The Two Dominant Mechanics on this Patch

Probably related to sample. Different people saying the first opinion than those later saying the second. Maybe also different standards for "strong" and "bad" for different people.

Sort of, but my point was about the potential for separate buffs to stack a single stat, in this case damage reduction. The Commander/Boost consolidation mostly dealt with the problem of themes being able to add a decent amount of all stats to multiple champs, whereas the problem I'm seeing is more related to giving a small cadre of champs a very high single stat.

An example of what I'm talking about is something like having Ailur Concord, Macadamize, Might of Ironfist, Mark of Redemption, and Forge Hammer all available in the same bg. On their own, none of these is too much, and I don't think they're unbeatable together either--but the possibility of losing to a bg that included these just because you got into a compromising situation with the type of damage you're running leads to competitive players tending towards damage multipliers and non-targeted damage (since they can deal with the widest variety of base champs that you might cast all those buffs on).

Note that I'm not saying that superchamp-building is overpowered, but rather remarking that an increasing pool of opportunities require competitive decks to cast the widest possible net in order to consistently win. Sort of like how no one builds an all-physical damage bg any more because it's possible (not overly common, but possible) to run into things that have physical immunity.

 

not everyone knows what their talking about, even less people know what their talking about when it comes to themes they don't even play. a big part of the reason you guys take forever to get stuff right is because you guys ignore this fact. extispicer previously was a terrible rune and psychic has been very mediocre since the recostings at least. It is now a very good theme and extispicer is very strong, may be slightly more efficient than it should be but it's not currently a having much negative impact on the game.

why you guys keep listening to dmr when it comes to fw for example, is one of the greatest mysteries of poxnora.(as well as the logic behind the fw changes of the past year)

 

Probably the best wide-reaching change in the last year or so.

Right now, strong deck depend on how much damage they can get outside (at this point, in manners outside of Commander). The amount of ramp -- whether through Amp, layered flat damage boosts, high base damage, or single-champ boosters -- really defines a deck. Like, the whole sweeping set of Boost/Commander/Defender changes might have scaled things back some, except lots of decks now or still have access to other particular forms of damage boosting that matter a lot more. Plus pretty much every theme has Commander anyway, it's not a defining element.

 

Commander is still pretty rare in some factions.

 

None of this is new though; these mechanics have always been extremely dominant as long as you could find good runes that have them. Remember my SL sandmix deck from last patch Bellagion? Over half the champs had a bomb of some sort, which allowed me to deal with range hate incredibly easily. These mechanics are straight up necessary for the game, or else it becomes an arms race of who can spam more range hate.

The issue, as always, is power level and proliferation. Clucky's IS/FW deck shows the problematic nature of proliferation of these runes. You couldn't deploy range hate to deal with his dead fairies or else it would get eaten by his arcanis and terraformers. He essentially forces you into a spot where you're always outranged, and you have to be capable of making very large threat range powerturns to kill his key runes.

Talking this patch specifically, I believe Extispicer and Terraformer to be simply overpowered. Exti is just kinda weirdly formula breaking; his stats are pretty respectable at 68, he has an extremely important and strong global effect, a gap closer, and damage multiplier. That rune just does so much for its cost. Terraformer still has the problem of not paying for his damage or range stat, despite the fact that it has a ton of damage and range. I agree with MW on the issue here being his sandbag ability is not nearly sandbaggy enough.

 

Yup, agree. I'm just pointing out that their power level and proliferation have basically reached a breaking point with this patch.

 

For the indirect damage, I think it mostly has to do with not needing AP -- for instance, something with a ping-like or aura ability that uses those for their primary damage get a phantom ~+3 SPD, because they aren't spending 3 AP on attacking. Obviously it comes with tactical restrictions, about the amount of effective AP these units can generate gets pretty wild. This is also (part of) why Haunting Spirit is way better than Disturbed Spirit: Disturbed needs to relax for a whole turn before it can do anything effective, even if what it does do is incredibly powerful. This extra AP in turn bleeds into further mobility on the field. So I think the best way to understand both of these mechanics is by reducing them down to their effective influence on base resources, and AP-less damage generates a ton of that, because one point of AP per-turn is worth ~8 nora. Haunting Spirit has 4 SPD, but he has a threat range of 6 every turn, and can spend all AP on positioning.

 

This is also a good explanation for why Stormreader is so powerful. I feel like Teleport enables him to a huge degree, since with Teleport 2 he can move 7 spaces (through possible obstacles) and still deal damage at 5 range. That's a lot of invisible AP, and the flexibility of that power puts him head and shoulders above Mind Shredder.

Ed: Woops. Teleport 3 is actually also on that line. 8 spaces and then 5 range.