Fixing Kinkou Elusives - Patch 1.2

Guess what, we get to talk about everyone's favorite stealthy list, and how to fix it.

- The solution was simple, just splash frejord. Now every wayfinder can pull out omen hawks and buff all future elusive draws.

- The evaluation works like this, if a wayfinder pulls out 2 hawks that's 4/5 strength plus 4/4 strength into future draws.

- That is 8/9 stats on turn 4 so consider me converted, all the list needed was a tier 1 splash. Not to mention the deck thinning potential.

- You also get access to burst speed spells that keep your elusives alive like fury of the north and elexir of iron.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWrJ5QXpOVU&lc=z23nwr0xutf5hznzm04t1aokg25qqapueelyifqzmnoqrk0h00410

Really weak bait. Try harder next time.

Also you're like 2 months late.

Its not bait its literally the competitive version of the list, but whatever you do you man. A link is included of up to the day relevant meta information.

For those reluctant to click the link: it's a Youtube link to Swim's "weekly" meta report, and he's making the case that Kinkou elusives are Tier 1 now if you cut the third copy of Elixir and Twin Disciplines in exchange for 2x Fury of the North.  I take exception to calling this "fixing"--it's only 2 cards that ~50% of games you won't even draw given how fast this deck goes, and you're exchanging burst-speed buffs for burst-speed buffs so often it won't play much differently.  At best, you're talking about changing your win rate +- 3%.

Here's his decklist: https://lor.mobalytics.gg/decks/bpc85ulp8n7fhorvousg

Honestly, I don't think elusives have ever stopped being a good deck.  I was kinda relieved when they fell out of popularity--seemingly arbitrarily as the community just decided Noxus/P&Z was superior.  Looks like that's going to flip back now, which I'm dismayed about because I hate facing this archetype.  That said, I do think its important to have budget options for new players, and between the recent nerfs to rearguard and brood awakening this is probably it.

Quote From iWatchUSleep

Really weak bait. Try harder next time.

Also you're like 2 months late.

You're pretending and explaining an archetype that's been in the game since its inception basically is somehow some new hip top tier deck.

You again try to claim Freljord is (one of) the best region(s) in the game to try and get reactions from people, just like you did in your previous thread.

You act like deck thinning somehow matters in an aggro deck.

Your tone, despite numerous people calling you out for it last time, hasn't changed at all.

Yeah, this is still bait. 

I shouldn't of said anything. I mention Elusives and 5 hours later someone is complaining. My fault forum peeps. ;)

Again if you are starting your forum status with: "X is unfair/broken/OP and should be fixed/nerfed/gutted, you are not doing yourself any favors."
You should be asking: "How can I do better against X."

X = Elusives, Burn Aggro, Stand Alone Zed, Unyielding Spirit, Pilfer Goods, etc.

The only thing that needed "fixed" was Stand Alone which they did and it was only because swim made an insane deck the last week of Set 1 that ate up 50%-75% of matches.

Nifty, I have tried to ignore these kinds of posts because I really do think you're just baiting people on this forum (I chose not to respond at all to the "new best decks" post, for instance), but congrats because this one really irks me enough to engage on it.

A week ago, when you claimed that the Freljord is the best region in the game, I posted a long comment refuting your point in which I called out Kinkou Elusives as a) the highest win rate deck based on data available at the time and b) a deck that already featured only a very minor Freljord splash in the form of Omen Hawk and Elixir of Iron. Your response was "Dude I'm sorry but elusives is not a deck that people run in this game at any tier."

So you can imagine my frustration to see you praising the archetype that you just dismissed as trash, all while falsely claiming that Swim has "fixed" the Elusive Kinkou list by adding a Freljord splash that it already had. OldManSanns has hit the nail on the head - the deck has been good for a long time and the edits Swim has actually made are incredibly minor techs to the deck.

Frankly, after tuning in to the Progress Day podcast on YouTube, I have just about zero respect for Swim's point of view. The episode in question was discussing the Twitch Rivals tournament and Patch 1.2, and Swim was really childish about the results. Specifically, he complains about losing to Kripp's Burn Aggro list and describes it as though it was some random list even though it was about as cut-and-dry a Burn Aggro netdeck as you could get. He then went on to complain about how tournaments are better when you can predict your opponent's line-ups, and that his opponents were just "bringing random stuff" instead of "outgaming [him]." He came off as a petulant child who felt entitled to first place simply because he plays more Legends of Runeterra on Twitch than the various Hearthstone streamers who joined the tournament. 

The part I'm referencing from Swim is here, a few minutes into the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdUEac4l9J8&feature=youtu.be&t=538

I wonder if Swim mulligan/keep his tech cards in the starting hand.

If Swim does search for them: he is just a bad player.
If Swim does not: +10 points for OldManSanns post... it won't change the outcome enough to matter.

