Hail, Champions! Patch 2.11.0 will arrive next week, with it the new Rise of the Underworlds expansion along with some much awaited card balance changes. In anticipating, we've put together this short wish list of all the things we're hoping to see out of the upcoming patch notes!
Seeing Nasus Thresh, TLC, and Azir Irelia Put to Pasture
We never thought we'd actually be envious of Hearthstone's heavy-handed approach to live balance, yet here we are. Nasus Thresh and Trundle Lissandra Control have been dominating both upper ladder and tournaments since a few days after their release back on March 3rd. And while Irelia has only been around since May, the infamous Azir + Irelia Blade Dance deck has made up for its shorter stay by becoming the single most prolific decks on ladder. While we have seen a few card nerfs targeting these decks in previous balance patches, they were all too minor to make any significant impact. Given how stale the meta has grown, we think it's time for all 3 of these decks to be forcibly retired to make room for some new blood.
Some Love for Taliyah, Heimerdinger, and Taric
As many have quipped on social media, "the new Taliyah skin has a beautiful level up animation -- it's too bad you're never actually going to see it!" Indeed: as great as all the new pool party cosmetics look, these 3 champions have been at the bottom ranks for play rate and win rate for quite some time making it hard to justify purchasing skins for them. Taliyah arguable has a somewhat viable deck in the recent Lissandra "Turbo Thralls" decks, but as many have discovered the deck actually performs more consistently the fewer copies of Taliyah included. Heimerdinger meanwhile has never really recovered from his elusive turret rework in Patch 1.6 back in last July, and Taric has never really had a ladder-viable deck. We're not looking for anything that would elevate these champions to be the new top-tier decks; just enough of a power bump that we could comfortably play them on ladder without regretting it.
Inspiring Buffs
Some of the best parts from previous balance patches have been the things no one saw coming -- those "out of left field" buffs that make people reassess forgotten cards and try to innovate completely new archetypes. Remember when Funsmith dropped from 5 mana to only 4, or Poro Herder changing from 4 mana to only 2? While most of these types of buffs ultimately end up not making much of an impact on the meta, their novelty should not be undervalued. Many content creators and players love theorycrafting and homebrewing off-meta decks, and buffs like these can often inspire a bold new creation.
Viability for all 3 New Champs
While the promised balance changes for the existing cards have been the focus of this article -- and probably the focus of the greater Runeterra community as well -- let's not forget this patch will be an expansion release with 3 new champions as well. We got some pretty heavy-handed hints at who those champions will be in this week's cinematic trailer. But take a moment to consider the previous 3 "mini-expansions":
- Monuments of Power revealed a powerful partnership between Soraka and Tahm Kench, but Shyvana was very underwhelming in her initial release as a 3|4 without Fury
- Cosmic Creation gave us the ever-useful Zoe, but Viktor and Riven both needed some buffs to help them climb to their current middle-of-the-pack positions
- Guardians of the Ancient brought Irelia, but Zilean and Malphite haven't seeing much play beyond some initial experimentation
In other words, each of these mini-expansions had 1-2 "hits" and 1-2 "misses". Whereas the bigger expansions have enough new cards to overshadow a few lackluster champions, it's a very different story for these smaller expansions with only 3 champions. While it is a tall order to expect any champion to be well-balanced right out of the gate, since this is a wish list, we're going to wish for success on all 3 new champions on release day.
A Plan for the Near Future
Finally, the biggest change we'd like to see in next week's patch notes is Riot's strategy for maintaining Runeterra's live balance in the next few months. We've heard recent statements from both RubinZoo and Dovagedys acknowledging the flaws with the current live balance approach and reiterating that Riot is working towards something better. And while we are interested in Riot's long-term strategy for live balance, right now we are much more concerned with the state of the meta right now and -- assuming this balance patch resolves the current issues -- ensuring it doesn't stagnate again soon. This might mean an interim process for live design while Riot is still working on their reformations. Or perhaps continuing with the current patch cadence but just ensuring it is done with the same zeal of the 2020 balance patches.
What are you looking for in next week's patch? Share with us below!
Comments
As a separate sort of wish list, I kinda wish there were maybe a few more players for the game, so I less often find myself queued into a Noxus/SI Aggro Bot. Playing casual style games, I can find myself up against this 3 or 4 games in a row sometimes, especially if I'm playing in my early morning (east coast US). How are the numbers for LoR? Here's hoping this miniset brings in some new blood :)
Obliterating an entire deck is never a healthy thing for a card game especially when it comes with a body like this big.
