After the Mercenaries announcement I decided that the amount of paid stuff they started tossing around is just way too much and switched from a completionist (gathering each and every piece of cosmetics/card backs/etc.) to a F2P player. The incoming portraits only reaffirm my decision. No more preorders from me either.
Considering they seem to be moving to a "free"-ish model, cosmetics are never something for you to "complete" unless you're a whale. I doubt you were spending a ton of money on the game in the first place if your immediate reaction to this is "no more preorders from me either". This may come off as a little harsh, but posts like yours seem to only ever have the premise of "I R ANGRY WIT BLIZARD, I TAKE MUH MONIES AND GO". Instead of looking at the big picture which is this:
You are not entitled to everything released in a game. Especially cosmetics. Buy the cosmetics that tickle your fancy, ignore the ones that don't. This isn't some PlayStation RPG/story game, you're not here to collect 100% of everything and earn a platinum trophy or something. This is a competitive card game.
Collect cards/Mercenaries and improve your tactical decisions from a collection standpoint? Sure, and quite reasonable. Collect every skin, cosmetic, gold/diamond card? No, unless of course if you plan on spending A TON of money. And if someone out there wants to do that, more power to them.
Complaining about not being able to afford/complete all the cosmetics in a game is like complaining that someone else that lives near you has 3 BMW's, while you can only afford a cheap Mazda. That's part of being an adult... is realizing that just cause something IS available, or someone else has something; doesn't mean you are entitled to have it as well.
Wait what? I never saw that. How does (did?) that even work?
I know that leapfrogger was broken because it was all people were trying to build towards. I'm glad that beasts once again have to highroll for Goldrinn to have an end game wincondition.
Maybe a little bit of both? True Gacha games tend always have the "newer" thing be better than older things. So as long as we don't see "newest mercenary has overpowered abilities, equipment, skills" then I think limiting synergies is a good thing to encourage different comps, strengths, and weaknesses.
Played 3 matches with Alura Shard quest priest. 2/3 matches were Noz matches (both had Noz) which was surprising. (Played on Ranked Standard Ladder). I run a slightly modified version of the deck with Mutanus, so I just swapped him out with Noz (since both are 7 drops) and it worked well enough. (2 wins, 1 loss. Neither win was from shard though, just pure tempo.)
3 is not 5 4 is also not 5 that does not mean 3 is 4
A lot of people will play the same braindead uninteractive deck if given the chance, forever, because it gets results, not because its fun to win with it. They value their ego and their rank more than they value being a good sport.
Agreed. There's far too many people who treat ladder like it's an Innvitational league. I'm not saying people can't play seriously, I'm just saying that for what games are supposed to elicit (fun), it seems like an awfully lot of people are chasing the carrot on the stick (ranking up), instead of enjoying the ride (the game)
Sparklefly, maybe. 1/2 for 2 mana staline is rather bad, and the only reason it's even surviving is due to targon buffs. But targon needs lifesteal options as it's naturally a more control style region to counter the more aggro based regions.
Aloof Travelers. Yes, 100x yes. This card is insane on how much it does. Good statlines for 4 cost. Draw effect. Discard opponent's possible win condition. It does too much.
Hidden Pathways. Also yes.
Otterpus. Maybe. Pranks seems thematically fine, but not sure. I'd have to be very finely tuned.
Lost Soul. Revenant form should be nerfed to a 3/3
Sharpsight: Eh I don't know. It's kind of needed for demacia otherwise they would get completely run over by elusive decks.
As someone who regularly buys the pre-order expansion bundles, I'm actually quite hesitant to buy the merc pre-orders because they don't seem to have a lot of value, and even if they are valuable...it's hard to determine the value because the mode hasn't been released. We don't have a "baseline" value of how good tokens are, etc.
I think it's a new mode that is exciting and I look forward to playing it. But I think the way they've presented some info is woefully inadequate. Hopefully more info gets released as the next month progresses.
As well, I think I can speak for a lot of us and say, you may be a good player; but we could care less when you are shoving it in our faces. Saying that other players are bad at the game because they disagree with you does not help you either. All it shows is arrogance.
Pretty much this, 100%.
