Hearthpwn

Quote from Pathod >>

Quote from NightCrawl3r >>

Zeph for sure.  Kazakus can lose you games where you need that one specific potion ingredient out of two tries and don't get it.  If zephyrs whiffs, it's because you failed to set it up properly

 Except Zephrys isn't a human and can't always give you the best answer even though you can set him up well. I'd go for potion RNG anyday over hoping that Zephrys gives me a Poly or Hex at 6 mana against a Big Priest...

He doesn't always give you the best card, but he always gives you exactly what you expect him to if you know him well enough and that information is powerful.  If you know he is not going to give what you want on the given turn, then you don't play him.  With Kazakus, you don't know if he has what you want until you invest 4 mana

If you play Zephrys against big priest, you should that know he won't give you a transform effect to begin with because he can't see all the res cards in the opponent's hand.  Expecting him to give you one of these and wasting 2 mana/the battlecry to check the box is considered a whiff in my books.  Transforming Big Priest things isn't in the scope of what he can do, much like Kazakus has other things out of his scope too

Q: Can you talk about tournament mode at all? Why was it scrapped?
A: We liked the idea about it, but we didn't have an implementation that was both like relatively easy to do and would hit a lot of player desires.

What??  Isn't china server literally playtesting a tournament mode right now?  I does seem to hit a lot of player desires and it would be relatively easy to take something that's already done.  Unless it was developed by Netease and they're not letting Blizzard use it internationally?

Zeph for sure.  Kazakus can lose you games where you need that one specific potion ingredient out of two tries and don't get it.  If zephyrs whiffs, it's because you failed to set it up properly

 Just don't be warrior, and you're good to go

Given the new design philosophy, I doubt druid will never be what it used to be (unless you like token druid).  And by "what it used to be", I don't mean the just bonkers KFT brokenness; I'm also referring to the more tame decks before them.  Maybe the class itself might become good again at some point, but gameplay will be very different because we already know what blizzard will and won't print for the class

Just move on to a different class, mate.  I used to only have a few thousand druid wins, but just this expansion, I got my golden mage and shaman.  Not because I like golden heroes, but because druid isn't fun anymore

As for why druid is currently bad, it's simple.  Choose one is one of the major mechanics.  The existence of the quest severely limits the power level of choose one cards but at the same time, caused many of these weakened choose one cards to be printed as synergy.  If hidden oasis was printed in the absence of the quest, we'd all have a good meme about it being purify 2.0.  Nourish probably died for this too

Most of the core community moved to OOC when the admins changed.  A number of people stayed on HP because they didn't like how OOC looked, but I suspect the majority of people stayed simply did so because they don't use the forums enough to even know what was happening between the two sites at all.  Generally speaking, people who don't use forums often are more likely to lack forums etiquette and thus make shitposts and other less than constructive posts more often

It might also be a matter of passion.  People who are passionate and positive about the game are more likely to make constructive and positive posts.  Sharing good posts and posting often makes you more likely to bond with the community.  If you just make shitposts and salt posts, the community will react negatively, you will get a negative experience and you obviously won't bond with the people shaming you (you might even hate them).  Anyway, people who were passionate about the community and the admins who held it together were more likely to migrate to OOC

If you hate control warriors and want to ruin their days, just play freeze mage

Edit: heh, I just realized ... after years of suppression, freeze mage now counters control warrior in 2019.  Granted, giants are your fireballs now while you stall with freezes but I guess freeze mages in beta ran giants too

Quote from Gooaa >>

Quest Nomi Druid is in top ranks of hsreplay.

I tried it and had a laaarge winstreak.

It ransout of cards almost allways or close to it. Usually it's game before Nomi,but couple times  i played it and had success.

One deck with A 600 sample size at a 58% wr = top ranks of hsreplay LUL

If you sort all decks by winrate, this puts your deck on page 9 with probably 50 individual control warriors and paladins above it (and with statistically relevant sample sizes)

If you take the aggregate of all the Quest nomi druid decks, it won't even show up on the meta tier list page because it's so bad

Quote from hillandder >>

 

Nomi priest, but I don't see that deck in ages.

 Warriors have plagues of wrath now so combo oriented Nomi decks that aim to make Nomi copies and empty the deck as soon as possible are far less competitive than before... and they weren't that competitive to begin with

Quote from C_A_W >>

Quote from Poghy >>

Quote from NightCrawl3r >>

Quote from Spectralfire1984 >>

Let me help you make your point.  Filter HSreplay by legend and ranks 1-5.  Priest is the only tier 1 deck when you look at it that way. 

