Quite strong ngl, seems like a big poro pay off, reminds me of a hearthstone card that adapted murlocs (gentle dinosaur or something dunno)
sure different games but also here this statline is not as bad, also "adapts" itself.
TBH I believe this is enough to make poro decks viable.
Poros are already viable, they just aren't OP pieces of crap, like the 3-4 strongest decks are. Fabled Poro might just be enough to push it over the edge into actually good. Maybe.
I'm holding out for them making Iceborn Legacy fast or burst (maybe with a cost increase) - if they do that, Poros will definitely be good.
I've played a lot of poros, but I'm not sure how to evaluate this. Probably insanely good with Give It All. Could also generate important keywords for Fluft.
The Lurk mechanic will depend almost entirely on the power level of the Lurker units. If there are enough strong Lurker units, then the mechanic will work. You just get some Lurkers on the board, set up a Lurker on top with predict, and get the train rolling.
But the ones revealed so far don't look so great. 1-cost x/1 Fearsome and 6-cost x/6 Overwhelm - they have to be better than that if this mechanic is going to be viable. The game already has a 6 cost 7/6 overwhelm ... that's 4 lurks just to break even with the Freljord version. Very unimpressed with that one particularly.
Releasing a patch right now is a lose-lose-lose situation. Waiting for the exp to balance is the correct decision.
Which is literally exactly what they said they were going to do in that big reddit post people keep mentioning.
If people would go back and actually read it again, they would see that they said at that time that the balance changes would be in patch 2.11, NOT 2.10.
I mean, you can bemoan it if you want to, but they are doing exactly what they said they were going to do. I don't see how it's fair to get mad about that.
Now, if we end up 2 weeks from now with only 10 card changes ......
In defense of people getting angry, Riot is not on a great track record right now for balance changes. TF/Fizz dominated the meta for at least a month and a half, alongside Aphelios, before finally getting brought into line (though they did well with the TF/Fizz nerfs, since the deck is still playable by those who are dedicated to it). But when they nerfed Aphelios the first time, it was not enough - and when they nerfed him the second time, it was way too much.
Then immediately after the next big expansion, we have the Watcher show up and push out essentially every other viable control-ish strategy in the game, and after a couple weeks, we had Nasus/Thresh arrive as a major powerhouse of a deck (though I have no idea how to classify it ... aggro/midrange/combo/tempo?). Nasus/Thresh got a couple of nerfs, but immediately got replacement cards as well, so the nerfs kinda didn't matter, and nothing was done about Watcher combo at all in any form (which still remains true to this moment).
Then we enter a new expansion with a blatantly overpowered deck on day 1 that basically built itself, give or take 5-6 cards. And then Riot saying it was fine and didn't need nerfs.
Then coming up to the "big balance patch" that only happens every 2 months and them doing essentially nothing that mattered much in it.
So, it wasn't just the non-patch that made people angry. It was also a lot of mis-management that led up to that patch as well.
I'm pretty strongly convinced that it's the length and difficulty of ladder climbing that makes it such a big deal. If climbing were not so brutally difficult, people would be more forgiving of bad metas
This is not exactly news. Azir/Irelia always had bad match ups against aggro who themselves have bad match ups against Tresh/Nasus and Trundle/Lissandra control, hence why so many pro player describe the current meta as "coin flip".
Exactly. There's a VERY good reason that aggro has such a low playrate in Diamond and Masters - aggro has always been very easy to counter. Specifically, both Nasus/Thresh and Demacia/Targon (aka Dragons), and even Matron Cithria, have no problems kicking its teeth in, whatever flavor the aggro happens to be.
And seriously, there must be a lot of bad Azir/Irelia players out there to make it look like aggro is so favored against it. My Azir/Irelia opponents are either much more skilled or much more lucky than average, because my aggro decks do not get that kind of winrate against them.
I'm expecting patch notes, and a hotfix. Like it's a digital card game. Doesn't take two weeks to implement what should be a relatively straight forward change. Nevermind a month.
As for the actual design overhauls or buffs to lesser known archetypes sure take all the time you need. But what players need is an emergency hotfix.
---Fyi----
Irelia Azir was buffed at the same time as being nerfed because Irelia summons blade burst on level up now.
Thats why we haven't seen the decks win rate go down even an inch.
They made a big post on Reddit the day after the last patch. They are going to break their usual pattern and do a huge balance patch alongside the next expansion release. Yes, it's another 3 weeks. Yes, I REALLY wish they had done a big balance patch at the time they were supposed to do a big balance patch (a week ago).
