First of all, I'd like to apologize for this being more or less a salt thread. The last three times Mutanus the Devourer was played against me, he always sniped my biggest minion in hand (Grommash Hellscream out of 4, Rattlegore out of 5, Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180. So I'm slightly infuriated by that card and I know, it's due to variance and the card probably isn't overpowered in general.
But I'd like to turn that into a constructive discussion whether it is a healthy kind of disruption tool. I mean, probably anyone can agree that disruption is something a game like Hearthstone should have. The question is, should it be in such a highrolly manner as Mutanus? In some instances, he eats a 1/1 from my hand and is completely useless and in some instances he more or less wins the game. Whereas some earlier disruption cards like Dirty Rat seem a bit more "fair" and consistent. What are your opinions on the matter?
It can be 7 mana 4/4 do nothing, in my opinion the card is OK and this kind of disruption is 10x better than tickatus. At least there is some combo disruption in standard.
The problem is that you can't (or should I say shouldn't) create non-random hand disruption at a halfway competitive mana cost because that's even more of a problem. Just as an example, look at your last three scenarios and imagine Mutanus being a Discover ability. Yes, it's less random and thus less frustrating to play against, but that would have been a lot stronger because in two of your three scenarios, it's pretty likely that your highest cost minion gets rekt. Disruption is honestly fine at this power level and mana cost, and I am quite happy that it exists. There should be counterplay to more stuff.
Yes it's healthy, because with Scargil, Lushwater Scout, and Finja, the Flying Star, I can finally play a midrange murloc deck with some of my favorite cards at a good winrate against the most degenerate decks in the meta, and even counter virtually unbeatable strategies against minion-based decks like mine, thanks to Mutanus the Devourer.
Deck is so well fleshed out and synergistic I had to remove cards as strong as Gentle Megasaur and Coldlight Seer, to focus on more murlocs with persistent effects, I kept the quest cause it's fun but it's nearly useless against most decks, it's a win more card, but it doesn't hurt the winrate if you don't blindly play it on turn 1 every time.
And you would be surprised how many of the decks I face have no more minion in hand by turn 4/5 (when I play scargil + mutanus), or no minion at all in their deck, so I can only imagine how much Mutanus sucks at 7 mana outside of my scargil deck.
I don't really know about standard, but cards like Mutanus are needed to keep some archetypes in check in Wild, and it has a fair cost, compared to all the other cards that can destroy/transform/negate a minion from the opponent's hand (Dirty Rat, Savory Deviate Delight, Felsoul Jailer, etc), , Mutanus has the most consistent and powerful effect, but the highest mana cost, at which point his consistent effect might be nullified by the fact the opponent had time to play all their minions. All these cards are useless against the ever growing popularity of spell-based decks, except dirty rat because it has OP stats for the cost, as opposed to Mutanus.
We've needed some form of hand disruption for ages, I've lost count of how many times I've seen it not just called for, but demanded.
When you break everything down into odds then you start to mislead yourself. The odds of me reading this thread and responding to it, given all of the events in both our lives and choices we've made which could have ultimately resulted in one of us never visiting this site? The odds will be crazy but that's what happens when yoj calculate odds after the event, almost everything that happens actually has pretty crazy odds, given how easily something slightly different happening could change the ultimate outcome.
No, I don't feel it's bad for the game in any way what so ever. It whiffs plenty of times if you use it without much thought or just play it on curve. It rewards you monitoring your opponent's hand and taking calculated guesses on what it might hit. There should be plays that can be made in this way, it widens the skill gap. If I watch someone like Dekkster, I often find it pretty amazing how well he follows and reads his opponent's hand. I'm not so insecure that I can't acknowledge that he's far better at it than I am, hence why he's a more skilled player. Sadly, this game more than most I've encountered seems to have a large demographic of people who are deluded when it comes to their intelligence and ability level within the game. Not being able to prevent certain plays is a big source of frustration for many players. Knowing your opponent has assembled their combo and having absolutely no way of being rewarded for that knowledge means lower skilled players are rewarded, games they may have lost because they flippantly showed their hand by playing certain cards but go completely unpunished because there's no physical way to do it.