Nifty, creating discussion threads is not a bad thing, even if you do come off as over-eager. But people generally don't care about what rank you are at, barring specific meta circumstances. But the last thing we need or want is for you to purposefully misinterpret replies, and then continue to not only misuse terms ("So much conjecture" --- what? That's not even proper use of the word) and embarrass yourself; but lowers the ability for you to be taken seriously by others when making discussions about metas. In addition we don't need you shoving your rank in our faces. It really doesn't matter. And then the icing on top of the cake is assuming that because we disagree with your postulation we are bad players. When it couldn't be further from the truth.
In short: You don't seem to want discussion, you want an echo chamber. And when people disagree with you, or call you out on your theory to provide backing/proof... you insult them, call them names, and generally turn into an infantile keyboard masher.
I am so fucking tired of losing to Miracle Mind Tether Priest in Duels.
That strategy singlehandedly negates any kind of non-burn-centric strategy, making it impossible to have a reasonable run with nothing that isn't a meta deck.
Seriously, fuck that deck.
Yea, I really dislike mind tether. Granted as # of games goes up, the efficacy of the deck goes down, but those first 1-4 games against any Mind Tether priest are generally unfun as you most likely will lose barring hail mary armor/health gains. (Consequently, I've stolen a few wins from Mind Tether priests by playing quest shaman in duels, and building my starting deck with Healing Rain. It's a lovely card to use alone, or after quest (For double the healing fun!) to help stall the game into a winning scenario.
The problem with face hunter right now is that it has just enough cards to be good. Builds aren't flexible at all and if you're not careful with what you're nerfing and how much you could kill the whole deck easily and that's a problem because Hunter has only one viable deck right now and that's exactly face hunter
Then perhaps blizzard should stop forcing the same archetype over and over? Players are like a current (voltage), they will find the path of least resistance. Players are HAPPY to try something new (look at how quest hunter was played in the first few days versus now). But they will only continue to play it if it has the ability to compete with the big boys. This is why decks like spell hunter (with Rok' delar) were viable. They provided hunters with something to fill their weak point (hand size, which in this case was random spell generation from a single card) but required a deck building mechanic to be fufilled.
I also think he's pointing out that Aggro/face hunter has been the best deck for quite awhile with little-to-zero nerfs. It's ok for decks to be "low man on the totem pole" but for some odd reason, hunter is never there. They may never be the #1 or #2 meta deck, but they are never #9 either. (Well except for this meta and the last one, where apparently aggro hunter is the #1 deck.)
It doesn't help that for a lot of people (myself included), that if you have a bunch of fun/flashy cards that cost 6+, but you almost never get to see those cards played (even for memes), then the game is heading in a direction that fundamentally is broken.
TLDR...
Expectation: People should play Hearthstone to have fun. That doesn't mean you need to play aggro decks at the beginning of every month to "rank up faster", hell, the POINT of the monthly star bonus was to allow you to reclaim your previous season's rank without having to work quite as hard as you did the previous season)
Reality: Too many people play Hearthstone like they are planning on joining an e-sports tournament, and think they'll be invited to this year's Inn-vitational.
I read a blog a few years ago, and while I can't remember the specifics at this point, the message roughly paraphrased was this:
If your only goal is to "rank up" or reach a specific competitive milestone on a regularly basis, you'll quickly find that this metric becomes meaningless. Don't make your play sessions into cyclical grinds. (i.e. Ranking up for the sake of ranking up)
On a serious note it's a bit odd that someone provides statistical site evidence and you dismiss it completely out of hand with nothing more than baseless opinions. I'm not saying you can't have an opinon, but it's a unique type of person to dismiss stats completely when presented with countering evidence and statements like:
"I dont know if I can trust that website"
"I actually belive pirate aggro has never been worse"
"And I think that fleet feather tracker into lulu is easy to counter"
I'm sure we'll finally see warlock demon seed get nerfed, I just think fundamentally circumventing the fatigue mechanic is what is making it broken. I have a feeling that we'll see a change to how tamsin interacts with fatigue, but we'll have to wait and see how things flesh out...
This sounds eerily similar to Legends of Runeterra. Weekly chests, that upon earning enough weekly experience, gives you an expedition token (the equivalent of a tavern ticket.) Which I would approve of. I think casual duels should go bye-bye and as long as duels is a supported and balanced mode, heroic duels should just be...duels. We should get a tavern ticket with our weekly "win 5 ranked games" quest.
Also we should be getting slightly more rewards in general since the new mercenaries mode apparently is going to be stretching gold resources even thinner.
Sigh, I genuinely don't ever post in salt threads. But I think if I'm being truly honest, this is by far the least fun I've ever had in a meta, both as playing as classes and against others.
