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OldManSanns

Azir
Joined 08/05/2019 Achieve Points 1040 Posts 924

OldManSanns's Comments

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 8 months ago

    I didn't see anywhere explicitly stating they didn't consider buffing Malphite. However given that he just received a buff last balance patch and Taliyah is now receiving back-to-back buffs, there's a solid chance they want to see how he plays out in a post TLC/AzIrelia/ThreshNasus meta before committing anything else.

    (Spoiler: I think he still needs Overwhelm at least on his L2 form, but we'll see.)

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 8 months ago

    LOL that Pyke animation...

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago

    In general, any 6+ mana spell is bad unless it either drastically changes the board state (Harsh Winter, The Ruination, Vengeance, Feel The Rush), creates additional lethal possibilities (Atrocity, Battle Fury), or provides overwhelming value (Warmother's Call, Cosmic Inspiration). I don't think Glorious Evolution will have any of those possibilities -- the closest would be the value proposition, and at 10 mana I think it's just too slow for what it does.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago
    Quote From minuano28

    I wouldn't put Tresh/Nasus in the same boat as Lissandra/Trundle control and Azir/Irelia. Don't get me wrong the deck is top tier but not oppressive (A nerf to Merciless Hunter would do the trick).

    In a vacuum I could see leaving Thresh+Nasus alone. My problems with it in the current state of the game are as follows:

    1. It's still a powerful and above-average deck -- many actually consider it to be the strongest archetype in the game right now
    2. It's an extremely well-known deck which most higher players have already crafted and learned how to play well
    3. It has a ton of draw and tutoring so it's very consistent (contrast with Lee Sin or Yasuo decks which just drop a certain percentage of games if they draw poorly)
    4. It has a lot of favorable matchups with very few "natural predators"

    I think the result of these points are that if Riot delivers heavy-handed nerfs to only TLC and AzIrelia and left Thresh+Nasus either alone or just with a minor tweak like you suggest, many players are just going to delete the former 2 decks from their library and jump over to their tried-and-true Thresh+Nasus deck to start power-laddering as soon as the ranked reset happens.

    LoR live balance has frankly been very absent these past 6 months, and unfortunately I think it is going to take some drastic measures to right the proverbial ship.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago
    Quote From KANSAS

    I like hearthstone a lot more. LoR is more generous with it's rewards, but that is about where the appeal ends. I don't like the UI or setup for the menu, collection manager etc. I don't like how many keywords and regions there are. I don't like how fast Riot makes new cards. I don't like the turn/rounds system. And just in general I don't think the game play is fun. A lot of these things are subjective and if you like them that's fine. The main point I am trying to make is that LoR simply isn't for me and I just have more fun playing Hearthstone.

    Would you say that LoR has too many keywords "in a vacuum" or that the game is just too complex for newcomers and those playing it as a supplement to Hearthstone/MtGA/etc? In other words: if every other digital CCG shut down tomorrow and LoR was now the only game you could play, would that change your opinion?

    I frame my question like that because you also critique the amount of regions, but if we draw the comparison between LoR regions (currently 9, will grow to 10 this fall) and HS classes (currently 10, possibly will grow in the future), HS is actually more complex in this regard. Please note that I don't consider this to be a logical inconsistency -- it is a totally valid opinion to think of playing HS as the status quo and to frame your evaluations of other games from the practical viewpoint that you already know and play HS rather than the theoretical viewpoint of if you were starting both games from scratch. Honestly, that's probably the reason why I haven't tried out Mythgard myself despite hearing such great things about it. I'm just curious if you were giving that statement about the LoR keywords objectively or subjectively based on your preference to play HS.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago
    Quote From Nirast

    Essentially, it's a nerf.

    Technically true -- on play is strictly worse than on summon -- but I can't think of any non-meme decks that are affected by this. The change would only be relevant if you had a way to either cheat out or resurrect a boat, and I've never encountered that in constructed. It makes me wonder if there's some upcoming power-combo with the about-to-be-released cards that they wanted to nip in the bud or if they just wanted to make the text more consistent. 

