Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Ra Ra Rasputin
Apr 2, 2011
I imagine it wears on people facing the same deck over and over with over a quarter of games being against that deck and it having disgusting turns you can hardly interact with, even if you fill your deck with counters which you have to if you want a viable deck right now.

That and there is probably a lot of frustration that the Taliyah/Malphite buffs were the lightest of light touches that might bump their winrates in decks by less then a percent without addressing their issue that landmarks take too much board space and mana.

Was a long awaited balance patch and it changed 4 cards with a bugfix that makes irelia stronger, probably fell flat for what people were expecting when they would change a giant roster of cards to bring the weaker cards up to par and give people a reason to make new decks in a "solved" meta.

Ra Ra Rasputin fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 1, 2021

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Whitenoise Poster
Mar 26, 2010

Awesome! posted:

bbg is playing runeterra right now

when he streams league he gets like 1/4 the viewers as lor

Like he says here, he wasn't prepared for it to be this bad and needs time to find a new game.

https://m.twitch.tv/clip/BlatantObliqueLatteKAPOW-nvpboT0i7dFaj2r1

Sega 32X
Jan 3, 2004


The pace of online CCGs is mindblowing. Like, it's been a month. I remember playing in solved metas for old paper ccgs (and finding new angles) after a year, but it was so many fewer players and each player playing so many more games (and angle shooting mattering less in the hundreds of games you play on a online CCG ladder than a 10-20 game tournament) that it acts as a tremendous multiplayer, especially for toxic parts of an environment or, even more, toxic parts of a playerbase.

breaks
May 12, 2001

The abrupt change from really aggressive balance patches to really conservative ones has been grinding on the community for a while and folks have finally had enough of it I guess.

Wollawolla
Jan 15, 2007

Are you gonna smash my skull and breathe my blood-mist?
MTG has had much more degenerate metas, but at least they would give you the opportunity to board in hate against whatever decks were dominating the field. Ranked being a BO1 format with no board mechanics just encourages jamming meta decks with plus matchups vs as much of the field as possible.

Draynar
Apr 22, 2008

Wollawolla posted:

MTG has had much more degenerate metas, but at least they would give you the opportunity to board in hate against whatever decks were dominating the field. Ranked being a BO1 format with no board mechanics just encourages jamming meta decks with plus matchups vs as much of the field as possible.

I think things are a bit of an over reaction but side boards def should be a thing in this game. They have tons of cards that would be amazing in sideboards as counters as well.

Kris xK
Apr 23, 2010
Side boards are the ONLY thing I miss about MTG, but boy do I miss them.

Khorne
May 1, 2002
I don't really get the point of giving Taliyah +1/+1. If you gave her +2/+2 she still wouldn't see additional play. Stats are not particularly valuable in LoR outside of some very specific cases. If Taliyah becomes viable at some point with her current keywords and text it will be due to duping landmarks.

I don't really get why they didn't buff Taliyah to have some of her leveled up ability before leveling up and/or reduce her cost to 3/4. The other Taliyah problem is you need landmarks out for her to be useful when leveled and that kinda works against what you're trying to do with her with the current playable landmarks. It'd make more sense to require landmarks to have the ability before leveling and then when she levels she always has the 3 knives or w/e they are. Especially at 5 mana. I'm not convinced even this would make her a t0/t1 deck, but at least then she'd be a powerful card.

Malphite I can't comment on because landmarks are bad so he will be bad. Any remotely playable landmark gets nerfed out of existence. 10 or 12 is irrelevant because there's no reasonable combination of a,b,c cost landmarks that add up to 10 or 12.

I'm pretty disappointed they never walked back the veiled temple nerf. It really killed the card. They could have nerfed the mana acceleration instead. I sort of feel the same way about the grand plaza. They should really iterate on these cards a bit and admit that the nerfs were too heavy handed.

Zilean needs a redesign to save him.

