Hearthpwn

Quote from Liam3Bucks >>

These puzzles are waaay harder than I expected them to be.

 My guess is that they know that the solutions will be posted online by the end of the day for those that don't want the challenge, so they are able to make these as difficult as they'd like without punishing people who don't care and just want the rewards.

Just started playing the puzzles and have to give credit where credit is due.  Puzzle labs is a super creative idea that teaches newer players things they might not normally think of.

Of course, the puzzles aren't going to be insanely challenging for veterans or highly ranked players, but a few of the puzzles involved fun gimmicks like damaging your own minion to create lethal or contained cards that aren't part of the puzzle to throw you off.

Although the replayability is low and I'm sure the answers will be posted online, this is a nice way to teach players to look for unusual plays.

It's really good right now, because it feasts on Zoo decks.  The meta hasn't really settled though, and it's entirely possible it ends up not being relevant a month or two down the road.  I wouldn't spend a ton of dust crafting stuff like Al'akir that's not always meta-relevant.  The deck is, however, perfectly viable without corpsetakers, and giants are pretty much always used in one deck or another so they're not a bad craft at all.  There are cheaper viable decks that are probably a better idea for beginner or budget players though.

It's not that Pogo-Hopper is bad, but I don't think it's a sleeper deck.  I played a bunch of games with it the first week of the expansion and as a player that reaches legend monthly with non-meta decks, I wasn't able to get it better than rank 2.  It is possibly the most fun deck I've ever played and involves a lot of careful and thoughtful plays (and produces some incredible wins when you come back from near death with just a couple of pogo hoppers sticking) but I wouldn't call it oppressive.

That said, I was playing the unoptimized version that ran striders and elekk and stuff.  I'd get just flat out killed before I could set up my pogos since rogue has pretty much no healing or armor gain.  The newer version running giggling inventors and zilliax is certainly better, but I just can't see any deck built around bunnies being better than high tier 3 to mid tier 2 - viable but not overpowered.  Pretty impressive for what many considered a "meme" card but certainly not Jade Druid 2.0 or anything like that.

New mechanics almost always seem (barring a few exceptions that were just bad mechanics) to increase the skill cap the first days/weeks of the expansion.  However, this is because many decks aren't optimized and many people don't know how to play them yet.

Right now, people that are able to critically think about the new cards are at an advantage.  However, a few months from now, the decks will be streamlined and the playstyle optimized, and these tips will seem obvious.  People eventually learn the mechanics, often from being punished by them repeatedly - like by leaving an egg or bomb up.  A few months down the road, this will all seem like common knowledge.

Many decks are "hard" until you learn the gimmicks and patterns, and I think this is what we're observing here.  Note that I'm not saying that the game is easy or that the skill cap is low, just that eventually even lower rank players will memorize the right responses, even if it doesn't make perfect sense to them.  

Quote from Rhyolth >>

Quote from 1xbenx1 >>

I'm really concerned that this will be the Kara nerfs all over again.

In the Kara nerfs, they nerfed a bunch of cards "around" shaman, but not the ones that were causing the biggest issues: Trogg, Golem, Flametongue.Then, they nerfed Warrior, Druid, and Hunter, which were decks that were competing against Shaman. All that really happened was Midrange Shaman became better than Aggro Shaman. (IIRC...feel free to correct me here).

Here, they nerfed a bunch of cards around druid, but not the one causing the biggest issues: Jade Idol. They've also nerfed Jade Druid's competition in Pirate Warrior and Aggro Druid.

I fear that all that will change is that Jade Druid adds a few more, midrange, defensive tools. It will still be favored against every control deck, because that's what it does.

 Yeah it feels more like a PR move with little effects. than an actual carefully thought nerf.

People complained about Spreading Plague, because it made Druid too hood against aggro ? They nerf it ... all while nerfing aggro decks as well : that's a zero sum in my book.

Eh, these are fine.  Spreading Plague was a HUGE issue since it caused a catch-22 where if you don't make your highest tempo play you're playing into their game plan and allowing them to build massive Jades, while if you do you're often playing small minions hoping they don't have plague and end up allowing them to stall multiple turns.

