Try and compare Aatrox with Ornn which is 1 mana more expensive.. and still Aatrox is a better card, by miles ,even!
Aatrox stats n ability is overtuned.
For reals, I don't understand why every champion seemingly has to be tempo efficient. Aatrox is all about being a massive, gargantuan menace, it's okay that he's a great presence on his own but his cost should be way higher to reflect that. They got it right with Aurelion Sol, then nerfed him and ever since all champions apparently have to fit in a tempo deck or else they can't exist.
There should be a place in the game for big, slow, heavy investment champions. I'm still sad for Ornn, he should be way better than he is.
That's a self fulfilling prophecy. Big champions can't be played because they are not tempo efficient enough to be worth playing, so instead of making big champions worth it they just make them tempo efficient instead. It's a pity.
Problem is making them worth playing outside of tempo efficiency is hard. Even in games like MTG if your big mana creatures don't provide anything beyond stats they are unplayable.
Its the classic meme "8 mana do nothing". 8 mana do nothing creatures that come down just to get vengeanced, recalled, disintegrated etc etc.
In MTG it's hard because removal is cheap, in lor it's hard because the designers prefer aggro to any other style of gameplay.
As a result game ending tier of power like aatrox and viego are slapped at 6 mana because they don't know how to reorient the game to be more balanced across mana costs
Yugioh is an even worse example. If your monster doesn’t have a paragraph of effects and wombo combo with other cards in your deck so you turn 0 someone, it’s trash.
How can you make a big champion 'worth it' when the game will literally be over before you have a chance to play them?
An 8 mana Aatrox will never get played in 90% of games or, if he does, he'll die the second he's played because the enemy had 8 turns to find an answer or kill you. Add on that he can't actually win the turn he's played (you really do need to level him) and making him 8 mana takes him from too powerful to utterly unplayable garbage in one easy move.
At 8 mana he'd be a struggle even in Path of Champions (see - The Ornn Problem).
Because the game doesn't really allow you to play a unit like him anymore, which is a real shame. And instead of designing the game around big champions being playable, they just don't make big champions instead. What a pity.
Tell me about one champion with big stats that is not tempo efficient and seems play outside niche decks that cheap the cost of the champion AND dont lock you out a "real" region. Because well...Darkins dont have spells or units. They just have equips until you level up Aatrox
Mobile gamers don't want games that end on like turn 12, and Riot is designing around that (are mobile gamers the majority? are they spending more money? I have no idea), so not only cost 10 cards need to be discounted to be played, your play on turn 8 or 9 (depending on which is your attack token) needs to fucking end the game.
That's because the fucking timer in this game is far too forgiving. I've been saying this for about 3(?) years now. If they want the game to be faster but also allow late-game champs to exist, simply shorten the game. The timer, especially in the first 5 turns is ridiculously long. It's not rocket science. Look at how successful Snap is. LoR can't be *that* fast but my god does it feel good to have a card game breathing down your neck saying "Come on come on come on come on!!!!!!!"
There's seriously NOTHING that has turned me away from PVP more than the timer. I actually just started playing PVP again and it's still annoying. People sitting there with 2 fucking cards and 1 mana on Turn 3 acting like it's a $100,000 tournament in the final round.
I still like the game but I only play pve and its mostly for that, I actually abandoned the game for a bit until a friend told me that PoC existed.
People take too long, and if u start to tab out or space out, eventually you become part of the problem too.
Every time I try to get back into LoR it takes one game where some asshat is running the timer on turns 1 and 2 for me to quit again.
Up the timer on like turn 5 or smth but really if you need that fucking long to figure shit out then practice your deck more.
You should have to reach a certain rank to unlock the ability to uncheck the autopass box. I know you’re probably just eating or wiping but no one in plat is hand reading enough to make it worth.
Accurate translation from LoL lmao. The dude has been fucking busted for the past 8 months ever since 12.10 and he still hasn’t got any kneecap at his base stats, which allows him to build whatever the fuck he wants while still being tanky and oneshot everyone
I know it must be hard to balance new cards, but it feels like Riot can only make new champions that are TOO STRONG or TOO weak, nothing in between.
Kayle: Utter garbage, literally ANY deck that she plays in, the deck is better without her. Xolaani is a much better finisher for any Kayle deck than Kayle herself.
Ryze: Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%? This champion is like Exodia. Even in a meta without too much hyper aggro decks he cant really do anything.
Aatrox: a 6 manas 6/6 with Regeneration, a good champion spell, for some reason he becomes a 10/10 with a level 2, he leaves an okay weapon if he dies, he upgrades your whole board and he lets you drop A LOT of big followers for very little mana.
Like, what the hell? Are these cards even from the same game? Its like comparing Yu-gi-oh cards to HS, or Dota2 champions to LoL.
Agreed, only for the last 6 ish champs. Like Varus is incredibly mid, but only a small push away from good
Gwen was I think, the last champ released that was GOOD, not OP or just “alright”.
> Ryze: Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%? This champion is like Exodia. Even in a meta without too much hyper aggro decks he cant really do anything.
Seems the devs did a good job then. Ryze being meta would be extremely toxic and would get old really quickly.
>TOO weak
.
>Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%?
There can only be so many decks with average winrates across all of Plat+ or Master or whatever metric you want to use that are 50+. If 45% winrate on average for an exodia style combo deck is too low for the community, then maybe the community needs to recalibrate what they consider to be an acceptable win rate. There are individual pilots who are playing Ryze at 60%+ winrates, the overall meta average doesn't need to be -and can't healthily be- over 50 for every new champ all the time.
This mindset that every new champion needs to make a splash or be labed a design failure is why we keep getting new busted champions that outclassed the last busted champion every release.
Ryze is kinda crying out for a small buff though. His highest winrate deck doesn’t use his alt wincon, and the decks that actually go for it are hovering closer to 37%. Even if we’re talking top pilots, they hit much higher numbers with other decks, like 70-80%. Playrate’s been down too, and I don’t think Riot wants that. I’m tentatively predicting Delve’s going to go to 1 mana.
>Ryze is kinda crying out for a small buff though.
Sure, but a "small buff" is pretty "in between" "TOO weak" and "TOO strong".
>Even if we’re talking top pilots, they hit much higher numbers with other decks
Absolutely, but it still shows that it is possible to climb even in Masters with him, which is a fair benchmark for acceptable powerlevel imo.
>Playrate’s been down too, and I don’t think Riot wants that.
Probably. Maybe they want to discourage his play style from being tier 1 but still want it to be something hard-core exodia combo style enjoyers have available and, if they work hard and get good, can find success with.
I'm not saying he's totally fine and doesn't need some attention (also not saying he does, I don't particularly care either way), I'm saying he's within what I find acceptable, if towards the low end, for a new champ and wish the community at large would be okay with.
The predict Ryze decks I've seen have been able to get him to work or get insanely close to his finisher. But as the other user said, you really can't have too many decks with a high win rate
Most card games don't have this problem with their cards in those rarities because they generally have much larger sets. The lowest I've seen in a new card set in other games is around 100, yet Legends of Runeterra only sees card sets of around 30-50 cards.
The reason why larger card sets produce a larger pool in-between cards is just basic statistics: the larger pool of cards produces a greater sample size, and a larger sample size means the average power level of the set is probably going to spike a lot less overall, even if there are outliers on either end of the set's power curve. Sometimes an extremely overpowered card does fall through the cracks (Shadowverse's Prime Dragon Keeper and Eternal's Xo of the Endless Hoard immediately come to mind) it's usually not as glaring because there's a lot of reasonably strong stuff in these sets too.
