Legends of Runeterra

I had said the last balance patch was the best LOR had ever seen.

Necessary justified nerfs, buffs to bad archetypes like sundisc, and new cards that were actually playable and strong.

Now once again Riots nocked it out of the park.

This time the nerfs are again justified and not overbearing 

The new cards are very playable, elite card is flexible, reputation card is a 2 for one, stance card tutors for stance.

Champ changes are nice, I'm little worried about Waaaaaar but probably fine.

Ash can now work with Surima so giving her acess to quick sand is fairly gross, it does what harsh winds did but at 3 mana.

Garen is a genuine tribal card. Like you can run him with spiders if you want, or yordles, or yetis or poros.

Bad Champs like Karma, and Leblanc seem to be more worth playing.

Katarina is a ping machine now so she is kinda like gnar and that's awesome.

Malphite stuns on play now so he drops on play he's leveling and stunning on 7, so not a dead card.

The rest are just nice stat changes, and like I'm still sad that Lux, Jayce, TF and just general "control" champs are kinda bad 

"Tempo" equals good right now, and this patch won't change that.

Otherwise, I'm super happy with everything 

----edit---

They removed burst passing, and control Champs only leveling/generating value on spell resolve.

So now I play Jayce with one tick, putting a spell on the stack for tick 2 can't counter the level up he just pops.

Why does this matter?

Same reason why rummaging Jinx to level at burst to counter removal was her strongest tempo play.

And burst passing is dumb, endgame stalemates where "professional" player grind value and make optimal non plays for an hour wasnt them being "good" it was them testing patience and turning a video game into chess.

Percentages are just so healthy across the board, and increasingly even old archetypes and new are re-surfacing for proper evaluation.

Everyone knows scouts are great but pirate aggro is back at 58% possible never having left.

For everyone complaining that YOI is overpowered they are only 55% making them a strong but not thaaaaat strong midrange deck.

Sejuani gangplank, still 53% super healthy for the Oldman plunder archetype.

The only complaint you can have is that certain Champs are very bad picks right now.

Value midrange/control stuff, like Swain, Ashe, Heimer, Jayce, Lux, Karma, TF

There seems to be much better alternatives at the moment.

But the actual archetype balancing is phenomenal with more decks then we've ever seen being playable.

Region wise, Frijord needs the most help outside its ramp identity. With shadow being almost as bad outside its removal pkg.

But otherwise perfect.

This is going to be fairly based on personal oppinion, in terms of decks I find sucess with and what other people are playing.

1. Shurima - It's not so much that sundisc is good finally, it might be quicksand, it might be the landmark value pkg, it might not be any one thing but the overall value versatility.

Playable decks:

- Akshan whatever

- Thaliyah whatever

- Mono Shurima

- Irelia

- Ekko if you're a meme lord

- Renekton if you're the same

2. Demacia - It's very hard to beat 2 mana kill anything you want, even with the nerfs to the likes of sharpsight, and the 3 mana elite. That just means you have supplement with additional tools from other regions. Routinely has 56% winrate decks in the meta.

Playable decks:

- Targon Buffs

- Scouts

- Galio HP

- Lux if you're a meme lord

- Elites if you're the same

3. Targon - The undisputed king of long game, tempo, Combo play style. Invoke has never been nerfed, their burst spells haven't really been touched, strong Pantheon followers, sunlight blade is amazing right now. Only problem is their deck count is low.

- pantheon buff pkg

- invoke not a meme but also not great

4. Bandle City - Took a hard hit to its value identity last patch, but possible the best aggro region in the game full stop even after gutting Poppy just turns out that it doesn't matter. I only rank it low because every bandle deck is a bandle deck and makes me zzzzzzzz.

- YIA (aka aggro stuff)

- Multi region Champs are just good outside bandle and feature prominently everywhere

- Cycle value if youre a meme lord

5. Noxious - Only really does two things right now different flavors of aggro overwhelm vs discard etc. And being a flock/hard removal solution. For that reason it ranks lowly.

