Hearthpwn

Best comment and fact I've seen in ages.

Got Jungle Giants!

Nice to see old school FoN, Ancient of Lore, and Keeper of the Grove druid! 

Hmm.. with K&C, Overload Shaman with the finisher being Lesser Sapphire Spellstone  + Wolfrider.  10-mana 12-damage charge.  Also, deathrattle Shaman, with Ancestral Spirit + Cursed Disciple or Lesser Sapphire Spellstone.  Unlimited 5/1 on board!

Quote from Trademark >>

My guesses for HoF are:

Ice Block, Bloodmage Thalnos, Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Alexstrasza and Preparation

I have a Golden Auctioneer and especially a Golden prep that I haven't touched in years hoping they get HoFed.

More rewards for winning against a friend or in a fireside gathering.  Although I personally like the 80g challenge a friend quest, it's a rare pick.

More spells and minions that are dependent on card position (e.g Crushing Walls).

Revise some probabilities in generating cards:
- For non-legendary cards: If you already have 2 copies of a card (either normal or golden), significantly reduce the probably of getting a 3rd copy of the same card from packs.  It's frustrating opening 6 copies of a common card after opening 40 packs, or taking forever to complete the basic set even if you've been playing for years.
- Golden cards should only have a conditional probability of pick (e.g. if a card has a 1% chance from a pack; then if you get that card, there's a 25% chance that card would be golden).  The point is I don't want golden cards to affect the probability of getting a specific card regardless of the cosmetic aspect.

Return the Sorry emote.

Quote from Lysenko >>

 

The important carry-away, though, is that 44% of my opponents were priests, almost all of them archetypes that were supposed to be favored against me, almost twice the representation of priests in the overall rank 5-1 population,  By comparison, my second largest group of opponents, warlock, were 22%, not too far off from their 17% representation in the population.  The remaining classes were only 1 or 2 games each.

Quote from Lysenko >>

All that said, I do personally like the idea that ranking should be a test of execution and not "what do I put in my deck."  As a player, that would mean to me that the optimal strategy might be finding a difficult-to-play deck and getting really good with it, rather than just going for easy and overall powerful.  (Arguably, like Spiteful Summoner Dragon Priest.)

Really well written thread, props to you guys.

Although I don't have any conclusive evidence or enough data to prove something statistically, personal experience tends to point matchmaking through specific cards (or even decks).  Similar to one of the posts above, I played a C'Thun Warrior out-of-whim one day to be matched to another C'Thun deck.  And on another instance, I used a buff priest similarly out-of-whim (i.e. Shadow Ascendant) only to be match with the similar archetype.

I wouldn't be surprised if matchmaking is tiered -- something like: ranking -> specific keycards (commonly used cards, legendaries, DKs) -> length of active play.  By putting the community into subsets, it'd be easier for Blizz to match specific players.  I brought up length of active play because recently (maybe since Oct/Nov?) I've been paired against gold players frequently in Standard matches even if I don't have a single gold hero and hardly ladder at all.  Using one-off weird decks still pits me against common meta deck archetype until I start having 5 consecutive losses.

Blizz has enough data to map a model to retain a business-oriented mmr, and at the same time balance it with the competitive scene.  What they do not have a direct control of are forums such as these, but given a lot of people tend to net deck or use in-fashion decks from pros, Blizz can use pro player decks as templates to match deck specific deck archetypes against each other.

P.S. Hopefully what I said made sense... I'm just having my coffee right now.  But please keep up the conversation. :)

Sometime ago, I read that Discover favors class cards; i.e. Discover is a weighted-probability.  Not sure of the ratio of class vs non-class cards, and chance of each card within each subset, but that weighting helps explains why cards such as Tirion and Sunkeeper are relatively common occurrences with Stonehill when using Paladins.

Quote from Kovachut >>

1) Big priest gets additional bodies, while the warrior only pulls them from its deck. Once they are dead, they are dead. Priest can cast Monster reborn, Greater Diamond Spellstone, i.e. priest has more resources to work with.

 

So is this card worth crafting?  I know it's probably safer to wait for a few weeks before crafting legendaries, once the meta settles down (for f2p players at least), but how's your experience so far?

I guess a lot have been saying something similar, but one huge argument blizz has for giving f2p the difficult chance to have a complete HS experience is that it's f2p.  Maybe from a corporate point-of-view, they're not going to release this without ensuring regular returns in investment. If most active players can complete the card list of a current expansion with fairly regular (daily) play, then there would be significantly less paying players, so there's no obligation for Blizz to maintain the game for the long run.

Several years down the road, I wouldn't be surprised if Blizz would either rotate back old cards or remove sets outright from the game.  This is a digital card game, and I'd imagine maintaining the libraries of a million active/inactive players would entail heavy costs on them.   This is a potential risk for a digital card game to have a split between "Standard" and "Wild" deck, which is not prevalent in a physical game (correct me if wrong).  Or, maybe one day, we'll cards have almost the same effects as older cards.  Although, surprisingly, a part of me looks forward to see the day again where a 4 mana 4/5 neutral body would be considered a power play in arena.  RIP Chillwind Yeti.

I once had a mirror match, only to have the tables turned on me since my opponent played Murmuring Elemental and Mind Control Tech.  Also, no Blazecaller?  That card's quite a tempo swing, but I'm not sure if it's your cup of tea...

Moroes value!