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago
    Quote From Nifty129

    If they can do all that Riot can release one substantial balance patch once a month...yeesh

    So Riot's tentative plan is to release a meta-changing patch every 4 weeks -- all the odd-numbered patches. The problems recently have been:

    1. They've actually mostly liked the recent meta, which is the reason why 2.9.0 only had 4 card changes. Apparently, a lot of their internal tracking metrics are all showing what they consider to be positive numbers. 
    2. They want to treat every expansion as potentially meta-changing on its own with no balance of existing cards. 2.11.0 is going to be a huge buck to that convention, but given the animosity of the community they didn't think they could wait until 2.13.0 (end of July).

    I slightly object to the "they're focusing on skins instead of balance because skins make money" argument -- it's technically true, but they are also 2 totally different teams with radically different skill sets and committing more personnel towards balancing doesn't necessarily mean you get better results. The bigger issue is that the Live Balance team's assessments of what is and isn't fun just doesn't seem to match the community at large, so now we have this delay in them figuring out what they should/shouldn't balance in addition to the existing 3-4 week delay to test/build/distribute a new patch. 

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 9 months ago
    Quote From FenrirWulf

    As for Kench, it's probably harder to fit him into any other region than Targon. Demacia and Freljord is an option but there's simply no enough option in it other than buffing him up so he would die less, they don't have any other things to offer such as a proper consistent win condition like Star Spring.

    Targon/Soraka is definitely the most competitive build for TK, but before the current Arelia/Nasus/TLC meta I've seen mild success with both Frejlord/Ashe (frostbite) and Demacia/Lux (detain & barrier). If you're looking for specific decklists, try browsing Mogwai's YouTube videos. 

    In reply to Kench and Kindred
  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    So I watched Zack Snyder's zombie movie "Army of the Dead" on Netflix this weekend. It's...fine. Using the significantly low bar of "we already have Netflix so it's free", I don't feel like I wasted my 2 hours 28 minutes watching this movie. And there was some cool world building and assorted nice touches like the tiger and the "time loop" theory. That said, there were A LOT of things that just really bothered me about the movie because they needlessly weaken the overall experience, and I just need to get them off my chest.

    This is definitely a rant post, so if that's not your thing, please back out now and have a nice day. :-) Also: "spoilers", I guess? But realistically everything in this movie is super-predictable, so I don't really consider anything spoiled.

    If Tanaka owns the casino, why didn't he just give them the code to the safe along with an exact description of the countermeasures and instructions how to disable them? I know thematically this is to heighten the suspense, but then you just rewrite him as a mob boss without direct knowledge instead of the owner!

    Why is there the shady double-cross from Martin? If Tanaka and Martin really are strictly-business, then they would appreciate that it was already a high-risk operation and they should be direct with their subordinates to minimize the chances of things going south. 

    Building on that: if Martin doesn't even know about zombie alphas before Coyote tells him, how does he know that's what he's there for? Maybe Tanaka granted him autonomy during the mission, but that just implies they should have approached the group with an offer of ~$10M to investigate and capture the zombies rather than hope Martin can figure something out once he's inside. The whole casino heist was just a needless distraction.

    And why does Martin turn so homicidal? Coyote is the only person that knows he's trying to smuggle the zombie head out of the city, besides which the cast generally seems very unconcerned about the threat of the zombie infection spreading out beyond the walls. He seems so committed to betraying and killing off the team despite it lowering his personal odds of survival, and no reason is ever given.

    When Chambers is dying, why is her final act to tell Guzman "go"? She's a zombie killing bad ass who just saw the man she doesn't trust (Martin) block off her escape route; why isn't she warning the group about him? Or trying to shoot him? If you're worried about "spoiling" Martin's upcoming double-crosses (which again make no sense; see above), you could have it come out garbled because she's fighting off a pack of zombies. Instead, she comes off as a weak-kneed lovestruck little girl in her final scene, which was totally out of character.

