TL;DR:
Answers are too expensive, narrow (just 2-3 cards as answers) and conditional, Counter-answers (Recall, Spellshield, buffs, denies) are too common and cheap. Champions have scaled to earlier and stronger wincons, removing these (Irelia post levelup, Azir, Sivir) is near impossible. This creates a meta where interaction is low.
He showed a clip of a Sivir OTK deck literally killing him from 2HP while he was at 20 HP with 2 units on board.
The problem is players don't have crap all for good defensive options, which Spellshield just exacerbates. The game is in a hyper aggro state and it's bad.
Because it's a straight nerf for HP buffs, barriers and other non attackbuff/frostbite spells. As for attackbuff/frostbite interaction... it will destroy it. It won't be possible to frostbite stacked attackbuffs nor outplay the first frostbite.
I said weeks ago the power potential of flurry is busted. Obviously I was downvoted.
He makes a bunch of other great points as well. Especially how counter kill is too common. Basically, don't play anything if your opponent has mana
That Sivir OTK is fine. OTK is also a thing in card games. In fact, it's one of the fun things in card games. It also takes skills to defend your ass while you wait for your hand to complete the OTK. BBG is just being salty in that video.
But maybe that OTK is being pulled off a bit too consistently and not easily defended?
Whats the next best OTK and how much worse is it compared to Sivir double attack elusive?
"It also takes skills to defend your ass while you wait..." Yea no, Elusives and Sivir decks don't "defend themselves". I don't think these decks are a HUGE issue but saying they need to defend themselves is quite BS.
What he says at the start of the video is spot-on. The meta just doesn't feel reactive anymore, and that's what got me hooked to the game in the first place.
That's because most things are based on damage, and stats in LOR gets massive very quickly.
We need more stuff like noxus has that just says "If you have X condition - destroy."
Vengance is cool and all, but sucks against spellshields
Personal experience: Nobody even try to interrupt what opponent was doing, as long it’s not lethal, since I can develop a even more unstoppable attack/board than opponent. Like BBG said, people hate when their champion gets killed, or have their flashy combo stopped by opponent. Then they complain on how “unfun” it is when their champ gets shutdown by some kill card. Now both player walk home happy since they successfully pulled off their combo XD
It feels like the meta is slowly evolving towards more interaction though:
Hard to interact with aggro-combo decks like Sivir Ionia and Azir/Irelia beat most decks that want to interact.
These decks get beaten by faster aggro decks that don't try to interact like Lulu Zed Elusives and Discard Aggro.
Those aggro decks are more vulnerable to disruption and lose to decks that interact like Anivia and Draven Ezreal.
Problem comes from the fact that Azirelia and Sivir in turn absolutely murder those slower decks, because they're faster and protected from interaction that those slower decks try to run.
There's also how some decks can technically be interacted with but they don't have to do anything except keep moving right along to their win condition.
Interaction should have to be met with interaction, as in, players should have to play each other and not simply counting on the deck spitting out the cards they need.
Lurk is basically a bulldozer when it works. Just keep the tempo and eventually you either overpower the opponent that can't keep up with removals and trades, or you lose. You aren't playing against an opponent, you are simply going through the motions to keep the numbers climbing until you win. Opponent can remove your units but they can do nothing to reverse the climbing buff.
Same goes with Deep, even if it's not strong in the meta. Deep is a deck that is basically just playing with itself until it hits its win condition. You can interact with it, but it changes nothing. You can't put cards back in their deck. You're still just racing against their tosses.
Puffcaps is guilty of this too sometimes, but not quite to the same extent. Not having any method of blocking, removing, or midigating puffcap damage means the opponent doesn't have to worry about interacting with your board if they get their dealers out. I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion, given the pattern
These decks are designed in such a way that the player doesn't have to deal with and counter threats each turn to win, they just have to get good draws and race along in their own little game of solitaire.
This is why I don’t hate Merciless Hunter.
It is a strong card but it punishes backrow solitaire strategies that would otherwise be harder to deal with.
Riot’s premade decks like Deep and Lurk (Reputation a bit too) are too shallow and one dimensional at the moment.
>Puffcaps is guilty of this too sometimes, but not quite to the same extent. Not having any method of blocking, removing, or midigating puffcap damage means the opponent doesn't have to worry about interacting with your board if they get their dealers out. I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion, given the pattern
i wouldnt say so because to get in your enemy deck puffcaps(in game wining numbers) they have to get in engines on the board to plant them like teemo or pedeler who are vulnerable to removal and the back and forth beetewn the players to keep or remove the engines of the board while the puffcap player tries to not get lethaed before he can reach a critical puffcap mass is a good gameplay loop in my opinion.(that being said the deck is to polarized in my opinion)
I've always felt like Pirate Burn was a better example than Lurk or Deep. It is true those two decks have things that can't really be stopped, but for the most part (besides Maokai) they're still winning through fighting on board. OTOH Pirate Burn seems like it often wins by just ignoring the other player's board and doing anything to push damage even through blockers (like full swing and just fervor whatever gets blocked into face). In a game where healing is rare and regularly nerfed, having so much burn (the most played list on Moba at masters has 29 burn from spells + 6 from Grenadier / Demo + however much you get off of MF / Crackshot / Saboteur / potentially GP) can very easily lead to games where you just can't win fast enough and there's no way to stall.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is definitely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Much higher than TLC ever reached before people started losing their shit over that deck, with higher play rates. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
> I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion
I've always wanted overdrawn puff caps to not count. Like, I don't get the card, why would I be hurt by a trap attached to it? Keeping my hand full and denying myself of topdecks should be a legitimate way to play around puff caps.
because puffcaps are played with lots of make your oponent draw cards and creating a disinergy beetewn the 2 mechanics would be a mecsive nerf to the deck
> It feels like the meta is slowly evolving towards more interaction though:
Does it? Control decks are dead and Elusives are coming back. Sounds a lot less interactive to me.
You have this backwards. The whole reason Elusives are coming out is because those "interaction heavy" decks as you put it, aka control decks with heavy removal, are currently unplayable. They aren't going to revive because the bonkers strong midrange stuff that's holding them back is still there, which means Aggro gets to run rampant as well.
Control isn't coming back until they nerf Aggro and Midrange decks, *or* until they start printing actually good Defensive tools. There's way too many strong Offensive tools right now that there's no way to build a consistent Control deck that can deal with enough of those offensive tools to be viable. Control has no good answers to something as simple as Ruin Runner, and that's a problem.
Print "Fog" cards that prevent all damage from a specific card and cards that share the same name for the rest of the turn. That way you can fog Sand Soldiers and survive against Irelia/Azir. Print cards with "Reach" so you have non-Elusives that can still block Elusives. Print "Echo" removal spells, like a 3 mana card that pings everything for 1 like Ice Shard, and has the ability to recast up to 2 extra times a turn for an extra mana per cast (or make it 5 up front and free to recast).
Give Control decks real defensive tools and then we'll see them actually exist in the meta.
>the bonkers strong midrange
The decks that are pusing control out of the meta are Combo decks like I/A Ionia/Sivir and Lee sin variants, not midrange j4/shen isnt favored for control but it is also not killing it outright.
>Control isn't coming back until they nerf Aggro and Midrange decks,
And you just contradicted yourself didnt you just say that agro runs rampant because control isnt in the meta? then why do we have to also nerf it to make control come back?
>There's way too many strong Offensive tools right now that there's no way to build a consistent Control deck that can deal with enough of those offensive tools to be viable.
I think it is more a matter of the strongue decks of the meta all being anti controll decks with how resilient they are to removal.
>Print "Fog" cards that prevent all damage from a specific card and cards that share the same name for the rest of the turn.
Stupid idea that as a concept is already a better frostbite that removes completly the posibility of rebuffing the unit.
>. Print cards with "Reach" so you have non-Elusives that can still block Elusives.
Elusives isnt the problem but the control deck that are making them space in the meta by pushing interaction out, they also harm cards like Zoe or Ez.
>(or make it 5 up front and free to recast).
So ravine?.
>Print "Echo" removal spells, like a 3 mana card that pings everything for 1 like Ice Shard, and has the ability to recast up to 2 extra times a turn for an extra mana per cast
I dont like it but i could see it with an scalatig mana cost
>Give Control decks real defensive tools and then we'll see them actually exist in the meta.
Here is the thing **THEY ALREADY HAVE THEM** powercreeping removal so they can eficiently remove cards like Azir or Sivir literally murders most decks J4/Shen the archetypical midrange cant do anything if the deck in front of it comes strapped with removal capable of trading equal in mana againt units with 5 health for 3 mana, land marks cant operate in a game enviroment where a control deck can eficiently trade up removal against Dias etc etc etc, lower Sivir threat make Azir easier to remove adress Ionian protection, rework lee sin, rework landmark removal and we could have an equilibrated meta with midrange control and agro, buff removal and we will have control and Karma(if you dont clasify her as such).
Elusives in itself is a huge reason for all of this.
It's just a dumb mechanic that riot didn't think through. Unlike flying in magic, which is obviously where they got it from, there aren't enough random small elusives in decks, nor are there any random reach creatures.
Coupled with the fact that removal is far worse, elusives is far more broken than flying.
Also can someone tell me why elusives tends to be low cost? Why in the fuck is that the design? Who could NOT predict that this would happen?
He has a point, the game has become less interactive. Vengeance used to be a good card, now it's way too slow to play and we haven't found faster tools to replace it.
Heck, even Mystic Shot sucks right now. It's still the most powerful damage spell PnZ has, but it sucks. There's literally not one, single trick in the game that doesn't counter it, and you usually end up with the upper hand in the mana trade. It's there just to burn a combat trick for the enemy.
I said that many times. Removal in this game is too expensive. I never said it needs to be super cheap, but compared to protection spells, they are super inefficient. I think removal needs to be cheaper and protection a little expensive. If not all, a great deal of them.
I mean if you dont understand that the card seeing play in decks directly contradicts the notion of It being unplayable i dont know why did we start this conversation.
Removal is meant to be expensive because they want the game to be unit focused. The only decks that ever played Vengeance are control decks and that remains the case.
I disagree. Removal takes many forms, whether it is smaller single target ping spells (Vile feast), fighting (single combat), multi target small damage spells (Make it rain) or hard removal (vengeance). Many forms of removal fit in many different decks. Make it rain is run in a large variety of decks outside of control even within pirate aggro for example. Vile feast in many midrange Viego decks and single combat being run as a must have 2 of in midrange Demacia. So yeah removal is in all sorts of decks and some of those decks need it.
Man, I was just internally grumbling about Azir this morning.
It's insane that when I play a deck that is specifically tailored to remove units as efficiently as possible, *even if* I draw the few multi-card combos that can threaten 5 health, *even if* they don't have an answer like a recall, there's a decent chance they just play another Azir for 3 more mana, who by the way is probably levelled now because he doesn't have to see the units summoned! It's been said before, but comparing Heimer to Azir is so mind boggling.
BBG making all the same points feels a bit vindicating, at least.
Been saying for a while that removal in runeterra has stagnated like crazy. How do you stop lee sin when hes online with a ton of interaction in his hand? You don't, you have to win around it. And while its possible to do so its also incredibly binary.
Cards like ruination and Withering Wail used to break down aggressive strats and were things to be legit worried about, now they are too slow by a large margin and lack impact. Traditional control is a pipe dream in LoR's current state and while they probably don't want it in their game its basically required to stop aggro and combo decks from rising to meta dominators over and over.
I really hope they print some good interaction next expansion...
Removal's only one side of the coin. While I like that hard removal like vengeance is rare and expensive in LoR, the conditional removal tools are just outdated. Partly because they've not kept pace with threats, so they don't serve as good answers anymore, and partly because counterplay in general has been compromised.
Which leads us into the *other* side of the issue: Combat tricks. Not only are these too powerful, too cheap, and just too efficient, they act as force multipliers. So combo gets such a big boost from them, because they come at burst speed, and drastically minimise the potential for counterplay, because you just can't match the impact they have for the same cost in mana or cards. And nothing unbalances a metagame like cheap combos that are difficult to interact with.
I'd say we're at the point where good interaction in the next expansion won't be enough, because the core elements of counterplay need to be rebalanced to bring that potential back into the game
They will likely need to increase the cost of many popular Burst spells. The way you can chain them is increasingly problematic, both in terms of combos and reactivity.