Innervating out UI after ramping is also often an absolute back-breaker once you have them close to out of cards and out of gas.  I would have preferred if they made innervate restore 2 mana crystals, allowing them to use 2 extra mana without being able to summon out creatures they shouldn't be able to, but this change isn't awful at least.

War Axe and Hex are cards that have been whined about for a long time but they aren't issues right now so it seems like a weird time to make these changes.  I get the whole design space argument and that their usage was super high but they're class-defining cards so I never had an issue with how often they're used.

Obviously, I would have loved some kind of direct hit to Jade rather than just indirect hits to druids altogether, but these changes should at least help.  

Jade Druid with Spreading Plague has become the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma that was an issue with the old Patron Warrior.  I'm not sure that any one card is the issue right now - UI wouldn't be as big a problem without Ramp and Innervate, Ramp wouldn't be such a big problem without a huge reload like UI, Plague wouldn't be such a problem without huge Jades to back them up, and so on.  I'm not sure what the solution is here, especially given that they have to think about the future too.  However, Spreading Plague has been particularly frustrating for me.

The only way to really counter Jade Druid's growth and inevitable victory is with aggression.  However, now that Spreading Plague is a card, we are punished for that aggression.  It creates a catch-22 where if I play around Plague by intentionally trading away or simply not playing my small minions, I'm playing right into their gameplan - I simply don't have the gas to finish them before the huge jades and massive armor gains.  However, if I make value trades that keep my board alive and wide (the typical way you used to beat druid) I'm greeted with a wall of 1/5s that stalls for more than long enough to win them the game.

There really is no clean way for most classes to deal with 1/5s, they're excellent even against big minions.  At this point, I generally just have to play as if they don't have Plague in their hand unless they give an obvious sign it's in their hand.  If they do have it, I lose, but I wasn't going to win by playing around it anyway.  I love smart counterplay like intentionally avoiding creating a Paladin token or trading a 1/1 into a 3/3 jade to deny a 1/5, but because of the rest of Jade Druid's cards you simply don't have time to play smart with most decks.

The new Jade Druid list is the first deck to legitimately make me not enjoy the game when I'm playing against it.  I've put up with all of the big decks people complained about (Secret Pally, Patron Warrior, Pirate Warrior etc) without complaining, and the new Jade Druid is the first time I've truly felt hopeless.

It feels like even with the perfect highroll draw against an average draw from Jade Druid, playing as aggressively as humanly possible, there's just no way to finish them before the inevitable snowball.

Don't get me wrong - I appreciate that the meta has slowed down and I'm having a ton of fun on the odd occasions I'm not playing one of the two ridiculous druid decks.  It's just too frustrating playing against a deck that feels like an auto-lose against a wide variety of decks out there with no counterplay.  I know that there are decks that beat the deck, but they're few and far between, don't interest me, and underperform against a lot of other decks.  We've never had a deck quite so punishing to quite so many decks before, in my opinion.

Anti-Freeze mage tech or something?  Warrior is the one of the few classes that doesn't actually NEED techs against freeze mage though.

Can't see this seeing a ton of play, risk is WAY too high even in a heavy control warrior.  I've liked some of the cards released so far a lot, and this is a VERY interesting mechanic, but I just can't see 10 armor being worth 2-10+ mana in reductions for your opponent.

I smell a troll

That's just a matter of taste. I personally feel the same when Guldan brings back a big wall of voidlords, despicable dreadlords, doomguards etc, which have been cheated out multiple ways before, or when the third hadronox lands, and so on. Difference is, those shit can be pulled of a lot more consistently, because all classes have access to reliable card draw, except of hunter (the main problem rexxar dk was meant to address).   

Your attempts at sarcasm suck.

Quote from Unknown27 >>

Quote from Kaladin >>

superior?  no.  more difficult to play?  arguably.

 This is wrong on so many levels you can't even understand.

It's neither more difficult nor superior.Just a different style.

