In LOR when you toss cards from your deck, you can’t discard champions, so it can be seen as an upside.
Then you have a lot of strong effects that triggers only if your deck is almost empty.
And finally, there is a cards that puts back all the tossed cards that costed 4 or more.
HS “no deck lock” has only 2 pay off cards: 1 mana 6/6 taunt (lol) and 3 mana 3/3 lifesteal deal 6 damage.
If you toss them, you are left with naruu, literally one card that can be tossed as well and doesn’t win the game in 2 turns.
Meanwhile you damage yourself with fatigue damage and die faster than the opponent.
Also, nautilus is a 7 mana 13/13 (20 is the hero’s health), that can’t be stopped by weak units (so it goes face everytime, unless you sacrifice a good stated unit).
Ticketus is a 6 mana 8/8 when you have 30 health, way weaker imo.
In HS, when Ticketus burns 1 good card it seems OP, but you can still draw other win conditions, while in LoR Maokai destroys every champion (or legendary card) in the deck.
I miss playing that deck, maybe I should play LoR again 
It seems like an OP mechanic, but it’s slow (not like the demon seed in wild) and it’s interactive (until you basically win by upgrading Maokai, which can be seen has a quest)