Hearthpwn

More often than not unstable portal has left me with an unsatisfied feeling.  I once got a flame totem :)

Quote from Livesage »

Sigh, there are just so many illogical people around who cannot count properly.

"OMG Unstable Portal is OP because you can get a 1 mana Piloted Shredder or 3 mana Cairne!"

Actually, you already paid 2 mana for whatever card you got by playing Unstable Portal. So in the best case scenario, the mana reduction is only one (and sometimes it will be zero or negative). Yes, it sometimes allows you to play a strong card ahead of the curve, but Druids are guaranteed to be able to do that their Innervates, which no one is screaming to be nerfed.

Also, keep in mind that you lose tempo everytime you play Unstable Portal and cannot instantly play the card you got that turn (you effectively passed your turn 2), so it is only fair that you gain back tempo when you eventually do play the card you got.

 

I disagree that your only paying 1 mana less because you utilize the minion on a different turn. Especially late game this card is unbalanced, the low cost of UP allows for easy mana use that otherwise would go unused. So turn eight, UP and then Sylvanas and get a 5 man Rag for turn 9? no loss of tempo there.

Hello all OP here, First Yes I retract my previous statement that there are "No Bad Cards" Yes there are bad minions that you can get Probably any 0 mana minion is a bad draw. But my original point is that paying zero mana for a 2, 3, mana for nearly any minion besides parrot is going to increase your advantage significantly and doesn't really hurt your "tempo". Unless you are playing a "tempo" deck a minor loss of tempo will not lose you the game especially if you get any value out of UP same turn.

Any Late game card becomes a mid game card. a turn 3 cairne, a turn four Dr. boom or Hell even a 3 mana Boulderfist is OP

My main point is any bad minion 3 mana and above vanilla is bad. But synergistic or not every one of those cards -3 mana is good, really good. Blizzard has recently stated about RNG that it creates epic stories however odds are forever not in the opponents favor with UP, and that makes for some pretty negative epic stories.

I will add that imo UP just needs a minor nerf. I don't want it so its never played I want it balanced. Preferably 3 mana, or summons a minion that costs 2 less. 

Someone needs to calculate the odds.

Unstable portal gives a net advantage of

1 mana, +0 cards in deck, +0 cards in hand, and you get a spray and pray effect.

The mana reduction is equal to innervate+coin, who's cost nets about 1.5 cards and 0 mana. So you are effective paying 2 mana for a spell that draws a random minion from all minions in the game and an effect equal to 1.5 cards. At some point I ran the exact numbers for the minions, will update this post If I find it.

This poor website . . . . 

all it's become is a place for players to whine about whatever they lost most recently to.

everything is OP, everything needs a nerf, only the cards I like should be good, RNG always favors the opponent, my personal anecdote is the reality, etc etc

sigh

It's been said in the forums several times that Blizzard nerfs based on how often it's used. I'd guess its ability to end a game would also be a factor. Which would explain power word;Shield (which I say is the best card in the game,) not being changed.

I think it comes down to it's lack of purpose. It doesn't have a synergy with anything. (Aside from just being a spell.) It's just strong. The odds aren't anywhere near balancing out. I'm not cherrypicking. From my experience it's too much.

I think people are greatly overestimating its value. Yes, it has the ability to blow games wide open, but it can also be a total dud tempo loss. In the current meta things are relatively fast, and often you can't afford to do nothing on Turn 2. It's a great card for weaker players because it gives them a chance in match-ups they previously had no chance in, but its lack of consistency makes it pretty bad in a serious constructed deck, both for ladder and tournaments. Most serious players have already started to cut it (see http://bmkgaming.com/building-better-robot-mech-mage-mech-shaman-decks-hearthstone/ for example) and I would be absolutely shocked if it saw a nerf.

"This version includes Unstable Portal, largely at the urging of my stream’s chat. I played with it a bunch, but didn’t really like it, even though it probably gave me far better than expected returns on average. The big problem with it in a deck like this is that you really want to spend your early turns either developing your own board or responding to your opponent, and casting Unstable Portal doesn’t reliably allow you to do either of those things. It can certainly be very powerful, and perhaps overtly game-winningly so given its effect, but it’s not really a card that I was happy using myself."

He doesn't say it isn't OP. He says it might be. He even tried it in the deck when he wanted synergy. I would agree it's not great for a mech deck.