I personally think it's a well designed card, it isn't particularly reliable and is a slow play which more often than not is removed before it can do anything, so it's value is mostly in the disruption effect. Which can whiff really bad even if you are being smart about when and how to play it.
The problem is that you can't (or should I say shouldn't) create non-random hand disruption at a halfway competitive mana cost because that's even more of a problem. Just as an example, look at your last three scenarios and imagine Mutanus being a Discover ability. Yes, it's less random and thus less frustrating to play against, but that would have been a lot stronger because in two of your three scenarios, it's pretty likely that your highest cost minion gets rekt. Disruption is honestly fine at this power level and mana cost, and I am quite happy that it exists. There should be counterplay to more stuff.
No objection to that. A Mutanus with a discover effect would be absolutely horrible design. Still, something like Dirty Rat is valueable counterplay with less variance. I for one would like that better, but I can see your point.
"Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180"
Just to touch on this again, these odds will have been the same no matter what card it pulled. You're only making a deal of it because it happened to be cards you cared about or that impacted you. If it had destroyed some 2 mana minion you didn't care for, the odds didn't change when you are looking at it after the fact, you just aren't bothered, so don't care that your opponent was 'super unlucky to hit a crappy minion'. The chances it hit whatever cards it hit in the order it hit them are the same as Rattlegore. If your opponent hit some useless minion, they could just as easily say "it's rigged against me, the chances of hitting a bad minion in game 1 and then another bad minion in game 2 are 1 in X, the chances were so small of it happening that Blizzard must have rigged the rng to target bad minions". You can watch the replay using a deck tracker and see what your opponent had in hand, so it's not crazy that someone, somewhere would see it this way. So whatever it hits, there's someone potentially annoyed because 'the odds were long'.
So what happened to OP is called a bad beat, but that doesnt mean that Mutanus is badly designed. Its a balanced tech card and it has a counterplay (try to hold as many minions as you can to defend your valueable one). The counterplay doesnt always work, because thats the nature of the game, but you can play around Mutanus and if you do, you will win more games against it on the long run. So I think the card is fine and its the right kind of rng.
"Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180"
Just to touch on this again, these odds will have been the same no matter what card it pulled. You're only making a deal of it because it happened to be cards you cared about or that impacted you. If it had destroyed some 2 mana minion you didn't care for, the odds didn't change when you are looking at it after the fact, you just aren't bothered, so don't care that your opponent was 'super unlucky to hit a crappy minion'. The chances it hit whatever cards it hit in the order it hit them are the same as Rattlegore. If your opponent hit some useless minion, they could just as easily say "it's rigged against me, the chances of hitting a bad minion in game 1 and then another bad minion in game 2 are 1 in X, the chances were so small of it happening that Blizzard must have rigged the rng to target bad minions". You can watch the replay using a deck tracker and see what your opponent had in hand, so it's not crazy that someone, somewhere would see it this way. So whatever it hits, there's someone potentially annoyed because 'the odds were long'.
What's your point? I already admitted that I got hit by the very worst end of variance and that's not the thing in question here. I already admitted that I'm salty because of that, but that it doesn't reflect the power level of the card. And I also made clear that I don't want to discuss the power level - which is fine - but the design of disruption tools. I didn't come here to whine about my bad luck (I just wanted to get that out of the way so I wouldn't be accused of posting purely out of salt) and I didn't come here to accuse the game of being rigged against me.
The question is quite simple: Should disruption tools have this much variance or not?
Apparently there has been so much emotional, distructive outrage about specific cards that people have lost the ability to have a decent conversation about game mechanics. Which is sad, I think.
So what happened to OP is called a bad beat, but that doesnt mean that Mutanus is badly designed. Its a balanced tech card and it has a counterplay (try to hold as many minions as you can to defend your valueable one). The counterplay doesnt always work, because thats the nature of the game, but you can play around Mutanus and if you do, you will win more games against it on the long run. So I think the card is fine and its the right kind of rng.
