ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Yep. The decision to open attack or build your board and then swing is maybe the most interesting thing about aggro in Runeterra that separates it from Magic. Do you try and expand the board and maximize your damage knowing your opponent will get to play another unit? You have to know what your opponent has in their deck and also keep track of how many things they've played in order to make that calculation well. If you're ahead on board and play a unit and then they drop House Spider you just got blown out in a lot of cases. I also think aggro requires knowing the odds extremely well and being confident that you made the best decision with the information available. Sometimes it is correct to go all in on a 50/50 or a 40/60 knowing that not going for it is certain doom anyways. It will feel really bad when they have it and you have to shrug that off!
Karma/Lux also has a lot of decisions, but many of them are non decisions. A lot of people confuse many decisions being better or more skill testing, but if the decisions don't matter or aren't real decisions, then what have you tested? Open attack or not? Removal to the dome or clear board? All of these decisions have less options but each can be excruciating, high impact, and skill testing. Think about the Lee Sin overwhelm deck that was in vogue for a hot minute. You got to play lots of cards! Yeah! You must be doing things and making hard choices instead of just playing units on curve. But the play pattern is very linear and gave less of a shit about what your opponent was doing since their units don't matter when you can kick them into their nexus and overwhelm through for double damage. In every deck with Eye of the Dragon, there is never a choice on turn 2, you are always playing your Eye of the Dragon on curve.
And again, it's not "lol control decks are really the easy ones noobs" it's that archetype does not correlate with skill or play difficulty.
thats why i just get to diamond and screw around with deckbuilding to see what works at what doesn't. i cant drop below diamond now, but i sure as hell can throw rogue decks at people to keep them from masters lol.
i totally ran into someone earlier who outrogued the fuck out of me though. it was a zoe/aphelios deck. but i got wrecked by Out of the way, lamb's respite, and darkwater scourge. ill let you do the math why i lost.
all you get for ranked rewards is prismatics? that's not an incentive
why do you need incentives to play the video game
incentives to play ranked. if that's all their giving me for wading into it I'm better off ignoring it
I made it to masters when the only reward was a dumb icon that was also not even the best icon out of all the ranked icons. And we liked it! We loved it!
Honestly isn't this the best way for it to be though? I feel like I see more people complaining "why do I have to play ranked for all the cool rewards." Do what you want, play however you want.
Hearthstone gives cumulative rewards based on where you finished the season. If you reach Legendary, this is what you get:
7 Standard Rare cards, 1 Standard Epic card, 5 card packs from the latest expansion, and the monthly card back.
That's 48 cards and a card back. That kind of sucks in it's own way, but I suppose the two games have very different economies. Getting Prismatic stuff and the Icon kind of sucks too, but I'm not sure what else they add. They basically give away all the cards, and their primary source of income is cosmetics.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
y'know i do what i can to make every bucket work but boy the lissandra/taliyah bucket is a pile
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Made it to gold on the back of LeBlanc/Sivir almost entirely. Such a satisfying deck. Sivir is really much better than I initially expected, the spell shield does so much work for her. It lets you block pretty comfortably knowing if she gets down to 1 or 2 health she's not going to be trivially pinged away. LeBlanc is definitely the weak link of the two but she eats a lot of removal for other targets and if she doesn't then she also smashes faces in. Her hero spell has also come in pretty clutch a lot. I also like how they're both champions where attack order matters, just a little bit of extra thinking available to you and some trade offs to weigh.
i think the single card im most impressed with of the expansion is ruin runner. that thing is a house that closes out games, especially if you toss a couple shaped stone and/or sharpsights on it.
i think the single card im most impressed with of the expansion is ruin runner. that thing is a house that closes out games, especially if you toss a couple shaped stone and/or sharpsights on it.
Ruin Runner is in many ways the second actual champion in the Sivir/LeBlanc deck. Very hard to remove, tramples through for damage. I've won a lot of games using a shaped stone and/or the one sided fight spell on it to clear it's own blocker.
I was theorycrafting a new Shurima champ in my head and I kept coming around to a Control concept. The idea would be that once you flipped your champ, you'd get this text:
When I level up, grant your Nexus "Round Start: Summon a Rolling Sands. If I already have one, instead Drain 5 on the enemy Nexus."
Not sure if that would be any good, but I know that Rolling Sands is a really good card which makes for impractical plays by your opponent. If they try and play around it by not putting out a unit, their Nexus gets wiped out over time.
Of course, a lot of this concept would hinge on the viability of the champ's first form and how hard it is to flip. Regardless, theorycrafting is fun!
