Hearthstone- Heroes of Warcraft (Enter Your ID!)

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I think the rotation out of context of the complete rebalance of Classic cards is pointless to speculate with.

Like shaving two mana off Guardian of Kings would change a hell of a lot about Paladin and the meta.

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I'm wondering what the rebalance of Classic cards will do to the Wild format, though. The conceit of dividing them was to have a format that wasn't affected by rotation so people who wanted to play with all the cards could do so. But if Savage Roar gets rebalanced in Classic to avoid breaking Standard, that's going to affect the Wild meta, too.

The wild format is pretty broken at the moment.

My speculation (pure speculation) is that the next set broke certain GVG/Naxx cards in half, and thus they were faced with a choice of alter their design, or finally phase out some of the old bullshit. Plus GvG represents some of the most egregious design flaws in the game. ESportal is an ongoing joke for how it sometimes enables turn 3 Cairn and sometimes drops a ship's cannon or something, there's a complex table of "when to kill the shredder" based on the horrible outcomes that might result (Mana Wraith, Doomsayer, Cho, any Taunt, etc.), it added Dr. Random... the set was a giant mess. They turned the RNG up to 11, it wasn't really enjoyable. They dialed it down to a more reasonable 5-6 and made the discover mechanic, most people loved it.

I can't help but think they'll touch up some cards for the rebalance that really need it. Druids need to lose easy access to combo, the combo is making Druid stupidly good no matter what flavor of deck you run. Mages could probably do to lose Ice Lance, otherwise Freeze Mage is the eternal deck (like 20+ cards are just classic/class cards). I would not be surprised to see Darkbomb shift into the base cards, it's badly needed and they can't just reprint Darkbomb-like cards every few sets because Warlock needs one. I'm thinking Hunter needs a lot of love, and I'm fairly certain they're not going to get out of this without just poking Shaman to see what they can do (maybe just make BGH hit 8, not 7?)

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Make Savage Roar 4 mana, make FON 7 mana, you fix Druid

Good job you killed the combo, you can't even cast it on turn 10 now without innervate.

Killing the combo is not the way imo. It's one of the only reasons Druid is good honestly.

You mean one of the only reasons Druid is good is a very specific 2 card combo that relies on drawing both pieces then waiting until you hit 9 mana to go off? First, Druid has actually gotten some good cards recently. Second, if that's true, that's a power limited on the entire class. It has to be removed.

My proposal is very simple, stick to the "soul" of savage roar.

"3 - All things you control get +2/+0 this turn, and must attack enemy minions if able"

There we go, it's now a buff, but it's a buff that makes you want to brawl. Combo is still possible on an empty board, but you have to play "fair", which is the actual Soul of the Druid (fair, powerful cards)

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That just seems horrible.

Cards like Innvervate, Fireball, Truesilver Champion, Execute, Sprint, they're part of what defines a class. It's fine for a class to have "signature" cards. I really dislike the MTG approach to color separation where one block white is some hyper aggressive weenie thing and the next it's a slow, controlling archtype, just based on what they felt like. I like how each hearthstone class has a distinctive flavor.

I don't like every fucking game you lose against a class ending the same way, with 14-28 damage worth of trees and bullshit to the face. It's why I think they should consider not evergreening Ice Lance. Frostbolt, Firebolt, Flamestrike, Blizzard, these are all iconic. Ice Lance is just a buff to Freeze Mage, and a key card in that deck.

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Why do people play tavern brawl more than they need to? All of them are kinda stupid.

From the league thread I'm aware this is a foreign concept, but there's this idea called "fun".

Yes, they're often silly and unbalanced, but if I wanted a perfectly balanced experience with minimal luck I'd just play Puerto Rico on BGA all day.

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Well, like all priest decks, you must trust in RNGesus.

Priest is so bad.

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I'm up for a tourney.

And sorry, Mustard is still the best arena card.

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Yeah it's alright in accuracy.

You could just use a tier list, given how HA has gone it's pretty much the same thing. Tier lists also let you scan them and see interesting things. Like Sap is a lot better than Shado-Pan Rider.

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Well at least you didn't Demonfuse him

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Well I'm around if you are, I think we're round 1 matches

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The rotation will come in 2017 and nail TGT and LoE. OG, Kara and "unnamed large expansion" will be the 2016 block to go with 2017.

It looks like they're probably trying to settle into either a "2 large, 1 small" or "2 large, 2 small" pattern, judging from how they've done things. I think the next rotation will drastically increase the popularity of wild. We're losing a lot of staple decks (including Reno). On the other hand obviously 2 large and 1 small expansion is enough to carry a meta, so we're not to badly off.

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It seems like they should just rotate out whatever the last set out was when the new one comes in; that seems like a better solution for making sure cards get equal time in the limelight, rather than basing it around the calendar year.

It's a difficulty Magic has faced as well, with the small sets always getting less time than the large ones.

The question is "how often do you want to make people rebuild their decks?" Since losing even a single key card can trash a deck completely.

The answer of "once a year" is a reasonable one.

