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Hearthstone Players!
- Jackwraith
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When we say we’re evaluating and playtesting every day, it’s actually happening. Not every time we speak on reddit or twitter (almost never, actually) is going to be an announcement of some grand change we’ve made. What we can do is be open about what our current thoughts are and the kinds of things we’ve been thinking about changing. When a decision does get made, community and dev will work together on drafting an official message, localization will translate that message into many different languages, then we’ll simultaneously release that message to every region.
So, what have we been thinking about? For Naga Sea Witch, I think the original tweet was taken out of context, but that’s probably my fault for splitting the message up. What I intended to say is that it takes time to understand whether a strategy is a flavor of the week, but in the case of NSW decks, that time has passed. We’ve been discussing a variety of changes for either just the cost or design. We haven’t 100% landed on one yet, but will continue this discussion when we do.
For Standard, what we generally do is look at all the high population, high win-rate, or potentially unfun cards and discuss changes to them so we’re ready when the time comes. We would not change all of these cards, but these are the cards we’ve discussed. Sunkeeper, Call to Arms, Baku Paladin Hero Power, Spiteful, Lackey, Gul’dan, Dark Pact, Librarian, Quest Rogue, and Doomguard. Again, we wouldn’t change every single one of those, but in the spirit of being open about what card changes we’ve been discussing/playtesting, those are it. I know a lot of you want to know the exact timeline for when a decision will be made, but reddit/twitter isn’t going to be the place where that is discussed, at least from individual developers. We'll continue having these discussions at work this week and the next time you hear more about a potential balance/design patch will likely be from an official channel.
He also replies to a bunch of comments in that comment thread which are possibly worth reading. I've listed a few of the noteworthy replies below.
On the Paladin Baku upgraded hero power:
The most obvious one (at least to me) is to make the minion a 2/2. I think some people would argue that's even better, but I think the minion swarm nature of the deck and how you can buff multiple targets is where most of the power lies. If odd paladin truly was a problem and that wasn't enough, we would probably make either the 2/2 minion not a silver hand recruit to get buffed by recruit cards, or change the 1/1 minions to new minions for the same reason. Those are the three changes we'd been considering if we needed to change it in some way.
On nerfing the Rogue Quest card itself:
Probably the card itself, yes. Quest Rogue matchups are so polarizing that they can leave you feeling like the outcome of the match is decided before the game begins rather than what happened during the game. It's fine if Quest Rogue is a niche metagame counter for fatigue decks, but it become an issue if it becomes a metagame counter for a huge variety of control decks. I would say this is the most debated one internally, because it's unclear if we're actually facing a current of future 'meta of the quest rogue' problem. Part of the reason to list all the things we're discussing is to gauge what you are the most important issues to address, or if there is anything unlisted that you think is worth talking about.
It looks like Barnes is in the clear (for now):
We talked about Barnes for awhile but ultimately removed it from the list of cards we were considering changing, at least for the time being. Most Wild decks have some way to deal with Barnes, and he creates some interesting archetypes that are fun for people to play. I would agree it can be frustrating to lose to a T4 Barnes, but in the end we have to weigh all the positives and negatives of a card and make a judgment call. For now, we think there are enough answers out there for Barnes strategies that it doesn't warrant making a change.
On why they opted to wait a few weeks after the latest expansion to consider changes:
We knew they were risks going in. Rather than do a balance patch on launch when so much was changing we opted to wait and see how the first few weeks went. I think the biggest unexpected deck for me personally was even-paladin. It performed so well that it drove the population of paladin up and warped the meta in such a way that cubelock was a really strong deck to play even if there were enough metagame counters for it. I actually think the dynamic of even/odd paladin is different enough that it's cool to see even if a lot of the cards in the decks are the same as pre-rotation, it's just that the cube population gets a lot higher because of it and the meta starts to feel similar to pre-witchwood. These are all the things you have to learn over the first few weeks in order to make a good decision on how to move forward. /quote
The list of cards they're discussing ranges from interesting to obvious:
Sunkeeper: Why now and why Standard? The only reason this card would be coming up on a regular basis is if the meta is so rampant with aggro (Paladin) or burst (Cubelock) or both (Quest Rogue) that it basically HAS to be played by control decks. If control decks are reaching that far, I don't think the issue is with Sunkeeper.
