broadly speaking if you try to draw analogies between elusives and evasive style units in other card games, elusives are almost all costed very aggressively and competitively. i don't know if they expected the checks on them in the format to be better or what. they managed to get them to a decent place in the base set and that left them pretty confident, but as we've seen, bilgewater brought with it a lot of nexus-damage based strategies that add up
One interesting thing he said in the podcast was that they were surprised by PnZ/Noxus burn because they never expected champless decks to be competitive. So I imagine that factored into how they balanced the bilgewater cards before release
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Naw I fucking hate the Anivia deck. I think it's too trivially easy to get a lot of them out. It's shenanigans. You're punished for killing the Anivias, you're punished if you don't kill them, it's lose lose. It feels terrible.
You need the right cards in hand to start multiplying Anivia. It's not super hard with a Shadow Isles addition but it's still chewing up some mana and getting the draw. And the only time killing Anivia is a bad idea is when they don't have the ability to do that themselves, in which case 1 Anivia is not that scary most of the time and if you can't beat there ass down before it gets you, you were probably in a terrible position regardless. Killing off Anivia's is difficult but generally a good idea actually. Especially one they put out early cause the egg just chews up board space and as long as you kill it before 10 it's all good. Plus the Egg means they can't drop Ruination.
And man, Heimer/Vi is like the opposite of playing the game. It's a deck that is all elusives and removal. It's entire plan is to stall you out by killing your units and/or going face with elusives and then dropping Heimer to beat your ass down with endless elusives. With just a splash of Vi for taking out big targets and/or the alternate win condition. It's way more of a "No, you don't get to play the game" deck.
There are six of the right cards in swim's version at least which isn't some horrible burden. One of them costs four mana. And like, of course it's better to kill the anivia. It's basically better to kill all champs. It's just that most of them will still die to a single removal spell after being rekindled. And they can still do Ruination, they have a much better ability to bounce back thanks to the revival.
Heimer vi is a control/combo deck. Of course that's how it is. Corvina is kill everything and go over the top with endless ledros or Corina. Karma/Lux was kill everything and beat your ass with endless final sparks. They're control decks, the point is to not let you play the game. My problem isn't with that, it's that it felt like those decks made tradeoffs in inevitability, life gain, and damage output and that made it possible to counterplay, to foil their plans.
You can kill Heimer. Bouncing him is a meaningful setback because it will reset his level progress and he needs additional mana to do anything. Even if he goes off, he is weak to make it rain or withering wail, or basically any removal because he spams a lot of X/1s instead of 3/5s.
The problem is that you don't have to do anything for the Anivia game plan. Just living is enough. You can't slow it down or make brilliant plays to prevent it from happening like you can with the other control champs. Karma is another enlightenment level up but she can't just do the whole thing herself usually. She needs a backup champ or a grip full of burn spells to double at your head. And again, she can be killed in one combat, or by one card. She doesn't require double tapping.
Edit: I'll tl;dr my Anivia beefs. 1) Very inherently sticky, she requires at minimum, two cards which isn't a problem in and of itself since many champs are similarly sticky (Vi, Tryn, anyone super fat), but since she requires two cards it gives her more value with revival when combined with her 2) Inevitable level up. There's no interaction with it, no slowing her down, it's just gonna happen. Sure Karma is like that but she isn't 3) very self sufficient. An Anivia doesn't need anything outside of that to pop off but she does obviously close out much faster when there are multiples of her but that's true of most champs, you can draw a good parallel to Gangplank here but he isn't (go to 1).
The odd thing is I don't even think the buff from 7 to 6 is that huge for her because she's such a late game champ. I wonder if she was just slept on and it's the kind of change that got people to seriously try or if it was (probably more likely) the fact that Braum got such a huge buff in stall power.
It’s 100% the Braum change and the fast meta. Braum can pull/block efficiently and the 3/3 is huge for a mid game tempo blocker.
There are a lot of decks that can beat down Anivia decks, but they get hard countered by Elusives, so they aren’t visible. Like I said earlier, Deep is basically a guaranteed win. I think mono Demacia would wreck as well. Their unit stats allow them to apply pressure and overcome the healing/AoE from the Anivia deck.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Highlander/Singleton Gauntlet is today right? Gonna start out with P&Z/Ionia.
If we take 1 of every card in Heimer/Vi and Ez/Karma we start off with 24 cards; Thermogenic Beam, Health Potion, Jury-Rig, Rummage, Claws of the Dragon, Eye of the Dragon, Mystic Shot, Ezreal, Flash of Brilliance, Get Excited!, Shadow Assassin, Solitary Monk, Twin Disciplines, Concussive Palm, Deny, Gotcha!, Spirit's Refuge, Statikk Shock, Will of Ionia, Deep Meditation, Heimerdinger, Vi, Karma, and Yone.
Subpurrsible and Purrsuit of Perfection are the closest things we have to highlander payoff cards.
Lee Sin, Clump of Whumps, and Chump Whump are playable blockers that fit the 'cares about spells' synergy.
Greenglade Duo, Amateur Aeronaut, Kinkou Lifeblade and Yusari are mediocre but playable additional elusives.
