Hearthstone devs answer a number of interesting questions on Zephrys, Solo Adventure, Brawls, Arena, and more, in this Community Q&A Roundup!
Regarding Zephrys
- [S] Zephrys doesn't take into consideration that you're drawing two cards out from him (double battlecry effects), each one will be evaluated independently.
- [S] If a lot of your minions died this turn, Zephrys should give you a High Inquisitor Whitemane as an option.
- [S] If you want to get a value card other than Tirion Fordring out of the 3 choices (Ysera, Jarraxus or other 9+ cost cards), you should play Zephrys at the end of your turn.
Regarding new Adventure
- [S] We should see more information about the upcoming solo adventure in about a week or two.
- [S] We should see more quests coming leading into the solo adventure.
Regarding Brawls
- [S] The Webspinners brawl has been soft-retired and we won't get it in the immediate future if ever.
- [S] Raven Idol brawn isn't completely retired and we still might see it in the future, because It isn't completely random and you can control the game a bit.
Regarding Arena
- [S] There is going to be a change regarding arena drawing buckets in the patch 15.4:
Quote fromMicroadjustment balance changes are based on a formula that takes into account the current bucket information, which is why they don't happen until at least a few days after bucket adjustments. I believe we sent over the public bucket information a few days ago to our community team but it's possible it didn't get to the right folks. I'll doublecheck Monday.
For 15.4, we're going to try doing an arena patch without buckets and have all cards be part of one giant pool. This is similar to how the early days of arena worked. Theoretically, buckets made individual arena decisions a little more interesting and put more weight behind how a card works in the deck you are drafting vs its power level in a vacuum. While I think there is some truth to this, I don't think it's been a well received change overall. For players new or inexperienced with Hearthstone, the idea of having 'obvious' choices is a win. For hardcore players, if the change to buckets is not a clear upside (which has been most of the feedback we've received here) then it's probably just not worth doing. One positive part of not doing buckets is that the micro-adjustment patches should happen faster in the future because there does not need to be a preliminary bucket adjustment patch to set the stage.
Miscellaneous answers
- [S] They're working on a bunch of different things, BUT, they just aren't quite ready to share what those things are.
- [S] Elise should be copying cards from left to right, but she is currently copying cards randomly - that should be fixed in the next major update.
- [S] Iksar likes the idea of adding Rush to the base set at some point.
- [S] They have been very happy with the gameplay of the Rush mechanic and there is a lot of design space with it.
- [S] The goals of the classic and basic set have changed over the years:
Quote fromI think our goals now can afford to be a little more narrow. Mechanically, we want to teach players the base level interactions of the game and give each class a core identity and toolkit of stuff to help them realize that identity expansion to expansion. Power level aside, I think Rogue is a good example of a class that does this pretty well. Regardless of what cards exist in an expansion, Rogue gameplay still tends to feel unique on the back of a simple mechanic (combo) and some core toolkit cards that aren't win conditions on their own (Backstab, Evis, SI, Etc). Some of our other classes could do better at having a core toolkit, so it's something we want to address.
Editor's note: These answers were gathered from developer responses to community questions on Reddit/Twitter. We have made formatting and wording tweaks to improve flow. You can find the original source for each answer by clicking on the [S] icon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX2BQf8EWM4
cc is not a problem, mountain giant is, i do agree with kibler
Well, yes, he has been saying that mountain giant should be hall of famme for years.
do you remember handlock? do you remember even warlock? do you remember hand mage? that's when mountain giant proved that if it is in a deck it's a toxic deck
Conj Calling was an issue in arena just based on the fact that it allows for a trade + 2 new minions for 3 mana. It is for sure a problem
Buckets were the main thing separating more-skilled arena players from the pack. The old system allowed for far too much luck from a draft to have extra-powerful decks, whereas buckets allowed more consistency in your decks if you knew the bucket system. I think this is a bad choice.
This is a lazy move because they don't want to balance the buckets after every 2-month arena rotation, nor could they effectively do so in the first place. Having randomly swapped arena sets every two months sounds fun, but it's a bad idea from a balance standpoint.
I agree, but picking the same set of cards over and over again gets boring. Especially if you play arena a lot, like me. For example, if you play paladin, you'll have a hard time picking blessing of kings or consecration because they always get offered with truesilver champion, which is a better overall card.
They want to remove buckets because it is too hard to choose 1 card from 3 similar level ones lmao. Do they realize that deckbuilding is part of the game they they have all but forgotten about!? We don't want 1 obvious pick and 2 trash picks, that is so dumb. No wonder so many players are leaving the game
How did they get the sense that the Bucket system is bad? People still pick good cards out of same bucket (as opposed to their "deck-synergistic" card) because some cards are just under-bucketed. Instead of adjusting the bucket of those card they decide to get rid of bucket at all?
The meta get's very fixated on what's best in each bucket, which changes with each iteration of the bucket system. So if you aren't playing arena all the time it's really hard to know what cards you need to play around and the knowledge get's reset every time they change the buckets. So it kinda feels like the knowledge you just acquired just became useless.
I on the other hand enjoy the feeling of not knowing what to play around as the meta stays fresh, but it does introduce a lot more variance for those expecting to go infinite.
I personally enjoy it and hope it can attract some more arena players whenever the buckets shuffle, that in itself should help out everyone's winrate :)
As long as they nerf Northshire Cleric im happy.
HELL NO! You can't nerf a card because of some cards from the expansions,you should nerf them(conjurers calling)not the giant
So you are saying they should have nerfed juicy psychmelon and not aviana monkaHmm
Juicy Psychmelon just made drawing the combo more consistent, so of course it wasn't the problem card, while Mountain Giant and Sea Giant were never even thought to put into a mage deck until Conjurer's Calling released
If they are not in buckets I am not understanding how they will be bundled? Again by rarity? Than again terrible rarity will cause issues. Not like this is that big problem, but however.
When will be the next major update?
The formatting of this article is horrendous. I'm reading this from mobile and most of the Ishkar's paragraphs are sandwiched badly. I hope it will get reformatted better.
You were right, that was totally unreadable. We are terribly sorry that we didn't check on mobile how the article looked. It's fixed now, hope you enjoy reading about the Arena changes in his quotes.
I've taken a look and updated the formatting. It should hopefully now be working on mobile.
I've tested on iOS, but don't have an Android to do so. Please let me know if it is still a problem.
Thanks!
Hall of Fame please:
Mountain Giant (maybe even Sea Giant)
Savage Roar
Divine Spirit
Alexstrasza
Leeroy Jenkins
top fucking kek