Apparently, their team is not really very big (see their comments that live balance is handled by only 3 people), and their team has been focused on future content. They recognize that as a problem.
Finally, if they are going to do unplanned balance changes, they cannot just throw them into the "balance me now" machine and spit out new versions of the cards the next day. They have to program the changes, test the changes with at least some minimum number of actual games played with the new versions to make sure they aren't super busted, compile all of the new coding into a patch file, and get the whole thing tested to make sure it doesn't have bad side effects (a step they apparently kinda missed with the most recent patch).
We'll survive for 3 weeks. <--- That's the mature side of me speaking. The immature side of me wants to scream that I'm sick of losing to Azir/Irelia even when I'm playing a deck that "counters" it.
"We made our game so free-to-play so that we can make frequent balance changes and it doesn't make you feel like you wasted your money on your decks." <-- the sentiment of Riot's opening paragraph.
*Counts the number of cards that got balance changes in the entire last 2 months* "Yep, they changed 6 cards." <-- me
Something here is very inconsistent. (I will admit, however, that they did make a big balance patch for 2.5, on March 31 -- there were 17 card changes + all 5 of Aphelios's moon weapons for a total of 22 changes). This patch *should* have been like that one. Instead we get 4 changes ... when there are at least 15-20 cards in the game that are at problematic power levels ... sigh.
I really have to ask - what were they smoking when the wrote the requirements for the 10th quest?
Level up four champions in a single game. And do it twice. In match-made games, not AI.
Now, most of the time you don't even level up two champions, which is all you normally even have in your deck. This is asking you to have 4 different champions in your deck. Draw all four of them. Level all four of them, and play all four of them. Against another real person, in a game you couldn't have planned out in advance because it's match-made.
Yeah, good luck managing to get those stars to align even once. Let alone twice.
I will be shocked beyond imagination if anyone in the entire game manages to pull that off before they just summon 20 champions.
Or I guess you can manage to Activate the Sun disc with two level 2 ascended champs on the board. But that means you're playing mono-Shurima. And again, this has to be against a real person, who has to stay and wait for the animations. So yeah, definitely easier than the first scenario ... but still seems unlikely to be pulled off before just summoning 20 champions.
I wish I could find exactly what Riot said when they were talking about nerfing TF/Fizz, but even for that deck, they waffled and claimed that it wasn't really that high on playrate or winrate and that it was the most skill intensive deck in the game, etc, etc.
In other words, they were claiming TF/Fizz wasn't really that bad. For TF/Fizz. The most powerful deck in the history of the game.
So, why are we surprised they don't think Azir/Irelia is that bad?
Personally, I detest the use of hidden MMR in digital card games. It seem like most of them use hidden MMR, but I just cannot grasp why the MMR has to be hidden.
At bottom, these systems require us to just "trust" the company that their matchmaking is fair, because it's based on your MMR compared to your opponent's MMR.
I mean, if we could see the MMR's, then we could actually confirm that this is true. But they hide the MMR's, so we don't have any way of knowing if they are actually matching us against players with similar skill to us or not. We just have to trust them, in the end.
The whole thing just seems way shadier than it has to be. What would it hurt to reveal MMR?
(I feel like I must be missing some fundamental problem with revealing the MMR, since it's so widespread to use hidden MMR, but it just doesn't sit well with me at all.)
I wouldn't call Irelia Azir tier 0 (not sure if swim did, yet to watch the video) since it has hard counters: scar grounds, Fiora and Dragons.
Actually, in the hands of a skilled player, Irelia Azir doesn't really have any hard counters. Even their worst matchups are closer to a 55/45 than a 70/30.
The trick is that they need to have a build that allows them options (particularly having Homecoming), and they need to have a lot of practice with the deck. But if those things are true, we're actually seeing a deck that can pretty easily steal wins from its worst matchups. Which incidentally sounds a lot like TF/Fizz.
Mono-Fiora is probably the worst matchup in the game for Azir/Irelia, but even in that matchup, the Fiora player has a 13% chance to not draw Fiora (Entreat version) by turn 3, so they are starting with a bare minimum winrate of 13% against their worst matchup because the opponent's deck can just lose to itself. But it's even worse than that for Fiora, because of Homecoming. If the Azir/Irelia player has Homecoming in their deck, and they draw it, AND they use it skillfully, the Fiora player stands a strong chance of losing. Now, obviously, the Fiora deck has ways to respond to a Homecoming, but only if they leave mana open for those responses, and only if they actually draw those responses as well. But the point is this - even against their worst matchup, Azir/Irelia still has a reasonable way to win the game, without even needing to highroll.