That leaves room for 7 more spells. Insight of Ages, Ki Guardian, Sonic Wave, Vault Breaker, Ritual of Renewal, and Progress Day are 6 decent options, but I'm very unsure about the last card. Dawn and Dusk is a bit of a meme but would win games if it resolved. Dragon's Rage is removal and burn but pretty expensive. Stand United, Suit Up!, and Retreat all offer protection for creatures, but are so much less interesting.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Mono Demacia would probably do pretty decently at being able to put on the pressure before they close out but it has minimal to zero interaction with Elusive so it's a total non starter. Hell, even the interaction they have is bad. Challengers or single combat can get blown up by Fury of the North, Transfuse, or Will depending on the flavor you're playing against. Their advantage would mostly be just being thicc enough to not get killed by most removal.
I think the elusive problem is Greenglade Duo but nerfing down to 1 attack probably doesn't do that much in the long run? I actually feel like Navori Bladescout is kind of a problem too because his drawback isn't really that high considering there are two bodies that will bounce him back to hand, and because of that he interacts so favorably with Duo. I'd really hate to nerf that though because I think finding synergies and turning downsides into upsides is like, what the game should be about.
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Highlander/Singleton Gauntlet is today right? Gonna start out with P&Z/Ionia.
If we take 1 of every card in Heimer/Vi and Ez/Karma we start off with 24 cards; Thermogenic Beam, Health Potion, Jury-Rig, Rummage, Claws of the Dragon, Eye of the Dragon, Mystic Shot, Ezreal, Flash of Brilliance, Get Excited!, Shadow Assassin, Solitary Monk, Twin Disciplines, Concussive Palm, Deny, Gotcha!, Spirit's Refuge, Statikk Shock, Will of Ionia, Deep Meditation, Heimerdinger, Vi, Karma, and Yone.
Subpurrsible and Purrsuit of Perfection are the closest things we have to highlander payoff cards.
Lee Sin, Clump of Whumps, and Chump Whump are playable blockers that fit the 'cares about spells' synergy.
Greenglade Duo, Amateur Aeronaut, Kinkou Lifeblade and Yusari are mediocre but playable additional elusives.
That leaves room for 7 more spells. Insight of Ages, Ki Guardian, Sonic Wave, Vault Breaker, Ritual of Renewal, and Progress Day are 6 decent options, but I'm very unsure about the last card. Dawn and Dusk is a bit of a meme but would win games if it resolved. Dragon's Rage is removal and burn but pretty expensive. Stand United, Suit Up!, and Retreat all offer protection for creatures, but are so much less interesting.
Thoughts?
I feel like Ez/Karma are pretty hurt from a lack of redundancy among the damage spells in two ways. 1) Ezreal needs to target to actually level up and then 2) sometimes you need to point those spells at their dome for the finisher.
Heimer I feel like is a little bit hardier to singleton because you can run those Highlander payoffs and slot them in pretty seamlessly into the deck plan and the free bodies will always be a good idea regardless of the bodies you're getting. It will also probably be easier to keep Heimer alive, in singleton the number of answers for him will be much fewer. This is probably the way to go I think.
I'm not sure I'll try the gauntlet that much this week, I'm kind of more committed to trying to get the hell out of mid platinum right now.
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I think this LoR competitive post is a pretty good example of something that's wrong with the game that I hadn't considered before but makes total sense. It describes why we keep having these issues with aggro decks being super uninteractive.
The tl:dr is that removal is bad in this game, specifically conditional hard removal. Pre-nerf Boomcrew Rookie and post-buff Basilisk Rider are his examples. What are you going to do to not take damage from from it on curve? Literally only culling strike, if you have banked mana. What about Basilisk Rider? Maybe you have an 4/X, but you're still going to get hit. Maybe you banked mana for a Vengeance on 4. That's...about it. They're going to get in for damage most likely no matter what you do or what answer you have (on curve). He's calling for more shit like Big Game Hunter from Hearthstone, hard removal but not a silver bullet. Something that's cheaper because it affects a subset. Hard removal is important because buffs are burst speed in this game so you can just get countered back. There's also a severe lack of cheap, effective AoE removal. You have Avalanche, Wail, and...Ruination? There's no 4 damage Avalanche for more mana. I'd be interested to see what everyone else thinks, and what conditional stuff you could add to the factions without homogenizing everything.
Naw I fucking hate the Anivia deck. I think it's too trivially easy to get a lot of them out. It's shenanigans. You're punished for killing the Anivias, you're punished if you don't kill them, it's lose lose. It feels terrible.
You need the right cards in hand to start multiplying Anivia. It's not super hard with a Shadow Isles addition but it's still chewing up some mana and getting the draw. And the only time killing Anivia is a bad idea is when they don't have the ability to do that themselves, in which case 1 Anivia is not that scary most of the time and if you can't beat there ass down before it gets you, you were probably in a terrible position regardless. Killing off Anivia's is difficult but generally a good idea actually. Especially one they put out early cause the egg just chews up board space and as long as you kill it before 10 it's all good. Plus the Egg means they can't drop Ruination.
