Patch notes have arrived! We've got the first round of card balance for Call of the Mountain with Patch 1.10 and we're going to get more of it in two weeks in 1.11!
Quick Card Changes in 1.10
Here is the quick version of the card changes in this week's patch. For a detailed response on why they are being changed, check out the full patch notes.
Card Nerfs
- Ezreal - Now requires 10 targets (up from 8)
- War Chefs - Power is now 1 (down from 2)
- Yordle Grifter - "Create a Warning Shot" is now a part of the Allegiance keyword alongside "Nab 1".
Card Buffs
- Flash of Brilliance - Cost is now 3 (down from 4)
- Overgrown Snapvine - Power is now 5 (up from 4)
- Crackshot Corsair - Health is now 2 (up from 1)
- Cygnus the Moonstalker - Power is now 5 (up from 4). Health is now 3 (up from 2)
Card Reworks
- Lee Sin - Lower stats, increased level up requirement.
- Jagged Taskmaster - Lower stats with a decrease in cost to play. All numbers decreased by 1.
Quick Updates
- Standard Gauntlet now requires 3 decks to play and you will get to ban one of your opponent's decks.
- A New Lab has been added which is the first constructed Lab! Welcome to the Jungle is inspired by jungling gameplay from League of Legends.
- Expeditions: Call of the Mountain archetypes will now be offered during the initial champion picks half as often as previously, or 50% more than normal for the duration of Patch 1.10. The offering bonus will be removed completely with Patch 1.11.
- Expeditions also has several shakeups - all detailed below.
- Cross-shard Friend Challenge is now available. You can play against friends no matter where they are located in the world.
Full Patch Notes
Quote From Riot Our first major patch of Call of the Mountain brings the latest balance changes as well as Gauntlet updates, a new Lab, and the long-awaited debut of cross-shard friend challenge!
Card Updates
Dev Notes: Balance in 1.10 & 1.11
Patch 1.10 lands three weeks after the Call of the Mountain patch rather than the usual two, which has given us room to lock in more balance changes than usual for the first post-release patch. It's also not quite enough room to gather data on all the new stuff, so we'll be following up with more balance changes in just two weeks as part of Patch 1.11. For that patch, we'll have a greater focus on Targon-specific tuning after using the additional time to observe and test.
Here's a preview of a few things to expect in 1.11:
- Adjustments to the difficulty of Aurelion Sol's level up requirement
- Adding escalation to Hush's repeatable cost
- Grandfather Rumul giving more hugs
RubinZoo, Live Design Lead
Champions
Level up: You've targeted enemies 8+ times. → You've targeted enemies 10+ times.
Ezreal's an exciting build-around and a unique combo/control finisher (all things we want to preserve), but his design also presents some "is this fun to play against?" challenges that we've discussed previously. Increasing the difficulty of Ezreal's quest will ask for additional investment to reach his extremely potent level 2 form, and create more tension in the choice between leveling up his quest and saving damage for the opponent's Nexus.
Cost: 6 → 4
Health: 6 → 4
Level up: You've cast 7+ spells. → You've cast 8+ spells.
Lee Sin has been the least played Rising Tides champion since his release. We're reworking him to be significantly cheaper and able to make an impact earlier in the game, while making more sense alongside the double-casting archetype.
Lee Sin(Level 2)
Cost: 6 → 4
Health: 7 → 5
Lee Sin's Sonic Wave
Was Lee Sin's Dragon's Rage
We've also changed Lee Sin's champion spell to Sonic Wave. While this is a more unusual change, Lee Sin's Dragon's Rage was often a poor fit for Lee Sin decks due to being expensive and Slow speed, resulting in rarer use than we'd like to see in a champion spell. His new spell should help his early game and allow Lee Sin to contribute more synergy to followers.
Followers & Spells
Power: 2 → 1
War Chefs has been a consistent fixture of mid-range Demacia decks, always earning its keep through the potential to create huge early advantages. We'd like to see more variety, so we're making this change to allow more counterplay via blocking and rein in how consistently the card can create snowball wins.
Cost: 4 → 3
What would patch notes be without a change to Flash of Brilliance? We're reverting a previous change made simultaneously with an update to Heimerdinger—overall, Flash's satisfaction and usability took too much of a collateral hit from those changes. Heimerdinger and Flash of Brilliance are ultimately a natural pairing, and we'd like to restore the appeal of such a core interaction while also making Flash more appealing to a wider variety of decks.
Power: 4 → 5
Overgrown Snapvine has been a frequent request for updates among the Epic card roster. Snapvine can sometimes lock you out of playing meaningful units, and while we want to be careful given the potential of its effect, a simple boost to its power should provide a significant usability and payoff upgrade.
Health: 1 → 2
Bilgewater's cheap & aggressive Plunder-based units haven't been seeing much usage outside of Jagged Butcher. This adjustment should help Corsair be a more viable option in Bilgewater-based aggro.
