Hearthstone Players!

jeb wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: That's the Warrior symbol (the sword.) I'm betting that they're putting new identities in for the various classes, so you'll be able to play someone other than Garrosh, Malfurion, Jaina, etc. There's no way they'd just dump an entire class and one that's a staple of both this game and WoW.

A MAN CAN DREAM, JACKWRAITH! {sob}

Just repeat the mantra with me and you will find release: Fuck. Those. Guys.
There's still nothing so viscerally satisfying as just grinding a Face Hunter to dust as they keep charging you and you put a deathgrip on the game with Control, Ramp Druid, or even just aggro with better creatures. Suddenly, they have an empty hand and the board is clear or only has your minions and they're like: "Uh... shoot you?" and you're all: "OK. Here's a Healbot. Why don't you go ahead and concede right now? Thanks!"

Still the best interview answer ever from Mike Donais:
There’s obviously been a huge influx of new people with the phone versions rolling out. What's been the feedback in terms of people using the user interface? I think you’ve done a great job of cramming it onto phone screens, but I did notice a Hunter who Quick Shot-ed his own face last night who I think was probably on phone. I mean he had it coming obviously...
Mike Donais: That was a karma thing. We have that built into the game.

Jackwraith wrote: Just repeat the mantra with me and you will find release: Fuck. Those. Guys.
There's still nothing so viscerally satisfying as just grinding a Face Hunter to dust as they keep charging you and you put a deathgrip on the game with Control, Ramp Druid, or even just aggro with better creatures. Suddenly, they have an empty hand and the board is clear or only has your minions and they're like: "Uh... shoot you?" and you're all: "OK. Here's a Healbot. Why don't you go ahead and concede right now? Thanks!"

Haha, this is exactly what happened to me last night. He kept Threatening me with an empty board and no cards in hand as my board just kept filling up. It felt so good.

Gregarius wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Just repeat the mantra with me and you will find release: Fuck. Those. Guys.
There's still nothing so viscerally satisfying as just grinding a Face Hunter to dust as they keep charging you and you put a deathgrip on the game with Control, Ramp Druid, or even just aggro with better creatures. Suddenly, they have an empty hand and the board is clear or only has your minions and they're like: "Uh... shoot you?" and you're all: "OK. Here's a Healbot. Why don't you go ahead and concede right now? Thanks!"

Haha, this is exactly what happened to me last night. He kept Threatening me with an empty board and no cards in hand as my board just kept filling up. It felt so good.

Agree. My favorite is to get them to attack my Healbot when I had the Duplicate secret out, which is basically game over against those guys.

And confirmation: new heroes

Magni Bronzebeard can now be purchased for $9.99 to replace Garrosh. He comes gold (kinda cheesy) and with a new card back (which is nice), but $10? If they sold them for gold, I'd be all about it. But I'm not interested in tossing $ at them for cosmetic purposes..

LAME.

At least you will be able to easily identify your opponent as a sucker.

Got to play a Madder Bomber onto my board of an undamaged Amani Berserker and once-damaged Gurubashi Berserker with my opponent on 11 life. Feels good, man.

Michael Barnes wrote: LAME.

At least you will be able to easily identify your opponent as a sucker.

Boo sss. I want Blizzard/Hearthstone to succeed. If folks got money to blow on portraits, go for it. This is 1000x better than the financial models where the monied and the F2P crowds play different games. Or consign the F2P to some ad-laden ghetto.

I'm just saying that I'd be fine with paying for new heroes, but not for $10, and not just for cash. You can get entirely new characters to play for less than $10 in Heroes of the Storm or just pay gold for them. If a new hero was $3 or something like that, I might pick up a couple. But $10 is just ridiculous. Sure, if people want to pay that, let'em. There's nothing wrong with it. I just think they're pricing out a good chunk of the market.

Last Paladin draft was meh. Went 3-3. No Silverlight, no BoK, which was precisely the card that killed me in my last two matches. So started a Shaman . Haven't played any games yet. I know: 3(!) Whirlys and 3 Crackles? They just kept offering crap in comparison. Managed an FE, Hex, and Storm, plus Totem and Earth Shock. But still looks a little imbalanced. We'll see..