The only class I can even markedly climb with and enjoy on some small scale is quest shaman. And even then most wins feel shallow and contrived. But then I look at most of the decks I face and realize they are equally as shallow.
Anacondra/Celestial Druid's who just vomit out cards and pray to RNG that their fungal fortunes doesn't discard any of their key cards. (literally if it does, they just instantly concede, because why build a "fair" deck when you can build a broken deck that has 0 comeback potential for your opponent, and if you fungal discard your key minions, just insta-concede and try again!)
Quest Warlock, which after the SECOND round of nerfs is still strong and ridiculous. They keep nerfing other cards, instead of the core of the problem. Which if you'll pardon my language IS THE FUCKING QUEST.
I seriously have not disliked a meta as much since probably Jade Druid. Or maybe Rastakhan's rumble. But seriously this current meta is the most polarizing meta ever. And I honestly feel like if mercenaries and/or the next expansion falls flat I'm done with Blizzard. (Considering that I've been playing Blizzard games for over 25 years now, it's almost sad, but also considering that their company has changed drastically I think it's time the king was dethroned...)
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy Duels and I still think that the game mode should allow you to exploit broken stuff. It's just that it kind of happens too frequently now, and it doesn't always feel good.
Your last statement hit home for me as well. Duels is about exploiting broken combos, but it shouldn't be super consistent like it is currently with some treasures.
Avalon, do you feel like some of the new treasures are overtuned? Specifically Meek Mastery, Party Replacement, and Oops All Spells?
I consistently see those treasures from opponents and that means 1 of 2 scenarios: They are the strongest and therefore are more often picked. Or they are the strongest and therefore are killing off people who chose other (worse) treasures.
Party Replacement is super strong, but out of the 3 I mentioned seems to be the most beatable if you have enough tools/degenerate combos in your own deck. (at the end of the day it just ends up being a free 2/2 which in early games is impactful, but later on is less dangerous.
Generally I primarily play casual duels when I play duels mode (because it's free!) so I'm unsure if the opponents I'm facing are just lucky, or just conceding and farming runs until they get "perfect passives" because of the free nature of casual duels.
- Ionia don't have access to rally, Relentless Pursuit and Golden Aegis come from Demacia. You could consider blade dance to be a form of rally but blade dance is garbage without Shurima.
- I said it before elusive are the not the problem, they are understated for their price and we didn't have any competitive Ionia elusive deck since the beta. Elusive are a problem now because they have access to Twin Disciplines. Like Nopeify! it protect them from removal but what makes better than that card is that it also allow them to trade favorably and push for lot's of damage
Don't have a ton of energy to respond to all your responses at the moment, but I'll respond to these as they stood out the most to me.
My issue with certain regions is less their "overall power" in a vacuum, and more in their power and strength to be splashed or used as a baseline. Ionia has some magnificent spell counters that people tend to splash into their other decks (like mentioned in the thread, Will of Ionia, Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, etc).
To me the biggest issue is that regions have strengths and weaknesses. Clever deckbuilding and region combinations can shore up some of those weaknesses, however Ionia (and to a lesser degree Shadow Isles) seem to be used because of their strong controlling aspects, without any real penalty for using those regions as a splash region. I know that's part of the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, but at a certain point if certain cards are *consistently* used in every deck that has Ionia, then those cards neeed to be adjusted or force a decision to be made that balances their region strength, against their cross-region strength.
In short: this is what the purpose of allegiance cards was... creating strong cards that either encourage mono, or allow you to base your decision on the number of cards from that region that you put into your deck. Something similar to that needs to be brought to bear on the more "often used" cards. If they won't straight up nerf them, then they need to de-incentive them from being splashed. (or make you roll the dice on the cards power like allegiance would do in non-mono decks).
As for elusives, I unfortunately disagree. They were overstated in beta. Nerfed countless times, and still continue to be a problem. Fundamentally elusive cards create a very polarizing gameplay...either you have your own elusives to counter them (and not many regions have as many options as Ionia) or you have the spell removal to counter them, or you don't. It's very rare to force an elusive card to trade with a non elusive card (act as a blocker) unless you are threatening lethal. I understand that the original purpose of elusives was to force chip damage in. But as it stands now, there is more card draw in the game then there was in the beginning of the game and the resource management that was in the game in the beginning is starting to wane even more.
