LoR Reflections #1 — the Champ Rework Patch
Five LoR Master players share their (not always agreeing) views on the latest balance patch.
Now that almost two weeks have passed since the Champion Balance patch (3.6.0), we asked five Master players – with varied experience in different aspects of Legends of Runeterra – for their opinions on the recent rule and card changes.
The participants of this conversations were:
Conansson – Youtuber, Guide Creator, author of the (Unofficial) LoR Rule Book, Professor in the Main LoR Discord (a role given to knowledgeable players that frequently help others & answer questions),
Aeolius – Data Analysts for Home of the Aces (an APAC competitive team),
Friendly Neighborhood Nihilist – Porofessor in the Main LoR Discord,
Wick – eSports Enthusiast, Washed LoR player, Twitter personality,
bA1lance – Data Analyst for Pandex Sports (an AM competitive team) and Mastering Runeterra writer.
We asked them their opinion on the Burst Pass change, the Play / Cast change, and buffs & nerfs to cards.
To those of them in frequent contact with other players, we also asked for their perception on the same topic.
Conansson – Youtuber, Guide Creator, Author of the Unofficial Rule Book, Porofessor in the Main LoR Discord (EMEA shard)
I don't really care too much about the Burst Pass change. Sometimes, being able to pass one extra time was important, but it mostly was just punishing newer players who didn't understand the rule. Burst Passing never won a game, all it did was set up the opponent to lose the game by blatantly playing into it.
And it was overall very confusing and unnecessary, especially in Path of Champions, where you often had to click "OK" multiple times per turn.
This change isn't really hitting control decks since those can often hard-pass – it does hit annoying combo decks like Shellfolk and prevents avenues for grieving (passing back after each burst spell in a long combo). Even though I was confused about it at first, I'm fine and even happy about the change after some time.
From what I see in Discord and Twitter – which are my favorite platforms – there were some singular voices saying "control is dead", but most people say that they either don't mind or that the change is good.
The Cast / Play change, on the other hand…
I generally trust Riot with changes like this, but it for sure seems poorly thought through. Multiple synergies have been removed (Jayce/Lux; Karma/Ezreal) and some cards fundamentally changed (Taric, Go Hard). Ultimately, a lot of interaction has been lost by this change, and it introduced some of the most unfair combos in the history of Legends of Runeterra, like Burst speed Judgement and Burst speed Ezreal.
These things can be fixed and Riot has already said that they are going to change Karma back so that she works again, but I still don't see what is gained from the change. Some cards are easier to understand, but that could have been fixed with better wording or a proper tutorial. And some cards do feel better to play, but if they wanted to buff these, they could have just made them Play effects without messing up random bystanders such as Go Hard.
And, unlike with Burst Pass, most people I talked to dislike the Cast / Play change – the few that do like it are of the opinion that it makes the game easier to understand.
Was this change done to open up design space? I think it achieves the opposite, by completely removing a design avenues, and limits possible cards in the future – for now, I'm very skeptical about the change, but we'll see what Riot has in store.
On the changes to individual cards, I would have wished for bigger changes or full reworks on some of the currently unplayable cards, but overall I think the changes are good. Maybe the Bandle Tree rework was overkill, but we can't test it yet.
The timing, though…
Terrible. The changes to rules should have been a separate patch, one that isn't so close to Seasonals. There are also way too many bugs, so the patch feels rushed and it is very hard to reliably test before Seasonals.
On the other hand, communication was excellent – they included videos on the rule changes and communicated early on what their plans were, and listened to feedback afterwards. I've rarely seen such good communication in the gaming industry.
HOTA Aeolius, Data Analyst for Home of the Aces (APAC shard)
I'm a combo player, and Burst Passing was a great thing to have, so personally I don't like the changes. However knowing that Burst Pass highly favors reactive decks, I do believe it was for the best.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the Play / Cast change, because the main joy I derive from LoR is from the interactivity – to rack one's brain in finding the best time to play spells, as well as considering what plays can your opponent do, in order to disrupt that play.
And about the card changes… to be honest I was somewhat disappointed – I was expecting full Champion reworks, as promised on the roadmap. But, overall it was a good patch, especially the Udyr change, so kudos to the Devs.
They could have communicated things a bit better, though. For example, clarify things beforehand, like what happened with the current patch – we were promised Champion reworks, and no one from Riot clarified that what we would actually get would be some major adjustments but not really a redesign in the sense of reimagining how a certain Champion works.
