Hearthstone releases crap Legendaries all the time, but Runeterra wants you to play with everybody.
This is great. I don't even care what these cosmetics are; just the idea is fantastic.
Champions in LoR fill a completely different role than Legendaries in HS.
LoR has a cap limit on champions in a deck, and champions are build around mechanics. You generally build a deck based on 2 things, the champions you put in the deck, and the core strategy associated with those champions (sometimes flexible enough to have more variants, but generally only 1-2 core strategies exist per champion currently). If your champion dies, you have multiple chances to replay the champion due to allowing 3 copies of a champion in your deck. Losing all your copies, generally is an indicator that you've lost the match (barring special circumstances) since champions are so core to your win condition.
Legendary cards in HS are unique, 1 per deck. And barring gimmicks which allow you to copy them, can't be resummoned. Legendary cards act more like "power plays" in HS. Yes some of them are core win conditions (like Mozaki, ETC, or Antonidas), but often even if those cards are removed, you still have a chance to win the game. The win condition of decks in HS is much more loosely defined by the power of the individual cards, and less about the overall synergy. (Please don't read this as that I'm saying HS doesn't require deck synergy, it does, just less than Runeterra seems to require.)
Lastly, the powerlevel of Champions/Decks in Runeterra is much more closely defined in difference than decks in HS. The top winrate decks in Hearthstone usually boast somewhere around 55-58% winrates, and can be as much as 5-8% of the entire meta, while the bottom meta decks usually have somewhere to 40-48% winrates, creating a discrepancy of somewhere between 10-15% between the best meta deck and the worst meta deck. The top winrates in LoR tend to stay similar to HS, but the bottom meta decks usually never dip below an even 50%. In addition LoR decks/champions since they are so closely tuned, tend to not carve out more than 1-3% of the meta, which means you see a lot more meta variety while playing the ladder.
So in short: "crap legendaries" are more or less power or niche legendaries (maybe even just fun or memey legendary cards), where champions are generally never memey in LoR since they are the core of a deck. (meme cards may be inserted into decks to have fun or support an archetype, like for example The Howling Abyss), but generally the champions themselves originally put into a deck are not memey.
As for the cosmetic aspect of this article, I guess it's cool? I mean it's not anything to write home about, all the "cosmetic" does is give you a leveled chevron depending on how much you've played that champion. Maybe it will evolve into something more, but this preliminary view into the cosmetic isn't anything that is telling me "this really encourages you to play this champion", any more than playing meta decks/champions would.
One of the things I don't like about Runeterra is the fact that combat is reactive, rather than proactive. This and might just bring me back into the game along with the Demacia Plaza.
They also look like they keyworded the 'Burst, can't cast during combat or as a response' spells, by the looks of Exhaust.
That chant at the end of the video, though. So good!
It's a bit ironic (to me at least) that you make this comment, as I asked Kibler yesterday during his stream if he still played LoR, and his response was that the combat was very reactive and "you have to play around everything...which is exhausting as a streamer".
Out of curiosity, what exactly is enticing you to come back to Runeterra? As someone who also lost a lot of interest after the monuments of power expansion, Renekton, Nasus, and the like seem very interesting. At least enough to give it another shot. (Doesn't help that Hearthstone is super aggro at the moment...) The one thing I do like about the game is the turn timer management, along with keywords. (I get so annoyed that the hearthstone dev team refuses to keyword certain things, despite them being the same thing, like the inspire mechanic and other cards with "inspire like" effects as an example.) To me a good card game shows consistency. Hearthstone......has no consistency.
Barrens Expansion seems a reasonable expectation. While I'm not ruling out a RFK expansion...RFK is.....like one of the "meh"est dungeons in WoW classic. It just seems an *entire* expansion themed around RFK is odd and hard to shoehorn in. However I could see an entire expansion themed around the Barrens/Horde in Kalimdor. It's probably a Barrens themed expansion because the quillboar are pretty much all over the barrens, somewhat in Mulgore, and entirely in RFK/RFD.
I love Rustwix. Normally in the past I'm not a warlock player. (Zoo doesn't appeal to me, and the last control lock I played was handlock with molten giants, if that gives you any sort of frame of reference). But Rustwix has single handedly given appeal to playing warlock. The card enables a variety of strategies. Currently I feel like the best version is quest control.
I think versions that run Tickatus/Y'shaarj or other corrupt cards aren't horrible but just not as viable right now. (Deck has too little ways to corrupt Tickatus) and the soul shard package feels slightly inferior. Come rotation, with quest rotating out and Galakrond rotating out, without knowing what new cards will come the soul shard shell will most likely be the only viable way to play a control version.