Major egregious problems with LoR still remain. So much so that I honestly can't say it's any better than Hearthstone's meta at the moment. Both games appear to be in major balance dumpster fires at the moment.
(for those unaware, Questlines in Hearthstone were just released a few weeks ago and have been creating huge game winning conditions that are almost uncounterable as early as turn 5-6 on a consistent basis).
Anyhow, my two main issues with LoR (and this patch) at the moment:
Problem 1: Ooh Shiny!
Newer champions are being pushed hard, while older champions are eschewed and forgotten. Any competitively viability from older champions was either nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but instead of creating creative cards that could be potentially used in multiple archetypes with clever deckbuilding and play, they create forced archetype inclusions. One such example is Caitlyn Bombs/Teemo Shrooms. Forced inclusion archetype cards that without makes those heroes suck. Yes, I know to some degree all champions have those. For example Ashes needs Frostbite, but technically you could build an Ashe deck without any other cards and eventually she would level up on her own...
But when is the last time you saw Garen, Lux, or hell even Hecarim used? (and no bronze/iron does not count). I understand not *every* champion can be competitively viable at the same time, but it says something when nearly all the old champions are eschewed for newer ones. This isn't hearthstone. There is no yearly rotation (yet), and Champions are supposed to be more of a build around/win condition than Hearthstone legendaries. So why does it seem like Riot is just pushing newer champions for the last year with little to no support for older champions? The only time I can recall "older" champions making a huge comeback was when Scargrounds landmark was released it revitalized Vladimir/Braum style decks for a small period of time.
To put problem #1 in a nutshell: I think that we are being put on the "new expansion" train where the latest and greatest is pushed (as with any card game) so that way you either use up your wildcards, or you buy more coins to build all the new shiny decks. Most decks feel like they are "on rails" being pushed with new cards, and have very low skill caps to be effective. (Which is not what drew me to the game in the first place. If I wanted a low skill cap card game to play, I could go play Hearthstone.)
Problem 2: Ionia and beyond!
I truly believe at it's heart Ionia was created with great intentions, but very poor execution balance wise. In addition the biggest issues with deck building in general seem to come from 3 things: Elusive units. Rally effects. And too much draw. (A problem I believe is also plaguing Hearthstone at the moment as well, as too much draw effects allows decision making to be trivialized because you have multiple options and answers available)
I actually saw someone else point this out on reddit today in the competitiveLoR sub, and they got downvoted to hell. Granted, I understand gamers can be mercurial; and maybe the way they presented it wasn't the most contructive, but still...
I feel like the region identities are fine, but there's currently some very broken decks and cards out there that still haven't been touched (or if they were, the wrong thing was nerfed.) For anyone aware, I'm mainly referring to Sivir, and their respective region cards as being markedly broken. (Ruin Runner, Merciless hunter for Shurima as well as Ionia's usual cadre of Elusive cards and counter spells available.)
Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, but I'd love for some constructive feedback to see if I'm just drinking too much Kool-aid or of I'm on the money with my assessment of things currently. Thanks!
Considering they seem to be moving to a "free"-ish model, cosmetics are never something for you to "complete" unless you're a whale. I doubt you were spending a ton of money on the game in the first place if your immediate reaction to this is "no more preorders from me either". This may come off as a little harsh, but posts like yours seem to only ever have the premise of "I R ANGRY WIT BLIZARD, I TAKE MUH MONIES AND GO". Instead of looking at the big picture which is this:
You are not entitled to everything released in a game. Especially cosmetics. Buy the cosmetics that tickle your fancy, ignore the ones that don't. This isn't some PlayStation RPG/story game, you're not here to collect 100% of everything and earn a platinum trophy or something. This is a competitive card game.
Collect cards/Mercenaries and improve your tactical decisions from a collection standpoint? Sure, and quite reasonable. Collect every skin, cosmetic, gold/diamond card? No, unless of course if you plan on spending A TON of money. And if someone out there wants to do that, more power to them.
Complaining about not being able to afford/complete all the cosmetics in a game is like complaining that someone else that lives near you has 3 BMW's, while you can only afford a cheap Mazda. That's part of being an adult... is realizing that just cause something IS available, or someone else has something; doesn't mean you are entitled to have it as well.
Wait what? I never saw that. How does (did?) that even work?
I know that leapfrogger was broken because it was all people were trying to build towards. I'm glad that beasts once again have to highroll for Goldrinn to have an end game wincondition.