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I was theorycrafting a new Shurima champ in my head and I kept coming around to a Control concept. The idea would be that once you flipped your champ, you'd get this text:
When I level up, grant your Nexus "Round Start: Summon a Rolling Sands. If I already have one, instead Drain 5 on the enemy Nexus."
Not sure if that would be any good, but I know that Rolling Sands is a really good card which makes for impractical plays by your opponent. If they try and play around it by not putting out a unit, their Nexus gets wiped out over time.
Of course, a lot of this concept would hinge on the viability of the champ's first form and how hard it is to flip. Regardless, theorycrafting is fun!
I mean that level up form seems very strong, it's going to very quickly end the game while providing a lot of healing. It would be hard to come back from, that's a lot of inevitability.
I was theorycrafting a new Shurima champ in my head and I kept coming around to a Control concept. The idea would be that once you flipped your champ, you'd get this text:
When I level up, grant your Nexus "Round Start: Summon a Rolling Sands. If I already have one, instead Drain 5 on the enemy Nexus."
Not sure if that would be any good, but I know that Rolling Sands is a really good card which makes for impractical plays by your opponent. If they try and play around it by not putting out a unit, their Nexus gets wiped out over time.
Of course, a lot of this concept would hinge on the viability of the champ's first form and how hard it is to flip. Regardless, theorycrafting is fun!
I mean that level up form seems very strong, it's going to very quickly end the game while providing a lot of healing. It would be hard to come back from, that's a lot of inevitability.
I feel like it's on par with a lot of other inevitable champion flips. It has play around by dropping a unit every turn to avoid the 5 damage, but you'll be pressured to play inefficiently.
Edit: perhaps it could just deal damage instead of Draining. Or only do 4 instead. I definitely want it to feel like a timer though.
MNC Dover on
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Deal damage instead of drain is probably more fair. You can still try to go over the top and end the game. A level up 10 life swing is super hard to overcome. This is a little better than a free decimate a round which is still quite a bit but maybe a bit more fair. I wonder if you'd go with it as an aggro finisher or a control inevitability finisher. Would really depend on costs/stats/flip condition.
Fair enough. Now I might have to craft up the card for fun.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I feel like the obvious thing is to give it quick attack, but then is it just Shurima Kindred? Maybe a tough or regen based character with low power would be an interesting way to take it. Trades profitably but not with total impunity. But then is it just Braum? Ehhh.
I feel like a 2/5 tough "when I'm summoned summon a Roiling Sands" and "When you've made x units vulnerable, I level up" would maybe be interesting.
Well, I tried to design with my above concept and looked up the Shurima champions, finally landing on Amumu. But after reading his lore, I came up with a new concept. It sort of incorporates my old idea, but tries to incorporate the "death touch" curse Amumu has on him. Since he lived a life of solitude and fear, I felt it very thematic that he'd never attack and level after being ignored. I accomplish this by giving him Immobile so he can't interact and Vulnerable so the enemy can always choose to "ignore" him if they want.
Anyway, here's the idea:
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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0
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
That's a unique take with the can't attack and the level up trigger. I think he might end up being very binary. Some decks will be able to deal with Amumu pretty well and some won't and he'll wreck their day. I do like how his ability punishes Quick/Double Attack. Since his ability can really only trigger every other turn (without rally triggers) I actually think it could go back up in power when he's leveled. Five every other turn (maybe) isn't actually that fast a clock and he's very weak to decks that can shit out lots of small tokens.
I like the idea of being ignored as a mechanic but making him immobile creates weird pacing and slows his clock hugely.
Let him swing in as an obnoxious block of HP and if he's not blocked that's a tick. Then make it like 3 turns of being ignored to level and dial back the effect a bit more.
At that point he's kind of similar to a defensive Kindred where you enable gross attrition and threaten a terrifying (if slow) level up clock.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Amumu is also an initiator in LoL (Although maybe not? It's been ages since I've played) so his super passive style is kind of funny compared to that.
I've been trying Ashe/LeBlanc just to mix it up some and I don't think it's as good as the Sivir version because Sivir is a house and just so so strong. It's funny how she was pretty low on my initial interest tier list and has become probably the second coolest champion thus far.
and not running shurima also means you arent running ruin runner who is like mini sivir. i think ashe leblanc has some good matchups just due to having the freezes, but also has some weak ones due to no spellshield.
and not running shurima also means you arent running ruin runner who is like mini sivir. i think ashe leblanc has some good matchups just due to having the freezes, but also has some weak ones due to no spellshield.
The spellshield is so good but Ashe is also way more fragile since she doesn't have quick attack. What happens when they have two big dudes? A lot of the time you can't even swing with Ashe since she'll trade with the other body, and that means she's providing no value. I can see how Ashe would lead into stronger closeouts with the unblockability if you get there, but Ruin Runner can be pseudo unblockable by just killing the thing in front of it. I also haven't run into the dream of cloning Ashe which I imagine is good if rare.
