Hearthstone

[HumblePie]

Current brawl I'm 19 wins out of 20. All hunter. Only time I lost was to another hunter. Most of the boss hero powers complement the agro face hunter deck far better than anything else out there I've found. I'm wrecking most people by turn 3 or 4. If not, I've come from behind several times with the a good dps burst.


On another note, I FINALLY got Dr Boom. Crafted him after finally saving dust for the past 6 months or so. Yah it took that long. So Fallen you've spent a crap ton to have all those legendaries. About 3 times as many legendaries as I have despite playing since beta with this game on a consistent basis. These are the only legendaries I own.

All from the solo adventures:
Baron Rivendare
Chromaggus
Emperor Thaurissan
Feugen
Kel'Thuzad
Loatheb
Maexxna
Majordomo Executus
Nefarian
Rend Blackhand
Stalagg

For other non craftable cards I have Ol' Murk Eye from getting all the classic murloc cards. I also have Gelbin Mekkatorque from being a beta player.

For the craftable/find in packs legendaries I have the following:
Al'Akir the Windlord
Bolvar Fordragon
Dr. Boom
Harrison Jones
Hogger
King Mukla
Nexus-Champion Saraad
Ragnoros the Firelord
Tirion Fordring
Ysera


Of those I crafted Ragnoros and Dr. Boom and didn't find in a pack. I had found Nozdormu but dusted him to craft Ragnoros instead initially. I've been actually getting fairly lucky as of recently with more legendary drops in packs. In the past month I picked up Ysera, Saraad, Hogger, Bolvar, and Harrison Jones. Until about a month ago I had squat for legendaries basically beyond the ones you get out of the solo adventures. Of which Loatheb and Emperor Thaurissan see the most play in any of my decks on a consistent basis.

Now I haven't bought a single pack of cards, but I have done every brawl, and every way to get free packs there is available. I do everything I can to maximize gold for packs as I can too. Which means I've opened up hundreds of packs since I've been playing and for the most part have received jack and squat overall in terms of legendary drops until recently.

Which is fine as most of the decks I play really don't require a whole bunch of legendaries to be decent. Mage, Hunter, Warlock, and Paladin are the main decks I tend to use most often as agro decks. Doesn't take much to make them effective enough to win as long a I go first most of the time and have a decent to good initial hand draw.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Only packs I bought was the pre-order deal on The Grand Tournament. Everything else were either crafted or opened. I've also played since beta, but I didn't receive Gelbin Mekkatorque because you needed to purchase a pack to get him and I didn't want to spend real money on the game at that time since I didn't know if I really liked it yet.

The only money I have actually spent was unlocking 2 of the first expansion wings (used gold for the others), purchased Blackrock Mountain expansion, and the pre-order on TGT deal. Everything else was obtained via gold and/or arena runs (mostly daily quests, which I always mulligan the quests that only award 40 gold attempting to get one of the 60 or newer 50 gold quests and the occasional free pack spectate quest). I also havn't missed a single daily quest (never let more than 3 pile up).

 

[HumblePie]

Only packs I bought was the pre-order deal on The Grand Tournament. Everything else were either crafted or opened. I've also played since beta, but I didn't receive Gelbin Mekkatorque because you needed to purchase a pack to get him and I didn't want to spend real money on the game at that time since I didn't know if I really liked it yet.

The only money I have actually spent was unlocking 2 of the first expansion wings (used gold for the others), purchased Blackrock Mountain expansion, and the pre-order on TGT deal. Everything else was obtained via gold and/or arena runs (mostly daily quests, which I always mulligan the quests that only award 40 gold attempting to get one of the 60 or newer 50 gold quests and the occasional free pack spectate quest). I also havn't missed a single daily quest (never let more than 3 pile up).

I only got Gelbin because I had some sort of credit code from Blizzard at the time during beta. So haven't spent a dime on the game at least. I also muligan any quest that is 40 and try to maximize gold by not doing quests that are only 40 unless my quest log gets full and I have to. But the pre-order for TGT is a bunch of packs for what you got for $50 if I remember. You are guaranteed at least 1 legendary at least from a purchase that size even if you dust every single card. Usually though many people get a few legendaries from a purchase that large.