- ezreal catlyn

- discard aggro

- overwhelm

6 . Bilgewater - Essentially just a midrange good stuff region with the likes of Lurk and Scouts but in a game filled with midrange good stuff. I would need to see kegs, TF, plunder, ans deep see a resurgence to start ranking this region higher again.

- Lurk

- scouts

- midrange plunder I'd you're a meme lord

- deep if you're the same

7. Shadow - Possible the worst region in the game right now besides Ionia. Spiders is highest winrate deck and continually their control identity is being supersceeded by other region choices.

Deck option: 

- spiders

- darkness

- ephemerals if you're a meme lord

- burn if you're the same

8. Ionia - This region is problematic where the better it is like with Ezreal or Karma decks the more people want to commit sempuku. That being said it kinda sucks at aggro, and control, and even combo right now.

Playable decks:

- Ahiri (there are way better aggro decks)

- karma if you're a meme lord

- yassao if you're a meme lord

- Lee Sin if you're a meme lord

9. Freijord , their midrange identity is kinda dead, and their tribal stuff is subpar, so all that's left is ramp. It does ramp things and that's about it. So for that reason they are at the bottom of the pile

- ramp

Over 9000 P&Z - essentially doing it all right now from a combo/aggro/control perspective but it's not a region I particularly enjoy right now but I acknowledge the power.

- Viktor everything

- ezreal being ezreal

- buuuuuuurn

So as you can tell from the rankings certain things feel very strong right now, other things feel exceptionally weak to the point of being a total joke like deep. Hopefully the champ reworks at the end of April shake things up a bit.

I know I've gotten bored of my Targon, Demacia deck just for winning way too much and having a relatively straight forward powerful playstyle.

Gonna talk about 3 decks that have risen in popularity and power and more specifically the connecting thread that binds them.

1. Viktor

High value unit that can gain massive tempo with the likes of ambush

2. Rumble

High value unit that can gain massive tempo with discard

3. Pantheon

High value unit that can gain massive tempo with buffs

---------------

We've had aggro metas, we've had midrange metas, we've had combo metas.

This is the tempo meta, playing hard to remove things that can swing for massive dmg essentially.

So how do you counter tempo or brew against it?

You have to provide counter tempo, plays that kill their stuff while representing threats of your own.

Shadow is too slow, Ezreal/Catlyn is great, personally I love my 80% winrate Jarvan list.

But I've seen overwhelm decks, and yes even Ekko for the meme kings out there doing well because of their massive counter tempo plays.

Requiring answers every turn of their own so the tempo decks never get rolling.

So happy brewing, the answers are easy, the games are fast, just don't suck and you'll never need to grind.

Mono Shurima: 52%

Lurk: 52%

Spiders: 57%

Viktor: 57%

Pantheon: 55%

Ezreal: 53%

Irelia: 54%

Scouts: 56%

Thaliyah: 55%

Yordles: 56%

Shadow ramp: 54%

Overwhelm: 57%

Sivir: 54%

Rumble: 56%

That is roughly 15 decks that are very playable and strong right now in the meta. A healthy mix between midrange, aggro, Combo, and control.

I said it before and I'll say it again this is LOR with perfectly balanced scales, now is that a good thing for every person, absolutely not perfect balance can equal stagnation but for me man this is beautiful.

A few champ tweaks for underplayed champions like Ekko, or Jayce and the game is literally perfect right now.

Head on over to Mastering Runeterra to see the latest meta report for the first couple days after the patch.

It's a fascinating picture of what is good and what is not good currently in the meta.

Note that the playrate of Mono-Shurima is decreasing at this point, so it's nothing to be concerned about.

The rest of the meta has a lot of interesting decks and it's pretty diverse. So far, I'd say Riot did a great job with this balance patch!

Cycling has existed in many iterations in this game, and each one of them past vanilla has been problematic from a balance perspective

1. Yoink

Play a creature and steal a card from your opponents deck the original OP Cycling mechanic that was so strong midrange plunder was a tier 1 deck for longer then memory serves.