And man, Heimer/Vi is like the opposite of playing the game. It's a deck that is all elusives and removal. It's entire plan is to stall you out by killing your units and/or going face with elusives and then dropping Heimer to beat your ass down with endless elusives. With just a splash of Vi for taking out big targets and/or the alternate win condition. It's way more of a "No, you don't get to play the game" deck.
There are six of the right cards in swim's version at least which isn't some horrible burden. One of them costs four mana. And like, of course it's better to kill the anivia. It's basically better to kill all champs. It's just that most of them will still die to a single removal spell after being rekindled. And they can still do Ruination, they have a much better ability to bounce back thanks to the revival.
Heimer vi is a control/combo deck. Of course that's how it is. Corvina is kill everything and go over the top with endless ledros or Corina. Karma/Lux was kill everything and beat your ass with endless final sparks. They're control decks, the point is to not let you play the game. My problem isn't with that, it's that it felt like those decks made tradeoffs in inevitability, life gain, and damage output and that made it possible to counterplay, to foil their plans.
You can kill Heimer. Bouncing him is a meaningful setback because it will reset his level progress and he needs additional mana to do anything. Even if he goes off, he is weak to make it rain or withering wail, or basically any removal because he spams a lot of X/1s instead of 3/5s.
The problem is that you don't have to do anything for the Anivia game plan. Just living is enough. You can't slow it down or make brilliant plays to prevent it from happening like you can with the other control champs. Karma is another enlightenment level up but she can't just do the whole thing herself usually. She needs a backup champ or a grip full of burn spells to double at your head. And again, she can be killed in one combat, or by one card. She doesn't require double tapping.
Edit: I'll tl;dr my Anivia beefs. 1) Very inherently sticky, she requires at minimum, two cards which isn't a problem in and of itself since many champs are similarly sticky (Vi, Tryn, anyone super fat), but since she requires two cards it gives her more value with revival when combined with her 2) Inevitable level up. There's no interaction with it, no slowing her down, it's just gonna happen. Sure Karma is like that but she isn't 3) very self sufficient. An Anivia doesn't need anything outside of that to pop off but she does obviously close out much faster when there are multiples of her but that's true of most champs, you can draw a good parallel to Gangplank here but he isn't (go to 1).
The odd thing is I don't even think the buff from 7 to 6 is that huge for her because she's such a late game champ. I wonder if she was just slept on and it's the kind of change that got people to seriously try or if it was (probably more likely) the fact that Braum got such a huge buff in stall power.
4 mana just to replicate an Anivia for next turn, at best, is very slow. And Anivia is basically useless pre-level-up too. She's a big late-game bomb if you spend the mana and turns to replicate her a few times. The counter is to kill them first. It's a very slow deck. You aren't dropping an Anivia bomb till like turn 10-12 usually, at minimum. That's a long damn time to beat someone down. If midrange decks were still viable against the current aggro meta you wouldn't even see this shit imo because it's so slow.
And that slowness is the trade-off being made and the fact that it involves having to play for board control is why it just doesn't feel as bad as something like Heimer/Vi imo. Anivia/Braum has to contest the board and slow you down with units and trade efficiently until the bomb can go off. Ultra control decks are just like 6+ turns of "No, fuck yourself, you don't get to play cards" and then they kill you. And Heimer/Vi slathers on a layer of elusives just to make it more irritating. Cause even if they do play units, you can't interact with them.
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Anivia isn't useless pre level up. She's a Miss Fortune that hits the back row so even if they don't block they're taking damage. She also has more health. I'm not saying she's holy shit amazing but you can definitely use her, and use her to combo with other removal while you're attacking to take down larger threats.
Kill them faster is all well and good I guess except for the 3 grasp, wail, vile feast, innkeepers, etc. That's just the healing, so you're probably starting at needing to take care of 30+ hp in addition to however much combat damage Braum + poros + other cheap bodies absorb. The elusives at least stand a fighting chance because they get around all the cheap bodies that gum up the board. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all over team "kill them faster" that was my whole jam when people were complaining about unyielding spirit, but those decks didn't also run gobs of healing.
Anivia isn't useless pre level up. She's a Miss Fortune that hits the back row so even if they don't block they're taking damage. She also has more health. I'm not saying she's holy shit amazing but you can definitely use her, and use her to combo with other removal while you're attacking to take down larger threats.
Kill them faster is all well and good I guess except for the 3 grasp, wail, vile feast, innkeepers, etc. That's just the healing, so you're probably starting at needing to take care of 30+ hp in addition to however much combat damage Braum + poros + other cheap bodies absorb. The elusives at least stand a fighting chance because they get around all the cheap bodies that gum up the board. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all over team "kill them faster" that was my whole jam when people were complaining about unyielding spirit, but those decks didn't also run gobs of healing.
Anivia is a shittier Miss Fortune because she has to attack to get her effect. By the time they can drop a 6 mana unit, you should be able to brick her after one attack without too much difficulty. And if you can't, you were in trouble regardless. And that again highlights the ways in which Anivia decks are at least interactive.
I think poor spell quality is an active design decision and a large part of what drives the creature-centric style of the game. In general the devs seem to want creatures interacting to be a bigger focus than spell based removal.