No Wave posted:

It feels like people enjoy talking about balance patches than actually playing the game... myself included. I think it's a bit concerning for the health of the game long-term tbh, there's something about the game that makes people take balance issues incredibly seriously instead of just trying to have fun through it.
I don't really get why. For example, the tf+fizz meta was actually pretty healthy. I could have played tf+fizz and zoe+aph meta for 6 months. There were some insanely deep decks to play and the outcomes of games frequently came down to decisions rather than chance.

I don't feel like the two metas that have came after have been particularly healthy in comparison. Yeah you can play lots more random decks that amount to closing your eyes and flipping a coin to determine the outcome, but is that what makes a meta good in a CCG?

but uh I always like super high powered metagames, and I am not bothered by facing the same deck a thousand times provided it's a skill-testing matchup. In fact, riot's playrate criteria makes no sense to me. As the game gets more cards there will be decks without too many bad matchups that people decide to play. A 10%, 20%, or even 30% play rate isn't an indication of a problem. It's how the deck warps a meta around it that matters. For example, if ez+draven were 30% of the meta tomorrow at 51%-52% wr because everyone decided to play it you'd have to be crazy to think it deserved a nerf or was a problematic deck.

This isn't to defend irelia+azir. I wish they'd have gone with a more direct nerf than making two cards that could have conceivably seen play elsewhere at some point useless outside of the archetype. At the same time, I'm not sure how much nerfing irelia+azir fixes the current meta given the current meta is largely the previous but with irelia+azir.

I kinda don't get what people are expecting for a metagame given metas I'd consider good are hated on and metas I consider bad are also hated on and metas I'd consider okay (like tf go hard which was an okay meta) are hated on too. Constructed formats in CCGs always become about the same few best decks over and over, and that seems like something LoR players are not willing to accept. LoR is even way better about it than most games. There are a ridiculous number of viable t2/t3 archetypes compared to any other game I've played.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jun 2, 2021

Khorne
May 1, 2002

Whitenoise Poster posted:

Like he says here, he wasn't prepared for it to be this bad and needs time to find a new game.

https://m.twitch.tv/clip/BlatantObliqueLatteKAPOW-nvpboT0i7dFaj2r1
BBG & Swim were underlords streamers before LoR.

They both quit around when they added underlords. Which was the single worst change I've ever seen in my 20+ years of online gaming. It took a pretty good game and stomped all over everything that made it good. And valve refused to walk it back which is even funnier.

Swim might have ducked out during the leadup to underlords because there was a stale meta for months and months. The funny thing is after the underlords release the game had less players. Everyone was waiting for the patch to shake up the game and reveal the next big thing. The reason we had no updates. And it was just an awful patch.

Pretty much all the underlords streamers went to TFT or LoR. The few who didn't went back to other genres.

breaks posted:

The abrupt change from really aggressive balance patches to really conservative ones has been grinding on the community for a while and folks have finally had enough of it I guess.
This makes sense. I started playing after the rapid changes. This might be why the consistent community outcry about metas makes no sense to me. They are used to constant buff patches and they just aren't coming anymore. I'm all for frequent patches.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jun 2, 2021

Ra Ra Rasputin
Apr 2, 2011
The problem right now is you either get rushed down by azir/irelia with a giant sparring student or duo, or aggro decks that try to rush faster then it, atrocity from a 20/20 nasus, or if you try and play any kind of control you just lose to someone attacking with a watcher and his many clones after turn 8.

Khorne
May 1, 2002

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

The problem right now is you either get rushed down by azir/irelia with a giant sparring student or duo, or aggro decks that try to rush faster then it, atrocity from a 20/20 nasus, or if you try and play any kind of control you just lose to someone attacking with a watcher and his many clones after turn 8.
TLC is control though. If you want to play control you are playing TLC in this meta.

I fully agree that the current meta isn't good.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 2, 2021

Ra Ra Rasputin
Apr 2, 2011

Khorne posted:

TLC is control though. If you want to play control you are playing TLC in this meta.