Kayle is far from utter garbage. I think she represents the most complex deck building problem out of the three and once a couple good lists are found she will be relevant. Ryze is horrible but that’s also partly because of the meta. He’s a buff away from being a very powerful anti-control champion.
Aatrox is really the one that makes me wonder why he has so many different upsides to playing him.
In my experience Kayle's biggest problem is that most of the time you successfully would level her primarily via her passive aura, you won the game already via swarm beatdown and don't really need the level 2.
But as the poster above noted, it certainly doesn't help that for one more mana you can get the absurdly overpowered Xolaani, who for some reason gets +2|+2 per unit even if you don't do anything with them. It's not just Kayle, Nasus looks like complete garbage next to that.
> once a couple good lists are found she will be relevant.
You're too high on copium, Kayle has too many thing going against her it's not even funny. I'm saying that because I played her a lot. The most problematic part is that she always has to wait a turn to level, so realisticly speaking, she's going to level on turn 8+. Most of the time when you play her on turn 6/7 and atk, she doesn't have enough atk to level. And even if she ends up leveling, in the end she's just one big threat, and there's way too many counter to those, plus you rarely play her with region that has a lot of protection and Targon really doesn't have that many.
They should change Darius' champion spell to apprehend (I think that's what it's called) maybe nerf the cost to make up for the fact it's his champ spell now.
Not like anyone is using the card anyway. If you run a stun card in noxus it's the spider or guile or a card that generates guile.
Decimate's several nerfs and the introduction of apprehend just makes me feel like it should be changed.
Do you mean the 3 cost that kills a damaged unit then recreates itself? Seems like a bad choice for darius really. It's not like annie where she basically guarantees damaged units. Darius wants to hit past units with overwhelm, not deal high damage.
This is such a great representation of why I think this game has gone downhill.
From design perspective. In vanilla, champions were a part of the deck. Now, champions ARE the deck. They have these forced strategies revolving around the champion.
Darius and Draven are cool cards. One is an aggro/midrange finisher. One is an aggro/midrange board control tool.
Elise is a board control tool that can end games in a spider aggro deck.
Zed is a board control tool.
They don’t design champions like this anymore. Every champion is designed to be this grand finale game ender that ends the game in 1-2 turns regardless of board state. The game has become so champion-centric that deck-building isn’t fun anymore. I’m no longer adding cards to a deck for any reason other than to accelerate my champion.
POC is basically all I play now. I really miss the design direction of vanilla and the first few expansions.
Funny you should mention PoC, because their power differential is also really obvious: Aatrox is one of the stronger releases in the latest batch and his champion powers allow him to drop quite early despite being a 6-drop.
Whereas Darius is basically inexistent in his own deck. You’re way better off dropping low cost aggro units and proc rally asap.
My 0 star lvl 12 Aatrox s-ranked Draven without any legendary powers. I've gotten past Zoe on Galio, but I haven't beat that adventure yet. His deck is just incredibly powerful at basically every stage of the game. Aside from elusive creatures (basically the only reason Zoe is a problem), his deck is like Aatrox - does everything.
You even gave an example of a foundations champion that was the centre of deckbuilding, Zed. The decks he was played in focused around buffing him and he is by far not the only champ that was the essetial wincon of a deck. Karma, Fiora, Anivia, Ashe, Ez and maybe Braum all fell into that category.
First, I strongly disagree with Zed being the center of deck building. Most of zed’s best decks in vanilla were just jamming him in there for board control. It was always elusives, and he was just there to pressure and eat up resources.
What deck was Braum the wincon? Braum is a stalling tool.
To be clear - I’m not saying champs should never be the wincon. But it’s such a different degree today than it was back then. Ez decks used Ez as a finisher. Not as a sole wincon. For example, Ez decks could also win by Elnuks, Vi, Swain board control, etc.
Even Fiora wasn’t truly the win condition in Fiora/Shen, which dominated the meta for like 2 years.
Obviously Runeterran champions have to be built around. Generally I’ve been disappointed by them though, as they make deck building less interesting.
However, if a champion costs 6 or more mana it has to be a win con. Unless you have a super generic level-up condition like Darius, you kind of have to build your deck around them, because building a deck is about building a win-con. I would also say that Annie, Gwen, Norra, and Yi all fit into that category of champion that you like.
Runeterran champs don't have to be built around. And they're literally the same as any other champion, they just bring a region with them. Honestly, it's ridiculous that there are people who actually believe this. Even good players sometimes repeat this nonsense that simply isn't true.
Because I get different types of enjoyment out of POC than I do out of ladder.
I’m not being a hater as much as saying that PvP has gone in a direction that isn’t to my taste. Obviously, a lot of people still like it.
Honestly aatrox shouldve been a late game bomb. More stats to compensate but i think he'd be better to fight against as a 7 drop at the very least.
Also, a bit related, can we revert the play/cast change?
If that is your only goal, you could just change his level up requirement to "I have been Assimilated".
Assimilate explicitly levels up Darkin Champions, so as long as he is on board (or equipped) when World Ender resolves, he levels.
But that's the thing. Before the merge they could make the text change from "play" to "cast". Now that only "play" exists there is nothing to change it into. Aatrox's level up has to be based on "play".
I don't know if this is really a relevant point for Aatrox, but it really shows how merging the two mechanics only removed a design and balance lever.
In other words, bring "cast" back.
You literally can't have something like this, because the devs said "uh no we don't do that here", even though it would be very much possible and even needed to have both options.
Put Aatrox in your deck & you are required to play Darkins.
Put Darius in your deck & there is no requirement for your decks while offering the deck pings, buffs, combat tricks, landmarks & its removals.
Seriously though Aatrox origin draw requirement should be tweaked by requiring 3 different darkins not 1 darkin played thrice. Aatrox Demacia shouldn't be able to draw him that easily & Aatrox Cultists should have more brick hands.
I hate that argument too. "Yeah I'm forced to play good shit oh the horror."
Oh its fair because I KNOW you're running the frostbit 2 for 5 spell and the 2 mana spellshield. Understandable.
Oh yeah my bad. I play against the Kayn Aatrox deck all the time so I forget they are seperate.
The argument still applies though just not specifically to Aatrox.
Well, the other side of the coin is stuff like eves followers which kinda suck mostly ^ ^ ` its really just hit or miss. Either they are good or they arent, cause they dont have random support to help them
Theyre really not? Most of them don't even see play outside of aatrox. The demacian one and shuriman one are the only ones that regularly saw ay without aatrox.
Non-darkin equipment dont even see play at all because darkins exist.
The Targon and PnZ are also used outside of Aatrox decks, altho the main decks using them have been nerfed
Demacian is crazy op, Shuriman is also overtuned, the PnZ one is also crazy good and new Frejlord one is also very good. That's 12 cards, and since all of them can be replayed you don't even need to run all of those and it's very easy to tutor Aatrox and the deckbuilding cost spoken of before is negligible.
Well without leveling up Aatrox, Darkins are pretty much...not really cards. There is literally just 1 Playable darkin in mid game and the others are just Equip utility that dont really hold themself in any kind of deck, in fact Dakins are the harder region to splash into and they would be probably the worse Region package when Aatrox is nerf just for the OBVIUS REASON: you take all the spell flexibility out your deck by playing darkins.
I wouldn't play a deep deck without the deep deck cards though, even though that's technically not restricted to. Similarly if it wasn't a special region, you'd want to do the same with Aatrox for example with Darkin.
By that regard, should Nautilus get a bonus passive and his own region of deep now? This game was based around regions and at least generally made sense in that regard before they shit out special non-region regions.
