It's all about leveling Leona early, take out all of the opponent's blockers with stuns and finish the job with a double rally effect from Taric + Golden Aegis/ Relentless Pursuit
Edit: I just noticed in one of my games that Relentless Pursuit is eighter worded wrong or bugged:
It says that it grant a unit +1/+1 and that you rally
According to LoR rules that would mean that if the unit you buff gets killed in response you still would rally.
But for some reason the rally effect fizzles if your unit should die in response.
Eighter the wording is wrong (correctly it would be: "grant a unit +1/+1 TO rally" ) or the card is implemented wrongly.
Riot gonna have to clearify which of these 2 cases is true.
I find the daybreak archetype is currently the best archetype for the Taric extra attack engine because it has high statted low cost aggressive units and the the best tools in targon demacia to devalue blockers (stun effects).
It doesnt need more than a double attack combo with 2 blockers stunned to win games and the deck doesn’t struggle to do that
Because now you can run effectively up to 6 copies of Golden Aegis in your deck.
It's not like you would run 6 copies but 4-5 copies (3 Golden Aegis + 1/2 Relentless Pursuit) gives you that much more redundany and deck consistancy (especially because Written in Stars indirectly got buffed through Solari Priestess that getting the double rally combo going will be very easy to do now.
It's not like Taric gets to do something new but he is getting to do something strong he already did way more consistanly.
The huge difference between a Merciless Hunter and the likes of Fiora and Aphelios is: they are winconditions that you actively want to protect because they will win you the game if the live long enough, if your Merciless Hunter dies you won't be too sad about it because it's just a 3 mana fearsome unit afterall
Also is the Legion Rearguard example a different case because the card literally had as it's only benefit to be overstatted as a 1 drop (which afterwards it wasn't anymore and totaly lost it's purpose)
Sure these are nerfs on the most powerful cards right now but are they reaĺly impactful?
Well I doubt it. Removing 1 Health from both Ruin Runner and Merciless Hunter doesn't make them a lot weaker since all the merciless Hunter nerf will do is making the unit more vulnerable to spell removal, which is not worth it most of the time for a 3 mana unit and Ruin Runner cares even less about 1 health lost.
Shaped Stone however drops significantly through 1 attack nerf and in combination with these nerfs could drop the shuriman midrange deck's winrate by 2-3% still it doesn't really impress me.
I we are starting with the debate why certain champions can't be viable at a time then I doubt we come to constructive conclusion.
I mean of cause Lux is a bad champion because her design and stats make no sense at all:
she doesn't have a great statline to fight, yet she has barrier
she is a 6 mana champion that can't level in deck and has a requirement that can be served very poorly in her region.
No matter how you turn it: Lux sucks and there is no hope in her Archetype making sense other than reworking her theme from the ground or add a ton of viable spells to demacia.
My suggestions would be: change the mageseeker requirement to: you have spent 6 spellmana this game instead of casted a 6 mana spell and Lux level up as you spent 8 spell mana.
She also should be a 5 mana 4/4 barrier with: "whenever I attack or block spend all spellmana to give me +1/+1 this round for each spellmana spent"
So could you make clear what you mean by "fix the game"?
This phrase is about as vague as it gets and if anything you should make give a picture what you want for the game.
Do you think the balance is so bad? Do you think we have too many effects too many cards that are breakable?
Do you think certain regions are not fair?
Do you think the game is too stale?
I mean I am quite certain that the game won't return to it's glory days from beta/release.
Imo that is because LoR lacks novelty and deckbuilding becomes less and less a creativity task when there is an increasing amount of clearly best in slot cards for certain archetypes.
And it is kinda necessary to print cards with certain archetypes in mind because an universal card like Will of Ionia is super difficult to balance in an environment with evergrowing possibilities.