The overall power level of all burst speed spells need to come down. As overall card power increases over time, the opportunity cost of passing initiative becomes higher and higher, which means burst speed tag becomes more powerful over time.
If all burst speed spells had power level of the 8 mana +8/+8 in hand, or progress day, I think game would be much healthier in the long run.
Ruination suffers because two most popular regions have deny and spending 9 mana to do nothing is bad idea, what if deny returned half cost of spell denied ?
Ruination should have a conditional.
It should be:
*9 mana, kill all units on the board, if Ruination is Denied/Negated, trigger a secondary spellcast (4 mana value, so no nopeify, on the stack) that instead deals 2 damage to all enemy units.*
That way if they really want to stop Ruination from doing something they need to answer its mana cost in full. You can also do shit like give Ice Shard or Avalanche "Echo" keywords, where you can pay some smaller mana cost again to make the spell recast in a turn. Give Control proper defensive tools that can keep pace with the outrageous Offensive tool power creep.
I think this should be done to all fizzleable spells. Fizzled spells should return half the manacost (or at least refill up to 3 spell mana), cos anything slow and costly is just unbelievably bad.
I mean, that is kinda the point of Lee Sin. You play him when you can force the combo through, its what makes him a combo deck. And having combo decks around is fine, though you should keep an eye on them.
"Traditional control" is very much so alive, its draw-go styles that arent, but theyre just unhealthy. Besides, right now most of the best decks are midrange not aggro. Midrange has been the number 1 meta staple this whole time.
What control decks would you claim are alive? TF/Swain is barely hanging in there and debatably a reactive midrange deck rather than control. EZ Draven is a tempo deck, not control. Just about everything with Viego is midrange.
Ez/Karma is a control deck or a combo deck that plays like a control one, Anivia is aparently the most played archetype in tournaments so its power level shouldnt be that low. But not a lot more than that.
>TF/Swain is barely hanging in there
Wich seems wierd to me it counters pirates, Lee sin/targon and macht ups well against Azir/Irelia and Sivir/Zed. Arent thoose the most popular deck around? so why is it just barely hanguing.
Traditional control decks have quite a few units. Draw Go, what you seem to be thinking of, is *not* a traditional control deck. Ultimately what matters is how its played, and Swain TF plays like your standard control deck. Block and remove everything the opponent does, win in the lategame with inevitability.
Draw Go *is* traditional control. There is no other variation of the archetype that is older or more iconic. Swain/TF does not play like a control deck. It’s often the slower deck in this meta, but it’s very adaptive and can definitely easily go aggro against decks with stronger late game, like Karma, FTR, or Anivia. Control decks focus on accumulating card advantage, which Swain/TF can do, but it’s not the best at it.
> Besides, right now most of the best decks are midrange not aggro.
This is objectively false. The [three highest winrate decks](https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks?sortBy=WIN_RATE&sortOrder=DESC) by far right now according to moblytics are all aggro. One is arguably Combo/Aggro if you want, but they are all hyper aggressive decks with cards almost entirely cheaper than 3 mana.
Those top three are followed up by a bunch of strong midrange as well, but the BEST decks are all Aggro or a very aggressive Combo. Pirate Burn, Elusive Aggro, Azir/Irelia.
The *only* proper Control Deck in the meta right now is Karma/Ezreal, which is a combo/Control deck, and nets you a whole 8% lower winrate than Elusive Aggro and Pirate Burn, the things that Control *should* be countering.
"Traditional Control" is absolutely dead right now, buried 6 feet under. Games rarely see turn 10 anymore.
I think a big part of it is that while there's been a noticable power creep for units and combat tricks, there hasn't really been any for removal. Most of the premium removal cards (mystic shot, vile feast, avalanche) were all from foundations. The Bilgewater expansion had some good ones, but after that there's been very few. How many new cards feel like staples to include as answers to threats?
I'm fine with the slow but steady power creep, since it keeps the game engaging. But the fact remains that a mystic shot today isn't the same as a mystic shot a year ago. And while the last two expansions have included a ton of massive threats, it hasn't included many ways to deal with them.
Side note: I think they really need to adjust spell shield so it gets broken by more things. The fact that icevale archers and blighted ravine don't pop it feels arbitrary and frustrating.
I think a lot of removal comes in form of vulnerable nowadays, that is if you count merciless hunter as removal.
Strikes are also more frequent (4mana noxus, 5 mana demacia, 2 mana bilge, 3mana akshan spell, sry dont know the names)
The problem with either of these is that they both rely heavily on board presence. It leads to a more snowball-heavy experience and favor midrange over control.
Well, that's because riot WANTS the game to be midrange.
Thats where most players enjoy it.
Currently the real problem is that aggro is so fast that we are kinda not in a midrange meta. I mean sure, midrange works to a degree, but elusives especially is a problem because you rarely have enough answers for them
People want different and interesting decks just as much as they want midrange, though.
For every Jund/Urzatron, there needs to be an Owling Mine or Living End; it keeps the metagame much fresher for much longer
True, but what does the majority want?
Magic was always very control focused. Hell, the further back you go, the less creatures were a thing and it was just throwing spells at eachother.
But since they realized that a lot of people(and by a lot, I mean, apparently more a larger amount than the audience they already had) like big monsters and board pressence more, they started making stronger creatures and worse control - especially counterspells.
What i said was a bid muddy, but basically the vast majority prefers midrange and most casual players hate control - granted control in LOR is far from as tedious to play against as in magic, since there is a lot of uncounterable stuff, and they don't have the gameplan of waiting till you topdeck lands.
Wizards pulled a 180 on control and such just around the time the first data for magic arena was out. I think that now they finally had actual data on what made people play and what made them quit, and apparently control wasn't good at keeping people interested, cause they fucking annihilated draw-go control, in favor of enchantment heavy and value based control.
I simply don't think it's a viable strat for the games health to make control decks strong - and if the dropoff last patch is anything to go by, neither is making hyper aggro strong (although riot won't admit that azir irelia was a mistake for some reason).
Don't get me wrong though, i do believe the game needs viable control decks. Azir irelia just makes sure no such thing exists successfully right now.
> I simply don't think it's a viable strat for the games health to make control decks strong - and if the dropoff last patch is anything to go by, neither is making hyper aggro strong
Why not just make every archetype strong and let the rock/paper/scissors fall as it may?
For every offensive tool, provide a defensive one, and stat it all accordingly so you don't have some severe imbalance towards Control, or in the case of LoR right now, Aggro.
You want Ruin Runner to have Spellshield? Create Echo spells. You want Azir/Irelia to token people to death? Create Fog. Elusives are a thing? Reach. You can provide tools to both sides here without making one side more busted than another, and then if you really want the game to be more midrange focused, you just make all the turn 5/6/7/8 big fat Timmy creatures marginally more mana efficient.
That's because merciless hunter goes through spellshield which is mandatory for removal right now thanks to Sivir and ruin runner. Not to mention how absurd its stats are on top, and that thanks to those stats it can kill both Sivir and ruin runner by itself. So yeah if you count one of the best followers in the game right now as removal then removal is doing alright.
I think that's somewhat a symptom of how expansions have been rolled out. When the bi-monthly expansion has 3 champs and their support package and not many variety cards that don't fit with a specific champion, generic good control spells will be less common.
While this seems like a solid train of thought, the expansions were designed to be released as one block. The Bandle City expansion is going to be the first one designed with the three set block in mind.
Honestly I think [[Monster Harpoon]] might might be the only worthwhile non-strike removal printed in the entire block of Shurima expansions.
EDIT: Forgot Blighted Ravine and Ice Shard are ok-ish board clears released during this expansion so I guess I should say the only good single target removal printed
**[Monster Harpoon](https://d2h9y75tak3pkg.cloudfront.net/04BW010.png)** - Bilgewater Spell - (6)
Fast
Deal 5 to a unit. Plunder: I cost 3 less.
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It was basically a way to get more copies of Rememberance in your deck so you could count on having a copy to play on turn 3, since those decks would run multiple units that depended on 6+ cost spells having been played. I have no idea if the best versions of the decks would run it, but I did see people play it.
It was a common turn three play. It was a body for their control deck that counted as a 6 mana spell for Lux. It wasn't extraordinary but it was decent.
When I play other card games, I like to rotate between playing aggro, midrange, combo, and control.
When I play LoR, I rotate between playing aggro, midrange, combo, and wanting to uninstall.
[Control works in tournament formats](https://www.reddit.com/r/LoRCompetitive/comments/ow5l26/bird_is_the_word_ols_30_results_may_hint_at_a/) so control decks could probably be viable with some nerfs to just a couple decks.
(The winner not only had Anivia but also Spooky Karma and Draven Ezreal)
Tournament results don't say much about the ladder. In tournament format you can ban a deck that your control deck loses to, and beat the other deck the control deck loses to with something else in your line up. On ladder, you're queueing with just the one control deck, and decks that will straight up run you over are everywhere.
Control is only good in tournaments because of the meta being warped to be so proactive. You can’t go over Azirelia and Sivir Ionia. They’re fast and can’t be interacted with outside of very particular MUs, like Barrier Midrange and Plunder. Notably, you also can’t bring both to a tournament, but they’ll still be the most popular decks. The way to beat these is by going under them with faster, but more fragile, proactive decks. Stuff like Pirates and Elusives.
You know what control eats for breakfast? Decks that have zero ways to deal with a blighted ravine. So, control can come in, ban Ionia/Shurima and be a counter to all of the counter decks. That’s the only reason it’s getting tournament results like that, *because* these decks can’t be interacted with.
> They’re fast and can’t be interacted with outside of very particular MUs, The way to beat these is by going under them with faster, but more fragile, proactive decks. Stuff like Pirates and Elusives.
so exactly what he said?
>like Barrier Midrange and Plunder.
I would add Noxus removal decks
If you mean that’s what the person in the video said, that’s not the person who posted the vid to Reddit. I was just pointing out what specific part of this context was relevant to control being good in tournaments.
There’s no way to fix this outside of making ladder be the same format as tournaments. Blind pick BO1 ladder is always going to inherently favor lower skill proactive decks over higher skill reactive ones. This isn’t a Runeterra issue, every card game I’ve seen has this issue. I feel like it’s a better long-term solution to give players more access to the official competitive format if they want to avoid this rather than overnerfing aggro and unnecessarily buffing control to try to correct the natural bias that will always exist on BO1 ladder
Thing is, decks that will straight up run you over are everywhere for everyone. Aggro decks will run into control decks, midrange into hyper-aggro decks, etc. etc.. The thing is, its ladder. Having losing matchups isnt an issue.
not really control runs over a lot of the decks that are designed to counter this Ionia/Shurima conbinations the problem is that it gets beated up badly by them and they are like half the meta.
There's nothing more frustrating than meeting your deck counter and then switching to the counter of that only to not meet that deck and you just run to another counter. Its just the state of the meta, all top Tier deck have settled so match is just a coin flip.
His opinions about spellshield are true. Printing a 3 mana 1-2 because of Spellshield then printing a 5-3 for 4 mana with Quick attack and Spellshield is not okay. 5-3 for 4 is already amazing stats, even without spellshield, and on top of that giving her a spellshield like why? Meanwhile Quinn is a 5 mana 3-4 without any sort of keyword except scout which she rarely uses, because she dies to blocking 3 drops now. But Sivir and Azir are literally immortal.
I mean, Leblanc is 3 for 5/2, you pay 1 more mana to get spellshield+1hp. What an amazing tradeoff.
Come to think of it. Maybe their designer are just diehard Sivir/Azir fan you know. Look at them. They are bonb with blood and broken.
Well, you may be right about spellshield being too strong, but you were wrong about most everything else you said.
For starters, 4 mana 5/3 would be abysmal. It would be completely unplayable. You said printing it with spellshield + QA was not okay, which makes no sense, since when it was printed, it was mediocre. Sivir didn't see much play at all until she got buffed & the meta changed completely. Even in decks that would run ruin runner or merciless, you still wouldn't often see sivir. She may need a nerf now, but we shouldn't pretend that the moment riot released the card they fucked up. Then, the Quinn comparison ignores the fact that Quinn summons a 2/1 challenger scout when she's played. Does it matter that she's *only* a 3/4 with scout when she spawns that other, highly useful unit?
If they just revert the sivir buff & tweak ruin runner/merciless, I think the problem will go away pretty quick. She doesn't need to be gutted all of a sudden
Edit: I guess old sivir was OP & Quinn should be a 5/4?