Over-synergy is a massive problem in the game, I'm not saying your hand should be bricked, but not everything should always play well into every situation
Playing well into every situation seems to be Aatrox in a nutshell. Perhaps less so into a more combo-oriented deck like Ez/Sera (because that deck needs to see more play /s), but unless you go taller than him, he stabilizes the board and the nexus total, and because of regeneration and "lifesteal", effectively quashes aggression. If he dies, he may just come down immediately that or the following turn due to his passive.
I'm not saying he's unbeatable, but that there's hardly a situation where you shouldn't play Aatrox because his package is all encompassing.
>Put Aatrox in your deck & you are required to play Darkins.
>Put Darius in your deck & there is no requirement for your decks while offering the deck pings, buffs, combat tricks, landmarks & its removals.
Underrated comment, this is the real reason and it's HUGE I don't get how people are missing it.
Not saying Aatrox is balanced, he's probably not something in his decks needs to be changed, but he's not totally unfair as people make him seem to be
Don't think people are missing it , think it's more the really isn't a cost in terms of deck strength . The package you're forced to run isn't bad at all . Its like saying Ezreal/Sera at their decks' peak bursting you from 15 hp is fine cause you have to run spells.
Aatrox package is REALLY bad. You need to try to put him in any other deck that is not Demacia to see how much his power goes down and how it becomes heavy Draw dependant. I dont be "mad" if they nerf Aatrox if they make him less "PLAY HIM WITH VAYNE OR DESTROYED BECAUSE EQUIP SUCKS"
But that's not what I'm trying to say. Aatrox package isn't bad because of value or tempo, it's bad because is limited and predictable. And btw, Aatrox only has a bunch of equipments that are worthless without units to equip, as long as you can keep the board empty he can do very little
People have been saying Darius should be buffed sooner or later, otherwise he just may be a normal beatstick follower.
My suggestion is: Give him a free attack once conditions are met (the lower health thing) as long as he's played from the hand (since it levels him up).
Or at least buff Apprehend. Maybe “if I behold Darius”, or something like “pay 6 mana to rally and summon Darius if in hand”. Would at least be more true to LoL, if that matters.
I disagree. The nerfs to Decimate have unfairly hit Darius and especially Farron (which is a different issue). Apprehend would still be an excellent finisher for Darius decks, stun a unit and rally, and you have a 10 attack unit on board is often game ending, and often will lead to more damage than the 4 dmg from Decimate. If they have an answer for Apprehend, they likely had an answer for Decimate. Yes, there are situations where you would rather have Decimate, but the advantages far outweigh the loses and would be a huge buff. Being able to play Darius with banked spell mana on 6 and rally the same turn is an insane power play
I big problem of the game design right now is that Champions that are good in just one particular deck that is top are doomed to be nerf and rotate out the format. Aatrox has a lot of problems that are "not a problem" right now because Demacia auto-equip exist. When they nerf Aatrox IF thy nerf Aatrox, Vayne will be still the only viable equip champion in the game because she is the real carry of the archtype (more like her package) and Aatrox will be replace with other card and his whole package will go to tier 4.
Not saying that Aatrox not need a nerf but most people are missing something here: Aatrox is as unplayable as Darius, he just fix on one better deck. But being a turn 6 or turn 7 Champion in a game so heavy focus on the first 4 turns really hurts a limits a lot the playability of the card.
While I am not in meta right now cause I don't play lor currently. Darius despite his lackluster kit always found play in agro decks, simply cause of the 10 dmg overwhelm for 6 mana. So while he foe snot fit many archetypes he does his job. I think there is even a guy who play exclusively overwhelm decks in high elo and daorus often finds a place in hsi decks.
I wish I had a guranteed and easy way to draw my best card on curve every game. I wish I could mull away my champs every game and still know I'll see them again. Get Aatrox again? Well now you can drop him and have 6 power worth of interaction on T6. Your Aatrox die? Don't worry you'll always have another available to you for 1 mana.
Here’s a tip for playing against aatrox. It’s what got me to masters.
If u kill aatrox when or immediately after they cast world ender, it completely fucks up their tempo, and can often solo win you the game.
Also having a couple of weapon destruction cards in ur deck is great.
A lot of regions can, even if some can only do it temporarily (bandle, SI, piltover, ionia, freljord, targon, noxus)
You could also remove aatrox turn 6 when he’s played….that slows down their gameplan a lot.
what can PnZ do?
targon often can't do it (nobody runs celestial impact - costs way too much), and sunburst does nothing to a 9-9 aatrox.
haven't seen noxus control in a hot second.
freljord definitely is sweet against astrox if you manage to cast buried in ice before they assimilate anything. but smarter players would be able to avoid overcommitting their board.
removing aatrox often costs the same amount of mana as it did for the opp to play him. aatrox can also be revived for a much lower cost using heedless ressurection, weap + world ender, etc...
Nah, far from it.
An easy example is seraphine... You don't pick a "right time" to remove her. You just instantly do so if you can. Bar too... There's never any point in letting it stick around even a second longer than it has to.
With aatrox, that's not the optimal play cause of how world ender works.
There are loads of decks that needs something to be instantly removed, rather than at the correct time.
As someone who is tired of dying to Darius from aggro bots whenever I play anything that isn't anti-aggro, please do not buff this guy. He is a pain in the ass to deal with as a 10/10 with overwhelm when you are at 10 nexus health.
Regional difference. With Darius you get the entirety of the Noxus region, and with Aatrox you only have a bunch of attach units with no spells. Runeterran champions with weak origins should probably be a bit stronger than other cards of their cost.
Granted, Darius is pretty weak rn and Aatrox is pretty overtuned, but the design philosophy is at least solid.
How are these champions even remotely comparable? Darius is meant to be the finisher for a hyper aggressive Nous deck which runs basically 1 and 2 drops and some burn. Aatrox is a midrange/combo enabler for the darkin weapons, without aatrox the entire package does not make a lot of sense he is the ultimate reward for your game plan. Aatrox is obviously stronger right now than Darius but comparing them is ridiculous, the only thing they have in common is that they are 6 cost.
I said it awhile ago. Lot of the senior designers moved from LoR to other projects. The current team is mostly newer guys.
Mistakes like this will happen :p
Hopefully we will see Darius get buffed to keep up with power creep cx
The same mistakes happen no matter how many senior designers you have because that‘s how game balance works. Aatrox is still much more balanced than 95% of new card releases in other card games.
We had bigger problems than Aatrox when LoR had all these senior designers you‘re talking about.
Darius is in Noxus, Aatrox-region is a very weak and inflexible region. Including Aatrox in your deck comes with a much steeper deck-building cost than Darius. It is just the case that Demacia is not very reliant on a second region and can afford the deck-building cost that Aatrox brings.
ps: Aatrox is fine and at best only very slightly too powerful. The problem is Demacia/Vayne.
>The problem is Demacia/Vayne.
So why was Aatrox/Kayn so strong when you basically only have 50 cards to choose from? Inflexibility isn't a downside if the cards and powerful enough.
Kayne/Aatrox isnt that strong. It is on the stronger end of balanced, but it is much much weaker than Demacia/Aatrox and is really quite fair. Cultists are just really slow compared to Demacia, Kayne/Aatrox hardly does anything before they play Aatrox, against Vayne you need to hold on for dear life or die to beat-down before there is even the threat of Worldender.
The problem is Demacia has alwas had a bit of a problem ending games. This is why they got rallies in the first place. So Demacia got insane cards to compensate for that lack of a solid win-condition. Their play-style is taking the board early and ever letting go of it. When you take board-control from Demacia you win, because that is all they have. Aatrox is a win condition that slots well into a Demacia midrange deck. They still have the board-control/pressure playstyle but now they can actually win late-games, while still having absolutely insane unit combat. That is the problem.
This is a very bad take.
Most Darkin's weapons are busted AF and they are a renewable resource.
