I agree on all counts, but why not go a step further by removing the feels-bad moment of getting cards you don't care about?
No one would ever feel bad about getting duplicate wildcards. ^^
Speaking for myself, I think there's something to be said about opening a 'pack' (i.e. region reward) and finding out what you got. Finding an epic for a deck I've been planning to craft feels really good. Of course, from a purely logical standpoint, a wildcard would always be superior. But humans aren't inherently logical creatures ;).
I think it's a valid question. However, I commend Riot for disabling duplicate acquisition for Epics and Champions - the rarities where it matters most. I guess they could've gone all the way and implemented it the same way for commons and rares, but I really don't mind. I think acquiring commons and rares is done so easily that we don't need the extra help. Plus if you're absolutely not interested in certain commons or rares, getting a few shards from a duplicate beats opening copies of those cards you'll never use anyway, right?
I'm largely happy with the balance changes. Especially regarding Black Spear, which other people (including Swim) seem to be iffy about; the balance between this and Get Excited! was way out of whack, so I'm super happy it had its cost adjusted.
Mageseekers are looking sick right now. I was actually planning to build a Lux/Heimerdinger deck next, so this change is perfectly timed for me.
I'm cautiously optimistic about Hecarim. I don't think he'll continue to be as dominant as he has been. Honestly, the nerf to Spectral Rider is just what needed to be done in my opinion (although removing Overwhelm on his level 1 might still be warranted).
The Rekindler still seems way too ridiculous. In addition to the increased cost, he should have his stats reduced to 3/3 and/or switch his summon effect into a Play effect and/or have the game mechanics adjusted so a player can never have 2 instances of the same champion on the field, period (That's actually a pretty drastic game change that I would like to see in general, irregardless of Rekindler).
As for Shadow Assassin, I think a mana cost of 4 would be perfectly appropriate.
I can empathize with your confusion to an extent, but to me, this is very much how I'm used to things working in other CCGs. I agree with YouPrivateNightmare that it would make skill-triggering units far too weak overall (especially ones with low health).
Ok they won't leave bodies on the field but changing the rule is better than nerfing all ephemeral units in my opinion. It already punishes you to spend your resources to temporary units. This change will answer most of the broken situations about them, Hecarim/Mark of the Isles/Darkwater Scourge/Death Mark etc. instead of nerfing all of these cards seperately.
I don't agree with this; it only reduces the power of ephemerals against regions / deck archetypes which have easy access to small damage spells. I'd rather see across-the-board nerfs to ephemeral cards if it turns out they're oppressively strong.
I really don't get it why it is so hard and confusing to understand this. A single-use buff should be single-use. That's so simple. +2 health buff for a round should stay for one round. Shouldn't heal the unit. It doesn't make the unit die suddenly after the turn ends because it will go back to its previous health once the turn ends.
Well, as I tried to explain as elaborately as possible in my last post, your desired functionality for one-round buffs is - at least in my eyes - the least intuitive out of 3 possible scenarios. The more logically consistent options would be to either heal and keep the full amount of the health buff or heal and then remove the full amount of the buff at the end of the round. Your suggestion lies somewhere in the middle and might make a lot of sense from a generic video-game perspective, but not from a conventional CCG perspective.
Contrarily to you, I really think that this opens more deckbuilding opportunities rather than limiting it. If you want to use Death Lotus in your Vladimir deck, You should try a Katarina/Vladimir deck instead of throwing 2x Death Lotus without a Katarina in your deck for example.
This feels and seems openning more opportunities for deckbuilding for me. Also seems more logical for that The singature spells are cast by those champions.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm not quite sure whether I like this idea or not. However, I will point out that this might lead to more champions being splashed into certain decks as a 1-of, which would be an interesting alternative to the prevalent trend of running mostly 3-ofs.
The help text for Quick Attack reads "While attacking, strikes before its blocker."
Oops - teaches me to try quoting from memory instead of checking my facts. Thanks for correcting me. In that case, however, I definitely regard Katarina's interaction with Single Combat as a bug. If she dies as a result of the enemy's strike, she shouldn't be able to recall.
