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.

Vicious Syndicate has interesting podcast this week. Usually they talk about current meta and talk about what are best decks and techs to current archetypes to help gain advantage on them.

This week was a departure from that so they could talk about meta dynamics overall and how to contextualize strategies and define terms with which to discuss these things.

Brings me back to 5ish years ago I asked you guys what tempo was. Zach O. eschews tempo and value in preference of initiative and resources. Tempo is a vague term that I think is hard to explain without using the idea of initiative on the board. And resources are much broader term than value as it applies to life as well as card advantage.

Anyhow if you like podcasts check this out.

www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-45/

So, I was possessed of the sudden urge to play Zoo the other day. I don't really know why. I still keep tabs on the Hearthstone situation, but haven't played in about a year. I still watch Kibler's videos on YouTube because he's entertaining and I like watching a master at his craft. I had a ton of cards to burn and ended up with about 16K dust which I used to forge a bunch of cards for Zoo (no legendaries) and a Paladin Dude deck (one legendary), so I still have over 10K dust left. I'm enjoying the new quest system, although I quickly recognized its far more compelling (neé addictive) structure. It's not just play X games for X gold anymore. It's "accrue these points by doing these tasks and- Oh! You're only 29 points away from the next goal! Better play another game!" I'm not having any. I have continued my transition from Spike to Jonny to almost-Timmy, in that I just want to play Zoo and my Dude deck and I really don't give a shit if I win or lose. I just want to see if I can make these two subpar models function. The Dude deck is actually the more appealing of the two at the moment (Perhaps the Zoo urge has been satisfied?)

### Dude
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Gryphon
#
# 1x (1) Animated Broomstick
# 2x (1) Conviction (Rank 1)
# 2x (1) Knight of Anointment
# 2x (1) Righteous Protector
# 2x (1) Tour Guide
# 2x (2) Hand of A'dal
# 2x (2) Soldier's Caravan
# 2x (2) Wriggling Horror
# 2x (3) Carnival Barker
# 2x (3) Day at the Faire
# 1x (3) Lord Barov
# 2x (3) Seedcloud Buckler
# 2x (3) Warhorse Trainer
# 2x (4) Balloon Merchant
# 1x (5) Lothraxion the Redeemed
# 1x (5) Stand Against Darkness
# 2x (6) Hammer of the Naaru
#
AAECAZ8FBJXNA5PQA4feA8qgBA3KwQObzQOC3gOE3gOF3gOi3gPK4wPM6wPj6wP77APK8QPHoATJoAQA

It's a little altered from my first model, which had two Stand Against Darkness (I found the second one often sitting in my hand as a "win more" card) and also used Pursuit of Justice, which always felt like a very inconsequential play and likely won't ever be any better (RIP 800 dust.) I was also using Rally, which occasionally paid off by resurrecting a Barker or Trainer alongside my soon-to-be-summoned Dudes or already-present Dudes, but often felt like less than it should've been, since I only had two 2-cost minions in the deck to resummon, which meant I was often spending 4 mana for a 1-cost and a 3-cost (i.e. 4 mana), which didn't felt like enough mana cheating to keep it. I also wanted to try out Hammer of the Naaru as a late game threat/defensive option.

I've been doing pretty well with it (75% win rate), although I've been playing in the nether reaches of the competitive realm (just reached Silver today), so It's hard to know how it would work against "real" decks and experienced players. However, I did play a gold (as in, had the gold frame on his hero and hero power) Rogue today, so that seems pretty experienced and he had both the god draw to stop my early start, as well as being a Rogue, which is the class probably most equipped to handle a Dude deck (Knife hero power, tons of removal, etc.) One thing they don't handle well, though, are the bubbles...

hsreplay.net/replay/GsUrkLjmzCw5dvxLZNgj6W

I mulligan the Broom, as it's not an early-game play (despite being a 1-drop) and am rewarded for risking holding on to both Horror and Barker with something that gives me the perfect target for the Horror: a Tour Guide. That means I can put down two 1/1s on turn 1 and force him to either Coin-Knife to get rid of one or face two 2/2s and a 2/1 on turn 2. He has the Pen Flinger which, OK, but OF COURSE he has the Backstab, as well. So my opening is shot down right away. I topdeck the Caravan, which is cool, because surely he doesn't have the other Backstab, right? Right? HE TOPDECKS THE OTHER BACKSTAB! Right then, I'm thinking: "OK. Maybe this is just a loss because this is Rogue and I'm playing a Dude deck." Plus, I topdecked the Caravan into a turn that was otherwise just a Dude dying to a Knife. So, turnabout is fair play.