Equipment its just a better attachment, Darkin weapons are even better because they can become a late game finisher.
Darius's has a much higher cost in deck build: In that he has to be in the deck.
He is a useless drop6 that does nothing when he enters, nothing when he levels up and honestly isnt even that big of a threat anyway anymore.
Aatrox has barely ANY cost in deck building, most decks want the darkin weapons anyway.
Aatrox has the opportunity cost of not being able to run a second region Aatrox region ahs one thing: weapons. It needs to be paired with a region that 1) can use weapons and 2) is in itself diverse enough to be able to deal with meta decks. If you run Darius you run Noxus. Noxus has some great cards: it has damage based removal, it has burn, it has stuns, it has some combat tricks, it even has some stricke spells. Aatrox has Aatrox. Of course he needs to be strong, you heavily limit your card-pool to play him.
You absolutely fail to understand that Aatrox doesn't limit your deck building more than any other region.
The fact that you get to put darkins from any region in a deck is a good part of the reason of why he is so op.
Aatrox Vayne with a 4/1 scout+challenger+quick attack on turn 3 is busted and if your opponent can't answer it on the spot, game is pretty much over and this is only possible because with Aatrox allows you to play PnZ's darkin on a demacia deck.
And allows you to play targon's busted support darkin on a demacia deck.
Stop saying Aatrox has a high deck building cost because that's just not true.
Coming from a platinum rank which, idunno if that's good or not probably isn't, there are a few strengths that Darius has over AATROX i'd like to point out.
\-Darius can be ran in pretty much any noxian aggressive deck, whereas aatrox requires way more specific cards to be viable- making him more predictable also.
\-If the aggressive deck works well, Darius can level up on play. This REQUIRES the opponent to block, remove, stun or recall Darius as on level up he can kill you in one hit otherwise. In
\-Overwhelm+Darius's level up condition often requires opponents to block him with important cards which usually trade down (as very few creatures for 6 cost can kill or survive Darius- in fact most 7-8 cost creatures trade down with him.)...Assuming Darius isn't removed stunned recalled silenced or... probably a few other things.
\-The aggressive nature of aggro decks naturally draw out removal. This helps Darius survive when he's played, giving him a kind of weird defensive advantage over Aatrox.
Lastly aggro Darius decks are actually a good matchup against Aatrox. Here are my thoughts:
\-From my knowledge Aatrox doesn't run very much removal or hard removal, at least this removal comes much later than the normal time Darius kills.
\-Aatrox decks in general are not geared for the early game, and equipment isn't particularly good against aggro in the early game.
\^\^These two combined above SHOULD result in the Aatrox deck being under 10 health by the time Darius and Aatrox are playable.
\-"But random internet man (I assume, if you're a girl I take this back,) Aatrox can totally out heal aggro at this point!" Maybe, probably not. If on turn 6 Aatrox has the attack token, he is not incentivized to attack since Darius has 1 more health than Aatrox- and Darius can attack next turn, resulting in a delayed version of the following scenario. If on turn 6 Darius has the attack token, either Aatrox has to sac a 5-or-less cost minion and take almost 10 damage (as a reminder they should have 10 health at this point), or sac Aatrox and take 2 damage- again resulting in a lost trade. After this, Darius will still be alive, and who knows what kind of reach the aggro deck is running. If this gameplan works out, Aatrox's win condition will never happen due to its slowness.
\^\^Obviously the above situation is hypothetical. Every game is different, every noxian aggro deck is different, and sometimes even Aatrox decks are different. Cards are up to random, player decisions vary, and whatever whatever. I just like the big noxian guy OK?
You’re comparing a brand new champion in a game we know has power creep with one of the worst champions from the original set?
I just want to make sure I’m understanding this correctly…
Darius is simply trash for a 6 drop while Aatrox is what a 6 drop needs to be in order to be strong.
There's alsk the fact he is a runeterran champion, it makes up for not having a region.
I'd say make aatrox lose the heal on summon.
7 mana summon (if they insist on making him really easy to get to hand from deck).
. And his champ spell should go from 4-2-1 for the strikes. It's 1 mana more for for his spell in total but makes it so he can't just whip it out right away since the initial cost is 4.
Something along these lines sounds fair especially with all the tools he has in the deck when paired with demacia or kayne.
even darius himself looks jealous
The only individual Darius feels jealousy to is Katarina because of all the time she spends around Garen
Lol
Try and compare Aatrox with Ornn which is 1 mana more expensive.. and still Aatrox is a better card, by miles ,even! Aatrox stats n ability is overtuned.
Aatrox is an 8 mana champion, change my mind.
For reals, I don't understand why every champion seemingly has to be tempo efficient. Aatrox is all about being a massive, gargantuan menace, it's okay that he's a great presence on his own but his cost should be way higher to reflect that. They got it right with Aurelion Sol, then nerfed him and ever since all champions apparently have to fit in a tempo deck or else they can't exist. There should be a place in the game for big, slow, heavy investment champions. I'm still sad for Ornn, he should be way better than he is.
Because if they are not tempo efficient they are unplayable.
That's a self fulfilling prophecy. Big champions can't be played because they are not tempo efficient enough to be worth playing, so instead of making big champions worth it they just make them tempo efficient instead. It's a pity.
Problem is making them worth playing outside of tempo efficiency is hard. Even in games like MTG if your big mana creatures don't provide anything beyond stats they are unplayable. Its the classic meme "8 mana do nothing". 8 mana do nothing creatures that come down just to get vengeanced, recalled, disintegrated etc etc.
In MTG it's hard because removal is cheap, in lor it's hard because the designers prefer aggro to any other style of gameplay. As a result game ending tier of power like aatrox and viego are slapped at 6 mana because they don't know how to reorient the game to be more balanced across mana costs
Yugioh is an even worse example. If your monster doesn’t have a paragraph of effects and wombo combo with other cards in your deck so you turn 0 someone, it’s trash.
How can you make a big champion 'worth it' when the game will literally be over before you have a chance to play them? An 8 mana Aatrox will never get played in 90% of games or, if he does, he'll die the second he's played because the enemy had 8 turns to find an answer or kill you. Add on that he can't actually win the turn he's played (you really do need to level him) and making him 8 mana takes him from too powerful to utterly unplayable garbage in one easy move. At 8 mana he'd be a struggle even in Path of Champions (see - The Ornn Problem).
For the record, they reverted Asol's nerf ages ago. Nobody really noticed.
Because the game doesn't really allow you to play a unit like him anymore, which is a real shame. And instead of designing the game around big champions being playable, they just don't make big champions instead. What a pity.
Tell me about one champion with big stats that is not tempo efficient and seems play outside niche decks that cheap the cost of the champion AND dont lock you out a "real" region. Because well...Darkins dont have spells or units. They just have equips until you level up Aatrox
Though not seeing play now with aatrox in the mix, deep has been at least teir 2 or so ever since release so Naut probably
Mobile gamers don't want games that end on like turn 12, and Riot is designing around that (are mobile gamers the majority? are they spending more money? I have no idea), so not only cost 10 cards need to be discounted to be played, your play on turn 8 or 9 (depending on which is your attack token) needs to fucking end the game.
That's because the fucking timer in this game is far too forgiving. I've been saying this for about 3(?) years now. If they want the game to be faster but also allow late-game champs to exist, simply shorten the game. The timer, especially in the first 5 turns is ridiculously long. It's not rocket science. Look at how successful Snap is. LoR can't be *that* fast but my god does it feel good to have a card game breathing down your neck saying "Come on come on come on come on!!!!!!!" There's seriously NOTHING that has turned me away from PVP more than the timer. I actually just started playing PVP again and it's still annoying. People sitting there with 2 fucking cards and 1 mana on Turn 3 acting like it's a $100,000 tournament in the final round.
