Hearthstone- Heroes of Warcraft (Enter Your ID!)

[popsofctown]

UTH decks are so retardedly OP and skill-irrelevant

Early game:
1) If opponent has considerable board control, use your spells, secret (not snakes), or play a taunt card
2) If he does not, use your phasing cards (tracker, novice)
3) If you have remaining mana, use hero spell

Do not play any of your beast cards unless you absolutely have to

Setting up for UTH (Do this while you have UTH in your hand or if you're about to die)
1) Play snakes and a taunt card. If your buzzard would be safe on the board (or if you don't have enough mana for it on your kill round), play it and get 3 free cards. If you're losing too badly, this is a great desparado move to draw your kill combo.
2) Next turn, play every single one of your retardedly OP 1-2 mana champs while buffing your attack with timber wolfs and shit
3) hit the champion.

Literally the only mechanics involved in the execution of this deck is a smidgeon of game knowledge and being able to click at 0.5APM on your kill combo round. The rest is luck. And you draw your combo without dying around 70% of the time.

Fortunately UTH loses to Ice Block and most forms of aggro

[popsofctown]

If you're playing Mechmage I would definitely say to craft Boom. Given the choice between entering a big schmancy tournament with Boomless Mechmage or Antonidasless mechmage I would choose the Antonidasless Mechmage, because Antonidas is good but requires you to hoard spare parts and sometimes even run a mech yeti to make him strong, while Boom just requires you to survive to turn 7 to be good.
If you're playing Tempo Mage, then you also want to get Boom, Boom is used in that deck and I'm pretty sure Antonidas isn't because it has no spare parts.

If you're playing Freeze mage and Freeze mage is really your thing then sure go ahead and get the Antonidas, because Dr. Boom isn't used there. Dr. Boom is the better cross-class investment but that's ok if he is not the thing you want to play right this second. I used to love freeze mage but man Kezan mystic is a card that makes me rage rage rage so I for sure can not play that deck right now myself.

[popsofctown]

Sabotage, yeah. BGH will probably contribute to a better winrate than Assassinate will, although Assassinate might be more fun.

[popsofctown]

Don't get all classes to level 10 on matchmaking or against bots. Challenge a friend and let them concede to you repeatedly until you get to level 10.

There's a hidden 100 gold quest for beating each bot and hard bot once each, though, I think. That's good. But definitely don't just take some of your starter cards to Play mode and play against an opponent whose MMR is based on the classes you have cards for, and keep going until you get to level 10, that sounds like the most painful thing I can imagine.

[popsofctown]

No. The resource you're acquiring isn't tradeable, and you're not gaining access to cards that are for sale for $$ in the shop. I really doubt the Terms of Service has some clever line in it that would forbid me from conceding to you 20 times trying to pull off the Lightwarden-Lightwarden-Wild Pyro- Silence-Circle-Circle turn 2 kill while you happened to have less than level 10 experience for the class you were playing.

[popsofctown]

Priest, Druid and Mage have to level up to get their AoEs. Hearthstone is balanced like a broken alpha product without AoEs. Playing Hearthstone as a finished product is not painful, playing damaged hearthstone is.

If they did a better job giving you what you really needed at first and putting the stuff you didn't need until later in the level ups, I'd agree with you. But they withheld some stuff that is pretty essential to the game (while outright giving you some stuff that is great, but not essential, like Gurubashi Beserker). I think the challenge a friend workaround is the only reason they haven't met with outcry or concern about it.

[popsofctown]

Of course, Shaman's only AoE is still at rare, which is awful. It should be made basic.

Really you should just play arena until you have a jillion cards.

[popsofctown]

I'm not EU enough to have that quite yet.

[popsofctown]

Eleven is enough for the golden rare. You'll be short one of those golden commons.

[popsofctown]

You never want to spend 100 gold for a pack. Arena is always better. If you are at least decent at Arena, you will break even. If you are not decent, you will get valuable experience that moves you towards being decent, then later being good. Basically arena is paying out more to the winners, less to the losers, but more than 150 gold per entry to the entire average arena population, and you want to get a piece of that.

Early on, it may be wise to play a deck like Zoo or midrange paladin in Casual Play mode to practice playing Hearthstone so that you can do better at the arena. (you don't want to actually play Warlock in the arena, but Warlock is a good class for practicing Arena because it uses the most neutral cards, and in arena you are given a higher proportion of neutral cards than you would normally use).