Call to Arms: Duh. They should have realized this during Kobolds. Every Paladin deck has to play it. Full stop. Control decks that want to play their cards carefully and not dump a handful of minions on the board play this card. The only Paladin deck that doesn't play it is the one that can't: Baku. Even fucking OTK decks play at least one copy of it.
Baku Hero Power: Can't argue it. I've seen the suggestion that the Dudes produced not be Recruits, so they can't be Leveled Up. I've also seen the suggestion that it be a 2/2, as well. The latter will slow down the deck, but won't leave it feeling lacking like the DK does, since you don't have to wait until turn 9 to have the mighty ability to produce a 2/2 with a tacked on OTK mechanic that you'll never achieve.
Spiteful: Please. It's just boring. No one likes playing against it and it feels stupid playing with it.
Lackey and Dark Pact: They're just too easy, especially because they're actually minor combo pieces but they open the door to much worse. You'd rather silence the Lackey, but you have to save those silences for the Voidlords, mostly because grinding your way through the latter is just tedious. You can do it, but I find myself often wanting to just concede and move on to another game.
Gul'dan and Doomguard: I don't really have an issue with these. The burst potential of Cube and DG is driven by other cards (aka Cube and Dark Pact.) Doomguard is still something that you never want to play from your hand except in very specific circumstances (like my midrangey Zoo deck. 5 cards in hand, 2 DGs, opponent at 10. I play 1 and keep the other DG. Play the other and win. But I kept one in hand for 5 turns because I didn't want to pay the cost.) And Gul'dan is the best DK by far, but I think that's emphasized by the fact that Warlock is the best class by far at the moment. I don't think that's caused by Gul'dan. It's just another layer of "best class by far."
Librarian: It's just like Call to Arms, except not demoralizing to the opponent. They want to do something because there's no reason to not play this card. Zoo plays it because it's a card draw and a Zoo-like minion. Control plays it because it's a card draw and something that can be thrown away against aggro. If you play Warlock, you play Librarian because it does the Warlock's hero power AND gives you a 2/1. In perfect contrast, no Shaman deck plays Kobold Hermit. Why? Because it's the same cost for 1 LESS stats and takes away the flaw in Shaman's hero power, which will still never, ever be as good as Life Tap. One is the (too) perfect design, because you always want to Life Tap if you can. One is a highlight of a badly designed hero power, because you only want to Totemic Call if you have no other option.
Quest Rogue: Doesn't really happen in the nether reaches where I play. I see it every once in a while and I beat it because the deck does take some skill to pilot. But if they have the perfect Engineer-Shadowstep opening hand and can then walk themselves into the dual Boar-Brewmaster and/or Shadowstep hand, the game is over before it began, kinda like Iksar was saying. The key is recognizing how those hands are coming together. Playing it a few dozen times will give you that insight and then it becomes oppressive. Most of the pilots I run into don't have that knowledge unless they're pulling out an Un'Goro era version to finish a daily in Casual.
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I am having lots of fun these days playing Togwaggle Druid. Main impetus for trying to it was that it also runs Azalina and the Twig and they were already in my collection languishing. It’s basically a mill deck and I always loved mill rogue. 3 ways to win. 1.versus aggro Draw slow, armor and remove until they concede.. let them out draw you. 2.vs control. Use all the cards with draw option to draw as fast as you can. Catch them late with 6+ cards and then double naturalize Togwaggle so they don’t get ransom. 3. It’s tricky and needs careful timing for when you can’t use 1 or 2. Time the Twig so you expend it when you can Togwaggle and naturalize if you have any, then snap the twig and Azalina to get copy of the ransom. Then if they ransom you can ransom them back and keep their deck. I have had some fun games where I stole copy of Sulfuras with post quest warrior hand and beat him with it. Stole the post quest priest health guy and beat them with it. You can never beat Cubelock or inner fire priest. Decks with too much burst are a problem.