I didn't even send any money opening any wings at all. I got that free first wing opening when Naxx first came out and if you logged in during a certain time frame they gave you the first wing which I got. Otherwise I haven't spent a cent on the game.

My biggest thing is I don't do arena that much. Most of the time I barely break 3 wins due to bad draft, going against opponents with retarded OP decks, or going against cheaters. Of which the cheaters are way too prevalent in Arena than elsewhere that I've seen. Not that I see them all the time there, but RL friends and I have seen them in Arena more often than other places so myself, friends, and bunch of co-workers don't bother much with arena and haven't for awhile. It wasn't nearly this bad when Arena first came out. I did it a lot more often back then. I had a few 7-12 game win streaks compared to 3 or less wins per run. No I go 3/3 or better once every 10 arena runs. Rest is 0/3, 1/3, or 2/3 more often than not. I do try it every so often though to mix things up, unlike most people in know in real life that play the game. They completely avoid it. I will say that I don't know if the hackers/cheaters are a prevalent in hearthstone as they once were. Still I don't doubt there are a few out there. The old force your opponent to disconnect cheat I used to run into constantly was annoyed the shit out of me for a long time. I haven't had that happen for awhile now at least, but for a long time it was really fucking annoying.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, what I know is I got 7 legendaries out of the initial TGT packs I opened (approx 65 packs, the extras were from gold I started saving up ahead of the release). Unfortunately, 2 of the legendaries were repeats (I got 3 dreadscales). So after dusting dupes, I had an additional 4-4.5k in dust (had about 500-1000 dust already). Not bad to be honest.

 

[Vivendi]

Set aside some time for hearthstone today, and... servers down for maintenance.... Why do they do this at the end of the month... when I want to climb the ladder..
Missed this week's brawl. It seemed like an interesting one as well, but I'm sure they'll rotate it sometime. Also, free pack...

 

[Aikouka]

Set aside some time for hearthstone today, and... servers down for maintenance.... Why do they do this at the end of the month... when I want to climb the ladder..
Missed this week's brawl. It seemed like an interesting one as well, but I'm sure they'll rotate it sometime. Also, free pack...

Overwatch's beta released yesterday, which is why Battle.Net went down for maintenance.

 

[Rhezuss]

I'm having just enough will to get my rank 20 each month, after that i'm logging out till de next season

 

[Anubis]

Set aside some time for hearthstone today, and... servers down for maintenance.... Why do they do this at the end of the month... when I want to climb the ladder..
Missed this week's brawl. It seemed like an interesting one as well, but I'm sure they'll rotate it sometime. Also, free pack...

every Tuesday

blizz does maintenance every Tuesday normally starting someplace between 3 am and 6 am PST

they have been doing this for over 10 years

 

[Vivendi]

every Tuesday

blizz does maintenance every Tuesday normally starting someplace between 3 am and 6 am PST

they have been doing this for over 10 years

They started it a bit early than was scheduled on EU. And then servers were down today as well.

 

[Vivendi]

Did a hearthstone marathon today to rank up on last day. Went on a win streak from rank 14 to 6 with midrange paladin with some anti aggro cards. I was also running a single Kezan Mystic earlier but I've seen lots of mages just remove their secrets from deck. Was only two stars away from rank 5 when the season ended
There;s so much aggro decks on ladder right now, I really need to change my decks.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Decided to craft Nexus-Champion Saraad. Sure the power is a little random, but it is a pretty solid 5 drop in general and certainly is a decent drop towards end game when you might be low on cards in your hand.

Was really debating that Legendary or one of the druid class legendaries (that I don't have), King Mukla, or Malygos. The class legendaries and Malygos are really very situational, so that left me with Mukla and Nexus-Champ. Given the agro-meta, Mukla seems like the 2x +1/1 spells that you give to the opponent will simply hurt more than Mukla helps.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Fatigue Priest not nearly as good as Fatigue Warrior

This was after he finally realized he lost and would not be able to out fatigue me. Grant it, I had 85 armor the turn before, but he was taking more damage than he could heal this turn and finally gave it up.

