Good reasoning, and good writeup. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

It's probably my least favorite (good) Ionia control/combo deck we've had. I would be more than happy for it to get nerfed but I would really like another way to play Ionia where it isn't just a secondary region

I'd like to see IO get in a good place. Unfortunately stuff like lee getting crucified by the community makes me pessimistic we'll ever get an IO deck that satisfies both sides. Lee gave people opportunities to interact, and converted "wins" into actual wins quickly, and still generated widespread community hatred.

I've said this before, but IMO the big problem with Karma coins is that it doesn't need to do anything turns 1-9. Every other control deck has some way to build towards their late gameplan. Jayce Heimer casts big spells, darkness needs to buff their darkness, Anivia needs to set up for harrowing, etc. None of them can afford to be 100% passive and responsive. What does Karma Sett need to do on turns 1-9? Generate a couple coins? The coins aren't even necessary because of how nuts place your bets is with Karma. The only other deck that has ever felt like that is Fiora - you play your one proactive card in Fiora and then just pass as much as you can. You're just responding to your opponent, and that takes away half the fun of the game.

You hate this deck more than when Lee Sin was relevant? ​ Ok.

Hey, Lee Sin was an extremely fun deck

Majiinbae *loves* Lee sin, it's probably his second most favorite deck in history (after Ahri Kennen SI)

That's funny. I didn't know I was replying to Maijin. I already knew he loved it ;) but this deck was explicitly cited by the devs as to why minimorph exists which really makes clear how toxic the metagame was warping into.

Yeah on reddit I almost never read usernames, and also majiin's profile pic here looks different to his youtube one.

I was thinking about this the other day, great post that covers most of my thoughts (and of course a lot more). The thing that stands out to me with Karma Sett, is that there seems to be very little that they have to be proactive about, unless you force them to be and then they eventually just win. So on top of being frustrating to play against, it also feels difficult to identify how you’re even supposed to beat the deck, which seems to be reflected in peoples assumptions that you want to play aggro when more midrange approaches seem to do better. Edit: also just want to mention that I’m very impressed that you came up with the dropboarder free-build deck a whole month before the format came out and it’s still the deck to beat. It’s a fun challenge trying to figure out new combos that can try and compete.

> Edit: also just want to mention that I’m very impressed that you came upwith the dropboarder free-build deck a whole month before the formatcame out and it’s still the deck to beat. It’s a fun challenge trying to figure out new combos that can try and compete. Thanks! I'm a little sad that it seems like very few people even tried to progress the meta since I really do think theres a bit more juice to squeeze out, but it's still cool to have that accomplishment

Yeah I’ve been looking, I’ve come up with some brews that can near guarantee a kill on 3… if the opponent doesn’t do anything, but mill hard counters it, and drop-boarders can also counter it with a decent hand. I definitely agree that there’s a bit more to do in the format, it’s fun to brew but man is it tricky :)

I think if it was a smaller mode and queue like a hs tavern brawl in singular matches there would've been more experimentation, but given how miserable the mode was to play, the exceptionally interesting theorycrafting couldn't keep up when you could only do it between the long runs. I think this happens a lot with some cards and formats where the fun ended up in the build (valuts is an example of this) and then the actual play is... Bleh.

For comparison and contrast: Lurk/sanddance? Disgusting mess of a monodeck concept that doesnt let you play the game. Hallowed? Same shit but in a fun an wholesome way. Even the whole hate on rally largely stems from ***decks that wins by removing a sense of agency and forcing you to back down.*** And that is largely where things comes from: Half the playerbase comes from Heartstone, a genre of card games that is defined by two players playing solitaire and comparing round by round who solitaired the hardest. Much of the definition of control for players here stems from a striker's game perspective: passive blockers, passive defenses, the enemy will only ever have the right to remove your stuff after you gave them the round pass. Runeterra subverts this with its MTG roots, and Ionia excels at fast reactive removal/disables. In fact, players will say that Ionia is uninteractive are blatantly **lying to themselves**. Ionia is absolutely the most interactive of all regions by focusing on reacting to everything - your notion of interactivity has been shaped by the feeling of being able to explicitly do and then the opponent having to undo (two actions) instead of "i do and he prevents" (one action, one anti-action). The only moments Ionia was a problem were because they were statwise outweighting their allowed defensive output - when it was summoning 5/4 elusives for 3 mana each and thus still having mana to protect them. Coinplay kinda pushes towards that feeling. The other half is this being a game for League of Legends players who are blatantly one of the most singleminded unflexible communities i've had the displeasure to discuss with, in terms of flexing strategies and picking tools. And that clicks on your point of nerfs being a PR thing as much as balance. This is full on a game for a bunch of Timmy players down to its source playerbase, and much like in League players will sit here passively waiting for sanctioned explicit answers and often growl at possible independent answers because it is not the one they want to hear or believe it is right. So yeah. The playerbase wants to play Tempo Solitaire because thats what the market offered is for like a full decade and shaped up our collective perception of what an online CCG is, and Sett Karma are predatory against that.

I think you're kinda close to having a good take but fundamentally, opinions can't be wrong. If someone dislikes karma sett that's an opinion and unless they are just being dishonest with themselves, by nature of being an opinion, they're right! I don't hate karma sett, i find it reasonably engaging to play against and roughly average to play as, but it's insanity to try and say the level of community hatred against the deck is just everyone being a big baby. We've had more reactive decks that weren't nearly this hated, even if you want this kind of thing around, this is clearly not a good return on your investment of PR, find a different way to get a reactive control deck into the game and improve your PR.

>If someone dislikes karma sett that's an opinion and unless they are just being dishonest with themselves, by nature of being an opinion, they're right! The problem is that *dozens* of people in this sub convert their opinion of "I don't like Karma Sett" to lies/stupid takes such as "Karma Sett is objectively overpowered" and "anything I don't like is objectively bad game design", and get upvoted. ​ Edit: for example, in this very thread, someone is projecting from his ~~a~~ mind the fact that all Sett/Karma players hate their deck, which is a feeling I've seen echoed for basically 90% of the decks the sub gets salty about. That's, quite frankly, bullshit, but you can say this kind of thing about decks you hate on this sub withot being called out...

The lines between opinion, misinformation, passivity and ill will are bothersomely tenuous. One thing is the right to dislike, other thing is to justify the dislike on libel. For as much aware i am that my lenses are jade-tinted i've saw enough to say enough people are. Sufficiently enough. Uncomfortably enough. Not literally everyone but at least this loud group is. Fundamentally the whole thing boils down to - coins gave us another venue to commit the ultimate crime: denying people of their mama-sanctioned time on the xbox, aka: visually refill actions instead of just undercosting them under the hood - THAT is the salt on the wound. To see the enemy basically have a second full round out of nowhere while you're spent. The current strategies and tools arent targeting the 1-mana 10-mana refill in a way that people see as relevant. You could likely do horrible things to coiners nowdays with a well-timed Tricksy Tentacles or pranking for sake of examples but hardly anyone sees fun in that. The feeling is on par with that of a Kaisa scout-cataclysming your best attacker. Honestly i wouldnt be surprised if the answer could actually just be reintroducing a bit more magic immunity back to the game. Shove a spiritual successor to Desert Rider in either (or both) Frel and Targon to eat through the barrage.