### Custom Druid
# Class: Druid
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Raven
#
# 2x (1) Lesser Jasper Spellstone
# 2x (1) Naturalize
# 2x (2) Wild Growth
# 2x (2) Wrath
# 2x (3) Ferocious Howl
# 2x (4) Branching Paths
# 2x (4) Ironwood Golem
# 2x (4) Oaken Summons
# 2x (4) Swipe
# 1x (4) Twig of the World Tree
# 2x (5) Arcane Tyrant
# 2x (5) Nourish
# 2x (5) Starfall
# 2x (6) Spreading Plague
# 1x (7) Azalina Soulthief
# 1x (7) Malfurion the Pestilent
# 1x (8) King Togwaggle
#
AAECAZICBJnTApvoAv3rApruAg1AVl/pAcQG5AigzQKU0gKY0gKe0gLb0wKE5gK/8gIA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
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- Jackwraith
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I wouldn't object to having more variety in Priest decks, honestly. If they do nerf Call and/or some aspect of Cubelock, I'd expect that a similar nerf would come down on Spiteful. The reason that Spiteful is so popular is because it's the only reliable win condition for Priest these days. I've tried several, since I hate Spiteful. The Mind Blast combo can work, but it's probably no better than 50%, since you rely on having not only Duskbreaker but also another dragon in hand to activate it against Paladin. The Divine/Inner combo is brilliant against Warlock with Shadow Madness. But it's a crapshoot against anything else. And, yes, Hadronox could turn out to be a problem. But I'd expect more Priest to keep that in check with Psychic Scream and maybe even Control Pally with Equality. (Speaking of a lack of variety, will there ever be a Control Paladin deck without Equality, Consecration, and Pyromancer?)
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- Jackwraith
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So, fuck it. I've had enough. Maybe I should think about doing something realistic with my life instead of playing games I'm apparently not good at and writing shit that no one reads. This forum is nothing but a fucking echo chamber for me most of the time, anyway.
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As we both chatted up on here some weeks ago, Shudderwock works best in a Control Shaman deck, not some goofy all-or-nothing Combo deck. There's no OTK in this deck. It's just really really good. This is the version piloted by Asmo, Thijs, Pathra, and others recently : AAECAaoICt4FsgaQB/PCApziAqvnAvPnAqfuAu/xAu/3AgqBBPUE/gWXwQKZwgKbwgLrwgLKwwKbywKe8AIA
I crafted Hagatha (!) and Grumble for this. I am committed. And I don't even HAVE Kalimos. It's still great. Here's my build::
### ShuttleLaunch
# Class: Shaman
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Raven
#
# 2x (1) Fire Fly
# 2x (1) Glacial Shard
# 1x (2) Prince Keleseth
# 1x (3) Far Sight
# 2x (3) Healing Rain
# 2x (3) Lightning Storm
# 1x (3) Mind Control Tech
# 2x (3) Stonehill Defender
# 2x (3) Tar Creeper
# 2x (4) Hex
# 1x (4) Lifedrinker
# 2x (4) Saronite Chain Gang
# 2x (4) Tol'vir Stoneshaper
# 1x (4) Witchwood Piper
# 1x (5) Harrison Jones
# 1x (5) Volcano
# 1x (6) Grumble, Worldshaker
# 1x (8) Hagatha the Witch
# 2x (8) Primordial Drake
# 1x (9) Shudderwock
#
AAECAfe5AgreBbIGkAfHwQKc4gKr5wKn7gKm8ALv8QLv9wIK9QT+BZfBApnCApvCAuvCAsrDAsnHApvLAvPnAgA=
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
I took a Controllock to ConcedeTown when he was 6 deep in fatigue and had already tried to kill me with 3 Doomguards, maybe 7 Voidlords, Rin and all her crew, &c. Crazy. The play is reset, reset, reset, Shudderwock, maybe twice, win. The opponent usually kills them; they usually aren't more than, say, 6/3 with Taunt once everything fires. But in all that I probably gained 6 life, utterly demolished the board, put weenies in my hand for Hagatha and triggered another couple of Keleseth ticks. If you have these cards, play it. Tons of decisions, cool recoveries, big effects. It's great.
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Yes HS can be quite vexing, especially if you think climbing and winning matter. I am on a 5 game losing streak on ladder myself. Just yesterday APX, who mostly plays ago mage decks, decided that he hadn't seen a Quest Rogue in days at legend so why not mix it up with control mage?? Right off the bat, first game he gets Quest Rogue. It happens. There are nothing but rocks when you have scissors. Take a break. Make some stupid crazy ass shudderwock deck that has 25% chance to win. Crush some fool with it, and laugh knowing he is probably running to some other forum to post how you made him want to quit HS.
Don't go. Don't quit HS.