 

[HumblePie]

Agro meta has been strong hardcore for awhile now. Zoolocks, face hunters, face rogues, zerg secret paladins, rush druids, mech mages, and mech shamans are all I see. It's all zerg -> face -> face -> face as fast as possible. I do see the occasional control warrior, handlock, and control priest, They are very rare to see though. The agro secret paladins are the most common ones I see though. Follow by the charging rush to the face hunters. It's about killing you before turn 5 which many of the decks can now do. If you are death before your turn 5, chances are you aren't going to stall with a sludge belcher or antique heal bot.

Worst part about these super agro face decks is that when they play each other the person that goes first wins. That simple. So when I am playing a similar agro deck if I go first chances are usually pretty good the other person concedes right off the bat once they see my first round or two if they see I am an agro deck and went first. I do pretty much the same as it is very rare to win when going second as an agro face deck against another agro face deck. Very rare.

 

[Vivendi]

I'm not even bothering to do my quests now, unless it's something easy like spectate a friend. Ladder is just infested with super aggro decks and secret paladins.

Logged in today for the first time this season for the co-op brawl, which is actually pretty fun for a change.

 

[HumblePie]

I'm not even bothering to do my quests now, unless it's something easy like spectate a friend. Ladder is just infested with super aggro decks and secret paladins.

Logged in today for the first time this season for the co-op brawl, which is actually pretty fun for a change.

Yah enjoyed the one time I did the brawl today at lunch on my phone. Will have to do it again We lost but still got the pack. So just doing it gets the pack for this brawl which is nice. Definitely a unique twist on the game.

But you do know you can do quests in the Brawl or Casual right? Don't have to be playing ranked. Although I will say that for me, my casual games aren't much different in match up than ranked when it comes to the type of decks I go against.

 

[Vivendi]

...
But you do know you can do quests in the Brawl or Casual right? Don't have to be playing ranked. Although I will say that for me, my casual games aren't much different in match up than ranked when it comes to the type of decks I go against.

Honestly, I think I'm just bored of the hearthstone "meta" right now. Maybe there'll be something announced at Blizzcon that'll be interesting. In any case, I still play the brawls every week, so far I've only missed it once.

Even when I used to make gimmicky decks, I'd still play them on ranked, horrible win% or not, just to see how high I could take the deck, as well as the golden portrait progress.

Currently, I'm just wasting gold from quests on packs instead of saving it. I would have 25k dust now if I disenchanted extra copies, another 15k dust if I get rid of goldens. Only way I'm spending that much dust is if I start crafting cards like The Beast.

..

Thinking more about it, I feel like since I favour playing midrange/control decks and like to play for card advantage more than tempo; HS developers have continously released cards that punish players like me. There used to be time when aggro decks couldn't just mindlessly dump their hands without worrying about removal. But now minions are so sticky... it doesn't matter if I have a hellfire or consecrate or flamestrike in hand.
Hearthstone has become so fast and only about tempo and playing the bigger threat turn after turn. People no longer complain about Dr. Boom, either because the game's usually over by the time he comes into play or have become used to such unbalanced cards. And let's not forget about Mad Scientist and Shredder, even more unbalanced than Dr. Boom IMHO.
The game no longer awards players playing for card advantage. In fact aggro has cards like divine favour, mysterious challenger etc to punish people who play for card advantage, and encourages dumping your hand.

In a lot of games, I see my aggro deck opponents make a such an obvious bad play that it's amazing that they've actually gotten to rank 5. But before I can punish them for their mistakes, game's probably over. Mind you, it just might be a bot if it's secret paladin. Apparently secret paladin is so mindless to play that even bots have an above 50% winrate with it and are taking the deck to legend.

Anyone remember the days when playing priest meant your typical turn 2 was "healing" your opponent's face and emoting 'the light shall burn you'. Good luck doing that these days and actually winning the match. Miss a drop on any turn and aggro just destroys you.

OK rant over

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah it really has gotten that bad. I even stopped trying to play dragon priest since even that can't control the agro anymore (and it was probably the best deck at doing so with 2-cost 2/4+taunt, 3-cost +2/4 to minion spell, and 4-cost 3/6+taunt... you still can't win).

That said, I opened a dupe legendary (Gruul) today from the brawl reward deck. Wish it was golden, but I will take the 400 dust I guess (put it toward saving up for the next legendary to craft).