And they could have been a bit more mindful with their timing – players competing in the Seasonal tournament need to have ample time to prepare.
But, overall, I do like the way in which they handled this patch.
Friendly Neighborhood Nihilist, Porofessor in the Main LoR Discord (EMEA shard)
The Burst Pass change makes a lot of sense, and the players' reaction to the change feels overblown.
A simple rule that goes: 'If you hit pass, and then your opponent hits pass, the round ends' is more logical than having a handful of caveats, and it feels more consistent overall, so I like the change.
In terms of actual gameplay impact, I haven’t really felt any. A lot of decks don’t get affected by this new rule, on account of them not having any burst spells that they would want to use proactively, and the few that are affected aren’t exactly gutted and tossed aside by this change – the benefits definitely feel like they outweigh the downsides with this change.
The Play / Cast merge, on the other hand, has not been a good change in my opinion.
As it stands, this change's only benefit at the moment is the simplification of all the terms in the game. “Play” was still always a trigger within the game, and the cards that properly benefit from the change could’ve just had their texts changed, without all the extra implications for cards like Ezreal, Karma, Mirror Mage, Taric looking frankly like a buggy mess, etc.
The other issue I have with the Play / Cast change is that it goes against one of the fundamental ideas that this game was built on.
The level of interaction between players, and the mental game it creates is one of, if not the, biggest factors that sets LoR apart from its competition (at least from a gameplay standpoint), and this change just removes a window of interaction.
People will argue that it feels really bad for your big play to get denied by the opponent removing your Heimerdinger or your Lux before the spells resolve, but equally it feels bad for the opponent if they have no (or at least more limited) opportunities to stop that from happening.
The most egregious example of how this removal of a response window is problematic is of course Ezreal: burst lethals are frustrating for opponents, but cards like Phantom Prankster and Neverglade Collector, Warning Shot or even pre-change Ezreal were at least fine since the reach of those burst lethals was small. That is no longer the same with him, and that’s a big issue – it’s somewhat sad that the most likely solution here is to nerf Ezreal, who ultimately was a champ who was finally in a decent spot power level-wise.
The only thing that I’m willing to keep an open mind about with this change is that they mention that it “frees up more design space”.
While I’m skeptical about how much design space this does actually open up, I’m ultimately not a Dev and there may well be something that is now possible that I have not noticed. However, for this change to be justified by this “opening design space” argument, a card/archetype that takes advantage of this new space has to come out pretty quickly – otherwise, we go through all this shake-up for basically no immediate benefits, and quite a significant number of immediate issues.
I’ll also just touch on my opinions on Riot’s quite obvious move to simplify the game to make it more understandable for newer players.
While appealing to new blood is essential for the game to do well, I maintain that the first thing that needs to change is the game’s tutorial and teaching resources. None of them are very good, and LoR is a fairly complex game that needs a half-decent tutorial. Other explorable options for making these spell triggers more understandable (which as I’ve said is currently the only upside of this rule change) would include actually taking the time in the tutorial or (more likely) the challenges to explain and outline the differences.
The balance changes from this patch have been on the whole fairly okay – they addressed some of the major issues from the previous meta in ways that don’t delete decks (which is always what we want to see, really), and there were some nice buffs in there as well to Garen, LeBlanc, Nasus, Sion, Malphite, etc. While not a massive shake-up for the meta, these changes were needed and are certainly helping those Champions.
That said, there is a rather large elephant in the room, that being the change to The Bandle Tree. Deleting decks shouldn’t be the aim of these changes, but it’s hard to see the Bandle Tree change doing anything but that. While people disliked the deck and how it played, it was still an interesting condition to work towards and now it just kinda isn’t worth pursuing since it’s fairly unachievable in its current form, and it’s a shame to see.
I think it’s hard to say whether this change needed to go live now without seeing the next Expansion, since for all we know that next Expansion will release cards that need the design space freed up by these changes.
We also have to consider that this change couldn’t happen on patch 3.8 – since, from what we know, that patch will be fairly large, between a new expansion, Runeterra Champions and the relaunch of Path of Champions – so if they did need the design space freed up then this patch was the correct time to implement the change.
A lot of the dissatisfaction with this patch that I felt (and the dissatisfaction of a fair number of players in similar positions to myself) stems from how this patch and in particular the “reworks” to cards were communicated – simply put, they did not live up to the hype which Riot had built up.
Of four promised reworks (LeBlanc, Garen, Udyr and the Bandle Tree), only Udyr was actually a rework. I'm not saying that the Garen and LeBlanc changes weren’t good, because they were – but when one of your changes is something that people have been asking forever since the Champion was revealed, rather than the full rework you promised, you’re going to have a lot of unhappy customers.