Also, I get an almost perfect draw, which is the Seedcloud Buckler. It's a 3-drop on turn 3. The only better draw would've been Day at the Faire. Everyone likes to think that Faire needs to be corrupted to make it worthwhile, but corrupting it makes it obscene. Even at 3 mana, it's still great mana cheating because you're creating 6 mana and 3 turns of value (3 Dudes) in one card. (This is where I think back to the guy on Reddit who tried to tell me that Paladin had the worst hero power in the game, which... I don't even know where to start with that.) But the Buckler is also pretty amazing. A lot of people looked askance at it when the mini-set was previewed because you have to maintain a board and get three charges off a 2-strength weapon to get value. But you don't need to maintain a board. You can create one on the very turn that you drop the last weapon charge and totally turn a game. So, I loaded it up and hit his face to get closer to that magic moment. My only other option was playing the Barker into Pen Flinger and Knife, which isn't worth it when you can get so much from the Barker if he stays alive for even one turn.

He drops Mankrik which... OK. I can see the card's value but I still think it's kinda overrated. You're dropping a Spider Tank, which is solid, and hoping that you get a free 3/7 somewhere down the line. I mean... Cool? But I'm still mystified at how many decks it ends up in. Yes, free 3/7 with a free attack! That's demonstrably better than a Spider Tank. But my first question would be: Does this non-Arena deck need a Spider Tank? My turn 4 is subpar, in that I only get down a Dude which I turn into a 2/2 with the Horror, but I take a swing at Mankrik so that if he chooses to trade, he loses his minion and I'm on my last charge to set up for the Stand Against Darkness I just drew. He Flingers the Horror and Brain Freezes my enhanced Dude which is just the pattern this game has had from the get-go: I create value. He removes it. And then comes the game-changing moment.

I Stand Against Darkness and put 5 bubbled Dudes on the board. Rogue doesn't deal well with wide boards. It especially doesn't deal well with wide boards that have to be hit multiple times, especially with no more Fan of Knives (which wasn't played much before the Classic revision, anyway.) I know he still has the Flinger and a Knife loaded, so at least one of them should be going down, which is exactly what happens. But that means four Dudes that have to be killed twice are still on the board. The next legendary arrives- Kazakus - and I'm still not concerned, since even the best result from it (Divine Shield and Copy) doesn't change the fact that I am now the aggro in this game and we're in a race that I'm prepared to win because his removal can't deal with this many bubbles. I draw Righteous Protector, which just about seals it. Barker making a 2/3 bubbled Taunt and a 3/3 Horror boosting two Dudes means I have complete control of this board. The Flinger dies to remove the threat of popping my bubbles without real sacrifice from my opponent and everything else goes face. The 3/3 Kazakus is not a concern.

His golem result is actually pretty great for him (Freeze, Rush) because it neutralizes part of my threat, as I am now the aggro. Following with a Brain Freeze on my Barker only enhances that response. But I still have five minions on the board and three of them in bubbles. I drop Lothraxion as another 5/5 threat, irrespective of what he can do for my future Dudes (but I do get another bubbled Dude, because I can and because it increases the threat.) It's fair to argue whether I should have even bothered to clear Kazakus and the golem, since I'm the aggro, but taking another 8 to the face with Rogue's burst potential (I hadn't seen any Wicked Stabs or weapon boosts yet) didn't seem entirely wise, So I cleared and still got in three damage and had total control of the board. Jandice arrives and he got a decent pairing of minions, stats-wise. The Ogre's stats are great, but the randomness is bad. The good Doctor makes being one health less unfortunate than many other results, since he's Rushing, anyway. The downside to him creating a 2/3 Knife for my opponent is that he still feels it's necessary to take out the 5/1 Lothraxion with his face, making the weapon bonus superfluous and still taking 5 to the face.

Drawing Balloon Merchant was just icing on the cake, since I could kill Jandice and still restore the bubble AND add +1 attack to my Dudes, who all go face because I'm the aggro and the Ogre's randomness makes him almost as much a liability for my opponent as an advantage. When it hits a bubble, the game is over. Thinking back, if I had left Kazakus and the golem up and the Ogre's coin flip had hit me, I would've died to the two Wicked Stabs he drew, which is why I cleared, despite the change in status between us (i.e. I'm the aggro.)

