Hearthpwn

Battletag: Crawford#1677

Region: NA

Trade only? : yes, you go first

Not to defend the big corporation, but there are a couple of reasons for these currencies that aren't related to "stealing" from players by leaving you with a couple of dollars worth of premium currency after you make a purchase.  They're about reducing transaction costs by reducing the number of interactions with financial services providers players make while purchasing small in-game products.

Credit card transaction fees eat up a lot of the revenue for small purchases like $1.50 BG skins.  A lot of small stores will not accept credit cards for transactions below a certain threshold, while bigger stores just jack up prices on smaller items to cover credit card costs.  Spending $100 on a bundle of currency once and then buying things with that currency a little at a time winds up being much more profitable for Blizzard just because they don't have to process a credit card transaction for every purchase of a couple of dollars worth of packs or skins or whatever.The second reason is to duck the commissions on various mobile app stores, which can reach 30%.  If Blizzard can convince mobile players to download HS PC and make their transactions through the PC game instead of mobile versions, it can make a LOT more money selling the same stuff to the same players for the same price.  

What is missing from this, and why the anger is justified, is that there is no incentive for the players.  If they gave us $10 or $15 in free currency for every $100 we spend on Runestones (without jacking up prices on us), that would go a long way toward calming the community down.  As it is, there is no incentive to buy big bundles rather than paying as we go, and there is no incentive to make purchases through HS PC rather than the mobile app, so there is no mechanism for Blizzard to capture many of the best efficiencies of premium currencies.

This game absolutely does not need a report feature.  People who are not on your friends list cannot communicate with you.  If someone friends you and then sends you a message you don't like, you can simply unfriend them and then they cannot talk to you anymore.  This is a perfectly self-policing system with a completely effective user remedy for any toxicity.  Some people seem to just want to have a teacher to tattle to.  

The only toxic behavior that is even arguably a problem that you can't easily solve yourself is roping, and that needs a change to the rules for the rope rather than punishment of players.

 Battletag: Crawford#1677
Region: NA
Trade only?: Yes, you go first 

I'm of the opinion that Kazakusan is a win condition for a dragon deck, not for an all-spell deck or for any deck that draws itself into fatigue.  So I am fine with this and will keep the card.  

I don’t see how big anything can coexist with odd questline hunter, so the single biggest thing I am hoping for is a nerf to that.  I am also concerned that even if the decks that currently dominate get nerfed, several OTK mage decks will be broken in the new meta.  I think there is a good chance that combo mages have too much card draw in wild now, and the only thing keeping them from being oppressive is the presence of some utterly broken decks that kill them even faster.  Control and value decks cannot exist in a meta where OTKs end the game on turn 6 or 7.

Carnivorous cube.

The big problem with Stormwind is that it introduced reliable game-ending win conditions that are faster than previous game-ending win conditions.  In Standard, the other pieces may not be in place for some of them to consistently complete on turn 5 or 6, but in Wild they definitely are.

Previously, OTK decks have been strong in both formats.  Notable ones are Mechathun, Togwaggle, Malygos Druid, Raza/Shadowreaper Anduin priest and Druid and Mage time-warp Exodia.  As decks like these rotate into Wild, it’s fun to get new decks with similar goals, but we shouldn’t get stronger, OTK decks that get their win conditions sooner.

All of these quests finish the game around 9-11 and are vulnerable to aggro and often midrange tempo decks while beating greedy control/value decks.  But Stormwind has replaced 4-5 card OTK combos that you have to draw into with win conditions that either start in your hand (quests) or can be tutored from your deck (ignite, boar).  These are going to be super-problematic in Wild because Wild has more card draw to find combo pieces, more pirates for warrior, and more spells to quickly trigger the hunter quest.

The best Stormwind OTK decks now achieve their win condition on turn 6-7 which means that only extremely aggressive decks can beat them, and not even super-consistently, midrange decks are too slow, and control value decks are way too slow.  In the past, there has occasionally been a broken wild interaction, but the game has never been like this.  Before the current expansion Warriors were playing stuff like Rattlegore!

The game needs a big nerf patch for anyone to be seriously excited about Alterac valley.  I don’t think anyone will be sad or disappointed to see the quests nerfed more or less out of existence, especially with dust refunds coming just in time for the new expansion.

The people who walked out are the same people who are putting nonbinary wizards in Warcraft and centering black and female characters in World War 2 military shooters even though there were very few black soldiers in WW2 combat roles and no women.   I hope Kotick cans the lot of them.  A lot of the people who are responsible for making the games good have been run out of these studios and if someone doesn't put their foot down, they'll wind up being EA when they're done hollowing themselves out with reckoning after reckoning.

Quote from Krishno_NL >>

how can you tell which characters are done with all their tasks?

 When you get to a mysterious stranger with them in your party, you never get a task for them.  Otherwise, you just kind of have to remember.

I've farmed Rend probably 50 times over the last few days grinding Edwin coins.

As some others have posted, Diablo and Cairne are the optimal Rend finisher.  If Rend has a board full of Dragonkin, Fire Stomp will go off seven times, and none of their moves are faster than Cairne's Endurance Aura.

My strategy is to use Geddon, Rag, Tony to start off, with Cairne, Diablo, and either something I'm leveling or Edwin for a chance at extra coins behind them.

What you do first turn is fireball with Tony to start the combo, Use Geddon's AOE, and then use Die Insects on Rag, because it's his highest damage move and it doesn't matter what you hit, unless they have a potato, in which case you hit that with everything.  Usually,  enemies target your lowest health Merc which will probably be Rag.  He should survive turn 1.

Turn 2, Rend will put his instakill on Geddon.  This is fine.  Just hit them with the same combo, except you may want to use Rag's faster move, just to make sure it goes off before he dies.  Usually, Rag and Geddon will both die this turn, which fills the board, and gives you room to bring in Cairne and Diablo, and then you can just Aura+Stomp to win. 

If only one thing dies turn 2, you may want to bring in whatever your sixth thing is, and try to set up two slots on turn 3, just to be safe.   

The great thing about this lineup is that Rag+Geddon+Tony are also the best farming composition, and can clear most packs in the bounty in one turn, so this farms MUCH faster than nature or holy or shadow comps. I can run this in about 10 minutes.  I'm planning to max Edwin (and cookie and sneed) and level all my mercs to 30 doing this.

One way to do it is gib him with mages before the barrels blow up.  There are no warriors in the encounter, so there is no reason not to run three mages.  If you want to farm for him in Felwood, Anduin+Velen+Xyrella is the team I use for bounty farming in BRM.  Brukan+Guff+Malf would also work, or Vol’Jin+Tamsin+Natalie, maybe.

With the Holy lineup, I Blinding Luminance a warrior turn 1, so the pack can’t kill anything, and then turn 2, you Velen’s Blessing for a double Holy Nova.  Velen and Anduin throw around a ton of heals while also doing damage, and on Thaurrisan, the healing keeps the barrels up longer.  Since mages don’t need to attack, you also don’t have to kill the abomination before going HAM on the Emperor.

It's definitely a bug and will be fixed.

Quote from tomastefan >>

There is no information about whether there is duplicate protection on coins; i.e. whether you will stop getting coins for a particular merc once you have bought all available upgrades for it.  

Now that the game mode is out, have you found out how it works?

 Yeah, it is confirmed that you will continue to get coins for mercs that are fully maxxed out, which kind of sucks.  A guy on Discord who spent $1000 on packs had like 6000 coins for each of the rare mercs. It would be nice if you could buy skins with them or convert them to gold or if you just stopped getting them.