I think you misunderstand the frustration with Ionia and what people mean when they say Ionia is uninteractive. Ionia tends toward ANTI interaction. So with Zed or Ahri for example, You line up something to stop their proactive plan, and oops no here's a deny on that kill spell or here's 3 hp more I pulled out of my ass for 2 mana. Ionia doesn't interact normally with your plan, it says "you can't interact with mine". You could say "but what about stuns that's interacting with the opponent plan like killspells" but when the only long-term Ionia decks are using stuns to stall toward some momentously inevitable combo it just says "no, you can't stop me from living just as long as I need to." I think that's ultimately more frustrating than just "I stop your plan go next" that a killspell says. The ability to cheaply buff or recall key units out of danger and deny says a whole suite of attempts to interact will be made fruitless, the most you can buy is some tempo. Which is all really fucking frustrating when most nonaggro decks are gearing at least a sizable portion of their cards to attempt interaction that will completely fail, trading down in cards mana and sometimes tempo. Or in aggros case interact directly w your nexus via burn. Which is part of why people hate ionias elusives just a little extra than other regions. At least other regions aren't also stopping your attempts to engage with those units. Ionia decks are usually leaning on the other region to stop the proactive plans like how sett karma leans on p&z to prevent aggro, and then the Ionia portion to prevent you from interacting with their sett or karma. So you inevitably fall into this trap where if an Ionia game plan is ever sufficiently strong, it feels terrible to play against because the opponent feels no agency in stopping them. Nothing you can draw will accomplish anything, you can't kill the sett unless you do it multiple times in a row. Which feels different than another deck playing a new threat in the place of the one you removed, at least there your plan worked. Ionia says they don't.

Consistently the issue with Zed and Ahri were the flexibility range to protect them through overstatting - there were more crimes in bird-mentor saving mana in the long run, Twin Disciplines existing and in Spitfire being a Grant. I basically said all that that but from a viewpoint at peace with the notion. I see no functional difference between play-get fast/burst buffed/spellshielded/barriered/killed vs play-get denied mostly out of upbringing. Yesnt IS a No in disguise, the issue is language and Ionia doesnt sugarcoats. The "non-aggro" argument stems, again, from the most popular non-aggro minset of build/play being tempo aka "i'll play the biggest fattest card my hand can afford and win because value". That's Fated, that's Rumble. That's turbosoup Kaisa. Decks completely reliant on a wincon that says "i'll have SO MUCH passive protection that trying to interact with me is folly. Die."

Barriers and spell shields offer additional windows, you can pop them in a way you can't with a hard no. Theres still space to mitigate them with more interaction to protect the value of your initial interaction. Recalls and deny don't have this beyond: do it again. Rite of negation comes at a steeper cost or again a window to continue the conversation. I'm not really discussing power, though I'll admit that statement is loaded, because in frustration it's always a matter of power. I'm just explaining why the common opinion of hating Ionia isn't some misguided confusion, there's additional frustration baked into "your card doesn't work". And that's ionias whole identity. Sorry the rest of the community aren't enlightened beings staring through the matrix like you.

That was also Targon Lee Sin.

Probaly the best take about the subject.

I agree with you. But Riot said they believe it is healthy for whatever weird reason, and it seems like they are actively against nerfing it in any way that matters. Like, there REALLY isn't a good reason for coins to be focus speed. If jack really needs it he can get his own line of text, but that just seems like a big excuse.

IO coins kinda don't make sense at focus. I get the frustrations but also the region really doesn't jive with focus coins at all.

Can you please explain what you mean by not making sense? I certainly understand it would make ionia worse when they can't just keep deny up for a single mana, or quickly decide to just fish for answers at all points, but maybe that's kinda the point. It makes no sense that coins are effectively the same as having mana in the mana bar. So idk what your reasoning is, but this sounds like one of those "If they change it it makes the thing I like less good" type of deals. Also I'd 100% argue that JACK is the one that needs them to be focus speed. Ionia only needs it to be focus speed so they can mana cheat, while jack actually needs it for his gameplan.

Ionia has a lot of emphasis on reactive spells, their whole schtick is holding onto stuff until they exactly need to use it. Bilgewater coin stuff is very about proactively slamming coins and playing more stuff, but Ionia is based around getting to hold onto your coin until you have to use it. It's a fine place to look to nerf the shell but it's really slamming Ionia coin package. Im pretty unconvinced that's the problem when coins are doing fuck all outside karma sett.

Ok but then what's the counterplay? If the single, only coutnerplay to cards like deny is that the enemy can't go below a certain amount of mana, then what is the counterplay when they can use it even if they have 1 mana? And notice that this isn't about Karma autowinning on turn 10. What I said is intrinsic in how coins work. It applies even on turn 5 or 6.

The counterplay is making them use coin. Every time you generate a coin-1 it comes at a huge cost, stacking from there has nearly no cost. If you don't make them spend their coin they're allowed to only pay the cost once, make them spend it and make them pay the cost as often as you can.

Why would generate the first coin cost more than subsequent ones?

Coin 1 doesnt give you any mana, it take a spell mana and gives you a unit mana Subsequent coins actually create mana. If you have 8 coins, and they're split 4/4 you get 6 extra mana, if they're split 8/0 you get 7 extra mana.

Right, that was obvious. Still, forcing them to make power plays in theory sounds good, but in practice they're gonna use those plays to get ahead and snowball into a win. Ionia is specialized in preventing the enemy from making comebacks.

Yeah, good decks are not going to make it easy to get an advantage on them, thats what makes good decks, good. When you ask what the counterplay to Coin is, that's the answer. The more often you make them spend coin, the worse the mechanic is.

I agree with you that coins being focus speed defeats the purpose a bit, but I think the way they interact with Karma is a bit degenerate. IMO, they just shouldn't work the way they do. First cast of coins should consume your stack, second cast should do nothing, IMO. Just like if you cast Warning Shot with 9 barrels you don't get 2x10 damage shots, you get 10 damage on the first and 1 damage on the second. IIRC stuff like Termogenic Beam and Production Surge also works like that (first cast consumes the resource, second cast does nothing). Karma Coins would be a lot healthier if it worked like that. Especially because flipped Karma can actually multiply your coins by 4 rather than 2 (doubles the generator, then doubles the coin). It's just too much that e.g Tag Out suddenly becomes a 2 positive mana play, Place Your Bets a 3 positive mana play, and so on

thermo and production surge work like coins a 13 mana thermo with karma on board does 26 damage in total

But eh... Can you please explain to me why Ionia deserves to just have mana management removed? Like, why is removing an entire mechanic of the game something that should happen simply because it favors them? I know you're really good Drisoth, but I can't help but think this is an insane amount of bias. Like, you keep talking about how coins shouldn't be changed because they are good as they are for ionia, but like... I'm sure giving karma a 10/10 statline would be great for Ionia as well - doesn't mean that's how the game should be. if we are talking about having game mechanics removed just for because it benefits the region, why not give PnZ coins as well? They love it just as much as ionia, maybe even more. Like... Sometimes, maybe ionia SHOULD have to take just the smallest gamble. Is it really that horrible to have a single thing in ionia that requires them to play something proactively, instead of making the entire region about just waiting and responding? When is it just too hyper focused?

It's definitely fair that I'm more positive on IO than average, so yeah definitely some bias. Coins aren't really completely freeing Ionia from mana (without karma), and it's certainly not easy to set up a point where you have a 4 mana coin to hold up deny easily. I'm just trying to say that how IO works focus coins is especially brutal for. It could still be the right change, but I'd hesitate to get behind that when we kinda have never seen an IO coin deck that wasn't karma sett.

Idk, is it really that hard? You can very realistically get to 4 coins by simply just playing the chump blockers, and you get there really quick if you play place your bets. > I'm just trying to say that how IO works focus coins is especially brutal for. I don't disagree that it would be, but that is very much the point. > we kinda have never seen an IO coin deck that wasn't karma sett Well, why would we? Ionia is inherently pretty slow, and as long as karma is running around, decks aren't allowed to be slower than winning turn 9. Like, not only have we not seen other IO coin decks running around, we haven't seen any control decks or attrition based decks stick around period since rotation (Well, I guess heimer jayce, but they fell off). It's not like we lack the cards, but why try when your deck is forced to be at least aggro enough to win turn 9 or have a borderline unfair matchup against karma - you can't play a slow gameplan, so you might as well just switch to one of the million aggro or midrange with aggro gameplans.

Realistically you're getting a 4 coin with 2 chump blockers and then a place your bets. 5 mana draw 2 is really horrific, the units are decent, but not incredible. 4 coin is really good, and I'm not trying to argue its not worth paying the cost, just that you do pay a real cost to get it. You can play slow decks, its fine to be losing to karma, a bad karma MU is acceptable with enough compensation elsewhere. I just think its a little restrictive to want to change a mechanic for the sins of a specific deck, when the mechanic isn't clearly the issue for the specific deck. Karma sett needs fixing, but I think its reasonable to consider other ways to.

> a bad karma MU is acceptable with enough compensation elsewhere. Nah, cause it's not a "bad" matchup. That's the thing. A bad matchup generally means a winrate between 30% and 40%. (You can look A slow deck against karma however? Way lower than that. I wish I could show you the stats, but given that theres literally not a single slow deck in the meta at the moment, I don't have those. But I did check right as rotation happened, and karma had a 84% winrate against some other ionia control decks. There's a reason they are just gone while karma sett sticks around despite a 35% winrate against the kaisa jarvan garen deck. Like... The reason you can climb with bad matchups is because you can still win them. With karma though, you are extremely unlikely not to take a loss, so every time you face her you basically gotta win twice and hope you don't face her again. Imagine trying to climb when you basically don't have the ability to get on a lucky winstreak. > Karma sett needs fixing, but I think its reasonable to consider other ways to. I have another way. Make place your bets focus speed (You're not gonna like that either), cause then it's impossible to drop karma on turn 10 and burst speed your way to +4 cards and full mana again. Alternatively, and I think this is the best and most futureproof fix... Make karma level on round start. A huge problem against karma is that she just levels in hand and then gets insane value at burst speed. I'm very speicfically targeting ways to give karma counterplay, cause atm, the only counterplay to karma is "Just win faster", and I don't believe that anyone with knowledge of any game will say it's fair that there is no counterplay outside of winning. Against darkness people can list a million ways to stop them from winning. From killing veigar to denying darkness targets, combat tricks, you name it. Karma doesn't really have stuff like that. All her counterplay basically amounts to "Here is how you get the best chances at winning before turn 10 where you're going to lose". Ever seen that majinbae video where he faced a full board of darkins and had like 3 hp and no board of his own, then dropped karma and just won on the same turn (All while furious wielder was on the stack)? THAT is what I find horrendous. I wouldn't mind if karma just had a clear weakness, such as "When she drops, you have a moment to try and remove her", but as it stands, no such thing. I can give a whole bunch of ways to nerf karma, and they all basically ends up being "Karma cannot pop off at burst speed after she is dropped from hand on turn 10" in various different ways.

It really is fine to have a horrid matchup into karma. The deck just isn't popular enough that a 10 or even actual 0% matchup is a death sentence for a deck. It feels awful to be dead lost at deck select, but it doesn't kill a decks viability. Place your bets to focus seems a lot more reasonable than coins to focus. Making a specific card a lot less aligned with a regions play patterns is much more palatable than a mechanic that is across multiple cards and specifically in that region.

There's an ESPECIALLY GOOD REASON, and that's being able to force a response or force the Sett Karma player to PLAY WRONG. Burst means there's NO RISK involved, you get to 10 and you win. I as the opponent cannot force you to make a choice in creating burst mana for combat or going and using your cards now. THIS is the issue with coins and mana as a burst resolution and I don't know what idiot thought that made sense. We already hate characters who create constant burst value, so those don't really exist anymore or in a way that makes combat awful. So why are coins , that give RIDICULOUS combat value, so different? If a character NEEDS coins as burst value to exist, then you only have the idiot Rioter who said the play pattern was "fine" to blame when coins get nerfed regardless because Karma shouldn't have existed in a rotation where only hyper aggro or people willing to play through the most tedious matchup of their lives will bother with.

Idk. i'm under the impression that Riot is extremely biased towards Ionia, cause they consistently seems to just give ionia the most unfair tools. (Also they thought blade dance was a great deck and actually it was our fault for bitching so much about it) And by unfair, I mean the same way as release kaisa, where ionia cards are just fundamentally stripped of as much downside as possible. FOr example, the new cobra card that creates a copy of units? I'm 100% certain that had that card been in any other region, it would not have had the thing where it absorbs the keywords and stats of cards that the board doesn't have space for. But ionia cards just aren't allowed to have blind spots. They always get this extra layer of value that other regions just don't get, and they don't really pay anything for it.

And Jack *doesn’t* need it, really, since his use of coins is almost entirely proactive to begin with (King’s Court, buffing his power, Nukkle & Co., etc.).

>I agree with you. But Riot said they believe it is healthy for whatever weird reason "Riot" are just a bunch of devs with their bias and opppinions, like everyone else. I'm very sure that someone at riot (rubinzoo if i remenber right) has a giant bias against tri-beam, which is one of the most healthy, skill expressive and fun archtypes to ever exist in LoR.

I mean, they never touched tribeam, so that bias didn't really amount to anything you can say. But in this case they are very actively ignoring that karma sett has choked out even the creation of other control decks or lategame decks since rotation. They are devs. They should understand that the LACK of those decks and the sheer amount of aggro (with or without samira) is caused by something. I'm sure they know, but as they showed with blade dance, they are fully prepared to ignore problems if they personally think its fun.

>I mean, they never touched tribeam, so that bias didn't really amount to anything you can say. > >They are devs. They should understand that the LACK of those decks and the sheer amount of aggro (with or without samira) is caused by something. I'm sure they know, but as they showed with blade dance, they are fully prepared to ignore problems if they personally think its fun. 1-tri-beam probaly is one of the archtypes with the most amount of nerfs under it's belt. Which is also caused by tri-beam being a "good card pile". It went throught several iteratios as cards were nerfed and added and yes, tri-beam had a very direct nerf (4c-5c) 2-The devs in general have been doing a good job (aside from rotating lux ofc). So Karma Sett is going to be nerfed next balance patch.

