Whether a deck exists with pre-ordered cards or the next card is pick randomly each time you draw / use Tracking is a non debate, it doesn't change the value of Tracking at all.
This is actually exactly the case. It absolutely doesn't matter, since before the card draw you do not know the outcome. Thus, the specidic single result is just not changing the overall benefit at all. And statistically, the card does perform positively.
Look at the statistics of the card. As long as the pros are using Tracking , it is likely worth the inclusion. The feeling that you always have to decide between good cards is probably confirmation bias. In most games it is more important to get a certain card NOW and not lose the present game than having the discarded cards still in the deck and maybe fish them out with stitched tracker.
The only time tracking is actually useless (or even dangerous to use) is in matchups which will go to fatigue (e.g. Odd Warrior). And maybe using it with Zul'jin can also lead to fatigue issues.
That said, I also do not like tracking and I rarely use the card in my Hunter decks for the same reasons you pointed out. However, I know that I am most likely wrong in doing so. But I feel better and that's enough reason for me...
If you've played zul'jin you probably have already won
Depends on the deck you are playing against. Against a midrange or aggro deck, yes you likely have. Against control? They just boardwipe and outvalue you. Odd warrior would love to see you replace Rexxar with zuljin. Control warlock as well.
tracking is more often than not giving you the edge to be able to win a game.
the most common mistake i see though is people randomly ditching it out turn 1. there may be opening hands where you wanna play tracking first turn but usually its a horrible play as sometimes you don't even know what deck your opponent is playing so you actually may pick a bad card for that specific matchup without knowing.
If tracking was bad then pro players wouldn't play it.
Hunter doesn't play combo, so burning a card doesn't matter. Yes, you can get Legendary weapon, Rexxar, and Zul'jin all in your tracking. You can't let low% instances effect your overall view of the power of the card. For every time you discard something you really needed, there are like 5+ games where tracking just puts you closer to the card you really need via deck thinning.
The "you aren't playing tracking correctly" thing is a real thing, and it's not an insult to your skill as a player. There have been plenty of times i've played tracking and looked at it after and realized it was not a good play, and not just in hindsight because of RNG. Hunter generally plays for tempo, and playing the best card of the top 3 on your deck that turn is better than drawing it 1-3 turns later. You don't play tracking for no reason because you have 1 mana floating, you play it when it can improve your turn. People debate about turn 1 tracking and sometimes it's the right play so you can get the card that strengthens the kind of hand you have or matchup you're in.
DR hunter often plays for value unlike most hunter decks (it can still play the tempo role and use tracking differently when doing so) and it still plays tracking. Against an odd warrior you don't play tracking until turn 7 if you haven't found Rexxar,and then you might not play it at all unless you're fishing for a card that could give you lethal. You don't play tracking if you're going to play Katrena soon so you don't discard a beast.
The smaller deck size > greater strength thing is something I never even considered before. Patches for example, before my time but could never figure out it's worth. Saying that it essentially gives you a 29 card deck and free 1/1, I'm still scratching my head a little as to how that can be a noticeable advantage, but I'm at least starting to see the benefit.
I understand the value of the multi-card draw - but I can't justify the 1 mana to draw 1 card mechanic as a standalone entity. You're spending one mana to draw the card you would've drawn if you didn't have the 1 mana draw 1 card in the deck! :)
Anyway, I'm understanding Tracking a lot more now, the discussion has been great!
As to patches: filtering is a minor advantage, but it still is. The main value lies in the fact that you get a +1/+1 on your minion for free. A huge tempo gain in the early game. With charge it was superstrong, without it's just strong.
The smaller deck size > greater strength thing is something I never even considered before. Patches for example, before my time but could never figure out it's worth. Saying that it essentially gives you a 29 card deck and free 1/1, I'm still scratching my head a little as to how that can be a noticeable advantage, but I'm at least starting to see the benefit.