Thanks for sharing those HSReplay premium stats.  It's really insightful.  Do you know what is the sample size on those Rank 5-L priest games, by any chance?  Normally it wouldn't be a concern but combo priest has historically been played in tiny numbers even when it's good

 Its called "Combo Priest" but its not like previous versions of combo priests. Its just zoo priest with DS/IF. Its no OTK or anything like that, you just fight for board control and surprise your opponents with Hearthstone's oldest trick. Pretty lame but with the new cards its effective. At least for now, while its new and it can get off-guard the opponents. IMO its just a "deck of the week" because its so predictable once you know what are you playing against.

 It is comparable to Mech Bomb Hunter from last expansion. I don't it is going to disappear from the ladder just because it is cheap and effective for climbing, but yeah it is not gonna see any tournament play.

I'm not sure about that.  Psychopomp and Amet are super powerful and, IMO, are only held down by being in a weak class.  Divine spirit finishers aren't that unexpected and most people probably play around it as soon as they see large health things and Amet, especially at those high ranks cited in the screenshots

I wouldn't compare it to ladder only decks like mech hunter, token druid and zoo either.  Those were decks that got a boost on ladder stats because they were easy to play and didn't suffer much from a lack of skill.  This priest being tier 1 at high ranks but low tier 2 overall strongly suggests the opposite; that casual players aren't good enough to use the deck to its full potential.  I'm not surprised, because anything involving divine spirit inner fire has historically be very hard to play perfectly and undervalued in ladder stats (and that includes both tempo and combo variants).  This is the kind of deck that would see a lot of tournament play and little ladder play, like cyclone mage or control warrior from the previous meta.  Well... either that or the sample size is too small, which is why I was asking

Quote from FortyDust >>

Priest has always been the combo class. This is not a new development.

Sometimes it gets the tools for control, but that's not the default state. With no evergreen board clears, you can't claim control is its identity.

Maybe they were in the past but they're not meant to be.  Mind Blast is rotated and divine spirit was mentioned as a "monitored" card in a recent reddit AMA in part because it conflicts with priest class identity

As for board clears, priest has soulpriest circle and an affinity for pyro shenanigans due to evergreen cheap spells and health buffs

Quote from Spectralfire1984 >>

Let me help you make your point.  Filter HSreplay by legend and ranks 1-5.  Priest is the only tier 1 deck when you look at it that way. 

Thanks for sharing those HSReplay premium stats.  It's really insightful.  Do you know what is the sample size on those Rank 5-L priest games, by any chance?  Normally it wouldn't be a concern but combo priest has historically been played in tiny numbers even when it's good

Reached legend again just now @ 71% winrate with freeze mage!

This had to be one of the most frustrating legend runs I've had in awhile.  Faced the final boss 7 times in total and on the 6th time, I almost fell out of rank 1 (climbing got a lot harder at ranks where people figured out that quest druid is terrible lol)

I think I'm done with giants based mages for the foreseeable future after this.  I like to play decks where I'm happy to queue into the mirror because I think I can easily outplay the opponent.  With giants mages, you will easily lose regardless if the opponent has pocket galaxy in a timely manner and you don't, which is frustrating to me (Although, one time I almost beat someone with that kind of draw: I had giants, chain freezes and made the decision to capitalize on them rather than try to go even and lose slowly... would have won if the opponent didn't power of creation into taunts in the end)

The meta was pretty stable once I started reaching the trihard ranks.  It's mostly reno mages up here, with a number of aggro shamans, control warriors and murloc paladins.  A small amount of tempo rogues, midrange/reno hunters.  One inner fire priest that I kept queuing into.  No druids or warlocks whatsoever

Quote from Murl0c_Slayer >>

 Srsly did you face any aggro ?

Highlander Hunter ?! you want me to play it only  For 7 mana King Krush ? this is just stupid.

 Highlander hunter is mid tier 2 on HSReplay, mate.  It does lose to aggro, but it has a stellar winrate against everything else.  Having polarized matchups doesn't make a deck bad.  In fact, we all should know how powerful decks like egg hunter, cubelock and the current mages are

It really depends on what you mean by "experiment time".  The super obvious T1 decks like bomb warrior were already out by this time last expansion but on the other hand, there is also a lot of weaker but refined decks in the meta that people haven't figured out aren't good yet (such as zoo last expansion).  There could also be T1 decks yet to be discovered; cyclone mage and egg hunter weren't created until very late into their respective expansions

Decks are obviously a lot more refined than day 1 but there is still a lot of room for improvement