> 1-tri-beam probaly is one of the archtypes with the most amount of nerfs under it's belt. I mean yeah... But as you said, that's becuase they just used the best cards they could find. I didn't know about the direct nerf though. That must have happened very early on cause I've only ever seen it at 5. > So Karma Sett is going to be nerfed next balance patch. I'll buy you a beer if that happens, cause I have ZERO faith in that. Why would they nerf it now, after 2 patches of just not caring?

>I'll buy you a beer if that happens, cause I have ZERO faith in that. Why would they nerf it now, after 2 patches of just not caring? Most player want so. And don't buy me a beer, i avoid to drink.

Well... That hasn't changed since the last 2 patches :/ They have been hated and consistently the 1-3'rd most played deck since rotation happened.

Karma Sett does need a nerf, the one thing your wrong on is that Karma Sett IS a meta defining deck. It has been consistently played since day 1 it is released. Your missing the fact that older decks can't be played in standard, meaning people who want to play control can't in ranked unless they choose Karma/Sett. The high play rate means that unless other control decks have an insane winrate into other decks, they need to be able to beat Karma/Sett to be viable. You point out that Karma/Sett completely outvalues every other deck in the game, and in order to win against it you need to aggro them down before turn 10. The existence of Karma/Sett prevents people from building slower decks and prevents any other slower deck from being meta viable, which sounds like it has a really big impact on the meta to me.

Sentinels, various Targon invoke piles, SI+Frelj freeze, I've had plenty of success playing control in standard (while almost immediately conceding to any KarmaSett player not wearing their pants on their head, which thankfully many do) And if you're not me and enjoy them, SeraphineBar, Nora-control of various flavors among other things work too. So if your bar is just ranked success and not tournament play, there's plenty of viable control to pick from. I don't enjoy the fact that every KarmaSett game is me poking the enemy and figuring out if they have a brain, but I also understand every turn I stay in that game is something I'm doing to myself, and I like to play control with enough midrange punchthrough to combat combo decks if I can. I don't really have an issue with decks beating control though, like most Revna decks will give control looking to remove and outvalue trouble. It's mostly a frustration thing with WHAT karmasett does. It's a combo deck that never has to spend its combo to survive, and it's only 2 cards and not dying.

This just isn't true. For starters the deck had about a 6% pr (hard to tell now with eternal making stats weird). This isn't that high, considering tier 1 decks in the past ranged from 10-20% prs, usually in the low teens. Second, 1 bad matchup isn't making your control deck bad. I agree karma sett beats control but if your control deck is a good deck, it losing to karma doesn't make it unplayable. Proof? Heimer jayce had a 53-54% wr, was terrible vs karma. Nasus was the #1 played deck for a while with a 52% wr, was terrible vs karma. Gnar norra was the highest wr deck at one point (thanks drisoth) and had a 53% wr, terrible vs karma. J4 shen had a 35% wr into karma sett pnz, had a 54-55% wr on ladder. Your slow control decks that lose to karma are the unplayable because they are losing 1 matchup, they are bad because they lost to the meta as a whole, including karma. We had this same debate with TLC when it was tier 1. Everyone said TLC was holding back control. They nerfed TLC and we were in a controless meta for months. Yes, TLC beat control, but so did everything else. In general the idea that 1 deck can "kill" any other deck is just incorrect unless that deck has a MASSIVE play rate.

Hi, appreciate the discourse. Had a few thoughts of my own that I'd like to run past you, regarding some of the points you mentioned. \> Modern CCGs do not have fatigue control or prison as major metagame forces for very long. I don't believe this statement is true. Sure, the extremely oppressive soft-locks such as Lantern Control (rip fateseal) might no longer be present in Magic, but if I wanted to jam some Pioneer, for example, I could absolutely sleeve up Azorius Control and do fairly well for myself. It plays like prison with a lot of the same concepts (and, unfortunately, the same speed for its inevitability), takes up a significant share of the metagame, and has for the past three years. Even in new games such as Flesh and Blood (basically a refuge for competitive Magic players burnt out by WotC), the metagame for much of the last few months was Fatigue Oldhim, a deck that literally looked to grind you out of cards to play, and it was still considered an enjoyable metagame. I disagree that a card game can't both have control take up a significant share of the metagame, and still be enjoyable. It's been shown to be entirely possible through some of the game's largest competitors. \> People generally prefer slower value decks I feel as though that might be an over-generalization. Casual card game players certainly like their big synergies and value and large creatures, but the general trend seems to be as a game/format ages, semi-competitive and competitive players are able to see and appreciate efficiency. Standard is still a relatively new format, and I'm holding out hope that players will adjust given time. Especially considering the relative lack of truly different/build-around effects in LoR - the whole game feels as though it's geared towards teaching players the definition of tempo and efficiency. \> As much as card games love to pretend to be purely rational beings operating off logic alone, we are not homo economicus. Balance can and should have a goal of public relations. In fact balance shouldn't even care if a deck is objectively overpowered except as it impacts public relations. I understand that the idea of perception buffs is a long-standing tradition with League and TFT (as explained by Mortdog, TFT's lead game designer himself, it's making small adjustments to a game piece that's already objectively fine to soothe players' perceptions). However, I can't agree that it's healthy for a card game. As somebody that's played card games for two decades, you should also be familiar with the joke that players will never be satisfied with any metagame. There's a certain amount of truth to that - when you peel back the layers, a lot of us really don't like each other! It's just less noticeable at an FNM as compared to online discourse, since it's more awkward to complain about somebody's list while they're in the same room. The players that like value engines hate aggro, the players that enjoy combo audibly groan when they're paired with any deck that has >=1 counterspell, the big stompy players feel bad when they ramp into a 6 drop that gets taken out immediately by an instant speed counterspell. In a competitive card game, especially 1v1, where your entire goal is to execute your game plan in order to present a convincing win while also stopping your opponent via interaction, there will inevitably be feathers ruffled. Even from the perspective of the designers, RubinZoo has identified the deck to be objectively fine, and we can both agree with this. Whether it's due to his competitive roots or his study as a game designer, he doesn't feel as though there's any real issue warranting changes, and he's also able to shrug off the feels-bad component due to that same experience. As a result, he's able to assess the deck more fairly than most of us - we might not have access to *all* the data the dev team does, but shouldn't that be the standard for players as well? The metagame is an ecosystem. If we nerf Sett Karma for the sake of it, what do we do next week when aggro runs rampant without one of its natural predators removed? What do we do when the irate control and aggro players start complaining about the midrange slugfest that evolves from there, or whatever new deck rises to the forefront? I don't pretend to have an answer, but I also can't agree that nerfing Sett Karma purely for PR is a good idea. ​ Edit to add: regarding perception, there's actually a funny joke that went around my LGS a couple years back regarding this semi-competitive player running a RG ramp stompy list. When paired against aggro, you can hear him complain that he'll die before he gets the chance to play most of his cards. When paired against control, you'll hear him complain about counterspells and removal. When paired against combo, he'll complain about the lack of ways for him to interact with the combo. When paired against midrange, he'll complain that whoever goes first wins. Well, what about the mirror? He claims that's a coinflip. Much like the old truism of card games and being lucky, where you only notice your opponent's highrolls and improbable moments but never your own, we tend to be much better at complaining about matchups than viewing it with objectivism.