2. Invoke

Play an expensive creature to get a card, now we no longer need a pre-condition we just spend 1 mana more. People are generally okay with invoke, tempo is an easy thing to balance and while there have been OP Targon decks invoke has never needed adjustment directly.

3. Darkness

What if every creature gave you removal and was fairly costed...hmmm yes now we start to see that we no longer need to pay for tempo or pre-conditions

4. Manifest

What if you could play a creature that gave you answers to things your deck wasn't built for? Yep Mogwai had been the most vocal for the nerfing of this mechanic and it finally happened a bit this patch.

5. Counters?

There is no hard counter for card advantage except for combo decks. Lee Sin offering otk options isn't great he can be removed. Ezreal/Carina is a control card he can be out card advantaged in situations he should be favored.

So finally we have mono shurima a midrange (landmark) based combo deck that is actually good and doesn't care about card advantage.

Cycling for the first time ever since LOR has existed is now being hard countered...and people are pissed.

Welcome to how the rest of us have felt as you yanked, invoked, and manifested to victory winning games you shouldn't, with nothing the other player could do.

Have fun for the next month till the end of April and mono Shurima gets gutted again because people can't auto-cue and auto-win with pure card advantage anymore.

This is undoubtedly the healthiest meta movement I've seen since bandlewood released in LOR so one year let's say.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/archetypes

Why do I say that oh mono Shurima is OP no it isn't its at 52%

What people really mean is that a lot of the value grinding lists that were oppressive are now bad.

Darkness while never OP did start the trend of play a creature that give you a free card, rinse and repeat till win.

Now we are seeing these "cycling" decks fall below 50% because even if everything cycles and they have infinite value they will still lose to mono shurima which is good 

Ramp decks are back at 54% winrate whens the last time we saw that?

Pantheon is still good for those that like him at 54%

Aggro still does aggro things.

So across the board the "decks" are getting better and the "card piles" are getting worse 

I view that as amazing, but the people who have gotten used to this game being this way for so long will hate it.

So mono shurima is an archetype that I have experience with long before it was playable.

Here's a list of counter decks beyond the obvious, landmark removal lists.

1. Nasus slay, otk options are dangerous against mono shurima because of a lack of hard removal. So creating a champion that is 20/20 representing fast speed lethal is very dangerous back up by your own counter spell. Also quite agressive traditionally.

2. Swain represents strong removal options but also stun lock endgame with lethiathan, always a valid option he's never out of style.

3. Burn aggro, compared to the board reliant all in play styles of spiders that will struggle going into the buffed quicksand, sitting on the sidelines and slinging spells whether that's prankster ephemerals with monkeys or a more direct approach should be effective.

4. Dragons, strong challengers with cheap demacia removal will present a problem for mono shurima when they have none of their own. Then you can ramp into Asol and see what wins.

5. Rally/predict/sandman/scouts extra attack phases have always been extremely problematic for mono shurima to deal with. Just because they are a little faster now doesn't change that.

6. Deep/lasandra hard to win without a deck God emporer or no he's not immune to mill.

***the meta is changing time to change back with it, to high synergy decks with unique wincons and not just value vomit***

Do that and you'll be fine.

Here we have two decks to show you which is better against Shurima.

One is your standard value grind that is effective in the previous meta and the other is an even older school build that is fast and effective against high synergy brews should they get popular again.

Neither one is inherantly better then the other, they just serve different purposes and learning the difference will make you a better player, and you'll spend less time arguing on Twitter about buffs to weak high synergy decks.

So here we have the buffed deck why is the faster high synergy burn list better then the control list.

Because they only have the following lines of play, play creatures to stall, burst speed interaction to stall, rite of the arcane, and counter spells.

None of that is great at dealing with low curve fast win cons with a burn finish.

Option 2 if you don't want to go under with high synergy, you go over with high synergy

Turbo ramp into an Asol, or obliterate their deck, or play an old fashioned war mothers is honestly to strong for them to deal with

The stats are up on Runeterra.Ar, and I have some personal experience with it as well. The site's data shows about 8.5k games played, making it a whopping 17% playrate over the past two days, which is pretty insane. About double the playrate of anything in the past few months. But its winrate is only about 53%.