Now that's the kind of input I was hoping for. Thanks for sharing! While I disagree with him to a certain extent, I find his insights interesting and reasonable.
I would suggest you run the card for a while and see how it performs over a bigger run of games. I think you'll find it isn't all that great in general. But, I could be wrong. Test it out
Kinda what happens when people keep asking for a tech card that doesn't suck. They should've just put Dirty Rat in the core set, but then again, I doubt it would see play in the current meta since it has the chance to pull big crap like Y'sha and rattlegore.
The point was clear, it's just pointing out why looking at it in that way is a nonsense.
You openly make a whiny, salty thread and then say its sad that people can't have conversation. No, conversation can easily be had but when you open a thread you set the tone for the conversation that follows. If you had made a thread that genuinely just wanted to discuss the card then my reply would have been in kind but you didn't, you even openly say you didn't. So when you make a salty post, you're probably going to get a higher amount of similar types of responses, because people typically don't have much time for it. Plus it gets done countless times every week on here, so you get a tired response to a tired attempt at engaging conversation.
I simply pointed out the flaws in your thinking and gave a reasonable response as to why the card isn't a problem. If that's your idea of 'not being able to have a conversation' then it's more of an issue with you looking to either be pandered to or to find an echo chamber. Neither are my problem. Next time, make a more rounded, considered, non salty thread perhaps?
You didn't even bother to attempt a response to my actual response regarding the card. For someone bemoaning an ability to have a conversation, you aren't very good at engaging in them.
The problem is that you can't (or should I say shouldn't) create non-random hand disruption at a halfway competitive mana cost because that's even more of a problem. Just as an example, look at your last three scenarios and imagine Mutanus being a Discover ability. Yes, it's less random and thus less frustrating to play against, but that would have been a lot stronger because in two of your three scenarios, it's pretty likely that your highest cost minion gets rekt. Disruption is honestly fine at this power level and mana cost, and I am quite happy that it exists. There should be counterplay to more stuff.
No objection to that. A Mutanus with a discover effect would be absolutely horrible design. Still, something like Dirty Rat is valueable counterplay with less variance. I for one would like that better, but I can see your point.
I fail to see how DIrty Rat has less variance. It literally has the same chance of pulling a minion. Sure, if your opponent pulls a Rattlegore with their Dirty Rat and can't deal with it, that's awesome for you. But if they pull a Mozaki and clear it, it's literally the same thing (plus the card itself costs 5 less, so you can spend quite a lot of mana for the 2nd card and still remain efficient). In that sense, Dirty Rat has a much higher potential to f..k up the player who plays it, so the range of results is even bigger.
Regarding Reynad's video, it feels crazy to be reminded of how coinflip Knife Juggles were winning or losing games back in the day. If you think about it, it's not just about the likelihood of something happening, it's also about the consequences this has for the match. Did these 25, 20, 11% hits make you lose the game or did you even end up winning? Did you lose because of something else and was there a better way to play around Mutanus in the 25/20% games?
If you get frustrated by HS RNG, just remind yourself of what these likelihoods actually mean. I used to play poker a couple years ago and I can tell you that losing to 11-25% is absolutely likely compared to losing to runner/runner hands (hands where you are so far ahead that your opponent needs to hit two out of two cards; in my case, I lost quite a bit of money because I got rekt by players who hit their 2- and 1-out(s) on turn and river in a hand; happened to me 3 times within 2 weeks. Try not to freak out in such a situation). At some point, you have so many games that these unlikely scenarios will eventually happen; I also got a royal flush twice. Just accept that it happens and move on. It's a free(mium) game after all. It's not like you are playing the World Series of Poker, spent 10k to participate, and lose in your very first hand in a 99 to 1% situation.
Regarding your initial question, I remember people talking about how the mini set is weak and how Mutanus is way too slow because of aggro....blablabla. You can always argue one way or another, but the card really doesn't feel too strong or unhealthy for the game and the poll is pretty telling.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for this being more or less a salt thread. The last three times Mutanus the Devourer was played against me, he always sniped my biggest minion in hand (Grommash Hellscream out of 4, Rattlegore out of 5, Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180. So I'm slightly infuriated by that card and I know, it's due to variance and the card probably isn't overpowered in general.