I understand the value of the multi-card draw - but I can't justify the 1 mana to draw 1 card mechanic as a standalone entity. You're spending one mana to draw the card you would've drawn if you didn't have the 1 mana draw 1 card in the deck! :)
Anyway, I'm understanding Tracking a lot more now, the discussion has been great!
This is just the reason people play card draw in general, almost the same thing as what i explained in my last post. If you could just make your deck 28 cards instead of 30 for the cost of not playing 2 trackings, then this would be a valid argument. But you can't, card draw is basically paying extra mana (in this case 1 mana) to cycle through your deck, effectively making your deck less than 30 cards for the cost of that extra mana. Replacing card draw with cards you wanna draw would only make sense if you weren't already playing the max amount of those cards that you can fit in a deck. But you can't play more than 2 of a card/more than 1 of a legendary. Best thing you could replace it with is some cards weaker than what you already have in the deck that also work quite well with it or tech cards. But you'd really rather just pay the extra 1 mana for 1st draw and 2 for every next draw [on average] to get closer to the really op stuff you already have like spellstones, rexxar in some matchups, zul'jin in some matchups etc. So don't compare card draw to just playing the cards you wanna draw in its place. You already have those in your deck, the card draw is just filling up the deck until it's 30 cards to get to those cards faster.
What you should compare tracking to is other card draw. Sure, it doesn't draw multiple cards, but mana wise it's fair for drawing 1 card when it does that, but also with an upside (which i already talked about in the previous post, on average it's still an upside even if you discard 2 cards), so it's a good card. You also can't really compare it to multi card draws, because hunter doesn't really has those, it just plays what it can. But it's also not like it's strictly worse than multi card draw (if hunter had it). Compare it to something like sprint - it's way better value, because 1 card draws you 4 cards, but it costs 7. You usually spend your whole turn just playing that card, that's a huge tempo loss (you have to make up for it by using the value from the 4 cards you've drawn). Meanwhile tracking only costs 1, so in most games you can find a turn where you just play it for free with your leftover mana.
My absolute favorite part about tracking Is when the card I want is the on the very right because than I know that if I didn’t tracking I would have had to wait 3 TURNS to get to that draw! :) and probably would have lost tempo/possibly died by then. So yeah I like tracking. Not only cause it draws you a card for 1 mana, discards the two you don’t need and are cluttering your top decks, but the satisfaction of getting that very right devilsaur egg you so desperately needed cause you have a hand full of deathrattle procs ;) oh yeah
This thread has been amazing, thanks so much to everyone for their contribution! I'm blown away by the knowledge and positivity, and just how many damn posts we've got in here!
Just about every post I read I'm learning more about Tracking, and it's helped me understand card draw in general too. Now I'm figuring out why Thalnos is considered a strong legendary card, for example.
I've *definitely* been playing it wrong, and the last half dozen or so posts have some great information in them as to how Tracking is valuable in DR Hunter. So it's very likely I won't even experiment too much with the card out of the deck. (Curiosity will kill my cat though, I'm sure of it).
I love this knowledge sharing and helping each other to understand things! <3
This thread has been amazing, thanks so much to everyone for their contribution! I'm blown away by the knowledge and positivity, and just how many damn posts we've got in here!
Just about every post I read I'm learning more about Tracking, and it's helped me understand card draw in general too. Now I'm figuring out why Thalnos is considered a strong legendary card, for example.
I've *definitely* been playing it wrong, and the last half dozen or so posts have some great information in them as to how Tracking is valuable in DR Hunter. So it's very likely I won't even experiment too much with the card out of the deck. (Curiosity will kill my cat though, I'm sure of it).