I fully agree that the current meta isn't good.

Yeah that's what I'm saying though, TLC makes all other slow decks obsolete because the watcher just automatically wins against them, it should probably just delete your hand on attack or be harder to clone easily then being 0 mana.

Servaetes
Sep 10, 2003

False enemy or true friend?
As tedious as Aphelios could be I rather enjoyed the many ways you could build decks pre Shurima. TF/Fizz was pretty drat strong and I really hated the Lee Sin deck's inevitability but I felt like I could get away with TK/Soraka a lot more.

Though right now Noxus seems pretty rare so there's a hell of a lot less scorched earth. I feel totally helpless as TK/Soraka into a control Noxus deck

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

Yeah that's what I'm saying though, TLC makes all other slow decks obsolete because the watcher just automatically wins against them, it should probably just delete your hand on attack or be harder to clone easily then being 0 mana.

Funnily enough I found the iterations of Deep that ran the treasure burst spell + the deep treasure spawning follower faired decently against the Watcher combo. It was pretty goddamn funny milling a Watcher deck and filling my deck with treasures or dropping naut just to replenish the deck. I broke a TLC player with a fancy board and fancy emotes by milling him to death with Mao and he stopped emoting and roped until the game surrendered for him

wologar
Feb 11, 2014

නෝනාවරුනි
Taliyah's updated labs deck seems worse than the old one. Amazing!

Khorne
May 1, 2002

wologar posted:

Taliyah's updated labs deck seems worse than the old one. Amazing!
I was just coming to post this. They removed Aspiring Chronomancer, Exhaust, and Salt Spire. Three cards that you actually played in the old list. And put in a bunch of gimmicks that are worse. Imagined Possibilities (wow pay 1 more mana for a countdown landmark than normal? incredible), Clockwork Curator (a 2/2 that advances the advancing landmarks I don't have), and Hibernating Rockbear (it's salt spire but worse because playing this early is bad and playing it later is slower and with lower payoff than salt spire).

Aspiring Chronomancer in particular makes no sense to remove. It's such a versatile card that even supports the landmark gameplan.

Exhaust is very good vs the AI independent of your strategy.

Salt Spire is underpowered but in the early rounds you had to crutch on it with the old list. It also made Taliyah not a total dead draw because you could setup play salt spire -> copy it next turn plays. WIthout Salt Spire I'm not even sure you ever want to play Taliyah.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jun 2, 2021

Xguard86
Nov 22, 2004

"You don't understand his pain. Everywhere he goes he sees women working, wearing pants, speaking in gatherings, voting. Surely they will burn in the white hot flames of Hell"
Ugh. I haven't played since the last release. Was hoping this patch would be a direction changer. Do I... Do I go back to Hearthstone?!

Ima Computer
Oct 28, 2007

Stop all the downloading!

Help computer.
I'm still holding out hope that the last 1/3 of the set will fix the meta (and fix Taliyah/Zilean/Malphite).

Until then, I'm only logging in once or twice a week to finish some daily quests in single player labs. :smith:

Sedisp
Jun 20, 2012


No Wave posted:

It feels like people enjoy talking about balance patches than actually playing the game... myself included. I think it's a bit concerning for the health of the game long-term tbh, there's something about the game that makes people take balance issues incredibly seriously instead of just trying to have fun through it.

Card games have always had this. It's an ostensibly skill based game with a lot of variance in there. Runeterras variance is less mana screw/flood and more just straight up decks being terrible against other decks so to me this creates a lot more angry people when the deck building aspect of the game is immediately destroyed by the majority of the games you will play.

Add in the fact that it's entirely digital and you have people a lot less willing to forgive balance screw ups.

Pilchenstein
May 17, 2012

So your plan is for half of us to die?