But I'd like to turn that into a constructive discussion whether it is a healthy kind of disruption tool. I mean, probably anyone can agree that disruption is something a game like Hearthstone should have. The question is, should it be in such a highrolly manner as Mutanus? In some instances, he eats a 1/1 from my hand and is completely useless and in some instances he more or less wins the game. Whereas some earlier disruption cards like Dirty Rat seem a bit more "fair" and consistent. What are your opinions on the matter?
Why was dirty rat more fair? Because you could get punished very hard?
The point was clear, it's just pointing out why looking at it in that way is a nonsense.
You openly make a whiny, salty thread and then say its sad that people can't have conversation. No, conversation can easily be had but when you open a thread you set the tone for the conversation that follows. If you had made a thread that genuinely just wanted to discuss the card then my reply would have been in kind but you didn't, you even openly say you didn't. So when you make a salty post, you're probably going to get a higher amount of similar types of responses, because people typically don't have much time for it. Plus it gets done countless times every week on here, so you get a tired response to a tired attempt at engaging conversation.
I simply pointed out the flaws in your thinking and gave a reasonable response as to why the card isn't a problem. If that's your idea of 'not being able to have a conversation' then it's more of an issue with you looking to either be pandered to or to find an echo chamber. Neither are my problem. Next time, make a more rounded, considered, non salty thread perhaps?
You didn't even bother to attempt a response to my actual response regarding the card. For someone bemoaning an ability to have a conversation, you aren't very good at engaging in them.
I will take the criticism of setting the wrong tone, since it's obvious to me that multiple people didn't get my intention. The reason I mentioned my anecdote and my saltiness was precisely to take the wind out of the sails of responses I anticipated that would be like "ah, you don't want to discuss, you're just salty because you lost to a card". Apparently by admitting to being salty I provoked what I was trying to avoid. I still thought I made clear that I don't think of the card as overpowered, just wanted to discuss the underlying mechanic. Probably a bad choice of words or whatever, my bad.
I still don't get your response though. What flaws in my thinking? I know that for every outcome as bad as the one I experienced there is a multitude of better outcomes. I'm a mathematician, I know statistics. I pointed out that likelihood as an anecdote, not to prove a point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood your response, your point is: Mutanus is useless as often as useful, therefore balanced. But the direction of my question was a different one: Is the difference between a "good Mutanus" and a "bad Mutanus" too strong? As a reference, there could be a card that says: "Flip a coin. Heads, you win the game. Tails, you loose." Such a card would be perfectly balanced, but still terrible design. So I wanted to investigate whether Mutanus is too much like such a card or not.
And by the way, my remark about people not being able to have a decent conversation wasn't even so much aimed at you, but more to witty one-liners that put up no argument at all. When I wrote that, I was upset that there were multiple responses that didn't seem to even discuss the same topic I was referring to. But as I get from your answer, that might have at least partially been my fault, as people probably got my intention wrong.
p. s.: I realised just know that you had posted an answer in this thread previous to the one I initially quoted. I wasn't aware of that then. I agree with you on the skill cap thing and also that such cards with high skill cap (Mindrender Illucia comes to mind) are quite interesting. I'm not delusional about my ingame abilities (I consider myself a decent, but not good player) and I would honestly applaud someone sniping a wincon from my hand after correctly deducing that there's a high chance for that to happen.
The problem is that you can't (or should I say shouldn't) create non-random hand disruption at a halfway competitive mana cost because that's even more of a problem. Just as an example, look at your last three scenarios and imagine Mutanus being a Discover ability. Yes, it's less random and thus less frustrating to play against, but that would have been a lot stronger because in two of your three scenarios, it's pretty likely that your highest cost minion gets rekt. Disruption is honestly fine at this power level and mana cost, and I am quite happy that it exists. There should be counterplay to more stuff.