I've thought first she needs to survive and played around it always but tried it while i have the attack token (while her Quick attack is active), she turned back to my hand even tho she didn't survive. I'm not so sure that was a bug or intended tho.
Now that you mention is, the description of Quick Attack says that it's active "while attacking," doesn't it? That phrasing could indicate that a Single Combat resolving during combat takes Quick Attack into account. It's ambiguous, though.
There is a Radiant Guardian as 5/1 and Though. Your opponent uses Back to Back on her to block your 3/2 and makes her 8/4. She became 8/2 after battle phase ends; Right now, she became 5/2 after the turn ends. You can't kill her with Mystic Shot for example if you top-deck some. If the change I have called above is applied, it would became 5/1 after Back to Back's effect disappear so you would be able to kill her with your top-deck Mystic Shot.
I don't think this is so confusing. People already confuses why they are healing instead of my change. All people expects units to revert back their current health instead of healing them.
Thanks for providing an example - this helped me better understand your point. However, I disagree that it would be more intuitive. In fact, I'd say it's the least logically consistent solution out of 3 alternatives:
1. The game currently ups the maximum health of the unit and permanently heals it by the same amount.
2. The game could only increase and heal the unit's health for the current round. This would mean that in your example, the Radiant Guardian would die since the 3 health subtraction would reduce it to -1 health. (This is what I initially thought you were suggesting)
3. Your suggestion: The buff effect temporarily increases max health and heals the unit; after the round, if the unit's current health exceeds what its current health was before the buff took effect, reduce its health to that old value instead.
I'd say #3 is an overly complicated solution compared to the other 2. For discussions on a topic like this, we always need to keep in mind that Runeterra calculates unit health in the form of a 'damage counter' on each unit. Options #1 and #2 are both very straightforward in this sense (the difference being that one of them provides a lasting heal while the other doesn't), while #3 is sort of an awkward mix between the two.
Since #2 would make health buffs almost pointless and #3 is not very consistent with the game's underlying rules, I think keeping things as they are (#1) is the best choice. Cards are already (at least somewhat) balanced to account for this: Elixir of Iron 'heals' 2 while also providing a temporary max health increase while Health Potion heals 3 for the same cost. Maybe buffs are a little too strong compared to healing overall, but I would fix that by adjusting individual card power rather than changing the rules altogether.
Also, I will mention one card that I believe is absolutely sleeper-OP: Battering Ram. I boggles my mind that this doesn't see more play. I only own 1 copy, but I'm planning to build a deck including it soon. In my opinion, the attack buff effect either needs to only last for the current round or be reduced to +2 attack. In addition, reducing its health to 10 might be called for.
Interesting find. I'm still quite a ways away from maxing out my region rewards.
I absolutely think you shouldn't be able to rack up points for a Season Road Level that's supposed to take effect at a (much) later date. You might be right in that some people will still be able to craft a sizeable amount of cards on day 1 of the expansion hitting. But we don't need to make those players' headstart even greater.
Karma feels really weird, is one of the few cards that brings rng to the game (aside draw), i don't like her basic skill.
Relentless Pursuit is either slow or 5 mana. It was disscused before, but it brings unnecesary power to the board, in mtg similar effects are waaaaay more expensive than 3 mana. Also, The text is not accurate, since you can play at the start of your turn and have a second combat phase.
Honestly, I like her level-1 ability more than her level-2. I generally concur that RNG effects should be kept to a minimum in Runeterra, but I think it works fine with Karma. Perhaps limit the randomness to some specific subset of spells she can create?
As for Relentless Pursuit, I'm still not convinced it's quite as strong as most people claim, but I wouldn't mind seeing it changed to slow speed.
- After "For this round" buffs, All units will return back to their damaged healths instead of restoring their health. - Spells of champions should not put into decks that doesn't have those champions and can't be created with random effects like Back Alley Barkeep or Karma. Example: You can't put Prismatic Barrier to a deck that doesn't have any Lux.
If one-round buff spells worked they way you're proposing, what would be the point of buffing a unit's health? I can only think of very niche scenarios (like killing the 4th enemy with a buffed Fiora) where temporary health buffs would be of any significance. I think the mechanic is working just fine as is.
