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Let me start by saying that I absolutely love Path of Champions. Neither the original Lab of Legends or the Saltwater Scourge were nearly as enjoyable to me. So please take the following criticism as things that I feel can be improved upon in an already fantastic mode.
- Rework Unstable Manaflow. This is a common one, but still one of the most glaring issues in my opinion. I get that Unstable Manaflow exists to stop the infinite rerolls from the old Lab of Legends modes. I also appreciate that the requirement to not get Unstable Manaflow has been pushed back to two battles, coming from three! However, the power still has the same issue at its core- it punishes players that have gotten bad early drafts or hands and lose because of that. Then, in their next run, they'll be forced into Unstable Manaflow, do their mandatory two battles, then reset that run because being down a power is pretty huge. I can't imagine this interaction was the intention of the devs. I'd think Unstable Manaflow would be way more fair to distribute if the player surrendered in their first two-three battles, rather than just lost. To get fast rerolls, you'd have to self-destruct against the first opponent of each run, which will still take up some time. Not everyone is willing to waste a good two to four minutes to reroll immediately- I certainly wouldn't. This of course assumes there's a system in place that can track whether you lost proper or surrendered.
- Rework random starting items. A glaring issue currently is that as you rank up your champion, certain cards in your deck will randomly receive a common or rare item to start with. This is great when your creatures gain something like Quick Attack, Challenger or raw statboosts! However, in some situations, these items actively hurt your deck, rather than improve it. No, I don't want my Zaunite Urchin to become a 5/4 at the cost of being a 3-mana unit. No, I don't want my Bloodbait to draw a card. No, I don't want Jayce's 6-cost spells to have a lower mana cost. And no, I don't want my Monkey Idol to start a free attack. A way to fix this would be to, at the start of your run, give the player the choice between three random common items for three random cards in their deck, and then do the same for the rare items. In this way, there's still some RNG involved, but in 90% of the cases the item will still be a benefit to your deck.
- Include an option to change a champion's starting deck. Some cards in the starter decks are inherently detriments to the deck itself. Be it Chum the Waters in Pyke being globally bad or Make It Rain in MF being useless in the Nautilus run, you wish you didn't have to start with them. On the other hand, sometimes you pick up cards in a run that work surprisingly well with the champion you're playing. For example, in my most recent Vi run, I managed to pick up a Solari Soldier that managed to put in a surprising amount of work, certainly more than Golden Crushbot could have ever done. For this reason, I'd propose the following idea. At the end of a run, give the player the ability to swap one of the cards in their starter deck with a non-champion card they picked up that run. These changes don't have to be permanent- for example, you could be forced to revert back to the original starter deck when you lose a run with that champion. Still, I think it'd make PoC runs more interesting, as it adds another layer of progression between runs.
- Either include an option to skip picking up "reinforcements" or add more cut events. This one's pretty self-explanatory. A lot of the so-called reinforcements you're forced to pick up proceed to actually dilute the quality of your deck. In my opinion, this is detrimental to the concept of PoC, as you should get stronger the farther you get in your run, not the other way around.
- Add a hard mode. I'm not going to ask to immediately add four difficulty modes or something to cater to the full PoC fanbase. Just the addition of a tougher mode than we currently have could be nice. My favorite champion to play with is Pyke, but at the point I'm at (maxed Pyke), not a single enemy in the entire PoC mode manages to even be a challenge, unless I get both an awful hand and they start their full combo immediately (Karma, anyone?). It'd be nice to be able to enjoy playing Pyke again, rather than completely curbstomping anything that dares do so much as look funny at you.
I can't stress enough that I love PoC to death. A single player mode in a card game has never been more enjoyable for me. Take these suggestions with a grain of salt too- obviously I'm not speaking for the entire community here! In the end, these are just ideas that came to mind from a random dude that enjoys the gamemode you, the devs, created. Keep up the fantastic work!
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