Quote From meisterz39

Frankly, after tuning in to the Progress Day podcast on YouTube, I have just about zero respect for Swim's point of view. The episode in question was discussing the Twitch Rivals tournament and Patch 1.2, and Swim was really childish about the results. Specifically, he complains about losing to Kripp's Burn Aggro list and describes it as though it was some random list even though it was about as cut-and-dry a Burn Aggro netdeck as you could get. He then went on to complain about how tournaments are better when you can predict your opponent's line-ups, and that his opponents were just "bringing random stuff" instead of "outgaming [him]." He came off as a petulant child who felt entitled to first place simply because he plays more Legends of Runeterra on Twitch than the various Hearthstone streamers who joined the tournament. 

The part I'm referencing from Swim is here, a few minutes into the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdUEac4l9J8&feature=youtu.be&t=538

I have not seen the Twitch Rivals tournament so what I'm about to say could be wrong, but I don't think you should be too hard on Swim because of what he said on the podcast. If you're participating in a tournament where people expect you to be the expert who stomps all the inexperienced people, and the opposite happens followed by twitch chat endlessly making fun of you for it, it makes sense that you're going to be frustrated by it. In addition his loss(es?) was(/were) apparently to Noxus/P&Z burn aggro, on which I think we can all agree that it is not the type of deck you want to see being played in tournaments because it is incredibly easy to pilot and losing against it feels like losing a coinflip.

I'm not saying everything Swim is saying is completely correct or justified, but I don't think you should abandon all your respect for him just because of what he said here. Everyone says something dumb every once in a while, especially when they're frustrated about something.

Quote From GerritDeMan

I have not seen the Twitch Rivals tournament so what I'm about to say could be wrong, but I don't think you should be too hard on Swim because of what he said on the podcast. If you're participating in a tournament where people expect you to be the expert who stomps all the inexperienced people, and the opposite happens followed by twitch chat endlessly making fun of you for it, it makes sense that you're going to be frustrated by it. In addition his loss(es?) was(/were) apparently to Noxus/P&Z burn aggro, on which I think we can all agree that it is not the type of deck you want to see being played in tournaments because it is incredibly easy to pilot and losing against it feels like losing a coinflip.

I'm not saying everything Swim is saying is completely correct or justified, but I don't think you should abandon all your respect for him just because of what he said here. Everyone says something dumb every once in a while, especially when they're frustrated about something.

For context on the tournament, he lost his first match to Kripp (lost to Burn Aggro, won a game, then lost a game because of the timer), then he tied to MegaMogwai in the second round (again due to the timer). He won his third match and made it into the winners bracket by the skin of his teeth, and then went on to take second place against DogDog.

I'm certainly sympathetic to your point about expectations - going into the tournament, Swim was considered a favorite to win, so there's a lot of pressure on him to do that. But it's not like he lost...he got second place. Sometimes your first seed in a tournament doesn't win, and that's not a big deal from a reputation standpoint. Had he come in last or been dropped down into the losers bracket like MegaMogwai, I could more easily understand the resentment over the results because that kind of failure directly flies in the face of his supposed expertise.

But my point really has a lot less to do with whether or not he's mad about the results, and more about how talks about it.

• His description of his loss to Kripp's Burn Aggro deck was "because he brought this - one of his decks, it was Noxus/P&Z and he was running a lot of low cost cards and all of his cards reduced my Nexus health...then I just got zero health and lost." He talks about it like a crazy deck straight out of left field. 
  • He could have said that the Burn Aggro archetype was degenerate for the game and bad for competitive play (which is true)
  • He could have talked about how the timer rules meant that popular control lineups were left worse off (which is also true, and contributed to his poor Swiss record)
  • Instead he talks about it like something unfair that no one could have seen coming, and continuously tries to downplay the impact that Kripp had on his losses because that would seemingly mean that he's worse than Kripp.
• His broader description of his opponents is unduly disrespectful. "It's more competitive when everyone is on the level and you have some kind of anticipation of what people will bring and then if they bring something surprising it's because they're outgaming you instead of just bringing random stuff"
  • What he's describing here - opponents bringing decks he couldn't anticipate - is basically the nature of competitive CCG innovation. There are lots of examples across Digital CCGs of decks which aren't great on ladder but are great in tournaments because of how they play against specific, popular decks. This is extremely common.
  • In this moment, he's basically saying "I'm the expert, so if my opponent has brought something I couldn't anticipate, it's because they have no idea what they're doing and just got lucky"
    • While all of these opponents he's talking about are not major LoR streamers, they're all major CCG streamers with years of expertise in CCGs. LoR is not so different among CCGs that their experiences are not applicable or relevant.
    • When he says "on the level" he basically means "using my tier list on Mobalytics and treating it as undeniably correct"

In my mind, all of this speaks to an "expert" status that has been conferred onto Swim incorrectly. He's certainly one of the biggest LoR streamers, but given how small the LoR scene is right now, he's a big fish in a small pond. 