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I take refuge in weird decks. If they win, cool. Who knew 1/6s Howling Mines could win games? If they lose, it's okay—they are weird. It's a cover for my inadequacy as a player. I can get so tilted if I lose to a topdeck here or a one-in-ten highroll there. It's maddening. So I need to break out Stealy Danduin or something and make the game fun for a little bit. Or hunt some Monsters. (Still no wins on any char—my kid has TWO).
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- Matt Thrower
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Jackwraith wrote: I was even going to start writing regularly for the site about Hearthstone, but I can't even do that because I can't get a signal on what format to use.
So, fuck it. I've had enough. Maybe I should think about doing something realistic with my life instead of playing games I'm apparently not good at and writing shit that no one reads. This forum is nothing but a fucking echo chamber for me most of the time, anyway.
Send me your piece(s). I'll make sure they go up. You can use any format you want.
Having a bad losing streak sucks. I almost gave up at the start of the K&C meta, where I was flogging the supposed "tier 1" Jade Druid deck and couldn't win sweet FA with it. For days, weeks even. Still not sure whether it's the deck or me or just me not being able to play the deck.
Whatever you normally play, Standard or Wild, play the other for a while. Your rank will be crap and your matches will be full of noobs you'll stamp all over and it'll make you feel much better. Hugely cathartic. Trust me, I know. But please write your content. You *know* this game. I want to hear what you have to say.
Whatever you do, don't play the current Brawl, which is plumbing new depths. Not only is it hugely RNG dependent, but the matches are long and drawn out and almost guaranteed to grind into a tedious stalemate. Beyond awful. Not sure even the lure of free cards is enough to tempt me to another match after quitting two from sheer boredom.
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Jackwraith wrote: So, fuck it. I've had enough. Maybe I should think about doing something realistic with my life instead of playing games I'm apparently not good at and writing shit that no one reads. This forum is nothing but a fucking echo chamber for me most of the time, anyway.
I feel you; I haven't posted much here lately because this meta is reminding me of the environment post-Grand Tournament. They introduced a new mechanic (Rush) that is only used by a few classes (if there even are any other than Warrior) where they only run a select few cards that use it. The result is that most previously-existing decks are very similar to their pre-WW versions and it all ends up feeling boring and stale to the point where I haven't felt the urge to even finish dailies that last few days, let alone try to climb the ladder.
Anyway, go on hiatus if you need to for your mental health - or, like Jeb suggested, switch to weird decks for a bit - but don't leave HS entirely. I never played MtG so I always enjoy reading your perspectives on HS since you've seen a lot of these concepts before in Magic, or can just draw on your CCG experience in general, and can place them in an interesting context.
And if you're looking for format ideas, this post of yours, where you talk about your history with the Warlock class in WoW and then segue into talking about Cubelock's deck changes in response to the ascendancy of Taunt Druid, would form a fine basis for a front page article, IMO.
I also really liked this post and its followup where you tried to make Cathedral Gargoyle work and went through your thought process in building the deck. I think it would be interesting if you did features on off-meta decks and then revisited them periodically to see how they perform as the meta changes. Plus it might be more interesting, as well as less tilting, for you to play goofy/niche decks for the purposes of collecting data, which will distract you from the general monotony of the current HS meta.
But I also like it when you rant about the problems with Priest or Shaman (or whoever), so I don't think there's a need to stick to writing only one kind of feature. Honestly, I don't think you need to worry about format because, with a little tweaking (cleaning up and/or editing the game summaries for a general audience, including more game results, etc.) most of your longer posts are feature material, anyway.
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- Jackwraith
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Anyway, I just sent Matt a 1500-word article about Shaman's lack of identity and RNG problems, so that's my first foray to the front page in about three years, IIRC. Meanwhile, I think I'll take Sebastian's advice and turn those two forum posts into something a bit more elaborate and we'll see if we can get the ball rolling for the Hearthstone corner of TWBG. Thanks, again.
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I have no problems with ControlLock, which must be 50% of decks around my rank right now, Everywhere, holy smokes. I keep losing to some bad beats that just stick in my craw for ages after than really hang on me. Druid rolls Tyrantus on turn 5. Of course. I am ready for it, and kill it with Volcano. I had Hex in hand, but knew Tyrantus could come, so I set things up for it, just in case. Turn 7, SECOND TYRANTUS. So... so.. I just need them to NOT GET TWO Tyrantuses (Tyranti?) off Spiteful Summoner BY TURN 8. Just get ONE. But they got two. I couldn't find my second Volcano in time. I held off with Taunts, Freeze effects, &c. I was going to be able to handle it if they cleared my 5-toughness Taunt with it, but that was turn 9, so they played Ultimate Infestation on it to clear it. Wasn't enough. They paid 12 mana. They got 32 points of stats, most of it untargetable. What in the actual hopped-up FUCK can anyone do about that?