You will have to make every flexible card weak, making the archetype specific cards stronger if you don't want every ionia deck to run 2-3 copies of the flexible cards but this limits on the other hand deckbuilding options a lot. But ultimately the increasing powerlevel is what keeps so many strategies and playstyles dead on arrival.
If you take the latest versions of elusive decks it is quite obvious that your deck needs a strong elusive defence or a lot of removal ready to stop this strategy which excludes many lists that otherwise could be viable right now.
If anything annoys me from the ionian arsenal it is the duo of Will of Ionia and Concussive Palm their ability to take units out of the fight no matter the size is really nasty to deal with but one can live with it afterall.
There is no doubt that Ionian has been on the strong side in the recent past but given it's nonexistence for multiple months before I think it's okay for the region to be good.
When it comes to nerfs I can't say about any archetype right now if he deserves a nerf since the meta is far from settled.
And you might be right about riot pushing new cards to be viable and more restrict but afterall that is what cardgames tend to do when their cardpool grows larger and they still want to sell their newest content. Its not creative and pretty lame at times but it's also hard to avoid if you don't want the likes of SejuaniGangplank ruling the meta all day.
Sure the deck wasn't good if it would completely rely on the combo but I think the support package is on it's own quite strong and espeicially the likes of Mountain SojournersSparkleflyand Frightened Ibex can create strong lines of play even without the stars of the show.
I think for my next trick I will try to combine Ziggs with Swain. The amount of stuns + burn triggers will proably be a Nightmare for opponent once you have a level 2 Swain on board.
The curve of TaricPoppy is not really awkward considering that Taric + Golden Aegis is a round 5 play anyways so you play Poppy on round 4 and follow up with taric + Golden Aegis the following round . (4 unit mana + 4 unit mana + 4 mana (1 unit mana +3 spell mana))
I think thah SionDraven sooner or later will drop Sion in favour of an more aggressive curve. It turns out that a Darius, that is arguably harder to level for 1 extra mana but with a Backup wincondition is not carrying well... which could explain why nobody played Darius before.
In general however nexus got great additions and will rule quite well.
Poppy is strong no matter how you play her it seems which isn't too surprising given here repeated bannerman effect that doesn't require alligiance and therefore doesn't need more than a vaguely wide going strategy to do it's thing.
My PoppyTaric deck looks quite busted but I think most Poppy decks just work because her lvl 1 is far too strong.
FizzNami is... annoying and I think it will end up being one of the better archetypes if one figures the best spell spamming shell for it(which proably won't be pranks).
And about multiregion nonsens. It's.... doing it's thing I guess and refined versions will proably be an agressive midrange deck with a lategame wincondition. Is it tier 1 material ? I doubt that but tier 2 maybe.
Darkness will proably also be a central deck in the meta simply because it has pretty cheap removal for days and is hard to disrupt.
In general it is way too early to give actually accurate predictions on the meta so i will stop doing so now :).
The way I would design a reworked Darius is that I would make him a 5 mana 5/4 overwhelm with. Whenever I see you dealing damage to the enemy nexus I get 1 stack of noxian might. I have +1 power for every stack of noxian might.
Most of this deck's description is right but Ramp clearly isn't part of it's features, and no: restoring spell mana doesn't count as ramp (which means get to play cards ahead of the usual curve by increasing max mana permanently/temporarily)
That's the deck that I am playing right now.
It's all about leveling Leona early, take out all of the opponent's blockers with stuns and finish the job with a double rally effect from Taric + Golden Aegis/ Relentless Pursuit
Edit: I just noticed in one of my games that Relentless Pursuit is eighter worded wrong or bugged:
It says that it grant a unit +1/+1 and that you rally
According to LoR rules that would mean that if the unit you buff gets killed in response you still would rally.
But for some reason the rally effect fizzles if your unit should die in response.
Eighter the wording is wrong (correctly it would be: "grant a unit +1/+1 TO rally" ) or the card is implemented wrongly.
Riot gonna have to clearify which of these 2 cases is true.