Yes, it can highroll pretty hard. Yes, it's actually a good deck now. No, it's not as OP as people think it is.

Examples of decks that beat it:

• Elise Spiders - mono-shurima is actually listed on Runeterra.Ar as the best matchup currently for spiders. Spiders deck has a 1.5% playrate and a 55% winrate overall - no doubt thanks to the easy wins from all the mono-shurima players
• Azir/Irelia - mono-shurima is also listed as the best matchup for this deck as well - this deck that got nerfed hard in the past and fell off the scene for a long time. Well, it's back, and it's eating mono-shurima for breakfast. Azirelia's playrate is at 2% and winrate is at 57%.

So, yeah, guys. Don't fall into the trap of the alarmist hype that mono-Shurima is completely broken and OP. It just isn't.

Side note - I played 5 games with the deck in Plat 2 and lost literally all 5 games. Never touching it again. Time to play decks that beat up on it, so I can get back my lost LP. Also, just for fun in normals, I played an old poro deck with Fabled Poro and such, focused on building a buffed board of all types of poros, and I queued into mono-Shurima all three games so far, and I completely wrecked my opponent in all of those games - with poros. Seriously, the deck can't be that good if it folds to poros. (Edit - though, to be fair, I did include two copies of Aftershock in there, and those did have an impact on two of my wins. In one of the wins, the opponent put their Xerath into a landmark, preparing to level him when he popped out the next turn. Aftershock ended that dream, and the game. In the other game, the opponent didn't bother to spellshield the Sundisc, so I killed it. Third game, I just beat him the normal way.)

A new Common Targon Spell, Celestial Wonder, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Beyond the Bandlewood

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Beyond the Bandlewood!

A new Common Piltover & Zaun Spell, Rocket Barrage, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Beyond the Bandlewood

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Beyond the Bandlewood!

A new Common Shurima Spell, Desert Duel, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Beyond the Bandlewood

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Beyond the Bandlewood!

I guess the title should be suggestive enough to sum up the problem I am facing right now. Are there any fun decks to play? The meta so far is basically hearthstone, you either get swarmed by aggro or killed by some stupid combo. Control decks in both games are close to non-existent. I am a huge control/attrition fan when it comes down to card games, but I can't seem to find a single consistent control or to say controlISH deck so far. Darkness feels a lot more like a combo deck rather than control. Also, I feel like the game is lacking a big cards with big reward. I guess there are cards like FTR but this is not a big reward card for 12 mana also, you are either ahead and you slam it down to win, or you cheat it out so you get ahead but if you are behind it simply doesn't matter at all. One of the few fun concepts for me is Purrrfection but, the kitty is just meh when it comes down to finishing games with it, due to stuns and removal. Now, you might say well if there are stuns are removal there should be control decks working right? Not at all. Its good when your opponent is relying on one big ass minion. Karma is prolly one of the few fun cards to play but she is just too slow. So ya, if you can recommend a value/attrition/control deck I'd be happy to give it a try. Maan , I miss highlanders days. Don't get me wrong, the game is good. Its just my own frustration. 

Hey all I hope you're having a good day so far. As the title stats I am new to the game and just started Sunday and getting into it. I have played other card game system such as pokemon, yu-gi-oh when it first came out and after so many years my cards got stolen. 3k or more worth of cards, haven't played sense. I did magic a bit when I was in high school but didn't get too into it. And then heartstone, been in and out of it until hearing what been going on with Blizzard and though it was time to get away from it. So now trying Runeterra, so far it has kept me interested. I done all the bonus challenges and done some of the Path of Champions with Jinx. That said I got a good idea how the card works and went to see about making decks, that's where I am having some trouble.

I've seen online people post out their overpowered decks and really, I don't want to do the whole copy and paste type of thing. I want my own or if anything a deck outline and tweak it to fit my style. After trying to make deck I notice I can only do like two regions, yet I see online people have three which I like to know how that is posable. But with that in mind I that's where I need your help, want to make a few decks base from the other card games I played and hoping maybe those will work well with today's Runeterra's card sets. At the very least tell me what regions combos I should focus on to make it work. Also any tips or suggestions you may think of.