    Speaking of spreading the infection: why do we not get any shot of them closing the secret passage into the city?! I presume someone shut the door off-screen, but seriously -- if the entire premise is that Las Vegas has been completely walled-in to prevent zombies from getting out, you'd think we'd get at least a 1 second shot of someone closing the breach that would ruin everything.

    Why does the dialogue make such tight timelines in-universe time for the bombing if they are going to be so much longer in actual runtime? There is no reason to tell the audience "we've only got 10 minutes!" and 20 minutes later the nuke still hasn't arrived. You could make the argument that scenes happen in parallel so things actually happen quicker in-universe, but that just feels like lazy writing. It would be trivial to instead have in-universe be slower than real-time; you could say 30 minutes and still have the same intensity without sacrificing credibility. Plus: it's a nuke! Even if it's a "light tactical nuke", that doesn't mean you can start your escape at T -1 minute and hope to survive.

    Speaking of surviving: so this nuke is so "light" that Vanderohe can survive by just being inside an underground vault? If so: why is there no military effort to sift through the rubble and ensure that no zombies survived? They clearly established that these zombies can survive anything other than destroying their brains, so it seems like a pretty big liability to just assume every single zombie in the city had their head vaporized.

    If Coyote knows the alphas will retaliate for beheading the queen, why do they leave her body in the middle of the street? Why not at least drag it inside a car or into one of the buildings so as to stall the upcoming horde?

    Speaking of Coyote's poor decisions: she suspects Martin's betrayal and her priority is keeping the team alive, so she A.) does the one thing she knows will definitely put the entire team in jeopardy, and B.) does it for no other assurances than said untrustworthy man's word. Why not just tell the team she thinks Martin is going to betray them? Why not just leave him for the zombies -- we've already established she's cold-blooded enough to do what she thinks needs to be done. And if you are so sure that this person is just waiting lying until he can kill everyone off, why do you believe he can ever be trusted?

    If Kate is only concerned with getting Geeta back (conveniently the only 1 of the 3 captured women not die inside the Olympus, BTW), why don't we get any closure on what happens to her? She probably dies in the helicopter crash, but it's just super weird that the last ~45 minutes of the movie are "Operation Save Geeta" and then we don't even get a confirmed death. And it's like Kate goes from valuing Geeta's life more than her own to entirely forgetting about her as soon as her shoes hit the copter.

    And finally -- like the ending, this last one is a bunch of inter-related things jumbled together -- how can Kate be so stupid as to try to infiltrate the zombie base on her own and why is she actually successful? I suppose the official answer is because zombie Zeus marshalled literally every competent zombie besides zombie Cummings and they all rushed passed in such a hurry they didn't notice her hiding in a car, but that is wa-a-a-ay too cute for my taste. She just happened to be hiding at the perfect time? And the captured women didn't notice they were being unguarded and try to leave on their own? And Kate finds them in a casino with dozens of stories and thousands of rooms in less than 10 minutes because again, the dialogue is needlessly tight on time? This is where the film blows any conceivable suspicion of belief: Kate should have been picked off within 120 seconds of leaving the casino, Ward should have been frantically still looking for not-there Kate when the nuke exploded, and Peters should have long ago left with the helicopter and never returned, realizing these idiots were going to get her killed.

    This isn't part of the movie/plot per say, but also: why is this movie so long??? At 148 minutes, it's almost 2.5 hours for an absurdist escapism movie. For reference: Shaun of the Dead is 99 minutes. Train to Busan is 118 minutes. Zombieland is 88 minutes. I Am Legend is 101 minutes. World War Z is 116 minutes. Every Resident Evil movie is between 93 and 106 minutes. It's like Zack Snyder is determined to knock your socks off with a meal so he decides to prepare a 5-course meal, but each course is only so-so with too big a serving so you just leave feeling bloated, wishing he'd focused on making one plate unforgettable instead. For instance: you could cut Martin out entirely -- no betrayals, Chambers get separated due to someone accidentally kicking the glowstick, Queen dies as a result of a bad encounter with the entire team -- and the movie is actually better. Or cut out Geeta & Kate, who frankly felt like they were in an entirely different movie which just overlapped with the heist movie. 

