Which one was harder to explain without using the champions' specific mechanics?

Because my take is that seraphine was just a glorified unit that only empowered the pnz card pool, and samira, varus and ezreal all completely warped their respective decks.

Actually, here's an exercise:

Describe Samira Varus without explaining what Samira or Varus does. Then describe Ezreal Seraphine BC the same way. Then Samira Seraphine.

Which decks had the most overlap? Which champion warped each deck the most? Did any other cards come up?

Jax Ornn wasn't totally oriented around Jax and Ornn, but they warped the entire deck's structure around them.

Annie Jhin asked you to set up combos and plan ahead so jhin can wipe the board and/or end the game.

Norra needs no introduction with her portal nightmare

Janna... made stuff cost less?

Samira decks, with the exception of samira Leona, were difinitively driven by samira. Aatrox was almost always played on 6, warped the entire game state when he hit the board and created world ender.

Victor uhh... gets a new keyword every now and then?

I suppose ahri kennen was mostly relevant as an ahri deck, but this kind of mentality mostly just applied to said milk-flavored ice cream pnz and demacia piles. Gwen Katarina and Teemo Cait were thoroughly champ-driven, but karma sett, seraphine Victor and nilah Janna were near-indiscernable.

the first part was sarcasm, wasn't it

If anything, riftbound is thriving because it's a riot games collector's wet dream in a breeding ground for late stage capitalism, mixed with a little bit of gambling.

LoR had literally none of these elements in a world where just having good art made you average, and so it died.

Idk if kaisa is the deck you want to be using here as an example, the deck is built from the ground up to support her.

Azir irelia I agree about, morde I'm 50/50 on, and there was absolutely a problem with pnz/ionia milk-flavored ice cream control piles, but I think that wasn't the majority.

Well, not exactly. I love fab, and I love high floor high ceiling decks so much. I'm just crashing out a bit and wanted some low-effort idiot deck to play casually for a couple days to clear my head, but that deck doesn't really exist the way it does in other games.

Yeah, not enough focus on the champions is why mtg failed too.

And by this I mean continue my trajectory of personal growth, not that I'm perfect.

i’m ruined

95% writing some 16 page incomprehensible manic trainwreck about the hearthstone meta during The Grand Tournament, citing Reynad at one point and mathematically analyzing how op piloted shredder was.

We're still in touch, and when I asked her about it years later, she kinda dodged the question lol