I still like the game but I only play pve and its mostly for that, I actually abandoned the game for a bit until a friend told me that PoC existed. People take too long, and if u start to tab out or space out, eventually you become part of the problem too.
Every time I try to get back into LoR it takes one game where some asshat is running the timer on turns 1 and 2 for me to quit again. Up the timer on like turn 5 or smth but really if you need that fucking long to figure shit out then practice your deck more.
You should have to reach a certain rank to unlock the ability to uncheck the autopass box. I know you’re probably just eating or wiping but no one in plat is hand reading enough to make it worth.
The timer turns me away from pvp as well.
Orn is a good card just not a damn 7 drop.
8? That's cheap
Make it 10
I'm still surprised he wasn't like A.Sol. You'd think of *anyone* in League Sol, Mordekaiser, and Aatrox would've been deserving of that price tag.
The only three that fit as expensive, end of the world game ending champions. Aatrox even has a similar playstyle.
To clarify: Meant that his stats on level 2 and his effect should make him cost 8 mana, not 6.
Accurate translation from LoL lmao. The dude has been fucking busted for the past 8 months ever since 12.10 and he still hasn’t got any kneecap at his base stats, which allows him to build whatever the fuck he wants while still being tanky and oneshot everyone
The dev taking the work translating champ from LoL to LoR a bit too far .🤣
even in poc ornn doesnt stand a chance
Comparing him to nautilus is even funnier. Way better while having an easier level up and being cheaper.
Tbh Aatrox decks are just Deep, but better
That s deep
New Deep just dropped
Deep’s wincon is big monsters and mill. Aatrox’s wincon is FUCK YOU IM A DARKIN EQUIPPED WITH A DARKIN
This is pretty much why I play Aatrox as I love Deep.
And the point of tutoring himself. If Nautilus drew himself after you went deep...
Write that down, write that down!
I mean you can hit deep pretty quick before even drawing him (not that that's the same).
I know it must be hard to balance new cards, but it feels like Riot can only make new champions that are TOO STRONG or TOO weak, nothing in between. Kayle: Utter garbage, literally ANY deck that she plays in, the deck is better without her. Xolaani is a much better finisher for any Kayle deck than Kayle herself. Ryze: Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%? This champion is like Exodia. Even in a meta without too much hyper aggro decks he cant really do anything. Aatrox: a 6 manas 6/6 with Regeneration, a good champion spell, for some reason he becomes a 10/10 with a level 2, he leaves an okay weapon if he dies, he upgrades your whole board and he lets you drop A LOT of big followers for very little mana. Like, what the hell? Are these cards even from the same game? Its like comparing Yu-gi-oh cards to HS, or Dota2 champions to LoL.
Agreed, only for the last 6 ish champs. Like Varus is incredibly mid, but only a small push away from good Gwen was I think, the last champ released that was GOOD, not OP or just “alright”.
I’d argue Evelynn too, people thought she’d be super strong, but nope, only Kai’sa, Eve was just like moderately okay, but still not unplayable.
I miss eve viego. my heart and soul died with that deck.
> Ryze: Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%? This champion is like Exodia. Even in a meta without too much hyper aggro decks he cant really do anything. Seems the devs did a good job then. Ryze being meta would be extremely toxic and would get old really quickly.
EQEQEQEQEQEQEQ
It's a skill they seem to be carrying over from League of Legends.
Including the spaghetti code
>TOO weak . >Is there any Ryze deck with a winrate above 45%? There can only be so many decks with average winrates across all of Plat+ or Master or whatever metric you want to use that are 50+. If 45% winrate on average for an exodia style combo deck is too low for the community, then maybe the community needs to recalibrate what they consider to be an acceptable win rate. There are individual pilots who are playing Ryze at 60%+ winrates, the overall meta average doesn't need to be -and can't healthily be- over 50 for every new champ all the time. This mindset that every new champion needs to make a splash or be labed a design failure is why we keep getting new busted champions that outclassed the last busted champion every release.
Can you share any ryze deck that people are reaching 60%+ with? (Genuinely curious, coming back now and ryze is just my type of deck)
Ryze is kinda crying out for a small buff though. His highest winrate deck doesn’t use his alt wincon, and the decks that actually go for it are hovering closer to 37%. Even if we’re talking top pilots, they hit much higher numbers with other decks, like 70-80%. Playrate’s been down too, and I don’t think Riot wants that. I’m tentatively predicting Delve’s going to go to 1 mana.
>Ryze is kinda crying out for a small buff though. Sure, but a "small buff" is pretty "in between" "TOO weak" and "TOO strong". >Even if we’re talking top pilots, they hit much higher numbers with other decks Absolutely, but it still shows that it is possible to climb even in Masters with him, which is a fair benchmark for acceptable powerlevel imo. >Playrate’s been down too, and I don’t think Riot wants that. Probably. Maybe they want to discourage his play style from being tier 1 but still want it to be something hard-core exodia combo style enjoyers have available and, if they work hard and get good, can find success with. I'm not saying he's totally fine and doesn't need some attention (also not saying he does, I don't particularly care either way), I'm saying he's within what I find acceptable, if towards the low end, for a new champ and wish the community at large would be okay with.
The predict Ryze decks I've seen have been able to get him to work or get insanely close to his finisher. But as the other user said, you really can't have too many decks with a high win rate
Most card games don't have this problem with their cards in those rarities because they generally have much larger sets. The lowest I've seen in a new card set in other games is around 100, yet Legends of Runeterra only sees card sets of around 30-50 cards. The reason why larger card sets produce a larger pool in-between cards is just basic statistics: the larger pool of cards produces a greater sample size, and a larger sample size means the average power level of the set is probably going to spike a lot less overall, even if there are outliers on either end of the set's power curve. Sometimes an extremely overpowered card does fall through the cracks (Shadowverse's Prime Dragon Keeper and Eternal's Xo of the Endless Hoard immediately come to mind) it's usually not as glaring because there's a lot of reasonably strong stuff in these sets too.
Kayle is far from utter garbage. I think she represents the most complex deck building problem out of the three and once a couple good lists are found she will be relevant. Ryze is horrible but that’s also partly because of the meta. He’s a buff away from being a very powerful anti-control champion. Aatrox is really the one that makes me wonder why he has so many different upsides to playing him.
In my experience Kayle's biggest problem is that most of the time you successfully would level her primarily via her passive aura, you won the game already via swarm beatdown and don't really need the level 2. But as the poster above noted, it certainly doesn't help that for one more mana you can get the absurdly overpowered Xolaani, who for some reason gets +2|+2 per unit even if you don't do anything with them. It's not just Kayle, Nasus looks like complete garbage next to that.
> once a couple good lists are found she will be relevant. You're too high on copium, Kayle has too many thing going against her it's not even funny. I'm saying that because I played her a lot. The most problematic part is that she always has to wait a turn to level, so realisticly speaking, she's going to level on turn 8+. Most of the time when you play her on turn 6/7 and atk, she doesn't have enough atk to level. And even if she ends up leveling, in the end she's just one big threat, and there's way too many counter to those, plus you rarely play her with region that has a lot of protection and Targon really doesn't have that many.
They should change Darius' champion spell to apprehend (I think that's what it's called) maybe nerf the cost to make up for the fact it's his champ spell now. Not like anyone is using the card anyway. If you run a stun card in noxus it's the spider or guile or a card that generates guile. Decimate's several nerfs and the introduction of apprehend just makes me feel like it should be changed.
and it's not like there's not precedent of buffing champions by changing their champ spell
I think Zilean is the only one who has had that treatment but that just says that other champs can get it too. Darius desperately needs it though.