As someone who stopped playing LoR around the time of the KDA event (right after it ended, the whole event and power level of the KDA cards left a sour taste in my mouth), does anyone have any insight on how one could get back into the game? My collection was pretty good prior to KDA, and even though go hard was nerfed, the flavor of the cards along with the gimmicks they enabled (and unlike brawls in Hearthstone, these are permanent additions to the game) just left me wanting more.
I do like most of the cards/flavor/animations/etc in LoR but I find myself playing Hearthstone solely it's comfortable. I should note that my hearthstone experience lends me to getting legend every season, where LoR I barely get above bronze or silver.
what do you mean I sound like I dislike the archetype? That's preposterous! I truly love seeing my opponent's two-card hand actually being infinite cards hand, like all of us.
This deck tries to do too much IMO. I tried the "super control" version of this on day one of the miniset and found that Tickatus is the weak point. His only purpose is to disrupt OTK decks. Of which there are really only two notable ones. Mage and DH. The mage one usually kills you before turn 8 (when you can semi-reasonably expect to play Tickatus) via Mozaki. The "exodia" mage that made a brief resurgance is actually the less popular of the two tries to draw it's whole deck, so in that one you literally have to play Tickatus on curve otherwise he really does effectively nothing.
Against DH, again it boils down to: Did you draw tickatus? Did you corrupt tickatus? Were you able to finally play him before the opponent drew all their combo pieces?
Against control/value decks Tickatus shines a *little* better but still isn't an iWin card. Overall the Tickatus/Y'shaarj just doesn't do enough in this listed deck archetype. At minimum it needs strongman to be worth the tempo turns (0 cost 6/6 taunt when corrupted, and again when you play Y'shaarj).
Not going to mention felosphy because those are again, greed plays that work with or without tickatus. I agree that Questing Explorer is just a bad card in this deck, but so is Tickatus. From mid-december until the miniset released Tickatus saw decent enough winrates to warrant some inclusion.
But now Tickatus is no longer in a positive winrate. He's too slow, and doesn't do enough. In short: Rustwix decks don't need Tickatus or Y'shaarj to be viable. But if you do insist on running Y'sharj, Strongman should be an auto-inclusion.
The issue I have is not with playing ranked. It's that they're forcing Wild players to scrap a deck just so they can queue for Standard. Wouldn't have been hard to make it Play 5 Games of Ranked. Hell, if we're all about catering to all play modes (Battlegrounds, Duels, Constructed), where's the next quest after that: Play 5 Games of Ranked Wild? Kinda tired of how obvious they are at treating Wild players as second rate citizens while choosing not to incentivise Standard players to occasionally try Wild as well. Wild players get dragged over to Standard but never the other way around.
Step 1: My Collection>New Deck>Pick a Class>Custom Deck>Complete My Deck>Yes>Done
Step 2: Click Play>Pick the deck you made>Ranked>Click Play.
Step 3: "I choose death!" (i.e. Concede)
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 four more times.
Step 5: Profit.
Now addressing your other complaint: the inherent reason that "Wild isn't supported" is because Blizzard realized that they couldn't sustain the game balance with that many cards. Every other card game I've ever played has also had sets rotate out. It's not a new concept. Not to "young shame" but have you ever played any other card games? Because if you did, you'd realize that this is not a foreign concept. So this forced blizzard to maintain standard balance, but allow "anything goes" in wild. But, to counter your point, they have been looking more at wild over the last year and made adjustments to the cards to prevent them from overwhelming the wild meta. (Genn and Baku as a glaring example).
And they aren't treating wild players as second rate citizens, treating them as second rate citizens would be reducing the gold for quests if they are completed in wild, or having wild only quests that offer lower gold than standard quests. So FWIW, I don't think you understand the concept of "Second rate citizen".
I understand duels is still in beta and needs some TLC to be brought up to snuff, but bugs like the one in the screenshot where your opponent is starting with 40 life and 2 treasures is utterly ridiculous and part of the reason there aren't many playing duels. They really need to buckle down and fix the glaring issues (balance problems can take a back seat to crashes, unintended matchmaking problems like the one above, and other more serious issues).
I don't normally "blizzard bash" cause I find it usually a waste of time, energy, and brain cells by any who indulge in it...but Duels has been out for quite awhile now. They really need to be focusing on getting the game mode out of beta at this point. Whomever is in charge of prioritizing things for Hearthstone needs a re-evaluation, or needs to be let go so someone better can fill their shoes.
The problem was never my phone app, but my computer. When I log in through my phone, all is there. It is when I try to log in through my computer that it is all gone. But never mind, I just play with my phone now.