I'd most like to see defense or value oriented creatures similar to Braum, stuff like
A 'reach' keyword that blocks Elusives
A 'giant' keyword that allows for blocking multiple creatures
A creature that gains Barrier at start of turn if you don't have an attack token
An overstatted creature with Challenger that cannot deal Nexus damage
More creatures like Embermaiden that deal start of turn damage to dodge defensive combat tricks
More creatures like Devourer of the Depths that are hard removal on a stick (similar to the BGH/TBK he mentions but less conditional), and creatures that strike on ETB
That said, some spell effects that would make a lot of sense design wise (and ignoring P&Z/SI which kind of already monopolize removal)
Noxus board wipe with 'Destroy all followers and champions except the one with the highest power'
Noxus spell with 'Two enemies strike each other'
Demacia spell with 'Silence all followers'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal 1 damage to all enemies (insert number here) times'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the number of cards you've Tossed this game'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the number of cards you've drawn this turn'
Freljord spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the health of a follower'
Freljord spell with 'Grant all followers Vulnerable'
Ionia spell with 'Grant all followers negative (insert number here) attack'
I think this LoR competitive post is a pretty good example of something that's wrong with the game that I hadn't considered before but makes total sense. It describes why we keep having these issues with aggro decks being super uninteractive.
The tl:dr is that removal is bad in this game, specifically conditional hard removal. Pre-nerf Boomcrew Rookie and post-buff Basilisk Rider are his examples. What are you going to do to not take damage from from it on curve? Literally only culling strike, if you have banked mana. What about Basilisk Rider? Maybe you have an 4/X, but you're still going to get hit. Maybe you banked mana for a Vengeance on 4. That's...about it. They're going to get in for damage most likely no matter what you do or what answer you have (on curve). He's calling for more shit like Big Game Hunter from Hearthstone, hard removal but not a silver bullet. Something that's cheaper because it affects a subset. Hard removal is important because buffs are burst speed in this game so you can just get countered back. There's also a severe lack of cheap, effective AoE removal. You have Avalanche, Wail, and...Ruination? There's no 4 damage Avalanche for more mana. I'd be interested to see what everyone else thinks, and what conditional stuff you could add to the factions without homogenizing everything.
I think he's definitely highlighted one of the key factors here. Although the way he frames it highlights a specific solution to that, whereas I think the problem is just more general with some design decisions for the game overall. Basically, the lack of removal is a problem because of other decisions and is a way to solve it but not the only way.
They seem to have made a deliberate design decision to make removal more costly and limited then in other games, I think in order to encourage more units-on-board play. They also set up the region system with fairly specific flavours to each. I think these two things are good design goals abstractly. But the way they interact with things like elusives (ie - units on board that you can't interact with outside specific spells) suddenly you run into issues. And it's not just elusives, units that emphasize burn go here too for example.
They set up the game to not have a ton of spell->enemy unit interaction and then designed units that can only be interacted with via spells. It's a pretty obvious problem I think.
And then this becomes compounded by the region system leaving a lot of the options to deal with those kind of threats confined to only specific regions. Which is good in some ways because it means you can go up against a specific region and know the tools they can have. If you are facing a Demacia/Freljord deck, you know they don't have specific kinds of removal just from the region tag. But it also means certain combinations don't really work against non-interactive strategies.
Cheap removal is part of why HS is bad. Every card has to be a circus of value to justify its existence when it can be plonked so easily. I do agree it feels weird that SI has the only decent aoe spells, but hard pass on the indirect effects 3 mana BGH had on the development of HS.
+1
Options
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I think Anivia would be better if there wasn't such a huge glut of Elusive. As other people have pointed out, she has natural counters, they just get destroyed by the rest of the current field.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Anivia isn't useless pre level up. She's a Miss Fortune that hits the back row so even if they don't block they're taking damage. She also has more health. I'm not saying she's holy shit amazing but you can definitely use her, and use her to combo with other removal while you're attacking to take down larger threats.
Kill them faster is all well and good I guess except for the 3 grasp, wail, vile feast, innkeepers, etc. That's just the healing, so you're probably starting at needing to take care of 30+ hp in addition to however much combat damage Braum + poros + other cheap bodies absorb. The elusives at least stand a fighting chance because they get around all the cheap bodies that gum up the board. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all over team "kill them faster" that was my whole jam when people were complaining about unyielding spirit, but those decks didn't also run gobs of healing.
Anivia is a shittier Miss Fortune because she has to attack to get her effect. By the time they can drop a 6 mana unit, you should be able to brick her after one attack without too much difficulty. And if you can't, you were in trouble regardless. And that again highlights the ways in which Anivia decks are at least interactive.
Shittier is a pretty uncharitable read. Different is probably more accurate, there are pros and cons to both things. I'm not argue that she's great before but like, she's not useless and you can double up her ability with a damaging spell to get the extra +1 off of her attack trigger to gain some extra reach.
Plus, worst case scenario even if you get her killed at 6, if you made a trade and bought yourself time, you can just rekindler and hey! You're where you were with an extra body. It's not like Anivia dying isn't part of the plan.
ChaosHat on
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I think poor spell quality is an active design decision and a large part of what drives the creature-centric style of the game. In general the devs seem to want creatures interacting to be a bigger focus than spell based removal.