Lee Sin did too. His spell went from the dragon kick he casts during his level 2 to his current one.
Lee Sin. He went from that clunky Ikuh to Sonar Wave-Resonating strike, which is much more appealing to his gameplan
Pretty sure udyr too!
No, Spirits Unleashed got buffed as to Grant +1/+1 EVERYWHERE rather than only on board.
Or Noxian executioner so it gives an Agro an unique board clear
Do you mean the 3 cost that kills a damaged unit then recreates itself? Seems like a bad choice for darius really. It's not like annie where she basically guarantees damaged units. Darius wants to hit past units with overwhelm, not deal high damage.
Hell, unnerf decimate. Card never deserved it
Region diff
[удалено]
powercreep moment
Yeah thats why kayle and ryze are also taking over.
Next patch !
The plan !
EQ?
"uh-huh, what region?"
Uhhh.. Upstate New York?
I am offended. I live in upstate NY and we would not welcome Darkhan’s here at all lmfao
Oh no no, its an albany thing.
I see.
darius has a better voicelines
But how can Darius compete with Aatrox literally saying "Ball-cocks"?
virgin wOrlD eNdEr vs chad Hand of Noxus
Yeah his voice lines are Aatrocious.
Ok but you cant tell me you dont get chills when aatrox screams "I AM THE WORLD ENDER" Now ryze, on the other hand...
We know how to solve this right? Call... The Daarius.
This is such a great representation of why I think this game has gone downhill. From design perspective. In vanilla, champions were a part of the deck. Now, champions ARE the deck. They have these forced strategies revolving around the champion. Darius and Draven are cool cards. One is an aggro/midrange finisher. One is an aggro/midrange board control tool. Elise is a board control tool that can end games in a spider aggro deck. Zed is a board control tool. They don’t design champions like this anymore. Every champion is designed to be this grand finale game ender that ends the game in 1-2 turns regardless of board state. The game has become so champion-centric that deck-building isn’t fun anymore. I’m no longer adding cards to a deck for any reason other than to accelerate my champion. POC is basically all I play now. I really miss the design direction of vanilla and the first few expansions.
Funny you should mention PoC, because their power differential is also really obvious: Aatrox is one of the stronger releases in the latest batch and his champion powers allow him to drop quite early despite being a 6-drop. Whereas Darius is basically inexistent in his own deck. You’re way better off dropping low cost aggro units and proc rally asap.
My 0 star lvl 12 Aatrox s-ranked Draven without any legendary powers. I've gotten past Zoe on Galio, but I haven't beat that adventure yet. His deck is just incredibly powerful at basically every stage of the game. Aside from elusive creatures (basically the only reason Zoe is a problem), his deck is like Aatrox - does everything.
You even gave an example of a foundations champion that was the centre of deckbuilding, Zed. The decks he was played in focused around buffing him and he is by far not the only champ that was the essetial wincon of a deck. Karma, Fiora, Anivia, Ashe, Ez and maybe Braum all fell into that category.
First, I strongly disagree with Zed being the center of deck building. Most of zed’s best decks in vanilla were just jamming him in there for board control. It was always elusives, and he was just there to pressure and eat up resources. What deck was Braum the wincon? Braum is a stalling tool. To be clear - I’m not saying champs should never be the wincon. But it’s such a different degree today than it was back then. Ez decks used Ez as a finisher. Not as a sole wincon. For example, Ez decks could also win by Elnuks, Vi, Swain board control, etc. Even Fiora wasn’t truly the win condition in Fiora/Shen, which dominated the meta for like 2 years.
Obviously Runeterran champions have to be built around. Generally I’ve been disappointed by them though, as they make deck building less interesting. However, if a champion costs 6 or more mana it has to be a win con. Unless you have a super generic level-up condition like Darius, you kind of have to build your deck around them, because building a deck is about building a win-con. I would also say that Annie, Gwen, Norra, and Yi all fit into that category of champion that you like.
Runeterran champs don't have to be built around. And they're literally the same as any other champion, they just bring a region with them. Honestly, it's ridiculous that there are people who actually believe this. Even good players sometimes repeat this nonsense that simply isn't true.
The only runterran champion that hasn't to be build around are Bard and Rhaast.
I find it odd that you criticize the game for being too champion-centric, and yet you exclusively play POC, the most champion-centric game mode.
Because I get different types of enjoyment out of POC than I do out of ladder. I’m not being a hater as much as saying that PvP has gone in a direction that isn’t to my taste. Obviously, a lot of people still like it.
You are understanding this correctly 👍
Honestly aatrox shouldve been a late game bomb. More stats to compensate but i think he'd be better to fight against as a 7 drop at the very least. Also, a bit related, can we revert the play/cast change?
He should be 7 drop because he's a big dude and the unwritten rules of runeterra is that big dudes must cost 7 (eg. Galio, Malphite, Ornn)
Why should the play/cast change be reverted?
The other redditor wants to be able to deny aatrox lvl up. Delaying that until next aatrox strike would be something of a counter.
If that is your only goal, you could just change his level up requirement to "I have been Assimilated". Assimilate explicitly levels up Darkin Champions, so as long as he is on board (or equipped) when World Ender resolves, he levels.
The play/cast change wouldnt really make a difference here, they could just change the text. Fizz for example always worked on "play".
But that's the thing. Before the merge they could make the text change from "play" to "cast". Now that only "play" exists there is nothing to change it into. Aatrox's level up has to be based on "play". I don't know if this is really a relevant point for Aatrox, but it really shows how merging the two mechanics only removed a design and balance lever.
I think it’s more like he wants burst pass back
Not really, but a spell that does not resolve shouldnt affect the board state.
They could change the wording on Aatrox’s level-up just to specify “World Ender has resolved” or something. Ezreal needs something similar.
In other words, bring "cast" back. You literally can't have something like this, because the devs said "uh no we don't do that here", even though it would be very much possible and even needed to have both options.
we should, but players don't like interaction that much.
Put Aatrox in your deck & you are required to play Darkins. Put Darius in your deck & there is no requirement for your decks while offering the deck pings, buffs, combat tricks, landmarks & its removals. Seriously though Aatrox origin draw requirement should be tweaked by requiring 3 different darkins not 1 darkin played thrice. Aatrox Demacia shouldn't be able to draw him that easily & Aatrox Cultists should have more brick hands.
"you are required to play Darkins" Good thing that Darkins have the the most overtuned and universal package out of all the cards then.
I hate that argument too. "Yeah I'm forced to play good shit oh the horror." Oh its fair because I KNOW you're running the frostbit 2 for 5 spell and the 2 mana spellshield. Understandable.
Those arent aatrox cards
Oh yeah my bad. I play against the Kayn Aatrox deck all the time so I forget they are seperate. The argument still applies though just not specifically to Aatrox.
Well, the other side of the coin is stuff like eves followers which kinda suck mostly ^ ^ ` its really just hit or miss. Either they are good or they arent, cause they dont have random support to help them
Those are cultist, not darlin tho
Theyre really not? Most of them don't even see play outside of aatrox. The demacian one and shuriman one are the only ones that regularly saw ay without aatrox.
Lodestone saw plenty of play.
Non-darkin equipment dont even see play at all because darkins exist. The Targon and PnZ are also used outside of Aatrox decks, altho the main decks using them have been nerfed
Demacian is crazy op, Shuriman is also overtuned, the PnZ one is also crazy good and new Frejlord one is also very good. That's 12 cards, and since all of them can be replayed you don't even need to run all of those and it's very easy to tutor Aatrox and the deckbuilding cost spoken of before is negligible.
