Hearthpwn

Sorry @Scorpyon & @AndreiLux sometimes emotions take over.

I forgot the rules: "Don't hate the Player, hate the Game".
These wise words come from a mage from my World of Warcraft days.

I have removed the insult but I will post the truth again.

Yesterday I met someone who really pays a lot of money for Hearthstone, every expansion with pre-order and of course Battlepass.
I wanted to see what kind of games he plays, so I watched him play.

The player was on his way to becoming a legend. But his matchups were just totally rigged, even the pirate rogue played so retarded that you could see it was intentional. So I would venture a guess that it wasn't a human, but software to make the player happy because the human paid for it.

I belive that Blizzard want to sell games of chance to children and for me this is also the reason why the Chinese server was closed. I'm really sorry for you guys, losing the whole collection is not a nice experience.

"Just give us a lot of money and we'll make you look like a smart player" - Blizzard 2023
"Oh, and feel free to imagine that you have a brain, but don't forget to give us money again."
Yeah, that's how it works at Blizzard these days. A little COPIUM here, a little COPIUM there, hooray Diablo is finally here!

btw: @Scorpyon Noone likes Mods :) , do you know about Godwin's law?

Quote from Ldrago1254HS >>

its literally the only good remove that Shaman has, and other classes have like 500 removes

Devolve

Quote from MagicAmy69 >>

Sorry @Scorpyon & @AndreiLux sometimes emotions take over.

Idk why you mention me, I guess the insult was towards me? If that's the case, no problem, I didn't even saw it. I would like to clarify that I was answering to OP about that specific combo. I actually kinda understand and partially agree with your first post, I don't know if Shaman is really that OP, but at least Totem Shaman looks very good in Wild indeed. Calling people bots for playing decks you don't like is not very nice, but it could be Blizzard's bots if your MMR is low enough so why not.
Your theory about cruise to legend for players who spend money doesn't sound realistic, why would you do that if climbing to legend is easy anyway? I think you underrate how bad of a mistake human can make. I have definitely seen and made enough extremely stupid plays to not assume any dumb mistake is impossible for human. Matching bots against really bad or completely new players makes more sense, and that's what Blizzard said they are doing with their bots. Anyway, I'm F2P, I could care less.
The reason why Blizzard stopped working with NetEase is clearly not about HS, games of chance and selling them to children. Even NetEase did not said anything like that, and they were pretty angry, up to the point of saying something like how much one idiot can ruin (probably our dear friend Bobby so they could be right). If Blizzard's games themselves were a problem, NetEase would have said so. It was because of money shares, users data, possible transition to Tencent after deal with Microsoft or combination of those. Chinese games are way worse in terms of predatory monetization and micro-transactions, if someone was pushing for more of that, it was NetEase.

Quote from Scorpyon >>

Quote from AndreiLux >>

 Matching bots against really bad or completely new players makes more sense, and that's what Blizzard said they are doing with their bots. 

 Is that Blizzard trolling us by implying we must be really bad players if we match up against a bot? lol

But seriously, it's more to do with the rank you play at. For example, at the start of the season, when in ranks bronze and silver at the start of the season climb, I notice I get a bot or two at that point. But as soon as I reach Platinum / Diamond etc I dont see another bot again.
So unless MMR resets every season (which I don't believe it does?), then it would suggest that MMR is not the basis for matching against bots.

Interesting. What if it's not Blizzard's bots, like the accounts with random letters in lowercase type of names? Many people call them bots, but those are not Blizzard's bots, but Chinese accounts that created to catch a really strong Arena draft and sell the account so someone can brag about their 12-win run, stream "superdrafts" as they call it, or whatever, maybe those are farming ranked a bit before that to create less accounts?
Maybe I misread Blizzard's statement (I can't find it anymore). I personally haven't seen an obvious one for months if not years. Maybe I was not paying enough attention or just don't recognize them since I still don't get how you do it with 100% certainty unless it's a farming bot. When topics here and on reddit about bots invasion started to appear I was like "what are they even talking about?". Also some people describe literally me as a bot with "patterns" like "replies with greetings to your first emote and not replies after that" and "doesn't concede in hopeless situations", so I assumed that people exaggerate or I just have too high MMR to meet those bots. Still it's kinda weird that he seen a bot when the guy he spectated was finishing his legend climb. Wait, what if this time conspiracy theorists are right and you actually get more bots if you pay more as he said and I don't get them because I'm F2P? I don't think so since playing against bots is widely considered as inferior experience so I should meet them all the time instead, but by this anecdotal evidence it matches :D
MMR doesn't reset, I received way too generous star bonuses for wild and classic after month when I didn't play these modes, but it was probably smaller than usual, so maybe it reduces at the start of the month. It would explain why I never get bots since I try to get max star bonus as often as I can and stop playing at Legend most of the time to never visit dumpster, you play normally and gain back enough MMR very fast and some people need more time to get enough MMR so they get a lot of bots? Anyway, It's a mystery to me.