No objection to that. A Mutanus with a discover effect would be absolutely horrible design. Still, something like Dirty Rat is valueable counterplay with less variance. I for one would like that better, but I can see your point.
I fail to see how DIrty Rat has less variance. It literally has the same chance of pulling a minion. Sure, if your opponent pulls a Rattlegore with their Dirty Rat and can't deal with it, that's awesome for you. But if they pull a Mozaki and clear it, it's literally the same thing (plus the card itself costs 5 less, so you can spend quite a lot of mana for the 2nd card and still remain efficient). In that sense, Dirty Rat has a much higher potential to f..k up the player who plays it, so the range of results is even bigger.
Regarding Reynad's video, it feels crazy to be reminded of how coinflip Knife Juggles were winning or losing games back in the day. If you think about it, it's not just about the likelihood of something happening, it's also about the consequences this has for the match. Did these 25, 20, 11% hits make you lose the game or did you even end up winning? Did you lose because of something else and was there a better way to play around Mutanus in the 25/20% games?
If you get frustrated by HS RNG, just remind yourself of what these likelihoods actually mean. I used to play poker a couple years ago and I can tell you that losing to 11-25% is absolutely likely compared to losing to runner/runner hands (hands where you are so far ahead that your opponent needs to hit two out of two cards; in my case, I lost quite a bit of money because I got rekt by players who hit their 2- and 1-out(s) on turn and river in a hand; happened to me 3 times within 2 weeks. Try not to freak out in such a situation). At some point, you have so many games that these unlikely scenarios will eventually happen; I also got a royal flush twice. Just accept that it happens and move on. It's a free(mium) game after all. It's not like you are playing the World Series of Poker, spent 10k to participate, and lose in your very first hand in a 99 to 1% situation.
Regarding your initial question, I remember people talking about how the mini set is weak and how Mutanus is way too slow because of aggro....blablabla. You can always argue one way or another, but the card really doesn't feel too strong or unhealthy for the game and the poll is pretty telling.
Yeah, I was a bit unclear about that. What I meant with variance is that the impact of good or bad outcomes is heavier due to the fact that Mutanus absorbs the stats of the card and destroys the card (and is way understatted by itself, whereas Dirty Rat is overstatted). Dirty Rat just yoinks the card out of the owners hands, but the card remains in play and the stats don't switch sides. Most of the time, it provides less of a tempo (and value) swing and sticks to being combo disruption. Now, one could definitely argue that it's appropriate for Mutanus to have a heavier impact (be it for good or worse) due to the higher mana cost. The thing I wanted to discuss is whether it's good to have such high-impact combo disruption or if something cheaper with less tempo would be better for the game.
By the way, I play poker myself, so I have quite the experience with bad beat situations and usually can cope with them quite well. I will probably be able to laugh about the Mutanus story tomorrow. But I will still be interested in discussing the mechanic. Therefore I regret even bringing that anecdote up. It led people on the wrong track, I see that now.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for this being more or less a salt thread. The last three times Mutanus the Devourer was played against me, he always sniped my biggest minion in hand (Grommash Hellscream out of 4, Rattlegore out of 5, Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180. So I'm slightly infuriated by that card and I know, it's due to variance and the card probably isn't overpowered in general.
But I'd like to turn that into a constructive discussion whether it is a healthy kind of disruption tool. I mean, probably anyone can agree that disruption is something a game like Hearthstone should have. The question is, should it be in such a highrolly manner as Mutanus? In some instances, he eats a 1/1 from my hand and is completely useless and in some instances he more or less wins the game. Whereas some earlier disruption cards like Dirty Rat seem a bit more "fair" and consistent. What are your opinions on the matter?
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
No Patrick, Tickatus does not destroy the game
[raises Hand]
Mutanus does not either.
It can be 7 mana 4/4 do nothing, in my opinion the card is OK and this kind of disruption is 10x better than tickatus. At least there is some combo disruption in standard.
How constructive! Thanks for that interesting argument. Really brings a lot to the discussion.
