Oh that makes sense. From what I heard, they also said that in general they want to go back to monthly patch cycles, and they only did it biweekly for a while because of their process being slow and some changes needing to be delayed (which explains patches like the one in which they only nerfed Lee Sin and Make it Rain).
It’s interesting that they’re not doing balance changes, I guess they finally caught up with their changes and are going back to monthly updates. It’s kind of sad not have to changes to look forward two every other Wednesday, but the small patches have contained so few changes that I’d actually prefer bigger but more impactful balance updates. Labs also adds something new every two weeks.
On another note, why does Gauntlets get so few changes? There are so many different possibilities (max 2 copies, unlimited champions, 3 Regions, all regions) and all they’ve done is singleton and pick-and-ban.
I think that the 9 Mana dragons could honestly all just become 8 Mana (with some changes obviously). To compensate for the buff I think Malygos could go down to Spell Damage +4 and some of Ysera’s dream cards might have to be nerfed.
I think that they really should have gone farther with these changes. They didn’t nerf cards like MF, Jagged Butcher, or any of the Bilgewater Burn cards.I also wish they had buffed the Demacia Dragons (make the Broodmother a 6/7 and Kadregrin a 9/8) because Shyvana is pretty much the only good Demacia Dragon.
Just play a deck with Divergent Paths and a Landmark or play Scorched Earth. Then you just cheaply destroy Star Springs. Noxus in general is pretty good because they have Culling Strike, Scorched Earth, and high-Power units that are hard for Tahm to eat. You can probably also look up a counter deck on Mobalytics.
@Skyomyke Well that’s why I mainly buffed Vladimir and only slightly buffed the Crimson units. The Crimson units definitely aren’t the issue with the scars deck, I just wanted to rework them to synergize better with my Vladimir Rework.
I get the criticism of Vladimir still hurting your board in my idea for a Rework, but I think that buffing Power forces the opponent to trade with your units to avoid Nexus damage, in the same way that Hecarim’s passive forces the opponent to block Ephmerals that they might normally ignore. In my rework I also reworked some of the Crimson units to give them keywords that make the Power Buff relevant (Lifesteal, Challenger, and Fearsome). I also like my idea because it opens up a lot of synergy for Vlad with Overwhelm and Fearsome units, so he actually synergizes with Noxus and his decks could be more varied.
On your rework idea, I think that it might make Vlad too much like MF, Anivia, Gangplank, and TF. Right now Vladimir occupies a unique position of forcing the player to sacrifice Health for an upside, and I think that removing his downside or making it a net neutral effect is less interesting than increasing the payout for building around him. Also, buffing the Power of your attacking allies does effectively the same thing as damaging defending enemies, except that it has better synergy with Keywords and is more vulnerable to removal.
My solution was to give him the passive “damaged allies have +1|+0 while attacking” on level 1 (and it upgrades to +3|+0 on level 2). That way he’s a bit like Hecarim.
Here's my second idea (The Ghost Ship seems like a fundamentally flawed design):
(The Golden version would read "At the end of your turn, add a copy of 2 different Frozen minions to your hand," so that it can't get you triples really quickly)
In constructed, this would be a Freeze Mage and Freeze Shaman support card (because it would be part of the KotFT expansion). As a 1/5 it should have some chance of seeing play. In Battlegrounds it is similar to Gentle Djinni, but instead of always giving you a valuable card, it will likely give you something random. Additionally, because it forces you to Freeze it essentially "costs" 1 Gold (because you miss out on a reroll), making it similar to Rafaam's Hero Power. I think that it should maybe be at Tier 4 because of it's gold over time value, but I would prefer to keep it at Tier 3 if that isn't game breaking.
EDIT: It also forces you to keep a 1/5 on your board, which is far worse than Gentle Djinni at Tier 5. Between the unreliability, the 1 Gold "cost," and the cost in making your boardstate worse, I think that this would be balanced.
