How do you even win in this mode? I'm 0-14 right now. What's the strategy?
edit: 2 hours later finally got a win. This mode is stupid.
edit 2: honest to god whats the strategy here? Just hope to get lucky?
Keep in mind:
You get rewarded for having things die, so unlike normal circumstances sometimes its advantageous for your units to not survive
Along the same lines: killing an enemy unit just to remove it from the field can sometimes backfire because it might mean your opponent just plays and even bigger threat in its place
The buffs accumulate. Let's say you have a bunch of 3/3s: if you played the first 3/3 and let it die, then playing whatever got buffed (6/6), then playing the final (9/9), that would be a total of 18/18 worth of stats.
Many things are just ridiculous with big stats--elusive, overwhelm, and lifesteal in particular
Frostbite + kill will reduce the handbuff to +0 attack: difficult to pull off, but brutal when you do
If you're struggling, try the SI + Ionia deck for a while to get use to how it works: the ephemerals will give you huge hand buffs, but you'll have very few blockers so you'll need to play aggressively.
Really interesting you should say that, because Swim just brought a Deep deck without Nautilus to a Twitch Rivals tournament and placed first. I thought a Deep deck w/o Nautilus sounded absolutely crazy, but turns out it does pretty okay, at least in a tournament format.
Although a caveat being that the Deep deck he recommends for ladder does include 2x Nautilus.
Ugg... 3x Thresh, 3x Maokai. Take this with a grain of salt because I haven't actually played or seen it, but that just sounds ugly to me. Thresh's ability will always pull Maokai, and attacking with Maokai usually gets him insta-killed. It only makes sense to me if you are ready to flip Maokai but don't have him on-board or in-hand, or that just sounds like such a niche condition unworthy of dedicating so much of your deck...
I have to say: I am enjoying this "Spirit Blossom" event a lot more than I thought I would. When I first read about it I thought it sounded fairly underwhelming, but I just spent the past hour diving in and its really reinvigorated my enthusiasm for LoR. Even though content-wise its "just" a new lab, new quests, and new reward path, for some reason they feel very fresh. I think the decision to create the new currency, petals, instead of just recycling XP is inspired--it really makes the event progression feel different from the base game even though its practically very similar. And these new epic quests are well balanced: challenging enough that you can't just fumble through them with a few games, but not so much that you get discouraged. The OR/AND stuff is pretty cute too. I made it through the "Win 4 Lab games" quest, and am about 2/3 through the "Toss" quest.
I haven't bought the season pass yet, but now I'm seriously considering it.
What do you guys think? I saw the thread about the ephemeral/elusive deck in the lab which I agree is a bit overtuned, but in general I haven't seen a lot of comments about the event overall.
And also: its entirely too slow so don't actually play it and for the love of C'thun don't craft, and have tissues on-hand for when it gets silenced / polymorphed / hex / devolved / poofed away. But still: gotta love that flavor. Many a meme will be had.
It's always curious if Hearthstone will support a mechanic forever like Discover or pretend it never happened like Inspire.
I think it entirely depends on the mechanic. Discover and Rush seem to be now so ingrained in what we think of as HS, plus they are probably a huge design crutch as they both increase a particular card's bottom potential (e.g., discover > random) while still limiting their upper potential (e.g., charge > rush) so their value becomes more predictable. I just can't picture either of them rotating out. Meanwhile mechanics like Inspire and Magnetize are more gimmicky so its actually beneficial to have them come and go--they give specific sets unique flavor.
Watching that Cinematic Trailer, yesterday's predictions of a light-hearted "Harrypottersque flair" seem dead on. Good job to everyone who saw that coming.
It's real problem was that it was an instance with a true audience. It was originally designed / tuned for a 10-man raid for levels 55-60, yet it only yielded rare quality gear and there were a number of tricky encounters which could cause a wipe if everyone wasn't careful. If you were just partying with a PUG, Stratholme was a superior choice in every way that mattered: it only required 5, it didn't have any especially tricky encounters, and because it was so popular that mean most people were already familiar with it and rarely wiped. If you did have a larger party, Blackrock Spire provided better rewards. And if you were 60 and/or raiding with an active guild, you wanted something that would provide better rewards than just rare quality gear. Scholo was relegated to just one time to complete quests, the Paladin mount, and fools like me attempting to complete the Dreadmist Raiment set.
