CATL TsimpleT ➡️ GEN.G LA Showdown

TL;DR at bottom I’m once again reminding folks that when calling for bans, the conversations should not be involving statements such as “X color is too strong and needs bans!” Riftbound decks are NOT built around colour combos but rather around Legends. When PG Master Yi was BDIF, Jax was doing nothing. When Irelia was BDIF, Yasuo was doing nothing. While Kaisa is tier 1, Ekko is.. you know Although I agree that Stellacorn needed to be banned a few sets ago, it is not enough of an argument to say “Green/Purple is a broken colour combo that abuses Stellacorn too well”, because it misses the nuance that the Irelia/Riven legend abilities themselves facilitate the abuse of Stellacorn. (Ezreal community please don’t shoot me) Stellacorn in and of itself is not a busted card. If it were, then we would see every Green deck play it. The point is that it needs synergy to be over the top, which just so happens that the Green/Purple legends themselves are providing for almost no cost. Not to mention Starspring as well being a 0e draw a card a lot of the time while also protecting both units in base. Lastly I want to talk about Astral Heron. Astral Heron is genuinely one of the coolest and well designed cards Riot have ever put out. Not too overcosted that its only viable if you cheat it out, and not too cheap that its oppressive. The oppressive interaction with Heron is with the hidden Zhonyas’ Hourglass. Astral Heron hiding any other card underneath is completely fair and fine. And I genuinely mean every single hidden. The issue with Zhonyas hidden is that there is not any reaction speed gear removal in the game. “But Berkun, we have Offer at action speed.” Its too late by then because they already got their Heron trigger and will defy/NSF your gear removal. Convenient that the important counter spells are 2e or less. So you’d need to invest a lot of resources to even get over the 7 might Heron, they flip Zhonyas and counter your gear removal, trade their Zhonyas (1p) with 7 might worth of units on your side if you didn’t use a pump and reconquer next turn clearing the rest. Or if you did use a pump to beat over, your unit dies anyway next turn to the Heron thats now safe in base. Format still would not be fixed as you also have to tune Kaisa, Kennen, and Aurora but thats a post for another day. TL;DR Legends run Riftbound, not colours. To hit Riven: Ban Starspring, ban Zhonyas and ban Stellacorn with the understanding that the Riven/Irelia legend abilities were mistakes. Heron did nothing wrong.