Wick, eSport enthusiast, Twitter personality (AM shard)
I love the Burst Pass change. People abused it to bait misplays or grief time. Removing it forces players to accept playing proactively or ending their turn.
As far as I can tell from Twitter, the people complaining about Burst Passing are the niche ultra-competitive crowd. Riot has decided to ignore their thoughts, though, so why shouldn't I do the same? :+)
Everyone else is pretty neutral or happy with the changes — with more and more people liking it after experiencing it more.
The Play / Cast change is great too. It prevents reactionary cards from negating multiple cards in play.
Reactive gameplay has been dominant for the entirety of LoR's existence – cards like Deny would be two-for-one (or more) because you would not only negate the text on the cards, you would also negate the text on any units in play as well, thus acting like a pseudo-silence.
I think this change allows the Devs to increase the amount of interaction – this game has always had a problem with the "fun police" stopping you from doing everything, eventually forcing everyone to uninteractive concepts. It also is a HUGE buff to Slow spells, which have been terrible forever.
I've seen on Twitter a few people talk about why they like the Cast / Play change, but there are still people complaining about the Devs killing interaction in LoR – I think the Devs have actually given themselves space to start printing more interactive cards, now that interaction got such a huge nerf.
About the nerfs and buffs to individual cards… I literally do not care. And from what I can tell, pretty much nobody does.
The timing and verbiage used was awful, to be honest – communication was, on the one hand, the best we've ever had, but I think it's still lacking. Riot needs to be very cognizant about the words they use. Terms like “rework” and “buffed” are very specific, and Riot needs to create a formal definition if they hope to reduce future community outcry.
bA1ance – Analyst for PANDEX, Mastering Runeterra Writer (AM shard)
I like the Burst Pass change because it places a huge emphasis on deciding whether or not you are okay with making a play this turn, without a “safety cushion” so to speak – as Riot wrote in their patch notes, it does create higher-stakes decisions. In Twitter – which is where most of my modest audience is – I’ve seen mixed reactions, but I'd say they lean towards being in favor of the change.
I like the Cast / Play change too – it makes the game feel like something new. There are now many interactions that I need to test and reevaluate!
It also gives value to Slow spells upfront, making them more viable (in general). I am a bit concerned that level-two Ezreal can get out of hand with this change, but I trust the Devs to keep a watch on it if it does. I will say that I’m a little concerned that this could create design space issues moving forward, but overall I think this is a step in the right direction.
I’ve seen more of a dislike regarding this change from my Twitter audience, though. I see where they’re coming from and it could be related to the feeling that, oftentimes, balance patches don’t go far enough to bring down the top decks soon enough.
When taking all the changes into account – that's to say, including nerfs and buffs too – I have to say I like this shake-up right before a Seasonal Tournament. It's not a HUGE shake-up, but big enough to change the dials on what’s important in the metagame. I saw a wide spectrum of reactions in Twitter, however, and they leaned towards the nerfs and buffs not being impactful enough in scope. I think that has a lot to do with what we were all expecting (as in, we were told there would be Champion reworks).
I suppose I would have liked to see the rule changes a bit earlier in the season, to get used to them in time for the Seasonal Tournament, but that’s more because of my limited preparation time. That said, I believe many mistakes will be made in tournaments due to the changes.
Overall, this entire season of balance patches and changes has been solid – from the set release and toning down Ahri Kennen, to the first balance patch to control Gnar and bring Mono Shurima to the forefront – and this patch gets us ready for the Seasonal Tournament.
On the topic of how Riot communicated these changes, I think the described scope – that we were given during the Road Map, announcing the current patch as bringing forth Champion Reworks– is what hurt the current reception.
This is a case where managing the expectations from the player base would have helped – a rework to me means fundamentally changing how a champion works (like we’ve seen happen multiple times with Ezreal). There was some of that, but not a lot and not nearly enough for a patch advertised as one focused on Champion Reworks. It would have been better to call this patch “Champion-Focused Balance Patch,” or “Champion Buffs Balance Patch.”
While others may not agree, I like this recent patch cadence – minor balance with a new set, balance patch four weeks later, and one more balance patch before the Seasonal Tournament – and I want to stress that it’s very important for the live balance team and the player base to recognize at least one week is needed to determine if an emergency balance patch / hot-fix is needed.
If it’s for the health of the game, let’s see some more!