You're missing the point. As others stated, you are using a pseudo account on mobile. It's better to figure out how to convert that into a real bnet account if possible. Otherwise at some point your collection WILL go missing permanently because you have to switch to a new phone.
Honestly I just think they are trying to tone down some of the obvious synergies in duels. Duels should be partly about starting deck synergy, and partly about treasure/bucket RNG.
Right now it feels like people still force certain starting decks/archetypes because of the OPness of certain strategies. This should do a good job of keeping that in check and fostering a more experimental environment (at least I hope).
For sure, I always try to keep work and home separate (even while working from home lol). Also, your second point is so true, there's always someone willing to do it for free on Reddit.
I mean on the one hand, I feel like every board *should* have a secret interaction, but then at that point is it really a "secret" interaction if every board has it? My favorite is still Un'goro though. Saviors of Uldum is a close second though. God I really hope that the new "big change" coming to the next rotation is that old sets will rotate into standard periodically. I'd love to play with, ungoro cards and dalaran cards at the same time (as an example). Though I do fear certain things returning (like ungoro quest mage).
IMO the Envoy Warlock deck is actually worse off with Quest and plot twist. Sure they can make it so you draw 0 cost primes, but it's 3 cards that effectively do nothing in your hand or game. In a meta where every turn matters, even with decent control tools I find that the 3 cards just don't do enough to warrant legend competitiveness (sure it's fine for climbing from bronze to diamond).
Considering that the list above includes other cards like Sky General Kragg and Kelidan it just feels like a very weak version of the deck that tries to do too many things and dilutes it's ability to compete effectively. In the version I'm running I still use some of the soul fragments for life gain (instead of armor vendor) and currently at a 58% winrate purely in legend (~rank 5-6k).
That deck seems to be everywhere on ladder in wild right now. It’ll pass, and if it doesn’t, they’ll probably nerf something.
For my part, having a freezing trap down as hunter seemed to be very effective. When that sends the tiller back to hand there were a lot of concedes across from me yesterday.
Funny outcome, but honestly the problem isn't wretched tiller OR hysteria. It's that damn 2/4 that grants immune. Most degenerate decks I can recall (defile+immune combo) in wild were a result of that card that grants a minion immune.
If you don't understand something, then the first thing you should do is to read the full answer:
Illucia is mean. I've answered questions like this previously but it's just finding a balance. Some people literally play Hearthstone to cackle and do mean things like Illucia or Tickatus. We make those cards for them. (Source)
The hope is that the niche of players who absolutely love that stuff can do it, but it's a low enough power level that it's not taking over all of Hearthstone. I think the world where Illucia is the best card in Hearthstone is a world we've messed up. (Source)
Your sources are from twitter. Expecting every person to follow a twitter account just to get a full spectrum of answers is asinine. Consequently you're also being pedantic with the response "If you dont understand something, then you should...read the full answer".
Literally if there were the ability to block someone on here you would be my first. Downvote away.
Edit: You also never actually replied with your own opinion on the cards. Instead you made a snarky quip, and then posted two twitter sources. If ever an appeal to authority existed, your reply is definitely it.
Champions in LoR fill a completely different role than Legendaries in HS.
LoR has a cap limit on champions in a deck, and champions are build around mechanics. You generally build a deck based on 2 things, the champions you put in the deck, and the core strategy associated with those champions (sometimes flexible enough to have more variants, but generally only 1-2 core strategies exist per champion currently). If your champion dies, you have multiple chances to replay the champion due to allowing 3 copies of a champion in your deck. Losing all your copies, generally is an indicator that you've lost the match (barring special circumstances) since champions are so core to your win condition.
Legendary cards in HS are unique, 1 per deck. And barring gimmicks which allow you to copy them, can't be resummoned. Legendary cards act more like "power plays" in HS. Yes some of them are core win conditions (like Mozaki, ETC, or Antonidas), but often even if those cards are removed, you still have a chance to win the game. The win condition of decks in HS is much more loosely defined by the power of the individual cards, and less about the overall synergy. (Please don't read this as that I'm saying HS doesn't require deck synergy, it does, just less than Runeterra seems to require.)
Lastly, the powerlevel of Champions/Decks in Runeterra is much more closely defined in difference than decks in HS. The top winrate decks in Hearthstone usually boast somewhere around 55-58% winrates, and can be as much as 5-8% of the entire meta, while the bottom meta decks usually have somewhere to 40-48% winrates, creating a discrepancy of somewhere between 10-15% between the best meta deck and the worst meta deck. The top winrates in LoR tend to stay similar to HS, but the bottom meta decks usually never dip below an even 50%. In addition LoR decks/champions since they are so closely tuned, tend to not carve out more than 1-3% of the meta, which means you see a lot more meta variety while playing the ladder.