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
The problem is that you can't (or should I say shouldn't) create non-random hand disruption at a halfway competitive mana cost because that's even more of a problem. Just as an example, look at your last three scenarios and imagine Mutanus being a Discover ability. Yes, it's less random and thus less frustrating to play against, but that would have been a lot stronger because in two of your three scenarios, it's pretty likely that your highest cost minion gets rekt. Disruption is honestly fine at this power level and mana cost, and I am quite happy that it exists. There should be counterplay to more stuff.
Yes it's healthy, because with Scargil, Lushwater Scout, and Finja, the Flying Star, I can finally play a midrange murloc deck with some of my favorite cards at a good winrate against the most degenerate decks in the meta, and even counter virtually unbeatable strategies against minion-based decks like mine, thanks to Mutanus the Devourer.
Deck is so well fleshed out and synergistic I had to remove cards as strong as Gentle Megasaur and Coldlight Seer, to focus on more murlocs with persistent effects, I kept the quest cause it's fun but it's nearly useless against most decks, it's a win more card, but it doesn't hurt the winrate if you don't blindly play it on turn 1 every time.
And you would be surprised how many of the decks I face have no more minion in hand by turn 4/5 (when I play scargil + mutanus), or no minion at all in their deck, so I can only imagine how much Mutanus sucks at 7 mana outside of my scargil deck.
I don't really know about standard, but cards like Mutanus are needed to keep some archetypes in check in Wild, and it has a fair cost, compared to all the other cards that can destroy/transform/negate a minion from the opponent's hand (Dirty Rat, Savory Deviate Delight, Felsoul Jailer, etc), , Mutanus has the most consistent and powerful effect, but the highest mana cost, at which point his consistent effect might be nullified by the fact the opponent had time to play all their minions. All these cards are useless against the ever growing popularity of spell-based decks, except dirty rat because it has OP stats for the cost, as opposed to Mutanus.
We've needed some form of hand disruption for ages, I've lost count of how many times I've seen it not just called for, but demanded.
When you break everything down into odds then you start to mislead yourself. The odds of me reading this thread and responding to it, given all of the events in both our lives and choices we've made which could have ultimately resulted in one of us never visiting this site? The odds will be crazy but that's what happens when yoj calculate odds after the event, almost everything that happens actually has pretty crazy odds, given how easily something slightly different happening could change the ultimate outcome.
No, I don't feel it's bad for the game in any way what so ever. It whiffs plenty of times if you use it without much thought or just play it on curve. It rewards you monitoring your opponent's hand and taking calculated guesses on what it might hit. There should be plays that can be made in this way, it widens the skill gap. If I watch someone like Dekkster, I often find it pretty amazing how well he follows and reads his opponent's hand. I'm not so insecure that I can't acknowledge that he's far better at it than I am, hence why he's a more skilled player. Sadly, this game more than most I've encountered seems to have a large demographic of people who are deluded when it comes to their intelligence and ability level within the game. Not being able to prevent certain plays is a big source of frustration for many players. Knowing your opponent has assembled their combo and having absolutely no way of being rewarded for that knowledge means lower skilled players are rewarded, games they may have lost because they flippantly showed their hand by playing certain cards but go completely unpunished because there's no physical way to do it.
I personally think it's a well designed card, it isn't particularly reliable and is a slow play which more often than not is removed before it can do anything, so it's value is mostly in the disruption effect. Which can whiff really bad even if you are being smart about when and how to play it.
No objection to that. A Mutanus with a discover effect would be absolutely horrible design. Still, something like Dirty Rat is valueable counterplay with less variance. I for one would like that better, but I can see your point.