 

[CalebRockeT]

I've never received a Legendary from a Brawl or Spectate quest pack. Sad times.

 

[HumblePie]

Honestly, I think I'm just bored of the hearthstone "meta" right now. Maybe there'll be something announced at Blizzcon that'll be interesting. In any case, I still play the brawls every week, so far I've only missed it once.

Even when I used to make gimmicky decks, I'd still play them on ranked, horrible win% or not, just to see how high I could take the deck, as well as the golden portrait progress.

Currently, I'm just wasting gold from quests on packs instead of saving it. I would have 25k dust now if I disenchanted extra copies, another 15k dust if I get rid of goldens. Only way I'm spending that much dust is if I start crafting cards like The Beast.

..

Thinking more about it, I feel like since I favour playing midrange/control decks and like to play for card advantage more than tempo; HS developers have continously released cards that punish players like me. There used to be time when aggro decks couldn't just mindlessly dump their hands without worrying about removal. But now minions are so sticky... it doesn't matter if I have a hellfire or consecrate or flamestrike in hand.
Hearthstone has become so fast and only about tempo and playing the bigger threat turn after turn. People no longer complain about Dr. Boom, either because the game's usually over by the time he comes into play or have become used to such unbalanced cards. And let's not forget about Mad Scientist and Shredder, even more unbalanced than Dr. Boom IMHO.
The game no longer awards players playing for card advantage. In fact aggro has cards like divine favour, mysterious challenger etc to punish people who play for card advantage, and encourages dumping your hand.

In a lot of games, I see my aggro deck opponents make a such an obvious bad play that it's amazing that they've actually gotten to rank 5. But before I can punish them for their mistakes, game's probably over. Mind you, it just might be a bot if it's secret paladin. Apparently secret paladin is so mindless to play that even bots have an above 50% winrate with it and are taking the deck to legend.

Anyone remember the days when playing priest meant your typical turn 2 was "healing" your opponent's face and emoting 'the light shall burn you'. Good luck doing that these days and actually winning the match. Miss a drop on any turn and aggro just destroys you.

OK rant over

I personally like playing mid range decks with some early drops and still some late game punch. However that isn't the winning setup for any deck right now. Mainly because the ONLY control decks that have a chance these days are ones with Justicar with a legendary control warrior/priest. 4 armor or health per turn is hard to overcome if Justicar can be dropped early enough even for rush agro face decks. But it's now a single card reliant deck and while some people have plenty f luck with such decks I can tell you that I certainly don't.

I have been massively tempted to dust some cards to build some of the current FotQ (Flavor of the Quarter because it takes at least 3 months before Blizzard does anything) decks. I don't have Mysterious Challenger for example. It's funny because we all knew how bad that card was going to be for the game and months later that prediction has come true. The ladder is basically only agro rush secret paladin decks. As noted all the bots are using the deck because even with many mistakes it is very easy to win with.

Before agro rush decks were popular, but weren't always over 50% win rate. But as stated there are a ton of very sticky low cost cards that make playing anything else pointless in ladder.

Still I like playing my druid deck lately although I am basically relying upon Force of Nature + Savage Roar with either Emp or Innervates to allow me to burst down my opponent on the turn I make my move. It's an old combo but still works well when it works. In a way, so long as I can survive that initial agro rush until I can produce 8+ mana or so then I have a fairly good chance of winning as the rush decks don't tend to have any sort of taunt wall.

 

[darkewaffle]

IMO hero health should be increased to 40/50 or all cards below 4 mana should lose 1 attack or something. Who and how changes fairly regularly but the game has almost never not been plagued by facedecks. I think simply giving less aggressive decks another turn or two to survive would be a favorable change in the aggregate.

 

[Aikouka]

And let's not forget about Mad Scientist and Shredder, even more unbalanced than Dr. Boom IMHO.