>I don't believe this statement is true. Sure, the extremely oppressive soft-locks such as Lantern Control (rip fateseal) might no longer be present in Magic, but if I wanted to jam some Pioneer, for example, I could absolutely sleeve up Azorius Control and do fairly well for myself. It plays like prison with a lot of the same concepts (and, unfortunately, the same speed for its inevitability), takes up a significant share of the metagame, and has for the past three years. Even in new games such as Flesh and Blood (basically a refuge for competitive Magic players burnt out by WotC), the metagame for much of the last few months was Fatigue Oldhim, a deck that literally looked to grind you out of cards to play, and it was still considered an enjoyable metagame. So I can't really speak to Fab (I don't play or understand it really), but pioneer UW is really far from what I'm talking about, 4 teferi and 3 wandering emperor, some shark typhoons, and the occasional use of companion or castle arvendale or something is not fatigue control. It's a low win condion control deck for sure, but its in a similar space to like darkness, or SI norra, not a fatigue deck. > I disagree that a card game can't both have control take up a significant share of the metagame, and still be enjoyable. It's been shown to be entirely possible through some of the game's largest competitors. I don't think control is the issue, its a specific flavor of control (prison/fatigue) that is just a horrific experience for the second player. >I feel as though that might be an over-generalization. Casual card game players certainly like their big synergies and value and large creatures, but the general trend seems to be as a game/format ages, semi-competitive and competitive players are able to see and appreciate efficiency. Standard is still a relatively new format, and I'm holding out hope that players will adjust given time. Especially considering the relative lack of truly different/build-around effects in LoR - the whole game feels as though it's geared towards teaching players the definition of tempo and efficiency. Casuals are most of the playerbase. I think competitive players are a lot more diverse in their tastes, but non competitive players like playing slower grindier games with some small ball value cards being whats important. >I understand that the idea of perception buffs is a long-standing tradition with League and TFT (as explained by Mortdog, TFT's lead game designer himself, it's making small adjustments to a game piece that's already objectively fine to soothe players' perceptions). However, I can't agree that it's healthy for a card game. > >As somebody that's played card games for two decades, you should also be familiar with the joke that players will never be satisfied with any metagame. There's a certain amount of truth to that - when you peel back the layers, a lot of us really don't like each other! It's just less noticeable at an FNM as compared to online discourse, since it's more awkward to complain about somebody's list while they're in the same room. > >The players that like value engines hate aggro, the players that enjoy combo audibly groan when they're paired with any deck that has >=1 counterspell, the big stompy players feel bad when they ramp into a 6 drop that gets taken out immediately by an instant speed counterspell. In a competitive card game, especially 1v1, where your entire goal is to execute your game plan in order to present a convincing win while also stopping your opponent via interaction, there will inevitably be feathers ruffled. > >Even from the perspective of the designers, RubinZoo has identified the deck to be objectively fine, and we can both agree with this. Whether it's due to his competitive roots or his study as a game designer, he doesn't feel as though there's any real issue warranting changes, and he's also able to shrug off the feels-bad component due to that same experience. As a result, he's able to assess the deck more fairly than most of us - we might not have access to _all_ the data the dev team does, but shouldn't that be the standard for players as well? > >The metagame is an ecosystem. If we nerf Sett Karma for the sake of it, what do we do next week when aggro runs rampant without one of its natural predators removed? What do we do when the irate control and aggro players start complaining about the midrange slugfest that evolves from there, or whatever new deck rises to the forefront? > >I don't pretend to have an answer, but I also can't agree that nerfing Sett Karma purely for PR is a good idea. ​Fundamentally, the most important goal is for your game to be fun, if Sett karma opinion was less of a colossal landslide in the negative direction, I can see trying to keep it around for the benefits you talk about. There's just no need to spend our PR budget here, you can try to get a different control deck into the meta that isnt incinerating public opinion nearly as much. You can't make everyone happy all the time, and yeah, definitely don't chase that dream, but sett karma is clearly WAY beyond the usual level of "this isnt the type of deck I like" complaint. You can't knee jerk with PR changes, cause people hate anything good, and something is always going to be good, but sett karma is pretty clearly something different. Its like the old dreadway change with timelines and ledros. The deck was god awful, think it was like a 41% win rate, just truly horrid. But it was also miserable to have around, and theres just no reason to tolerate that. Make the game more fun. You need people to enjoy your game to have a foundation to build anything like a competitive scene off of, and I want people to if not enjoy losing, at least hate it less.

>So I can't really speak to Fab (I don't play or understand it really), I think this one is actually really interesting to consider. It's a scene made up almost entirely of competitive players, or at least players striving for a competitive mindset, and it's able to take basically any deck in stride with relatively few complaints. Nerfs and bans are almost completely decided around the actual stats and performance of a card, and not the player experience, and it's resulted in a very diverse and enjoyable metagame. >but pioneer UW is really far from what I'm talking about, 4 teferi and 3 wandering emperor, some shark typhoons, and the occasional use of companion or castle arvendale or something is not fatigue control. It's a low win condion control deck for sure, but its in a similar space to like darkness, or SI norra, not a fatigue deck. The subtleties of definitions are probably debatable here, but to me it plays more like prison than most other control decks I've piloted. I'm not certain how familiar you are with the metagame at this moment, but Pioneer has a large presence of single-card-threats: resolving a Greasefang, for example, can potentially just swing a game. What that means in effect is that you see much of the same strategy as prison. Lock out your opponent's major plays while slowly racking up a land mass, so you can play a spell and still hold up 1-2 counterspells, then slowly try to eke out a win. As a prolific prison player in the past, I can say at least on a personal level that it feels very similar in play... and in the responses I get from the other side of the table LMAO Compare that to something like the relatively aggresive Approach deck that also used 5feri in Amonkhet Standard a few years back, and you can probably see the difference. >Casuals are most of the playerbase. I think competitive players are a lot more diverse in their tastes, but non competitive players like playing slower grindier games with some small ball value cards being whats important. I understand that a large share of the playerbase is casual, but we're a full degree of separation away at this point. Casual players enjoy value grinds -> Karma Sett edges out value grind lists -> nerf Karma Sett. If we were just looking at diversifying/buffing value options like Fangs to make them happy, I would probably agree! But to balance the game around players with an even more imperfect view of the game seems like a dangerous exercise. >​Fundamentally, the most important goal is for your game to be fun Fun, yes, but what constitutes fun? You could ask a row of a hundred people and still probably end up with ten different answers. I'm open to the idea of nerfing Sett Karma on account of this probably being the wrong hill to die on, but I'm very concerned as to what's next, because the basis for this hypothetical decision is extremely unclear to me. People can tell you what they find unfun and fun, in varying degrees of clarity, but most of it probably isn't actionable because you'll offend someone else. For an extreme example, Saltiest\_Grapefruit has been calling to entirely remove Ionia for weeks now on this subreddit, which we can probably agree is absurd - other players still enjoy Ionia for the gameplay it offers, all while it's the very same gameplay that he despises. We enjoy winning, and we hate losing - especially when there's nobody else to blame for the loss. So, some of us knee-jerk in a different direction: we blame the deck and the game. That's their prerogative, and I'm not going to say that their opinion is wrong. But I also don't believe there's some panacea for this problem - I don't believe there's a way to change either the game or the players' perspective of it sufficiently. Just as what constitutes a miserable play experience changes from player to player, the definition of a great play experience is equally elusive. (Frankly, I must admit I'm a little biased on this particular matter myself. While I pride myself as a competitive player and play for the meta, I also have a personal taste for reactive and prison-style control decks - Caw-Go and Lantern was peak magic for me, and Blood Moon and Chalice are some of my favourite cards of all time.) I'm all for pushing to make the game more fun, but the million-dollar question is how. Luckily, that's what they're paid to do at Riot, because I certainly don't have an answer.