So in short: "crap legendaries" are more or less power or niche legendaries (maybe even just fun or memey legendary cards), where champions are generally never memey in LoR since they are the core of a deck. (meme cards may be inserted into decks to have fun or support an archetype, like for example The Howling Abyss), but generally the champions themselves originally put into a deck are not memey.
As for the cosmetic aspect of this article, I guess it's cool? I mean it's not anything to write home about, all the "cosmetic" does is give you a leveled chevron depending on how much you've played that champion. Maybe it will evolve into something more, but this preliminary view into the cosmetic isn't anything that is telling me "this really encourages you to play this champion", any more than playing meta decks/champions would.
Is the patch live? I'm not seeing a patch update yet.
How about we wait for more information or metrics before doomsaying archetypes? Mmkay?
I figured it was a Barrens themed expansion. Quillboars/RFK alone wouldn't be enough content.
The real question is, will there be a card that references Barrens Chat, Mankirk's Wife, and Chuck Norris jokes? :)
It's a bit ironic (to me at least) that you make this comment, as I asked Kibler yesterday during his stream if he still played LoR, and his response was that the combat was very reactive and "you have to play around everything...which is exhausting as a streamer".
Out of curiosity, what exactly is enticing you to come back to Runeterra? As someone who also lost a lot of interest after the monuments of power expansion, Renekton, Nasus, and the like seem very interesting. At least enough to give it another shot. (Doesn't help that Hearthstone is super aggro at the moment...) The one thing I do like about the game is the turn timer management, along with keywords. (I get so annoyed that the hearthstone dev team refuses to keyword certain things, despite them being the same thing, like the inspire mechanic and other cards with "inspire like" effects as an example.) To me a good card game shows consistency. Hearthstone......has no consistency.
Barrens Expansion seems a reasonable expectation. While I'm not ruling out a RFK expansion...RFK is.....like one of the "meh"est dungeons in WoW classic. It just seems an *entire* expansion themed around RFK is odd and hard to shoehorn in. However I could see an entire expansion themed around the Barrens/Horde in Kalimdor. It's probably a Barrens themed expansion because the quillboar are pretty much all over the barrens, somewhat in Mulgore, and entirely in RFK/RFD.
I love Rustwix. Normally in the past I'm not a warlock player. (Zoo doesn't appeal to me, and the last control lock I played was handlock with molten giants, if that gives you any sort of frame of reference). But Rustwix has single handedly given appeal to playing warlock. The card enables a variety of strategies. Currently I feel like the best version is quest control.
I think versions that run Tickatus/Y'shaarj or other corrupt cards aren't horrible but just not as viable right now. (Deck has too little ways to corrupt Tickatus) and the soul shard package feels slightly inferior. Come rotation, with quest rotating out and Galakrond rotating out, without knowing what new cards will come the soul shard shell will most likely be the only viable way to play a control version.
As someone who stopped playing LoR around the time of the KDA event (right after it ended, the whole event and power level of the KDA cards left a sour taste in my mouth), does anyone have any insight on how one could get back into the game? My collection was pretty good prior to KDA, and even though go hard was nerfed, the flavor of the cards along with the gimmicks they enabled (and unlike brawls in Hearthstone, these are permanent additions to the game) just left me wanting more.
I do like most of the cards/flavor/animations/etc in LoR but I find myself playing Hearthstone solely it's comfortable. I should note that my hearthstone experience lends me to getting legend every season, where LoR I barely get above bronze or silver.
I admit, I laughed a bit too hard at this.
This deck tries to do too much IMO. I tried the "super control" version of this on day one of the miniset and found that Tickatus is the weak point. His only purpose is to disrupt OTK decks. Of which there are really only two notable ones. Mage and DH. The mage one usually kills you before turn 8 (when you can semi-reasonably expect to play Tickatus) via Mozaki. The "exodia" mage that made a brief resurgance is actually the less popular of the two tries to draw it's whole deck, so in that one you literally have to play Tickatus on curve otherwise he really does effectively nothing.
Against DH, again it boils down to: Did you draw tickatus? Did you corrupt tickatus? Were you able to finally play him before the opponent drew all their combo pieces?
Against control/value decks Tickatus shines a *little* better but still isn't an iWin card. Overall the Tickatus/Y'shaarj just doesn't do enough in this listed deck archetype. At minimum it needs strongman to be worth the tempo turns (0 cost 6/6 taunt when corrupted, and again when you play Y'shaarj).