It seems odd to have all these heroes, even the fact they are allowing cross-IP heroes (like Diablo), yet we have.....a random Blink Fox as a hero.
Maybe a little bit of both? True Gacha games tend always have the "newer" thing be better than older things. So as long as we don't see "newest mercenary has overpowered abilities, equipment, skills" then I think limiting synergies is a good thing to encourage different comps, strengths, and weaknesses.
Played 3 matches with Alura Shard quest priest. 2/3 matches were Noz matches (both had Noz) which was surprising. (Played on Ranked Standard Ladder). I run a slightly modified version of the deck with Mutanus, so I just swapped him out with Noz (since both are 7 drops) and it worked well enough. (2 wins, 1 loss. Neither win was from shard though, just pure tempo.)
Agreed. There's far too many people who treat ladder like it's an Innvitational league. I'm not saying people can't play seriously, I'm just saying that for what games are supposed to elicit (fun), it seems like an awfully lot of people are chasing the carrot on the stick (ranking up), instead of enjoying the ride (the game)
My quick reply (at work)
Nami, yes.
Sparklefly, maybe. 1/2 for 2 mana staline is rather bad, and the only reason it's even surviving is due to targon buffs. But targon needs lifesteal options as it's naturally a more control style region to counter the more aggro based regions.
Aloof Travelers. Yes, 100x yes. This card is insane on how much it does. Good statlines for 4 cost. Draw effect. Discard opponent's possible win condition. It does too much.
Hidden Pathways. Also yes.
Otterpus. Maybe. Pranks seems thematically fine, but not sure. I'd have to be very finely tuned.
Lost Soul. Revenant form should be nerfed to a 3/3
Sharpsight: Eh I don't know. It's kind of needed for demacia otherwise they would get completely run over by elusive decks.
As someone who regularly buys the pre-order expansion bundles, I'm actually quite hesitant to buy the merc pre-orders because they don't seem to have a lot of value, and even if they are valuable...it's hard to determine the value because the mode hasn't been released. We don't have a "baseline" value of how good tokens are, etc.
I think it's a new mode that is exciting and I look forward to playing it. But I think the way they've presented some info is woefully inadequate. Hopefully more info gets released as the next month progresses.
Pretty much this, 100%.
Nifty, creating discussion threads is not a bad thing, even if you do come off as over-eager. But people generally don't care about what rank you are at, barring specific meta circumstances. But the last thing we need or want is for you to purposefully misinterpret replies, and then continue to not only misuse terms ("So much conjecture" --- what? That's not even proper use of the word) and embarrass yourself; but lowers the ability for you to be taken seriously by others when making discussions about metas. In addition we don't need you shoving your rank in our faces. It really doesn't matter. And then the icing on top of the cake is assuming that because we disagree with your postulation we are bad players. When it couldn't be further from the truth.
In short: You don't seem to want discussion, you want an echo chamber. And when people disagree with you, or call you out on your theory to provide backing/proof... you insult them, call them names, and generally turn into an infantile keyboard masher.
Yea, I really dislike mind tether. Granted as # of games goes up, the efficacy of the deck goes down, but those first 1-4 games against any Mind Tether priest are generally unfun as you most likely will lose barring hail mary armor/health gains. (Consequently, I've stolen a few wins from Mind Tether priests by playing quest shaman in duels, and building my starting deck with Healing Rain. It's a lovely card to use alone, or after quest (For double the healing fun!) to help stall the game into a winning scenario.
Then perhaps blizzard should stop forcing the same archetype over and over? Players are like a current (voltage), they will find the path of least resistance. Players are HAPPY to try something new (look at how quest hunter was played in the first few days versus now). But they will only continue to play it if it has the ability to compete with the big boys. This is why decks like spell hunter (with Rok' delar) were viable. They provided hunters with something to fill their weak point (hand size, which in this case was random spell generation from a single card) but required a deck building mechanic to be fufilled.
I also think he's pointing out that Aggro/face hunter has been the best deck for quite awhile with little-to-zero nerfs. It's ok for decks to be "low man on the totem pole" but for some odd reason, hunter is never there. They may never be the #1 or #2 meta deck, but they are never #9 either. (Well except for this meta and the last one, where apparently aggro hunter is the #1 deck.)
It doesn't help that for a lot of people (myself included), that if you have a bunch of fun/flashy cards that cost 6+, but you almost never get to see those cards played (even for memes), then the game is heading in a direction that fundamentally is broken.