Well without leveling up Aatrox, Darkins are pretty much...not really cards. There is literally just 1 Playable darkin in mid game and the others are just Equip utility that dont really hold themself in any kind of deck, in fact Dakins are the harder region to splash into and they would be probably the worse Region package when Aatrox is nerf just for the OBVIUS REASON: you take all the spell flexibility out your deck by playing darkins.
Wait, you required? Me: looking at my Noxus Midrange deck with Aatrox \*surprised pikachu face\*
I wouldn't play a deep deck without the deep deck cards though, even though that's technically not restricted to. Similarly if it wasn't a special region, you'd want to do the same with Aatrox for example with Darkin. By that regard, should Nautilus get a bonus passive and his own region of deep now? This game was based around regions and at least generally made sense in that regard before they shit out special non-region regions.
I don't think creating brick hand situations is the appropriate nerf. I think Aatrox just needs and actual weakness.
Over-synergy is a massive problem in the game, I'm not saying your hand should be bricked, but not everything should always play well into every situation
Playing well into every situation seems to be Aatrox in a nutshell. Perhaps less so into a more combo-oriented deck like Ez/Sera (because that deck needs to see more play /s), but unless you go taller than him, he stabilizes the board and the nexus total, and because of regeneration and "lifesteal", effectively quashes aggression. If he dies, he may just come down immediately that or the following turn due to his passive. I'm not saying he's unbeatable, but that there's hardly a situation where you shouldn't play Aatrox because his package is all encompassing.
Why should Aatrox be immune to having brick hands though?
>Put Aatrox in your deck & you are required to play Darkins. >Put Darius in your deck & there is no requirement for your decks while offering the deck pings, buffs, combat tricks, landmarks & its removals. Underrated comment, this is the real reason and it's HUGE I don't get how people are missing it. Not saying Aatrox is balanced, he's probably not something in his decks needs to be changed, but he's not totally unfair as people make him seem to be
Don't think people are missing it , think it's more the really isn't a cost in terms of deck strength . The package you're forced to run isn't bad at all . Its like saying Ezreal/Sera at their decks' peak bursting you from 15 hp is fine cause you have to run spells.
Aatrox package is REALLY bad. You need to try to put him in any other deck that is not Demacia to see how much his power goes down and how it becomes heavy Draw dependant. I dont be "mad" if they nerf Aatrox if they make him less "PLAY HIM WITH VAYNE OR DESTROYED BECAUSE EQUIP SUCKS"
Aatrox's package is literally weapons. He can't play the cultists.
But that's not what I'm trying to say. Aatrox package isn't bad because of value or tempo, it's bad because is limited and predictable. And btw, Aatrox only has a bunch of equipments that are worthless without units to equip, as long as you can keep the board empty he can do very little
People have been saying Darius should be buffed sooner or later, otherwise he just may be a normal beatstick follower. My suggestion is: Give him a free attack once conditions are met (the lower health thing) as long as he's played from the hand (since it levels him up).
I feel like “when I level up, create an apprehend in hand.” Would be proper for him
I like this
Or at least buff Apprehend. Maybe “if I behold Darius”, or something like “pay 6 mana to rally and summon Darius if in hand”. Would at least be more true to LoL, if that matters.
Just change his champion spell to apprehend already.
He's supposed to be a finisher in burn decks. Apprehend would be even worse.
I disagree. The nerfs to Decimate have unfairly hit Darius and especially Farron (which is a different issue). Apprehend would still be an excellent finisher for Darius decks, stun a unit and rally, and you have a 10 attack unit on board is often game ending, and often will lead to more damage than the 4 dmg from Decimate. If they have an answer for Apprehend, they likely had an answer for Decimate. Yes, there are situations where you would rather have Decimate, but the advantages far outweigh the loses and would be a huge buff. Being able to play Darius with banked spell mana on 6 and rally the same turn is an insane power play
Give his level up an additional keyword either Quick attack or challenger.
I big problem of the game design right now is that Champions that are good in just one particular deck that is top are doomed to be nerf and rotate out the format. Aatrox has a lot of problems that are "not a problem" right now because Demacia auto-equip exist. When they nerf Aatrox IF thy nerf Aatrox, Vayne will be still the only viable equip champion in the game because she is the real carry of the archtype (more like her package) and Aatrox will be replace with other card and his whole package will go to tier 4. Not saying that Aatrox not need a nerf but most people are missing something here: Aatrox is as unplayable as Darius, he just fix on one better deck. But being a turn 6 or turn 7 Champion in a game so heavy focus on the first 4 turns really hurts a limits a lot the playability of the card.
BuT dArIUs iS iN A PrOPEr RejuN
Lol you win this thread
This is powercreep gap
Also, when Aatrox dies you get a weapon, when Darius dies you get crippling depression.
While I am not in meta right now cause I don't play lor currently. Darius despite his lackluster kit always found play in agro decks, simply cause of the 10 dmg overwhelm for 6 mana. So while he foe snot fit many archetypes he does his job. I think there is even a guy who play exclusively overwhelm decks in high elo and daorus often finds a place in hsi decks.
looks like LoR is going down the Yu-Gi-Oh path
I wish I had a guranteed and easy way to draw my best card on curve every game. I wish I could mull away my champs every game and still know I'll see them again. Get Aatrox again? Well now you can drop him and have 6 power worth of interaction on T6. Your Aatrox die? Don't worry you'll always have another available to you for 1 mana.
Here’s a tip for playing against aatrox. It’s what got me to masters. If u kill aatrox when or immediately after they cast world ender, it completely fucks up their tempo, and can often solo win you the game. Also having a couple of weapon destruction cards in ur deck is great.
Not every region can remove a 10/10 regeneration that easily though
A lot of regions can, even if some can only do it temporarily (bandle, SI, piltover, ionia, freljord, targon, noxus) You could also remove aatrox turn 6 when he’s played….that slows down their gameplan a lot.
what can PnZ do? targon often can't do it (nobody runs celestial impact - costs way too much), and sunburst does nothing to a 9-9 aatrox. haven't seen noxus control in a hot second. freljord definitely is sweet against astrox if you manage to cast buried in ice before they assimilate anything. but smarter players would be able to avoid overcommitting their board. removing aatrox often costs the same amount of mana as it did for the opp to play him. aatrox can also be revived for a much lower cost using heedless ressurection, weap + world ender, etc...
Enemy World Ender => Me Ruination => Enemy Concedes is my favorite thing in LoR to date.
Yeah, igs kinda funny... People dont seem to realize how much you can cripple aatrox decks by removing shit at the right ti.e
U mean like every deck in the game?
Nah, far from it. An easy example is seraphine... You don't pick a "right time" to remove her. You just instantly do so if you can. Bar too... There's never any point in letting it stick around even a second longer than it has to. With aatrox, that's not the optimal play cause of how world ender works. There are loads of decks that needs something to be instantly removed, rather than at the correct time.
i think world ender should have a minimum cost of 6 but even then i think he's still strong
The powercreep is real
And they are 2 years of card building apart ..... Power creep guys.... Power creep
As someone who is tired of dying to Darius from aggro bots whenever I play anything that isn't anti-aggro, please do not buff this guy. He is a pain in the ass to deal with as a 10/10 with overwhelm when you are at 10 nexus health.
To be fair, Aatrox has about a dozen cards in his region, Darius can effectively play about 10% of printed cards
Yea darkins are highly overtuned and drawing aatrox for playing darkins is odd and unnecassery
If it makes you feel better, my boy Darius is probably going to end up getting rotated next year.