    Like I said: it's not really a bad movie, it just has so many glaring plot holes that detract from the viewing experience so much and I don't know why.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    The price for the entire bundle is high, but at the same time that's getting everything. It's a bit like looking at the sticker price to craft a golden deck in HS or prismatic deck in LoR: that's not really a practical expense unless part of your income is from streaming and/or you're just a total whale. I suspect the majority of players will fall into a cadence where they only buy 1-4 skins/year, cherry picking the champions they want to play & think look good rather than a "gotta have 'em all" approach.

    For context, the price for a single skin is 700 coins (~$7 USD) for the art-only and 1495 (~$15 USD) for the art + animation -- a little steep just to have as a collector's item that you'll rarely use, but very reasonable if it's a champ you intend on playing 40+ hours of over the next 12 months.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    Imagine spending 3 hours researching & writing this article, and forgetting that they provided that in-game calendar already confirming the event for the 19th. (ー_ー﹡; )

    I do think it's significant that neither the Skins or Lab update/rotation went out last week, though. The only reason I can think for them to not deploy alongside the expansion release is because they are integral to the event.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like powder keg + time bomb does not (currently) work like we expected it would. You do get the plunder which can be nice, but without the 2 damage AoE we're not sure that particular decklist is viable.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    My understanding is that the blades just appear in-combat and attacking; you don't spend or gain an attack token. Think like how Cataclysm works. I would expect it does proc Azir / Greenglade Duo / etc. The blades self-oblit when combat ends, so they would only proc Thresh / They Who Endure / Phantom Prankster / etc if they are blocked & killed before the combat ends.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago
    Quote From Synnr7

    I understand wanting each class to be truly unique I don't think that is healthy for the game. If Warriors were THE weapon class  and mages where THE spell class that takes away from other classes not enhances them. If you look at all the classes they overlap with another in every aspect. That's actually a good thing. It helps the design of neutral (and dual) class cards. If a card is so specific it only works in one class then why do we have neutrals?

    ...

    Conclusion:

    I understand the idea of wanting a class to be a unique shining star. To have something no one else has. But that's not the direction Blizzard went with any of the classes. Why should Demon Hunter be different? Mechanics being similar allow for neutral and dual class cards to be better targeted. Different archetypes in a class allow for diversity in builds. Sure maybe most DH are OTK right now but the next set dropping a good deathrattle or two could push the Barrens cards into the spot light. Even if it doesn't overtake the meta build letting these exist is still healthy. Heck I've been enjoying deathrattle DH in wild a lot. It's silly sure but it still wins and it's fun to play and refine that deck. 

    To me the game would be boring if every class was predetermined by some magical unique thing they needed to do. Fighting that one Recruit paladin in the sea of Secrets is refreshing and fun in my daily climb. Don't you agree?

    Literally taken, yes I think every class needs to be unique -- if the only difference between Hunter and Warrior was that one had green card backgrounds while the other had red card backgrounds I think that would be a colossal failing. I would also say the if the only difference was that Hunter had card X and Warrior had card Y (i.e., imagine they took a pile of unreleased cards and just randomly divided them between all the classes), that too would be a failing. That's not the argument Synnr takes -- they actually write a pretty good nuanced argument that implies a distinction between "truly unique" versus general uniqueness -- but for discussion sake I think it's important to set that expectation that if you're going to add a class to the game, it needs some intrinsic novelty beyond just being the sum of cards available to it.

    Personally, I think Hearthstone should have established a lot more division between the classes even prior to Demon Hunter. That doesn't necessarily mean that each class should have only been good at one thing, but I would have liked to see each have a defined profile. Consider the current "color chart":

    • Mage is great at AoE spells, single-target spell removal, over-the-top damage, & card draw; they are good at disruption (secrets) & value generation; they are weak at healing & units; they have no rush or weapons
    • Shaman is OK at AoE spells, single-target spell removal, healing, over-the-top damage, token units, rush units, and weapons; they are poor at card draw & value generation; no disruption
    • Hunter is great at over-the-top damage, units, rush, spell-based unit removal, disruption, & weapons; they are poor at card draw & value generation; no healing & no AoE besides explosive trap
    • Warrior is great at weapons, rush, units, single-target spell removal, AoE spells (brawl, bladestorm); they are good at value generation & healing; they are weak at card draw; no disruption besides taunt