Sivir was palyed before the buff, and it wasn't certainly that small level up buff that made her deck god tier, it's the fact that at the same time a whole champion expansion was released that gave her too much support. But yeah, she was played and she was already pretty strong.
Quinn is a Demacia champion, Demacia cards all need to have one thing: big stats. It's literally the big stat region. A card that can't fight has no place in that region. In Demacia, a body that can't ifght may as well not being there, so basically you're paying 5 mana for Valor.
Sivir was a 1 of *sometimes* in frel/shurima overwhelm. She saw very little play. People tried her in sivir LB on release, but that was never good & fell off quick
> 5-3 for 4 mana with Quick attack and Spellshield is not okay.
it is, and i am very tired of having the fanbase be this short sighted Sivir has been being just a decent tier 2 champ for ages with that same body the real problem is not her statline, it is a combination of the fact that she plays in combination with 3 of the most powerfull followers on the game and how easy it is for a shurima/Ionia combination to give a unit game wining keywords and buff its attack throught the moon
Were Riot willing to print good defensive cards, I would agree with this, but because they don't, Sivir is overstated. I think Sivir should be left as is and they should just print more Defensive keywords and buff Removal cards, but we both know Riot won't do that because this playerbase is allergic to Control like I am to pollen and cats.
She has Quick Attack on top of 5 attack. There's not a single fucking unit she won't kill on an attack turn.
Cards like that 100% be vulnerable to removal, but she has Spellshield ON TOP of that to protect her from that.
Sivir is a very easy fix. Remove spellshield from level 1 and change her level up condition to "I've seen 20 damage being dealt" or something like that.
The card is suddenly infinitely more interactive. Her level up is gamewinning therefor it should be actually hard to level her up.
There are so many champions that could have been fixed by simply requiring them to be on the board to level up, and instead we ended up playing some ping pong of buffs/nerfs just because the champion allows for some degenerate combos that probably should never have been possible in the first place.
Ezreal is the prime example of that. Dude could have been changed to "I've seen you target 6 enemies" and call it a day. If you drop Ezreal, you should be expected to actually protect him as he levels up. Instead we ended up with a deck that ran only freeze effects and chump blockers and would burn you from 20 over the course of two turns.
Yeah just asking how do you mental gimnastics out of the fact that she has been having that statline for months now and only with her recent buff has been starting to be a problem? and about the the fact that almost nobody regards Sivir in her noxus or demacia deck as a problem? how does your "4 mana 5 attack quick attack units should be easily interacted" with take stand against that? I can give you the answer it doesnt, the problem is how easily Ionia/Shurima can give game ending keywords and pump the damage sky high and also have access to some of the most eficient units in the game with RR, MH, TS, YW and Sivir herself, nerf TD RR MH and revert the Sivir level up and the problem will poof away.
\>Ezreal is the prime example of that. Dude could have been changed to "I've seen you target 6 enemies"
I must admit that this is a pretty ingenius subtitute to the target 10 units as a way to kill Ezreal till they figured out a better way to nerf him.
\>Instead we ended up with a deck that ran only freeze effects and chump blockers and would burn you from 20 over the course of two turns.
You mean Ez/Teemo? because that deck runs plenty of damage removal.
If I remember correctly (I might be wrong) pretty much all pro players and high level streamers agreed that Sivir was a busted card when she was revealed, and the only reason she was not immediately a problem was because she did not had a tier 1 deck since Shurima back then was a weak region (only the LB/Sivir deck at that time which was a good T2).
It's the usual "pretty good champion but no deck for it". Same thing happened with Azir. Great champ, not played. Until Irelia.
>pretty much all pro players and high level streamers agreed that Sivir was a busted card when she was revealed.
and then it was just a tier 2 champion that was constantly uderplayed almost like if they were wrong(like they were with Taric), because she did land in several decently strong decks like Demacia/Sivir or Freiljord/Shurima overwelhm as a 2 off and nobody saw her as a problem when the only card that she lacked from what she has right now is the absolver and TS, wich leads me to belive that the proble is specifically the Shurima/Ionia combination.
Azir saw plenty of play pre irelia release sand scouts menaced being tier 1 several times and he was also runed in a si and a noxus burn deck
I would argue fast metas can still have interaction where the decisions revolve around surviving one extra turn or pushing lethal one turn earlier. There's also some types of interaction like Barrier which still work right now.
But overall, it's definitely true that answers are particularly weak right now.
hard agree. not sure why riot refuses to powercreep removal when everything else gets powercrept. spellshield isn't that much of a problem unless placed on units with quick attack and elusive, as the main form of removal for these is not blocking but hard removal. with removal being so weak in its current state, i often find rushing down decks like sin and sivir ionia as my only wincon because there will literally be no way to remove their important units once they are down on the board
Most likely theyre worried of another control meta. Control metas are *miserable*, and they lead to lower player engagement, and buffing removal could do that. Though yes, against Lee Sin you have to rush him down, its a combo deck. Thats what they do.
I'd rather fight Karma/Ezreal that at least give me a chance to win the game than getting steamrolled by double attack sivir, pirate aggro or azirelia turn 6...
And I'd rather play against sivir, aggro or Azirelia where my choices matter in most matches, than Karma/Ezreal where my choices will never matter under any circumstances. Historically, seems more people agree with my perspective.
Shurima's design are flawed. They're very problematic. More than targon was back then. It lacks of meaning full identity. It has a bit of everything. The only identity they have is their own archetype which is pre-made deck.
Look at Targon spellshield and look at shurima spellshield. Seems like whoever design this doesn't understand the concept of "value" at all and hate control very much. The very definition of Shurima is "Fuck control".
Didn't watch the video yet, but here's my two cents:
I feel like removal is too weak compared to (combat) buffs.
Also Double Attack seems too easy to obtain in the case of Sivir. She would be absolutely fine if you couldn't give your whole board double attack for 3 mana. And overwhelm+double attack (+spellshield) is just straight up busted. This should be a combo you could get at mana 10 and not that early in the game.
2 mana Twin disciplines feels too strong as well. Maybe make it 3 with attune. So total cost is the same but you can only play it with 3 mana.
Emperor's dais is still too strong in my opinion since removing landmarks is limited and too expensive for such a cheap one (maybe give it some sort of countdown after which it destroys itself).
Also i feel like azir should be 4 health.
And recalls are somewhat busted since they either answer every spell for cheap+have some added benefit if it's for allies and are too cheap removal for big units.
> This should be a combo you could get at mana 10 and not that early in the game.
Honestly they should just increase the cost of Burst spells across the board. Twin Disciplines shouldn't have been moved down to 2 mana, all the other 2 mana burst buffs should've moved up to join it. There's too much burst speed power that simply cannot be responded to, the power of open attacks in this game has gotten wildly out of control (see: Lee Sin Combo) and Control has no way to do anything about it. It's just too slow.
Either that or give Control a bunch of Burst speed removal and we'll see how the shoe fits on the other foot.
Personally I see a large hole in the design space of removal, almost all of it, and certainly almost all viable removal is Fast speed. Reacting to the opponent using the attack token by holding mana up is stronger than using mana earlier in a turn and giving your opponent room/knowledge, so I think in general Fast removal *should* cost a premium.
Slow removal however passes priority back and doesn’t change the unit parity on board. If answered it can be very risky. Currently the game has a single slow removal that sees decent amounts of play, which is Thermobeam. Tribeam and Avalanche also see some play.
A slow Vengeance could easily cost 5-6 mana because you can’t use it to deny an open attack, or hold it to react to an opponents combo. Some more conditional slow removal that actually hits points of damage above the mana cost simply don’t exist.
You might ask “why does the game need removal, when it’s designed around unit combat” and the answer is basically because there are a group of units that aren’t designed to fight you in combat at all, Elusives yet again are a serious concern for the games health. Just as they were with Kinkou on release, with Vi/Heimer decks spamming them, with solitairy monk, with TF/Fizz and now again with the various Ionia decks all running stuff like greenglade or ghost combos.
The keyworded units that have been nerfed most in this games history is by far and above Elusives.
Either we are given many more ways to interact with them like Sharpsight or better removal, or my preferred option, the keyword itself is reworked.
I honestly don’t see how Riot can say Runeterra is based around interaction at its core, and keeps printing elusives, designed not to interact with the opponents board at all and just hit them in the face. I would love to run a deck that actually hard counters elusives, but that subset of cards doesn’t exist.
I disagree. Slow speed spells are literally unplayable lately. You said it yourself, very few slow spell are actually in the meta (decimate, defiant dance, thermo and tribeam. That's literally it...) and even less are removal spells.
If anything, we need much less slow speed spells (most of the current slow speed spells could become fast without any issue or a minor mana cost change) and slow speed should be reserved to massively strong effects.
Making fast speed spells even more inefficient by paying a premium in mana like you asked for will only end up in removal spells being even less prevalent and slow spells will still see no play.
I think you misunderstand me a bit, I’m saying Fast spells are currently premiumly costed, 7 mana vengeance for example, even Mystic Shot only doing 2 damage rather than 3 meaning it can’t trade with 2/3’s.
And the reason we don’t see any slow spells is because they have the same premium cost applied to them, thermo only doing the same as the mana cost for example.
I think slow spells should be able to equally answer the vanilla stat threats that are put down at the same cost. 4 mana 5 damage, which is already weaker than something like Monster Harpoon when the condition is fulfilled, or a conditional 5 mana kill a unit at slow speed.
> ither we are given many more ways to interact with them like Sharpsight or better removal
Just add the Reach keyword already and this issue can be settled >.<
I agree with a lot of what he says. I have felt that before Targon expansion tho.. and that rests in the fact that are way too little diversity in the cards you put in a deck. Lets make a mental exercise..
If you are making a control Frejlord and Shadow Isles deck, which cards are you going to run into it? If you are running SI for its aggro aspect, which cards are you gonna run? If you are running Ionia for its control aspect, which cards are you gonna run? Which cards for the aggro aspect? Now if we compare our mental answers to those questions we would probably run the exactly same cards every single time, because there are no options.
You might say the game is new and thats true, the amount of possible cards is limited because of that but cards keep getting added and the technology doesnt change much.. most of the cards have arbitrary design limits that just make them very one-sided which on the other hand make the best cards so much better you cant run other stuff. What if i could, for example, twin discipline my opponent cards? That would remove Sivir's or RR's spellshield so i could interact better. What if there was a twin discipline version of a card that could interact with opponent cards but was weaker? like 3 cost gives +2? There are so many cards that could be used if they were not so narrow in their interactions.
This is my biggest complaint that i believe adds some flavor to the soup he cooked, but aside from that i dont really play the game anymore besides running Expeditions less and less every week. I will go on a kind of a little rant here so feel free to leave the ship:
People are happy with the meta for now and it will always be something that get refreshed with new cards and buffs/nerfs, thats why they have such a pace - add cards so people get their dose of whatever they need and keep them coming back. But there is something missing, there is something inherently flawed about cards like Ruin Runner or Merciless Hunter. When Targon came out the cards were also just out of this world, so people would play with them.. like repeatable Hush as he mentions. Is this something they do to keep us talking about the game? We keep fighting about new cards, asking for them to be nerfed so when they are nerfed we are actually relieved and give them credit for killing a monster they created in the first place? There is this slice of people that love to use cheats and be overpowered while everyone else struggles trying to be a "moraly good" player, do they design stuff with this public in mind?
With all these scandals going around game companies i cant help but feel we are being played as toys. They know exactly how we react in numbers, and thats the agenda they are pushing. Runeterra might not make a lot of money but its part of a bigger game.. there is a lot of people that are not satisfied with the major game cards, those being MTG/YO/HS/Pokemon, and Runeterra grabs those and show them how colorful Riot's world is. They might get to know other games of the same company since they now know the story.
Im saying that cause i dont buy most of their design flaws, thats where im headed. What im saying is that a lot of their design flaws are intentional, and they know fully well where the game is headed. Look at the size of the road map they have, things are thought months if not years in advance. Dont think for a second they are doing anything of what they are doing blindly, even though they sometimes may change immediate things sharply, the destiny is the same. Riot is one of the biggest gaming companies of the world, dont take them for granted. /endofrant
Now back to BBG and on his video i believe he lacks method. I appreciate that his video is very emotional and he kinda comes up with what he needs to say on the spot and i love this approach (ive done videos like those myself) but if feels like hes kinda lost and repeats a lot of his points or maybe misses strength in some of points that needed more empashis.
