How to handle burn decks?

Simple question hopefully with a simple answer. I'm relatively new to the game as one might imagine and I'm just completely over burn decks at this point. I don't mind aggro, hell I don't even mind all the elusives I face, but the burn decks imparticular have just about turned me off playing because it's all I ever see.

Hoping someone more experienced here could help me make a deck or point me towards one that is good at countering the burn decks. I'm not trying to climb super fast or anything, I'm just tired of lulunavoidabledamage all day. It's not fun being on a hard timer from turn one >>. Thanks for the advice in advanced, I really appreciate it.

Basically any slow Shadow Isles deck does phenomenally against them. Vile Feast, Withering Wail and Grasp of the Undying absolutely ruin their day.

I personally recommend using Corina control. It's relatively easy to play and really strong. 

The current iteration runs both Vi and Elise. I personally don't have Vi yet so I still run the beta version with just Elise and it's been working just fine for me. I don't think I've lost to any Nox/P&Z deck (the most common burn aggro deck) yet.

Basically: anything that heals.  Direct damage spells are relatively low-value in this game, so even if you are just managing to undo what they did they will run out of gas quick.

It has been said but healing is a direct counter to aggro. It hits aggro hard since aggro relies heavily on lots of small damage over time. Well if you heal that damage they end up stalling out by mid game.

I am a bit shocked that a "relatively new player" is bringing such a legit question to the table but getting so many poor answers from experienced users.

Simple Answer: Build a deck with 3 copies of Radiant Guardian. 

Deep Answer: With the exception of Lifesteal units, Heal cards are not cost-effective in this game.
There is a good reason why Burn aggro is the top S tier deck right now. 
Cards like Withering Wail can even do more harm then good due Crimson Disciple and Transfusion
Grasp of the Undying is another joke. Best target is Crimson Disciple, paying 3 extra mana to heal 3 is terrible. 
Vile Feast is decent, and just decent. Killing a Legion Grenadier to get a 1/1 token while taking 1 to the face is not exactly a great trade / counter play.
I just counted, burn aggro has a grand total of 48 direct damage to the nexus. Good luck enduring the early game just to lose the middle game. 

Sustained Life gain effects is the answer. Search your collection for good Lifesteal keyword units or implement a strategy to beat then before they burn you. There is no other way.

Quote From Hellcopter

I am a bit shocked that a "relatively new player" is bringing such a legit question to the table but getting so many poor answers from experienced users.

Simple Answer: Build a deck with 3 copies of Radiant Guardian. 

Deep Answer: With the exception of Lifesteal units, Heal cards are not cost-effective in this game.
There is a good reason why Burn aggro is the top S tier deck right now. 
Cards like Withering Wail can even do more harm then good due Crimson Disciple and Transfusion
Grasp of the Undying is another joke. Best target is Crimson Disciple, paying 3 extra mana to heal 3 is terrible. 
Vile Feast is decent, and just decent. Killing a Legion Grenadier to get a 1/1 token while taking 1 to the face is not exactly a great trade / counter play.
I just counted, burn aggro has a grand total of 48 direct damage to the nexus. Good luck enduring the early game just to lose the middle game. 

Sustained Life gain effects is the answer. Search your collection for good Lifesteal keyword units or implement a strategy to beat then before they burn you. There is no other way.

 

Alright, I'll try that out. As to everyone else, I appreciate all the responses! I'm still in the process of trying out a lot of different decks so I'm not even sure what I like to play yet, much less what is currently good that fits my play style closest, I just know that burn is irritating to no end. I'll definitely try out the control deck suggested in an earlier post and I'll give lifesteal units a try.

As a side question, are there any decent decks that run Hecarim or Swain currently? Both of these cards landed in my collection recently and they're both pretty interesting to me, so I'm wondering if anyone has any decent build suggestions. Figured I'd ask here first as an aside instead of constructing any entirely new thread.

Quote From Hellcopter

I am a bit shocked that a "relatively new player" is bringing such a legit question to the table but getting so many poor answers from experienced users.

Simple Answer: Build a deck with 3 copies of Radiant Guardian. 

Deep Answer: With the exception of Lifesteal units, Heal cards are not cost-effective in this game.
There is a good reason why Burn aggro is the top S tier deck right now. 
Cards like Withering Wail can even do more harm then good due Crimson Disciple and Transfusion
Grasp of the Undying is another joke. Best target is Crimson Disciple, paying 3 extra mana to heal 3 is terrible. 
Vile Feast is decent, and just decent. Killing a Legion Grenadier to get a 1/1 token while taking 1 to the face is not exactly a great trade / counter play.
I just counted, burn aggro has a grand total of 48 direct damage to the nexus. Good luck enduring the early game just to lose the middle game. 

