Hearthstone Players!

Same here. I play a little every day--it's the best way for me to goof off for 10-20 minutes. Everything is still bright and colorful, and I'm happy to see some flux in the "base game" because so many games play out the same way. I'm part of the problem, you can look at my old posts and see me say things like, "I look at every card and see if it lets me sneak Malygos into play." That kind of thing goes away with Core Set change. Other questions going away:

"Does this make Questing Adventurer/Edwin van Cleef huge?"
"Does this let me draw six cards with Battle Rage?"
"The meta is weenies, can I cram Wild Pyromancer into this deck?"

The "old" way of doing things is going away. We saw the same thing when Azure Drake and Acolyte of Pain went to Hall of Fame. There will still be some imbalance, but that's the game.

Hey guys. Good to see some of you still active. I still play a fair bit and find the game meta evolves enough every few weeks with more frequent patches that there is always a puzzle to solve. I either have been making legend or almost making it recently. I don't play enough ladder to grind it out every month though. Like most of the HS streamers, BGs is my new addiction.

Regarding the current state of HS, I decided to try the aggro rogue out to start this month. Have like 80% win rate so far with it. I wanted to check it out because either Self sharpening sword and/or Nitro Boost are about to get nerfed. Believe it

Overall, I think Masters Tour killed competitive HS which I followed. I think the game has gotten stale and isn't quite peaking. Not sure there is much Blizzard can do about burnout from player base. On the bright side, BG was a homerun. And I am mildly optimistic about Mercenary mode. I have a few friends that play, so its nice to be able to keep in touch and share decks etc.

Take everything I say with a mine of salt, since I don't play anymore and perhaps that invalidates my opinion, but the just-revealed Warlock card seems like an utter faceplant to me. Soul Rend costs 4 mana and does 5 damage to all minions, but you destroy a card in your deck for each minion killed.

This card is a fundamental misunderstanding of human psychology. They just changed Tracking because, while it's a great card, many players were reluctant to use it for fear of the "bad beat." People will always remember the one time that Tracking destroyed two crucial cards in their deck, as opposed to the other nine times when it got them a good card that they might not have otherwise drawn (and got rid of two other cards that weren't important to the game in front of them.) It's human nature to always remember that one time when something was a disaster, as opposed to all of the other times when things went right. In poker, it's routine that people remember the bad beats, as opposed to the regular wins.

Soul Rend is a "bad beat" card. No one will want to play it because of the risk of destroying key elements of your deck. It's the same reason that Warlock discard has never been a viable mechanic. Sticking with our Tracking example, that at least allows you the choice of what to lose. Discard was random up until the last year (highest-cost, lowest-cost, etc.) which is when it became somewhat workable with Hand of Gul'dan and Wicked Whispers. This is a totally random effect again which is the LAST THING YOU WANT as a control player, who tend to value each card in their deck moreso than aggro players. If you're facing a board full of Chillwind Yetis that require this much damage to remove, something has already gone wrong and you'll be even less likely to want to destroy a significant part of your deck in order to correct it. I don't see the point in producing this card, unless they're still on the Ben Brode model of producing "fun" cards that won't see play like Purify.

I agree. I was trying to come up with a contrary point, but I think your reasoning here is solid. I wanted to see it used in an Aggro deck like Zoo, which doesn't care about the late game (at all). But this is global AoE--guaranteed to kill all your stuff if you're Zoo. And not really guaranteed to kill the things that Zoo needs to kill. Misses 6+ health (ie, fat taunts), misses Bubbles, misses Reborn.

Right. I didn't even think about the fact that it misses the plethora of 4/6 and 3/6 Taunts now in the game. My only thought about Zoo was the same as yours: "If I'm playing a 'good trades' deck, which is what Zoo is, why do I want to kill all my stuff AND lose cards at the same time?" It's the same reason that all those stupid Shaman cards that do X damage to all minions never saw play. That's not the game that Shaman should be playing, especially when its hero power... produces minions.

Jackwraith wrote: Soul Rend is a "bad beat" card. No one will want to play it because of the risk of destroying key elements of your deck. It's the same reason that Warlock discard has never been a viable mechanic.

Not taking any issue at all with your main point, but Warlock discard has totally been a viable mechanic. I ran a zoo deck based on discard for quite a while back in the day when Silverware Golem was in the new set. It was a successful and popular build. It's still workable in Wild, even today.

Matt Thrower wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Soul Rend is a "bad beat" card. No one will want to play it because of the risk of destroying key elements of your deck. It's the same reason that Warlock discard has never been a viable mechanic.

Not taking any issue at all with your main point, but Warlock discard has totally been a viable mechanic. I ran a zoo deck based on discard for quite a while back in the day when Silverware Golem was in the new set. It was a successful and popular build. It's still workable in Wild, even today.

And if it worked for you, then it worked. I won't argue against your experience. I'll just say that top tier, competitive Warlock decks have almost never emphasized any discard other than Soulfire (which had to be nerfed from its original incarnation) until Hand of Gul'dan, because it's so ridiculously good and because there are cards that specifically target it. Even with Soulwarden, Jeklik, and Zavas, the random discard effect or having to winnow your hand down until you only discarded the good cards was always too crippling, from what I've seen, or was at least not competitive enough to dislodge the other archetypes that dominated Warlock at those times.

Discard Warlock was definitely a workable build for Zoo. There were good set of cards for it, and even now folks are running the 5/5 Rush. This card isn't that though, because this card eats cards you never saw, and might really matter if you are Control. Most of the "discard" cards hit something in your hand, and ideally hit the exact right thing in your hand (e.g., your highest cost card). In Wild, you know if you are pitching Gul'dan to some discard effect, but in Standard-to-b, you don't know if Tickatus will get eaten because you killed some 2/4 dude with Soul Rend.

So that puts you in the mind of playing a Warlock deck that doesn't need certain cards to win, like Zoo. But this card doesn't work for Zoo either, given the described above story where you don't kill what you need and all your stuff is gone. It's homeless barring other effects.