u/CardTrickOTK

The elephant in the room.

The first one is obviously Aurora. Almost every deck running body is running Aurora, and the card is incredibly predatory and doesn't feel like it's at all authentic Riftbound.

I'm not even arguing it's op, you can try and rush it down, run gear removal, hard removal, but no matter what it doesn't feel like 'opponent out played me' it always will feel like 'Ah, they got their thing, can I beat it right now? No? Go next'.
That's not a healthy card, and people are saying 'ban Elder'. Elder isn't the issue. If you had to spend 12 and recycle the full amount Elder would be a strong card with windows for interaction, but Aurora enables Elder to be played in an unhealthy way where they don't play the game for multiple turns, drop Aurora and suddenly 180 the power dynamic in spite of doing almost nothing for two to three turns.

Banning Elder does not stop Aurora. Aurora lists will just move on to go find another boss monster to jam instead, or wait a set (Mind you Vendetta is supposed to be introducing opposing domain legends so get ready for MIND/BODY Aurora Lists as well).

The only way to stop Aurora, is to just not allow the card to be played, and encourage people to actually build decks around their legends not build decks around Aurora.

The other pain point.

The second thing that everyones aware of but is still incredibly frustrating is the constant erratas, and bad rulings on how cards work.

I come from games where it's very very common for 'card texts beats rules text' to be the standard. This is frankly how it should be in general, because the general rules cannot account for EVERY card, so cards occasionally explain or exempt themselves in their text to function or to make unique interactions.
This SHOULD have been the case with Stalking Wolf who literally says "EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE OTHER UNITS THERE". Instead Riot looked at the Ambush ruling and went with that, which is honestly just straight up wrong imo, and a terrible ruling.

At worst they could've cleaned up the wording by adding '-only if the ally you killed was at that battlefield' or something along those lines to ensure Wolf is being played at the spot where the poro, bird, cat, or dog was. And probably clarified that the card doesn't count as being their until after the death resolves for cards like Loyal Poro/Lonely Poro.

Instead the card has text that riot have decided is just a lie.
This needs to stop happening.

This is a multi-faceted question, so I'll bring up a few points, and if you can think of more feel free to bring them up.

1- As a new player, how easy/difficult is it to get into Riftbound?
For me I think the answer to this is it's much easier, vaults (while the shape of the box is terrible), offer a good way to bulk up your collection, and the starter decks feel like they've found the sweet spot WOTC missed for ages, having actual playable staples in your decklist, without making it feel like a competitively constructed deck you don't want to tweak.
Honestly the only thing I'd really want now is a toolkit (IE a ~$20 box, with a few bulk runes, legends, a bit of bulk cards, and a few boosters), and with the upcoming duel decks, I feel the game is doing very good for new players. The one drawback being they are doing too many erratas I'd say. Most casuals won't know about or use those erratas.

2- How healthy is the meta? Are bans holding up and what problematic cards might need to be addressed?
Personally I see a lot of people playing all sorts of stuff, it's still early, but even the 'niche' legends got played this set just because I think a lot of people like the varied playstyles we got which is a good thing.
That said I think Aurora is becoming more and more of a problem, not because it's inherently op, but more so it's just a meta warping card for any body deck, and I think this card might need to catch a ban just to encourage these decks (especially Sivir and Miss Fortune), to actually play around their legends instead of just making good stuff piles that dig for Aurora. Aurora definitely feels like a big anti-diversity card because it seems to be auto-include for a lot of decks, and I think if they take it out, we'll see a lot more exciting builds.
And if banning it causes a major problem, that points out more about the color having a problem than Aurora itself.
Beyond that right now I think it's pretty healthy, varied and exciting to build decks.

3- What would you want to see in future sets/what other problems do you see in the games ecosystem right now?
I think the biggest issue here is all champions being rare+ and legends being in the rare slot instead of a token auto include at the back of a booster. Also a lot of the rare champions often feel stronger than the epic variants.
I think of those the biggest issue is obviously the legends problem. I was trading yesterday with a dude and looking through his unleashed stuff, and guy must've had like 100 or so of the new legends. It's just wild.
Beyond that I'm curious if they'd ever do like 'uncommon champions' like how Magic has uncommon legendries now. Making it easier to get something playable for a champion you like, and also broadening the pool without necessarily forcing mediocre effects into the rare slot. A good example of this in my opinion would be Xerath-Freed, who doesn't feel like he has a home an just feels like worse Caitlyn, because unlike Cait he doesn't have innate scaling AND he has a power cost to do flat damage. It's just an uncommon in the rare slot imo.

As for what I'd want to see in future sets, I'd honestly love if they release draft boxes with a few recent sets. It'd be really fun to just pull from like the past 4-5 sets and draft, rather than only having draft boxes for pre-release. I think drafting in riftbound is probably one of my favorite experiences with the game so far, so seeing draft boxes beyond just pre-rift kits would be nice. Maybe even put an variant art on the legend and champion in those kits to make them unique without mechanically changing them.

What do you all think? How are you feeling in set 3 right now?