Sustained Life gain effects is the answer. Search your collection for good Lifesteal keyword units or implement a strategy to beat then before they burn you. There is no other way.

 

You're kidding, right? Cherry picking scenarios where those three cards aren't fully optimal and then claiming Shadow Isles isn't one of the best anti-aggro strategies. Wail is phenomenal due to the fact that they have plenty of one-drops alone. That new 2/3 is just as good of a target for grasp, and so are [Hearthstone Card (used cask salesman) Not Found] and that 1 mana 3/2. 

Those cards being overcosted isn't relevant at all since you generally pass your first two turns anyway, only to massively swing back with the banked spell mana. Never mind the abundance of spiders to chump-block all their attack damage in the meantime.

There is no middle game with that Nox/P&Z aggro deck. It either wins fast or loses fast. Generally by turn 5 they'll have lost control of the board and you're above 10 hp. Since the deck has no card refill whatsoever they'll never be able to kill you with over the top damage before you end them with your spiders.

What a ridiculous statement. Control beats aggro, in nearly any card game, and Shadow Isles is the best and basically only control region at this moment. Do the math.

Quote From fadedxlichy

As a side question, are there any decent decks that run Hecarim or Swain currently? Both of these cards landed in my collection recently and they're both pretty interesting to me, so I'm wondering if anyone has any decent build suggestions. Figured I'd ask here first as an aside instead of constructing any entirely new thread.

Hecarim hasn't really seen much competitive play ever since he got nerfed a few months ago.

Swain isn't the best of cards either, unfortunately for you. The only deck I know is one made by Control which he got masters with. But even he admits it's not the best deck.

https://youtu.be/GIPOgbmi1Ag

As others have pointed out, in most CCGs the answer to aggro is healing. Obviously you also need units to defend you and/or removal to clear your opponents board, but if you have a means of healing/stabilizing, you will eventually run the enemy out of resources.

In Legends of Runeterra, that's a pretty annoying answer. The fact is, the majority of lifesteal and healing exist in two regions: Ionia and Shadow Isles. Sources of healing outside of those regions are:

• Demacia: Radiant Guardian
• Freljord: Kindly Tavernkeeper, Catalyst of Aeons
• Bilgewater: Citrus Courier

None of these are really very good options. Most of them come down pretty late - two of them are mid game units, and the only way you're getting Catalyst out early is if you spend your opening turns doing nothing, at which point you're dead anyway. So, the best answer to the ladder's Burn decks is unfortunately to run Shadow Isles or Ionia. Even just a small package of the healing/removal spells is probably enough to help you even the odds, but it does meaningfully limit your deck-building choices.

Well after playing Corina, I feel like I can safely say the burn in this game is over the top. While I agree from past experience control decks do generally beat aggro, the burn deck that is being used right now I feel falls into it's own catagory. Unless I draw extremely well, it's a very big toss up on if I win or not and most of the time it feels like it's entirely dependent on how they draw vs whatever I have.

The amount of face damage they can do per man vs what you can heal is a pretty devistating difference and  the health on some of the units make it very hard to even remove properly. Worse yet crimson boy makes wail a dead card most of the time, causing just about as much damage (sometimes more if there is two of them) than it solves or heals.

Other aggro type decks, the rare times I see anything other than burn are much more managable with the Corina control deck, as one would imagine with it being a control deck, it's just how it goes. The burn needs to be fixed. I'm not sure how too rather it's making cards easier to remove or reducing the amount of burn damage capable or simply increasing the cost of some of the units. But something, in my strict opinion, needs to be done with them.

While my winrate has definitely improved with a proper control deck and I am climbing far better than before, it simply in the end has opened my eyes to just how over the top burn is currently. I would be very surprised not to see changes to it in future patches. That said, my mini-conclusion/rant is over so I want to thank everyone in this thread for their advice, it has helped me a ton.

I ended up really like the Corina control deck and after playing around with a few more, I think control and more control oriented mid-range are the kind of decks I like. So I went ahead and crafted a Corina and a Heimer/Vi deck and am having a ton of fun with them despite so many games just burning alive. I tried some Demacia decks so I could use Radiant guardian and while very effective, none of the decks I tried really clicked with me, just kinda boring to play.

