Early Expansion Impressions

Forge is very good, again scaling without a great number of adequate answers is scary.

And much like attach you get your buffed piece of equipment back.

I feel bad for darkness you had 1 month again in the spotlight buddy oh well.

Grandma bunny was my first craft because memes, and truthfully her kit is kinda bad but she's kinda good. So feels like a runeterra champ minus the inflexible deck building restriction.

My first deck is a simple yordal tribal build with her and it seems good but not broken compared to how many forge and equipment decks well see day 1 and in the meta overall.

My first impression is that it's time to nerf some shurima cards again. 

This time it's Akshan's landmark and the new 5 mana ressurrect spell that costs 3 if you equiped this game.

I want to see Akshan nerfed because equipments tend to level him VERY fast and also repeatedly. Leveling akshan fast usually drains your hand but now... now you chain equipments and countdown your landmark once every 2 rounds with no end in sight.

And do I have to explain why an effect worth 7 unit mana is broken on a spell for 3?

Who doesn't like to kill a Master Yi, Akshan or Kai'Sa just to have 2 of them on the enemy board the very next moment? 

Yeah if hourglass is 3 now rez should be 4. Pretty hard to argue, with the latter being straight up better.

Like it basically took them the entire life cycle of world waker to properly balance that set, and I wont be surprised if there's some super broken stuff here too.

From personal experience the top dogs from the previous meta ( Miss Fortune/TF, Viego/Evelynn, Darkness and mono Kai'sa) still feel better than anything that came out of this expansion.

Maybe it's just because the deck list are not refined yet? 

Well yeah, if you're a net decker you shouldn't net deck till the decks are netted.

The reality is a lot of the new decks are so strong they require hard counters.

Things like quietus shadow (kill equipment or Zoe or like a heimer on curve) or silence and surpress  demacia(deals with fated followers and equipment)

Here's a list of the best new decks so far:

1. Jax forge - just midrange good stuff, slam jam and blam should easily win you the game

2. Lee Sin Ip Master - cataclysm, rally rally rally, counter, burst protect your Champs are leveled. Strongest combo deck, besides Kaisa.

3. Portals - hasn't been properly built yet so yes this one is "bad" right now but it's only inches away.

4. Sythe Grapple - saying that akshan decks are good is a pretty big understatement largely better then the old akshan spellshield decks.

So thats 3 great decks, and 1 "Fun" deck pretty normal for a new expansion. If you want lists I can share either mine or popular streamers.

My first impression after a decent bunch of games is that this expansion is pushing LoR further into highroll grounds. Jax decks seems consistent but Ornn/Trundle Timeline and any portal deck are highroll af. Especially the later. Sometimes it's T7 and your Norra is 2/6 and sometimes you got a full board with Sneezy Biggledust! by T4 and your opponent insta give up. Back to Trundle, the set definitely gave a huge second breath to the deck. Improvise allies are a god send since they keep the weapon while transforming, resulting in some absurbly stated followers.

Yi seems a bit less represented, I don't meet him often, but I'm not surprised with such a board dominion based set where having a 6/5 overhelm on T4 is the new standard.

Balance considerations aside, I really love to play with Norra. Sure it's RNG, it won't please everyone, but it's acceptably deterministic due to the fact it's on your 4 first cards and that her pack isn't that strong (Portalpalooza is a good example, it's both a key card and a rather sluggish one). Haven't found the sweet duo yet (Nami is meh due to meta being heavy with challenger keyword, same with Zoe). Rn I'm trying with Evelynn. The board can be a bit tricky to manage but the fact portals goes in hand if board full make it combo decently with Husks. Another perk is that Evelynn smoothen your mid game, which seems like the weak point of a Norra deck (your early game is played, you haven't summoned much portals and opponent start to do powerplays). And well Husks help shitton in Norra evolve with minimal PP invested.

Quote From Author

Well yeah, if you're a net decker you shouldn't net deck till the decks are netted.

The reality is a lot of the new decks are so strong they require hard counters.

I have been using a Sejuani/Gnar deck based around the transform mechanic and I have a far better win rate against deck from current patch than the ones from the previous meta, the reality a lot of the new decks aren't as strong as your making them out to be.

I mean does any LoR deck compare to the powerlevel of Kai'sa decks? 

It would have needed absolute incompetence to design 2 decks of that sort in a row.

Still: the new cards aren't weak imo and once we stop running non- optimal builds/cards I doubt the archetypes will still look rather weak

I've played transform, I can't say anyone has used it to rank highly on ladder it is fun though.

The new set is actually insane, 1 mana burst that can be an elixir of iron or wrath depending on need and causes 2 spell procs for akshan and Lee Sin.

An infinite 1 mana cycle for guaranteed card advantage in any Ionia deck.

1 mana equipments that double as late game threats.

Being able to simultaneously play an equipment creature and transform it to any other creature of the same mana cost 

The reality is that all the Champs of the new set minus sythe boy aren't that great, but the epic slot specifically the 1 mana cards are powercreeped so hard that control is a dead archetype now.

Also I haven't seen a single Kaisa deck, pirate aggro, darkness control. Like if you just jam a treasure of the sands on Akshan he becomes a Kaisa at mana 3, like why bother leveling Champs at all if they don't cycle when you can just buff smaller ones.

honestly, I think the one sided Shurima ruination is it for me.

Like the game is essentially unplayable outside of Ionia, and Shurima right now.

They have the best burst spells, counter spells, the best card advantage engines, like before I was like shurima is fine it was just a tempo region

But now it literally does it all, even has better buffs then any other option. (bone club costs 5 in freijord, costs 1 in shurima)

Not sure if streamers or "pro" players consulted on this expansion just like with Annie Bards initial release

But it has that same broken on release flavor, that made the game unplayable for me till we got that game fixing patch.

Quote From TheTriferianGeneral

I mean does any LoR deck compare to the powerlevel of Kai'sa decks? 

It would have needed absolute incompetence to design 2 decks of that sort in a row.

Still: the new cards aren't weak imo and once we stop running non- optimal builds/cards I doubt the archetypes will still look rather weak

I don't think that they are weak, and I have faced some pretty strong ones like Ornn/Trundle and Vi/Jax but if your are not playing the meta those deck feel a lot more fair than the likes Miss Fortune/TF, Mono Kai'sa or even Darkness.

Equipe cards need to be played proactively and are heavily punished by fast speed removal even the portal mechanic (a mechanic that I dreaded when it was announced) is rather slow, it's not like pre-nerf Bard who can start hitting you with high rolls early in the game.

Honestly it feel like they significantly toned down the power creep for this expansion and the only new card that seem busted to me is Heedless Resurrection.

Equip cards actually good ones like treasure of the sands 3 mana 4/4 buff can not be proactively punished by on curve removal say a mystic shot or what have you because they don't go on the stack.

Therefore the only thing that pro-actively controls a strong on curve equipment play is stuns and bounces which is why Ionia is running rampant right now.

So if you want to say play ezreal right now or Catarina good ****** luck. Same thing with darkness, even if you tech quietus just to stay competitive its usually rough due to the sheer amount of value akshan scythe dude gets.

Quote From Author

So if you want to say play ezreal right now or Catarina good ****** luck. Same thing with darkness, even if you tech quietus just to stay competitive its usually rough due to the sheer amount of value akshan scythe dude gets.

Akshan/Kayn struggle to even reach 50% win rate meanwhile Ez/Kennen and Katarina/Gwen/Elise both have 55%+ win rate even Darkness is doing well with 52% win rate 

https://runeterra.ar/stats

https://masteringruneterra.com/meta-tier-list/