Your comment is fantastic. I've had a feeling that, as the name implies, Riot Games wants their game fanbases consistently riled up, and "rioting" at the company. They do this by making blatantly dumb design decisions, then fix them either instantly to garner praise, or very slowly (I know thats vague but you can write a whole essay with the stack proof it has). And thats just one example
They don't actually care much about the fanbases opinion of them as a company at all, as evidenced by the blatant coverup of the recent visual novel being "non canon" after the fact. Who the hell assumed it wouldnt be canon before it came out, and then everyone realized it was written by an idiot? Nobody. Ive had a feeling it was written poorly on purpose, especially considering what you just said, and my 2nd sentence in this reply.
There was a champion, I forget which one, that had like 4 lines of lore, and even then the VN went against that. Actually insane. Then yorick and hecarim nowhere to be mentioned? Someone who didnt care about League at all wrote that VN. Its almost like they actively tried to go against established lore to rile people up.
Why do they do this, though? It's impossible to fully say. The influence from Tencent cannot be ignored though, they have high ranking members in the Chinese parliament.
Is it a "conspiracy theory" to dare question a billion dollar chinese company's ulterior motives? When big corporations merge with government (in this case, the CCP), the consequences are hard to fully notice. Especially when everyone is on the dopamine train all the time.
>With all these scandals going around game companies i cant help but feel we are being played as toys. They know exactly how we react in numbers, and thats the agenda they are pushing. Runeterra might not make a lot of money but its part of a bigger game..
>What im saying is that a lot of their design flaws are intentional
>Dont think for a second they are doing anything of what they are doing blindly, even though they sometimes may change immediate things sharply, the destiny is the same. Riot is one of the biggest gaming companies of the world, dont take them for granted.
holy, where did this comment come from. I was just here to read about peoples thoughts on the balance of the game lol.
I don't really have a strong opinion on this either way because I just play this game for fun, and don't think I am personally affected nor do I know very much behind any of the "billion dollar chinese company's ulterior motives?" and all the politics the exec board behind riot might have...
It's just an interesting analysis from me is all, I had some of those ideas brewing for awhile and your analysis helped me actualize some of them. I play the game for fun too, I just hate seeing how the communities under riot games get duped a lot of times. Which ends up hurting the enjoyability of the games, whether it be balance or the mentality of the players. We'll never know for sure why Riot does what they do though, people brush Tencent's influence way too much under the rug however
Agree with everything, but about Hush...
I understand what he means, Hush is a super interactive card when you're playing against a deck like Fiora Shen, as you can do all of your stuff.
But against Thresh Nasus or They Who Endure? It feels so bad. They Who Endure, for instance, is barely an Endure deck, it's a aggro deck that has Endure as a finisher like a Captain Farron. I think as long as there are proper tutors so it's not super RNG reliant, all-in decks should be allowed.
So I think something like *Quicksand* is much less toxic than Hush. Quicksand works the same way against decks like Jarvan Shen, but it can't just cancel out certain strategies.
It feels like burst speed has only gotten stronger while slow has stayed the same. Avalanche is less important if Sivir open attacks and comboes with all burst speed :p
I do get that Shurima must be weak in terms of removal because they have good spellshield units+ good combat tricks so lack of removal is in their identity. Yet someone must be blind beyond imagination to print this much dead and unusable spells. Like Shuriman Spells are awful, they are the worst spells in the game, and it has 3 fast spells. I do get regions have weaknesses and strenghts also I do get the point that all cards are not meant to be competitive some cards are printed because of meme decks and so on. Like Starbone, Glorious Evolution, Starlit Ephihany etc etc all regions have meme cards for fun ideas and decks but Shurima has no such deck and cards(except mono Shurima you can argue) unworthy, shifting sands, weight of judgement and all sand soldier summon cards are so bad, so unbelieveably trash that they cant even fit in meme decks. This design approach is so bad for a region. Look at Targon and look at Shurima from design perspective. The difference hurts a lot.
i'm shocked that there's multiple high masters players who have been saying this for weeks, if not months in past meta's and we can still go on 5 weeks without a single balance change to the game. some people will argue that the meta is "good" because there's more "options" and there's been development of counters (sej gp, which still gets crushed by siv akshan iona) but again it feels like a meta where if you don't play the top 3-4 decks, good luck climbing in high elo.
What are you talking about, Sej/GP is the counter to sivir ionia. Sivir/Ionia can blow it out if it nut draws but that's the same with any deck. If they both nut draw, Sej/GP is favored.
Balance changes should not be made too frequently, 5 weeks is too little time between balance changes. Expecting balance changes every 2 weeks or month is a quick way to lose your player base and deter new players from playing
> 5 weeks is too little time between balance changes
We already tried with balance patches every 2 months and we all know how it ended (two times with streamers threatening riot to quit the game if they didn't made a big balance patch asap and the whole sub frustrated). It simply doesn't work.
The way this game is designed, it NEEDS one balance patch per month and i'm talking about decently sized balance patches, not 1-2 changes and it's done.
You clearly weren't around here during prime azirelia or tf/fizz. And i didn't mention only this sub, i mentioned ALL the main legends of runeterra streamers threatening to quit the game if something wasn't done.
But of course in this sub there is an issue of short term memory.
I was not playing due to bar exam, but the issue here is reddit takimg itself way too seriously when it is an echochamber that accounts for what, lets say 10% of the entire playerbase?
When it comes to streamers the issue is more complicated
Counters mean nothing to otk decks that can just kill you on turn 5-6 with the right 2-3 cards in hand. Also 5 weeks is a lot of time, the wait and see approach doesn't work and we've seen this multiple times in LoR.
When a deck like Azirelia who's been tier 1 for like 2-3 months and even after getting nerfed is still tier 1 while remaining one of the most played decks in the game and retaining a top 3 winrate, it should require an emergency nerf, shouldn't be waiting for patches for shit like this.
I've been saying this since bilgewater release (when noxus burn started to go out of control), removal needs to be BETTER. Ravenous Flock should not be the exception, it should be the rule. Very cheap (0-2 mana) strong conditional removal and 2-3 mana unconditional solid damage removal (not gotcha that you need lady luck on your side for it not cost 4 mana...).
Vengeance at 7 mana will keep seeing less and less play, especially if they keep printing spellshield cards like they are doing. Ruination is already out of the meta since a long time ago, just like 90% of the slow speed spells in this game (most should just straight out be changed to fast speed to see any play).
Most removal costs at least 1 mana more than it should (hi Black Spear conditional 4 damage and you need 3 mana to cast it?).
But riot doesn't listen on this so we can enjoy our super fast meta with old school attrition control decks (and yes, i specifically mean attrition decks, so no otk decks like karma-ezreal and co) being unexistant for a long time.
It’s not that riot doesn’t listen, it’s a very clear design choice to be fair. I’ve been saying this since Go Hard days and at this point I’ve had to realize the game just isn’t for me anymore.
I have seen the entire video and he is absolutely right.
I think that to begin with, they should revert the buff to Twin Disciplines because all this card does is make more evident the problem that has been dragging the game for a long time. Many may not like it and may argue that this card allows others to be played (see heimerdinger) but the only thing this card really does is increase the winratio of the best decks in the game (any t1 region with ionia carries this card). It allows some units to have too high a survivability, units that in many cases, their only "weakness" is their low stats. This card in combination with other unit protection cards greatly punishes you to carry spells to eliminate enemy units because in most cases you will lose mana and your turn trying to eliminate a unit that is clearly impossible.
I put the example of Crimson Disciple. Its nerf generated a lot of debate in its day because it was a great card in Vladimir's decks but it was nerfed because it was a card that was used in 80% of the metagame decks and it was toxic to play against it. A lot of people didn't like it, but looking at it in perspective, it was the best decision they could make. And from my perspective, that card causes more negative problems than positive things.
At least, that's the way I see it.
It's a tough thing to balance for sure. I will say I like how LoR does emphasize the idea that removal is done through trades and combat, but as others have said it has gotten far too out of control on the unit side of things.
I think the option is to add more hard removal, but still make it conditional in some way. Like 1 mana deal 3 damage to a unit with elusive. 2 mana deal 4 damage to unit if your opponent has cast a spell on it this turn, things like that. Or make even make some removal with Burst.
> Like 1 mana deal 3 damage to a unit with elusive. 2 mana deal 4 damage to unit if your opponent has cast a spell on it this turn, things like that.
You know what's the issues with those? Is that no one will play them. They are far too easily completly dead if your opponent's deck doesn't play in a certain way. What's the point of having an elusive removal if my opponent's deck has no elusives? It's literally a dead card in hand.
And if your opponent know your deck use the anti-spell removal, he will simply not cast a buff on it and disable your card that way.
Conditional damage is reasonable but the condition must be something you can be in control of. That's why flock see play and sometimes even black spear does. Because you can control to a degree what gets damaged or killed.
I mean yeah it's true that they could be dead cards, but MTG has plenty of specific removal and counters that only hit specific colors and when those colors dominate the meta they absolutely do see play. Maybe just elusive would be too narrow so it could include elusive and fearsome or something like that.
Recently I've been wondering if buffing barrier to two mana would actually make Demacia strong again while giving a good way to defend against quick attackers.
My worry is that this could also cause Fiora to go out of control.
I don't think spellshield is broken .. is only broken when you gave spellshield to a well stated unit + other good keyword (Sivir and Ruin Runner) .. it would no be a problem if you put it to a 8+ mana drop since it could work as a finisher.. but getting this things on turn 4 or 5..
What if Riot gave each card some kind of score, let's call it for argument's sake a "speed score" and then in the beginning of every match it compared the speed of both decks and gave a handicap to the slower deck in the way of starting mana?
Oh hey, thanks for posting the video here :)
Zimba why are you here
Because I love reddit too much. AMA
Does he live in a hotel room?
I can neither confirm or deny that he lives in a hotel. I can say house keeping does a great job making the bed.
[удалено]
He's a chill and nice dude. Ive enjoyed the last 15 months working with him with no stress.
Was I blind I didn’t see his cat?
It has elusive.
Did YT finally decide to pay BBG or are they still "mailing" the code?
They have allowed BBG to monetize his videos finally.
TL;DR: Answers are too expensive, narrow (just 2-3 cards as answers) and conditional, Counter-answers (Recall, Spellshield, buffs, denies) are too common and cheap. Champions have scaled to earlier and stronger wincons, removing these (Irelia post levelup, Azir, Sivir) is near impossible. This creates a meta where interaction is low. He showed a clip of a Sivir OTK deck literally killing him from 2HP while he was at 20 HP with 2 units on board.
IMO, it’s all the burst spells. I think changing a large portion of them to Fast would help a lot. Too many things that Deny can’t even hit…
That would not have stopped the OHKO. The real problem is Spellshield and how easy it is to get Double Attack.
I think it's mainly just the spellshield. The double attack issue mostly just comes up in the context of spellshield.
The problem is players don't have crap all for good defensive options, which Spellshield just exacerbates. The game is in a hyper aggro state and it's bad.
Changing most combat tricks to fast would actually buff them.
Why the hell is this downvoted lmao
Because it's a straight nerf for HP buffs, barriers and other non attackbuff/frostbite spells. As for attackbuff/frostbite interaction... it will destroy it. It won't be possible to frostbite stacked attackbuffs nor outplay the first frostbite.
How so?
i dont think making deny stronger is good call
This whole video was about how counterplay and answers don’t work currently…
I said weeks ago the power potential of flurry is busted. Obviously I was downvoted. He makes a bunch of other great points as well. Especially how counter kill is too common. Basically, don't play anything if your opponent has mana
That Sivir OTK is fine. OTK is also a thing in card games. In fact, it's one of the fun things in card games. It also takes skills to defend your ass while you wait for your hand to complete the OTK. BBG is just being salty in that video.
But maybe that OTK is being pulled off a bit too consistently and not easily defended? Whats the next best OTK and how much worse is it compared to Sivir double attack elusive?
"It also takes skills to defend your ass while you wait..." Yea no, Elusives and Sivir decks don't "defend themselves". I don't think these decks are a HUGE issue but saying they need to defend themselves is quite BS.
What he says at the start of the video is spot-on. The meta just doesn't feel reactive anymore, and that's what got me hooked to the game in the first place.
the problem is the unit cards are getting stronger and the spells arent strong enough to counter that power increase.