I'd most like to see defense or value oriented creatures similar to Braum, stuff like
A 'reach' keyword that blocks Elusives
A 'giant' keyword that allows for blocking multiple creatures
A creature that gains Barrier at start of turn if you don't have an attack token
An overstatted creature with Challenger that cannot deal Nexus damage
More creatures like Embermaiden that deal start of turn damage to dodge defensive combat tricks
More creatures like Devourer of the Depths that are hard removal on a stick (similar to the BGH/TBK he mentions but less conditional), and creatures that strike on ETB
That said, some spell effects that would make a lot of sense design wise (and ignoring P&Z/SI which kind of already monopolize removal)
Noxus board wipe with 'Destroy all followers and champions except the one with the highest power'
Noxus spell with 'Two enemies strike each other'
Demacia spell with 'Silence all followers'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal 1 damage to all enemies (insert number here) times'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the number of cards you've Tossed this game'
Bilgewater spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the number of cards you've drawn this turn'
Freljord spell with 'Deal damage to an enemy equal to the health of a follower'
Freljord spell with 'Grant all followers Vulnerable'
Ionia spell with 'Grant all followers negative (insert number here) attack'
Ionia spell with 'Grant a unit "cannot attack" '
I do agree that it's a design decision. I've heard (but never actually seen) that Riot wants this game to be faster than Hearthstone, and the only way you get there is if offense > defense generally, so we're unlikely to see sweeping changes, but they should do something if they want to change the game away from ignoring your opponent to chase your own win con. I realize that the last meta was soooo good but we've seen now that this is a tenuous balance and so it will probably keep cropping up unless they change the structure of the game a little. Not a wide, sweeping change, just some tweaks.
Regarding some of your specific changes, I think reach would be probably too narrow to see play unless it was basically free. Maybe a keyword that had the effect of "can block anything/replace a blocker" and that would give counterplay to challenger units picking weaker/more valuable targets too. Barrier at start of turn with a real low power would be an interesting wall character. Or maybe a slow regen keyword where it would regain just some HP instead of all.
I think a spell effect to temporarily silence a champ would be interesting. I can see how you wouldn't want a permasilence, that feels shitty, but a 1 turn reprieve from Lux or Karma or a lot of other champs might be the difference. I think the rest of those spells could definitely exist and would be fine.
Yeah Purrfection is way too greedy, possibly more so than regular deckbuilding since you can't reliably even draw it. Just hit them in the face CEAAABACAICQIBQEAIBQGBAFA4GACBILDENB4IRHFAVCWMBRGULACAYCAQDQQDANB4IRGFAYDENB4HZDEUTCQLRTG4
Got it on my second try. First run got to 4 wins, but I was trying too hard to force a P&Z/Ionia comp to work. In all my game, I never actually drew 30/30 cat card. Oh well.
My winning run was mostly Frejlord with 7 Noxus cards for extra removal and win conditions (Leviathan/Swain). Each game was a different win. One with Swain, Feels good man. Here's the deck code:
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
My PnZ capsule upgraded to two champs so I got the two Teemos I was missing. I am a single Katarina away from all champions right now, with another PnZ champ capsule available, so I'll have them all in like, a week.
The timeline they gave us on patches went to patch 1.7, so every other week, that brings us to August 5th for 1.7. There would then be one available patch day in August, which is when we're supposed to get the next expansion so that probably drops on the 19th. I have 7 champ wildcards, with an 8th in the PnZ track, and then 7 weeks worth of champ wildcards from the vault, so I should be able to crack at least 15 total champ wilds which is 3 total playsets to start the expansion. I have 14960 shards, and with the chests remaining on the PnZ track I should get to 16.5k. If I continue to diamond all the chests from the vault, I'll get minimum 1500 from each vault so that's another 10k shards in 7 weeks and if I get lucky on some rolls I think it's possible to get close to 30k.
That's a pretty solid war chest for the expansion.
+2
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
Aaaand got my 7th gauntlet win. Went with Noxus/Freljord midrange. Lost maybe...two games along the way? Diciest moment was probably when a guy played a Heimer on 5 with 3 spell mana, and I have the Noxian Fervor in hand. I sat there roping fighting with myself internally. So, does he have Twin Disciplines? If he has it and I fervor him, I get blown the fuck out. But if I let him untap, then he gets access to Deny or Will or Spirit's Refuge mana, and then I'm probably really boned, so like, it's gotta be right the fuck now right? The odds of him having the out right now are pretty low since this is singleton. Fuck fuck fuck this might be the whole game.
And then I did it, and and he sad poro'd and then I won a couple turns later.
The deck overall did great! It's kind of how I like to play this game, win the board with beefy dudes and make good trades and grind them down. Scouts, bannermen, Frel/nox all have that nature to them. It's odd because that's not really how I enjoy magic but I guess the shit I like to do in MTG doesn't really exist in this game.
Cheap removal is part of why HS is bad. Every card has to be a circus of value to justify its existence when it can be plonked so easily. I do agree it feels weird that SI has the only decent aoe spells, but hard pass on the indirect effects 3 mana BGH had on the development of HS.
