Heart of the Fluft or huge Braum, or 2.) you treat your poros like cannon fodder. The difference between #1 and #2 is whether you try to keep the poros around for later value or you just try to cash them in aggressively. For #1 I actually do like Damacia, but I think you want things like Vanguard Sergeant and Redoubled Valor for your Braum. For #2 I think Shadow Isles as other have suggested, and you're looking for things like Fresh Offerings and Phantom Prankster.
Good luck!
LOL I was wondering the exactsame thing the yesterday.
I'm pretty sure you are correct on both accounts
We're 1 week in and there's already a bunch of threads debating whether or not Card X is overpowered or Y needs a nerf, so I thought it might be a Friday Fun topic to flip those conversations around and ask: which cards are you underwhelmed by? What do you think is unplayable and/or could really use a buff?
I'll start. I think Vladimir is the least impressive card in the set by a mile, followed by Kalista at a distant 2nd. Both are nonexistent on ladder. They're both champions--unlike say Mistwraith, where you can make the claim that the card is niche and isn't intended to be significant, these cards are suppose to be the high-impact tent poles that you build your decks around.
For Vlad: I like their commitment to theme, but in practice dealing 1 damage to ALL your attacking minions BEFORE the opponent declares blockers is extremely costly, and the benefit of dealing a little nexus damage just isn't worth it. He doesn't fit aggro strategies--he's too expensive--and he doesn't really fit tempo strategies because he just makes it too easy for your opponent to value trade. I have seen theorycraft decks where you try to leverage his effect across pain-loving Frejlord minions, but they're basically a lot of setup for the chance at one big swing--way too slow for any conceivable meta, and even if you do somehow pull it off you don't have overwhelm so you're vulnerable to chump blocks. They did at least buff him in the last patch such that his level up now includes damage to himself, but even if you level him he's just a 6/6 regen--basically a Level 2 Garen without the attack tokens.
For Kalista: her bond use to make her invulnerable but they nerfed it to just giving +2/+0 for as long as she's alive and gave her fearsome. The big problem here is that she still only has 2 health, so she dies to pretty much anything: challenger, mystic shot, avalanche, any blocker with 3+ attack, etc. I don't think she's as bad as Vlad as you can at least still slot a few copies of her in any aggro-oriented deck and basically just use her as a well-statted 3-drop, but as peoples' collections fill out and better options become available I think she stops making the cut.
Full disclosure: I have opened 1 Vlad and 2 Kalista from my champions modules, so I am definitely biased. :-P What cards do you think are "teh weaksauce"?
For anyone else who was scratching their head about this card: its the non-collectible, Expedition-only version of Purrsuit of Perfection, since the smaller decks of this format make the original 20 card requirement nearly impossible.
My personal take: I do like that it can be used to counter combat tricks, but I agree that cost of needing to bank 3 spell mana for the reward of canceling almost any spell or effect is probably too much. Even with MtG control decks, they were at least limited in what they could put on board if they needed to reserve mana for counterspells. Maybe if they limited its effect on spells to those that cost 3 or less? Or if it they made it so it only works on Fast spells--right now Slow spells aren't especially popular, but I could see that potentially changing if they didn't need to worry about Deny.
Right--but in Runeterra all minions have inherent haste and vigilance. Overall that's one of the things I love about this game as it opens up a lot more complexity and strategy for free, but as many players have discovered it disproportionately benefits these aggro elusive strategies. You can drop a Greenglade Duo followed up by a Navori Bladescout for 5 damage plus a chump blocker on Turn 3. Compare this with MtG, where you're lucky if you can get chip in 3 damage through fliers by Turn 3 and doing so probably leaves you without a single blocker.
You see each Champion at the start of the match, and at any time you can click on your opponent's deck to see it again.
Nasus as a 1/4 challenger regen with Strike: gain +1/+1 and Level Up: I've struck 3 times.