Cost: 3 → 2
Power: 4 → 3
Health: 3 → 2
We're adjusting the Taskmaster to make it easier to utilize in its core decks, while also making it more accessible to a wider array of Bilgewater decks.
Old text: Create a [Warning Shot] in hand.
Allegiance: Nab 1New text: Allegiance: Nab 1 and create a [Warning Shot] in hand.
Allegiance cards are intended and balanced to be quite powerful given the expected cost of their deckbuilding constraints. Yordle Grifter has proven too easy to rely on in decks that stretch those constraints too far, so we're extending the Allegiance requirement to both of its effects.
Power: 4 → 5
Health: 2 → 3
Cygnus was simply too low on raw stats to be a powerful curve topper for Nightfall decks.
Standard Gauntlet update: Multi-deck pick & ban
Last month, we updated the Singleton Gauntlet to allow tri-region decks, and now the Standard Gauntlet gets its own update with the introduction of a pre-match multi-deck pick & ban lobby.
You'll now start off the Standard Gauntlet by picking three different decks you'd potentially like to field. Different how? Well, there are a few rules in place:
- No champions duplicated between decks
- Different region combinations for each deck
- Maximum one champion-less deck
After locking in your decks (and before each new match), you'll queue like normal until you're matched with an opponent and enter the pick & ban lobby. Here you'll get to view regions and champions for your opponents decks and ban one of them from being played (while they return the favor), then pick which of your remaining two decks you'd like to pilot into the following single-game match. Each opponent brings a new pick & ban phase.
New Lab: Welcome to the Jungle
This patch also brings us our first-ever constructed Lab! Instead of receiving random cards or choosing from a set of preconstructed options, you'll be challenged to brew the perfect deck… or, if you'd rather get right into the action, you can choose quickplay and queue up with one of Heimerdinger's own concoctions!
Welcome to the Jungle is Inspired by the jungling gameplay of League of Legends—take the time to clear your opponent's jungle camps and you'll be handsomely rewarded.
- Both players have Vulnerable, Immobile jungle monsters on their board.
- Killing your opponent's jungle monster grants you a powerful buff spell with your choice of potent effects.
- Killing a jungle monster also spawns another in its place next round. Watch out—the new ones may be even stronger as the game goes on!
Expeditions Archetypes
Tightening things up after the debut of Call of the Mountain, we've diluted the Invoke-heavy Targon archetypes, which have been a bit too consistent, made the usual buffs to struggling archetypes, and adjusted Cohesiveness Rating increase for some archetypes that were showing up too far into drafts when you weren't focusing on them. We're also heavily reducing the offering bonus for Call of the Mountain archetypes:
Call of the Mountain archetypes will now be offered during the initial champion picks half as often as previously, or 50% more than normal for the duration of Patch 1.10. The offering bonus will be removed completely with Patch 1.11.
Afterlife
- Added: Ravenous Butcher, Vile Feast
- Removed: Mark of the Isles, Mist's Call
Cloning Program
- Wild Pick Bonus Chance increased to Medium from None
Collective Support
- Cohesiveness Rating increased to Medium from Low
- Wild Pick Bonus Chance increased to High from Medium
- Added: Mountain Sojourners
- Removed: Broadbacked Protector, Fledgling Stellacorn, Silent Shadowseer
Death's Door
- Added: Black Spear, Deadbloom Wanderer, Sump Dredger, Tri-beam Improbulator
- Removed: Trueshot Barrage, Vile Feast
Fishbones
- Added: Solari Soldier, Spacey Sketcher
Luminous Dusk
- Wild Pick Bonus Chance increased to Medium from None
- Added: Atrocity
- Removed: Black Spear, Mountain Sojourners, Shroud of Darkness
Moonlit Heist
- Cohesiveness Rating increased to Medium from Low
- Added: Chum the Waters, Prowling Cutthroat
- Removed: Jailbreak, Shellshocker, Star Shepherd
Otherworldly Creatures
- Cohesiveness Rating increased to Medium from Low
- Added: Ember Maiden, Startled Stomper, Take Heart, Yeti Yearling
Radiant Dawn
- Added: Broadback ProtectorBADCARDNAME, Sunblessed Vigor
- Removed: Moondreamer, Mountain Sojourners
Shadows and Dust
- Removed: Barkbeast, Encroaching Shadows, Fading Memories
Suit Up
- Added: The Tuskraider
Terrors from the Deep
- Cohesiveness Rating increased to High from Medium
The Black Mist
Cross-shard Friend Challenge
Friend challenge now available with all friends, regardless of which regional shard they play on.
Bugfixes
- The Empyrean and Dragonling (created by Eye of the Dragon) now correctly have the Dragon type.