Speaking of Leona and her daybreak archetype:
I find the daybreak archetype is currently the best archetype for the Taric extra attack engine because it has high statted low cost aggressive units and the the best tools in targon demacia to devalue blockers (stun effects).
It doesnt need more than a double attack combo with 2 blockers stunned to win games and the deck doesn’t struggle to do that
Because now you can run effectively up to 6 copies of Golden Aegis in your deck.
It's not like you would run 6 copies but 4-5 copies (3 Golden Aegis + 1/2 Relentless Pursuit) gives you that much more redundany and deck consistancy (especially because Written in Stars indirectly got buffed through Solari Priestess that getting the double rally combo going will be very easy to do now.
It's not like Taric gets to do something new but he is getting to do something strong he already did way more consistanly.
Looking at the Relentless Pursuit change I wonder how much it will take to buff Taric into a tier 1 champion...
apparently Riot is willing to find that out...
I also disagree: without puffcaps Caitlyn makes way less sense to be played because she cares a lot about any kind of trap including puffcaps.
If anything you can debate whether her flashbomb package is good enough since to me it looks way weaker than the puffcap one.
The huge difference between a Merciless Hunter and the likes of Fiora and Aphelios is: they are winconditions that you actively want to protect because they will win you the game if the live long enough, if your Merciless Hunter dies you won't be too sad about it because it's just a 3 mana fearsome unit afterall
Also is the Legion Rearguard example a different case because the card literally had as it's only benefit to be overstatted as a 1 drop (which afterwards it wasn't anymore and totaly lost it's purpose)
Sure these are nerfs on the most powerful cards right now but are they reaĺly impactful?
Well I doubt it. Removing 1 Health from both Ruin Runner and Merciless Hunter doesn't make them a lot weaker since all the merciless Hunter nerf will do is making the unit more vulnerable to spell removal, which is not worth it most of the time for a 3 mana unit and Ruin Runner cares even less about 1 health lost.
Shaped Stone however drops significantly through 1 attack nerf and in combination with these nerfs could drop the shuriman midrange deck's winrate by 2-3% still it doesn't really impress me.
The only champion that thematically makes sense to be multi region out of your examples is Taric who has a strong connection to demacia lorewise.
For the rest however... not so much
I we are starting with the debate why certain champions can't be viable at a time then I doubt we come to constructive conclusion.
I mean of cause Lux is a bad champion because her design and stats make no sense at all:
she doesn't have a great statline to fight, yet she has barrier
she is a 6 mana champion that can't level in deck and has a requirement that can be served very poorly in her region.
No matter how you turn it: Lux sucks and there is no hope in her Archetype making sense other than reworking her theme from the ground or add a ton of viable spells to demacia.
My suggestions would be: change the mageseeker requirement to: you have spent 6 spellmana this game instead of casted a 6 mana spell and Lux level up as you spent 8 spell mana.
She also should be a 5 mana 4/4 barrier with: "whenever I attack or block spend all spellmana to give me +1/+1 this round for each spellmana spent"
So could you make clear what you mean by "fix the game"?
This phrase is about as vague as it gets and if anything you should make give a picture what you want for the game.
Do you think the balance is so bad? Do you think we have too many effects too many cards that are breakable?
Do you think certain regions are not fair?
Do you think the game is too stale?
I mean I am quite certain that the game won't return to it's glory days from beta/release.
Imo that is because LoR lacks novelty and deckbuilding becomes less and less a creativity task when there is an increasing amount of clearly best in slot cards for certain archetypes.
And it is kinda necessary to print cards with certain archetypes in mind because an universal card like Will of Ionia is super difficult to balance in an environment with evergrowing possibilities.
You will have to make every flexible card weak, making the archetype specific cards stronger if you don't want every ionia deck to run 2-3 copies of the flexible cards but this limits on the other hand deckbuilding options a lot. But ultimately the increasing powerlevel is what keeps so many strategies and playstyles dead on arrival.