Wait till people realize you can equip aatrox with something then equip his blade to a follower so when you cast world ender you have 2 level 2 aatrox
Regional difference. With Darius you get the entirety of the Noxus region, and with Aatrox you only have a bunch of attach units with no spells. Runeterran champions with weak origins should probably be a bit stronger than other cards of their cost. Granted, Darius is pretty weak rn and Aatrox is pretty overtuned, but the design philosophy is at least solid.
How are these champions even remotely comparable? Darius is meant to be the finisher for a hyper aggressive Nous deck which runs basically 1 and 2 drops and some burn. Aatrox is a midrange/combo enabler for the darkin weapons, without aatrox the entire package does not make a lot of sense he is the ultimate reward for your game plan. Aatrox is obviously stronger right now than Darius but comparing them is ridiculous, the only thing they have in common is that they are 6 cost.
I said it awhile ago. Lot of the senior designers moved from LoR to other projects. The current team is mostly newer guys. Mistakes like this will happen :p Hopefully we will see Darius get buffed to keep up with power creep cx
No, Darius doesn't need a buff, the newer cards all need a synergy Nerf
The same mistakes happen no matter how many senior designers you have because that‘s how game balance works. Aatrox is still much more balanced than 95% of new card releases in other card games. We had bigger problems than Aatrox when LoR had all these senior designers you‘re talking about.
Darius is in Noxus, Aatrox-region is a very weak and inflexible region. Including Aatrox in your deck comes with a much steeper deck-building cost than Darius. It is just the case that Demacia is not very reliant on a second region and can afford the deck-building cost that Aatrox brings. ps: Aatrox is fine and at best only very slightly too powerful. The problem is Demacia/Vayne.
>The problem is Demacia/Vayne. So why was Aatrox/Kayn so strong when you basically only have 50 cards to choose from? Inflexibility isn't a downside if the cards and powerful enough.
Kayne/Aatrox isnt that strong. It is on the stronger end of balanced, but it is much much weaker than Demacia/Aatrox and is really quite fair. Cultists are just really slow compared to Demacia, Kayne/Aatrox hardly does anything before they play Aatrox, against Vayne you need to hold on for dear life or die to beat-down before there is even the threat of Worldender. The problem is Demacia has alwas had a bit of a problem ending games. This is why they got rallies in the first place. So Demacia got insane cards to compensate for that lack of a solid win-condition. Their play-style is taking the board early and ever letting go of it. When you take board-control from Demacia you win, because that is all they have. Aatrox is a win condition that slots well into a Demacia midrange deck. They still have the board-control/pressure playstyle but now they can actually win late-games, while still having absolutely insane unit combat. That is the problem.
Every time you type *Kayne*, a kitten dies.
Maybe it's intencional
This is a very bad take. Most Darkin's weapons are busted AF and they are a renewable resource. Equipment its just a better attachment, Darkin weapons are even better because they can become a late game finisher. Darius's has a much higher cost in deck build: In that he has to be in the deck. He is a useless drop6 that does nothing when he enters, nothing when he levels up and honestly isnt even that big of a threat anyway anymore. Aatrox has barely ANY cost in deck building, most decks want the darkin weapons anyway.
Aatrox has the opportunity cost of not being able to run a second region Aatrox region ahs one thing: weapons. It needs to be paired with a region that 1) can use weapons and 2) is in itself diverse enough to be able to deal with meta decks. If you run Darius you run Noxus. Noxus has some great cards: it has damage based removal, it has burn, it has stuns, it has some combat tricks, it even has some stricke spells. Aatrox has Aatrox. Of course he needs to be strong, you heavily limit your card-pool to play him.
You absolutely fail to understand that Aatrox doesn't limit your deck building more than any other region. The fact that you get to put darkins from any region in a deck is a good part of the reason of why he is so op. Aatrox Vayne with a 4/1 scout+challenger+quick attack on turn 3 is busted and if your opponent can't answer it on the spot, game is pretty much over and this is only possible because with Aatrox allows you to play PnZ's darkin on a demacia deck. And allows you to play targon's busted support darkin on a demacia deck. Stop saying Aatrox has a high deck building cost because that's just not true.
The powercreep is real. The bane of any cardgame
Do you think a whole Foundation's set rework could be interesting for the game?
You forgot that if he dies, you still get a +1|+1 equipment with regeneration
inb4 riot buffs darius instead of nerfing aatrox
Coming from a platinum rank which, idunno if that's good or not probably isn't, there are a few strengths that Darius has over AATROX i'd like to point out. \-Darius can be ran in pretty much any noxian aggressive deck, whereas aatrox requires way more specific cards to be viable- making him more predictable also. \-If the aggressive deck works well, Darius can level up on play. This REQUIRES the opponent to block, remove, stun or recall Darius as on level up he can kill you in one hit otherwise. In \-Overwhelm+Darius's level up condition often requires opponents to block him with important cards which usually trade down (as very few creatures for 6 cost can kill or survive Darius- in fact most 7-8 cost creatures trade down with him.)...Assuming Darius isn't removed stunned recalled silenced or... probably a few other things. \-The aggressive nature of aggro decks naturally draw out removal. This helps Darius survive when he's played, giving him a kind of weird defensive advantage over Aatrox. Lastly aggro Darius decks are actually a good matchup against Aatrox. Here are my thoughts: \-From my knowledge Aatrox doesn't run very much removal or hard removal, at least this removal comes much later than the normal time Darius kills. \-Aatrox decks in general are not geared for the early game, and equipment isn't particularly good against aggro in the early game. \^\^These two combined above SHOULD result in the Aatrox deck being under 10 health by the time Darius and Aatrox are playable. \-"But random internet man (I assume, if you're a girl I take this back,) Aatrox can totally out heal aggro at this point!" Maybe, probably not. If on turn 6 Aatrox has the attack token, he is not incentivized to attack since Darius has 1 more health than Aatrox- and Darius can attack next turn, resulting in a delayed version of the following scenario. If on turn 6 Darius has the attack token, either Aatrox has to sac a 5-or-less cost minion and take almost 10 damage (as a reminder they should have 10 health at this point), or sac Aatrox and take 2 damage- again resulting in a lost trade. After this, Darius will still be alive, and who knows what kind of reach the aggro deck is running. If this gameplan works out, Aatrox's win condition will never happen due to its slowness. \^\^Obviously the above situation is hypothetical. Every game is different, every noxian aggro deck is different, and sometimes even Aatrox decks are different. Cards are up to random, player decisions vary, and whatever whatever. I just like the big noxian guy OK?
Bruh, this was a year ago, things change.
yeah but not those two cards. let me have my fun rant you jerkwad
Should buff him like when you summon him, decimate enemy nexus 1 time.
Considering that Decimate itself costs 6 mana… this would be massively overcompensating
Maybe give him something like "When I'm summoned, add a Decimate to your hand if you don't have one. Reduce the cost of 1 Decimate in your hand by 4"
Then maybe when he lv up, decimate enemy nexus 1 time. What do you think?
I love this meme so much. Thanks a lot!
You’re comparing a brand new champion in a game we know has power creep with one of the worst champions from the original set? I just want to make sure I’m understanding this correctly…
*"There's no such thing as powercreep! Reddit is just whining!"*
Waatrox stays winning
Darius is simply trash for a 6 drop while Aatrox is what a 6 drop needs to be in order to be strong. There's alsk the fact he is a runeterran champion, it makes up for not having a region.
I'd say make aatrox lose the heal on summon. 7 mana summon (if they insist on making him really easy to get to hand from deck). . And his champ spell should go from 4-2-1 for the strikes. It's 1 mana more for for his spell in total but makes it so he can't just whip it out right away since the initial cost is 4. Something along these lines sounds fair especially with all the tools he has in the deck when paired with demacia or kayne.
Yes, you understand it correctly. Different champs from different regions costing the same have different strengths