Did you watch that Extra Credits video that I linked a while back? It was on game balance and power creep, and it specifically talked about Hearthstone. I thought it was a good video overall. One thing they did was explain what power creep. They pointed out that some of the upgraded cards such as the Evil Heckler, Frigid Snowbold and Ice Rager are not examples of power creep as the originals existed below the curve. However, they did point out that the Piloted Shredder is an example of power creep. The problem being that shredder is so good that it's included in most decks (where it's appropriate), which means that it's "the new pinnacle" of 4-drop cards. So, when they create new 4-drop or even 5-drop cards, they have to keep the Piloted Shredder in mind.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Oh, forgot to mention that I managed to win in brawl 3 out of 4 games last night. I really wish there was a way that the other player could easily tell you what cards they have. Managed to make a monster in 2 of the games due to Millhouse and Loremaster combined with the blessed champion spell. The other game (which was my first game in the brawl), the other player didn't do squat (he was paladin and simply popped out a couple hero power minions, and that was IT!). I don't know if he simply had a hand full of spells which were useless because he had no minions on the board, or didn't realize he could at least cast some of those spells on the minions I had on the board...

 

[HumblePie]

Did you watch that Extra Credits video that I linked a while back? It was on game balance and power creep, and it specifically talked about Hearthstone. I thought it was a good video overall. One thing they did was explain what power creep. They pointed out that some of the upgraded cards such as the Evil Heckler, Frigid Snowbold and Ice Rager are not examples of power creep as the originals existed below the curve. However, they did point out that the Piloted Shredder is an example of power creep. The problem being that shredder is so good that it's included in most decks (where it's appropriate), which means that it's "the new pinnacle" of 4-drop cards. So, when they create new 4-drop or even 5-drop cards, they have to keep the Piloted Shredder in mind.

Yep I had watched that video and it is very true. Cards that let you get more out of them for their mana cost compared to others are going to always be picked and played over anything else. Blizzard ties to make sure more "powerful" cards are ones that are adjusted by their rarity scale. Meaning rares on average are suppose to be more powerful than commons, epics are more powerful than rares and legendaries the most powerful. The rub is that more epics are meant to be situationally powerful when used with a specific strategy/combo and legendaries are reduced to 1 per deck. This can be seen with Molten Giant for epics. Molten Giant is a very powerful epic but isn't suitable to every deck despite it's power. In fact in many decks it would cause problems and more losses than wins if used in the deck.

The problem of power creep in Hearthstone is the common cards mostly like Piloted Shredder. As a 4 drop minion is basically better than everything else out there regardless of rarity or even class association (which is another limited Blizzard uses for card power assignment). The other problem is expansions making some card insanely more powerful over time. Knife Juggler is another one. With the inclusion of cards now like Muster for Battle, haunted creeper, living roots, and other cheap mana cards that pop out multiple creatures all at once this allows the damage return and value for the Knife Juggler to sky rocket.

Also I think the "situational" balance point that Blizzard tries to utilize on some cards really isn't as limiting as Blizzard originally thought. This leads to nerfs like what happened with starving buzzard. Current cards like Mysterious Challenger are examples of cards with a situational power that is hardly a limiter. If one isn't playing with secrets then Mysterious Challenger is a ho hum 6 drop card. Nothing great at all. But no one plays Mysterious Challenger in a deck without secrets. The other major problem is the synergy of the secrets. The more the secrets that synergize with each other, the more powerful Mysterious Challenger becomes. Which is the problem with the current secret paladin agro deck. 1 or 2 secrets out from a paladin can be dealt with easily. All of them at once can't unless the opponent is a hunter with flare ready to go. Which is essentially the biggest problem with Mysterious Challenger. There is no readily available counter balance to it's power for any of the other decks. Which a lack of counter means the power for the play goes up even more.

 

[HumblePie]

Oh, forgot to mention that I managed to win in brawl 3 out of 4 games last night. I really wish there was a way that the other player could easily tell you what cards they have. Managed to make a monster in 2 of the games due to Millhouse and Loremaster combined with the blessed champion spell. The other game (which was my first game in the brawl), the other player didn't do squat (he was paladin and simply popped out a couple hero power minions, and that was IT!). I don't know if he simply had a hand full of spells which were useless because he had no minions on the board, or didn't realize he could at least cast some of those spells on the minions I had on the board...

I'm 1 for 3 in the brawl. It's definitely very RNG based, but fun.

 

[quikah]

This brawl is rough. Not only do you need to rely on the rng, but also on another person. Many people just have no clue what they are doing (playing cho on turn 2 isn't going to do anything...).

Think I am 1 for 6 now. It is fun though.