I think the idea of restricting champion signature spells to decks that actually run the champion is very interesting. I'd have to wrap my head around some of the more concrete implications, first, though.
If you include the per-win XP along with the end-of-trial bonus, you are still getting more XP overall than you would playing the same number of normal PvP games.
I never did the math, but this is what I thougt. In light of this, I'd say the XP reduction was a good move. I can finally feel good about playing some constructed after my 3 weekly expeditions without gimping my progress.
Personally, I think the attack token flip between rounds still takes unnecessarily long. Most other things are extremely fast, though. Which is perfectly fine with me (I care very little about visuals in video games), but I can see why it might be a disappointment to other types of players.
I must admit, it took me a few minutes when i first saw this card until i realized how it works (without playing it). The past tense of cast being the same word does make it a bit confusing at first.
I'm in the same boat - this was actually the very first card whose text got me confused during the first days of the beta. But I can agree that the "Play" keyword makes the card's functionality decently clear on its own.
However, flexing my linguistic prowess, I would like to state that not only would adding in a "have" make the card effect more explicitly clear, but it'd also be the better choice from a grammatical perspective to use the present perfect here as opposed to the simple past tense.
It just sounds cooler. How is it pronounced? fin-aal-is fun-keln ?
It's a bit tricky trying to replicate German pronunciation in English with just the regular Latin alphabet. As a linguist with a Master's degree, though, I will try my best ;).
fee-nah-less foo-nk(e)ln
is the closest I can come up with. Caveats: nah as in the British pronunciation of "dance." foo with the "oo" pronounced as a short vowel instead of a long one. The e can be pronounced weakly or completely omitted.
At issue is the fact that, upon Karma's second casting of the spell, there is no unit at all.
I don't see it. When you play Final Spark, you pick a unit as the target. Karma duplicates the spell including its target (it even says so on the card). So you've got 2 Final Sparks queued up aiming at the same unit.
If the unit is then recalled, both Final Sparks resolve without a target; if the first Spark kills the unit, only the 2nd one resolves without a target. I see no systematic difference there.
Yeah, it's German. I had no idea that Riot originally used that term as her ultimate spell's name in the English version - that's kind of crazy :P. I just checked to confirm, and it's indeed still the name of the German ability (When I played League, I installed the game in English, so I never found out about any German names).
Incidentally.. I've been poking fun at it, but it would be pretty sweet if levelled Lux generated Finales Funkeln instead of Final Spark :3
My native language holds many sweet alliterations ;). Although, just in case you're interested: The meaning of "funkeln" is somewhat different from "spark." It's a verb which roughly means "glitter" or "sparkle".
"Deal 4 damage to a unit. If that unit dies, deal excess damage to the enemy Nexus"
Sorry if this sounds nitpicky, but I'd like to point out that "If that unit dies" is a problematic way of wording it; after all, the excess damage applies to the nexus in full if the unit is removed (e.g. recalled) by other means before Final Spark resolves.
I guess I'm in favor of making Relentless Pursuit a slow-speed spell. Honestly, I'm not sure a mana-cost increase is warranted; the card is pretty underwhelming in many scenarios. It only shines as a 'win-more' button if you've already got a heavy board advantage or if you control units that can't be blocked (circling back to the Elusive and Fearsome dilemma).
Speaking for myself, I think there's something to be said about opening a 'pack' (i.e. region reward) and finding out what you got. Finding an epic for a deck I've been planning to craft feels really good. Of course, from a purely logical standpoint, a wildcard would always be superior. But humans aren't inherently logical creatures ;).
I think it's a valid question. However, I commend Riot for disabling duplicate acquisition for Epics and Champions - the rarities where it matters most. I guess they could've gone all the way and implemented it the same way for commons and rares, but I really don't mind. I think acquiring commons and rares is done so easily that we don't need the extra help. Plus if you're absolutely not interested in certain commons or rares, getting a few shards from a duplicate beats opening copies of those cards you'll never use anyway, right?