3 Mana (Tier 3) 4/2 Stealth. Deathrattle: Summon a 2/1 Drowned Soul with Rush for each friendly Pirate that died this turn.
The Drowned Soul would be a Pirate so it still synergizes with Pirate synergy cards, but it wouldn’t be as powerful as a 1 Health copy. In constructed it’s a Jungle Panther with Pirate and Deathrattle synergy (the 2/1 having Rush makes it fairly powerful).
Feedback:
Show Spoiler
Naturewalker: I love it! The only suggestion I would make it to potentially change it to a 3 Mana 2/3 and make it only buff the units on your board, because the “wherever” part seems like it could be a highroll in constructed if you get it early.
Herald of Winter: I like the idea of Frozen synergy, but I think it might scale too little (and just gaining stats is a bit boring). Maybe something like “at the end of your turn, add a copy of the Frozen minion with the highest attack to your hand” could be more interesting.
Shadowmoon Adept: I like the concept but I worry that it could limit the design space of Battlegrounds Hero Powers. Maybe just “Battlecry: Refresh your Hero Power” could be less problematic.
Recycling Module: This one’s really cool! If you wanted to nerf it a bit you could make it summon a 1/1 or 2/2 copy (and you’d increase the Module’s stats).
Breathtaking Apparition: This seems like it could shut down a lot of BG strategies, but I guess that’s okay for a tech card. Maybe something like “When this attacks a minion, remove its keywords” could be better (so it just counters Divine Shield and Poisonous).
Simple Imp: It seems way too random, maybe it should be a 3/4 and transform an ally into your highest attack Demon instead.
I like this card compared to Warmothers because it can make small champions into monstrosities, and so it doesn’t incur as much of a deckbuilding cost.
I’m actually more fine with these than I thought I’d be. The art itself looks like stained-glass windows so it still kind of fits LoR aesthetic. The animations that play also could conceivably be magic spell mirages. Overall it’s less jarring than I’d thought it would be.
They nerfed it a while ago because people were doing an infinite combo where they would trap the opponent and wouldn’t let the round end. They changed it to not be able to copy itself to remove the potential for abuse. They’ll change it back once they find another way to prevent infinite combos from actually being infinite.
On your point about them not always balancing based on objective stats, I think that that’s fine. In the post I think they mentioned that Scouts and Nightfall Aggro are the two his guest winrate decks, but I’d they just nerfed those decks everyone would be mad because they aren’t the most frustrating and common parts of the meta. Games can be balanced around winrate perfectly but still feel awful to play if a few decks have really high play rates. Also, some cards have a fundamentally frustrating play pattern that people don’t want to see in the meta (like Elusives, which have been hated on every time they’ve been even slightly viable).
Hopefully the Lee Sin nerf will make him balanced enough to not be oppressive. If nothing else, it'll allow Aggro decks to play a little slower because Lee Sin will come down one turn later. The Make it Rain nerf is also great, hopefully it's enough to stop Bilge Burn from being the uncosted Tier One deck (it probably isn't enough though).
I wanted to make a Shapeshifting Legendary that is actually playable (sorry Zerus and Chameleos) so I added the restriction of it only transforming into playable (able to be cast with your current mana) class cards in the opponent's hand. This means that it draws from a higher quality pool (class minions), it is never a dead card (it only transforms into playable cards), and it has synergy with Thief Rogue. I decided to make it a dual-class Rogue/Priest card because the effect I wanted only works as a combination of Rogue and Priest thief mechanics. The art shows a Dragon, which made me consider making it a Dragon, but I think this would be too much of a lowroll for cards like Ysera, Unleashed and this type of card shouldn't be discoverable off of Lackeys.
Any thoughts? Would this be powerful enough to actually see play?
