Legends of Runeterra
This patch makes me want to quit this game.
So I got it 2 or 3 months ago. I quite enjoyed the pace of growing your collection, you don't get handed everything asap, but you also grow at a very steady pace. You can cast things at different spell speeds to have windows of interaction like MTG, but the pace of the game didn't suffer for it. Game aesthetics are on point, it feels well made and well polished.
But the immediate issue I ran into was 95% of my opponents were playing basically the same thing every game: Aggro.
- Elise + Fearsome
- Noxus free damage vomit
- Elusive + Autofill
- Aggro Champion with Quick Attack + Autofill
- Usually some fusion of two of the above
This meant I could literally only ever play Shadow Isles + Stuff myself, because Black Spear was a painful necessity against all the constant aggro swarms, Shadow Isles also has some of the only good card draw to dig with, and even Grasp of the Undying (which is overcosted) was also kind of necessary.
Doesn't help that, on top of this, the "control" deck's cheese of choice with Heimdinger and Karma also pretty much required a cheap 3 damage spell so you could cast 2 removals in a turn, or just get overrun by their endless value. And "answer me or basically lose immediately" gameplay is VERY polarizing and not fun. Any delay means too much damage or too many generated cards for the opponent, and you'll lose to THAT even if you find an answer after a short delay.
ALL OF THIS COULD BE ADDRESSED WITH MORE CHEAP CONDITIONAL REMOVAL OPTIONS.
Instead they nerf Black Spear. It was already balanced and difficult to utilize without filling your deck with a bunch of 1-cost garbage which already can't block Fearsome, can't block Elusive, and is too weak to even BE called a roadblock against the Aggro decks.
So now literally only Culling Strike exists to deal with SOME of the overwhelming number of Aggro cards, and it doesn't work on several. Noxian Guillotine is worthless because you can't EVEN do damage in the early game at all to units with Fearsome and Elusive going unblocked or Quick Attack not taking damage on attack. Most games just degenerate into a game of chicken between who can vomit the most Elusive+Fearsome cards or some overpowered Champion like Zed not being immediately answered, starting at "only" 6 damage per turn for 3 and ramping up after.
Legends of Runeterra was already plagued by Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing. For an online card game that FINALLY offered some promise of Mutually Interactive Gameplay (without the toxicity of unlimited value Planeswalkers), instead windows of interaction are being closed. Almost every low-cost Champion in this game now cannot be meaningfully interacted with, Elusive and Fearsome based aggression is even more dominating, and decks have even less variety in builds and gameplay than before because CONTROL isn't allowed to exist to balance the meta. (And even on Control's end, I don't want an unlimited value engine like Heimerdinger to exist in his current state either. That's the SAME issue MTG has. The card goes a minimum of 2 or 3 for 1 if he even gets answered or just oppressively wins without an immediate answer.)
There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay. You play Aggro of some flavor and vomit cards at the opponent and whoever can vomit harder wins. I don't care that there's 4 or 5 flavors of THE SAME EXACT THING WITH THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY, it's still the same deck with the same playstyle. Vomit difficult-to-block guys, go aggro. Mostly, it's just whichever aggro deck in the aggro mirror draws more of their unanswerable aggro Champions first and can attack with them first to snowball the game. Some combat tricks can shift this but those are again just standard aggro cards for standard aggro decks.
Do I really care if it's Shadow Isles, Noxus, Ionia, or Demacia? Nope. It's all the same deck doing the same thing.
And that's why I want to put the game down. It has a fun core, it has promise. But it's like the developers only like Aggro and Combo and hate Control, like the usual kids in other card games who whine whenever anything Control based is viable. Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation... these kinds just whine that the other guy's Control cards need nerfs. It's a childish way to play, wanting to treat the game like a singleplayer race and then complaining that you hit a speedbump instead of asking what you could do to play around your opponent. And it's a childish and self-defeating way to build a game.