Hot Rope Guy

fireraiser posted:

I'm still holding out hope that the last 1/3 of the set will fix the meta (and fix Taliyah/Zilean/Malphite).
It's been said often enough but I definitely think the switch to three part expansions was bad and made them a lot shyer about balance changes. Why fix thing X if you know that things Y and Z will come later and you might have to fix it again or undo the previous changes. The season after launch where we got all of Bilgewater at once and had regular patches was when the game was most enjoyable for me and I don't think that's coincidence.

In other news, I noticed you get infinite rerolls for your starting power in Lab of Legends now :toot:

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc
I'm surprised at how much doomsaying there is about this patch, there hasn't even been time to see if azirelia is still problematic, people just went straight to crying and claiming they are quitting. I mean I played hearthstone where druid combo was dominant for like a year, and in general broken cards stayed broken for a loooong time. So this response feels pretty whiny to me.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
if people aren't having fun they're not obligated to keep playing just because you personally haven't noticed it yet

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc
But they don't know that this isn't a fun meta because it has only existed for a couple hours, is what I'm saying

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
people can in fact use their brains to get a general idea of how much or how little card changes will affect decks they're familiar with playing, even without playing with the adjusted cards themselves

and they can use that information to predict whether they will enjoy playing in the "it's still all about aziralia but it's got like a 2% lower aggregate winrate" meta

Fate Accomplice
Nov 30, 2006




fireraiser posted:

Until then, I'm only logging in once or twice a week to finish some daily quests in single player labs. :smith:

I play exactly enough to get me to vault level 10 and that sweet sweet champion wild

Sedisp
Jun 20, 2012


Magic Underwear posted:

But they don't know that this isn't a fun meta because it has only existed for a couple hours, is what I'm saying

What about two units being up costed by 1 makes you think that azir isn't still going to be meta warping?

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

Sedisp posted:

What about two units being up costed by 1 makes you think that azir isn't still going to be meta warping?

I don't know, that's why I'm not rushing to judge it either way yet.

Canopus250
Feb 18, 2005

You guys are taking me along this time? Right? Wait Shaundi is going? This is bullshit man!

Holy poo poo the Fizz deck in lab seems utterly loving useless. I've lost to Wraiths/Thresh three times in a row and I have zero idea what passive to aim for at the start to make this deck do anything. Sure you have some elusives but everything has about the worst possible stat lines for their cost.

Also what an amazingly garbage patch. I dunno if the right cards get nerfed for Azir/Irelia and nothing else got touched. Let alone zero buffs to alternate decks, incredible.

Edit: At least some of the new Lab powers seem interesting or viable.

Canopus250 fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jun 3, 2021

Sam Sanskrit
Mar 18, 2007

I'm running into functioning Azir/Irelia decks in expeditions for fucks sake. I can't get away from this poo poo. And I win against them probably an "appropriate" amount but a lot of times I play as well as I possibly can and they just win on turn 4 or 5 because they drew well and that's it.

Khorne
May 1, 2002
The Taliya labs deck change is meant to make it so you force the new landmark passive every single time as your first pick. I don't really like that that design, but it at least kind of explains what they were aiming for with the baffling at first glance changes.

Magic Underwear posted:

But they don't know that this isn't a fun meta because it has only existed for a couple hours, is what I'm saying

Magic Underwear posted:

I'm surprised at how much doomsaying there is about this patch, there hasn't even been time to see if azirelia is still problematic, people just went straight to crying and claiming they are quitting. I mean I played hearthstone where druid combo was dominant for like a year, and in general broken cards stayed broken for a loooong time. So this response feels pretty whiny to me.
Irelia+Azir is possibly sufficiently nerfed. Nasus, TLC are untouched. The meta was close to what it was before Irelia+Azir with Irelia+Azir added. There's nothing new rising up so the meta will look almost identical later.

The complaints are more that they didn't address the meta at all and that they didn't buff random cards. Lots of people in the community, not necessarily me I liked go hard & tf+fizz & zoe+aph because I am a degenerate, think the game has had meta issues for the past 6 months or so due to the infrequent balance changes.