Counterpoint: MtG regularly prints low cost hard-kill spells. Often they have a drawback or condition, but stuff like Path to Exile still rolls around (the equivalent would be a 1-mana fast obliterate that gives your opponent an empty mana gem).
And in MTG all creatures have regenerate and you don't get free mana, I think HS is a much better source of comparison
0
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I think they could add some fog effects, or fog-esque effects like "enemies hitting your nexus cannot deal more than one damage." That could be interesting as a slow spell too, your opponent would have to commit to an open attack or build the board more.
Played the new Basilisk Rider/Harrowing deck up to Diamond since it seems to be the best midrange option at the moment.
That thing is a such a zen experience, you just play tramplers and open attack every turn.
I'll have to try this. I've recently tumbled down back to near the bottom of Platinum when my Ashe/Sej midrange turned on me and then I floundered a bit trying to find something else that worked.
Also does anyone else like the non-7 win icons for the gauntlets more? I'm torn because I like the simplicity of it but I also want to show off.
Played the new Basilisk Rider/Harrowing deck up to Diamond since it seems to be the best midrange option at the moment.
That thing is a such a zen experience, you just play tramplers and open attack every turn.
I'll have to try this. I've recently tumbled down back to near the bottom of Platinum when my Ashe/Sej midrange turned on me and then I floundered a bit trying to find something else that worked.
Also does anyone else like the non-7 win icons for the gauntlets more? I'm torn because I like the simplicity of it but I also want to show off.
I have never switched from my Catastrophe icon because, like, what could possibly occur that would make that not the best icon? Madness.
+1
Options
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
@Yilias jesus turn 6 harrowing in this deck is consistently DISGUSTING.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Yeah. Multiple times people have attacked into me turn 5 and I blocked to clear the board on both sides. I think they imagined a reprieve from the assault. At first I thought three of them was an insane number but you definitely want to see it every game.
Posts
There are six of the right cards in swim's version at least which isn't some horrible burden. One of them costs four mana. And like, of course it's better to kill the anivia. It's basically better to kill all champs. It's just that most of them will still die to a single removal spell after being rekindled. And they can still do Ruination, they have a much better ability to bounce back thanks to the revival.
Heimer vi is a control/combo deck. Of course that's how it is. Corvina is kill everything and go over the top with endless ledros or Corina. Karma/Lux was kill everything and beat your ass with endless final sparks. They're control decks, the point is to not let you play the game. My problem isn't with that, it's that it felt like those decks made tradeoffs in inevitability, life gain, and damage output and that made it possible to counterplay, to foil their plans.
You can kill Heimer. Bouncing him is a meaningful setback because it will reset his level progress and he needs additional mana to do anything. Even if he goes off, he is weak to make it rain or withering wail, or basically any removal because he spams a lot of X/1s instead of 3/5s.
The problem is that you don't have to do anything for the Anivia game plan. Just living is enough. You can't slow it down or make brilliant plays to prevent it from happening like you can with the other control champs. Karma is another enlightenment level up but she can't just do the whole thing herself usually. She needs a backup champ or a grip full of burn spells to double at your head. And again, she can be killed in one combat, or by one card. She doesn't require double tapping.
Edit: I'll tl;dr my Anivia beefs. 1) Very inherently sticky, she requires at minimum, two cards which isn't a problem in and of itself since many champs are similarly sticky (Vi, Tryn, anyone super fat), but since she requires two cards it gives her more value with revival when combined with her 2) Inevitable level up. There's no interaction with it, no slowing her down, it's just gonna happen. Sure Karma is like that but she isn't 3) very self sufficient. An Anivia doesn't need anything outside of that to pop off but she does obviously close out much faster when there are multiples of her but that's true of most champs, you can draw a good parallel to Gangplank here but he isn't (go to 1).
The odd thing is I don't even think the buff from 7 to 6 is that huge for her because she's such a late game champ. I wonder if she was just slept on and it's the kind of change that got people to seriously try or if it was (probably more likely) the fact that Braum got such a huge buff in stall power.
There are a lot of decks that can beat down Anivia decks, but they get hard countered by Elusives, so they aren’t visible. Like I said earlier, Deep is basically a guaranteed win. I think mono Demacia would wreck as well. Their unit stats allow them to apply pressure and overcome the healing/AoE from the Anivia deck.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
If we take 1 of every card in Heimer/Vi and Ez/Karma we start off with 24 cards; Thermogenic Beam, Health Potion, Jury-Rig, Rummage, Claws of the Dragon, Eye of the Dragon, Mystic Shot, Ezreal, Flash of Brilliance, Get Excited!, Shadow Assassin, Solitary Monk, Twin Disciplines, Concussive Palm, Deny, Gotcha!, Spirit's Refuge, Statikk Shock, Will of Ionia, Deep Meditation, Heimerdinger, Vi, Karma, and Yone.
Subpurrsible and Purrsuit of Perfection are the closest things we have to highlander payoff cards.
Lee Sin, Clump of Whumps, and Chump Whump are playable blockers that fit the 'cares about spells' synergy.
Greenglade Duo, Amateur Aeronaut, Kinkou Lifeblade and Yusari are mediocre but playable additional elusives.