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If you play absolutely passive "I won't do anything at all until I know everything about the gamestate and we're in fatigue" then yes, this is the case. But that playstyle is dead anyway, Yogg and Cthun killed it.

You should know how to check for secrets, run down the checklist. If it's not that then it's spot removal, AOE or draw. They just blew 5 mana to do nothing, that's a huge tempo swing and you can use it. Reason that Druid doesn't often run out 5 mana draw 3.

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I mean no, I don't believe that. Shaman decks do not put so little pressure on mage that mage just goes hog wild and leaps ahead. Same with other aggressive decks. Dragon Warrior isn't gonna go "oh yes, lets let the tempo mage just surge ahead". Sure you can make an aggressive deck with card draw for refill - Divine Favor Paladin was a thing for a long time and people complained about the refill then too (also Prep>Sprint or just plain Sprint) but it in and of itself is not broken. Draw 3 for 5 is a fair effect.

Nourish has two modes by the by~

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Tempo mage on a perfect or near-perfect draw out-tempos any of those (short of a Shaman going like Tunnel Trogg->Totem Golem->Coin+Tuskar into Totem Golem->Flamewreathed). I've played a lot of Face Shaman, and Tempo-Mage out-tempos me like 1/2 the time.

And you're basically saying "I don't want control to exist."

Well now you're into a sort of weird space. Because any tempo mage that can outtempo face shaman can't also win if its turn 20 against control warrior or something. I mean it doesn't matter that Cabalists tome generates cards, the issue is that you're running enough cheap shit that you can outtempo a face shaman. Or you're just discussing literal god draws, which are... kinda irrelevant. The tempo mage that wins late game versus control warrior and the tempo mage that out tempos face shaman are two different decks (unless its some Reno contraption at which point sure the god draws are excellent, but the average draws are pretty far away from that). And yes, you might not know which of the two you're facing, but that doesn't mean they're the same decklist.

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Lastly, the issue with Cabalist's Tome isn't that it's 5 mana for 3 cards, it's that you have no idea what those cards are, which makes it impossible to play around it effectively.

Yeah, the time that my opponent got Yogg, Call of the Wild and Tirion was pretty... wait, it just gets Mage Spells?

Yes, it gets 26 spells. That's mostly removal, card draw, and a handful of secrets. The secrets are all fairly easy to play around and weak (there's a reason mage typically runs Ice Block or none at all), the spot removal is... spot removal, the AOEs are pretty predictable too. You can usually figure out what they are from what your opponent does, and you can just do things like, oh, a ton of face damage while they're futzing about making random cards.

I mean maybe you honestly should be playing a different game?

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Yeah like Panzer this is basic game knowledge. You play league you play a game that requires 10x as much game knowledge. You walk up to that weird snake girl face first when she's level 6 you're gonna get wrecked. You just watch your lane and ignore where the hell that obnoxious cat man thing might be at 6 you're gonna get wrecked. You decide to trade with that creepy vampire so you both take damage you're gonna get wrecked. And like every friggin champion has a gimmick like that and they're up to what, like 135?

Here you have to remember what, Ice Block, Ice Barrier, Vaporize, Mirror Entity, Counterspell, Spellbinder and Effigy? So in order, here's your amazing things you have to remember: don't play any minion you can't deal with immediately, don't swing face with any minion you can't afford to lose, run out a test spell before you try your big spell, and if all that fails maybe go face instead of trading?

Like this honestly seems like pure salt, because its not very hard. You should know the general possibilities, if you slam down call of the wild into an unknown mage secret why are you angry that it gets counterspelled? That's all you. Honestly do people just play these games so they can get salty? Because it feels like you're working for things to be mad about. It's an anti tempo card in a tempo-based deck. The very best results from it are only as good as cards already in the mage's deck, the worst results are pretty trash (Dragon's Breath? Vaporize?). You lose temp to get cards that are probably anti-tempo. If you keep pressure on them the card is useless, so of course their deck is super fast or super grindy. Since mages can't be super grindy because they have no real ways of recovering life so get chipped to death eventually no matter what, they're super fast. So you know your win conditions, you know their win conditions, you know what you want your lines of play to be and how to put pressure on them. This seems supremely fair.

Now Yogg? That's genuine bullshit. Who the fuck knows what will happen.

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I don't run test spells in my decks, or creatures I don't mind losing. What if he has two secrets? I play a guy, it gets copied then I have to debate how many cards I have to use to deal with it? Tome is real fucking tough man.

This is not true. At the point (turn 6 at the absolute earliest) a tome secret comes out you should have an idea of how you're going to win the game. You might have a spare Kindly Grandmother or Mire Keeper or something to throw in. Even the most archaic control warrior builds have armorsmiths and stuff (in fact why would control warrior attack face there? Waste of time). The fact they played the secret usually gives you a lot of information, what was worth blowing their tempo for the turn (after blowing tempo earlier) on a completely dead card that doesn't do anything unless you flick the switch?