Sure, let them monetize the game, good work deserves reward and as a consumer I don't mind rewarding them for it...or for being a RESPECTFUL F2P game.

But please, sell me something useful- extra deck slots, additional single-player modes, tickets for special one-off game types, whatever...not this fucking "selfie" generation vanity bullshit, because that is exactly what this obsession with skins, avatars, custom costumes, etc. is. Look at me, I'm slightly more special than everyone else who doesn't have the $10 picture. This is a vanity purchase for people that somehow think there is some kind of special status to be had from buying a DIFFERENT picture. Different emotes, whoopty shit.

But what if you got a different hero power and maybe a couple of cards specific to that hero...now see, then it starts to look MUCH more attractive and much more valuable. This is fucking Team Fortress hats. Horse armor. Thanks a lot everyone who ever bought all that shit thinking it was funny. Now look where we are.

If this were something that were like a 500 gold purchase per hero, then I'd say sure, why not. But TEN DOLLARS each? FUCK THAT. I'm sorry, everyone has the right to buy whatever they want and spend their money however they want, but I also reserve the right to call you a chump for buying a TEN DOLLAR picture that replaces a FREE picture that has the EXACT SAME FUNCTION. Which is to say, not really ANY. This is seriously into selling snake oil/magic beans territory, and quite frankly I feel sorry for people that think TEN DOLLARS is worth shitting down the toilet on something like this. I certainly value my $10 more than that.

But whatever, ultimately it will have no impact on the game, and instead of those I'll just buy booster packs or Arena tickets. I've spent plenty on them and will likely continue to do so for some time to come, so there's my support for the game.

As for feeling like you somehow have to get behind this because you want Blizzard/Hearthstone to succeed...come on...that's like saying you're going to buy the overpriced, expensive cheese because you want Whole Foods to succeed. But that's cool, whatever suits you.

Cosmetic items are very profitable (see: DOTA 2). The scenario you describe is actually what I don't like about Hearthstone and why I don't play constructed that much. I'd rather they had MORE things like this if it meant I didn't have to pay in cash or gold for adventures, for example. Let the "chumps" subsidize it, because they will. Blizzard goes with both methods of money extraction in World of Warcraft, so I'm not surprised they went with both here.

I have to admit, the new animations are pretty sweet,



It also comes with new emotes and voice work. For $5 I'd be ok with it. Maybe I'll buy 1 or 2 during a Christmas sale or something.

Seriously, I am so ready to drop $5 or $10 for extra deck slots. I suppose I should try to actually focus on just one or two classes for a while so slots wouldn't be a concern to me, but when I have two decks for each class that I'd like to mess around with, it's annoying to have to keep changing stuff out (thankfully, HS deck tracker helps a lot.)

On a side note: I played a couple games of Heroes of the Storm last night and... kinda had a blast. I've been in since the Alpha but really haven't played that much because MOBAs are things you do with a group. Jumping into the queue and being paired up with a bunch of people you don't know and really can't communicate with isn't particularly fun in that style of game. If you're playing casual or to test things, other people might be playing to advance, or vice-versa. I just played with comp allies and opponents last night. But the game is in general release now so if anyone wants to get off the cards and try it out, feel free to ping me. I played Li Li last night, since she's one of the free heroes in this week's rotation (I was usually a healer in WoW) but I'd be just as eager to try Diablo or one of the assassin-types, like Kerrigan. The abilities and UI are pretty intuitive (Blizzard (duh)) and I have zero idea what a good skill path is, but that's part of testing it out.

Barnes, man. So righteous. I will pay for cards--I have paid more for cards than anyone else here I bet ($150 on the two adventures three times). I am all for buying cards and content. I am NOT for buying cosmetic stuff. I like earning cosmetic stuff, I will get golden portraits some year, but spend money on a new hero portrait? No. But like I said, I am glad Blizz is finding ways to make this game successful in ways that don't:

1. Exclude me from playing the game on an even field.
2. Cram ads up every orifice.
3. Exploit addiction ( cf. Candy Crush Saga )

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That 3-0 Priest went 4-3 and a follow-up Hunter went 0-3. Not my best day of Arena. Drafted a Mage though, and have Flamestrike. Maybe I'll do OK.