The part that is harder to dispute for fairness though is its effect on Arena. This card has insane value without any synergy. That's where it is the most over powered.

Quote from Spectre1116 »

This poor website . . . . 

all it's become is a place for players to whine about whatever they lost most recently to.

everything is OP, everything needs a nerf, only the cards I like should be good, RNG always favors the opponent, my personal anecdote is the reality, etc etc

sigh

 

Ahh right everyone but you is a noob.

Nope serious considerations only. 

Quote from Livesage »

Actually, you already paid 2 mana for whatever card you got by playing Unstable Portal. So in the best case scenario, the mana reduction is only one (and sometimes it will be zero or negative). Yes, it sometimes allows you to play a strong card ahead of the curve, but Druids are guaranteed to be able to do that their Innervates, which no one is screaming to be nerfed.

Also, keep in mind that you lose tempo everytime you play Unstable Portal and cannot instantly play the card you got that turn (you effectively passed your turn 2), so it is only fair that you gain back tempo when you eventually do play the card you got.

 

^Best explanation of what unstable does, basically it's like reverse overload, only you can never be sure what you'll get.

Quote from CasmX »

I can definitely relate to the OP's frustration but I also don't feel it will be nerfed any time soon.

The thing with Unstable Portal is there are far more decent draws than bad. Hell, there's more extremely good/broken draws than bad. You have to have pretty bad luck to get a bad draw with it. Of course, most people that play it enough will see a bad card every once in a while. Hell, I've seen a bad card a few times and I barely play mage. However, you're much more likely to see decent or good cards.

The list of bad draws, (IMO):

• Any 0 or 1 cost minion
• Captain's Parrot
• Alarm-o-Bot*
• Starving Buzzard

That's pretty much it. Captain's Parrot is just terrible but in arena, it can still be useful. Alarm-o-bot is equally terrible but given perfect conditions can be good. Lastly Starving Buzzard is terrible but even then, it just makes it a vanilla 2 mana 3/2 and in arenas, it's still possibly to gain card draw. So, even these completely terrible cards still aren't even that bad, they're just not going to be as useful as just about any other draw.

So, these cards along with the 0-1 cost minions make up about 15% of the minion pool, meaning that every time you cast Unstable Portal, there's approx an 85% chance that you'll get something that isn't atrocious. Now I'm not suggesting that every other card is going to be amazing, but every other card with the discounted cost is going to end up being pretty decent and many of the times, will be outright overpowered.

Alarm-o-Bot actually has a really good chance of being good from Unstable portal. Turn 2 has a decent chance of surviving... And it stays 0 cost. So you can keep replaying it over and over again for free. That's actually pretty amazing. You do need to find a way to sneak him in obviously, but if that'ts one of your 3 worst possibilities... That ain't bad.

Side Note* Saw Kripp owning with Far Sight. Which is considered as a bad card. Why is that?

Nerf/Buff? Neither.  A strong card, but often misused.  THIS IS NOT A CARD FOR COINED OUT ON TURN 1 OR TURN 2, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A 2 DROP MINION.  However, turn 3 or 4, this card becomes extremely great.  

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I have used at least 300 of this card, and can say from experience that the drop rates are about normal, and with data to prove it:

http://imgur.com/BVXN54e

(Me and my friends were bored for a few days, so we made this)

As you can see, the legendary drop rates are almost 20%, which matches the normal:legendary ratio in hearthstone.

Yes, random cards may not synergize - but some of the class cards from other classes synergize very well and those cards you can't just chose to put in your deck.

Flip side, just because you didn't see the bad draw doesn't mean it didn't happen. It could be that you never see it because it would hurt the mage more than it hurts you. I know that I'd be super nervous about playing a wisp against a hunter if there was even a ghost of a chance that they could pull off some sort of UtH combo.

(There is, of course, just 1 wisp... or maybe 2 if you count Captain's Parrot - but there are 18 class legendaries - and each of them basically already get a 1-mana discount over the average card).

I personally would like to see the legendaries (or at least the class legendaries) culled from the list of possible results. A 4 mana Stormwind Champion is still a very good card (or even a 6-mana UP, but that particular calculation only makes sense if you would only ever replace a UP with a 2-mana minion) - considering some of the decks it shows up in, that doesn't really seem to be the case.