I wanted to both give more support to Pirates in Battlegrounds and make Pirate rogue more viable. In constructed, this card has several uses. As part of the Witchwood set, it would help make cards like Cursed Castaway potentially viable. It also has synergy with Captain Hooktusk (you can play Ghost ship the turn before, then play Captain Hooktusk, sacrifice your Pirates and the Ghost Ship and get 1 Health copies of them back) which makes it feel at home in the Year of the Raven. As a Deathrattle unit, it could also work in some versions of Deathrattle Rogue.
In Battlegrounds, this minion is sort of a mix between Kangor's Apprentice and Soul Juggler, in that it provides a bonus for a certain tribe of allies dying. It also has the Stealth keyword, which would work exactly like in constructed Hearthstone (it can't be attacked until it attacks a minion). This makes it much less vulnerable to being taken out early due to RNG, which I think makes it a unique and powerful card. At Tier 4, this consistency should be balanced. The ship also summons minions at 1 Health remaining, which means that they are vulnerable to token boards and need cards like [Hearthstone Card (Great Admiral Eliza) Not Found] to survive. At Golden it summons the units at full health, which is very powerful but balanced by the card being hard to triple as a Tier 4 unit. I could definitely see changing it to summoning them at 2 remaining Health if that feels more appropriate and balanced.
I’m actually more excited about the balance patch than the actual expansion. There are so many CotM cards that haven’t found goods decks (such as Taric) that I think a balance patch that nerfs all of the top decks would essentially “add” a lot of content and make the game feel more fresh even than when CotM released. However, the last few patches have been pretty bad, so it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen. Getting the 5 new KDA cards could also help change the meta a bit.
It's weird that they included a nerfed version of the "gain 1 empty mana" Treasure but thought that Robes of Gaudiness was okay despite being one of the most powerful Treasures they ever made.
This post kind of worries me because it shows that at one point LoR will be full of alternate universe cards. I kind of wish that they had gone the route of only including new cards from the genres of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, so that the Aesthetic remains somewhat intact. I really don’t want to see a whole Pool Party expansion.
Oh that makes sense. From what I heard, they also said that in general they want to go back to monthly patch cycles, and they only did it biweekly for a while because of their process being slow and some changes needing to be delayed (which explains patches like the one in which they only nerfed Lee Sin and Make it Rain).
It’s interesting that they’re not doing balance changes, I guess they finally caught up with their changes and are going back to monthly updates. It’s kind of sad not have to changes to look forward two every other Wednesday, but the small patches have contained so few changes that I’d actually prefer bigger but more impactful balance updates. Labs also adds something new every two weeks.
On another note, why does Gauntlets get so few changes? There are so many different possibilities (max 2 copies, unlimited champions, 3 Regions, all regions) and all they’ve done is singleton and pick-and-ban.
I think that the 9 Mana dragons could honestly all just become 8 Mana (with some changes obviously). To compensate for the buff I think Malygos could go down to Spell Damage +4 and some of Ysera’s dream cards might have to be nerfed.
I think that they really should have gone farther with these changes. They didn’t nerf cards like MF, Jagged Butcher, or any of the Bilgewater Burn cards.I also wish they had buffed the Demacia Dragons (make the Broodmother a 6/7 and Kadregrin a 9/8) because Shyvana is pretty much the only good Demacia Dragon.
Just play a deck with Divergent Paths and a Landmark or play Scorched Earth. Then you just cheaply destroy Star Springs. Noxus in general is pretty good because they have Culling Strike, Scorched Earth, and high-Power units that are hard for Tahm to eat. You can probably also look up a counter deck on Mobalytics.
@Skyomyke Well that’s why I mainly buffed Vladimir and only slightly buffed the Crimson units. The Crimson units definitely aren’t the issue with the scars deck, I just wanted to rework them to synergize better with my Vladimir Rework.
I get the criticism of Vladimir still hurting your board in my idea for a Rework, but I think that buffing Power forces the opponent to trade with your units to avoid Nexus damage, in the same way that Hecarim’s passive forces the opponent to block Ephmerals that they might normally ignore. In my rework I also reworked some of the Crimson units to give them keywords that make the Power Buff relevant (Lifesteal, Challenger, and Fearsome). I also like my idea because it opens up a lot of synergy for Vlad with Overwhelm and Fearsome units, so he actually synergizes with Noxus and his decks could be more varied.