I never stopped playing HS, but it was a rough go for some time, especially if Standard Ladder was your thing. After these recent releases you were really hemmed into certain Heroes playing certain decks to succeed, and when you lost it was an ugly tragic experience that could really drive folks away from the game. It didn't feel fair. You lost, and lost badly, and you couldn't tag it with a bad draw or not having that Legendary, it was like playing tic-tac-toe when your opponent is playing chess.

As an anecdote, I played Priest (high tier capable) and Rush Warrior (mid-tier), full juiced, I have the cards I want, and would get to Gold 2 or 3 and then just bounce at 50:50 wins/losses and barely make it to Platinum season after season. I could predict how I would lose, and watch it happen with regularity.

Come a recent season, with a few days to go, I crafted Oh My Yoggs and played Menagerie Paladin (high tier) and just rolled. I was the unfair guy now. Ridiculous streaks. I probably went 30-5 and rolled into Diamond 8 before the season ended. Just nuts. I felt like I'd been wasting my time playing Priest or Warrior when I could have been doing this. The deck has a lower mental burden and incredibly robust (I make tons of mistakes). Everything was easier. Playing Priest is work. You have to get the most out of every mana, every time, with every card/decision. Playing Paladin was a romp, by contrast.

A few nerfs later, Paladin is still really quite good, but not 30-5 material anymore. The meta has shifted to Priest for Control (there are numerous builds, each somehow more annoying than the last), Hunter and Shaman(!) for Aggro, and Warrior (handbuff) and Rogue (Miracle) still hanging around as Midrange options. Demon Hunters are reduced to OTK and Warlocks are in really rough shape, Jackwraith's efforts notwithstanding. Mages are mages and might burn your face off, but there is a thematic push to Frost for them that isn't doing the class any favors. Druid... Druid is just there. They have a Token build that can just explode and kill you turn 3. They have a big build that manage to never lose once it gets rolling unless they misplay into Fatigue (see Priest, above). But neither deck really wows and is worth being overly concerned about.

On other fronts, Battlegrounds is great. They tweaked the Quilboars into being less nuts, so you don't see everyone in the group trying to get to Chargla first, hero power be damned. You can actually go with other themes and have a chance at winning, which is a welcome change.

The single-player content is kind of bad right now if you're like me and don't give a shit about WoW lore. All kinds of (I guess?) thematic stuff from WoW getting put out and it does nothing for me. Bring back the Puzzle Labs and Dungeon Runs!

Duels is a mess, but that's by design. Build a deck that might be broken and try to roll stuff that breaks it. You either go 2-3 or 9-3+.

Classic Ladder is a cool throwback. Everyone has the same collection and it's fun. I killed someone with Force of Nature/Savage Roar like the olden tymes. In turn, I have lost to Leeroy Jenkins into Shadowstep into Leeroy Jenkins into Shadowstep into Leeroy Jenkins into Eviscerate for 22. Such is life circa 2014.

Wild Ladder was a clusterfuck until a week ago when Stealer of Souls got banned. Now it's back to just its normal insanity.

Arena? Beats me, haven't played in years.

jeb wrote: Arena? Beats me, haven't played in years.

Just won an Arena ticket on the XP trail. I shrugged. I value my time more than the "fun' that engaging that part of the game will produce. And my efforts have done Warlock no favors. Mostly been playing the Dude deck, when I've been playing. Still with a 73% win rate with the most losses to the new Force of Nature (Illidari Inquisitor.)

I did end up using my Arena tickets that have come up on the quest chain, mostly just in the hopes of getting more gold or a lucky pack. I bomb out quickly because I'm not really good at Arena and I'm still not sure the time investment is actually worth it. One such lucky pack landed me a Firemancer Flurgl; the new, mostly useless Shaman legendary. I put a Murloc deck together and started toying around with it in Casual. It's not awful, but there's nothing particularly notable about it. It's also funny that, once again, the legendary Murloc is probably the worst/most superfluous card in the deck for the same reason they always have been before: lack of draw.