I do think that people are missing that as the game gets more developed and the skill level increases at the top that metas will settle way faster. It's not going to be like when the game was new and it was the wild west. A lot of LoR players want massive meta shifts every 2 weeks. Which I'm not opposed to. Also, I think the nasus meta just isn't good and wasn't good even before irelia+azir.

I've been personally waiting for the entire expansion to drop to start grinding ladder again. If they released it all at once there would have likely been fewer problems. It seems like instead of balance changes they're trying to just release 1/3 of a set every few weeks instead to save effort and monetize through passes. It's unlikely it is even the actual development team who wanted this format, but I don't think anyone has said outright that it was a business rather than game decision.

I don't think people are actually quitting yet. I do think Riot might turn things around. Riot does listen to their players unlike many other studios. Plus, lab of legends is wildly popular and they seem to be working on some big update possibly involving 2v2 or something not-yet announced.

Pilchenstein posted:

In other news, I noticed you get infinite rerolls for your starting power in Lab of Legends now :toot:
They've also sped up animations. And if anyone's game feels really laggy go into settings -> video and change it from 30/60 to 60 or 60+. For some reason the patch switched me to 30/60 and then was operating at 7-15 fps. I put it on 60+ and it's super smooth and good.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 3, 2021

Ra Ra Rasputin
Apr 2, 2011
The animation speedup is a good part of the patch.

For irelia/azir decks give it a little time for people to replace Marshal with Voice of the risen which does the exact same thing for -2 mana and -1/2 stats but it's permanent instead of summoned, it's rare for them not to level up by turn 4 or 5 anyway.

Pilchenstein
May 17, 2012

So your plan is for half of us to die?

Hot Rope Guy

Canopus250 posted:

Holy poo poo the Fizz deck in lab seems utterly loving useless. I've lost to Wraiths/Thresh three times in a row and I have zero idea what passive to aim for at the start to make this deck do anything. Sure you have some elusives but everything has about the worst possible stat lines for their cost.
I had to go do something else before I finished but my first run with him I was just wrecking poo poo with spell mana every turn & Jinx as my second champ. I think my other powers were the von Yipp one and every unit gets a random keyword. I left it just before guard bots and I don't think I'd used any rerolls (beyond the free ones at the start to look at the new passives :v:). If you want an easy time on him I'd probably start with von Yipp and grab anything that gives you more 1 drops.

snergle
Aug 3, 2013

A kind little mouse!
just had a really fun malphite deck lose to guard bots =( and i didnt even lose to guard bots so much as i lost to shrooms from foundry doing 21 dmg to me.

i had a super fun lissandra deck where my land marks trigger twice when they finish counting down and then later i got zz rot portal on the thralls. which btw is reverse synergy. it makes it so every single thing you do that summons a thrall summons two you never have enough space to trigger one let alone two. you need the ai to cooperate with you and murder your 2/2s and stuff so you can proc them. i had lissandra summon 2 on turn 2 then my othe rlandmark proced and summoned me two 2/2's on turn 4 i layed down the break them early guy obliting the two he summons due to space then blocking with my 2/2s and slamming pass so that i could get the proc off on turn 6 end. then i layed watcher on turn 7 and attacked with it to kill viktor while i had 1 hp the entire time. im so lucky he didnt draw any burn.

malphite summon a random landmark on turn 1 with agro mulligans into chip is how i play his deck. just not sure who i should be rerolling to pair with him since he isnt a von yip deck.

i dont like the new lab quests though i think they should be sped up. 200 cards is a gently caress ton of labs even if you do a fizz von yip zoe run where you lay down 6 1 drops every game.

snergle fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jun 3, 2021

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
My general experience with foundry is that you barely ever actually lose to it, but it does do a lot of damage to you on the way out if your deck struggles to close. Which can then put you in a bad situation against guard bots' constant pressure.