[popsofctown]

Constructed is THAT much slower. Going 7-3 takes 10 games' worth of time and nets you 100 gold. Going 30-30 takes SIX TIMES as many games for the same gold delta. If you for whatever reason find facehunter more interesting than arena, then maybe those games take a 5th as much time each and you are STILL behind. Also, if you spam facehunter hard all day you can easily hit the 100 gold per day cap. Arena has no gold per day cap.

The difference is on an order of magnitude.

[popsofctown]

Yeah, it does, but what do you do when you hit rank 5? Email blizzard to reset your ranking so you can win streak again?

Meanwhile, Arena always resets your ranking with each run so you can sustain a 70% winrate more than a few days each month.

If you play a couple days per month then yes! there's little difference. But if you only play a couple days per month you'll probably never have a collection anyway...

[popsofctown]

yeah, blargerer is chamber's alternate name.

Yes, you can progress to a collection just fine with constructed grinding, and you should definitely do that if it's more enjoyable to you.
Both methods are definitely fast enough for like, pleasurable f2p experience and all. Neither of them are a joke like f2p Solforge is.

[popsofctown]

Seeing two copies of your arena reward in your collection is a known bug. You only got one gold Far Sight.

That said, it's still tragic.

[popsofctown]

Steamwheedle Sniper is a good card in the wrong class. Fallen Hero is fine because the hero synergizes with it better.

[popsofctown]

The issue is that the Hunter hero power can never help keep you alive, so Hunter gets forced into being at least somewhat aggressive. For Hunter to be good, you would need a deck that has such a smooth curve and solid draw power that you are always spending your mana on cards and are never spending your mana on your hero power (early on that is, Steady Shot would be ok as a wincon if you could wait to use it as just a wincon I suppose). When Buzzard cost 2 and Unleash Cost 2, that was pretty close to being true, and that was the most controlly hunter there has ever been. A lot of people called it midrange but I'm not sure it would be wrong to call it a control deck. I threw Rag into it once and Rag worked fine, it was that full-bodied.

I was really hoping Lock and Load could keep your hand so full that it could make control hunter a thing but the Lock and Load strategy has a couple too many holes. That, plus the fact the deck definitely wants secrets, but Kezan Mystic wrecks control hunter even more than face hunter when it hits.

[popsofctown]

Hearthstone doesn't wait any extra time when it can't find the perfect match. It just always throws you what it has. It's especially annoying when it does that to cause high-win arena rematches.

[popsofctown]

Casual. My plan was to wait for everyone who was supposed to be much higher pass by in ranked while I chil in normals for a bit. But if you guys say low ranks =easier, k.

If you wait until the only people left in ranked are REALLY bad, you'll glide through them like butter and spike up to a higher rank than you want to be at. So it's a wash at best - due to the way win streak mechanics work, waiting too long might be worse than a wash.

I'd go for ranked now

[popsofctown]

Control priest might be better than Dragon at rankings 1-400, but I doubt it will ever be better than Dragon from Angry Chicken to Sea Giant, because there is always plenty of face hunter, and Wyrmrest Agent is so incredibly cash against Face Hunter.
Twilight Whelp too.
Both priests beat Face Hunter I'm sure but the Dragon version almost certainly slips up and loses many fewer times.
At much higher ranks that's less attractive because Face Hunter is not actually a good deck right now, it's just being overplayed due to affordability, so you probably run into it less

[popsofctown]

What would fix the deck's problems is nerfing battle rage probably.

That said, it's not really in line with how blizzard have nerfed stuff previously.

What are you talking about? Blizzard LOVES nerfing card draw. Old Battle Rage was stronger. Old Nat Pagle was stronger. Old Buzzard was stronger. 2 Mana unleash was a draw card, and was strong. Old Novice Engineer was stronger. Old Gadgetzan Auctioneer was stronger. Old Flare was stronger. It is TOTALLY in line with how Blizzard has nerfed stuff in the past.

In fact, off the top of my head, the only times I can think of cases where decks get nerfed and they don't nerf it by attacking the card draw component is when it's a Warlock deck, and they literally can't remove the draw without removing the Warlock Hero Power. Leeroy was doing incredibly work for handlock. Undertaker would be too key for Zoo even if Blizz attacked Webspinner instead of Undertaker. DoA, Argent Commander, SSC, and Dark Iron Dwarf were Warlock buddies.

