Living Legend
The following changes to Living Legend are effective from Tuesday, October 28, 2025:
- Deadwood Dirge is restricted.
- Rosetta Thorn is banned.
First, allow me to state the obvious. The run up to Living Legend’s first appearance at Worlds has not been particularly well executed. I’ll take this opportunity to apologize to our players, and assure you that we are already in the midst of adjusting our processes to avoid similar situations in the future. We have made the decision to implement these bans immediately to allow players to play more meaningful events under similar conditions to Worlds. We also apologize for the need for players to make adjustments for this coming weekend’s events on short notice.
Unfortunately, our improper scheduling of the first true season of Living Legend events has left us scrambling to deal with their outcomes. We tried desperately to find small but meaningful adjustments as early as possible, in order to provide as much preparation time as possible. However, the format remains unbalanced, with Runeblade simply being better than all other options.
It is clear that the format needs wholesale review as we consider its presence in events going forward, and we can promise that review will happen – but the current priority is to make a solid Worlds event while simultaneously trying to respect the weeks of testing that players have already put in. This is our best effort to serve both the needs of the format, and respect the very real time crunch Worlds preparation presents. We cannot take a massive swing at the format here, but we can look to tighten up some matchup spreads and just generally bring Runeblade down a peg.
Deadwood Dirge should never have been unrestricted. We made an attempt to make Living Legend Armory Deck: Viserai playable out of the box, hopefully at a bearable cost to format balance. It is clear now that the cost of Deadwood Dirge is not at all bearable. Chane is facing down three copies of Warmonger’s Diplomacy without batting an eye, and Viserai is too good at powering up his Bloodsheath Skeleta. Dirge has got to head back to the restricted list.
Currently, every meta-relevant Runeblade is happily leveraging one of the best weapons in the history of Flesh and Blood. Doing away with Rosetta Thorn offers a unique ban that weakens most of the strongest Runeblades all at the same time, but also serves up a ready-made replacement which keeps decks fairly whole. Hopefully this change respects the effort players may have already invested in learning a hero and leaves them able to adapt quickly.
While Runeblades will still surely be top-tier heroes following these changes, it is our hope that matchup spreads continue to tighten to the point where other options can find success.
These will be our final adjustments in any format before World Championship: Philadelphia.
Next Scheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement
The next Banned and Restricted Announcement will be published on Monday, December 15, 2025 (United States Time).