TLDR...
Expectation: People should play Hearthstone to have fun. That doesn't mean you need to play aggro decks at the beginning of every month to "rank up faster", hell, the POINT of the monthly star bonus was to allow you to reclaim your previous season's rank without having to work quite as hard as you did the previous season)
Reality: Too many people play Hearthstone like they are planning on joining an e-sports tournament, and think they'll be invited to this year's Inn-vitational.
I read a blog a few years ago, and while I can't remember the specifics at this point, the message roughly paraphrased was this:
If your only goal is to "rank up" or reach a specific competitive milestone on a regularly basis, you'll quickly find that this metric becomes meaningless. Don't make your play sessions into cyclical grinds. (i.e. Ranking up for the sake of ranking up)
On a serious note it's a bit odd that someone provides statistical site evidence and you dismiss it completely out of hand with nothing more than baseless opinions. I'm not saying you can't have an opinon, but it's a unique type of person to dismiss stats completely when presented with countering evidence and statements like:
I'm sure we'll finally see warlock demon seed get nerfed, I just think fundamentally circumventing the fatigue mechanic is what is making it broken. I have a feeling that we'll see a change to how tamsin interacts with fatigue, but we'll have to wait and see how things flesh out...
This sounds eerily similar to Legends of Runeterra. Weekly chests, that upon earning enough weekly experience, gives you an expedition token (the equivalent of a tavern ticket.) Which I would approve of. I think casual duels should go bye-bye and as long as duels is a supported and balanced mode, heroic duels should just be...duels. We should get a tavern ticket with our weekly "win 5 ranked games" quest.
Also we should be getting slightly more rewards in general since the new mercenaries mode apparently is going to be stretching gold resources even thinner.
Sigh, I genuinely don't ever post in salt threads. But I think if I'm being truly honest, this is by far the least fun I've ever had in a meta, both as playing as classes and against others.
The only class I can even markedly climb with and enjoy on some small scale is quest shaman. And even then most wins feel shallow and contrived. But then I look at most of the decks I face and realize they are equally as shallow.
Anacondra/Celestial Druid's who just vomit out cards and pray to RNG that their fungal fortunes doesn't discard any of their key cards. (literally if it does, they just instantly concede, because why build a "fair" deck when you can build a broken deck that has 0 comeback potential for your opponent, and if you fungal discard your key minions, just insta-concede and try again!)
Quest Warlock, which after the SECOND round of nerfs is still strong and ridiculous. They keep nerfing other cards, instead of the core of the problem. Which if you'll pardon my language IS THE FUCKING QUEST.
I seriously have not disliked a meta as much since probably Jade Druid. Or maybe Rastakhan's rumble. But seriously this current meta is the most polarizing meta ever. And I honestly feel like if mercenaries and/or the next expansion falls flat I'm done with Blizzard. (Considering that I've been playing Blizzard games for over 25 years now, it's almost sad, but also considering that their company has changed drastically I think it's time the king was dethroned...)
Your last statement hit home for me as well. Duels is about exploiting broken combos, but it shouldn't be super consistent like it is currently with some treasures.
Avalon, do you feel like some of the new treasures are overtuned? Specifically Meek Mastery, Party Replacement, and Oops All Spells?
I consistently see those treasures from opponents and that means 1 of 2 scenarios: They are the strongest and therefore are more often picked. Or they are the strongest and therefore are killing off people who chose other (worse) treasures.
Party Replacement is super strong, but out of the 3 I mentioned seems to be the most beatable if you have enough tools/degenerate combos in your own deck. (at the end of the day it just ends up being a free 2/2 which in early games is impactful, but later on is less dangerous.
Generally I primarily play casual duels when I play duels mode (because it's free!) so I'm unsure if the opponents I'm facing are just lucky, or just conceding and farming runs until they get "perfect passives" because of the free nature of casual duels.
Don't have a ton of energy to respond to all your responses at the moment, but I'll respond to these as they stood out the most to me.
My issue with certain regions is less their "overall power" in a vacuum, and more in their power and strength to be splashed or used as a baseline. Ionia has some magnificent spell counters that people tend to splash into their other decks (like mentioned in the thread, Will of Ionia, Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, etc).