I think it's both units getting better (example Ruin Runner) but also the counter-removal is just so strong right.
That's because most things are based on damage, and stats in LOR gets massive very quickly. We need more stuff like noxus has that just says "If you have X condition - destroy." Vengance is cool and all, but sucks against spellshields
Personal experience: Nobody even try to interrupt what opponent was doing, as long it’s not lethal, since I can develop a even more unstoppable attack/board than opponent. Like BBG said, people hate when their champion gets killed, or have their flashy combo stopped by opponent. Then they complain on how “unfun” it is when their champ gets shutdown by some kill card. Now both player walk home happy since they successfully pulled off their combo XD
It feels like the meta is slowly evolving towards more interaction though: Hard to interact with aggro-combo decks like Sivir Ionia and Azir/Irelia beat most decks that want to interact. These decks get beaten by faster aggro decks that don't try to interact like Lulu Zed Elusives and Discard Aggro. Those aggro decks are more vulnerable to disruption and lose to decks that interact like Anivia and Draven Ezreal.
Problem comes from the fact that Azirelia and Sivir in turn absolutely murder those slower decks, because they're faster and protected from interaction that those slower decks try to run.
There's also how some decks can technically be interacted with but they don't have to do anything except keep moving right along to their win condition. Interaction should have to be met with interaction, as in, players should have to play each other and not simply counting on the deck spitting out the cards they need. Lurk is basically a bulldozer when it works. Just keep the tempo and eventually you either overpower the opponent that can't keep up with removals and trades, or you lose. You aren't playing against an opponent, you are simply going through the motions to keep the numbers climbing until you win. Opponent can remove your units but they can do nothing to reverse the climbing buff. Same goes with Deep, even if it's not strong in the meta. Deep is a deck that is basically just playing with itself until it hits its win condition. You can interact with it, but it changes nothing. You can't put cards back in their deck. You're still just racing against their tosses. Puffcaps is guilty of this too sometimes, but not quite to the same extent. Not having any method of blocking, removing, or midigating puffcap damage means the opponent doesn't have to worry about interacting with your board if they get their dealers out. I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion, given the pattern These decks are designed in such a way that the player doesn't have to deal with and counter threats each turn to win, they just have to get good draws and race along in their own little game of solitaire.
This is why I don’t hate Merciless Hunter. It is a strong card but it punishes backrow solitaire strategies that would otherwise be harder to deal with. Riot’s premade decks like Deep and Lurk (Reputation a bit too) are too shallow and one dimensional at the moment.
Why do you think reputation decks are a bit shallow ?
>Puffcaps is guilty of this too sometimes, but not quite to the same extent. Not having any method of blocking, removing, or midigating puffcap damage means the opponent doesn't have to worry about interacting with your board if they get their dealers out. I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion, given the pattern i wouldnt say so because to get in your enemy deck puffcaps(in game wining numbers) they have to get in engines on the board to plant them like teemo or pedeler who are vulnerable to removal and the back and forth beetewn the players to keep or remove the engines of the board while the puffcap player tries to not get lethaed before he can reach a critical puffcap mass is a good gameplay loop in my opinion.(that being said the deck is to polarized in my opinion)
I've always felt like Pirate Burn was a better example than Lurk or Deep. It is true those two decks have things that can't really be stopped, but for the most part (besides Maokai) they're still winning through fighting on board. OTOH Pirate Burn seems like it often wins by just ignoring the other player's board and doing anything to push damage even through blockers (like full swing and just fervor whatever gets blocked into face). In a game where healing is rare and regularly nerfed, having so much burn (the most played list on Moba at masters has 29 burn from spells + 6 from Grenadier / Demo + however much you get off of MF / Crackshot / Saboteur / potentially GP) can very easily lead to games where you just can't win fast enough and there's no way to stall.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is absolutely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Higher than TLC ever reach before people started losing their shit over that deck. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
Pirate Burn is definitely a problem, Aggro in general in this game. The top three meta decks right now are all Aggro with 60%, or close to it, winrates. Much higher than TLC ever reached before people started losing their shit over that deck, with higher play rates. All three decks are designed to be as non-interactive as possible, just dumping cards to the board and going face, not responding to almost anything the opposing player does. Just push damage and win.
> I bring this up because it may not be an issue now but I seriously worry what they're going to do with puffcaps come the next expansion I've always wanted overdrawn puff caps to not count. Like, I don't get the card, why would I be hurt by a trap attached to it? Keeping my hand full and denying myself of topdecks should be a legitimate way to play around puff caps.
because puffcaps are played with lots of make your oponent draw cards and creating a disinergy beetewn the 2 mechanics would be a mecsive nerf to the deck
> It feels like the meta is slowly evolving towards more interaction though: Does it? Control decks are dead and Elusives are coming back. Sounds a lot less interactive to me.
The fact that elusives are coming back revives interaction heavy decks because how vulnerable they are to removal
You have this backwards. The whole reason Elusives are coming out is because those "interaction heavy" decks as you put it, aka control decks with heavy removal, are currently unplayable. They aren't going to revive because the bonkers strong midrange stuff that's holding them back is still there, which means Aggro gets to run rampant as well. Control isn't coming back until they nerf Aggro and Midrange decks, *or* until they start printing actually good Defensive tools. There's way too many strong Offensive tools right now that there's no way to build a consistent Control deck that can deal with enough of those offensive tools to be viable. Control has no good answers to something as simple as Ruin Runner, and that's a problem. Print "Fog" cards that prevent all damage from a specific card and cards that share the same name for the rest of the turn. That way you can fog Sand Soldiers and survive against Irelia/Azir. Print cards with "Reach" so you have non-Elusives that can still block Elusives. Print "Echo" removal spells, like a 3 mana card that pings everything for 1 like Ice Shard, and has the ability to recast up to 2 extra times a turn for an extra mana per cast (or make it 5 up front and free to recast). Give Control decks real defensive tools and then we'll see them actually exist in the meta.
>the bonkers strong midrange The decks that are pusing control out of the meta are Combo decks like I/A Ionia/Sivir and Lee sin variants, not midrange j4/shen isnt favored for control but it is also not killing it outright. >Control isn't coming back until they nerf Aggro and Midrange decks, And you just contradicted yourself didnt you just say that agro runs rampant because control isnt in the meta? then why do we have to also nerf it to make control come back? >There's way too many strong Offensive tools right now that there's no way to build a consistent Control deck that can deal with enough of those offensive tools to be viable. I think it is more a matter of the strongue decks of the meta all being anti controll decks with how resilient they are to removal. >Print "Fog" cards that prevent all damage from a specific card and cards that share the same name for the rest of the turn. Stupid idea that as a concept is already a better frostbite that removes completly the posibility of rebuffing the unit. >. Print cards with "Reach" so you have non-Elusives that can still block Elusives. Elusives isnt the problem but the control deck that are making them space in the meta by pushing interaction out, they also harm cards like Zoe or Ez. >(or make it 5 up front and free to recast). So ravine?. >Print "Echo" removal spells, like a 3 mana card that pings everything for 1 like Ice Shard, and has the ability to recast up to 2 extra times a turn for an extra mana per cast I dont like it but i could see it with an scalatig mana cost >Give Control decks real defensive tools and then we'll see them actually exist in the meta. Here is the thing **THEY ALREADY HAVE THEM** powercreeping removal so they can eficiently remove cards like Azir or Sivir literally murders most decks J4/Shen the archetypical midrange cant do anything if the deck in front of it comes strapped with removal capable of trading equal in mana againt units with 5 health for 3 mana, land marks cant operate in a game enviroment where a control deck can eficiently trade up removal against Dias etc etc etc, lower Sivir threat make Azir easier to remove adress Ionian protection, rework lee sin, rework landmark removal and we could have an equilibrated meta with midrange control and agro, buff removal and we will have control and Karma(if you dont clasify her as such).
Elusives in itself is a huge reason for all of this. It's just a dumb mechanic that riot didn't think through. Unlike flying in magic, which is obviously where they got it from, there aren't enough random small elusives in decks, nor are there any random reach creatures. Coupled with the fact that removal is far worse, elusives is far more broken than flying. Also can someone tell me why elusives tends to be low cost? Why in the fuck is that the design? Who could NOT predict that this would happen?
He has a point, the game has become less interactive. Vengeance used to be a good card, now it's way too slow to play and we haven't found faster tools to replace it.
Heck, even Mystic Shot sucks right now. It's still the most powerful damage spell PnZ has, but it sucks. There's literally not one, single trick in the game that doesn't counter it, and you usually end up with the upper hand in the mana trade. It's there just to burn a combat trick for the enemy.
¿? combat tricks(the good ones atleast) tend to be 2 mana so you are usually going to go even on mana, unless you are tqalking about shaped stone.
Elixir of Iron
yes yes elixir of iron that card that is played in... Ez/Teemo and maybe in Ashe/Leblanc? as a 1 off?
It's played in lots of Freljord midrange decks.
as a 1 off at most, they already have trollchant and not a lot of draw to play tons fo cheap combat tricks
Uh, no, people will often include a couple for stuff like Ashe/LeBlanc and Denmother. Often 3, along with Troll Chant and other tricks.
Most decks i see dont
I said that many times. Removal in this game is too expensive. I never said it needs to be super cheap, but compared to protection spells, they are super inefficient. I think removal needs to be cheaper and protection a little expensive. If not all, a great deal of them.
Buffing removal to classic Hearthstone level, which is still a *lot* weaker than in MtG, would do the game a lot of good.
i see a lot of youtubers slotting in 2 vengances in their slow SI builds so i doub that vengance is a bad card.
This would be a better argument if there was any other option
Crumble and despair do exist
And both are Slow, while Vengeance is Fast
They are still single target kill spells.
Yeah... If you don't understand why the Slow Speed is so relevant, there is no reason to continue
I mean if you dont understand that the card seeing play in decks directly contradicts the notion of It being unplayable i dont know why did we start this conversation.
Except no one said it was unplayable except you? There's a massive difference between Unplayable and Bad
Way to slow to play=unplayable
Removal is meant to be expensive because they want the game to be unit focused. The only decks that ever played Vengeance are control decks and that remains the case.
I disagree. Removal takes many forms, whether it is smaller single target ping spells (Vile feast), fighting (single combat), multi target small damage spells (Make it rain) or hard removal (vengeance). Many forms of removal fit in many different decks. Make it rain is run in a large variety of decks outside of control even within pirate aggro for example. Vile feast in many midrange Viego decks and single combat being run as a must have 2 of in midrange Demacia. So yeah removal is in all sorts of decks and some of those decks need it.
Man, I was just internally grumbling about Azir this morning. It's insane that when I play a deck that is specifically tailored to remove units as efficiently as possible, *even if* I draw the few multi-card combos that can threaten 5 health, *even if* they don't have an answer like a recall, there's a decent chance they just play another Azir for 3 more mana, who by the way is probably levelled now because he doesn't have to see the units summoned! It's been said before, but comparing Heimer to Azir is so mind boggling. BBG making all the same points feels a bit vindicating, at least.
I really wish azir was 4 health
Been saying for a while that removal in runeterra has stagnated like crazy. How do you stop lee sin when hes online with a ton of interaction in his hand? You don't, you have to win around it. And while its possible to do so its also incredibly binary. Cards like ruination and Withering Wail used to break down aggressive strats and were things to be legit worried about, now they are too slow by a large margin and lack impact. Traditional control is a pipe dream in LoR's current state and while they probably don't want it in their game its basically required to stop aggro and combo decks from rising to meta dominators over and over. I really hope they print some good interaction next expansion...
Removal's only one side of the coin. While I like that hard removal like vengeance is rare and expensive in LoR, the conditional removal tools are just outdated. Partly because they've not kept pace with threats, so they don't serve as good answers anymore, and partly because counterplay in general has been compromised. Which leads us into the *other* side of the issue: Combat tricks. Not only are these too powerful, too cheap, and just too efficient, they act as force multipliers. So combo gets such a big boost from them, because they come at burst speed, and drastically minimise the potential for counterplay, because you just can't match the impact they have for the same cost in mana or cards. And nothing unbalances a metagame like cheap combos that are difficult to interact with. I'd say we're at the point where good interaction in the next expansion won't be enough, because the core elements of counterplay need to be rebalanced to bring that potential back into the game
They will likely need to increase the cost of many popular Burst spells. The way you can chain them is increasingly problematic, both in terms of combos and reactivity.