I do think LeBlanc could be a touch better, I think it's kind of silly that both sides of her are "I've seen" since it means you have to get to 30 total damage to trigger her clone one time but she's fine. I think she could give you the damn clone on level up, or lessen the damage requirement for subsequent cards. She's not bad she's just boring and kind of suffers how Vi did in that she doesn't really feel like a champion imo.
finished all the lab of legends except heimerdinger because fuck heimerdinger. saved the easiest for last with lucian, quick attack makes things so much easier
Also, and I hate to say this, but I think balance patches need to be more frequent than 4 weeks. I get not shaking things up too much since Shurima just dropped, but not hitting TF in some way made this next wait more difficult.
I feel like the seasonal tournaments might be effecting balance changes. That would really suck if that's the case. I know some of you here are big into the tournament stuff, but I don't like the idea of it slowing down overdue changes. Players can and should have to adjust to changes in the meta on the fly.
MNC Dover on
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
pretty sure TF/fizz is still better then any new deck the expansion realized - and they mentioned TF being too strong right now due to the addition of stress testing. Problem is there is no stat change they can make to TF and the correct balance change is just remove stress testing basically, upping the number of cards he needs to draw would just kinda force you to play only hyper draw decks
I'd say 4 of the top 5 decks are pre expansion decks, it's been a low impact expansion at the top.
TF Fizz (no new cards)
Aphelios Invoke (Star Tipped Peak with Zoe, Unto Dusk with Diana, nothing new with TF)
Fiora Shen (Golden Aegis)
Zoe Lee (no new cards)
Liss Trundle
And part of why Liss Trundle is top 5 is because it's like 90-10 favored into TF Fizz.
I think the slower rate of balance is less the seasonals and more that they're expecting the content releases to be comparable to balance patches. Which is sometimes true (see how impactful Aphelios and his half a dozen cards are, or when KDA added Go Hard and FTR), but can also miss the mark (Ionia's gone months without a new playable card, Nopeify was in October!)
pretty sure TF/fizz is still better then any new deck the expansion realized - and they mentioned TF being too strong right now due to the addition of stress testing. Problem is there is no stat change they can make to TF and the correct balance change is just remove stress testing basically, upping the number of cards he needs to draw would just kinda force you to play only hyper draw decks
Swim's site had Fizz/TF as still the top deck after the patch dropped except the description now read "Why are you really playing this on the first day of a new patch? What kind of degenerate are you?" or something to that effect.
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Karma/Lux also has a lot of decisions, but many of them are non decisions. A lot of people confuse many decisions being better or more skill testing, but if the decisions don't matter or aren't real decisions, then what have you tested? Open attack or not? Removal to the dome or clear board? All of these decisions have less options but each can be excruciating, high impact, and skill testing. Think about the Lee Sin overwhelm deck that was in vogue for a hot minute. You got to play lots of cards! Yeah! You must be doing things and making hard choices instead of just playing units on curve. But the play pattern is very linear and gave less of a shit about what your opponent was doing since their units don't matter when you can kick them into their nexus and overwhelm through for double damage. In every deck with Eye of the Dragon, there is never a choice on turn 2, you are always playing your Eye of the Dragon on curve.
And again, it's not "lol control decks are really the easy ones noobs" it's that archetype does not correlate with skill or play difficulty.
why do you need incentives to play the video game
thats why i just get to diamond and screw around with deckbuilding to see what works at what doesn't. i cant drop below diamond now, but i sure as hell can throw rogue decks at people to keep them from masters lol.
i totally ran into someone earlier who outrogued the fuck out of me though. it was a zoe/aphelios deck. but i got wrecked by Out of the way, lamb's respite, and darkwater scourge. ill let you do the math why i lost.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
incentives to play ranked. if that's all their giving me for wading into it I'm better off ignoring it
Ladder is primarily a prestige thing though. If you've got nothing to prove then unranked has easier opponents, so you get to win more.
I made it to masters when the only reward was a dumb icon that was also not even the best icon out of all the ranked icons. And we liked it! We loved it!
Honestly isn't this the best way for it to be though? I feel like I see more people complaining "why do I have to play ranked for all the cool rewards." Do what you want, play however you want.
7 Standard Rare cards, 1 Standard Epic card, 5 card packs from the latest expansion, and the monthly card back.
That's 48 cards and a card back. That kind of sucks in it's own way, but I suppose the two games have very different economies. Getting Prismatic stuff and the Icon kind of sucks too, but I'm not sure what else they add. They basically give away all the cards, and their primary source of income is cosmetics.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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That would be cool, but sort of pointless for players that have acquired most everything, which will be everyone given a few months of play.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Fucking ridiculous.