Not going to mention felosphy because those are again, greed plays that work with or without tickatus. I agree that Questing Explorer is just a bad card in this deck, but so is Tickatus. From mid-december until the miniset released Tickatus saw decent enough winrates to warrant some inclusion.
But now Tickatus is no longer in a positive winrate. He's too slow, and doesn't do enough. In short: Rustwix decks don't need Tickatus or Y'shaarj to be viable. But if you do insist on running Y'sharj, Strongman should be an auto-inclusion.
Step 1: My Collection>New Deck>Pick a Class>Custom Deck>Complete My Deck>Yes>Done
Step 2: Click Play>Pick the deck you made>Ranked>Click Play.
Step 3: "I choose death!" (i.e. Concede)
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 four more times.
Step 5: Profit.
Now addressing your other complaint: the inherent reason that "Wild isn't supported" is because Blizzard realized that they couldn't sustain the game balance with that many cards. Every other card game I've ever played has also had sets rotate out. It's not a new concept. Not to "young shame" but have you ever played any other card games? Because if you did, you'd realize that this is not a foreign concept. So this forced blizzard to maintain standard balance, but allow "anything goes" in wild. But, to counter your point, they have been looking more at wild over the last year and made adjustments to the cards to prevent them from overwhelming the wild meta. (Genn and Baku as a glaring example).
And they aren't treating wild players as second rate citizens, treating them as second rate citizens would be reducing the gold for quests if they are completed in wild, or having wild only quests that offer lower gold than standard quests. So FWIW, I don't think you understand the concept of "Second rate citizen".
I understand duels is still in beta and needs some TLC to be brought up to snuff, but bugs like the one in the screenshot where your opponent is starting with 40 life and 2 treasures is utterly ridiculous and part of the reason there aren't many playing duels. They really need to buckle down and fix the glaring issues (balance problems can take a back seat to crashes, unintended matchmaking problems like the one above, and other more serious issues).
I don't normally "blizzard bash" cause I find it usually a waste of time, energy, and brain cells by any who indulge in it...but Duels has been out for quite awhile now. They really need to be focusing on getting the game mode out of beta at this point. Whomever is in charge of prioritizing things for Hearthstone needs a re-evaluation, or needs to be let go so someone better can fill their shoes.
You're missing the point. As others stated, you are using a pseudo account on mobile. It's better to figure out how to convert that into a real bnet account if possible. Otherwise at some point your collection WILL go missing permanently because you have to switch to a new phone.
Honestly I just think they are trying to tone down some of the obvious synergies in duels. Duels should be partly about starting deck synergy, and partly about treasure/bucket RNG.
Right now it feels like people still force certain starting decks/archetypes because of the OPness of certain strategies. This should do a good job of keeping that in check and fostering a more experimental environment (at least I hope).
For sure, I always try to keep work and home separate (even while working from home lol). Also, your second point is so true, there's always someone willing to do it for free on Reddit.
I mean on the one hand, I feel like every board *should* have a secret interaction, but then at that point is it really a "secret" interaction if every board has it? My favorite is still Un'goro though. Saviors of Uldum is a close second though. God I really hope that the new "big change" coming to the next rotation is that old sets will rotate into standard periodically. I'd love to play with, ungoro cards and dalaran cards at the same time (as an example). Though I do fear certain things returning (like ungoro quest mage).
IMO the Envoy Warlock deck is actually worse off with Quest and plot twist. Sure they can make it so you draw 0 cost primes, but it's 3 cards that effectively do nothing in your hand or game. In a meta where every turn matters, even with decent control tools I find that the 3 cards just don't do enough to warrant legend competitiveness (sure it's fine for climbing from bronze to diamond).
Considering that the list above includes other cards like Sky General Kragg and Kelidan it just feels like a very weak version of the deck that tries to do too many things and dilutes it's ability to compete effectively. In the version I'm running I still use some of the soul fragments for life gain (instead of armor vendor) and currently at a 58% winrate purely in legend (~rank 5-6k).
I think you mean Siamat gives you a pro-active play versus Nether. That's the only difference.
Funny outcome, but honestly the problem isn't wretched tiller OR hysteria. It's that damn 2/4 that grants immune. Most degenerate decks I can recall (defile+immune combo) in wild were a result of that card that grants a minion immune.
Your sources are from twitter. Expecting every person to follow a twitter account just to get a full spectrum of answers is asinine. Consequently you're also being pedantic with the response "If you dont understand something, then you should...read the full answer".
Literally if there were the ability to block someone on here you would be my first. Downvote away.
Edit: You also never actually replied with your own opinion on the cards. Instead you made a snarky quip, and then posted two twitter sources. If ever an appeal to authority existed, your reply is definitely it.