On your rework idea, I think that it might make Vlad too much like MF, Anivia, Gangplank, and TF. Right now Vladimir occupies a unique position of forcing the player to sacrifice Health for an upside, and I think that removing his downside or making it a net neutral effect is less interesting than increasing the payout for building around him. Also, buffing the Power of your attacking allies does effectively the same thing as damaging defending enemies, except that it has better synergy with Keywords and is more vulnerable to removal.
Coincidentally, I just made a Reddit post about a Vladimir Rework
https://www.reddit.com/r/CustomLoR/comments/jl24tj/vladimir_and_crimsons_buffrework_idea/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My solution was to give him the passive “damaged allies have +1|+0 while attacking” on level 1 (and it upgrades to +3|+0 on level 2). That way he’s a bit like Hecarim.
Here's my second idea (The Ghost Ship seems like a fundamentally flawed design):
(The Golden version would read "At the end of your turn, add a copy of 2 different Frozen minions to your hand," so that it can't get you triples really quickly)
In constructed, this would be a Freeze Mage and Freeze Shaman support card (because it would be part of the KotFT expansion). As a 1/5 it should have some chance of seeing play. In Battlegrounds it is similar to Gentle Djinni, but instead of always giving you a valuable card, it will likely give you something random. Additionally, because it forces you to Freeze it essentially "costs" 1 Gold (because you miss out on a reroll), making it similar to Rafaam's Hero Power. I think that it should maybe be at Tier 4 because of it's gold over time value, but I would prefer to keep it at Tier 3 if that isn't game breaking.
EDIT: It also forces you to keep a 1/5 on your board, which is far worse than Gentle Djinni at Tier 5. Between the unreliability, the 1 Gold "cost," and the cost in making your boardstate worse, I think that this would be balanced.
What if I changed Ghost Ship to:
3 Mana (Tier 3) 4/2 Stealth. Deathrattle: Summon a 2/1 Drowned Soul with Rush for each friendly Pirate that died this turn.
The Drowned Soul would be a Pirate so it still synergizes with Pirate synergy cards, but it wouldn’t be as powerful as a 1 Health copy. In constructed it’s a Jungle Panther with Pirate and Deathrattle synergy (the 2/1 having Rush makes it fairly powerful).
Feedback:
Naturewalker: I love it! The only suggestion I would make it to potentially change it to a 3 Mana 2/3 and make it only buff the units on your board, because the “wherever” part seems like it could be a highroll in constructed if you get it early.
Herald of Winter: I like the idea of Frozen synergy, but I think it might scale too little (and just gaining stats is a bit boring). Maybe something like “at the end of your turn, add a copy of the Frozen minion with the highest attack to your hand” could be more interesting.
Shadowmoon Adept: I like the concept but I worry that it could limit the design space of Battlegrounds Hero Powers. Maybe just “Battlecry: Refresh your Hero Power” could be less problematic.
Recycling Module: This one’s really cool! If you wanted to nerf it a bit you could make it summon a 1/1 or 2/2 copy (and you’d increase the Module’s stats).
Breathtaking Apparition: This seems like it could shut down a lot of BG strategies, but I guess that’s okay for a tech card. Maybe something like “When this attacks a minion, remove its keywords” could be better (so it just counters Divine Shield and Poisonous).
Simple Imp: It seems way too random, maybe it should be a 3/4 and transform an ally into your highest attack Demon instead.
I like this card compared to Warmothers because it can make small champions into monstrosities, and so it doesn’t incur as much of a deckbuilding cost.
I’m actually more fine with these than I thought I’d be. The art itself looks like stained-glass windows so it still kind of fits LoR aesthetic. The animations that play also could conceivably be magic spell mirages. Overall it’s less jarring than I’d thought it would be.