I'm glad they attempted to salvage it with the 1.9 patch, but by then I was already farming Blackwing Lair and wasn't interested in backtracking just for the memories.
What if L2 Jinx were given something like “Last Breath: Draw 2”? That way she would refill your hand after you were forced to dump it, and your opponent can’t totally destroy you by destroying your Jinx when you have an empty hand.
Level 10 Vault every week since open beta; 100% on all reward tracks.
15 Champ wildcards
17 Epic wildcards
67 Rare wildcards
206 Common wildcards
97836 Shards
16 Expedition tokens
My collection is missing 28 champions, 39 epics, and a few rare and commons--I don't really make the effort unless there's a specific deck I want to try.
80k shards wow =O Guess you guys are stacked for the next exp... well done!
The issue is that other than crafting for the completion sake, there's not a lot to spend crafting resources on. I already have more than enough decks to keep myself entertained, and if I do see something that catches my fancy it generally only makes a slight dent in my wildcard reserves, let alone shards.
Is Heimerdinger so problematic at the moment that it needs a change? I don't really play Ranked that much. Haven't seen awfully lot of him in Normal mode. I know Riot plans to change some of the Turrets, and I'm curious what they'll end up doing.
Anyway, for me the last one is overly complicated. The second one would be very frustrating for the Heimerdinger player, and for example the Barrier Turret would rarely get any value of its Barrier (as I can't really see anyone playing it from hand with its real cost). The first one is closest to my liking but I'm still not a fan of disincentivizing playing almost any cheap spells, which are the thing that make combat phases so interesting for me. I also feel that these changes would make Heimer really slow. Therefore, I'd argue that you'd need to change the Health of some of the Turrets to compensate if you'd like to make him playable.
If I'd were tasked with toning down the token spam, I'd just go with something simple like "The first Turret you play each round costs (0)." You could still play a lot of them in one round but only if you have the mana, and it would definitely encourage casting at least one high cost spell per round. While his current Health is a big weakness, I think it's very much needed to stay like that or he'd be really frustrating to face against. I don't play LoL so I can't say anything about the true flavor, but for me a weak statline seems to fit him better than a big bulky unit stats.
"Problematic" is mostly a subjective term, but there is general sentiment that his current behavior provides so more value than it ought and that he is over-represented in the meta.
Personally, I would make it even simpler: "The first time you cast a spell each round, create a fleeting Turret". That would limit his ability to pop-off and also discourage against that extremely frustrating Round 5 Heimer -> Flash of Brilliance -> Twin Disciplines -> double elusive turret tempo swing.
It's interesting. They definitely overstated the "cards based around the champions you picked", however--its just random cards from those regions. My first game, I drew/kept Nautilus + Malokai expecting to get a bunch of sea monsters and toss cards, but actually both champions got no support and were unplayable. Meanwhile "always good" champions like Zed, Draven, Katarina, and Hecarim just clean house.
Hopefully they do a better job "bucketing" in the future--probably leverage all their work from Expeditions here.
Glad I checked Out-of-Cards before I went to bed: I was sitting at level 4, so I played two Labs and a couple AI games to walk away with that free champion card :D
It's an icon (i.e.., that circular image of a yeti / poro / shark / etc that pops up above your champions when your match first starts).
Assuming PC client: go to the Home menu, click on your current icon (top-left, next to your gold), and a menu should popup with all the default icons plus what you've unlocked / won.
Log in to client. I usually do this from Home screen, but I think any screen other than an active match works.
Click on the icon in the top-right that looks like 2 hooded figures. A sidebar will popup
Click the icon with the hooded figure and "+". The "Add Friend" menu will popup
Enter Riot ID and region code. For example, my ID is OldManSanns and region code is moc
To confirm your own ID and code: under that same sidebar from #2, you should be able to mouse-over your icon and see a popup. If you created your account especially for LoR, it will probably be moc; if you're reusing a LoL account then it will be that which is less simple.