There should have been some come-back mechanics against it; MTG:A has an entire graveyard system against mill decks and Hearthstone has a bit of shuffle mechanics for it. Same with Tickatus in Hearthstone for standard only. Wild at least some shufle stuff for some classes to counter it.
It was so early for make this kind of deck without any counterplays for Runeterra because it killed all of the Control decks by itself. I hope Riot could see their mistake.
Other than that, it is really so boring to play against Atrocity after that much time. Since from beta, it is the only card that is viable and same strategy over and over again. We saw that increasing its cost doesn't help and it is not still the time for a rotation so maybe banning the card might be a solution.
Won't say anything for Azir/Irelia because i already hate it since beginning of this expansion. It is just like Pirate Warrior vs Jade Druid meta.
One watcher isn't a problem, control deck can deal it with it by using hard removal like Falling Comet, Vengeance or silence like Equinox. It's the decks ability to cheat out multiple Watcher with Spectral Matron and to lesser extended Fading Memories, that makes the match up unwinnable to control decks.
As for Atrocity I understand your dislike for the card but in the end the day, it's a fair card to play against. "boring" is not a reason to nerf let alone ban a card.
I didn't feel like in need of specifying Spectral Matron situation because when I call mill deck for Runeterra, I assumed that you gonna understand what i am refering to. My mistake.
As for Atrocity again, I didn't say I dislike the card. Hell, I love the card and loved the card but I think like Riot's releasing cards that still supports Atrocity with the same strategy must be the thing that Runeterra players should question and concern about. It is like a filler-card and/or powercreep issue to me. I mean, I know it isn't a filler-card or powercreep but kind of a mistake like them and I honestly think that it should be adressed as soon as possible. Drop a scale card, use OTK etc.
There IS counterplay to The Watcher. While most of it revolves around stunning or killing the card itself (unless it's the Retreat variant), there are a few cards to get them annoyed hard.
Introducing Counterfeit Copies. Meme however you want on the card, but if you use one copy of it on another copy, you can basically perma shuffle cards in your deck, bonus if you use Iterative Improvement on The Watcher and a bigger one if you run Warmother's Call to pull them out of your deck.
I managed to once have five Watchers at the same time with this strategy that I proudly claim my own.
Like I said above, i don't know that if you know about Pirate Warrior vs. Jade Druid times but it is more like it and about it. There might be some counter-plays but if you use them, it causes you to lose against all of the other decks and you simply queue for countering Watchers and that's just sad.
Been some time since that era of Hearthstone, and I do remember it being god awful (I was still playing then) Due to Jade single handedly destroying control decks, but now we got the 4/6 that destroys 1-Cost cards in both hands and decks, and combo decks got spread enough that Jade struggles now.
At least Runeterra had Counterfeit Copies right from the game's launch, so we have a solid answer to the watchers card-wise and we don't need to wait for a new expansion to get that.
I'm honestly glad to never have experienced Azir Irelia in their prime.
It's kinda still in its prime, TBH. The nerfs made very little difference. Not sure if you saw WhatamI against SirTurmund in the top 8 of the tournament ... but man. Let's just say that SirTurmund won the game with three absurdly lucky topdecks in a row, playing as Azir/Irelia. Most disgusting, tilting thing I've ever seen in a tournament.
(If you didn't see it, here's the summary version - he played out Dancing Droplet and 3x Dais, and his last card in hand was Homecoming. Topdeck 1 = Azir. Topdeck 2 = Irelia. Topdeck 3 = Ribbon Dancer. Using just Ribbon Dancer, Flawless Duet and one actual attack, he presented 60+ damage.) I woulda been so incredibly tilted if I were WhatAmI at that point.
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).
As for Taliyah I would recommend that you guys give Turbo Thralls a chance, the deck does struggle against aggro but it does perform very well against many tier 1 decks like Dragons and the already mentioned Tresh/Nasus.
In a vacuum I could see leaving Thresh+Nasus alone. My problems with it in the current state of the game are as follows:
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.
I would suggest reworking Malphite. Why? Because he is by far the worst champion in the game given he is a 7 drop champion with a useless keyword and doesn't do anything until he is leveled up and even then he is not that good... normal followers are better than Malphite... after he leveled up