Leave a Comment
You must be signed in to leave a comment. Sign in here.
So I got it 2 or 3 months ago. I quite enjoyed the pace of growing your collection, you don't get handed everything asap, but you also grow at a very steady pace. You can cast things at different spell speeds to have windows of interaction like MTG, but the pace of the game didn't suffer for it. Game aesthetics are on point, it feels well made and well polished.
But the immediate issue I ran into was 95% of my opponents were playing basically the same thing every game: Aggro.
- Elise + Fearsome
- Noxus free damage vomit
- Elusive + Autofill
- Aggro Champion with Quick Attack + Autofill
- Usually some fusion of two of the above
This meant I could literally only ever play Shadow Isles + Stuff myself, because Black Spear was a painful necessity against all the constant aggro swarms, Shadow Isles also has some of the only good card draw to dig with, and even Grasp of the Undying (which is overcosted) was also kind of necessary.
Doesn't help that, on top of this, the "control" deck's cheese of choice with Heimdinger and Karma also pretty much required a cheap 3 damage spell so you could cast 2 removals in a turn, or just get overrun by their endless value. And "answer me or basically lose immediately" gameplay is VERY polarizing and not fun. Any delay means too much damage or too many generated cards for the opponent, and you'll lose to THAT even if you find an answer after a short delay.
ALL OF THIS COULD BE ADDRESSED WITH MORE CHEAP CONDITIONAL REMOVAL OPTIONS.
Instead they nerf Black Spear. It was already balanced and difficult to utilize without filling your deck with a bunch of 1-cost garbage which already can't block Fearsome, can't block Elusive, and is too weak to even BE called a roadblock against the Aggro decks.
So now literally only Culling Strike exists to deal with SOME of the overwhelming number of Aggro cards, and it doesn't work on several. Noxian Guillotine is worthless because you can't EVEN do damage in the early game at all to units with Fearsome and Elusive going unblocked or Quick Attack not taking damage on attack. Most games just degenerate into a game of chicken between who can vomit the most Elusive+Fearsome cards or some overpowered Champion like Zed not being immediately answered, starting at "only" 6 damage per turn for 3 and ramping up after.
Legends of Runeterra was already plagued by Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing. For an online card game that FINALLY offered some promise of Mutually Interactive Gameplay (without the toxicity of unlimited value Planeswalkers), instead windows of interaction are being closed. Almost every low-cost Champion in this game now cannot be meaningfully interacted with, Elusive and Fearsome based aggression is even more dominating, and decks have even less variety in builds and gameplay than before because CONTROL isn't allowed to exist to balance the meta. (And even on Control's end, I don't want an unlimited value engine like Heimerdinger to exist in his current state either. That's the SAME issue MTG has. The card goes a minimum of 2 or 3 for 1 if he even gets answered or just oppressively wins without an immediate answer.)
There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay. You play Aggro of some flavor and vomit cards at the opponent and whoever can vomit harder wins. I don't care that there's 4 or 5 flavors of THE SAME EXACT THING WITH THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY, it's still the same deck with the same playstyle. Vomit difficult-to-block guys, go aggro. Mostly, it's just whichever aggro deck in the aggro mirror draws more of their unanswerable aggro Champions first and can attack with them first to snowball the game. Some combat tricks can shift this but those are again just standard aggro cards for standard aggro decks.
Do I really care if it's Shadow Isles, Noxus, Ionia, or Demacia? Nope. It's all the same deck doing the same thing.
And that's why I want to put the game down. It has a fun core, it has promise. But it's like the developers only like Aggro and Combo and hate Control, like the usual kids in other card games who whine whenever anything Control based is viable. Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation... these kinds just whine that the other guy's Control cards need nerfs. It's a childish way to play, wanting to treat the game like a singleplayer race and then complaining that you hit a speedbump instead of asking what you could do to play around your opponent. And it's a childish and self-defeating way to build a game.
Ok, lets break your post into smaller parts:
1- Everyone is playing aggro:
Aggro is strong, fast, consistent and easy to pilot; also it doesn't require owning champions as much as other decks.
Obviously is always going to be popular especially to new players as designed to be.
You didn't stated what kind of deck you are trying to play, so its hard to give advice, but even slow control decks like Warmother can beat aggro with the right curve if built properly.
2- Elusive and Fearsome are not interactive
I agree with you on this one. I also dislike both mechanics for all the reasons you described. Both should be reworked in a way they feel more interactive.
3- More cheap conditional removals
This one is quite bad as it could turn many high cost followers unplayable or Heimeirdinger into a must play champion for control decks.
4- Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing
As time passes by, decks are getting more and more refined so aggro tends to get stronger even without any buffs.
The only combo decks i remember are Ez and Karma/SI. After the last patch, the metagame got faster to the point combo Karma is not viable anymore and combo Ez is on the edge of being viable.
Just a few control decks viable: Ashe, Fiora, Garen, Heimer, Lux, Karma, Anivia/Thresh and my Spidy token Elise which i am sitting at rank Master 14º right now.
5- There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay
That's only true for optimal aggro decks that want to max damage. Its VERY untrue for anything else, and especially untrue for control decks.
Hell, even aggro decks can tech in a few control cards and see their winrate increase if all there is are aggro decks.
6- Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation...
I do this every single game i play. Every day. Versus every deck, even aggro, and i do play a control deck.
Most of my wins come from the reasons you listed above. Against aggro, its usually overextend into ruination. Against control and combo, too many resources wasted in the wrong targets.
Also notice that, so far up to this date, Aggro decks didn't receive a single buff.
I am not sure why you are mad at this patch.
This game is getting better and better with each patch, Elusives and Fearsome units were impossible to dealt with when the game first launched.
They are still a pain in the ass to deal with, but its much more manageable now then ever before.
Hearthstone: Me vs Firebat -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NCE81owjo
I am a shameless Elusive player... I win a ton of games with that type of deck, so I use it. That said, I do think they are a massive problem. On the flip side, the updates have made my decks' WR go down a lil bit or at least make it harder to pull out the victory. I am waiting for the true launch to actually spend all my shards/wild cards. I have bad luck with crafting shit and then having it nerfed. It's OPEN BETA guys! Of course it's not going to be ultra refined.
okaay byeee
I felt the same in many ways and that's why I stopped playing (although I won't rule out the possibility of returning with a new set)
It's kind of ironic how a game that was built on the idea of constant back and forth and interactive gameplay is plagued by decks that circumvent that exact principle.
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
(Apparently there's no working Quote function. Just opens a page of code.)
"This one is quite bad as it could turn many high cost followers unplayable"
-- Did you miss the word "conditional"?
"Hell, even aggro decks can tech in a few control cards and see their winrate increase if all there is are aggro decks."
-- I don't consider it creative or even substantially varied deckbuilding to toss a combat trick in an aggro deck. Big whoop.
"This game is getting better and better with each patch, Elusives and Fearsome units were impossible to dealt with when the game first launched."
--Culling Strike is the entire list of low-cost removal against low-cost overpowered threats. THE ENTIRE LIST. Black Spear is now a bad Get Excited, and Get Excited is a bad gimmick card for an undersupported unreliable garbage archetype. Discarding stuff is always inherently going to be a trash archetype because an empty hand means you have no ability to interact in the game. And heaven forbid it's Ionia and they play a +1 Attack mentor guy on their 3 Attack card like Zed, or it gets a +1/+1 Hawk buff.
And even calling Culling Strike an "answer" is generous. Eating 3 from Zed, Elise spawning a Spiderling, other cards being outright immune to it, or having to burn it on a non-champion... the list goes on and on for what is wrong with this exchange. I have to play an expensive conditional card with no intrinsic value and it doesn't function in many situations and doesn't even answer in others.
What is this long list of mythical answers to this overpowered non-interactive garbage, of which you've provided literally zero examples?
"It's kind of ironic how a game that was built on the idea of constant back and forth and interactive gameplay is plagued by decks that circumvent that exact principle."
-- Indeed. So many early game aggro cards are overpowered to an insane degree and then they have the audacity to nerf one of the few BAD CONDITIONAL ANSWER cards. What's worse is seeing people celebrate that because they're mad at Elise Autofill decks... so let's celebrate nerfing 50% of the early game responses to Elise. Like, really? People who hate Elise Autofill (now with more Kalista) should be frustrated one of the only answers TO Elise got nerfed while she remains overpowered.
Make Avalanche deal 3, Ruination cost 8, revert Rhasa to 7, Black Spear cost 1, Get Excited cost 2, Culling Strike cost 2, Noxian Guillotine cost 2, and you might have a fair patch.
Making Avalanche to deal 3 = ok
Making The Ruination to 8-cost = meh
Reverting Rhasa to 7 = It is nerfed because it is used as a finisher in the decks which you are whining right here = All of Shadow Isles Aggro decks. It should stay as 8-cost and it is still useful in control decks. It is only a bias that Rhasa the Sunderer is a bad card. You think that because it saw a nerf. It is just a prejudgement. The card is ok in control lists and just bad in aggro lists right now. Don't misjudge the card.
Making Black Spear to 1-cost = broken
Making Get Excited! to 2-cost = broken
Making Culling Strike to 2-cost = ok-ish, but might bring some other issues.
Making Noxian Guillotine to 2-cost = breaks some synergies (aka. Heimerdinger)
You might consider that all cards might be part of other archetypes. Reducing the cost of cards like Black Spear, Get Excited!, Rhasa the Sunderer will harm control, not aggro. You might consider that Aggro decks may use those cards too. That's why Black Spear and Rhasa the Sunderer has been nerfed. That's why The Rekindler has been nerfed twice.
There are some problems about the game, Everyone's aware of but your solutions other than Avalanche makes more powerful what you think you reduced its power. Avalanche even is a good state right now.
There are other problems. Some buff cards shouldn't be burst spells for example or some keywords are problematic right now. The game needs more mechanical changes than single card nerfs. I always supported this on this forum, on reddit, on official forums etc. Everyone says that "no, some cards need nerfs". Those cards are nerfed and there are still same problems. I insist on what I said before. The game needs some mechanical changes as rule changes like how elusive followers will lose their elusiveness, low-cost fearsome units are problematic so reduce its requirement to 2 attack instead of 3 etc.
Single target nerfs won't make the game better unfortunately. It is just because of Spell mana. If you want to keep spell mana in the game, you need to tinker some other mechanics to reduce the power level of Aggro. That's obvious. Even more obvious with 20 Nexus Health. I really wonder when Riot will realize this.
Unpopular Opinion Incarnate
My experience since the new patch:
- Oh, everyone is talking about how Mageseekers got buffed. Looks like a solid choice against aggro.
- Lets try out these new Heimer/Lux decks popping up.
- (20 games on ladder later) Damn, i cant win a single game against aggro with these decks.
- (goes back to playing Karma/Lux abusing Monk + Stand Alone)
Lemme give my 2 cents about the current state of control aswell guys:
While it is certainly not really possible to permanently control the game and lock it down completely it is not difficult to make decks that make it to turn 6/7 consistantly.
At that point you have to develop your wincondition so that cards that are 8 mana+ are not meant to played on regular basis and are properly powerfull in return
I dont know if you want to have a state of control like in mtg or hearthstone where you just spam value genegerators(like PWs), play denial(counterspells/discard) and cheap boardwipes in a deck, hope that you draw the fitting cards in time and call that a deck/game.
That should not become the concept in LoR because it is just a joykilling concept (to lock games down).