Sedisp
Jun 20, 2012


Magic Underwear posted:

I don't know, that's why I'm not rushing to judge it either way yet.

There is nothing that changed the ultimate problem with the archetype which is being able to generate an attack at focus speed. The mana curve is slightly higher and that's pretty much it.

Kris xK
Apr 23, 2010
PR Bullshit "we're listening" post is now out.

Balance is scheduled for 2.11 which is like 2 patches away so... Yay 2 months from now?

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
Oh, Lab has more updates? Nice.

Did they at least add more rerolls or choices to compensate for the even more choices, though?

EDIT: Oh poo poo, free first power rerolls, that solves like 50% of my issues with RNG.

No Wave
Sep 18, 2005

HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

Kris xK posted:

PR Bullshit "we're listening" post is now out.

Balance is scheduled for 2.11 which is like 2 patches away so... Yay 2 months from now?
This came on the heels of a reply dovagedys made yesterday that's currently sitting at -366 karma.

Awesome!
Oct 17, 2008

Ready for adventure!


sounds like they are spread a little thin and need some more devs. everyone make sure to buy those yasuo skins

breaks
May 12, 2001

I think calling it pr bullshit is a little harsh, they’ve been pretty good about doing what they say they’ll do. I’m sure it takes some time to change course as far as the scope of the adjustments they want to make in these patches. A bit late but hopefully it’ll liven things up.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Pilchenstein posted:

I had to go do something else before I finished but my first run with him I was just wrecking poo poo with spell mana every turn & Jinx as my second champ. I think my other powers were the von Yipp one and every unit gets a random keyword. I left it just before guard bots and I don't think I'd used any rerolls (beyond the free ones at the start to look at the new passives :v:). If you want an easy time on him I'd probably start with von Yipp and grab anything that gives you more 1 drops.

A von Yipp Fizz deck that aims for 1 drops is indeed an easy win. By the end Fizz himself was like a 9/7 1 drop with Scout.


snergle posted:

just had a really fun malphite deck lose to guard bots =( and i didnt even lose to guard bots so much as i lost to shrooms from foundry doing 21 dmg to me.

i had a super fun lissandra deck where my land marks trigger twice when they finish counting down and then later i got zz rot portal on the thralls. which btw is reverse synergy. it makes it so every single thing you do that summons a thrall summons two you never have enough space to trigger one let alone two. you need the ai to cooperate with you and murder your 2/2s and stuff so you can proc them. i had lissandra summon 2 on turn 2 then my othe rlandmark proced and summoned me two 2/2's on turn 4 i layed down the break them early guy obliting the two he summons due to space then blocking with my 2/2s and slamming pass so that i could get the proc off on turn 6 end. then i layed watcher on turn 7 and attacked with it to kill viktor while i had 1 hp the entire time. im so lucky he didnt draw any burn.

malphite summon a random landmark on turn 1 with agro mulligans into chip is how i play his deck. just not sure who i should be rerolling to pair with him since he isnt a von yip deck.

i dont like the new lab quests though i think they should be sped up. 200 cards is a gently caress ton of labs even if you do a fizz von yip zoe run where you lay down 6 1 drops every game.

The best Malphite mulligan is probably the one that make you start with a Sleeping Rockbear or whatever it's called. Really though thing main the you want is just the any free landmark at all because Chip is literally the only good card in the deck. It just happens to be the case that a Sleeping Rockbear is a better landmark than any of the ones in the Malphite deck. Like a lot of these bad decks, your goal should be to get a good 2nd champ to rely on and maybe buff up the Chips where possible. That said, I think Yasuo actually works pretty well in the deck? It has a lot of stuns for him to advantage of.

For Lissandra I went for "+1/+1 on surviving a hit" since she has armor and the all-targeting ping spell, but I don't know how meaning that actually is, in the end.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply