Hi, i'm new to this game (play it since may 15.) .
Are Unassailable Decks good vs Meta?
What protector shall i choose?
Welcome to Runeterra!
None of the keywords you mention match LoR English keywords, so I am going to assume you're translating from another language and that "Unassailable" means elusives (examples: Shadow Assassin, Greenglade Duo) and "protector" means champions (examples: Zed, Elise).
Elusive decks are still good, but not as powerful as before the Rising Tides expansion. Most popular elusive decks run only Zed for champion and look like the below. However I will caution you: don't feel like you need to follow the meta in LoR like for other card games. Riot is working hard to make every archetype viable, so the difference between meta and off-meta is not as extreme as you would expect here.
I too was surprised. Although honestly: I am more surprised at the underwhelming Frejlord buffs buff. The region has been persistently dead last place in tournaments, ladder, and 3rd party meta reports, yet the only change is giving Tavernkeeper vanilla stats. The region is still weak on 1-3 drops and has very few catchup mechanics.
Personally I think 20 Nexus HP is appropriate but that they should make healing more accessible. It's pretty nutty that right now if you want to make a control deck, you pretty much have to include either Ionia or Shadow Isles to reduce your opponents' reach.
Great guesses everyone! I count my final tally as 2 hits, 2 close, and 9 misses out of 13 total. DoubleSummon had the most hits--6 direct, 2 close--but he also had a lot of misses so I don't know how you want to weigh that. :-P Shout-outs to CursedParrot on coming close to Badgebear and Hellcopter for close on Boomcrew and Ranger.
I get a lot of these changes, but why the update to Jinx? Just because they added Noxian Fervor and Gotcha! to the game?
No, I think Shen and Jinx need buffs strictly due to their playrate & winrate. And honestly: even before Rising Tides, she was just too easy to pick off. She would die to all the stuff old Yasuo died to: Get Excited, Thermo Beam, chef + challenger, kamikazi Fiora, single combat on anything with 3 attack, frostbite, barrier, etc. 2 new direct 3-damage spells plus AoE plus vulnerability have only hampered her survivability, and dumping your hand to level her only to see her picked off is almost always GG.
I was close with Shen (although honestly I think the HP would be much more appropriate than +1 attack--he needs to level to justify playing him, and most of the time he just doesn't live long enough to see 4 things get barrier), but then they went with Vladimir and Hecarim which surprised me. They are both on the unpopular side, but I still at least see them both on occasion. Honestly I think Hecarim is still quite strong as a 4/5 overwhelm that summons two 2/2s; I'm surprised he hasn't found his way into a meta deck. But meanwhile I can't remember the last time I saw a Jinx in constructed.
Consider this: one of the most popular decks on the ladder right now is a P&Z/Noxus deck composed almost entirely of 1-3 mana cards, and you have a P&Z champion who's ability is "once your hand is empty, start drawing 2 cards at the start of your turn" of whom everyone gets 2 free copies, and everyone's like "nah, I think I'll just run some Decimates and Statikk Shock instead--they are more consistent". That's really sad.
I should have prefaced: these are my predictions for what Riot will actually patch, not necessarily what I would like to see patched. I'm basing off patterns I've noticed:
The majority of changes are either to the mana cost or unit stats. Tweaking a champion's leveling is also fairly common, but stat changes are more prevalent. Changing a spell's speed never occurs unless it is part of a rework, and reworks are only done to cards which are virtually unplayed.
Additionally, I'm making an assumption that Rising Tides cards are more likely candidates to receive buffs than the core set since they are effectively time-limited--e.g., Frejlord is more likely to see a buff to Ember Maiden than Avalanche and Demacia is more likely to see a nerf to either Loyal Badgerbear or Grizzled Ranger than Vanguard Bannerman or Single Combat.
Good catch on the chefs--I meant to include that on my list but forgot. I don't think I can agree with any of the others, though--perhaps Ranger as a 3/1, but 2/1 just seems too punitive for a 4-mana unit, and the others don't match the patterns.
I want to play the MF + Quinn deck, and maybe the Swain + Sejuani deck. Of those 12 cards though, I only own two Sejuanis DX Too many things I want to craft, and while I could probably get away with doing so, that would take everything I own, shards and wildcards.
Don't feel like you need to field 3x of each champion to enjoy the decklist. I've had some fair success building decks with just 2x: obviously they aren't as consistent, but in ~50% of games you probably wouldn't even draw that third copy anyways. Plus, I think the Level 23 champion capsule from region rewards is guaranteed to always give you champions from Rising Tides, so you might be able to get to 2x copies with a single wildcard and bit of XP grinding.