No kidding. Holy frick, Pyke can just eat Azir/Irelia for breakfast. And most other board-based decks, actually.
I'm kinda scared about him being too good, honestly. We could easily end up in another oppressive meta with Pyke as the boogeyman.
Poros are already viable, they just aren't OP pieces of crap, like the 3-4 strongest decks are. Fabled Poro might just be enough to push it over the edge into actually good. Maybe.
I'm holding out for them making Iceborn Legacy fast or burst (maybe with a cost increase) - if they do that, Poros will definitely be good.
I've played a lot of poros, but I'm not sure how to evaluate this. Probably insanely good with Give It All. Could also generate important keywords for Fluft.
The Lurk mechanic will depend almost entirely on the power level of the Lurker units. If there are enough strong Lurker units, then the mechanic will work. You just get some Lurkers on the board, set up a Lurker on top with predict, and get the train rolling.
But the ones revealed so far don't look so great. 1-cost x/1 Fearsome and 6-cost x/6 Overwhelm - they have to be better than that if this mechanic is going to be viable. The game already has a 6 cost 7/6 overwhelm ... that's 4 lurks just to break even with the Freljord version. Very unimpressed with that one particularly.
Which is literally exactly what they said they were going to do in that big reddit post people keep mentioning.
If people would go back and actually read it again, they would see that they said at that time that the balance changes would be in patch 2.11, NOT 2.10.
I mean, you can bemoan it if you want to, but they are doing exactly what they said they were going to do. I don't see how it's fair to get mad about that.
Now, if we end up 2 weeks from now with only 10 card changes ......
In defense of people getting angry, Riot is not on a great track record right now for balance changes. TF/Fizz dominated the meta for at least a month and a half, alongside Aphelios, before finally getting brought into line (though they did well with the TF/Fizz nerfs, since the deck is still playable by those who are dedicated to it). But when they nerfed Aphelios the first time, it was not enough - and when they nerfed him the second time, it was way too much.
Then immediately after the next big expansion, we have the Watcher show up and push out essentially every other viable control-ish strategy in the game, and after a couple weeks, we had Nasus/Thresh arrive as a major powerhouse of a deck (though I have no idea how to classify it ... aggro/midrange/combo/tempo?). Nasus/Thresh got a couple of nerfs, but immediately got replacement cards as well, so the nerfs kinda didn't matter, and nothing was done about Watcher combo at all in any form (which still remains true to this moment).
Then we enter a new expansion with a blatantly overpowered deck on day 1 that basically built itself, give or take 5-6 cards. And then Riot saying it was fine and didn't need nerfs.
Then coming up to the "big balance patch" that only happens every 2 months and them doing essentially nothing that mattered much in it.
So, it wasn't just the non-patch that made people angry. It was also a lot of mis-management that led up to that patch as well.
He got nerfed too hard. Even in labs, he's a shadow of his former self.
They have said consistently that all champions will eventually make it into LoR. So, she will be added someday.
I'm pretty strongly convinced that it's the length and difficulty of ladder climbing that makes it such a big deal. If climbing were not so brutally difficult, people would be more forgiving of bad metas
Exactly. There's a VERY good reason that aggro has such a low playrate in Diamond and Masters - aggro has always been very easy to counter. Specifically, both Nasus/Thresh and Demacia/Targon (aka Dragons), and even Matron Cithria, have no problems kicking its teeth in, whatever flavor the aggro happens to be.
And seriously, there must be a lot of bad Azir/Irelia players out there to make it look like aggro is so favored against it. My Azir/Irelia opponents are either much more skilled or much more lucky than average, because my aggro decks do not get that kind of winrate against them.
In light of the reddit post made by Dova, could we get a short article on the site that highlights the new plan for patch 2.11?
They made a big post on Reddit the day after the last patch. They are going to break their usual pattern and do a huge balance patch alongside the next expansion release. Yes, it's another 3 weeks. Yes, I REALLY wish they had done a big balance patch at the time they were supposed to do a big balance patch (a week ago).
Apparently, their team is not really very big (see their comments that live balance is handled by only 3 people), and their team has been focused on future content. They recognize that as a problem.
Finally, if they are going to do unplanned balance changes, they cannot just throw them into the "balance me now" machine and spit out new versions of the cards the next day. They have to program the changes, test the changes with at least some minimum number of actual games played with the new versions to make sure they aren't super busted, compile all of the new coding into a patch file, and get the whole thing tested to make sure it doesn't have bad side effects (a step they apparently kinda missed with the most recent patch).
We'll survive for 3 weeks. <--- That's the mature side of me speaking. The immature side of me wants to scream that I'm sick of losing to Azir/Irelia even when I'm playing a deck that "counters" it.
I'll be giving this a shot for sure, if I don't get through to the tournament with a win in the Gauntlet.
The Expedition desert is vast.
And it just got even more vast.
"We made our game so free-to-play so that we can make frequent balance changes and it doesn't make you feel like you wasted your money on your decks." <-- the sentiment of Riot's opening paragraph.
*Counts the number of cards that got balance changes in the entire last 2 months* "Yep, they changed 6 cards." <-- me
Something here is very inconsistent. (I will admit, however, that they did make a big balance patch for 2.5, on March 31 -- there were 17 card changes + all 5 of Aphelios's moon weapons for a total of 22 changes). This patch *should* have been like that one. Instead we get 4 changes ... when there are at least 15-20 cards in the game that are at problematic power levels ... sigh.
I really have to ask - what were they smoking when the wrote the requirements for the 10th quest?
Level up four champions in a single game. And do it twice. In match-made games, not AI.
Now, most of the time you don't even level up two champions, which is all you normally even have in your deck. This is asking you to have 4 different champions in your deck. Draw all four of them. Level all four of them, and play all four of them. Against another real person, in a game you couldn't have planned out in advance because it's match-made.
Yeah, good luck managing to get those stars to align even once. Let alone twice.
I will be shocked beyond imagination if anyone in the entire game manages to pull that off before they just summon 20 champions.
Or I guess you can manage to Activate the Sun disc with two level 2 ascended champs on the board. But that means you're playing mono-Shurima. And again, this has to be against a real person, who has to stay and wait for the animations. So yeah, definitely easier than the first scenario ... but still seems unlikely to be pulled off before just summoning 20 champions.
I wish I could find exactly what Riot said when they were talking about nerfing TF/Fizz, but even for that deck, they waffled and claimed that it wasn't really that high on playrate or winrate and that it was the most skill intensive deck in the game, etc, etc.
In other words, they were claiming TF/Fizz wasn't really that bad. For TF/Fizz. The most powerful deck in the history of the game.
So, why are we surprised they don't think Azir/Irelia is that bad?
Personally, I detest the use of hidden MMR in digital card games. It seem like most of them use hidden MMR, but I just cannot grasp why the MMR has to be hidden.
At bottom, these systems require us to just "trust" the company that their matchmaking is fair, because it's based on your MMR compared to your opponent's MMR.
I mean, if we could see the MMR's, then we could actually confirm that this is true. But they hide the MMR's, so we don't have any way of knowing if they are actually matching us against players with similar skill to us or not. We just have to trust them, in the end.
The whole thing just seems way shadier than it has to be. What would it hurt to reveal MMR?
(I feel like I must be missing some fundamental problem with revealing the MMR, since it's so widespread to use hidden MMR, but it just doesn't sit well with me at all.)
If you swapped Avarosan Marksman for The Howling Abyss, you'd actually have a deck with a wincon. Just saying.
Actually, in the hands of a skilled player, Irelia Azir doesn't really have any hard counters. Even their worst matchups are closer to a 55/45 than a 70/30.
The trick is that they need to have a build that allows them options (particularly having Homecoming), and they need to have a lot of practice with the deck. But if those things are true, we're actually seeing a deck that can pretty easily steal wins from its worst matchups. Which incidentally sounds a lot like TF/Fizz.
Mono-Fiora is probably the worst matchup in the game for Azir/Irelia, but even in that matchup, the Fiora player has a 13% chance to not draw Fiora (Entreat version) by turn 3, so they are starting with a bare minimum winrate of 13% against their worst matchup because the opponent's deck can just lose to itself. But it's even worse than that for Fiora, because of Homecoming. If the Azir/Irelia player has Homecoming in their deck, and they draw it, AND they use it skillfully, the Fiora player stands a strong chance of losing. Now, obviously, the Fiora deck has ways to respond to a Homecoming, but only if they leave mana open for those responses, and only if they actually draw those responses as well. But the point is this - even against their worst matchup, Azir/Irelia still has a reasonable way to win the game, without even needing to highroll.