If we slow down the meta by buffing removal we will see more of the higher cost cards getting a problem which would need a lot of further adjustments what would take multiple patches aka multiple months of imbalance (that we just could avoid by not doing it)
The main issue im hearing is ppl trying to beat aggro with control decks that cant do anything for the first turns. Theres midrange decks that beat it consistently. Specially frostbite noxus. It fell out of the meta but it deals with elusives quite well.
In LoR aggro beats control midrange beats aggro and control beats midrange. Its actually the standard for card games except for HS.
Try running the Storm karma ezrael. Its a mix of control with late game combo. It can do some trades vs aggro and elusives too cause it runs monk and shadow assassin. Plus all the removal from P&Z and will of ionia for the stand alone buff. And also deny.
Problem is ppl want to stick with one deck that was cool but forget that the meta changes very fast while retaining the aggro decks.
Full control is with Spooky Karma which it would be a T1 deck if it wasnt for the fact that ppl misplay a lot and blame it on the game.
MTG and Hearthstone are the two most popular and successful CCGs, and have been for years and years. I certainly don't think Runeterra should try to be exactly like them (after all, if it were exactly like them what would be the point of playing?) but clearly people have enjoyed and continue to enjoy those games to this day, so Runeterra should probably take some notes.
So you say that you want lock down to be a thing in runeterra? Thanks for your honest degeneracy :)
What you're describing as "degeneracy" (slowing the game down with counter spells and/or removal tools, and then out-valuing an opponent with more expensive and powerful cards in the late game) is exactly the definition of the control archetype in CCGs. And to the point about "draw the fitting cards in time," I assume you're talking about combo decks. In good CCGs, Aggro, Control, and Combo archetypes balance each other out; Aggro beats Control, Control beats Combo, Combo beats Aggro.
Degeneracy is not having powerful control tools, degeneracy is rampant aggro archetypes. As Marega pointed out, "Spooky Karma" is the only real control deck, and notably the most successful aggro archetypes are able to abuse some of the best Ionia and Shadow Isles control tools (e.g. Deny, Will of Ionia, Glimpse Beyond) to shut down Combo and Control decks.
More than anything, I think this reflects a failure of the base set in Legends of Runeterra. They may be able to patch some of the existing cards to help change which archetypes are excited about using them, but ultimately they will need to add new cards soon to make this game a real competitor to HS and MTG.
By drawing the right cards in time i talk about boardwipes that are needed to stop aggro, you eighter get them early or you get overun.
Also you got an completely strange idea of combo decks if you think that control beats combo (aka decks that knows ways to oneshot kill you if they get their combo assembled). Whoever told you that control is bad versus aggro can't have a clue of what he is talking about since control uses the most removal to stop aggro from doing it's thing.
Apparently, the definition of what a control deck is isn't quite uniform among all CCG players. If you listen to Swim's explanation on the matter, aggro (early-game) decks indeed counter control (late-game) decks because they can usually rush the control player's nexus HP down before they can play their bigger, stronger cards.
Now, if there were widespread, cheap AoE removal tools available to the control deck's regions, I imagine that would change matters. But that's not currently the case in Runeterra, and personally, I'm kind of happy about that (disclaimer: I very rarely play aggro decks, myself).
I understand that the basic rock-paper-scissors model for control-aggro-combo is not perfect, but it's a widely discussed and classic way of thinking about the major deck archetypes of CCGs, and helps to understand an idealized way that these archetypes should balance each other out. (And for what it's worth, I never claimed that every CCG achieves this successfully, I merely said that "in good CCGs, Aggro, Control, and Combo archetypes balance each other out.") To elaborate a bit more on this model:
These basic archetypes naturally give way to a rock-paper-scissors setup, but it's true that if a CCG decides to create some super cheap, super powerful AOE, that balance will be out of wack. You're certainly right that a metagame that allows for such rampant control would be degenerate.