I have one. Make it so Avalanche also gives everyone frostbite, your guys too, so you can combine it with Winters Breath for 11 mana and get a full board clear but not be able to fully capitalize on it till the next turn. So it will be a situational combo.
I considered that, but the big problem is that its still slow speed. Decent players will almost always open-attack if they have an undisputed board advantage so the frost bite is a non-factor. Meanwhile, it still affects your board, so putting down chump blockers to try to coax your opponent into developing their attack instead of open attacking is counter-productive.
Lol that's definitely a unique way to promote the game. I'm not sure if I'd actually attempt to recreate of any of them besides maybe the ceviche, however...
I feel like most of this BS could be solved if there was no limit to how many factions you could use. That way you could always slot in a card for almost any situation you may come across. But I get it. Since there are no mana colors like in MTG it would be hard to balance that too. But if that's the case they need to provide every faction with at least one answer to every possible card to balance it out. Like for example every faction should have at least one Obliterate, Deny, or Silence type card.
Just from a design standpoint, I think it would be very bad if each region was obligated to have least one Obliterate, Deny, Silence, etc. It's certainly true that every region should have a good set of answers to lots of different challenges, but those answers shouldn't be the same or the regions distinction will be pointless. Moreover, since you can run two regions, it's okay to allow for different regions to have different answers, but it becomes a problem when one region just has way more answers than the other regions. This is why there's such an imbalance between Ionia, SI, and P&Z vs the other regions.
I will meet you halfway. If for instance, Culling Strike and/or Noxian Guillotine obliterated instead of just killing, (and for the latter: US was also reworked such that the unit could take damage but still couldn't be reduced below 1 HP or killed): then Noxus, Ionia (Will of Ionia), and to some degree Frejlord (frostbite), Demacia (Detain & Purify), and Bilgewater + deep (fish) would have the potential for answering US but SI and P&Z wouldn't. That's the type of Paper > Rock > Scissors balance that I'd like this Riot to try harder to install in the future. As is: its really hard to incorporate Noxus and Frejlord into any deck other than aggro because they just don't contribute much beyond big bodies and nexus damage.
You probably want to cut Blade's Edge, Black Spear, and Fresh Offerings--they just aren't that strong. Other cards that look dubious are Culling Strike and Noxian Guillotine--I get why they'd be useful sometimes, but overall I think this archetype wants to focus on putting the most power on your board ASAP rather than trying to control the opponent's.
Definitely add 3x Salvage--that card is good enough to be run just for the card draw, much less when you also value the toss.
I'd also cut at least 1--arguably 2--Terror of the Tides. He's going to feel really bad to have multiple copies in your hand before you go deep--and unlike Eye, Devourer, and Hoarder which are sometimes valuable enough to play before going deep, he just feels awful playing as a 8 mana 6/5 Fearsome.
I like the idea of Vi's card - and I love the character of Vi - but I don't like the rest of Piltover/Zaun :( I've left it at zero progress.
Good news: there are a ton of decks right now where Vi is the only P&Z card they run. :-)
P&Z is kinda in a weird state right now--the burn cards and shroom generators are super-popular, yet the original discard package and multiple-spells package are practically unplayed and all their new Rising Tides cards lack clear homes.
I really want Avalanche to be better, and I like your suggested changes to it in general. 4 damage might be a little high for a card that can come down on turn 3, but it definitely needs either a speed or damage buff. I also like the Poro Herder change (I've been trying to make a Poro deck work recently), but I don't know that it will make for a major improvement to a dedicated Poro deck - if you don't have one or more Poros in play most of the game, you're probably losing. It would make running a small "Poro Package" feasible in some other deck, but I'm not sure it has the flexibility of the spiders package to be worth it.
I agree that 4 damage is a lot, but at the same time, I asked myself: besides making it fast speed, honestly how much damage would this card need to do to make me want to play it again? At the least, it would need to be able to clear vanilla Crimson Disciple, L1 Fiora, Elise, and War Chefs; however even up'ed to 3 damage I still don't think I'd actually play it because it still doesn't clear cards like Loyal Badgerbear, Boomcrew Rookie or the aforementioned post-bannerman and it's easily answered by cards like Transfusion, Ranger's Resolve, barrier, and Deny.