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
"Rattlegore out of 9(!)). The chances for that were 1 in 180"
Just to touch on this again, these odds will have been the same no matter what card it pulled. You're only making a deal of it because it happened to be cards you cared about or that impacted you. If it had destroyed some 2 mana minion you didn't care for, the odds didn't change when you are looking at it after the fact, you just aren't bothered, so don't care that your opponent was 'super unlucky to hit a crappy minion'. The chances it hit whatever cards it hit in the order it hit them are the same as Rattlegore. If your opponent hit some useless minion, they could just as easily say "it's rigged against me, the chances of hitting a bad minion in game 1 and then another bad minion in game 2 are 1 in X, the chances were so small of it happening that Blizzard must have rigged the rng to target bad minions". You can watch the replay using a deck tracker and see what your opponent had in hand, so it's not crazy that someone, somewhere would see it this way. So whatever it hits, there's someone potentially annoyed because 'the odds were long'.
This topic reminded me of an old video of Reynad talking about good and bad rng in the game, IMO its a very insightful video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdkGNrkJsII
So what happened to OP is called a bad beat, but that doesnt mean that Mutanus is badly designed. Its a balanced tech card and it has a counterplay (try to hold as many minions as you can to defend your valueable one). The counterplay doesnt always work, because thats the nature of the game, but you can play around Mutanus and if you do, you will win more games against it on the long run. So I think the card is fine and its the right kind of rng.
What's your point? I already admitted that I got hit by the very worst end of variance and that's not the thing in question here. I already admitted that I'm salty because of that, but that it doesn't reflect the power level of the card. And I also made clear that I don't want to discuss the power level - which is fine - but the design of disruption tools. I didn't come here to whine about my bad luck (I just wanted to get that out of the way so I wouldn't be accused of posting purely out of salt) and I didn't come here to accuse the game of being rigged against me.
The question is quite simple: Should disruption tools have this much variance or not?
Apparently there has been so much emotional, distructive outrage about specific cards that people have lost the ability to have a decent conversation about game mechanics. Which is sad, I think.
Now that's the kind of input I was hoping for. Thanks for sharing! While I disagree with him to a certain extent, I find his insights interesting and reasonable.
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
Is mutanus a tier 36161562 card?
Yasss
I would suggest you run the card for a while and see how it performs over a bigger run of games. I think you'll find it isn't all that great in general. But, I could be wrong. Test it out
Galavant Animation
Kinda what happens when people keep asking for a tech card that doesn't suck. They should've just put Dirty Rat in the core set, but then again, I doubt it would see play in the current meta since it has the chance to pull big crap like Y'sha and rattlegore.
"What's your point?"
The point was clear, it's just pointing out why looking at it in that way is a nonsense.
You openly make a whiny, salty thread and then say its sad that people can't have conversation. No, conversation can easily be had but when you open a thread you set the tone for the conversation that follows. If you had made a thread that genuinely just wanted to discuss the card then my reply would have been in kind but you didn't, you even openly say you didn't. So when you make a salty post, you're probably going to get a higher amount of similar types of responses, because people typically don't have much time for it. Plus it gets done countless times every week on here, so you get a tired response to a tired attempt at engaging conversation.
I simply pointed out the flaws in your thinking and gave a reasonable response as to why the card isn't a problem. If that's your idea of 'not being able to have a conversation' then it's more of an issue with you looking to either be pandered to or to find an echo chamber. Neither are my problem. Next time, make a more rounded, considered, non salty thread perhaps?
You didn't even bother to attempt a response to my actual response regarding the card. For someone bemoaning an ability to have a conversation, you aren't very good at engaging in them.
I fail to see how DIrty Rat has less variance. It literally has the same chance of pulling a minion. Sure, if your opponent pulls a Rattlegore with their Dirty Rat and can't deal with it, that's awesome for you. But if they pull a Mozaki and clear it, it's literally the same thing (plus the card itself costs 5 less, so you can spend quite a lot of mana for the 2nd card and still remain efficient). In that sense, Dirty Rat has a much higher potential to f..k up the player who plays it, so the range of results is even bigger.
Regarding Reynad's video, it feels crazy to be reminded of how coinflip Knife Juggles were winning or losing games back in the day. If you think about it, it's not just about the likelihood of something happening, it's also about the consequences this has for the match. Did these 25, 20, 11% hits make you lose the game or did you even end up winning? Did you lose because of something else and was there a better way to play around Mutanus in the 25/20% games?