But what we're seeing in Legends of Runeterra is that a large number of valuable control tools that they've printed also neatly slot into aggressive decks, so today we have rampant aggro and exactly the same degeneracy. You seem to bemoan the idea of fixing this at the risk of making control too good, but if they don't fix it at all, it will just mean aggro is too good. That's fine for aggro players, but it's not a particularly healthy way to grow your game.
I have played a lot of this game. If you are struggle against aggro decks in your games. I highly recommend you pick up Bannerman Deck. There are several versions of this deck, but it crushes aggro 80% of the time. As it should, it is Midrange. To be completely fair, it seems like Midrange is it a bit broken right now, but just shifted let's see where it settle. I do take a bit of issue with patches and changing the rules on the cards. It is annoying to grind for 2 weeks to get enough cards to build a solid deck only for the deck to be gutted with a nerf. Changes to a meta should come through new cards and a nerf should be the last resort.
A simple solution to Elusive problem:
Create a new group of cards that can defensive block elusives. MtG has Flying which is basically Elusive. MtG also has a mechanic known as "Reach". Creatures with reach can block flying creatures as if they had flying. They Adding a few of these to the mix can spice up the meta and cool off elusives. Any option is a card that targets Elusives or Fearsome. Fast spell deals X damage to creatures with fearsome.
I feel your pain on nerfs, my first deck got hit hard by nerfs and I had to regrind to get another deck. The best option right now to go for anti-aggro deck. I believe this is the best deck to do so. You can take some things out to modify it, but this should get the job down for you.
Bannermen:
Deck ID isn't working...
CEBACAIDG4FACAABBEFAWDA2DUSSWLIBAMAQAIBSGMAQCAIAGQ
I don't know why are ppl still whine so much about fearsome and elusive. Only op fearsome card for now is Frenzied Skitterer in my opinion, but I think it's much more useful in a more defensive antiaggro style plays. Hell, I don't even think that there's actually good aggro fearsome deck, they're middle of t2 at best. Elusives are actually quite closer to midrange now, it's a spectrum boys, so more midrange oriented control can actually lose easier, a lot of popular control decks are closer to midrange to deal with all this aggro. What really surprise me, that noone mentioned how really oppresive and op bannermen is. And the main reason Elusives is strong is Wayfinder rn. So overall, allegiance keyword seems pretty strong, or at least the effect on 2 cards above. Hate elusvies? Shut them down with bannermens, elusives aren't fast enough to close out games on turn 6-7, where bannermen at this point will own the board, and wasting will on garen or fiora feels bad, cause you're slowing yourself even further, when they won't mind that. Same thing with deny. Elusives and aggro overall are just cheap to build and easy to play, that's why there's lot of them. Or you can play Endure Spiders, at least it was succesful for me so far, just mulligan for more early aggresion and spiderswarm, look for whithering veil and vile feast. It really hurts them when they have to block the spiders with their lowhp elusives, if they started with hawk they slowdown quite a bit, and it's you who control the pace. They can't run you down without threating themself, and in the end, They Who Endure close out game quite easily. Playing around deny and will of Ionia is obvious. Sry for my English if there were any mistakes, pls feel free to correct me, I want to Improve it.
I reached platinum with warmother smidrange and got to 280 with anivia control currently struggling but steady in high masters (had a drop to 900s)
My point is I don't play aggro ever I like control and midrange it's up to the control player to know when to skip and when to go all in.
There are many answers for aggro depending on the archetype and region you are playing but if you want the most powerful anti aggro region go for shadow isles they have vile feast, ruination, whitening wails, grasph of the undying.
That region can be played as mono color or duo color another exceptional region to deal with aggro is demacia as their cards at pretty beefy and have barrier mechanics and challenger.
It's up to you man but overall I find the game fun except when I face ezreal decks they simply combo the shit out of me all the time apperently their game plan is far more superior than anivia gameplay.