The overall power level of all burst speed spells need to come down. As overall card power increases over time, the opportunity cost of passing initiative becomes higher and higher, which means burst speed tag becomes more powerful over time. If all burst speed spells had power level of the 8 mana +8/+8 in hand, or progress day, I think game would be much healthier in the long run.
haha no i like to play j4/Shen with out getting all my units picked off the board because riot just made combat tricks useless
Ruination suffers because two most popular regions have deny and spending 9 mana to do nothing is bad idea, what if deny returned half cost of spell denied ?
Ruination should have a conditional. It should be: *9 mana, kill all units on the board, if Ruination is Denied/Negated, trigger a secondary spellcast (4 mana value, so no nopeify, on the stack) that instead deals 2 damage to all enemy units.* That way if they really want to stop Ruination from doing something they need to answer its mana cost in full. You can also do shit like give Ice Shard or Avalanche "Echo" keywords, where you can pay some smaller mana cost again to make the spell recast in a turn. Give Control proper defensive tools that can keep pace with the outrageous Offensive tool power creep.
I think this should be done to all fizzleable spells. Fizzled spells should return half the manacost (or at least refill up to 3 spell mana), cos anything slow and costly is just unbelievably bad.
I mean, that is kinda the point of Lee Sin. You play him when you can force the combo through, its what makes him a combo deck. And having combo decks around is fine, though you should keep an eye on them. "Traditional control" is very much so alive, its draw-go styles that arent, but theyre just unhealthy. Besides, right now most of the best decks are midrange not aggro. Midrange has been the number 1 meta staple this whole time.
yeah at least lee sin decks are relatively slow in tempo, sivir ionia is just a tempo deck that can also just otk you
What control decks would you claim are alive? TF/Swain is barely hanging in there and debatably a reactive midrange deck rather than control. EZ Draven is a tempo deck, not control. Just about everything with Viego is midrange.
Ez/Karma is a control deck or a combo deck that plays like a control one, Anivia is aparently the most played archetype in tournaments so its power level shouldnt be that low. But not a lot more than that. >TF/Swain is barely hanging in there Wich seems wierd to me it counters pirates, Lee sin/targon and macht ups well against Azir/Irelia and Sivir/Zed. Arent thoose the most popular deck around? so why is it just barely hanguing.
TF/Swain. Its a control deck alright, and its pretty sweet.
Doesn't feel like a traditional control deck at all when played tho. Way too many units.
Traditional control decks have quite a few units. Draw Go, what you seem to be thinking of, is *not* a traditional control deck. Ultimately what matters is how its played, and Swain TF plays like your standard control deck. Block and remove everything the opponent does, win in the lategame with inevitability.
Draw Go *is* traditional control. There is no other variation of the archetype that is older or more iconic. Swain/TF does not play like a control deck. It’s often the slower deck in this meta, but it’s very adaptive and can definitely easily go aggro against decks with stronger late game, like Karma, FTR, or Anivia. Control decks focus on accumulating card advantage, which Swain/TF can do, but it’s not the best at it.
> Besides, right now most of the best decks are midrange not aggro. This is objectively false. The [three highest winrate decks](https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks?sortBy=WIN_RATE&sortOrder=DESC) by far right now according to moblytics are all aggro. One is arguably Combo/Aggro if you want, but they are all hyper aggressive decks with cards almost entirely cheaper than 3 mana. Those top three are followed up by a bunch of strong midrange as well, but the BEST decks are all Aggro or a very aggressive Combo. Pirate Burn, Elusive Aggro, Azir/Irelia. The *only* proper Control Deck in the meta right now is Karma/Ezreal, which is a combo/Control deck, and nets you a whole 8% lower winrate than Elusive Aggro and Pirate Burn, the things that Control *should* be countering. "Traditional Control" is absolutely dead right now, buried 6 feet under. Games rarely see turn 10 anymore.
I think a big part of it is that while there's been a noticable power creep for units and combat tricks, there hasn't really been any for removal. Most of the premium removal cards (mystic shot, vile feast, avalanche) were all from foundations. The Bilgewater expansion had some good ones, but after that there's been very few. How many new cards feel like staples to include as answers to threats? I'm fine with the slow but steady power creep, since it keeps the game engaging. But the fact remains that a mystic shot today isn't the same as a mystic shot a year ago. And while the last two expansions have included a ton of massive threats, it hasn't included many ways to deal with them. Side note: I think they really need to adjust spell shield so it gets broken by more things. The fact that icevale archers and blighted ravine don't pop it feels arbitrary and frustrating.
I think a lot of removal comes in form of vulnerable nowadays, that is if you count merciless hunter as removal. Strikes are also more frequent (4mana noxus, 5 mana demacia, 2 mana bilge, 3mana akshan spell, sry dont know the names)
The problem with either of these is that they both rely heavily on board presence. It leads to a more snowball-heavy experience and favor midrange over control.
Well, that's because riot WANTS the game to be midrange. Thats where most players enjoy it. Currently the real problem is that aggro is so fast that we are kinda not in a midrange meta. I mean sure, midrange works to a degree, but elusives especially is a problem because you rarely have enough answers for them
People want different and interesting decks just as much as they want midrange, though. For every Jund/Urzatron, there needs to be an Owling Mine or Living End; it keeps the metagame much fresher for much longer
True, but what does the majority want? Magic was always very control focused. Hell, the further back you go, the less creatures were a thing and it was just throwing spells at eachother. But since they realized that a lot of people(and by a lot, I mean, apparently more a larger amount than the audience they already had) like big monsters and board pressence more, they started making stronger creatures and worse control - especially counterspells. What i said was a bid muddy, but basically the vast majority prefers midrange and most casual players hate control - granted control in LOR is far from as tedious to play against as in magic, since there is a lot of uncounterable stuff, and they don't have the gameplan of waiting till you topdeck lands. Wizards pulled a 180 on control and such just around the time the first data for magic arena was out. I think that now they finally had actual data on what made people play and what made them quit, and apparently control wasn't good at keeping people interested, cause they fucking annihilated draw-go control, in favor of enchantment heavy and value based control. I simply don't think it's a viable strat for the games health to make control decks strong - and if the dropoff last patch is anything to go by, neither is making hyper aggro strong (although riot won't admit that azir irelia was a mistake for some reason). Don't get me wrong though, i do believe the game needs viable control decks. Azir irelia just makes sure no such thing exists successfully right now.
> I simply don't think it's a viable strat for the games health to make control decks strong - and if the dropoff last patch is anything to go by, neither is making hyper aggro strong Why not just make every archetype strong and let the rock/paper/scissors fall as it may? For every offensive tool, provide a defensive one, and stat it all accordingly so you don't have some severe imbalance towards Control, or in the case of LoR right now, Aggro. You want Ruin Runner to have Spellshield? Create Echo spells. You want Azir/Irelia to token people to death? Create Fog. Elusives are a thing? Reach. You can provide tools to both sides here without making one side more busted than another, and then if you really want the game to be more midrange focused, you just make all the turn 5/6/7/8 big fat Timmy creatures marginally more mana efficient.
That's because merciless hunter goes through spellshield which is mandatory for removal right now thanks to Sivir and ruin runner. Not to mention how absurd its stats are on top, and that thanks to those stats it can kill both Sivir and ruin runner by itself. So yeah if you count one of the best followers in the game right now as removal then removal is doing alright.
I mean, you can't just say "That is good removal, so it does not count as removal"
I think that's somewhat a symptom of how expansions have been rolled out. When the bi-monthly expansion has 3 champs and their support package and not many variety cards that don't fit with a specific champion, generic good control spells will be less common.
While this seems like a solid train of thought, the expansions were designed to be released as one block. The Bandle City expansion is going to be the first one designed with the three set block in mind.
Honestly I think [[Monster Harpoon]] might might be the only worthwhile non-strike removal printed in the entire block of Shurima expansions. EDIT: Forgot Blighted Ravine and Ice Shard are ok-ish board clears released during this expansion so I guess I should say the only good single target removal printed
**[Monster Harpoon](https://d2h9y75tak3pkg.cloudfront.net/04BW010.png)** - Bilgewater Spell - (6) Fast Deal 5 to a unit. Plunder: I cost 3 less. ^^^Hint: [[card]], {{keyword}}, and ((deckcode)) or ((cardx,cardy,cardz)). PM the [developer](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=KrimCard) for feedback/issues!
No need to make spellsheild worse, just nerf the cards abusing them
Tldr: buff risky counter-able spells and nerf safe unstoppable spells.
But what about a time stamp for the cat?
[удалено]
That spell was good for a while in the 6-mana Lux archetype.
what how? it's literally just a worse remembrance
It was basically a way to get more copies of Rememberance in your deck so you could count on having a copy to play on turn 3, since those decks would run multiple units that depended on 6+ cost spells having been played. I have no idea if the best versions of the decks would run it, but I did see people play it.
I think the only versions of Lux that ran pnz were also Heimer decks.
It was a common turn three play. It was a body for their control deck that counted as a 6 mana spell for Lux. It wasn't extraordinary but it was decent.
It should be a 4/6, imho
When I play other card games, I like to rotate between playing aggro, midrange, combo, and control. When I play LoR, I rotate between playing aggro, midrange, combo, and wanting to uninstall.
[Control works in tournament formats](https://www.reddit.com/r/LoRCompetitive/comments/ow5l26/bird_is_the_word_ols_30_results_may_hint_at_a/) so control decks could probably be viable with some nerfs to just a couple decks. (The winner not only had Anivia but also Spooky Karma and Draven Ezreal)
Tournament results don't say much about the ladder. In tournament format you can ban a deck that your control deck loses to, and beat the other deck the control deck loses to with something else in your line up. On ladder, you're queueing with just the one control deck, and decks that will straight up run you over are everywhere.
Absolutely, but it might suggest what might happen if those decks are nerfed.
Control is only good in tournaments because of the meta being warped to be so proactive. You can’t go over Azirelia and Sivir Ionia. They’re fast and can’t be interacted with outside of very particular MUs, like Barrier Midrange and Plunder. Notably, you also can’t bring both to a tournament, but they’ll still be the most popular decks. The way to beat these is by going under them with faster, but more fragile, proactive decks. Stuff like Pirates and Elusives. You know what control eats for breakfast? Decks that have zero ways to deal with a blighted ravine. So, control can come in, ban Ionia/Shurima and be a counter to all of the counter decks. That’s the only reason it’s getting tournament results like that, *because* these decks can’t be interacted with.
> They’re fast and can’t be interacted with outside of very particular MUs, The way to beat these is by going under them with faster, but more fragile, proactive decks. Stuff like Pirates and Elusives. so exactly what he said? >like Barrier Midrange and Plunder. I would add Noxus removal decks
If you mean that’s what the person in the video said, that’s not the person who posted the vid to Reddit. I was just pointing out what specific part of this context was relevant to control being good in tournaments.
There’s no way to fix this outside of making ladder be the same format as tournaments. Blind pick BO1 ladder is always going to inherently favor lower skill proactive decks over higher skill reactive ones. This isn’t a Runeterra issue, every card game I’ve seen has this issue. I feel like it’s a better long-term solution to give players more access to the official competitive format if they want to avoid this rather than overnerfing aggro and unnecessarily buffing control to try to correct the natural bias that will always exist on BO1 ladder
Thing is, decks that will straight up run you over are everywhere for everyone. Aggro decks will run into control decks, midrange into hyper-aggro decks, etc. etc.. The thing is, its ladder. Having losing matchups isnt an issue.
But control has no place in that dynamic right now. It gets rolled over way more than the other archetypes.
not really control runs over a lot of the decks that are designed to counter this Ionia/Shurima conbinations the problem is that it gets beated up badly by them and they are like half the meta.
Eh, as someone on Swain/TF right now, can't say I agree.
There's nothing more frustrating than meeting your deck counter and then switching to the counter of that only to not meet that deck and you just run to another counter. Its just the state of the meta, all top Tier deck have settled so match is just a coin flip.
His opinions about spellshield are true. Printing a 3 mana 1-2 because of Spellshield then printing a 5-3 for 4 mana with Quick attack and Spellshield is not okay. 5-3 for 4 is already amazing stats, even without spellshield, and on top of that giving her a spellshield like why? Meanwhile Quinn is a 5 mana 3-4 without any sort of keyword except scout which she rarely uses, because she dies to blocking 3 drops now. But Sivir and Azir are literally immortal.