He's a big part of how the weekly "meta tier list" is determined on Mobalytics, but I think he's taken that and convinced himself that his word is gospel on the strategy of the game. Going back to OldManSanns point - the Kinkou Elusive deck dropped off the tier list in a way that seemed pretty arbitrary and not truly reflective of its power level. And now it's back, simply because a nerf hit the Burn Aggro deck. It's not as though the Kinkou Elusive deck was ever bad, it just dropped of the tier list because Swim deemed it so. All of this points to an utter lack of self-awareness that leaves me with very little respect for him.

Quote From meisterz39

But my point really has a lot less to do with whether or not he's mad about the results, and more about how talks about it.

Having watched both Twitch Rivals and both Progress Day podcasts that feature Swim, I feel like I have some insight that might temper some of these points.  I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not actually a fan of Swim.  Don't watch his stream or videos, and the times I have come across his content, didn't really care for it.

Quote From meisterz39

His description of his loss to Kripp's Burn Aggro deck was "because he brought this - one of his decks, it was Noxus/P&Z and he was running a lot of low cost cards and all of his cards reduced my Nexus health…then I just got zero health and lost." He talks about it like a crazy deck straight out of left field.

I'm 99.9% sure this was a joke.  His delivery was a little off, but Panda and Mogwai both reacted to it properly as a joke, and him saying that seriously doesn't line up with how he was talking about burn earlier in the same podcast.

Quote From meisterz39

• He could have said that the Burn Aggro archetype was degenerate for the game and bad for competitive play (which is true)
• He could have talked about how the timer rules meant that popular control lineups were left worse off (which is also true, and contributed to his poor Swiss record)

Both of these are great points.  It's been a while since I watched the podcast, but I suspect these points may have been brought up when talking about the balance changes instead though?

Quote From meisterz39

• Instead he talks about it like something unfair that no one could have seen coming, and continuously tries to downplay the impact that Kripp had on his losses because that would seemingly mean that he's worse than Kripp.

While bashing another player the way he did here is in poor taste, unfortunately, there's a lot of truth to what was being said.  Kripp was attending the tournament for promotional purposes (as were a number of the participants really), and not as a serious player of the game.  I can tell you as someone who watched several of his games, he had only a passing knowledge of how the game works.  To cite an example, in a tournament, he played into a Fiora+Judgement combo, and even when it was revealed, he had no idea that he had just lost the game until it actually happened.  Honestly, Kripp's record was one of the best arguments to date of why Burn needed nerfing.

Quote From meisterz39

• His broader description of his opponents is unduly disrespectful. "It's more competitive when everyone is on the level and you have some kind of anticipation of what people will bring and then if they bring something surprising it's because they're outgaming you instead of just bringing random stuff"
  • What he's describing here - opponents bringing decks he couldn't anticipate - is basically the nature of competitive CCG innovation. There are lots of examples across Digital CCGs of decks which aren't great on ladder but are great in tournaments because of how they play against specific, popular decks. This is extremely common.
  • In this moment, he's basically saying "I'm the expert, so if my opponent has brought something I couldn't anticipate, it's because they have no idea what they're doing and just got lucky"
    • While all of these opponents he's talking about are not major LoR streamers, they're all major CCG streamers with years of expertise in CCGs. LoR is not so different among CCGs that their experiences are not applicable or relevant.
    • When he says "on the level" he basically means "using my tier list on Mobalytics and treating it as undeniably correct"

I only want to say that this is all spot on.  I didn't interpret it as much about his own narcissism (specifically being about his own tier lists), but I don't think that interpretation is at all unreasonable based on how he was speaking.

Hey I said that Frej was a tier 1 region, and that elusives wasn't great as is.

How did they fix it, they splashed Frej, I really couldn't make out how perfect things have lined up to what I expected.

Not to mention that Sejuani is now the best champ, she's everywhere.

Quote From meisterz39

Going back to OldManSanns point - the Kinkou Elusive deck dropped off the tier list in a way that seemed pretty arbitrary and not truly reflective of its power level. And now it's back, simply because a nerf hit the Burn Aggro deck. It's not as though the Kinkou Elusive deck was ever bad, it just dropped of the tier list because Swim deemed it so. 

+1

I always felt Kinkou Elusive was S tier all along, but it dropped ranks in mobalytics due to, i think, the popularity of bannerman decks.
Then bannerman got nerfed and Bilgwaters was out which greatly reduced its popularity but Kinkou Elusive never went up again, which is at the very least, strange.