If you get frustrated by HS RNG, just remind yourself of what these likelihoods actually mean. I used to play poker a couple years ago and I can tell you that losing to 11-25% is absolutely likely compared to losing to runner/runner hands (hands where you are so far ahead that your opponent needs to hit two out of two cards; in my case, I lost quite a bit of money because I got rekt by players who hit their 2- and 1-out(s) on turn and river in a hand; happened to me 3 times within 2 weeks. Try not to freak out in such a situation). At some point, you have so many games that these unlikely scenarios will eventually happen; I also got a royal flush twice. Just accept that it happens and move on. It's a free(mium) game after all. It's not like you are playing the World Series of Poker, spent 10k to participate, and lose in your very first hand in a 99 to 1% situation.
Regarding your initial question, I remember people talking about how the mini set is weak and how Mutanus is way too slow because of aggro....blablabla. You can always argue one way or another, but the card really doesn't feel too strong or unhealthy for the game and the poll is pretty telling.
Why was dirty rat more fair? Because you could get punished very hard?
I will take the criticism of setting the wrong tone, since it's obvious to me that multiple people didn't get my intention. The reason I mentioned my anecdote and my saltiness was precisely to take the wind out of the sails of responses I anticipated that would be like "ah, you don't want to discuss, you're just salty because you lost to a card". Apparently by admitting to being salty I provoked what I was trying to avoid. I still thought I made clear that I don't think of the card as overpowered, just wanted to discuss the underlying mechanic. Probably a bad choice of words or whatever, my bad.
I still don't get your response though. What flaws in my thinking? I know that for every outcome as bad as the one I experienced there is a multitude of better outcomes. I'm a mathematician, I know statistics. I pointed out that likelihood as an anecdote, not to prove a point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood your response, your point is: Mutanus is useless as often as useful, therefore balanced. But the direction of my question was a different one: Is the difference between a "good Mutanus" and a "bad Mutanus" too strong? As a reference, there could be a card that says: "Flip a coin. Heads, you win the game. Tails, you loose." Such a card would be perfectly balanced, but still terrible design. So I wanted to investigate whether Mutanus is too much like such a card or not.
And by the way, my remark about people not being able to have a decent conversation wasn't even so much aimed at you, but more to witty one-liners that put up no argument at all. When I wrote that, I was upset that there were multiple responses that didn't seem to even discuss the same topic I was referring to. But as I get from your answer, that might have at least partially been my fault, as people probably got my intention wrong.
p. s.: I realised just know that you had posted an answer in this thread previous to the one I initially quoted. I wasn't aware of that then. I agree with you on the skill cap thing and also that such cards with high skill cap (Mindrender Illucia comes to mind) are quite interesting. I'm not delusional about my ingame abilities (I consider myself a decent, but not good player) and I would honestly applaud someone sniping a wincon from my hand after correctly deducing that there's a high chance for that to happen.
Yeah, I was a bit unclear about that. What I meant with variance is that the impact of good or bad outcomes is heavier due to the fact that Mutanus absorbs the stats of the card and destroys the card (and is way understatted by itself, whereas Dirty Rat is overstatted). Dirty Rat just yoinks the card out of the owners hands, but the card remains in play and the stats don't switch sides. Most of the time, it provides less of a tempo (and value) swing and sticks to being combo disruption. Now, one could definitely argue that it's appropriate for Mutanus to have a heavier impact (be it for good or worse) due to the higher mana cost. The thing I wanted to discuss is whether it's good to have such high-impact combo disruption or if something cheaper with less tempo would be better for the game.
By the way, I play poker myself, so I have quite the experience with bad beat situations and usually can cope with them quite well. I will probably be able to laugh about the Mutanus story tomorrow. But I will still be interested in discussing the mechanic. Therefore I regret even bringing that anecdote up. It led people on the wrong track, I see that now.
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
Mutanus is fine.
Tickatus is actual garbage.
Mutanus is balanced, that's all
only combo/control cry for having their big minion or piece erased, that means it's a YOU problem