LoR: 5 Cards that Were Nerfed Unfairly

Throughout the years, some Runeterra cards were nerfed rather unfairly. These cards were killed entirely and buried six feet underground for very vague reasons, or even without any reason at all.

Let's explore a bit of Runeterra's history, remember some of these cards, and discuss what Riot could have done different when it was time to nerf them.

This spell previously cost 4 mana, and was responsible for carrying the Taliyah and Lissandra (Turbo Thralls) archetype on its back.

This list was considered strong in early 2022, and had an entirely different goal from other decks at the time. Even though it was quite consistent, it still struggled against the Rally meta that was consolidated at this period of time in Runeterra's history, which featured Poppy lists and Scouts.

As time went on, it was clear that this list needed a nerf, and many speculated that Promising Future would be nerfed to 5 mana. This would be quite fair, considering Turbo Thralls had several slow actions, and a reactive gameplay. Making this game style even slower makes a lot of sense.

But, unfortunately, Promising Future was nerfed to 6 mana in July 2022, completely killing this archetype.

Nowadays, we have many cards that remove landmarks, and Runeterra has evolved to the point that Promising Future, even if it was 4 mana again, would be a terrible card in the current meta.

Many players miss Promising Future, and firmly hope that this spell returns strong from rotation.

This landmark is one of the most iconic Runeterra cards. It has certainly been the star in many meme decks in Targon's golden age, and was in many meta lists as well.

Targon's Peak is a card that changes the course of a match entirely all on its own because it reduces the mana cost of a random card in each player's hand to 0. This effect wasn't that strong when this landmark was released, but there were certainly lists focused on this interaction that were absolutely terrible to face.

Basically, it was a card that focused on RNG a bit too much: you'd either benefit your opponent a lot, or play a Feel the Rush for 0 mana.

Targon's Peak was nerfed to 6 mana in September 2022, at a time this card was already a bit forgotten in the meta, considering we were in an aggressive meta. This means, practically no one was playing this card because Targon's Peak's ramp lists couldn't deal with the early game value that decks at the time had.

There are rumors that a U.S.A.-based content creator, after spending a lot of time complaining about this card on social media, was the one responsible for this nerf - and to this day, we suffer the consequences.

In any way, Targon's Peak wouldn't be a strong card nowadays, even if it cost 5 mana, due to the presence of Explorers in the game.

It is easy to say that Samira was one of the best Runeterra cards of all time. This champion was released in early 2023 to the game to change Noxus' identity entirely, and she really did.

The problem is that this champion might be one of Runeterra's nerf record breakers when it comes to her archetypes. Certainly, every list in which Samira played took some type of nerf - Fizz Samira, for instance, is one of the archetypes that took the most nerfs in all of Runeterra's history.

However, even after they killed the Fizz Samira list a couple of times (because it kept coming back to the meta in different ways), this champion was still the star in Control and Combo lists. We had the infamous Samira Akshan deck, and the most powerful Eternal list in 2023, Samira Seraphine.

In May 2023, Flair was nerfed to only target allied Samiras, which really disrupted the meta at the time and held back this champion's popularity. This nerf had already been enough to make Samira a fair card because she would only play in Akshan lists and Seraphine lists in Eternal specifically.

Still, in October 2023, Flair was nerfed to 2 mana, and this champion was also nerfed to "when I'm summoned or Strike, reduce the cost of Flair by 1", instead of 0.

This completely killed Samira, and we haven't seen this champion since. She was one of the strongest cards in the entire game, and now she is one of the worst Noxus champions.

What they did with this card was absurd.

Concurrent Timelines was becoming a small issue in mid-2022 after Weaponmasters were released to the game, and in September 2022, it was nerfed to 2 mana. Early 2023, it was rotated.

So far, so good, because Timelines (as it is called by in the community) really did deserve a nerf, and, because it was an Eternal card now, it became a problem the game would only have to deal with in the future.

Then, the first Eternal competitive season arrived, in May 2023, and Timelines was reverted to 1 mana. This was one of the worst mistakes in terms of balancing of all time, and it led to this card's entire death.

Timelines lists at the time were too strong, and you could create an entire lineup with only this card. With these decks, you'd play units with more than 8 attack points and Scout on turn 4, and it was very annoying to face this strategy. For this reason, just a few days afterward, Timelines was hotfixed, and returned to 2 mana.

However, this brief period of less than a week in which this card was the strongest in the entire game was enough to motivate many players to bring it to the Runeterra Open. The APAC server champion that season conquered their title by bringing a lineup with 3 Timelines decks.

Time went on, and, in November 2023, when this year's variety patch focused on Eternal was about to be released, one of the most unfair balance changes of all time happened: Timelines was reworked, and became one of the worst cards of all time.

Besides, this new version was released to the game extremely bugged, and to this day, we aren't sure if it is still this way or if it was 100% fixed.

Kai'Sa was the star of one of the strongest decks of all time: the infamous Mono Kai'Sa with Demacia, which was rightfully nerfed throughout 2022.

Kai’Sa was extremely forgotten for a while until Siren Song was released in June 2023. Everyone remembers this spell was one of the most toxic cards of all time in Runeterra, and needed to be nerfed because it was in almost 60% of decks played on the ranked queue.

At this time, Evelynn finally saw play after a long time because of Siren Song, and this champion was strong for a long time. Considering Evelynn and Kai'Sa are champions that were released to Runeterra to be a pair, in the patch Siren Song was nerfed to 6 mana, Kai'Sa lost her Quick Attack as well.

This was one of the most senseless nerfs of all time in Runeterra. You can even comment that Kai'Sa Garen Jarvan IV lists, which were strong before Siren Song, could come back as strong as ever. However, we were already moving towards a very different meta, even more so because a month later Janna and Nilah were released and brought extremely broken Piltover & Zaun lists to the game.

Kai'Sa is one of the weakest champions in the entire game, didn't need to be nerfed as she was, and was certainly the victim of one of the biggest and most unfair mistakes of all time.

If you read this far, comment down below if there were any unfair nerfs you think we missed!

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