At slow speed AND hitting both sides of the board, it's play style is like a "lite" version of Ruination, so comparably it needs to have a significant impact on board. Maybe if it also cleansed everything, or obliterated instead of killing? Or keep at 2 damage but reduce cost to 3 mana so it could be played at the end of Round 2 or with pure spell mana? Frankly, I think this card wants to be anti-aggro so making it fast speed is a superior answer but I was brainstorm other changes that maintained the card's original attributes.
Agree with all your changes except the Counterfeit one. There are other applications for this card outside the Elnuk combo. i've been running Counterfeit Copies in a Purrsuit of Perfection + Heimerdinger deck and it works very well as it is.
Welcome to Runeterra!
None of the keywords you mention match LoR English keywords, so I am going to assume you're translating from another language and that "Unassailable" means elusives (examples: Shadow Assassin, Greenglade Duo) and "protector" means champions (examples: Zed, Elise).
Elusive decks are still good, but not as powerful as before the Rising Tides expansion. Most popular elusive decks run only Zed for champion and look like the below. However I will caution you: don't feel like you need to follow the meta in LoR like for other card games. Riot is working hard to make every archetype viable, so the difference between meta and off-meta is not as extreme as you would expect here.
Good luck!
I too was surprised. Although honestly: I am more surprised at the underwhelming Frejlord buffs buff. The region has been persistently dead last place in tournaments, ladder, and 3rd party meta reports, yet the only change is giving Tavernkeeper vanilla stats. The region is still weak on 1-3 drops and has very few catchup mechanics.
Personally I think 20 Nexus HP is appropriate but that they should make healing more accessible. It's pretty nutty that right now if you want to make a control deck, you pretty much have to include either Ionia or Shadow Isles to reduce your opponents' reach.
Great guesses everyone! I count my final tally as 2 hits, 2 close, and 9 misses out of 13 total. DoubleSummon had the most hits--6 direct, 2 close--but he also had a lot of misses so I don't know how you want to weigh that. :-P Shout-outs to CursedParrot on coming close to Badgebear and Hellcopter for close on Boomcrew and Ranger.
No, I think Shen and Jinx need buffs strictly due to their playrate & winrate. And honestly: even before Rising Tides, she was just too easy to pick off. She would die to all the stuff old Yasuo died to: Get Excited, Thermo Beam, chef + challenger, kamikazi Fiora, single combat on anything with 3 attack, frostbite, barrier, etc. 2 new direct 3-damage spells plus AoE plus vulnerability have only hampered her survivability, and dumping your hand to level her only to see her picked off is almost always GG.
I was close with Shen (although honestly I think the HP would be much more appropriate than +1 attack--he needs to level to justify playing him, and most of the time he just doesn't live long enough to see 4 things get barrier), but then they went with Vladimir and Hecarim which surprised me. They are both on the unpopular side, but I still at least see them both on occasion. Honestly I think Hecarim is still quite strong as a 4/5 overwhelm that summons two 2/2s; I'm surprised he hasn't found his way into a meta deck. But meanwhile I can't remember the last time I saw a Jinx in constructed.
Consider this: one of the most popular decks on the ladder right now is a P&Z/Noxus deck composed almost entirely of 1-3 mana cards, and you have a P&Z champion who's ability is "once your hand is empty, start drawing 2 cards at the start of your turn" of whom everyone gets 2 free copies, and everyone's like "nah, I think I'll just run some Decimates and Statikk Shock instead--they are more consistent". That's really sad.
I should have prefaced: these are my predictions for what Riot will actually patch, not necessarily what I would like to see patched. I'm basing off patterns I've noticed:
Additionally, I'm making an assumption that Rising Tides cards are more likely candidates to receive buffs than the core set since they are effectively time-limited--e.g., Frejlord is more likely to see a buff to Ember Maiden than Avalanche and Demacia is more likely to see a nerf to either Loyal Badgerbear or Grizzled Ranger than Vanguard Bannerman or Single Combat.
Good catch on the chefs--I meant to include that on my list but forgot. I don't think I can agree with any of the others, though--perhaps Ranger as a 3/1, but 2/1 just seems too punitive for a 4-mana unit, and the others don't match the patterns.
Thanks, Neon! This is just what I needed for the 3-day weekend: some fun off-meta decks to play around with!
Don't feel like you need to field 3x of each champion to enjoy the decklist. I've had some fair success building decks with just 2x: obviously they aren't as consistent, but in ~50% of games you probably wouldn't even draw that third copy anyways. Plus, I think the Level 23 champion capsule from region rewards is guaranteed to always give you champions from Rising Tides, so you might be able to get to 2x copies with a single wildcard and bit of XP grinding.
