First I want to say this a is not a personal complaint. I have played since launch and have more than enough resources to craft the cards I want. I welcome rotation and how it encourages large shifts in deck building. So this is feedback on something I feel rotation could do better for other players.

On top of the benefit for the more competitive side of the scene (at least I feel it is a benefit), rotation also benefits new players since there are less cards they have to learn to fully understand the game. My assumption would also be that it also benefits new players as it reduces the size of the collectible card pool so it is easier of them to acquire the cards from currently viable decks. After seeing rotated cards in my weekly vault, I realize this is not the case here.

I remember when I first started playing, it took me only a few weeks to get most of the cards needed for a coherent Ashe deck, just through chests, then was able to use my resources to perfect it. I'd imagine now this is much more difficult now. Now if I started playing and wanted to craft a Ashe deck, not only is Freljord comprised of less Frostbite support (there is now Behold, Landmark and Stance Swap and Forge archetypes filling it), there are also 4 new regions, making it less likely that you receive Freljord cards to begin with. This could have been addressed by rotation by only giving out Standard cards in chests, but it was not.

I think it looks even worse when you put things in this perspective. New players now have two options;

1. Play in Eternal where they have to learn significantly more cards and go up against highly optimized decks
2. Play in Standard and accept 40% of the cards they acquire can't be used

I feel like Standard was a way to focus in on the game and prevent bloat, with eternal being an extra mode for players that want to go back and try crazy decks with ALL the cards (especially when Eternal doesn't have ranked). This makes perfect sense for Eternal cards to only be obtainable through crafting, as its sort of a "special mode" and not the core experience. But as far as card acquisition the game is currently straddling people between them.

Again this doesn't affect me much, but I though rotation would be huge positive for the new player experience that I feel is very important for the longevity of the game, and with how it has been implemented I now think rotation made the new player experience worse.