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I did the tutorial for HotS, and it's nice. If I was going to MOBA, it would be this. The controls are not obnoxiously obtuse, and there is a lot of charm there. With Blizzard, I imagine they will keep the audience somewhat tame compared to DOTA2 or LoL. But it makes my Mac Mini howl with pain.

I think my new favorite card is the Enhanc-o Mechano I got a while ago, forgot about, and just recently added to a few of my decks. I know the RNG will bite me eventually (double Taunt, etc.), but any of Mechano's buffs are nothing to sneeze at for anything with 5+ attack. It's not a card I would spend the dust to craft, but I'm thrilled to have pulled it.

Anyway, today I've been playing Warlock for the 5-win class quest. I haven't done anything with that deck in a while so I dusted it off and tinkered with it. Out: Acidic Swamp Ooze x1, Zombie Chow x1, Knife Juggler x1, etc. In: Piloted Shredder x2, Ironbeak Owl x1, Harvest Golem x2, Dread Infernal x1, Sunwalker x1, Enhanc-o Mechano, etc.

So this Rogue is all up in my face in the early game and I'm having all sorts of problems with the two Annoy-o Trons that I can't seem to shake. I Silence one, and he summons another. I'm not drawing well (lots of big 'uns in my hand) so I'm having to do weird contortions and trades to keep the damage to a minimum without using up all of my best removals. They're finally gone and we back and forth for a while. I take a lot of pings to the face before I stabilize at about 18 health and get board advantage with Loatheb, Sunwalker, and Piloted Shredder. My opponent is at 14 health and they summon an Arcane Nulllifier, and they also combo the card that gives it +3 health, so I'm looking at a 5/5 Taunt that's immune to spells. No worries, here comes Enhanc-o Mechano. Loatheb gets Taunt, Sunwalker gets Windfury, and Piloted Shredder gets Divine Shield. Shredder hits the Nullifier for 4, and I re-summon the Dread Infernal my opponent Sapped the turn before to take out the Nullifier and get him down to 13 health. Then it's swing twice with the Sunwalker for 8, and Loatheb makes 13.

Edit: I switched out 2x Undertakers for 2x Voidwalkers because the Undertakers never do anything for me and at least the Voidwalkers are a cheap, immediate stall. It wasn't that bad to get to 5 wins, though I lost a close one to a Mage and I lost one to a Paladin where it was one of those games where you can't draw anything good while your opponent always seems to have the perfect answer in their hand. I managed to face down an aggro Warrior deck where I didn't stabilize until I was at 9 health and he was at 33 (21 Health + 12 Armor). He burned through most of his deck and after I managed to clear his board yet again, Enhanc-o Mechano plus a Boulder Fist Ogre (and my other Ogre summoned a turn later) turned the tide.

I can't remember how I won the third game, all I remember is that I Mortal Coiled my 1 Health Shattered Sun Cleric to draw a crucial card late in the game to help me win, which was a fun and semi-desperate move on my part. At least my fifth win was a relatively stress-free rout. I happened to draw both of my Voidwalkers on turn one so I coined into both of them and it was all downhill from there for the Warrior I was facing. Unfortunately I didn't get my RNG fix because he conceded before I could drop Enhanc-o Mechano on the six minions on my side of the board.

Yeah, that's probably the Epic card I dread seeing most in Arena. I can handle giants, Doomsayer, Hobgoblin; but Enhance-o-Mechano on a loaded board is usually game over. I have two 5-win quests queued up. Warrior/Druid and Rogue/Warlock. I think I'll try Razor for the Warrior one and Combolock for the other. Not sure if you all have seen Combolock at work, but its gameplan is drag the game out until you can deliver 24 points in a shot with Arcane Golem (3), 2@ Power Overwhelming (2), Faceless Manipulator (5).