I really think it's terrible, because drawing more cards generally means more choices in your hand, which means more skill. The nerf philosophy should be to nerf obvious payloads instead to create variety in what you want to do after you draw tons of cards. So instead of having "duh, shadow step shadow step leeroy", you have some Rogue decks drawing tons off of Gadgetzan and trying to build up a taunty mech board with annoyotron and stay alive, you have some Rogue decks trying to draw tons of deadly poison and healing to create a board dominance by healing result, and you have some nerfed charge options for the decks that choose a balanced OTK like shadowstep-Arcane Golem as their payload.

[popsofctown]

If you're relying on the 2 copies of a card per deck limit to make decks function differently from game to game, you are going to be disappointed further down the road when there's an alternative version of every card, letting you circumvent the spirit of the limit.

A deck that draws all 30 cards every game is going to behave just as consistently as a deck that contains 30 Lava Shock-Crackle-Lightning Bolt-Earthshock-Lava Burst, and the same goes for every other design space that is getting filled in over time.

Webspinner and Spellslinger effects are a pretty good way to present a choice without causing games to be rehashes of themselves. I only wish they buffed some of the really awful cards in the game so that those kinds of cards are less volatile.

[popsofctown]

Hungry Dragon is not a great arena card. The best case scenario is that your opponent gets Elvish Archer, it attacks your Hungry Dragon, and you have a 4 mana 5/5, which is usually just as good as a 4 mana 4/5 and often as good as a 4 mana 3/5. Then there are lots of scenarios that are worse than that, including your Webspinner example.

I would take, for example, Refreshment Vendor over it.

[popsofctown]

On curve play is the most important aspect of a minion. A good arena deck is picking the minimum number of 2's, 3's, and 4's you need to curve out consistently, and then after hitting that minimum drafting nothing but ogres because ogres have better card efficiency.

But, I mean, we can talk about how a 4 mana 5/6 with "Battlecry: Frost Shock a friendly minion" is a great card on turn 8 if you want to.

[popsofctown]

It's probably at its best in rogue, still way worse than yeti in rogue though.

[popsofctown]

You've probably lost a lot with other decks too, but it feels terrible to lose using patron warrior. It also feels terrible to win using Patron Warrior. It also feels terrible to lose against patron warrior. It also feels terrible to win against patron warrior.

I don't think the deck brings much happiness.

[popsofctown]

"A-D" is the frightening "Lost Tallstrider that gives my opponent a buff receptacle" scenario.

Yeah I agree sometimes Hungry Dragon is ok. I don't know how often opponents in the 7+ win range will willingly throw a 5/5 onto the board to hang out with a 5/6 if their hand has any other available plays. And that initiative issue is kinda the problem with Hungry Dragon. You can throw an Ogre onto the board against a guy who controls a Water Elemental, and it's reasonably likely he can't do anything about the Ogre eating the water elemental. He might do 4 damage in advance to make sure it's a trade, but he'll pay a fair price for it. Throwing down a Hungry Dragon because you see a 3/5 or 5/5 you want to eat with it is almost impossible to actually succeed with because the spawned minion can help disrupt the trading process, it can get Sarge'd and paired with Darkbomb to kill the dragon, or it can attack another needs-to-be-removed thing from your board to free up mana for answering Hungry Dragon or taunting. Or occasionally the 1 drop is just Ready for Action himself.

[popsofctown]

That seems a little excessive..

[popsofctown]

Like no one ever was?

[popsofctown]

so the meta has basically settled and I feel like the only cards that really made an impact were the 2 new dragons in Dragon Priest & Justicar Trueheart making Control Warrior even more ridiculous in control v control matchups

kinda disappointed

Um... did you accidentally think that Mysterious Challenger was a Blackrock Mountain card for a moment, or.. what?

[popsofctown]

Holy Champion is seeing play, but I think it's only good at high MMR where there's less facehunter.

[popsofctown]

It's what happens when you design a game with 2-3 nontrivial decisions per 30 minute match.

[popsofctown]

It's what happens when you design a game with 2-3 nontrivial decisions per 30 minute match.

uh what are you playing that is taking 30 minutes

I play very average game length decks like Mechmage and Secretadin. I'm just awful at making time estimates. I stand corrected here.