The game feels sick right now from a design perspective. If you roll poorly in any game, you get fucked. Mana screw, mana flood, those have long been an issue in MtG. But you somehow feel responsible. Here, I didn't do anything wrong. I actually made an excellent metagame call. And I still got shit on. Utterly shit on because they rolled 1/5 twice (in addition to drawing both Summoners, having ramp dude, &c). It just kills me to lose games I should win. I want to feel like I had something to do with the outcome of the game. Either by deck choice, mulligan, play, &c. But it doesn't matter when they get turns like that.
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- Jackwraith
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Hrm. The HCT summer playoffs are done and the nerfs/tweaks/updates were promised after that, so I think that will put the brakes on Control Warlock, which should shift the meta quite a bit. More directly to your complaint, I'm betting that Spiteful gets either a mana adjustment (which won't really help in the case of Spiteful Druid) or something along the lines of "Spiteful Summoner summons a minion with the same mana cost and discards the spell." That still won't keep Druids from getting a Tyrantus, but it will at least stop them from still being able to use UI to reload once they've blown their wad. There are an assload of answers to big minions in the environment right now (the return of BGH, Basilisk, 15 different poison minions in Hunter) but none of them are worth shit against Control Warlock, which can just keep sweeping the board until you can't do anything. If Warlock isn't as much of a threat, other things can be played. This is a narrower focus on the bigger question of: Why is no one playing any Witchwood cards except Genn and Baku? It's because Call to Arms, Lackey, Death Pact, and a half dozen other menaces from Kobolds are too good.
I saw an interesting suggestion for Quest Rogue the other day, too: Change Preparation to "Lower the mana cost of any spell that costs 3 or less to 0." That way, they couldn't Prep - Crystal Caverns and wipe you out on the turn they complete it and they also couldn't Prep - Vanish, so they'd have to wait to use the latter until turn 6. It would help the Quest problem and also reduce the power of Prep to such an extent that it no longer functions as the design constraint that it currently does, since it's in the evergreen Classic set.
Meanwhile, do you want to try an experiment? I'm in the lower reaches and you're at least past rank 10. Do you want to try playing Rez Priest exclusively for a while, tally up results, and see how we both do with it? Our decklists are very similar, but I'm not running Hatcher or a Matriarch:
# 2x (2) Divine Hymn
# 2x (2) Shadow Visions
# 1x (2) Shadow Word: Pain
# 2x (2) Spirit Lash
# 2x (3) Shadow Word: Death
# 2x (4) Eternal Servitude
# 2x (4) Mass Dispel
# 2x (6) Bone Drake
# 2x (6) Coffin Crasher
# 2x (6) Shadow Essence
# 2x (7) Lesser Diamond Spellstone
# 2x (7) Psychic Scream
# 1x (8) Shadowreaper Anduin
# 2x (9) Obsidian Statue
# 2x (9) Sleepy Dragon
# 1x (9) Ysera
# 1x (10) Mind Control
#
AAECAa0GBAiiCdcKkNMCDdMK1grRwQLHywLlzALmzAK0zgLwzwLo0ALm0wLj6QK98wLc9QIA
Are you running the Coffin Crashers? I've found them to be pretty good, but not overwhelming.
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Jackwraith wrote: This is a narrower focus on the bigger question of: Why is no one playing any Witchwood cards except Genn and Baku? It's because Call to Arms, Lackey, Death Pact, and a half dozen other menaces from Kobolds are too good.
Pretty much, WW is TGT 2.0. The first sign was that I preordered, which I haven't done since TGT. I normally wouldn't put any stock in, from an anthropological perspective, ritual magic; but you're absolutely right in that WW can't compete with the OP KnC cards.
Jackwraith wrote: I saw an interesting suggestion for Quest Rogue the other day, too: Change Preparation to "Lower the mana cost of any spell that costs 3 or less to 0."
That's a great idea, which means that Team 5 will nerf the card into unplayability in about 6-9 months.
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