- Fixed an issue where Nightfall card VFX would take excessively long to complete when triggering Nightfall.
- Fixed an issue where Taric would incorrectly gain level-up progress from targeting your Nexus or allies in hand.
- Fixed an issue where Hush would delay stun effects to the following turn.
- Fixed an issue where Supernova would represent inaccurate results when using Oracle's Eye.
- Fixed an issue where Zenith Blade wouldn't be revealed when drawn off its Daybreak effect.
- Fixed an issue where Dragon's Rage, spells copied by Karma's (Level 2) effect, and Riptide Rex weren't correctly counting towards Ezreal's level-up progress.
- Fixed an issue where Flame ChompersBADCARDNAME wasn't being correctly buffed by Vision when both were simultaneously discarded.
- Fixed an issue where Aurelion Sol (Level 2) would reduce the cost of opponent's Celestial cards.
- Various minor bugfixes for deckbuilder and the rewards panel.
Comments
The change I liked the most was to change Lee sin's champion spell was surprised it's dragon rage since it had little synergy with Lee sin, sure he casts it on his level up but now his champion spell fits him so much more besides while ult plays are flashy, Lee sins are known by their q casts way more.
I'm liking the Ezreal and Yordle Grifter buffs. Guess I didn't know War Chefs was a problem.
I'm not sure why, but I'm enjoying the fact that The Empyrean now has the Dragon tag. I haven't seen that card played since open beta; I wonder if it'll make a minor comeback?
Love the ez nerf and the lee sin rework. Haven't seen him a lot lately but he always seemed way to easy to level.
Hoping Lee Sin is more playable now.
Wish they would have done something about Sejuani too as she seems way too easy to level for such a good level 2 ability.
Seriously?!
Ezreal nerf is too much, imo.
I wouldn't agree with that statement. Let's look at the 2 most popular Ezreal decks right now: TF Ez and Karma Ez. The former can still level up with a single Make it Rain (3) + a single Riptide Rex (7). The latter wants to stall to Round 10 and uses 20x targeting spells + Yone to do it, so it really shouldn't have a problem leveling him up in time either. Sure both decks will have games were they don't draw well and now lose where they previously might have won, but that's a risk for any combo deck in any game. The real blow though is to decks squeezing Ezreal where he honestly doesn't even belong -- e.g., Ezreal Vi Targon Gem decks -- and frankly I'm happy to see Ez pushed out of those archetypes to make way for lesser played champs like Lee Sin and Taric.
You've misused the terms former and latter, just fyi. Former refers to the first thing you said, latter the last thing you said. Edit - it's been fixed now.
Ack! So I did..
Well damn it: I literally just started using War Chefs two days ago >_<
Lee Sin's changes are interesting, he can gain barrier, so his health is not that important, two less mana cost is huge. Playing 8 spells instead of 7 can be a bit too much, but maybe they playtested him with the new stats and the old level up requirement and he was too good.
Ezrael's nerf is too big in my opinion, 10 targets its maybe overnerfing; not that i complain.
Yordle Grifter's nerf is the best nerf, the card was played just for the body and the warning shot, if it did nab a card it was just a bonus, if it didn't whatever. Now it's important to play the card only in almost mono-bilgewater decks; the only downside is that you'll feel even worse when your opponent gets the allegiance in a non mono-bilgewater.
Cygnus's buff is good, the card alredy saw some play in nightfall decks, now i'd say is a card that will be sure to be find in those kind of decks.
War chefs's nerf is ok, damacia midrange decks are just a bit over the curve.
Flash of brilliance came back, honestly i think the nerf to Heimerdinger's 3 drop was good by itself, and flash of brilliance didn't deserve a nerf at that point.
I like how the gauntlet now will differentiate from ladder and is going to a direction similar to a tournament setting; maybe requiring casual players to have 3 decks that they want to play and are good decks is a bit too much, i can see the mode fail for this reason (for example, in mtg arena, single games were played much more than best of 3 games; even if mtg was born as a best of 3)
Regarding Gauntlet: I think you mean "new free players," not "casual players." I know it sounds like quibbling, but they are very different demographics.
I actually meant casual players too. Like, i'm playing from the beta and between wild cards and shards i have the whole collection, isn't that the problem.
What i can see like a possible problem is having 3 decks that i want and enjoy to play, i'd have a problem chosing 2 decks already; it's still awesome to have something very similar to a tournament setting, i just can see it not be very popular for this reason, i hope i'm wrong
I wouldn’t worry too much about Standard Gauntlet becoming less popular, since right now it’s basically just ranked with a slightly different rewards payout, so I don’t think it was all that popular. Now it’s a significantly different game mode, so maybe people who love the Bo3 format will enjoy playing it a lot. This also lets them test how interested the community is in a Bo3, so they can decide whether it should be added as another game mode or stay a part of Gauntlet.