I love this knowledge sharing and helping each other to understand things! <3
Also, i don't think it's been confirmed that tracking takes the 3 cards from the top of your deck. Even if it's true, you don't know what those 3 cards are and if they are any better than the cards below them, so they might as well have been random. Arguments like "tracking is bad, because you would have gotten all 3 cards in 3 turns if you just didn't play it" are stupid, because you could say that for the whole game, but you don't know what 3 cards you are talking about. It's really just the question of "are 2 random cards out of x cards left in my deck on average something i'd rather get rid of or something important in the current game?". Usually more than half of the cards in your deck are something pretty useless compared to the other cards, so the answer would be yes. You'd rather just dig for the truly game winning stuff like spellstone, rexxar in control matchups or whatever else you need (some specific secret or kill command for lethal for example). The list of cards you wanna draw probably changes a bit as the game goes on and you can choose when to play tracking to get an advantage out of it.
If you aren't buying the arguments, just look at the statistics. They all say it's good. That won't help you understand why it's good, but it should help show you that it is, indeed, good.
In the early 20th Century, statistically the vast majority of Germans thought Nazism was a good thing. Your argument is on the same lines. You don't seem to understand the subjectivity of mob-born popularity versus objective usefulness.
Essentially, just because it's used in a lot of decks has literally no bearing on the value of a card. People didn't use Prince Keleseth for a long time because "obviously it is a terrible card; look at the statistics - nobody plays that card, so if you think it's good that means you must not understand why it is bad"....
I think you can see the problem with this line of thinking here...
If you aren't buying the arguments, just look at the statistics. They all say it's good. That won't help you understand why it's good, but it should help show you that it is, indeed, good.
In the early 20th Century, statistically the vast majority of Germans thought Nazism was a good thing. Your argument is on the same lines. You don't seem to understand the subjectivity of mob-born popularity versus objective usefulness.
Essentially, just because it's used in a lot of decks has literally no bearing on the value of a card. People didn't use Prince Keleseth for a long time because "obviously it is a terrible card; look at the statistics - nobody plays that card, so if you think it's good that means you must not understand why it is bad"....
I think you can see the problem with this line of thinking here...
Why do so many people bring up nazis in order to strawman a point of view?
If you aren't buying the arguments, just look at the statistics. They all say it's good. That won't help you understand why it's good, but it should help show you that it is, indeed, good.
In the early 20th Century, statistically the vast majority of Germans thought Nazism was a good thing. Your argument is on the same lines. You don't seem to understand the subjectivity of mob-born popularity versus objective usefulness.
Essentially, just because it's used in a lot of decks has literally no bearing on the value of a card. People didn't use Prince Keleseth for a long time because "obviously it is a terrible card; look at the statistics - nobody plays that card, so if you think it's good that means you must not understand why it is bad"....
I think you can see the problem with this line of thinking here...
Why do so many people bring up nazis in order to strawman a point of view?
Very good question, maybe because they think mentioning Nazis will overshadow the strawman so noone realize the lack of reason?
Honestly, that is one of the biggest bullshit arguments in this thread so far. Statistics of a card are not (merely) the amount of decks it is used in. Good deckbuilders (like many pros are) rely on the winrate statistics, i.e. how good a card performs in the respective decks and for the mulligan on the winrate in certain matchups. Which has nothing to do with opinions, but with numbers and facts.
Here is a brief example how winrate statistics are used by pros (beginning and 9:40):
If you aren't buying the arguments, just look at the statistics. They all say it's good. That won't help you understand why it's good, but it should help show you that it is, indeed, good.
In the early 20th Century, statistically the vast majority of Germans thought Nazism was a good thing. Your argument is on the same lines. You don't seem to understand the subjectivity of mob-born popularity versus objective usefulness.
Essentially, just because it's used in a lot of decks has literally no bearing on the value of a card. People didn't use Prince Keleseth for a long time because "obviously it is a terrible card; look at the statistics - nobody plays that card, so if you think it's good that means you must not understand why it is bad"....
I think you can see the problem with this line of thinking here...
Why do so many people bring up nazis in order to strawman a point of view?
Because the comparison was a relevant one and uses an example that everyone is familiar with. I might easily ask: "Why do people fool themselves into thinking that using Nazism as an example devalues an argument magically, because #reasons?"