For the first deck it is base from my old yu-gi-oh, a field control you might say. The main theme of it was jinzo and horus, to stop most magic and trap cards which at the time was hard to beat. The idea of preventing your opponent in using most their good card because I had mine blocking it. Giving me time to build and hit hard. What regions would you suggest to make something like that? Or even what card you think I would be worth focusing on?

For the second deck in mind I think fits more of a Targon but I am not sure. This base idea was from a priest deck in heartstone. My main card, Sethekk Veilweaver. It's ability is to give you a random priest magic card for every time you cast a spell on a minion. This combo plus buffs with other monsters I thought did real well, even more so when I was able to clone them lol. I would most of the time have a full hand of card but not enough mana to use them all. This again might be a control deck but like the idea of always have some cards at hand that could change the outcome of a game if that make sense? So I am wondering what would you say I need go with to fight that type of deck?

Thats about all I have in my mind right now and I hope some of you out there could give me your input and ideas of what I should go from here. 

https://masteringruneterra.com/lor-meta-march-21/

It's actually mostly the same as last week. Darkness control still has the highest playrate. 

Taliyah/Ziggs has not held up as a major contender.

Fizz Lulu has the highest winrate. 

Aggro is slightly more playable than last week, but still has a lackluster winrate. 

If you go read the article, take note:

PR = playrate

WR = winrate

I can't find it. They have it for LoL. Why not LoR?

Head over to Mastering Runeterra for the full breakdown. Please note that all of this data comes from the competitive portion of the ladder - Platinum, Diamond, and Masters ranks. If you're playing at lower ranks, the decks you face will probably be a bit different down there.

Short summary of the report -

• Darkness control has the highest playrate of any deck
• Pantheon and Teemo/Tristana/Gnar are the two popular decks that have the best winrates
• Scouts is still popular and still good
• Lurk is still very popular for some reason (and it's not winrate)
• The remaining popular decks do not have the greatest overall winrates-
  • Timelines Trundle/Gnar
  • Ezreal/Cait
  • Sivir/Akshan
  • Swain/Gnar (this one is below 50% winrate)

Best decks by winrate include:

• Pantheon and Teemo (see above)
• Scouts
• Taliyah/Ziggs (shocker of the month)
• Gnar/Ziggs
• Draven/Rumble

Seems like a decent array of decks being played. Nothing has higher than about an 8% playrate, and nothing has higher than about a 55% winrate. It's still a very diverse meta with a wide range of viable options.

So this is the first deck that I've built that I'm satisfied with. But I'm wondering if it's optimized.

Had Ava in, then removed her, then added her again, and I'm considering Hexcore Foundry

I'm thinking Sticky Whump can probably go.

The three key cards of the deck are Ballistic Bot , Puffcap Peddler, and Ambush (And I guess Ignition )

(Edit)

The purpose of Calculated Creations is to really make sure I get a Ballistic bot. And I don't mind having multiples. Practical Perfectionist serves a similar purpose, but it also helps me get the peddler, which I also don't mind having multiples of either. But there may be a better card for that, though I like having the effect come with a body I can block with. That's why I'm not running things like  Conchologist. I'm not just looking for pure CA. I'm really aiming to draw specific cards.

The deck wins either with Peddler and Ava Achiever, or ambush + Ballistic bot, or a mix of both. Obviously, ballistic bot synergizes with the peddler.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks

Been a while new job so we'll make this quick.

Aggro aggro aggro, beaters beaters beaters

A while back I said that this new expansion was deeply problematic because 3 flavors of I'm an op champ that kills my opponent easily.

Looking at the stats now yeah that where we are at like 10 gnar decks, and the other beaters are seeing play too.

Old aggro decks like scouts and spiders can out attack the new big beater decks in the early game so they still have a place.

Control is dead, proper spell midrange is dead, Combo is basically dead.

So hopefully this post doesn't get flamed just look at the stats they speak for themselves.

Its hearthstone Runeterra right now.