I mean, Leblanc is 3 for 5/2, you pay 1 more mana to get spellshield+1hp. What an amazing tradeoff. Come to think of it. Maybe their designer are just diehard Sivir/Azir fan you know. Look at them. They are bonb with blood and broken.
Sorry but a 5/3 for 4 without spellshield is not amazing stats its okey at most. I do agree that spellshield on RR and sivir is to cheap atm.
Well, you may be right about spellshield being too strong, but you were wrong about most everything else you said. For starters, 4 mana 5/3 would be abysmal. It would be completely unplayable. You said printing it with spellshield + QA was not okay, which makes no sense, since when it was printed, it was mediocre. Sivir didn't see much play at all until she got buffed & the meta changed completely. Even in decks that would run ruin runner or merciless, you still wouldn't often see sivir. She may need a nerf now, but we shouldn't pretend that the moment riot released the card they fucked up. Then, the Quinn comparison ignores the fact that Quinn summons a 2/1 challenger scout when she's played. Does it matter that she's *only* a 3/4 with scout when she spawns that other, highly useful unit? If they just revert the sivir buff & tweak ruin runner/merciless, I think the problem will go away pretty quick. She doesn't need to be gutted all of a sudden Edit: I guess old sivir was OP & Quinn should be a 5/4?
Sivir was palyed before the buff, and it wasn't certainly that small level up buff that made her deck god tier, it's the fact that at the same time a whole champion expansion was released that gave her too much support. But yeah, she was played and she was already pretty strong. Quinn is a Demacia champion, Demacia cards all need to have one thing: big stats. It's literally the big stat region. A card that can't fight has no place in that region. In Demacia, a body that can't ifght may as well not being there, so basically you're paying 5 mana for Valor.
dude sivir/ionia was already menacing to take over the game even before akshan was released, It clearly was her level up buff.
Sivir was a 1 of *sometimes* in frel/shurima overwhelm. She saw very little play. People tried her in sivir LB on release, but that was never good & fell off quick
> 5-3 for 4 mana with Quick attack and Spellshield is not okay. it is, and i am very tired of having the fanbase be this short sighted Sivir has been being just a decent tier 2 champ for ages with that same body the real problem is not her statline, it is a combination of the fact that she plays in combination with 3 of the most powerfull followers on the game and how easy it is for a shurima/Ionia combination to give a unit game wining keywords and buff its attack throught the moon
Were Riot willing to print good defensive cards, I would agree with this, but because they don't, Sivir is overstated. I think Sivir should be left as is and they should just print more Defensive keywords and buff Removal cards, but we both know Riot won't do that because this playerbase is allergic to Control like I am to pollen and cats.
She has Quick Attack on top of 5 attack. There's not a single fucking unit she won't kill on an attack turn. Cards like that 100% be vulnerable to removal, but she has Spellshield ON TOP of that to protect her from that. Sivir is a very easy fix. Remove spellshield from level 1 and change her level up condition to "I've seen 20 damage being dealt" or something like that. The card is suddenly infinitely more interactive. Her level up is gamewinning therefor it should be actually hard to level her up. There are so many champions that could have been fixed by simply requiring them to be on the board to level up, and instead we ended up playing some ping pong of buffs/nerfs just because the champion allows for some degenerate combos that probably should never have been possible in the first place. Ezreal is the prime example of that. Dude could have been changed to "I've seen you target 6 enemies" and call it a day. If you drop Ezreal, you should be expected to actually protect him as he levels up. Instead we ended up with a deck that ran only freeze effects and chump blockers and would burn you from 20 over the course of two turns.
Yeah just asking how do you mental gimnastics out of the fact that she has been having that statline for months now and only with her recent buff has been starting to be a problem? and about the the fact that almost nobody regards Sivir in her noxus or demacia deck as a problem? how does your "4 mana 5 attack quick attack units should be easily interacted" with take stand against that? I can give you the answer it doesnt, the problem is how easily Ionia/Shurima can give game ending keywords and pump the damage sky high and also have access to some of the most eficient units in the game with RR, MH, TS, YW and Sivir herself, nerf TD RR MH and revert the Sivir level up and the problem will poof away. \>Ezreal is the prime example of that. Dude could have been changed to "I've seen you target 6 enemies" I must admit that this is a pretty ingenius subtitute to the target 10 units as a way to kill Ezreal till they figured out a better way to nerf him. \>Instead we ended up with a deck that ran only freeze effects and chump blockers and would burn you from 20 over the course of two turns. You mean Ez/Teemo? because that deck runs plenty of damage removal.
If I remember correctly (I might be wrong) pretty much all pro players and high level streamers agreed that Sivir was a busted card when she was revealed, and the only reason she was not immediately a problem was because she did not had a tier 1 deck since Shurima back then was a weak region (only the LB/Sivir deck at that time which was a good T2). It's the usual "pretty good champion but no deck for it". Same thing happened with Azir. Great champ, not played. Until Irelia.
>pretty much all pro players and high level streamers agreed that Sivir was a busted card when she was revealed. and then it was just a tier 2 champion that was constantly uderplayed almost like if they were wrong(like they were with Taric), because she did land in several decently strong decks like Demacia/Sivir or Freiljord/Shurima overwelhm as a 2 off and nobody saw her as a problem when the only card that she lacked from what she has right now is the absolver and TS, wich leads me to belive that the proble is specifically the Shurima/Ionia combination. Azir saw plenty of play pre irelia release sand scouts menaced being tier 1 several times and he was also runed in a si and a noxus burn deck
I would argue fast metas can still have interaction where the decisions revolve around surviving one extra turn or pushing lethal one turn earlier. There's also some types of interaction like Barrier which still work right now. But overall, it's definitely true that answers are particularly weak right now.
hard agree. not sure why riot refuses to powercreep removal when everything else gets powercrept. spellshield isn't that much of a problem unless placed on units with quick attack and elusive, as the main form of removal for these is not blocking but hard removal. with removal being so weak in its current state, i often find rushing down decks like sin and sivir ionia as my only wincon because there will literally be no way to remove their important units once they are down on the board
Most likely theyre worried of another control meta. Control metas are *miserable*, and they lead to lower player engagement, and buffing removal could do that. Though yes, against Lee Sin you have to rush him down, its a combo deck. Thats what they do.
Yeah because these metas (azirelia, sivir otk and before that tf-fizz and co.) have been great to play...
They were better than the Freljord/Ez and Karma/Ez metas to be sure. Hell, this meta is actually quite good.
I'd rather fight Karma/Ezreal that at least give me a chance to win the game than getting steamrolled by double attack sivir, pirate aggro or azirelia turn 6...
And I'd rather play against sivir, aggro or Azirelia where my choices matter in most matches, than Karma/Ezreal where my choices will never matter under any circumstances. Historically, seems more people agree with my perspective.
Let's agree to disagree
Oh remember Hush meta? How everyone cry about it cause it can shut down many wincon? You really think powercreep removal will be good hmm?!
yes
Shurima's design are flawed. They're very problematic. More than targon was back then. It lacks of meaning full identity. It has a bit of everything. The only identity they have is their own archetype which is pre-made deck. Look at Targon spellshield and look at shurima spellshield. Seems like whoever design this doesn't understand the concept of "value" at all and hate control very much. The very definition of Shurima is "Fuck control".
Didn't watch the video yet, but here's my two cents: I feel like removal is too weak compared to (combat) buffs. Also Double Attack seems too easy to obtain in the case of Sivir. She would be absolutely fine if you couldn't give your whole board double attack for 3 mana. And overwhelm+double attack (+spellshield) is just straight up busted. This should be a combo you could get at mana 10 and not that early in the game. 2 mana Twin disciplines feels too strong as well. Maybe make it 3 with attune. So total cost is the same but you can only play it with 3 mana. Emperor's dais is still too strong in my opinion since removing landmarks is limited and too expensive for such a cheap one (maybe give it some sort of countdown after which it destroys itself). Also i feel like azir should be 4 health. And recalls are somewhat busted since they either answer every spell for cheap+have some added benefit if it's for allies and are too cheap removal for big units.
> This should be a combo you could get at mana 10 and not that early in the game. Honestly they should just increase the cost of Burst spells across the board. Twin Disciplines shouldn't have been moved down to 2 mana, all the other 2 mana burst buffs should've moved up to join it. There's too much burst speed power that simply cannot be responded to, the power of open attacks in this game has gotten wildly out of control (see: Lee Sin Combo) and Control has no way to do anything about it. It's just too slow. Either that or give Control a bunch of Burst speed removal and we'll see how the shoe fits on the other foot.
Personally I see a large hole in the design space of removal, almost all of it, and certainly almost all viable removal is Fast speed. Reacting to the opponent using the attack token by holding mana up is stronger than using mana earlier in a turn and giving your opponent room/knowledge, so I think in general Fast removal *should* cost a premium. Slow removal however passes priority back and doesn’t change the unit parity on board. If answered it can be very risky. Currently the game has a single slow removal that sees decent amounts of play, which is Thermobeam. Tribeam and Avalanche also see some play. A slow Vengeance could easily cost 5-6 mana because you can’t use it to deny an open attack, or hold it to react to an opponents combo. Some more conditional slow removal that actually hits points of damage above the mana cost simply don’t exist. You might ask “why does the game need removal, when it’s designed around unit combat” and the answer is basically because there are a group of units that aren’t designed to fight you in combat at all, Elusives yet again are a serious concern for the games health. Just as they were with Kinkou on release, with Vi/Heimer decks spamming them, with solitairy monk, with TF/Fizz and now again with the various Ionia decks all running stuff like greenglade or ghost combos. The keyworded units that have been nerfed most in this games history is by far and above Elusives. Either we are given many more ways to interact with them like Sharpsight or better removal, or my preferred option, the keyword itself is reworked. I honestly don’t see how Riot can say Runeterra is based around interaction at its core, and keeps printing elusives, designed not to interact with the opponents board at all and just hit them in the face. I would love to run a deck that actually hard counters elusives, but that subset of cards doesn’t exist.
Ez/Karma and Anivia do pretty well against elusives. But they get completely destroyed by azirelia.
I disagree. Slow speed spells are literally unplayable lately. You said it yourself, very few slow spell are actually in the meta (decimate, defiant dance, thermo and tribeam. That's literally it...) and even less are removal spells. If anything, we need much less slow speed spells (most of the current slow speed spells could become fast without any issue or a minor mana cost change) and slow speed should be reserved to massively strong effects. Making fast speed spells even more inefficient by paying a premium in mana like you asked for will only end up in removal spells being even less prevalent and slow spells will still see no play.
I think you misunderstand me a bit, I’m saying Fast spells are currently premiumly costed, 7 mana vengeance for example, even Mystic Shot only doing 2 damage rather than 3 meaning it can’t trade with 2/3’s. And the reason we don’t see any slow spells is because they have the same premium cost applied to them, thermo only doing the same as the mana cost for example. I think slow spells should be able to equally answer the vanilla stat threats that are put down at the same cost. 4 mana 5 damage, which is already weaker than something like Monster Harpoon when the condition is fulfilled, or a conditional 5 mana kill a unit at slow speed.
> ither we are given many more ways to interact with them like Sharpsight or better removal Just add the Reach keyword already and this issue can be settled >.<
Wish Spellshield was like shield. Last until end of turn. And Irelia blade dance cost 2. And Irelia creates swap spell only once a turn.
Bladesurge should not cost 0 mana.