Next time I will use an obscure reference that nobody has heard of and will expect everyone to accept because I said so (according to that logic). Anyway, nice use of a strawman there by diverting attention away from the valid argument my point raised and instead focused on the fact I used an analogy that made you uncomfortable instead. Irony, thy name is....
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hey! we hit 100 replies.
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
I play hunter and never put tracking in my deck,never.
play it!
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
This is actually exactly the case. It absolutely doesn't matter, since before the card draw you do not know the outcome. Thus, the specidic single result is just not changing the overall benefit at all. And statistically, the card does perform positively.
Depends on the deck you are playing against. Against a midrange or aggro deck, yes you likely have. Against control? They just boardwipe and outvalue you. Odd warrior would love to see you replace Rexxar with zuljin. Control warlock as well.
tracking is more often than not giving you the edge to be able to win a game.
the most common mistake i see though is people randomly ditching it out turn 1. there may be opening hands where you wanna play tracking first turn but usually its a horrible play as sometimes you don't even know what deck your opponent is playing so you actually may pick a bad card for that specific matchup without knowing.
If tracking was bad then pro players wouldn't play it.
Hunter doesn't play combo, so burning a card doesn't matter. Yes, you can get Legendary weapon, Rexxar, and Zul'jin all in your tracking. You can't let low% instances effect your overall view of the power of the card. For every time you discard something you really needed, there are like 5+ games where tracking just puts you closer to the card you really need via deck thinning.
The "you aren't playing tracking correctly" thing is a real thing, and it's not an insult to your skill as a player. There have been plenty of times i've played tracking and looked at it after and realized it was not a good play, and not just in hindsight because of RNG. Hunter generally plays for tempo, and playing the best card of the top 3 on your deck that turn is better than drawing it 1-3 turns later. You don't play tracking for no reason because you have 1 mana floating, you play it when it can improve your turn. People debate about turn 1 tracking and sometimes it's the right play so you can get the card that strengthens the kind of hand you have or matchup you're in.
DR hunter often plays for value unlike most hunter decks (it can still play the tempo role and use tracking differently when doing so) and it still plays tracking. Against an odd warrior you don't play tracking until turn 7 if you haven't found Rexxar,and then you might not play it at all unless you're fishing for a card that could give you lethal. You don't play tracking if you're going to play Katrena soon so you don't discard a beast.
As to patches: filtering is a minor advantage, but it still is. The main value lies in the fact that you get a +1/+1 on your minion for free. A huge tempo gain in the early game. With charge it was superstrong, without it's just strong.
This is just the reason people play card draw in general, almost the same thing as what i explained in my last post. If you could just make your deck 28 cards instead of 30 for the cost of not playing 2 trackings, then this would be a valid argument. But you can't, card draw is basically paying extra mana (in this case 1 mana) to cycle through your deck, effectively making your deck less than 30 cards for the cost of that extra mana. Replacing card draw with cards you wanna draw would only make sense if you weren't already playing the max amount of those cards that you can fit in a deck. But you can't play more than 2 of a card/more than 1 of a legendary. Best thing you could replace it with is some cards weaker than what you already have in the deck that also work quite well with it or tech cards. But you'd really rather just pay the extra 1 mana for 1st draw and 2 for every next draw [on average] to get closer to the really op stuff you already have like spellstones, rexxar in some matchups, zul'jin in some matchups etc. So don't compare card draw to just playing the cards you wanna draw in its place. You already have those in your deck, the card draw is just filling up the deck until it's 30 cards to get to those cards faster.
What you should compare tracking to is other card draw. Sure, it doesn't draw multiple cards, but mana wise it's fair for drawing 1 card when it does that, but also with an upside (which i already talked about in the previous post, on average it's still an upside even if you discard 2 cards), so it's a good card. You also can't really compare it to multi card draws, because hunter doesn't really has those, it just plays what it can. But it's also not like it's strictly worse than multi card draw (if hunter had it). Compare it to something like sprint - it's way better value, because 1 card draws you 4 cards, but it costs 7. You usually spend your whole turn just playing that card, that's a huge tempo loss (you have to make up for it by using the value from the 4 cards you've drawn). Meanwhile tracking only costs 1, so in most games you can find a turn where you just play it for free with your leftover mana.