[popsofctown]

It's what happens when you design a game with 2-3 nontrivial decisions per 30 minute match.

uh what are you playing that is taking 30 minutes

I play very average game length decks like Mechmage and Secretadin. I'm just awful at making time estimates. I stand corrected here.

Those decks, especially mechmage, have almost no decisions and just count on cancer draws. Don't complain about lack of decision points if thats what you are playing?

If I could play control warrior and force my opponent to control warrior ditto me, I would. But if I play control Warrior or Patron warrior and may opponent shows up with Facehunter and Mechmage, then it feels like I'm playing solitaire, and then after I'm done with solitaire we both get a match result off of it. Still doesn't feel good.

[popsofctown]

Yeah playing handlock doesn't make my opponent have to make any decisions. The only kind of deck that can force your opponent's deck to become skill intensive is like, Spellslinger? But you can only run up to two Spellslingers.

I play Mechmage way more than Secretadin because Secretadin is definitely the more brainless of the two.

Arena is my favorite mode because my opponent is, in fact, forced to play decks that are at least more difficult to play than facehunter, and arguably more difficult to play optimally than a whole lot of other high tier constructed decks. Unfortunately they are not fleshing out Arena into a really good mode of play because they are monetizing it in a way that doesn't encourage them to expand it, right now.

[popsofctown]

I have played the aggro decks myself, and have made legend with facehunter. I'm gonna agree to disagree with you.

[popsofctown]

Hope you get a crazy Young Priestess ZombieChow opening!

[popsofctown]

Jaraxxus comes with emotes. Think about this.

[popsofctown]

*shiver*

[popsofctown]

I want to play in Japanese because I bet the Japanese voice actors are awesome, but the Asian languages are written in Asian so I can't read which one is Japanese. Is anyone here knowledgeable enough to tell me whether to pick the first, second, or third option?

[popsofctown]

Wait, there is no Japanese

I feel ripped off

[popsofctown]

I know. I'm awful.

[popsofctown]

Aren't they moving japan to the asia server or something? If they're officially expanding to japan i assume they'd implement japanese language, right

I think it's gonna be a separate client. Like, so they can arrange buttons in ways that makes Japanese sense, I bet, like putting you arena card choices to the left of the "start playing" button?

I noticed in korean/chinese whichever asian language that was, the arabic numerals seemed larger, which seemed like a similar though less dramatic localization choice.

[popsofctown]

That and netdecking both kinda water the game down, I think.

Netdecking can give you a perfect 100% match of what to play, though, you can see what a famous streamer was running 10 minutes ago and play it, while the Arena client gets close to telling you what AWDCTA would pick, but can't tell you exactly what he would pick, since he can't possibly get all the nuances of changing valuations into the software (although there's lots of logic built into it like, you only need N 3 drops, you only need N silences, etc, that gets as close as possible)

So Arena is still the less corrupted one.

Sadly you probably have to play a whole lot of Arena to do better than exactly obeying a guide from a player as good as AWDCTA or any other drafter who has put in hours upon hours.

[popsofctown]

I also netdeck. My point is I'm usually netdecking and battling against someone who also netdecked, and that waters down the winrate differentials, whichever us is a better deckbuilder has very, very little advantage. And then if it's a deck that's easy to play too, winrates are getting clamped towards 50% pretty hard.

Several of the precon vs. precon tavern brawls were actually more skilltesting than ranked, because ranked doesn't offer much more freedom in what you can put in your deck without being suboptimal, but the precon decks had some decision intense cards in them.

[popsofctown]

Well the other way of looking at it is that it's least dangerous to buff archetype specific cards.

[popsofctown]

If the moratorium on buffing cards is lifted I wish they'd revert some of the stupid mistaken nerfs of the past. #IHopeYouLikeMyInvention

[popsofctown]

What's a simple mage ladder deck I could play?
Assume I have infinite dust.
Cause I'm soft infinite on arena and have infinite dust.

[popsofctown]

I feel obligated to play miracle mage.

I won 100$ playing Miracle mage shortly after beta.

With 5 mana Gadgetzan Auctioneer, fun times. (it was really freeze mage with a different wincon but slightly worse but it helped me talk myself into playing a freeze mage to round out my other 2 decks)

Edit: Miracle Mage has been pretty fun so far. I hate that unless I play a lot all in one month I'm basically goldfishing though. Because rank 10-20 meta is so soft.

[popsofctown]

I played some today it's fun
I won as the explorer map girl again even tho she seems bad