Flurgl does 1 point of damage to all enemies when you play a Murloc. Well, that means holding Murlocs in your hand until you can get Flurgl on the board, which is something no Murloc deck should be doing beyond holding off in the face of obvious board clears or having something to reload with. You have to keep tempo with Murlocs and if you hold cards, you're surrendering the board and much of your burst potential. Since Shaman still has the worst card draw in the game, you often can't build up a surplus of cards in hand to take advantage of him. So, he's basically a River Croc with a Landslide effect. But, wait!, you say. What about the Caravan? Well, I've been using the Caravan and it's as bad as everyone expected. I've played 10 games with the deck and I think I've had the Caravan survive to the next turn... twice? As the devs probably expected, if it does survive, it's amazing, since you're drawing two cards/turn as long as it lives. But it almost never survives and there are no taunts or freeze effects in the current batch of Murlocs to try to keep it alive.

You can do some cool tricks with Fishy Flyer and the Flying Carpet replacement (Murloc gets +1 attack and Rush) and I included Instructor Fireheart for a back door assist (landing a Hex to convert a 9/15 taunt into a 0/1 Frog, for example) but it's still a pretty sad sack tribe deck, as it almost always has been and Flurgl is better off as 400 dust unless something amazing shows up in Stormwind. It might be different if he triggered when you summoned a Murloc, but that would probably be catastrophic in Wild. (Once again, we see how cards usable in one format are ruined if not banned in another.)

The Dude deck is still as capable as ever. I lost my first game of the month to a Druid who got ahead of me with the Guardian Animals routine, but then won six straight, including 4 Mages whom you normally wouldn't think would be impacted so heavily by a weenie deck. But all of the Divine Shields (Seedcloud Buckler is my pick for the most underrated card when the mini-set was announced) makes your chip damage a constant presence and the power of Conviction (just like the priests say!) has enabled me to dish out 18+ damage in single turns to win games.

I know no one reads this thread anymore except me, Jeb, and Matt, so I'm just putting these words here for something akin to posterity, I guess.

I've been playing this game since the second week of the closed beta, with some breaks along the way. One of those breaks was extensive over the past year, in that I'd decided that the game was just too expensive to be involved with. But I got back into it in June, as noted in a couple previous posts, and had decided that I wasn't really trying to be competitive. I'd get up to Gold rank or something like that and that was enough for me. I just wanted to play decks that I'd enjoy and tool around with the game a bit.

It's in that frame of mind that I have to say that I've never been so discouraged in the opening days of an expansion as I am now. The proliferation of OTK or near-OTK decks created by the Questlines is insane. The quests are so easy to complete (routinely by turn 5 or 6 against every one I've played) and bring such an enormous power infusion that you regularly lose on turn 7 of every game, if not sooner. But even worse is that, as with most OTK decks, the term "non-interactive" doesn't begin to describe them. Remember how Team 5 always stressed the idea that minions were key to Hearthstone and minion interaction was what they wanted most decks to rely upon? That's all now in the past. Playing minions is actually detrimental to the person opposing the Questline player because many of them help your opponent to finish their quest (Mage, Hunter, Warlock.) There was a post on Reddit about two Quest Mages facing each other where both of them played and killed their own minions every turn so that they didn't help the opponent with their quest. But Rogue is also a culprit because it literally doesn't matter what you do when they can, once again, draw their entire deck that's filled with Garrote cards and snuff you out as early as turn 4. But there are also horror stories floating around about Demon Hunter's OTK with Ilgynoth and I've had Shamans OTK me with their quest no less than 5 times in the past two days.

I'm not sure how they solve this, since this is a much broader problem than just one class being out of control. It's an entire type of card across all 10 classes. It's also a core issue with the game's systems (e.g. minions aren't important and are often actually detrimental.) But that excitement I usually have for trying out new decks or cards is utterly absent after the few games I've played over the past two days. In true can't-beat-'em-join-'em fashion, after losing 5 games with the Shadow Priest I was so eager to try that I actually forged some previous cards to be able to play Priest again, I switched to Quest Paladin and immediately won a couple games; the first being against a Shadow Priest. Team 5 seems to be eager to try out more and more unusual stuff in recent months (Watch posts, etc.) but all of that stuff seems to be failing; either like the posts did because they were so onerous that they had to be nerfed into uselessness; were already useless when delivered (Caravans); or are now so overwhelming that the game simply isn't fun unless you happen to be (and enjoy) playing an OTK deck that basically ignores your opponent. I guess in one way they succeeded: They turned Hearthstone into a solo game. Congrats?

I still read this thread, but every time I do it reinforces my decision to give up playing a couple of years back.