Anyway, ran into a super stupid deck that exploits a huge bug in Sun Disk leveling to super-fast ascend all your champs. That was "fun".
Is that the double sundisk bug? It's quite known and should get fixed soon. Does that deck even work or is it luck based?
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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It certainly can work.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
Ruin Runner is in many ways the second actual champion in the Sivir/LeBlanc deck. Very hard to remove, tramples through for damage. I've won a lot of games using a shaped stone and/or the one sided fight spell on it to clear it's own blocker.
When I level up, grant your Nexus "Round Start: Summon a Rolling Sands. If I already have one, instead Drain 5 on the enemy Nexus."
Not sure if that would be any good, but I know that Rolling Sands is a really good card which makes for impractical plays by your opponent. If they try and play around it by not putting out a unit, their Nexus gets wiped out over time.
Of course, a lot of this concept would hinge on the viability of the champ's first form and how hard it is to flip. Regardless, theorycrafting is fun!
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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I mean that level up form seems very strong, it's going to very quickly end the game while providing a lot of healing. It would be hard to come back from, that's a lot of inevitability.
I feel like it's on par with a lot of other inevitable champion flips. It has play around by dropping a unit every turn to avoid the 5 damage, but you'll be pressured to play inefficiently.
Edit: perhaps it could just deal damage instead of Draining. Or only do 4 instead. I definitely want it to feel like a timer though.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
I feel like a 2/5 tough "when I'm summoned summon a Roiling Sands" and "When you've made x units vulnerable, I level up" would maybe be interesting.
Anyway, here's the idea:
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Twitch Page
Let him swing in as an obnoxious block of HP and if he's not blocked that's a tick. Then make it like 3 turns of being ignored to level and dial back the effect a bit more.
At that point he's kind of similar to a defensive Kindred where you enable gross attrition and threaten a terrifying (if slow) level up clock.
I've been trying Ashe/LeBlanc just to mix it up some and I don't think it's as good as the Sivir version because Sivir is a house and just so so strong. It's funny how she was pretty low on my initial interest tier list and has become probably the second coolest champion thus far.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
The spellshield is so good but Ashe is also way more fragile since she doesn't have quick attack. What happens when they have two big dudes? A lot of the time you can't even swing with Ashe since she'll trade with the other body, and that means she's providing no value. I can see how Ashe would lead into stronger closeouts with the unblockability if you get there, but Ruin Runner can be pseudo unblockable by just killing the thing in front of it. I also haven't run into the dream of cloning Ashe which I imagine is good if rare.
I do think LeBlanc could be a touch better, I think it's kind of silly that both sides of her are "I've seen" since it means you have to get to 30 total damage to trigger her clone one time but she's fine. I think she could give you the damn clone on level up, or lessen the damage requirement for subsequent cards. She's not bad she's just boring and kind of suffers how Vi did in that she doesn't really feel like a champion imo.
March 31 - Lab of Legends Upgrade
April 14 - 1 Year Anniversary
April 17 - Last Chance Gauntlet
April 23 - Ladder Cutoff for Seasonal
April 24 - Seasonal Open Rounds
May 01 - Seasonal Playoffs
May 05 - Season Ends
May 05 - New Set (Guardians of the Ancient)
May 19 - New Event
Also, and I hate to say this, but I think balance patches need to be more frequent than 4 weeks. I get not shaking things up too much since Shurima just dropped, but not hitting TF in some way made this next wait more difficult.
I feel like the seasonal tournaments might be effecting balance changes. That would really suck if that's the case. I know some of you here are big into the tournament stuff, but I don't like the idea of it slowing down overdue changes. Players can and should have to adjust to changes in the meta on the fly.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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TF Fizz (no new cards)
Aphelios Invoke (Star Tipped Peak with Zoe, Unto Dusk with Diana, nothing new with TF)
Fiora Shen (Golden Aegis)
Zoe Lee (no new cards)
Liss Trundle
And part of why Liss Trundle is top 5 is because it's like 90-10 favored into TF Fizz.
I think the slower rate of balance is less the seasonals and more that they're expecting the content releases to be comparable to balance patches. Which is sometimes true (see how impactful Aphelios and his half a dozen cards are, or when KDA added Go Hard and FTR), but can also miss the mark (Ionia's gone months without a new playable card, Nopeify was in October!)
Swim's site had Fizz/TF as still the top deck after the patch dropped except the description now read "Why are you really playing this on the first day of a new patch? What kind of degenerate are you?" or something to that effect.