I've been playing since the start of open beta, which I will admit is not a hugely long time. That being said I am a competitive card game veteran and I feel I have some valid points to bring to the table.

Ionia has so many game winning cards you are forced to play around them JUST BECAUSE the opponent is playing Ionia in their deck. If you play into them, and they have them, you lose, nearly unconditionally.

Almost all these cards have absolutely zero commitment, so you can just play them suboptimally and still be in a fairly good board state.

The card's I'm reffering to are Zed, Minah Swiftfoot, Deny and Yone, Windchaser. All of these cards have absolutely zero commitment, are auto include in every single ionia deck and break the founding structure of tempo and optimal plays by their existence. We will discuss them individually, starting with Zed.

Zed

Zed is an answer-or-autowin tempo piece. If you are playing first, it's even more so. If you have zed out on turn three and attack, and the opponent doesn't have specifically Prismatic Barrier Unit on board, Mystic Shot, Thermogenic Beam, Brittle Steel 2 damage unit, Black Spear, or other very card inefficient removal, you will just win the game from Zed's tempo. If Zed eats this multi card removal, the Ionia player has still beat you on tempo as you have likely sacrificed your turn 3 proactive play as well as extra cards. You do not need an ephemeral deck or combat trick deck to include Zed, he's just far too good at what he does. If you played Inspiring Mentor turn 1 on Zed, you have an even bigger chance of winning. Zed gives far too much tempo for decks that don't play to his strengths and have zero commitment, just a 3 drop that wins games when played on curve like 70% of the time.

Minah Swiftfoot

Minah Swiftfoot is a 3 for 1 card with a 6/5 body that wins games. Control decks win through persistent board whipes and control with proactive turns and immediate attacks. Minah breaks this formula because not only do you not attack first with your units from your proactive turn, you also just get a 3 for 1 with a big body on the same turn. A zero commitment unit that will almost every time turn the tide of the game for free. No matter what deck you play against with this, you will turn the game so far in your favor it's almost impossible to lose.

Against Zoo decks, you recall 3 cards and attack. They block and you get a free trade, or they take a lot of damage. The next turn, the zoo player cannot attack from their proactive turn, so they must play their board again, giving you opportunity to play blockers or have an answer for everything they just played.

Minah gives you time to stall, a window to kill their nexus, or just a massive tempo swing. For literally no cost to your deck or commitment, just slap it in your deck and play til turn 9 and you just win on the spot. If you can make it there, but no other 9 or 10 drop is so unanimously 1 sided in how it wins games and ISN'T a champion.

Deny

As the only counterspell in the game it cannot get better than this. 3 Spell mana is basically free if you forfeit your early plays, meaning you can spend your entire pool on units and still have enough to counter and enemies spell at any given time. If spell mana did not exist, this would still be an extremely good card since it is the only counterspell and costs only 3 mana.

There is no scenario this card is bad to have. If it blocks a cheap combat trick, hey, that trade went in your favor now, and you burned an opponents card; still a tempo gain. If it blocks a big spell, even better. If they can't play their cards because you have it in hand, even better. If they can't play their card just because you have 3 spell mana, that's just ridiculous.

No card that is essentially free should have this much impact on the game. Free counterspells in other games have extremely heavy drawbacks, such as having to discard cards or literally lose the game if a cost isnt paid later. It has no limitation on cost spells it can hit and theres literally no reason not to include at LEAST 2 of these cards in every single Ionia deck. This card existing makes any non-burst spell card in a matchup against them completely useless, as even if you manage to burn it with a less-priority spell its still a tempo win for them.

Yone, Windchaser

Yone falls under the exact same principals as Minah, except weaker. It cheats the formula for control windows by making a card-then-attack play control wouldn't normally do suddenly become far more optimal. Couple that with Yasuo and suddenly the card becomes mega-broken.

It's a 6/6 body with a combat trick that has massive tempo gains, for no cost to your deck.

Conclusion

These cards are auto include in every single Ionia deck and their mere existence has far too much of an impact on games and plays. Their strength when they hit is game winning and their strength when they fail is still great in the Ionian players failure. There is no world when these cards are played appropriately the victim can turn it in their favor unless they were already going to win anyway.

I'm interested in what you all have to say, as not only do I desire to play around these cards I'm also rather interested in how the competitive playerbase in this game thinks.