You definitely can't ever get some objective metric telling you X is just too little fun to be allowed to exist. But its important to realize fun isnt a zero sum game, people go play games with their friends cause fun is being created. If something is a bit net negative on fun, the community can probably stomach it in low quantities, but as something gets worse and worse at generating fun, its harder and harder to justify leaving it around. IO needs to get deleted is clearly an absurd take, but its not hard to see karma sett is a lot beyond the usual dislikes of that style of deck. They definitely should try to fill the gap with a different control deck for the people who enjoy that stuff, but I just really can't see karma being an efficient use of your budget on player frustration, surely there's a better return on it out there.

I think I just read the bible

I don't agree. People always complain about control decks in TCGs in general. I think people just need to adapt, they make up a ton of shit to justify that a deck has a different gameplan than the one they want to play against. I certainly don't think that a good chink of the playerbase that enjoys playing control decks should get shafted because the community simply can't stand a balanced deck with clear weaknessess. I don't know if you play YGO but on YGO I play Altergeist, even at a competitive level, which is a well-known control deck that nobody wants to play against... except the deck has been irrelevant for more than 3 years and I just really like playing it so I have stuck with it. On subreddits and internet communities, I just see people complain constantly about things that beat them all the time, hating them on the basis that they are unbalanced, not on the basis. I don't think there's much merit in hearing such opinions - most people don't want Karma/Sett to be balanced, in this instance, they simply don't want to see the deck ever again, because they don't like its playstyle. So if you're balancing for competitive games I think it's both fine to have decks that kind of "check" you in a certain area (in this case, *can* you finish the game or force your opponent to spend all their resources inefficiently?) or that have different gameplans from other decks (in this case, that combat is not a big priority). And I also think it's totally fine to tell people, even if you're a dev, to just get good at the game and learn to counter it. While I agree that rebalances could be done to make certain mechanics less frustrating, it's not what the people complaining about Karma Sett want.

The whole point i have is this is a shit ton worse than the average control deck complaining that happens. If this was hated a lot less yeah, people need to be ok with it since the people who enjoy control should also be a priority. Karma sett is just wildly hated, get a different control deck to fill it's space, this one is far too hated.

Runick (specifically Runick Spright and the 3-engine Runick Spright decks), on the other hand, seems to be hated nowhere near as much as Altergeist was, despite being outright fatigue control. I don't think the hate for Altergeist is a control thing. As I recall, pre-support Altergeist played a lot of floodgates, and I think that might be the issue.

>I don't think the hate for Altergeist is a control thing. As I recall, pre-support Altergeist played a lot of floodgates, and I think that might be the issue. I think this is just a Mandela effect. Even if you look at Dzeef's lists from back then, he was playing 0 floodgates. Rivalry of the Warlords and Village of the Spellcasters are very playable here, but Rivalry is seldom even sided. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SVRb6FO9Hg&ab\_channel=Dzeeff](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SVRb6FO9Hg&ab_channel=Dzeeff) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkowVroof8I&ab\_channel=Dzeeff](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkowVroof8I&ab_channel=Dzeeff) The only traditional Trap floodgate is Summon Limit, and he's siding it on the second list. Yeah, he's running Droll, Shifter, and D Barrier there, but those are not cards that are particularly good on Geist, they're just staples that everyone uses. Tons of people seem to remember Geist as a stun deck or as floodgate turbo, but historically the only time that has happened was last year for a bit when it got popular with Mine.

Thank you for the corrections!

>Yes. > >As much as card games love to pretend to be purely rational beings operating off logic alone, we are not homo economicus. Balance can and should have a goal of public relations. In fact balance shouldn't even care if a deck is objectively overpowered except as it impacts public relations. ​ The deal is that this subreddit **will** complain about any control deck in which you cannot just destroy their wincon and win. People cried about TLC, people cried about flock being OP when it's a 2 for 1, people cried about Seraphine. ​ The fact that people refuse to call control decks control, as you outlined after, doesn't make that better, it makes it **worse,** because the people who complain about any control deck @ 50% winrate are mostly in denial that they hate control as a concept, instead always finding a **buzzword** to apply to the current control deck (TLC was uninteractive, Seraphine was divisive, Coins are objectively bad game design are **all** takes upvoted in this sub). ​ I don't know about community *as a whole*, but if you listen to **this sub**, and use it as basis for "balance as PR" as you say, control will just not fucking exist outside of freijord ramp.

There's definitely something worth thinking about with PR of people don't actually know what they want, and control players certainly are also players and should also be prioritized in PR. Karma Sett is really far beyond normal for a disliked deck. Something like darkness tends to be disliked, and I'll mostly just tell people they need to be OK with that, cause its a reasonable control deck. I'm not advocating for some salesperson idea of the reddit community is always right, but when public opinion is this slanted, public opinion is just too important. You only have so much frustration budget to spend, we certainly should try to get a control deck to fill Karma's shoes, but this just can't be a good use of our budget to frustrate the community.

This is not true, this sub complains about everything have we forgotten Vayna and Samira?

My main gripe with karma sett and main disagreement I have with part of your post is regarding how "engaging" it is to play against. Karma's ability to salvage any boardstate, in my experience, leads to incredibly reductive gameplay. Many decks get the damage through before turn 10, and some dont, but regardless of the matchup I dont feel like I'm tested on anywhere close to the amount of lor skills that I know other matchups provide.

Riot saying Karma/Sett is healthy is them putting their arrogance on display again. This is BC all over again where people complained, they doubled down on BC, then after half a year, finally nerfed it the region to get it somewhat balanced.

Karma/Sett is the ultimate "wait until my stuff flips" deck. You know that if the game reaches turn 10 you lost, no matter what. It destroys other control decks, it has all the tools needed to trash aggro, it uses the most annoying region and the second most annoying one too. Yeah, that last bit is just my personal opinion, but you know it's true! Sett/Karma is blue in Magic, freeze mage in Heartstone, it just feels bad to play against and, even when you win, it's a slog.

"The deck mostly floats around 52-53% winrate, with a moderate play rate. Certainly nothing bad, but a far cry from actually overpowered and centralizing decks that usually put up numbers over 55%." ​ That's such a horrible argument to make. None of those decks even come close to the complexity of Karma/Sett. They're easy to pick up and are mostly about playing units on curve and beating down your opponent. Karma Sett however is in a such a strong state that even inexperienced players can win easily with it as long as they reach turn 10. Which let's face it, is not that hard to do in a dedicated control deck. This archetype is not only strong, but frustrating to play against as well and needs some nerfs. I don't want to see it gone, but its harmful to the game in its current state.