My absolute favorite part about tracking Is when the card I want is the on the very right because than I know that if I didn’t tracking I would have had to wait 3 TURNS to get to that draw! :) and probably would have lost tempo/possibly died by then. So yeah I like tracking. Not only cause it draws you a card for 1 mana, discards the two you don’t need and are cluttering your top decks, but the satisfaction of getting that very right devilsaur egg you so desperately needed cause you have a hand full of deathrattle procs ;) oh yeah
it was a good card before Zul'jin it is almost unplayable now.
Dead but dreaming
Just don’t play zuljin xD
This thread has been amazing, thanks so much to everyone for their contribution! I'm blown away by the knowledge and positivity, and just how many damn posts we've got in here!
Just about every post I read I'm learning more about Tracking, and it's helped me understand card draw in general too. Now I'm figuring out why Thalnos is considered a strong legendary card, for example.
I've *definitely* been playing it wrong, and the last half dozen or so posts have some great information in them as to how Tracking is valuable in DR Hunter. So it's very likely I won't even experiment too much with the card out of the deck. (Curiosity will kill my cat though, I'm sure of it).
I love this knowledge sharing and helping each other to understand things! <3
Yea me too bro. Learned a lot from this thread.
1xbenx1 gets it 👍
Also, i don't think it's been confirmed that tracking takes the 3 cards from the top of your deck. Even if it's true, you don't know what those 3 cards are and if they are any better than the cards below them, so they might as well have been random. Arguments like "tracking is bad, because you would have gotten all 3 cards in 3 turns if you just didn't play it" are stupid, because you could say that for the whole game, but you don't know what 3 cards you are talking about. It's really just the question of "are 2 random cards out of x cards left in my deck on average something i'd rather get rid of or something important in the current game?". Usually more than half of the cards in your deck are something pretty useless compared to the other cards, so the answer would be yes. You'd rather just dig for the truly game winning stuff like spellstone, rexxar in control matchups or whatever else you need (some specific secret or kill command for lethal for example). The list of cards you wanna draw probably changes a bit as the game goes on and you can choose when to play tracking to get an advantage out of it.
In the early 20th Century, statistically the vast majority of Germans thought Nazism was a good thing.
Your argument is on the same lines. You don't seem to understand the subjectivity of mob-born popularity versus objective usefulness.
Essentially, just because it's used in a lot of decks has literally no bearing on the value of a card.
People didn't use Prince Keleseth for a long time because "obviously it is a terrible card; look at the statistics - nobody plays that card, so if you think it's good that means you must not understand why it is bad"....
I think you can see the problem with this line of thinking here...
Why do so many people bring up nazis in order to strawman a point of view?
Very good question, maybe because they think mentioning Nazis will overshadow the strawman so noone realize the lack of reason?
Honestly, that is one of the biggest bullshit arguments in this thread so far. Statistics of a card are not (merely) the amount of decks it is used in. Good deckbuilders (like many pros are) rely on the winrate statistics, i.e. how good a card performs in the respective decks and for the mulligan on the winrate in certain matchups. Which has nothing to do with opinions, but with numbers and facts.
Here is a brief example how winrate statistics are used by pros (beginning and 9:40):
Because the comparison was a relevant one and uses an example that everyone is familiar with.
I might easily ask: "Why do people fool themselves into thinking that using Nazism as an example devalues an argument magically, because #reasons?"
Next time I will use an obscure reference that nobody has heard of and will expect everyone to accept because I said so (according to that logic).
Anyway, nice use of a strawman there by diverting attention away from the valid argument my point raised and instead focused on the fact I used an analogy that made you uncomfortable instead.
Irony, thy name is....