They're cool. Not really my thing, but I do really appreciate all the synergies they created.
Here's mine:
I considered that, but the big problem is that its still slow speed. Decent players will almost always open-attack if they have an undisputed board advantage so the frost bite is a non-factor. Meanwhile, it still affects your board, so putting down chump blockers to try to coax your opponent into developing their attack instead of open attacking is counter-productive.
Lol that's definitely a unique way to promote the game. I'm not sure if I'd actually attempt to recreate of any of them besides maybe the ceviche, however...
I will meet you halfway. If for instance, Culling Strike and/or Noxian Guillotine obliterated instead of just killing, (and for the latter: US was also reworked such that the unit could take damage but still couldn't be reduced below 1 HP or killed): then Noxus, Ionia (Will of Ionia), and to some degree Frejlord (frostbite), Demacia (Detain & Purify), and Bilgewater + deep (fish) would have the potential for answering US but SI and P&Z wouldn't. That's the type of Paper > Rock > Scissors balance that I'd like this Riot to try harder to install in the future. As is: its really hard to incorporate Noxus and Frejlord into any deck other than aggro because they just don't contribute much beyond big bodies and nexus damage.
I would replace the single copy of Take Heart with a single copy of Battle Fury.
I would probably also take out the single Navori Conspirator, single Brittle Steel, most if not all Windfarer Hatchling and possibly some combination of Kinkou Lifeblade and Greenglade Duo in exchange for 3x Eye of the Dragon, 3x Deep Meditation, 2-3x Retreat, and 1-2 Lee Sin in case the game goes late.
Good luck!
You probably want to cut Blade's Edge, Black Spear, and Fresh Offerings--they just aren't that strong. Other cards that look dubious are Culling Strike and Noxian Guillotine--I get why they'd be useful sometimes, but overall I think this archetype wants to focus on putting the most power on your board ASAP rather than trying to control the opponent's.
Replacements to consider are Decisive Maneuver, Crawling Sensation, Crowd Favorite, and Arena Battlecaster.
Good luck!
Definitely add 3x Salvage--that card is good enough to be run just for the card draw, much less when you also value the toss.
I'd also cut at least 1--arguably 2--Terror of the Tides. He's going to feel really bad to have multiple copies in your hand before you go deep--and unlike Eye, Devourer, and Hoarder which are sometimes valuable enough to play before going deep, he just feels awful playing as a 8 mana 6/5 Fearsome.
Well, my favorite "interaction" is hands-down Draven's response to Teemo: https://twitter.com/disguisedtoast/status/1195773969279803393?lang=en
But as far as combos go, I've been playing a lot of Maokai level up -> nexus damage -> 2x Pilfered Goods = you're dead at the start of your next turn.
Good news: there are a ton of decks right now where Vi is the only P&Z card they run. :-)
P&Z is kinda in a weird state right now--the burn cards and shroom generators are super-popular, yet the original discard package and multiple-spells package are practically unplayed and all their new Rising Tides cards lack clear homes.
I would probably drop Shellshockers and Black Spears for Salvage and Jaull Hunters.
An Atrocity or two as a finisher wouldn't hurt either.
I agree that 4 damage is a lot, but at the same time, I asked myself: besides making it fast speed, honestly how much damage would this card need to do to make me want to play it again? At the least, it would need to be able to clear vanilla Crimson Disciple, L1 Fiora, Elise, and War Chefs; however even up'ed to 3 damage I still don't think I'd actually play it because it still doesn't clear cards like Loyal Badgerbear, Boomcrew Rookie or the aforementioned post-bannerman and it's easily answered by cards like Transfusion, Ranger's Resolve, barrier, and Deny.
At slow speed AND hitting both sides of the board, it's play style is like a "lite" version of Ruination, so comparably it needs to have a significant impact on board. Maybe if it also cleansed everything, or obliterated instead of killing? Or keep at 2 damage but reduce cost to 3 mana so it could be played at the end of Round 2 or with pure spell mana? Frankly, I think this card wants to be anti-aggro so making it fast speed is a superior answer but I was brainstorm other changes that maintained the card's original attributes.
I'm intrigued--what do you copy? The Purrsuit? Heimer? Flash of Brilliance?
I just opened my third Heimer from vault today and am now looking for anything interesting beyond the standard Heimer/Vi midrange.