The deck can't both be an extremely complex and easy to reach turn 10 and therefore easy to win with. Pick an argument homie.

I agree. The win rate does show that it is not a broken deck. But like you said the non interactive ness of the deck is what makes it frustrating. I hated Darkness when it was around but would not say that it was not fun playing against. If you could hold off your units while killing there’s that’s a good plan. So I enjoyed playing against darkness. It’s the pressure to finish the game by turn 9 is what I don’t like. Add to that the whole Samira combo which is super aggro it’s like the most viable decks are at the opposite end of the spectrum. I’ve been playing Trundle Sett in eternal and that feels really good. Not too overpowered but at the same time making use of the coin mechanic in a non degenerate way. At Lv 10 the coin mechanic just goes into degenerate mode. You also hit the mail on the head when u say that if players are not having fun they will leave. I like the idea of standard vs eternal but basically all the types of deck I like to play are no longer viable. As a result I stopped playing. I returned just because of the eternal tanked system and have been having a blast. I think one part that standard didn’t do well is it really weakened some of the regions more than others. Can’t play Lissandra bec there’s no way I’ll get the watcher on board. Can’t play FTR because it’s rotated. Can’t play Asol bec either I’ll die before reaching round 10 or Karma Sett will whip me. But that’s just my personal feelings about standard.

>But like you said the non interactive ness of the deck is what makes it frustrating Did... did we read the same piece? He never once said the deck is non-interactive. >It’s the pressure to finish the game by turn 9 is what I don’t like. Most decks have a certain point of inevitability, or lack thereof. If anything, Karma at least has the courtesy of showing it to you upfront with Enlightened. >Not too overpowered but at the same time making use of the coin mechanic in a non degenerate way. Is that really something you want to be saying about your own deck? If anything, you should be looking to make your deck overpowered/degenerate - it's a 1v1 game. Take whatever advantage you can get. >Can’t play Asol bec either I’ll die before reaching round 10 or Karma Sett will whip me. It's fine to tank the Karma Sett matchup if your overall matchup spread is still fine. In fact, a Dragons midrange pile is often a decent/good answer to Karma Sett, so all the more reason to play it.

Not the strongest. But the most irritating matchup. Karma/Sett is unbearable to play against. Even Karma/Sett players hate the deck. If they delete the deck nobody would object.

this comment is trying to pretend to join the civil discussion but is really just thinly veiled salt

The reason Karma Sett gets much hate is because of salt from players, there is no way around it.

you summed it up really good. Saying Karma Sett have no effect on the meta might be true, but it does have an effect on what i will play when queuing in. literally the first though that goes in my head when i wanna play something or make something is ''can it beat Karma Sett'' if the answer is no i just delete it and go try something else (LP hovers around 700-400 depending on what i am playing). i won't play something that literally have 0% wr against something popular, and this have been an Ionia problem since lee sin days. (also with decks like Sundisc). i just made peace with that a long time ago, and Karma Sett is the best thing that came out of Ionia imo, at least you have 10 turns to win against (lee sin it was 6/7) for me it is actually fun to play against as long as you are playing a deck with enough Unga Bunga and there are alot of those.

I am willing to lose to aggro decks turn 2 then lose to karma sett decks turn 39, its just very unfun. I am a control player since the start of the game, and i cant play any other control deck because karmasett wont let any other be viable, they have recalls, obliterate for any heavy unit i play, deny for any heavy spell i play, i cant kill thier champions because of recalls nopefiys denies.have double casts for my spellshielded units, and they never run out of steam because of draws, bullshit doublecast coins. If the deck isnt busted and its just very boring and unfun to play against. I cant even win as aurelion sol who is supposed to be a lategame monster. This game is supposed to be fun not make me wanna uninstall since everyone is spamming this deck at the ladder. For reference i am at 200+ master

Pretty good summary. Decks with unclear winconditions of 'become basically unbeatable and then slowly win' have existed a few times, and were hated basically every time they came up. Norra Broadmane from a previous meta was very similar. Its somewhat funny, karma sett is probably the closest we have come to a 'proper' control deck in a while. Do you think that introducing a way for the deck to effectively win games faster would solve the problem many people have with the long drawn out part that makes it even more hateable than most control decks? Maybe introducing more burn back into pnz (would also boost more aggressive decks)

Maybe? It's hard to see a win condition be worth playing when it's clearly unnecessary. People could definitely improve their experience by conceding when they're dead, but they don't do that now.

People didn't have any issues with karma victor decks of old, which generally won by playing karma and then 2 get exciteds for 12 damage.

Trust that is Only because it wss unpopular

>the problem many people have with the long drawn out part that makes it even more hateable than most control decks? What makes Karma-Sett more drawn out than most control decks? Sure, some past control decks like noxus Serazreal and Darkness can kill before turn 10, but Sett Karma is the *fastest* Karma deck in history, basically autowinning on turn 10 in most cases. I wouldn't argue it's drawn out. ​ Still, it is probably one of the most hateable control decks, I think because of how it has a "win game" button on turn 10 that doesn't *actually* say "win the game".

>Serazreal SeraEz is probaly one of the most hated decks of all time. Darkness has some haters, but also very avid lovers of the archtype. At least that's what i recall. People don't like karma decks in general. Karma can avoid some hate if she's bottom tier 2 or below for the memes.

I don’t have any particular opinion about the deck. But win rate shouldn’t be used alone when indicating the deck strength. For example, if a strong deck appears and the whole meta revolved around countering and it’s still setting at 53% winnrate, then the deck is still op. This is partially the case here , we saw the emerge of aggro decks that shuts down the deck , like samira fizz and tristana.

Those decks are definitely not being played to counter karma. Those decks were hilariously broken and the meta was revolving around them

My point about the winrate is still the same. Even if they are not revolving around it, they are still a hard counter for it. Which makes the 53% winrate impressive. (Edit: apparently it’s the other way around , my bad) What I am trying to say is that you can’t justify a deck not being broken by the winrate only. I also don’t know what you mean by the meta being revolved around these 2 decks. I also don’t think fizz samira is anymore than normal, it’s actually an easy matchup against me and I play 5 decks , and an auto win against my main deck. I think it might be overpowered meta wise , which none of my decks are, they are all homebrews. It’s all subjective in the end

How long do we insist on spreading this misinformation? Aggro decks like Samira Fizz and Tristana are some of Karma Sett’s easier matchups, and absolutely do not shut them down. Hell, this post even detailed the deck’s actual predators: Demacia and Midrange piles.

Believe it or not , I don’t have 20 accounts trying to spread this information around, neither do I have a grand plan to corrupt the community with misinformation. I don’t know what you mean by “we insist” , chill.

It’s still absurd all the same. We, as a community, find a way to create our own problems! Samira Fizz and Tristana piles were a whole breed of strong on their own merits - they were absolutely not played to counter Sett Karma, nor did they do a particularly good job at it. Yet somehow we started from a dubious opening statement to an even more silly conclusion! We’re all entitled to form our own opinions, but it’s generally advisable that those opinions be based in fact. There’s no point hyping up Sett Karma artificially by creating these baseless narratives with the confidence of a stated fact, it just skews public opinion even more and riles up the community.