Like... if your deck is so sensitive to removal that every single minion is utterly crucial and nothing spawns random tokens, every spell is utterly necessary and you don't have a random Living Roots or Lightning Bolt to toss to see what happens, and you can't afford to lose anything... maybe your deck just isn't very good man. Maybe your deck just isn't very good.

I'm not saying Tempo Mage is a bad deck at all. It's a midrange deck, that is to say a deck that focuses on running the most efficient cards at every slot with extremely strong tools. All midrangish decks just exist to horribly punish "brews" that aren't optimized, since throwing non-optimized shit into the meatgrinder that is a good midrange deck is utterly painful (see: Secret Paladin, Midrange Shaman, Midrange Hunter, etc.). These decks are very linear, that is to say there's not too many opportunities for outplays, nor are there too many ways to screw up. If you simply play on curve you'll achieve maybe 70-80% of what an expert player will, while with a non-linear deck with decision points you have more opportunity to screw up. Thus they tend to get favored by mediocre players, and players who are just ass tired of low level brews (seriously, I won't even play Cthun warrior below level 10, there's so much random ass jank that can screw you hard).

All Tome is is the final nail in the coffin. At some point the midrange deck was going to leverage their superior cards and superior tempo plays into either overwhelming card advantage or just hold the board hard enough they can crush your face. At least tome is interactive and can be played around, unlike the old notification that Midrange was driving the nail into your coffin (Dr. 7)

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Well looks like Blizzard announced some nerfs.

Mostly looks fine although I think the Call of the Wild nerf was due to way too much whining. Still at 9 mana it has nice symmetry (3 animal companions for 3x the cost) so I can't complain too much. Rockbiter nerf was a bit crap, given how hard Shaman are about to be slaughtered by the rotation (Trogg and Totem Golem and Lava Burst?)

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I've got to ask, what do you enjoy about Hearthstone?

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Miracle Druid is tier 1 right now.

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Tempo deck.

Anything that runs Malygos is by definition not a Tempo deck.

Also bash cost 3

That's not the Warrior 3 damage for 2 mana card.

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Any burn spell does that too.

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I'm now 5-1 with just about the worst Warrior deck ever drafted. Is this real life?

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My favorite game mode, but I seriously thought I'd be lucky to get 2 wins with this deck.

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Yogg should just be deleted from the game. Nerfs did nothing except make it less fun when the stupid thing randomly wins the game.

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Blizzard really doesn't understand the risk-rewards ratio at all, as is apparent from the latest announcement. Their tournament mode preview is coming at the worst possible time, and in the worst possible way. $10 is way too much money for an online tournament (something they need to understand from MODO) and while the rewards are good, they're all concentrated at the high end. If I were doing it:

Make it $5/500G (this is about the "significant" price for most people without it being too significant)
Add a "door prize" like a random golden rare or greater just for entering (make it 90% rare, 9% Epic, 1% legendary). You can always cycle this out later, people will sign up just for lotto.
Make the 0 and 1 win rewards 2 packs, with 0/25 dust added on, make the 2 and 3 win rewards 3 packs with the same.
Maybe tone down the high end scaling. Or not. I mean this is definitely a case where the rich are going to get richer.

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But they won't make "t3h moniez". That's the thing. They're handing out digital objects. Their costs are all fixed. They will get more players, but more importantly they will get a LOT more rebuys at $5/500 and good rewards at the bottom. It's a lot easier to sell yourself on a $5 purchase where "at least I'm always getting two packs" than a $10 where you're getting 1. This "tournament" is just going to be a streamer thing, since even the sharks will avoid a fucking shark tank.

Honestly watching Blizzard and Esports recently it's been like "one step forward, blow your own foot off with a shotgun..."

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Yeah, the thing is they just... there's so many things wrong. Like Overwatch. They released to huge fanfare, they became the biggest game in Korea, they launched a new esports scene like they wanted... they failed to include any caster mode for cameras that's worth having so watching the fights is utterly impossible and you can't see shit. Heroes of the Storm, they release a casual MOBA then try to make it somehow compete with DOTA/League? What was the plan Blizz?

Then StarCraft they finally get all their ducks in order, they finally after two friggin expansions figure out how to monetize it, they finally fix the co-op mode and state boldly they're going forward with StarCraft 2 as an esport rather than releasing SC3/Warcraft 4/New Universe RTS... just in time for the Korean scene to finally collapse under the weight of years upon years of crippling neglect.

Now hearthstone where they release the most casual expansion imaginable where almost every card is some sort of RNG fiasco... then they debut what is clearly a prototype tournament mode, where you are miserably punished for losing, some of which most certainly will be to bad RNG (and players will ascribe even more to it, as Brode well knows - that's one of his favorite defenses of RNG). Like... why not at least offer non-joke rewards to people who "got unlucky" so they'll try again?

They fucking have no idea what they're doing.

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Well they pulled the proto tournament in favor of webspinners.

I hope they haven't been scared off it permanently, but man they have to ask what their audience is.

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Geist is a bad card, and it doesn't counter shit.

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Actually Hearthstone is just shit.