That leaves room for 7 more spells. Insight of Ages, Ki Guardian, Sonic Wave, Vault Breaker, Ritual of Renewal, and Progress Day are 6 decent options, but I'm very unsure about the last card. Dawn and Dusk is a bit of a meme but would win games if it resolved. Dragon's Rage is removal and burn but pretty expensive. Stand United, Suit Up!, and Retreat all offer protection for creatures, but are so much less interesting.
Thoughts?
I think the elusive problem is Greenglade Duo but nerfing down to 1 attack probably doesn't do that much in the long run? I actually feel like Navori Bladescout is kind of a problem too because his drawback isn't really that high considering there are two bodies that will bounce him back to hand, and because of that he interacts so favorably with Duo. I'd really hate to nerf that though because I think finding synergies and turning downsides into upsides is like, what the game should be about.
I feel like Ez/Karma are pretty hurt from a lack of redundancy among the damage spells in two ways. 1) Ezreal needs to target to actually level up and then 2) sometimes you need to point those spells at their dome for the finisher.
Heimer I feel like is a little bit hardier to singleton because you can run those Highlander payoffs and slot them in pretty seamlessly into the deck plan and the free bodies will always be a good idea regardless of the bodies you're getting. It will also probably be easier to keep Heimer alive, in singleton the number of answers for him will be much fewer. This is probably the way to go I think.
I'm not sure I'll try the gauntlet that much this week, I'm kind of more committed to trying to get the hell out of mid platinum right now.
I think this LoR competitive post is a pretty good example of something that's wrong with the game that I hadn't considered before but makes total sense. It describes why we keep having these issues with aggro decks being super uninteractive.
The tl:dr is that removal is bad in this game, specifically conditional hard removal. Pre-nerf Boomcrew Rookie and post-buff Basilisk Rider are his examples. What are you going to do to not take damage from from it on curve? Literally only culling strike, if you have banked mana. What about Basilisk Rider? Maybe you have an 4/X, but you're still going to get hit. Maybe you banked mana for a Vengeance on 4. That's...about it. They're going to get in for damage most likely no matter what you do or what answer you have (on curve). He's calling for more shit like Big Game Hunter from Hearthstone, hard removal but not a silver bullet. Something that's cheaper because it affects a subset. Hard removal is important because buffs are burst speed in this game so you can just get countered back. There's also a severe lack of cheap, effective AoE removal. You have Avalanche, Wail, and...Ruination? There's no 4 damage Avalanche for more mana. I'd be interested to see what everyone else thinks, and what conditional stuff you could add to the factions without homogenizing everything.
4 mana just to replicate an Anivia for next turn, at best, is very slow. And Anivia is basically useless pre-level-up too. She's a big late-game bomb if you spend the mana and turns to replicate her a few times. The counter is to kill them first. It's a very slow deck. You aren't dropping an Anivia bomb till like turn 10-12 usually, at minimum. That's a long damn time to beat someone down. If midrange decks were still viable against the current aggro meta you wouldn't even see this shit imo because it's so slow.
And that slowness is the trade-off being made and the fact that it involves having to play for board control is why it just doesn't feel as bad as something like Heimer/Vi imo. Anivia/Braum has to contest the board and slow you down with units and trade efficiently until the bomb can go off. Ultra control decks are just like 6+ turns of "No, fuck yourself, you don't get to play cards" and then they kill you. And Heimer/Vi slathers on a layer of elusives just to make it more irritating. Cause even if they do play units, you can't interact with them.
Kill them faster is all well and good I guess except for the 3 grasp, wail, vile feast, innkeepers, etc. That's just the healing, so you're probably starting at needing to take care of 30+ hp in addition to however much combat damage Braum + poros + other cheap bodies absorb. The elusives at least stand a fighting chance because they get around all the cheap bodies that gum up the board. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all over team "kill them faster" that was my whole jam when people were complaining about unyielding spirit, but those decks didn't also run gobs of healing.
Anivia is a shittier Miss Fortune because she has to attack to get her effect. By the time they can drop a 6 mana unit, you should be able to brick her after one attack without too much difficulty. And if you can't, you were in trouble regardless. And that again highlights the ways in which Anivia decks are at least interactive.
I'd most like to see defense or value oriented creatures similar to Braum, stuff like
That said, some spell effects that would make a lot of sense design wise (and ignoring P&Z/SI which kind of already monopolize removal)
I think he's definitely highlighted one of the key factors here. Although the way he frames it highlights a specific solution to that, whereas I think the problem is just more general with some design decisions for the game overall. Basically, the lack of removal is a problem because of other decisions and is a way to solve it but not the only way.
They seem to have made a deliberate design decision to make removal more costly and limited then in other games, I think in order to encourage more units-on-board play. They also set up the region system with fairly specific flavours to each. I think these two things are good design goals abstractly. But the way they interact with things like elusives (ie - units on board that you can't interact with outside specific spells) suddenly you run into issues. And it's not just elusives, units that emphasize burn go here too for example.
They set up the game to not have a ton of spell->enemy unit interaction and then designed units that can only be interacted with via spells. It's a pretty obvious problem I think.