    ...and so on. Those descriptions are based largely around this developer insight article from 2 years ago, and already I'm sure people's inner voices are screaming. "How can you say warriors are weak at card draw when Cutting Class exists? Or that hunter is bad at value generation with cards like Warsong Wrangler & Adorable Infestation?" And that's BEFORE accounting for neutral cards filling in gaps (e.g., Voracious Reader to fix bad draw; Armor Vendor for healing; etc). In my eyes, the Venn diagram of even the original 9 classes is this giant blob that says everyone is way more alike then they are distinct. So from there, it's no surprise at all that Demon Hunter would have trouble distinguishing itself. That's my $0.02. 

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago
    Quote From Almaniarra

    What I don't like most is how they changed experience reward firstly. Rewards for 7 win was giving champion card and they moved it to weekly chests which is fair and ok for me but Free runs now gives almost no experience which is a big con for me. I'm mostly a draft player in CCGs and in Runeterra, playing draft for a week doesn't reward. it is just a 3-times-run mode like aa Asian MMORPG dungeon which has limits to play weekly (Hello Lost Ark), lol.

    I agree that Riot probably should restore giving more XP for expeditions. TBH, after playing regularly for a while you really stop to care about XP -- region reward roads start to max out, the differences between the vaults levels don't really matter because most things are duplicates anyways, and if for any reason you do want more XP it's so easy to duel-farm PvP and Lab of Legends for a quick 3000+/day. But that just means players like me don't really care how much XP we're "leaving on the table" by not doing expeditions whereas players like tnrg could potentially be using it as a much-appreciated catch-up method.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    Obviously Shurima is the only region with direct landmark synergies, but I could see Spiral Stairs / Seed of Strength getting some experimentation in other regions -- e.g., Zoe / Viktor / Vi, possibly Swain, maybe Lee Sin. It's comparable to Zenith Blade: you get more stats, but you spend 3 unit mana instead of 3 spell mana and there are timing conditions.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    I feel like I am the only person in the world who didn't realize that reference when I first saw it. :*-(

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    I'm hoping that if you play/splinter a 2nd sumpworker, THAT is the copy that gets "obliterate me" and the original is the copy that gets transformed. If it's the original copy that gets obliterated AND they don't do a special exception to remove the ephemeral keyword (which I agree would be consistent with other things currently in the game), it's going to drastically reduce the value of that card.

  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

    Random first impressions:

    • Nasus Thresh is looking disgusting -- it's already a strong deck, and I think The Wings and The Wave can only make it stronger.
    • Buried in Ice looks fun; I just don't know how to use it. Will it be a control tool for TLC decks? A combo piece for It That Stares? Something you just put in midrange decks so you can swing for lethal?
    • AdaptatronBADCARDNAME = Heimerdinger synergy; it will be interesting to see if he goes from meme tier to meta deck overnight.
    • Chirean Sumpworker looks like meme material, but in a good way. Really curious if Fading Memories and/or Splinter Soul keep ephemeral; otherwise we're looking at Iterative Improvement and/or Counterfeit Copies
    • Cithria, Lady of Clouds looks amazing. I have no idea how you actually utilize her -- 10 mana is huge -- but that won't stop me from trying. The sad thing is that she's probably just worse than Brightsteel Formation and Minah Swiftfoot, who deliver the same "I'm just going to win now" power but for 1 less mana. But we can dream!
  • OldManSanns's Avatar
    Azir 1040 924 Posts Joined 08/05/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    In general, the deck lists don't seem to be publicly available. I know Hexenwitch and TheBlackBoss were 2 of the Shyvana decks; I was able to find their lists (below) and they are nearly identical. I wasn't able to find the other 2 but I would be surprised if they were significantly different.

    Good luck!

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