Yup, I'm puzzled how this can be so confusing to people, too. It isn't worded ambiguously in the slightest (unlike the old Mageseeker Investigator).
I'm largely happy with the balance changes. Especially regarding Black Spear, which other people (including Swim) seem to be iffy about; the balance between this and Get Excited! was way out of whack, so I'm super happy it had its cost adjusted.
Mageseekers are looking sick right now. I was actually planning to build a Lux/Heimerdinger deck next, so this change is perfectly timed for me.
I'm cautiously optimistic about Hecarim. I don't think he'll continue to be as dominant as he has been. Honestly, the nerf to Spectral Rider is just what needed to be done in my opinion (although removing Overwhelm on his level 1 might still be warranted).
However, I'm firmly with Sanns regarding The Rekindler and Shadow Assassin.
The Rekindler still seems way too ridiculous. In addition to the increased cost, he should have his stats reduced to 3/3 and/or switch his summon effect into a Play effect and/or have the game mechanics adjusted so a player can never have 2 instances of the same champion on the field, period (That's actually a pretty drastic game change that I would like to see in general, irregardless of Rekindler).
As for Shadow Assassin, I think a mana cost of 4 would be perfectly appropriate.
I can empathize with your confusion to an extent, but to me, this is very much how I'm used to things working in other CCGs. I agree with YouPrivateNightmare that it would make skill-triggering units far too weak overall (especially ones with low health).
I don't agree with this; it only reduces the power of ephemerals against regions / deck archetypes which have easy access to small damage spells. I'd rather see across-the-board nerfs to ephemeral cards if it turns out they're oppressively strong.
Well, as I tried to explain as elaborately as possible in my last post, your desired functionality for one-round buffs is - at least in my eyes - the least intuitive out of 3 possible scenarios. The more logically consistent options would be to either heal and keep the full amount of the health buff or heal and then remove the full amount of the buff at the end of the round. Your suggestion lies somewhere in the middle and might make a lot of sense from a generic video-game perspective, but not from a conventional CCG perspective.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm not quite sure whether I like this idea or not. However, I will point out that this might lead to more champions being splashed into certain decks as a 1-of, which would be an interesting alternative to the prevalent trend of running mostly 3-ofs.
Oops - teaches me to try quoting from memory instead of checking my facts. Thanks for correcting me. In that case, however, I definitely regard Katarina's interaction with Single Combat as a bug. If she dies as a result of the enemy's strike, she shouldn't be able to recall.
Now that you mention is, the description of Quick Attack says that it's active "while attacking," doesn't it? That phrasing could indicate that a Single Combat resolving during combat takes Quick Attack into account. It's ambiguous, though.
Thanks for providing an example - this helped me better understand your point. However, I disagree that it would be more intuitive. In fact, I'd say it's the least logically consistent solution out of 3 alternatives:
1. The game currently ups the maximum health of the unit and permanently heals it by the same amount.
2. The game could only increase and heal the unit's health for the current round. This would mean that in your example, the Radiant Guardian would die since the 3 health subtraction would reduce it to -1 health. (This is what I initially thought you were suggesting)
3. Your suggestion: The buff effect temporarily increases max health and heals the unit; after the round, if the unit's current health exceeds what its current health was before the buff took effect, reduce its health to that old value instead.
I'd say #3 is an overly complicated solution compared to the other 2. For discussions on a topic like this, we always need to keep in mind that Runeterra calculates unit health in the form of a 'damage counter' on each unit. Options #1 and #2 are both very straightforward in this sense (the difference being that one of them provides a lasting heal while the other doesn't), while #3 is sort of an awkward mix between the two.
Since #2 would make health buffs almost pointless and #3 is not very consistent with the game's underlying rules, I think keeping things as they are (#1) is the best choice. Cards are already (at least somewhat) balanced to account for this: Elixir of Iron 'heals' 2 while also providing a temporary max health increase while Health Potion heals 3 for the same cost. Maybe buffs are a little too strong compared to healing overall, but I would fix that by adjusting individual card power rather than changing the rules altogether.
