What is a "hard" adventure?

With the release of the 2nd 5 star Adventure Swain, I have seen the same complain about this new adventure and Lissandra: it's not hard, it's frustrating.

So what would be considered a hard adventure that also isn't frustrating?

In my opinion, both of this adventure are pretty well designed. I do however prefer Lissandra over swain because I like her format better than Swain, but I will get into that later.

First off both of these are end-game content. What does that mean? It means if you can't consistently 70/70 monthly, this probably is out of your league. Obviously both of these things require different amount of resources invested, but the skill needed does apply to both. What skill? Isn't it all rng? The skill to manipulate the rng in your favor and understand how to use the stuff the rng gives you. I have seen people post here complaining about losing to "unfair fight" when they have decent to good set up. Maybe it's rng, but I think that if this happen consistently, it is a skill issue.

Second, you can actually lose. Shocking, I know. There is nolo shame in retrying. How do you think the people who make the guide for you beat these things? Do they just magically know every encounter before fighting them? No. You will fail, but know what to do next time so you won't fail again like that. I think the fact that you can't play these adventures blind a very good thing. Any adventure before Aurelion Sol is in my opinion, much much more lenient for the player. You get a lot of power, early nodes are basically fodder, and there are only 1-2 hard fights in the entire adventure. By nerfing the player with less powers in Lissandra or buffing the early enemies in Swain, both make the adventure a lot more enjoyable in my opinion because every fight is a challenge, instead of 1 or 2 very hard and 5 other free heal and gold nodes.

Third point. This is a criticism of the structure of these adventures.

Lissandra

I absolutely hate the Lissandra boss fight. Her power alone make a lot of champion almost unplayable. However, I still prefer her adventure more because her smaller encounter are randomized. This means you if there is a node you struggle with, you can always avoid it and never have to face it again. The hard fight is also at the end, which means even on champion not good into her, you can potentially pick up stuff along the way to help. And because the reset of the route is fixed, you can choose which difficulty you want your adventure to be: full bottom for double elite, top/mid into mind meld for an easier path with no extra power, or top into howling abyss for potentially 2 extra power (emitter+power node). Overall I really enjoy this adventure since it let you plan ahead and reward you for doing so.

Swain

Onto the new adventure. I think a lot of what I am about to say will change with updates and strategy being discovered, but I think the main point should still be the same.

First of all, for those who don't know how this adventure work. The enemy will summon 3 gate breaker at game start, instantly dealing 3 damage to your nexus. In addition to this, every encounter the enemy's key unit (the one shown on the encounter, except for Maker and Crimson Aristocrat, Manasoul Student will additionally summon ravenbloom landmark) will be summoned at game start. All enemy unit gain half their stat (rounding up) which means the 3 gate breaker will be 2/8 and their spell and skill damage is doubled. In addition many enemy cards will have extra items (I do not know what is in every deck, but someone else will have it soon probably). You are also hard coded ro start with the attack token most of the time (need testing) (I know that the AI can start with token on the Minotaur reckoner fight, but I don't know if it is because it's an elite fight, a bug, or player just have heavy odds of getting token).

I think buffing the enemy in this way is a good alternative to nerfing the player, since swain is based on an existing adventure so they didn't change too many things. The enemy key unit being summoned right away solve the problem with a lot of the AI deck not working without access to those units. Extra stats (and nexus hp) prevent jinx and other aggro champion from speed running the adventure without interferring with how they play. I think this is a way better approach. Enemy not having the token also make scenario where the AI open attack turn 1 for 20 damage and kill the players in 2 encounters less likely to happen.

However, this adventure have no difficulty curve. Every encounter is almost as hard as the next one. The only difference is what encounter you are on, and how much hp does the nexus have. Hell, Swain is probably one of the easier encounter since by the time you get to him, you will have full hp and an optimized deck. Another thing that make it a bit worse for me is every encounter is fixed. While you can plan ahead which encounter to avoid because you know where they are, there are no variation, no replayability. Every run will be almost the same. Another problem is sustain. Enemy having a full board at the start of the game is cool and I think is a nice challenge, but unavoidable nexus damage stack up really quick. This make a lot of champion just straight up not viable because they can't last long enough. I think if the unit summon wasn't gate breaker, this would be a bit more fun with different possible champions.

TLDR: I think the new content are hard and fun, but definitely can be improved. You can't ask for a harder adventure then complain that they make it too hard.