In general, I agree with the sentiment that "cool" cosmetics should be cash-only. Honestly, I am at a point where I kind of feel bad I haven't given Riot any money yet: I've been playing almost daily since open-beta, have nearly all cards, and am enjoying much more than HS, yet I've given Blizzard ~$100-150 over the years and Riot $0--entirely because HS would do the devilish thing where I felt like I had to spend cash to make competitive decks whereas LoR is extremely generous in crafting resources if you're patient and play regularly.
The one exception is that I wish they would provide a few more non-cash cosmetics. They already have given rainbow poro pet, rainbow poro emote, and moonshine poro as time-limited free-bees and region-specific cardbacks as progression rewards, and I use those liberally. They also have done the ladder-based icons, but honestly I think those all look like trash. And no non-cash boards. Again: I do think all the "cool" cosmetics should be cash-only as that's essentially Riot's sole revenue stream, but I would also like to see a few more offerings along these lines.
Yeah i probably will play every other third day just to clear quest like you said, thank you good mate!
For me, letting go of that urgency to clear quests was a huge milestone. I know it feels a bit like leaving money on the proverbial table, but look at it this way: quests only grant you gold, and gold is only good for buying packs and arena tokens. If you're not really interested in crafting new decks or doing arena runs, then packs and tokens should have minimal value to you--therefore it should be totally rationale to prefer to spend 30 minutes doing something that might actually have a small improvement on your life (e.g., sleep an extra 30 min / watch a TV show / surf internet / chat with friends / etc) rather than perform a task which will only have insignificant benefit.
Create a list of all allied units that have died so far this game and order them strongest -> weakest
If you have an open slot on your board, summon a copy of the next unit from that list and give it ephemeral
Repeat #2 until either your board is full or the list is empty
Some interesting points:
All summon and last whisper effects proc. This makes The Rekindler especially valuable, as he will create a non-ephemeral copy of your strongest champion so long as he is summoned in slot #5 or less (if he's in #6, he will try to create the copy but you won't have a free board space so that copy will evaporate)
The copies from The Harrowing add to your rez pool--e.g., even if you have only played one "authentic" Hecarim, Harrowing #1 will copy that, Harrowing #2 will copy both = 2 total, and #3 will produce 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 total.
When considering how "strong" something is, Harrowing will take into consideration champion L2 stats (assuming they leveled) but not any buffs that only apply when the unit reaches the board (e.g., They Who Endure is only ranked by its 1/1 stats). I'm honestly unsure whether "everywhere" buffs like Poro Snax and Mistwraith are taken into consideration.
Harrowing only gets value from things that have died, which can create some interesting dynamics. For example: yesterday I was playing a game where I intentionally did a bad block so that my The Rekindler would die and I would resummon him + an additional champ when I played harrowing the next turn.
Harrowing's value is also limited by the number of board spaces, so if you plan to play it next turn its a good idea to try to kill off all your less valuable units this turn to free up space.
Twitch Prime has partnered up with Riot to offer some nice rewards in Legends of Runeterra for the fourth and last time (at least for now).
When I log into Twitch Prime LOR page, I see 4 capsules labeled "Claimed" (including the one I just got, thank you) and 1 more labeled "Coming Soon", implying there will be a 5th in the near future.
Honestly, the fact that L1 Jinx only has 3 HP disgusts me. Seriously: let's compare her apples-to-apples with Yasuo:
At L1, both are 4 mana, 4 attack with quick-attack
L1 Yasuo has a constant passive skill; L1 Jinx is vanilla--essentially a Academy Prodigy with +1/+2 until you level her up
Yasuo can level up even when not on board; Jinx needs to be on board
An L2 Yasuo combo'ed with Yone or Mina is usually lethal, often even when near full nexus health. An L2 Jinx combo'ed with a Get Excited! top deck (because if it was already in your hand, you had to dump it to level Jinx) represents 7 nexus damage.
Jinx is weaker in almost every conceivable way. But the real kick to the teeth is: to level up Jinx AND to get the subsequent rockets, you need to dump your hand--and dumping your hand makes you very vulnerable. You can't keep Deny / Fury of the North / Barrier backup to protect Jinx; you can't pull a Glimpse Beyond / Single Combat / Noxian Fervor to milk some value out of Jinx before she dies. And after she dies, you're totally out-of-gas. She's inherently a high-risk / medium-reward proposition...and I would even be OK with that, except for the fact L1 Yasuo originally had that same 4/3 quick-attack stat line and they decided HE needed to be buffed to 4/4 as he "hasn’t quite had the durability needed to be able to fully utilize him as a build-around". Ever since that change, Yasuo has been a constant mainstay of the meta while Jinx is relegated to meme-y decks like Draven/Discard and TF/Casino.