Also, I will mention one card that I believe is absolutely sleeper-OP: Battering Ram. I boggles my mind that this doesn't see more play. I only own 1 copy, but I'm planning to build a deck including it soon. In my opinion, the attack buff effect either needs to only last for the current round or be reduced to +2 attack. In addition, reducing its health to 10 might be called for.
Interesting find. I'm still quite a ways away from maxing out my region rewards.
I absolutely think you shouldn't be able to rack up points for a Season Road Level that's supposed to take effect at a (much) later date. You might be right in that some people will still be able to craft a sizeable amount of cards on day 1 of the expansion hitting. But we don't need to make those players' headstart even greater.
I'm curious: What exactly would this change besides the Death Mark interaction?
I agree with everything on your list except for the Minotaur change. At least, I'd reduce his attack to 5 along with the cost decrease.
Honestly, I like her level-1 ability more than her level-2. I generally concur that RNG effects should be kept to a minimum in Runeterra, but I think it works fine with Karma. Perhaps limit the randomness to some specific subset of spells she can create?
As for Relentless Pursuit, I'm still not convinced it's quite as strong as most people claim, but I wouldn't mind seeing it changed to slow speed.
If one-round buff spells worked they way you're proposing, what would be the point of buffing a unit's health? I can only think of very niche scenarios (like killing the 4th enemy with a buffed Fiora) where temporary health buffs would be of any significance. I think the mechanic is working just fine as is.
I think the idea of restricting champion signature spells to decks that actually run the champion is very interesting. I'd have to wrap my head around some of the more concrete implications, first, though.
I never did the math, but this is what I thougt. In light of this, I'd say the XP reduction was a good move. I can finally feel good about playing some constructed after my 3 weekly expeditions without gimping my progress.
Same. I've definitely been offered champion trades before my 4th win before. Twice, I believe.
Personally, I think the attack token flip between rounds still takes unnecessarily long. Most other things are extremely fast, though. Which is perfectly fine with me (I care very little about visuals in video games), but I can see why it might be a disappointment to other types of players.
I'm in the same boat - this was actually the very first card whose text got me confused during the first days of the beta. But I can agree that the "Play" keyword makes the card's functionality decently clear on its own.
However, flexing my linguistic prowess, I would like to state that not only would adding in a "have" make the card effect more explicitly clear, but it'd also be the better choice from a grammatical perspective to use the present perfect here as opposed to the simple past tense.
It's a bit tricky trying to replicate German pronunciation in English with just the regular Latin alphabet. As a linguist with a Master's degree, though, I will try my best ;).
fee-nah-less foo-nk(e)ln
is the closest I can come up with. Caveats: nah as in the British pronunciation of "dance." foo with the "oo" pronounced as a short vowel instead of a long one. The e can be pronounced weakly or completely omitted.
I don't see it. When you play Final Spark, you pick a unit as the target. Karma duplicates the spell including its target (it even says so on the card). So you've got 2 Final Sparks queued up aiming at the same unit.
If the unit is then recalled, both Final Sparks resolve without a target; if the first Spark kills the unit, only the 2nd one resolves without a target. I see no systematic difference there.
Yeah, it's German. I had no idea that Riot originally used that term as her ultimate spell's name in the English version - that's kind of crazy :P. I just checked to confirm, and it's indeed still the name of the German ability (When I played League, I installed the game in English, so I never found out about any German names).
Sorry for the off-topic, by the way.
My native language holds many sweet alliterations ;). Although, just in case you're interested: The meaning of "funkeln" is somewhat different from "spark." It's a verb which roughly means "glitter" or "sparkle".
Sorry if this sounds nitpicky, but I'd like to point out that "If that unit dies" is a problematic way of wording it; after all, the excess damage applies to the nexus in full if the unit is removed (e.g. recalled) by other means before Final Spark resolves.
In general, however, I think your idea is sound.
I guess I'm in favor of making Relentless Pursuit a slow-speed spell. Honestly, I'm not sure a mana-cost increase is warranted; the card is pretty underwhelming in many scenarios. It only shines as a 'win-more' button if you've already got a heavy board advantage or if you control units that can't be blocked (circling back to the Elusive and Fearsome dilemma).