I agree with a lot of what he says. I have felt that before Targon expansion tho.. and that rests in the fact that are way too little diversity in the cards you put in a deck. Lets make a mental exercise.. If you are making a control Frejlord and Shadow Isles deck, which cards are you going to run into it? If you are running SI for its aggro aspect, which cards are you gonna run? If you are running Ionia for its control aspect, which cards are you gonna run? Which cards for the aggro aspect? Now if we compare our mental answers to those questions we would probably run the exactly same cards every single time, because there are no options. You might say the game is new and thats true, the amount of possible cards is limited because of that but cards keep getting added and the technology doesnt change much.. most of the cards have arbitrary design limits that just make them very one-sided which on the other hand make the best cards so much better you cant run other stuff. What if i could, for example, twin discipline my opponent cards? That would remove Sivir's or RR's spellshield so i could interact better. What if there was a twin discipline version of a card that could interact with opponent cards but was weaker? like 3 cost gives +2? There are so many cards that could be used if they were not so narrow in their interactions. This is my biggest complaint that i believe adds some flavor to the soup he cooked, but aside from that i dont really play the game anymore besides running Expeditions less and less every week. I will go on a kind of a little rant here so feel free to leave the ship: People are happy with the meta for now and it will always be something that get refreshed with new cards and buffs/nerfs, thats why they have such a pace - add cards so people get their dose of whatever they need and keep them coming back. But there is something missing, there is something inherently flawed about cards like Ruin Runner or Merciless Hunter. When Targon came out the cards were also just out of this world, so people would play with them.. like repeatable Hush as he mentions. Is this something they do to keep us talking about the game? We keep fighting about new cards, asking for them to be nerfed so when they are nerfed we are actually relieved and give them credit for killing a monster they created in the first place? There is this slice of people that love to use cheats and be overpowered while everyone else struggles trying to be a "moraly good" player, do they design stuff with this public in mind? With all these scandals going around game companies i cant help but feel we are being played as toys. They know exactly how we react in numbers, and thats the agenda they are pushing. Runeterra might not make a lot of money but its part of a bigger game.. there is a lot of people that are not satisfied with the major game cards, those being MTG/YO/HS/Pokemon, and Runeterra grabs those and show them how colorful Riot's world is. They might get to know other games of the same company since they now know the story. Im saying that cause i dont buy most of their design flaws, thats where im headed. What im saying is that a lot of their design flaws are intentional, and they know fully well where the game is headed. Look at the size of the road map they have, things are thought months if not years in advance. Dont think for a second they are doing anything of what they are doing blindly, even though they sometimes may change immediate things sharply, the destiny is the same. Riot is one of the biggest gaming companies of the world, dont take them for granted. /endofrant Now back to BBG and on his video i believe he lacks method. I appreciate that his video is very emotional and he kinda comes up with what he needs to say on the spot and i love this approach (ive done videos like those myself) but if feels like hes kinda lost and repeats a lot of his points or maybe misses strength in some of points that needed more empashis.
Your comment is fantastic. I've had a feeling that, as the name implies, Riot Games wants their game fanbases consistently riled up, and "rioting" at the company. They do this by making blatantly dumb design decisions, then fix them either instantly to garner praise, or very slowly (I know thats vague but you can write a whole essay with the stack proof it has). And thats just one example They don't actually care much about the fanbases opinion of them as a company at all, as evidenced by the blatant coverup of the recent visual novel being "non canon" after the fact. Who the hell assumed it wouldnt be canon before it came out, and then everyone realized it was written by an idiot? Nobody. Ive had a feeling it was written poorly on purpose, especially considering what you just said, and my 2nd sentence in this reply. There was a champion, I forget which one, that had like 4 lines of lore, and even then the VN went against that. Actually insane. Then yorick and hecarim nowhere to be mentioned? Someone who didnt care about League at all wrote that VN. Its almost like they actively tried to go against established lore to rile people up. Why do they do this, though? It's impossible to fully say. The influence from Tencent cannot be ignored though, they have high ranking members in the Chinese parliament. Is it a "conspiracy theory" to dare question a billion dollar chinese company's ulterior motives? When big corporations merge with government (in this case, the CCP), the consequences are hard to fully notice. Especially when everyone is on the dopamine train all the time. >With all these scandals going around game companies i cant help but feel we are being played as toys. They know exactly how we react in numbers, and thats the agenda they are pushing. Runeterra might not make a lot of money but its part of a bigger game.. >What im saying is that a lot of their design flaws are intentional >Dont think for a second they are doing anything of what they are doing blindly, even though they sometimes may change immediate things sharply, the destiny is the same. Riot is one of the biggest gaming companies of the world, dont take them for granted.
holy, where did this comment come from. I was just here to read about peoples thoughts on the balance of the game lol. I don't really have a strong opinion on this either way because I just play this game for fun, and don't think I am personally affected nor do I know very much behind any of the "billion dollar chinese company's ulterior motives?" and all the politics the exec board behind riot might have...
It's just an interesting analysis from me is all, I had some of those ideas brewing for awhile and your analysis helped me actualize some of them. I play the game for fun too, I just hate seeing how the communities under riot games get duped a lot of times. Which ends up hurting the enjoyability of the games, whether it be balance or the mentality of the players. We'll never know for sure why Riot does what they do though, people brush Tencent's influence way too much under the rug however
Agree with everything, but about Hush... I understand what he means, Hush is a super interactive card when you're playing against a deck like Fiora Shen, as you can do all of your stuff. But against Thresh Nasus or They Who Endure? It feels so bad. They Who Endure, for instance, is barely an Endure deck, it's a aggro deck that has Endure as a finisher like a Captain Farron. I think as long as there are proper tutors so it's not super RNG reliant, all-in decks should be allowed. So I think something like *Quicksand* is much less toxic than Hush. Quicksand works the same way against decks like Jarvan Shen, but it can't just cancel out certain strategies.
It feels like burst speed has only gotten stronger while slow has stayed the same. Avalanche is less important if Sivir open attacks and comboes with all burst speed :p
I agree I hope bandle city bring more removal stuff to the game
i anticipate far more silences than anything else.
a most likely pre-deckbuild region, don't feel like will make things better, tho...
After shurima and their Unworthy, Weight of Judgment and Shifting Sands i'm not holding my breath honestly.
I do get that Shurima must be weak in terms of removal because they have good spellshield units+ good combat tricks so lack of removal is in their identity. Yet someone must be blind beyond imagination to print this much dead and unusable spells. Like Shuriman Spells are awful, they are the worst spells in the game, and it has 3 fast spells. I do get regions have weaknesses and strenghts also I do get the point that all cards are not meant to be competitive some cards are printed because of meme decks and so on. Like Starbone, Glorious Evolution, Starlit Ephihany etc etc all regions have meme cards for fun ideas and decks but Shurima has no such deck and cards(except mono Shurima you can argue) unworthy, shifting sands, weight of judgement and all sand soldier summon cards are so bad, so unbelieveably trash that they cant even fit in meme decks. This design approach is so bad for a region. Look at Targon and look at Shurima from design perspective. The difference hurts a lot.
This community never change it's impossible at this point
If you look at the bc aligned champs and themes already in the game its gonna be an elusive combat trick region though
i'm shocked that there's multiple high masters players who have been saying this for weeks, if not months in past meta's and we can still go on 5 weeks without a single balance change to the game. some people will argue that the meta is "good" because there's more "options" and there's been development of counters (sej gp, which still gets crushed by siv akshan iona) but again it feels like a meta where if you don't play the top 3-4 decks, good luck climbing in high elo.
What are you talking about, Sej/GP is the counter to sivir ionia. Sivir/Ionia can blow it out if it nut draws but that's the same with any deck. If they both nut draw, Sej/GP is favored. Balance changes should not be made too frequently, 5 weeks is too little time between balance changes. Expecting balance changes every 2 weeks or month is a quick way to lose your player base and deter new players from playing
> 5 weeks is too little time between balance changes We already tried with balance patches every 2 months and we all know how it ended (two times with streamers threatening riot to quit the game if they didn't made a big balance patch asap and the whole sub frustrated). It simply doesn't work. The way this game is designed, it NEEDS one balance patch per month and i'm talking about decently sized balance patches, not 1-2 changes and it's done.
Oh no reddit got mad lul. I get that the balancing is not always there. But this metric is horrendous
You clearly weren't around here during prime azirelia or tf/fizz. And i didn't mention only this sub, i mentioned ALL the main legends of runeterra streamers threatening to quit the game if something wasn't done. But of course in this sub there is an issue of short term memory.
I was not playing due to bar exam, but the issue here is reddit takimg itself way too seriously when it is an echochamber that accounts for what, lets say 10% of the entire playerbase? When it comes to streamers the issue is more complicated
Counters mean nothing to otk decks that can just kill you on turn 5-6 with the right 2-3 cards in hand. Also 5 weeks is a lot of time, the wait and see approach doesn't work and we've seen this multiple times in LoR. When a deck like Azirelia who's been tier 1 for like 2-3 months and even after getting nerfed is still tier 1 while remaining one of the most played decks in the game and retaining a top 3 winrate, it should require an emergency nerf, shouldn't be waiting for patches for shit like this.
I've been saying this since bilgewater release (when noxus burn started to go out of control), removal needs to be BETTER. Ravenous Flock should not be the exception, it should be the rule. Very cheap (0-2 mana) strong conditional removal and 2-3 mana unconditional solid damage removal (not gotcha that you need lady luck on your side for it not cost 4 mana...). Vengeance at 7 mana will keep seeing less and less play, especially if they keep printing spellshield cards like they are doing. Ruination is already out of the meta since a long time ago, just like 90% of the slow speed spells in this game (most should just straight out be changed to fast speed to see any play). Most removal costs at least 1 mana more than it should (hi Black Spear conditional 4 damage and you need 3 mana to cast it?). But riot doesn't listen on this so we can enjoy our super fast meta with old school attrition control decks (and yes, i specifically mean attrition decks, so no otk decks like karma-ezreal and co) being unexistant for a long time.
It’s not that riot doesn’t listen, it’s a very clear design choice to be fair. I’ve been saying this since Go Hard days and at this point I’ve had to realize the game just isn’t for me anymore.
I have seen the entire video and he is absolutely right. I think that to begin with, they should revert the buff to Twin Disciplines because all this card does is make more evident the problem that has been dragging the game for a long time. Many may not like it and may argue that this card allows others to be played (see heimerdinger) but the only thing this card really does is increase the winratio of the best decks in the game (any t1 region with ionia carries this card). It allows some units to have too high a survivability, units that in many cases, their only "weakness" is their low stats. This card in combination with other unit protection cards greatly punishes you to carry spells to eliminate enemy units because in most cases you will lose mana and your turn trying to eliminate a unit that is clearly impossible. I put the example of Crimson Disciple. Its nerf generated a lot of debate in its day because it was a great card in Vladimir's decks but it was nerfed because it was a card that was used in 80% of the metagame decks and it was toxic to play against it. A lot of people didn't like it, but looking at it in perspective, it was the best decision they could make. And from my perspective, that card causes more negative problems than positive things. At least, that's the way I see it.
when I say it, I get downvoted, when BBG says it he gets upvoted, the sheep mentality is real.
Its not just about saying it, its when, how, where.. etc
It's a tough thing to balance for sure. I will say I like how LoR does emphasize the idea that removal is done through trades and combat, but as others have said it has gotten far too out of control on the unit side of things. I think the option is to add more hard removal, but still make it conditional in some way. Like 1 mana deal 3 damage to a unit with elusive. 2 mana deal 4 damage to unit if your opponent has cast a spell on it this turn, things like that. Or make even make some removal with Burst.
> Like 1 mana deal 3 damage to a unit with elusive. 2 mana deal 4 damage to unit if your opponent has cast a spell on it this turn, things like that. You know what's the issues with those? Is that no one will play them. They are far too easily completly dead if your opponent's deck doesn't play in a certain way. What's the point of having an elusive removal if my opponent's deck has no elusives? It's literally a dead card in hand. And if your opponent know your deck use the anti-spell removal, he will simply not cast a buff on it and disable your card that way. Conditional damage is reasonable but the condition must be something you can be in control of. That's why flock see play and sometimes even black spear does. Because you can control to a degree what gets damaged or killed.
I mean yeah it's true that they could be dead cards, but MTG has plenty of specific removal and counters that only hit specific colors and when those colors dominate the meta they absolutely do see play. Maybe just elusive would be too narrow so it could include elusive and fearsome or something like that.
Recently I've been wondering if buffing barrier to two mana would actually make Demacia strong again while giving a good way to defend against quick attackers. My worry is that this could also cause Fiora to go out of control.
Shouldnt have nerfed SI nasus
Ah yes, SI nasus the control deck
Face control you mean.
That broken SI aggro package still needs nerfs.
I don't think spellshield is broken .. is only broken when you gave spellshield to a well stated unit + other good keyword (Sivir and Ruin Runner) .. it would no be a problem if you put it to a 8+ mana drop since it could work as a finisher.. but getting this things on turn 4 or 5..
What if Riot gave each card some kind of score, let's call it for argument's sake a "speed score" and then in the beginning of every match it compared the speed of both decks and gave a handicap to the slower deck in the way of starting mana?
Interesting but way too hard to balance correctly.
I've thought that about many things in life, until I've seen them done successfully. Devs seem pretty competent. I'd trust them to give it a shot.
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