Also, just in case someone wants to point out the obvious, yes I could just play the burn deck too and I have, since it's also super cheap to make and play. My god was it mindless and boring. Smash face, if not winning within 5 minutes, surrender, repeat and the sheer amount of fast wins completely outweight surrendering slow but winnable games. So, deleted the deck. It sucked. Felt almost as bad/boring to play as it does facing it.  

tl;dr Made Corina control, like it, better results, very cemented into the thought process that the current iteration of burn needs to be nerfed, not aggro as a whole. Thanking everyone for making my first thread so useful and informative, thank yah guys!

Just wanted to say, after 1 week of playing about 2 hours a day, I will stop playing until this issue is resolved. I know I am fairly new but I am moderately experienced at many card games. The current health of the card game is very horrendous and toxic to the point where only 3 factions are actually playable: Ionia, Noxus and Shadow Isles.

Trying to make a deck that doesn't contain any of those 3 will just get you obliterated by burn/aggro decks which are currently extremely overpowered. The biggest issue is, it's not fun playing against unavoidable damage, since the vast majority of burst/fast removal is only present in those 3 factions and also the vast majority of the most cost efficient sustain/heal is present in those 3 factions as well.

Burn decks require immediate removal that is literally not achievable through slow cards or units as they will have already done their damage anyways. Not only that but the "unavoidable" damage is extremely high, with most burn decks being able to win by turn 5 even when their opponent is playing efficiently/well against them. So many cards are able to deal 1/6th - 1/4th of your total hp of unavoidable damage by turn 4 while ALSO being units that can attack (dealing even more damage) and defend. Then you add in the fact that most of these units have relatively high health pool which further diminishes the amount of possible decks that could even try to contend with it as you must be able to play monsters with enough damage to take them out as soon as possible.

I hope this gets patched soon but the current game is very unfun to play and these decks comprise about 2/3rds of the decks I face against at the very least.

I'm not a good player by any means (Gold at the moment) but I feel like the main issue why Burn is a problem (and even why there are minimal viable Control and Combo decks) is direct Nexus damage and by extension - the low Nexus health.

Even the most popular Control and Combo decks depend on direct Nexus damage (Corina/Ledros/Atrocity for the first one, Ezreal for the latter) as win conditions.

Things that do uncounterable, direct Nexus damage feel awful to play against for lack of counterplay - a reason why I used to love this game so much. There's such a wide variety of champions and interesting deck archetypes, but in the end it now comes down to uncounterable damage (also why people hate elusives). The number of times against these burn decks where somehow I've managed to take control of the board and then lost to a top-decked Mystic Shot, or Get Excited, or Decimate... it just feels frustrating and terrible to play against and lose against something that barely needs any skill to play.

Also some of these suggestions imply having to play SPECIFIC cards just to counter ENTIRE archetypes - thus making a huge amount of deck types unviable. That's not the best design philosophy if that was indeed the philosophy.

I think the whole problem is also exacerbated by how in LoR you can buy specific cards (which is a great thing for the most part) - but it allows everyone and their grandmoms to run the same cheap meta deck on ladder (I've been facing this same shit since the climb back from Bronze when the season reset). At least in Hearthstone you wouldn't really get the same meta decks until you're much higher up in the ladder - since newer players typically wouldn't have the cards for them.

Anyways, unhelpful rant aside - I'm going to take a break from this game until this Burn phase goes away.

Quote From AlienFromEarth

I'm not a good player by any means (Gold at the moment) but I feel like the main issue why Burn is a problem (and even why there are minimal viable Control and Combo decks) is direct Nexus damage and by extension - the low Nexus health.

The problem is that every single card is too efficient, as it can deal at least 2 points of direct damage. 

The only way to counter direct damage is through heal.
But aggro pays 2 mana to deal 2 points of nexus damage (1:1 ratio) or more, and those units stay on the field for potencial damage snowball.
On top of that some 1 mana units are very hard to remove on T1 and can easily deal 4+ damage.

With a few exceptions, Heal has a 1:1~1:2 ratio, wich is inefficient as other card games have at least 1:2~1:4 ratio.
Unlike aggro, heal cards do not snowball (heal everyturn) outside of lifesteal followers. 
Finally, not every card in your deck will heal and not every faction has acess to early heal options anyway, so it becomes impossible to catch up with their damage. 

Rest assured this deck will be nerfed in the next patch.

There are lots of decks that hard counter the burn decks. 

Control decks, spider decks (too wide boards for aggro to handle), Bannerman and so on. The burn deck are very solid and has a lot of reach but they are not broken. I beat them pretty easily with Bannerman and Corina control.