I believe eventually they will give Jinx and additional HP to match Yasuo's stats, but the fact it it taking them this long to figure that out just infuriates me .
Keep in mind:
If you're struggling, try the SI + Ionia deck for a while to get use to how it works: the ephemerals will give you huge hand buffs, but you'll have very few blockers so you'll need to play aggressively.
Ugg... 3x Thresh, 3x Maokai. Take this with a grain of salt because I haven't actually played or seen it, but that just sounds ugly to me. Thresh's ability will always pull Maokai, and attacking with Maokai usually gets him insta-killed. It only makes sense to me if you are ready to flip Maokai but don't have him on-board or in-hand, or that just sounds like such a niche condition unworthy of dedicating so much of your deck...
I have to say: I am enjoying this "Spirit Blossom" event a lot more than I thought I would. When I first read about it I thought it sounded fairly underwhelming, but I just spent the past hour diving in and its really reinvigorated my enthusiasm for LoR. Even though content-wise its "just" a new lab, new quests, and new reward path, for some reason they feel very fresh. I think the decision to create the new currency, petals, instead of just recycling XP is inspired--it really makes the event progression feel different from the base game even though its practically very similar. And these new epic quests are well balanced: challenging enough that you can't just fumble through them with a few games, but not so much that you get discouraged. The OR/AND stuff is pretty cute too. I made it through the "Win 4 Lab games" quest, and am about 2/3 through the "Toss" quest.
I haven't bought the season pass yet, but now I'm seriously considering it.
What do you guys think? I saw the thread about the ephemeral/elusive deck in the lab which I agree is a bit overtuned, but in general I haven't seen a lot of comments about the event overall.
I love this card.
And also: its entirely too slow so don't actually play it and for the love of C'thun don't craft, and have tissues on-hand for when it gets silenced / polymorphed / hex / devolved / poofed away. But still: gotta love that flavor. Many a meme will be had.
Blazing Battlemage and Dire Mole might be more apt comparisons. (Former has beast tag; latter has none)
I think it entirely depends on the mechanic. Discover and Rush seem to be now so ingrained in what we think of as HS, plus they are probably a huge design crutch as they both increase a particular card's bottom potential (e.g., discover > random) while still limiting their upper potential (e.g., charge > rush) so their value becomes more predictable. I just can't picture either of them rotating out. Meanwhile mechanics like Inspire and Magnetize are more gimmicky so its actually beneficial to have them come and go--they give specific sets unique flavor.
Watching that Cinematic Trailer, yesterday's predictions of a light-hearted "Harrypottersque flair" seem dead on. Good job to everyone who saw that coming.
It's real problem was that it was an instance with a true audience. It was originally designed / tuned for a 10-man raid for levels 55-60, yet it only yielded rare quality gear and there were a number of tricky encounters which could cause a wipe if everyone wasn't careful. If you were just partying with a PUG, Stratholme was a superior choice in every way that mattered: it only required 5, it didn't have any especially tricky encounters, and because it was so popular that mean most people were already familiar with it and rarely wiped. If you did have a larger party, Blackrock Spire provided better rewards. And if you were 60 and/or raiding with an active guild, you wanted something that would provide better rewards than just rare quality gear. Scholo was relegated to just one time to complete quests, the Paladin mount, and fools like me attempting to complete the Dreadmist Raiment set.
I'm glad they attempted to salvage it with the 1.9 patch, but by then I was already farming Blackwing Lair and wasn't interested in backtracking just for the memories.
That's a pretty good idea actually
Level 10 Vault every week since open beta; 100% on all reward tracks.
My collection is missing 28 champions, 39 epics, and a few rare and commons--I don't really make the effort unless there's a specific deck I want to try.
The issue is that other than crafting for the completion sake, there's not a lot to spend crafting resources on. I already have more than enough decks to keep myself entertained, and if I do see something that catches my fancy it generally only makes a slight dent in my wildcard reserves, let alone shards.