If you take the latest versions of elusive decks it is quite obvious that your deck needs a strong elusive defence or a lot of removal ready to stop this strategy which excludes many lists that otherwise could be viable right now.
I mean sure it is a prototype of a deck but what does the deck try to do ?
If anything annoys me from the ionian arsenal it is the duo of Will of Ionia and Concussive Palm their ability to take units out of the fight no matter the size is really nasty to deal with but one can live with it afterall.
There is no doubt that Ionian has been on the strong side in the recent past but given it's nonexistence for multiple months before I think it's okay for the region to be good.
When it comes to nerfs I can't say about any archetype right now if he deserves a nerf since the meta is far from settled.
And you might be right about riot pushing new cards to be viable and more restrict but afterall that is what cardgames tend to do when their cardpool grows larger and they still want to sell their newest content. Its not creative and pretty lame at times but it's also hard to avoid if you don't want the likes of Sejuani Gangplank ruling the meta all day.
Sure the deck wasn't good if it would completely rely on the combo but I think the support package is on it's own quite strong and espeicially the likes of Mountain Sojourners Sparkleflyand Frightened Ibex can create strong lines of play even without the stars of the show.
I think for my next trick I will try to combine Ziggs with Swain. The amount of stuns + burn triggers will proably be a Nightmare for opponent once you have a level 2 Swain on board.
The curve of Taric Poppy is not really awkward considering that Taric + Golden Aegis is a round 5 play anyways so you play Poppy on round 4 and follow up with taric + Golden Aegis the following round . (4 unit mana + 4 unit mana + 4 mana (1 unit mana +3 spell mana))
I think thah Sion Draven sooner or later will drop Sion in favour of an more aggressive curve. It turns out that a Darius, that is arguably harder to level for 1 extra mana but with a Backup wincondition is not carrying well... which could explain why nobody played Darius before.
In general however nexus got great additions and will rule quite well.
Poppy is strong no matter how you play her it seems which isn't too surprising given here repeated bannerman effect that doesn't require alligiance and therefore doesn't need more than a vaguely wide going strategy to do it's thing.
My Poppy Taric deck looks quite busted but I think most Poppy decks just work because her lvl 1 is far too strong.
Fizz Nami is... annoying and I think it will end up being one of the better archetypes if one figures the best spell spamming shell for it(which proably won't be pranks).
And about multiregion nonsens. It's.... doing it's thing I guess and refined versions will proably be an agressive midrange deck with a lategame wincondition. Is it tier 1 material ? I doubt that but tier 2 maybe.
Darkness will proably also be a central deck in the meta simply because it has pretty cheap removal for days and is hard to disrupt.
In general it is way too early to give actually accurate predictions on the meta so i will stop doing so now :).
Oh and better buff Darius
The way I would design a reworked Darius is that I would make him a 5 mana 5/4 overwhelm with. Whenever I see you dealing damage to the enemy nexus I get 1 stack of noxian might. I have +1 power for every stack of noxian might.
level up: I have 12+ power.
Level Up Darius:
6/5 Overwhelm,the noxian might effect becomes: I get +1/+1 for every stack of noxian might and also attack:
Skill: if my blocker is damaged kill him.
Given that you run 37 noxian cards you might consider running Basilisk Rider
That is the list the screenshot demonstrating the stat stacking nonsens you can do with the list will come later :)
https://imgur.com/a/se51T6Z
Went 8/0 so far beating lee sin, Sion Midrange, Aggro, Elusives and Darkness control.
Admittedly my opponents weren't the greatest deck pilots but still 100% Winrate and against various matchups
On the Screenshot against Darkness Control: the covered barrier units is a 9/5 Brightsteel Protector
Most of this deck's description is right but Ramp clearly isn't part of it's features, and no: restoring spell mana doesn't count as ramp (which means get to play cards ahead of the usual curve by increasing max mana permanently/temporarily)