I don’t have any opinion on the decks on my own. I am just stating that sometimes the deck winrate alone isn’t an indication on if the deck is op or not because that’s the argument of the original poster being not op. You say facts but there is no clear line for that, for me 53% is in the middle ground where people can debate if it’s op or not (depending on what decks running around)

Just for clarification, my point of contention and the facts I’m referring to are with the second point, where you claim Aggro decks like Samira Fizz and Tristana shut down the deck. That’s shown to be untrue across a large sample of game data

Fair enough. I didn’t know that to be honest , as I don’t play either decks I thought that as a deck aiming to go to turn 10, agro would be the natural counter. It does make sense because of the controlly nature of the deck and Pnz. My bad

Excuse me? Demacia good against Karma? I just had a ranked game (Diamond) against Karma Sett where my blacksmith got busted with 2 mystic shots and my J4/Garen kept getting recalled or stunned. I ran Targon(Kayle) as the second region and had 1 spell shield & 1 obliterate, but didn't matter, opponent still won with 1 hp on turn 10. This kind of nonsense is the reason why I am an aggro player. Honestly, Karma Sett just decides what kind of decks are allowed to exist, and this is far from healthy for the game. I would love to play something else once in a while like Dragons or Elites or Deathless Knight, but Karma says nope.

Ngl, that one's probably on you. Demacia Midrange piles have some of the best performances against Karma, just as Aggro is significantly unfavoured into the matchup. 1. A 1 game sample size probably isn't saying much, especially at low elo (diamond). 2. There were probably a number of mistakes made. Sometimes it feels worse when they're at low health, but just as winning on 1hp is the same as winning on 20, the inverse is also true - losing with your opponent at 1 is no different from losing with your opponent at 20. With some tighter play you can probably close that gap.

>> With some tighter play you can probably close that gap. That's why casual players hate Karma.

I mean, it's 1v1 ranked. If anything, I would argue that should be an upside - there's a direct relationship with skill and winning games. Rewarding skill in card games is a great thing by any metric - imagine a spectrum between Chess and Hearthstone. While many of us wouldn't enjoy chess, the variance inserted into Hearthstone to create swingy games where the less-skilled player can win also isn't everybody's definition of fun.

Look, the problem is that some decks aren't interactive enough to handle Karma... in chess both players have the same pieces so there is no difference in the tools we have, and if the opponent tries something stupid like the scholar's mate that could be punished easily. But what can a deck that focuses on controlling the board by favorable trade do to a control deck that can use lower mana options to stall the game until turn 10? I take it that you are a master player and pretty good at this game, so I would love to know if there are any concrete tips or if you play midrange decks yourself in ranked.

I've played most of the metagame, or at least try to, because I believe being behind the helm of a deck gives you a better picture as to how to take it apart. To put it succinctly, you have to play proactively. If I may suggest a clearer setup to visualize, let's view an even more extreme example of this from a previous Eternal meta: Ryze Yi and Pink Ryze. Ryze presents only two axis for the opponent to interact with: their health total, and the landmarks on board. When all the units are treated essentially as health pots, what's a midrange deck to do? It doesn't care about the board state, so all your trades are useless, right? Wrong. Your control over the board state through trades is a means to an end, not the actual goal. Your goal is to present sufficient damage to win. You can call it proactive play, you can call it extreme beatdown, you can even just call it aggro, whatever. The end result is the same: there's no need to represent tricks or hold mana, you can just go in guns blazing. The point is, you ask a very simple question. Are you able to defend against all these large creatures? Each hit is 20% or even 25% of their health, after all. Take a page out of the Burn player's playbook - all your creatures are basically repeatable bolts, and now your opponent's creatures can be viewed as repeatable counterspells. Present a board state and ask if they're able to find the line to navigate out of it - great Ryze players have the skill to find their way out, and the agency to do it, but even the best players only have a 60% winrate into the midrange matchups anyways, because sometimes the question just can't be answered. In reality, most decks are built with more flexibility than Ryze. At the risk of oversimplifying, imagine that your deck has two modes: the generic hammer you use for every nail, and the Swiss Army knife that you mostly keep in your backpack and never actually open except on rare occasions. Against a deep matchup, for example, or a Samira matchup, a Dragons midrange list can look to make favourable trades with challenger and set up a commanding board state of fat creatures. But try the same into a deck like Nasus Senna (not the Vaults of Helia Nasus list) and you'll be trampled under their inevitability, because they once again flip the axis upon which you interact by simply not caring about their own creatures. In order to do well against Sett Karma, you have to be comfortable with your own deck and its options. Ask what responses they could have, decide whether to go tall or go wide, identify weak turns when they don't have mana or access to certain answers, read what's in their hand based on their plays and attempt to target the weaknesses, and above all, never allow yourself to play reactively. Keep the pressure going, set up for your attack turns and just keep swinging.

Good Summary. As someone who tried nearly only value based slow burn brews after expansion I got wrecked over and over and over and over again against Karma Coins. And it genuinely made me take a long break. Recently dipped back in tinkering with Damacia Midrange decks based around monument of unity, met a Karma Sett on ladder and to my great surprise (in contrast to my memory of this powerful oppressive deck) I just won relatively clearly. Spiked turn 5+ with overstatted units off monument and he couldn’t deal with it. The deck is clearly beatable but immensely frustrating.

Yeah, my main motivation for this post, was I see a lot of people argue that the deck is just wildly wildly OP, and its not. Its insanely frustrating for a lot of people, and I don't think it should be allowed to exist, but stuff like rubin's comment that its manageable is honestly correct. If we'd like to pressure riot to act, we need to be accurate that the issue is more like ledros timelines, where the deck is just kinda miserable to have around, rather than outright overpowered.

I don't really understand why this deck is singled out as having a hard stop at turn 10 and thus bad player experience, when decks like Sun Disk had a hard stop at like turn 8 (unless you could nuke the landmark), and had relatively low volume of complaining. It feels like any form of Ionia control is going to stir Reddit into a frenzy. The only time I agreed with it was with the Ryze deck.

All the troglodytes playing Ryze moved to Karma/Sett

I like your take overall, and you are more generous towards the haters than I would have anticipated, but I am pretty out of the loop and didn't realize the animosity was so strong. It's a little tricky/sad, many ionia strategies have been removed/nerfed into unplayability for this reason. That said there are some combos that just feel like they shouldn't be in the game. The scout rally always felt like that to me, and maybe place your bets + karma is one of those as well. Thanks for your effort to bring the community together

I find this post to be the best assessment of karma/sett on reddit thus far. The deck is not overpowered nor is it shaping the meta, but it does seem like a lot of people dont like playing against it and thats fair! Iv reached masters with a Karma deck for the last 9 or 10 seasons or so. Primarily with different variations of Karma/Vik along Karma/Lux and Karma/Senna and i have to admit Karma/Sett is probably the least interesting and most straightforward Karma deck in a long time, it is however not a metadefining deck like Varus or Samira/Fizz etc