And then this becomes compounded by the region system leaving a lot of the options to deal with those kind of threats confined to only specific regions. Which is good in some ways because it means you can go up against a specific region and know the tools they can have. If you are facing a Demacia/Freljord deck, you know they don't have specific kinds of removal just from the region tag. But it also means certain combinations don't really work against non-interactive strategies.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Shittier is a pretty uncharitable read. Different is probably more accurate, there are pros and cons to both things. I'm not argue that she's great before but like, she's not useless and you can double up her ability with a damaging spell to get the extra +1 off of her attack trigger to gain some extra reach.
Plus, worst case scenario even if you get her killed at 6, if you made a trade and bought yourself time, you can just rekindler and hey! You're where you were with an extra body. It's not like Anivia dying isn't part of the plan.
I do agree that it's a design decision. I've heard (but never actually seen) that Riot wants this game to be faster than Hearthstone, and the only way you get there is if offense > defense generally, so we're unlikely to see sweeping changes, but they should do something if they want to change the game away from ignoring your opponent to chase your own win con. I realize that the last meta was soooo good but we've seen now that this is a tenuous balance and so it will probably keep cropping up unless they change the structure of the game a little. Not a wide, sweeping change, just some tweaks.
Regarding some of your specific changes, I think reach would be probably too narrow to see play unless it was basically free. Maybe a keyword that had the effect of "can block anything/replace a blocker" and that would give counterplay to challenger units picking weaker/more valuable targets too. Barrier at start of turn with a real low power would be an interesting wall character. Or maybe a slow regen keyword where it would regain just some HP instead of all.
I think a spell effect to temporarily silence a champ would be interesting. I can see how you wouldn't want a permasilence, that feels shitty, but a 1 turn reprieve from Lux or Karma or a lot of other champs might be the difference. I think the rest of those spells could definitely exist and would be fine.
At this point I'm feeling like we need a rotation system starting on Tuesday, just so we can remove Ionia. :P
Opponents were
Mono SI
Mono Frel
P&Z/Ionia
Mono SI
Mono Noxus (Loss)
P&Z/Ionia
P&Z/Demacia
Mono SI
Not sure why so many mono decks, seems like it would be hard to hit allegiance cards and you have to dig a lot deeper into the dregs of the card pool.
If it makes you feel any better, my Avorosan Outrider just hit...a Lonely Poro. :biggrin:
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Got it on my second try. First run got to 4 wins, but I was trying too hard to force a P&Z/Ionia comp to work. In all my game, I never actually drew 30/30 cat card. Oh well.
My winning run was mostly Frejlord with 7 Noxus cards for extra removal and win conditions (Leviathan/Swain). Each game was a different win. One with Swain, Feels good man. Here's the deck code:
CEAAABADAEBQICZBAQBAGAIDA4EQMAQBAICQMBYIBINQCAIDAQDQQCILBYJBIFQYDUPCIJJGE4UCSKROGAYTENBWHA
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Dusk and Dawn is apparently not a throw card in a format where every deck has like 2 cards total that can respond to it.
The timeline they gave us on patches went to patch 1.7, so every other week, that brings us to August 5th for 1.7. There would then be one available patch day in August, which is when we're supposed to get the next expansion so that probably drops on the 19th. I have 7 champ wildcards, with an 8th in the PnZ track, and then 7 weeks worth of champ wildcards from the vault, so I should be able to crack at least 15 total champ wilds which is 3 total playsets to start the expansion. I have 14960 shards, and with the chests remaining on the PnZ track I should get to 16.5k. If I continue to diamond all the chests from the vault, I'll get minimum 1500 from each vault so that's another 10k shards in 7 weeks and if I get lucky on some rolls I think it's possible to get close to 30k.
That's a pretty solid war chest for the expansion.
And then I did it, and and he sad poro'd and then I won a couple turns later.
The deck overall did great! It's kind of how I like to play this game, win the board with beefy dudes and make good trades and grind them down. Scouts, bannermen, Frel/nox all have that nature to them. It's odd because that's not really how I enjoy magic but I guess the shit I like to do in MTG doesn't really exist in this game.
Counterpoint: MtG regularly prints low cost hard-kill spells. Often they have a drawback or condition, but stuff like Path to Exile still rolls around (the equivalent would be a 1-mana fast obliterate that gives your opponent an empty mana gem).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
That thing is a such a zen experience, you just play tramplers and open attack every turn.
Yes! Got it 7-0 on my second attempt with the same deck.
I played Shadow Isles & Freljord.
Elise
Kalista
Braum
Ashe
Sejuani
Anivia
Nothing too special really, basically what you'd expect seeing those champions. Lots of removal, lots of Last Breath, a bunch of Frostbite.
I'll have to try this. I've recently tumbled down back to near the bottom of Platinum when my Ashe/Sej midrange turned on me and then I floundered a bit trying to find something else that worked.
Also does anyone else like the non-7 win icons for the gauntlets more? I'm torn because I like the simplicity of it but I also want to show off.
I have never switched from my Catastrophe icon because, like, what could possibly occur that would make that not the best icon? Madness.
Ps4 : Gigawatt666
Steam I.D. : Gigawatt666
LoL : GiG4W4TT