 Ehm... control playstyle: Should I play a Deathcoil on that minion and trade this into that to play defile and clear the board (and save mana for heals) or keep resources for long terms and just play Twisting Nether?

Aggro playstyle: face face face face face face face me smorc me smorc me smorc me smorc leeeeroy jenkins. Fuck nerf BSM, it has too many AoEs...

I get reported because I insulted a person who created a thread about nerfing Water Elemental because it provided too many heals with Frost Lich Jaina (you know, it s water elemental the real issue, it s a 4 mana 3/6, TOO OP NERF IT). I couldn t be happier.

Im loving this so much, so many "old" combos brought back to light here. Oldtimers will def remember some of them and when they see some of the cards they r working with they will immediatelly go for the combo.

But i like how sometimes the obvious combo throws you off and you are trying to make it work but it is not the correct way. I love how some puzzles have "duds" that just screw with your mind, thats hilarious :D

Overall i think this is a great content that will remind (or introduce) different game mechanics and/or combos to all players. Rly well done.

Quote from Angrier_Chicken >>

Can it really be abused so much? I mean, you would need to spend a considerable amount of time in the game to be able to use is at your advantage, and most people won't do it. I wonder because I wish to implement such a system for a card game I'm developing.

 When offering something to a mass audience, never EVER assume that 'considerable amount of time' will be a major barrier.

Creating a system that automatically makes mass accounts and sends their goods to a main account have been around for decades now.  Since trading will exist, trading for cash will exist which provides plenty of incentive to keep running it even if you ban them.  For something like hearthstone, where you are guaranteed a legendary within 10 packs and where you can manipulate which legendary you get based on what you are currently holding, it makes creating a full collection VERY easy.

TCGs get around this by NOT offering anything for free.  Trading systems avoid saturation because they are limited by how much real cash you can spend.  And while people love to talk about how much they earned back selling their MTG packs, they aren't accounting for the many many **MANY** packs that ended up being trashed.  In the end, you will spend more than you earn in a CCG, which is fine if you are a player but worthless for folks trying to exploit the system.  Note though that this effectively means the game isn't F2P at all as you HAVE to buy the cards.  

CCGs get around this by NOT offering trade.  You can get whatever you want for free and can even keep rerolling accounts until you get the legendaries you want to start out with.  But it only works for your account.  You can try to get into account sales (which IS a thing and why bots are around here now) but that's easier for blizzard to track and punish than trading systems and you are far less likely to catch innocents trying to stop them.  

In the many many card games out there, trading, collecting, online, offline, so on, what you won't find is a system that combines the ability to obtain cards for free and the ability to trade those cards with others.  If a trading game offers cards for free, it'll be guaranteed in some way so that everyone can get them, making them worthless in the trading market.

And can we really REALLY *#($#)($# REALLYY stop with the "Blizzard won't allow it because PROFITS!?"  BS?  They already have tried this in Diablo 3 via the Real Money Auction House.  You can ask a D3 player how that worked out.  

Quote from Vrai_Nightviper >>

Would've been nice if it was a 6 mana 4/6 with taunt (along with the battlecry) or something. Or heck, 4/7, that's not broken right? 

You get dust back if they nerf so that you can craft another deck.  Jade druid is oppressively powerful and has created essentially a 4 deck meta.  There are plenty of ways to nerf the deck that don't come anywhere close to killing off the deck, but right now it beats anything it wants to that isn't murloc palladin or aggro druid.  That isn't ok.  Jade druid is essentially taking away viable ladder options and is creating a monotonous ladder. 

Quote from Vicious Syndicate »

Brace yourselves, Hearthstone players. Winter is here. The Un’Goro golden age has ended. The days of 18 viable archetypes from 8 different classes boasting win rates of over 48%, are gone. The period when decks could hardly break the 52% win rate mark at legend, is over. This is the age of the oppressive few. This is the age of Jade Druid, and the aggro decks that don’t roll over and die at the sight of it. There are only 4 archetypes that currently boast a positive win rate at legend, and there is a huge gap in the power level of these archetypes compared to everything else.