They nerfed it a while ago because people were doing an infinite combo where they would trap the opponent and wouldn’t let the round end. They changed it to not be able to copy itself to remove the potential for abuse. They’ll change it back once they find another way to prevent infinite combos from actually being infinite.
On your point about them not always balancing based on objective stats, I think that that’s fine. In the post I think they mentioned that Scouts and Nightfall Aggro are the two his guest winrate decks, but I’d they just nerfed those decks everyone would be mad because they aren’t the most frustrating and common parts of the meta. Games can be balanced around winrate perfectly but still feel awful to play if a few decks have really high play rates. Also, some cards have a fundamentally frustrating play pattern that people don’t want to see in the meta (like Elusives, which have been hated on every time they’ve been even slightly viable).
Hopefully the Lee Sin nerf will make him balanced enough to not be oppressive. If nothing else, it'll allow Aggro decks to play a little slower because Lee Sin will come down one turn later. The Make it Rain nerf is also great, hopefully it's enough to stop Bilge Burn from being the uncosted Tier One deck (it probably isn't enough though).
Here's my Idea:
I wanted to make a Shapeshifting Legendary that is actually playable (sorry Zerus and Chameleos) so I added the restriction of it only transforming into playable (able to be cast with your current mana) class cards in the opponent's hand. This means that it draws from a higher quality pool (class minions), it is never a dead card (it only transforms into playable cards), and it has synergy with Thief Rogue. I decided to make it a dual-class Rogue/Priest card because the effect I wanted only works as a combination of Rogue and Priest thief mechanics. The art shows a Dragon, which made me consider making it a Dragon, but I think this would be too much of a lowroll for cards like Ysera, Unleashed and this type of card shouldn't be discoverable off of Lackeys.
Any thoughts? Would this be powerful enough to actually see play?
I wanted to both give more support to Pirates in Battlegrounds and make Pirate rogue more viable. In constructed, this card has several uses. As part of the Witchwood set, it would help make cards like Cursed Castaway potentially viable. It also has synergy with Captain Hooktusk (you can play Ghost ship the turn before, then play Captain Hooktusk, sacrifice your Pirates and the Ghost Ship and get 1 Health copies of them back) which makes it feel at home in the Year of the Raven. As a Deathrattle unit, it could also work in some versions of Deathrattle Rogue.
In Battlegrounds, this minion is sort of a mix between Kangor's Apprentice and Soul Juggler, in that it provides a bonus for a certain tribe of allies dying. It also has the Stealth keyword, which would work exactly like in constructed Hearthstone (it can't be attacked until it attacks a minion). This makes it much less vulnerable to being taken out early due to RNG, which I think makes it a unique and powerful card. At Tier 4, this consistency should be balanced. The ship also summons minions at 1 Health remaining, which means that they are vulnerable to token boards and need cards like [Hearthstone Card (Great Admiral Eliza) Not Found] to survive. At Golden it summons the units at full health, which is very powerful but balanced by the card being hard to triple as a Tier 4 unit. I could definitely see changing it to summoning them at 2 remaining Health if that feels more appropriate and balanced.
I’m actually more excited about the balance patch than the actual expansion. There are so many CotM cards that haven’t found goods decks (such as Taric) that I think a balance patch that nerfs all of the top decks would essentially “add” a lot of content and make the game feel more fresh even than when CotM released. However, the last few patches have been pretty bad, so it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen. Getting the 5 new KDA cards could also help change the meta a bit.
It's weird that they included a nerfed version of the "gain 1 empty mana" Treasure but thought that Robes of Gaudiness was okay despite being one of the most powerful Treasures they ever made.
This post kind of worries me because it shows that at one point LoR will be full of alternate universe cards. I kind of wish that they had gone the route of only including new cards from the genres of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, so that the Aesthetic remains somewhat intact. I really don’t want to see a whole Pool Party expansion.