To me the biggest issue is that regions have strengths and weaknesses. Clever deckbuilding and region combinations can shore up some of those weaknesses, however Ionia (and to a lesser degree Shadow Isles) seem to be used because of their strong controlling aspects, without any real penalty for using those regions as a splash region. I know that's part of the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, but at a certain point if certain cards are *consistently* used in every deck that has Ionia, then those cards neeed to be adjusted or force a decision to be made that balances their region strength, against their cross-region strength.
In short: this is what the purpose of allegiance cards was... creating strong cards that either encourage mono, or allow you to base your decision on the number of cards from that region that you put into your deck. Something similar to that needs to be brought to bear on the more "often used" cards. If they won't straight up nerf them, then they need to de-incentive them from being splashed. (or make you roll the dice on the cards power like allegiance would do in non-mono decks).
As for elusives, I unfortunately disagree. They were overstated in beta. Nerfed countless times, and still continue to be a problem. Fundamentally elusive cards create a very polarizing gameplay...either you have your own elusives to counter them (and not many regions have as many options as Ionia) or you have the spell removal to counter them, or you don't. It's very rare to force an elusive card to trade with a non elusive card (act as a blocker) unless you are threatening lethal. I understand that the original purpose of elusives was to force chip damage in. But as it stands now, there is more card draw in the game then there was in the beginning of the game and the resource management that was in the game in the beginning is starting to wane even more.
Major egregious problems with LoR still remain. So much so that I honestly can't say it's any better than Hearthstone's meta at the moment. Both games appear to be in major balance dumpster fires at the moment.
(for those unaware, Questlines in Hearthstone were just released a few weeks ago and have been creating huge game winning conditions that are almost uncounterable as early as turn 5-6 on a consistent basis).
Anyhow, my two main issues with LoR (and this patch) at the moment:
Problem 1: Ooh Shiny!
Newer champions are being pushed hard, while older champions are eschewed and forgotten. Any competitively viability from older champions was either nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but instead of creating creative cards that could be potentially used in multiple archetypes with clever deckbuilding and play, they create forced archetype inclusions. One such example is Caitlyn Bombs/Teemo Shrooms. Forced inclusion archetype cards that without makes those heroes suck. Yes, I know to some degree all champions have those. For example Ashes needs Frostbite, but technically you could build an Ashe deck without any other cards and eventually she would level up on her own...
But when is the last time you saw Garen, Lux, or hell even Hecarim used? (and no bronze/iron does not count). I understand not *every* champion can be competitively viable at the same time, but it says something when nearly all the old champions are eschewed for newer ones. This isn't hearthstone. There is no yearly rotation (yet), and Champions are supposed to be more of a build around/win condition than Hearthstone legendaries. So why does it seem like Riot is just pushing newer champions for the last year with little to no support for older champions? The only time I can recall "older" champions making a huge comeback was when Scargrounds landmark was released it revitalized Vladimir/Braum style decks for a small period of time.
To put problem #1 in a nutshell: I think that we are being put on the "new expansion" train where the latest and greatest is pushed (as with any card game) so that way you either use up your wildcards, or you buy more coins to build all the new shiny decks. Most decks feel like they are "on rails" being pushed with new cards, and have very low skill caps to be effective. (Which is not what drew me to the game in the first place. If I wanted a low skill cap card game to play, I could go play Hearthstone.)
Problem 2: Ionia and beyond!
I truly believe at it's heart Ionia was created with great intentions, but very poor execution balance wise. In addition the biggest issues with deck building in general seem to come from 3 things: Elusive units. Rally effects. And too much draw. (A problem I believe is also plaguing Hearthstone at the moment as well, as too much draw effects allows decision making to be trivialized because you have multiple options and answers available)
I actually saw someone else point this out on reddit today in the competitiveLoR sub, and they got downvoted to hell. Granted, I understand gamers can be mercurial; and maybe the way they presented it wasn't the most contructive, but still...
I feel like the region identities are fine, but there's currently some very broken decks and cards out there that still haven't been touched (or if they were, the wrong thing was nerfed.) For anyone aware, I'm mainly referring to Sivir, and their respective region cards as being markedly broken. (Ruin Runner, Merciless hunter for Shurima as well as Ionia's usual cadre of Elusive cards and counter spells available.)
Maybe I'm looking at things wrong, but I'd love for some constructive feedback to see if I'm just drinking too much Kool-aid or of I'm on the money with my assessment of things currently. Thanks!
Taric Golden Aegis is such a fun combo, but it's honestly broken if we are being honest with ourselves.
They really need to do something about that interaction, or increase the cost so it can't happen so early at the very least.