"Problematic" is mostly a subjective term, but there is general sentiment that his current behavior provides so more value than it ought and that he is over-represented in the meta.
Personally, I would make it even simpler: "The first time you cast a spell each round, create a fleeting Turret". That would limit his ability to pop-off and also discourage against that extremely frustrating Round 5 Heimer -> Flash of Brilliance -> Twin Disciplines -> double elusive turret tempo swing.
It's interesting. They definitely overstated the "cards based around the champions you picked", however--its just random cards from those regions. My first game, I drew/kept Nautilus + Malokai expecting to get a bunch of sea monsters and toss cards, but actually both champions got no support and were unplayable. Meanwhile "always good" champions like Zed, Draven, Katarina, and Hecarim just clean house.
Hopefully they do a better job "bucketing" in the future--probably leverage all their work from Expeditions here.
Ditto. Thanks, Neon!
Update: got my first Fiora--woot!
It's an icon (i.e.., that circular image of a yeti / poro / shark / etc that pops up above your champions when your match first starts).
Assuming PC client: go to the Home menu, click on your current icon (top-left, next to your gold), and a menu should popup with all the default icons plus what you've unlocked / won.
Assuming the PC client:
To confirm your own ID and code: under that same sidebar from #2, you should be able to mouse-over your icon and see a popup. If you created your account especially for LoR, it will probably be moc; if you're reusing a LoL account then it will be that which is less simple.
In general, I agree with the sentiment that "cool" cosmetics should be cash-only. Honestly, I am at a point where I kind of feel bad I haven't given Riot any money yet: I've been playing almost daily since open-beta, have nearly all cards, and am enjoying much more than HS, yet I've given Blizzard ~$100-150 over the years and Riot $0--entirely because HS would do the devilish thing where I felt like I had to spend cash to make competitive decks whereas LoR is extremely generous in crafting resources if you're patient and play regularly.
The one exception is that I wish they would provide a few more non-cash cosmetics. They already have given rainbow poro pet, rainbow poro emote, and moonshine poro as time-limited free-bees and region-specific cardbacks as progression rewards, and I use those liberally. They also have done the ladder-based icons, but honestly I think those all look like trash. And no non-cash boards. Again: I do think all the "cool" cosmetics should be cash-only as that's essentially Riot's sole revenue stream, but I would also like to see a few more offerings along these lines.
For me, letting go of that urgency to clear quests was a huge milestone. I know it feels a bit like leaving money on the proverbial table, but look at it this way: quests only grant you gold, and gold is only good for buying packs and arena tokens. If you're not really interested in crafting new decks or doing arena runs, then packs and tokens should have minimal value to you--therefore it should be totally rationale to prefer to spend 30 minutes doing something that might actually have a small improvement on your life (e.g., sleep an extra 30 min / watch a TV show / surf internet / chat with friends / etc) rather than perform a task which will only have insignificant benefit.
Good luck!
Essentially:
Some interesting points:
When I log into Twitch Prime LOR page, I see 4 capsules labeled "Claimed" (including the one I just got, thank you) and 1 more labeled "Coming Soon", implying there will be a 5th in the near future.
Honestly, the fact that L1 Jinx only has 3 HP disgusts me. Seriously: let's compare her apples-to-apples with Yasuo:
Jinx is weaker in almost every conceivable way. But the real kick to the teeth is: to level up Jinx AND to get the subsequent rockets, you need to dump your hand--and dumping your hand makes you very vulnerable. You can't keep Deny / Fury of the North / Barrier backup to protect Jinx; you can't pull a Glimpse Beyond / Single Combat / Noxian Fervor to milk some value out of Jinx before she dies. And after she dies, you're totally out-of-gas. She's inherently a high-risk / medium-reward proposition...and I would even be OK with that, except for the fact L1 Yasuo originally had that same 4/3 quick-attack stat line and they decided HE needed to be buffed to 4/4 as he "hasn’t quite had the durability needed to be able to fully utilize him as a build-around". Ever since that change, Yasuo has been a constant mainstay of the meta while Jinx is relegated to meme-y decks like Draven/Discard and TF/Casino.
I believe eventually they will give Jinx and additional HP to match Yasuo's stats, but the fact it it taking them this long to figure that out just infuriates me .