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen a number of bots in standard which I don't think I've noticed this many before.  Pretty obvious because as Priest they've play a bunch of cards including several undead then play Undying Allies at the end as the last card, they could easily have had 2-3 undead with reborn.  This exact interaction has happened several times.

I've been playing less over the last few months due to lack of interest and frustration with Blizzard which meant I've not been getting as high in the rankings as I normally would, I don't know if it's related. 

Quote from Spansh >>

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen a number of bots in standard which I don't think I've noticed this many before.  Pretty obvious because as Priest they've play a bunch of cards including several undead then play Undying Allies at the end as the last card, they could easily have had 2-3 undead with reborn.  This exact interaction has happened several times.

I've been playing less over the last few months due to lack of interest and frustration with Blizzard which meant I've not been getting as high in the rankings as I normally would, I don't know if it's related. 

Thanks, that's a good pattern to recognize a bot, and it sounds like something Blizzard's AI could do, I never see anything like that for some reason. Have you seen these in gold+? Do you remember their names, was it stuff like AdjectiveNoun or just bunch of letters?

"it can shit on any minion-based deck"

Welcome to Hearthstone. Almost every class has overtuned board clears that hard counter minion-based decks, and that's been the meta since Knights of the Frozen Throne. Blizzard also loves the "play big taunt minion early and win" strategy too, where you cheat out big minion and revive it over and over. They make sure to print those cards with every year of HS even though literally no one likes it, and you can play that strategy in wild and its still the meta in wild.

Can confirm this, finally got some non trivial quests on my second account so was able to play, at gold level, played a hero power druid with a 2 word name (first word looked french).  It was an obvious bot as they were dead for the last 15+ turns on board, played instantly with hero power every round but only attacked with face when they weren't actually dead (so with armour it left them at 1hp).

Checked, could not add them as friend and they did not show up as my current opponent.

Quote from AndreiRO >>

It baffles me how the community defends the Flurgl + Toxfin combo. Yes, the murloc package is a bigger issue atm, but a 3 mana board clear that requires an immediate answer from the opponent to not lose the game on the spot is not healthy for the game at all. 

This community is filled with anger and personal grudges, so they lose sight of whatever is broken and unhealthy for the game. Usually they defend whatever is broken when they win with it or don't lose to, but when they lose to it, it needs an immediate nerf and it's the most broken thing ever. I'm playing mech paladin and I don't defend a turn 2-3 fill the board. It's toxic and broken. The game is at its best in the span of 6-9 turns. You feel you played the game but it's also fast enough you don't get bored of it and want to queue another game.

Sorry for the small rant, but seriously wild needs to be looked at because some cards or combos are getting too ridiculous. The community defending such broken cards or interactions is also ridiculous. 

 very well said sir

Shaman is a class that always had board clears:

Lightning Storm
Maelstrom Portal
Elemental Destruction
Volcano
Hagatha's Scheme
Earthquake

And for some reason, Shaman hasn't seen a new board clear that isn't a joke in ages.  Don't Stand In The Fire is a joke.

Every other class gets a great location that draws cards or gives a minion rush or attack and the Shaman location can't target enemy minions and doesn't even let you discover the "evolve".

So yeah, Flurgal-Tox is quite fair.

Shaman is a neglected class that only exists in Wild.

Why does Shaman not getting a new board clear that isn't a joke mean that Flurgal-Tox is fair? We're talking about Wild format where all of the good board clears are available, so why do you say that having no recent good board clears added justifies that combo? I think that a lot of people who are tired of Flurgal-Tox are tired of it not because it's good, but because it is staggeringly better than anything that preceded it when it comes to board clears for Shaman. And if we suppose that Shaman really is a neglected class that only exists in Wild (whether or not that is really true is irrelevant here), that is no real justification for the Flurgal-Tox combo, nor is it a justification for any combo in any class. At the time of writing this, Druid is the worst class in Standard. But I don't think anyone can say that Druid is a neglected class at this point...

On a broader note, it's entirely fine for Wild to become crazier as time goes on, that's the whole point of it and that's understandable. But that doesn't mean that it has to get scummier to the point of requiring an exact answer so that you don't just get avalanched by more things until you lose because your opponent was playing dirtier than you. The point of Wild is to allow for crazy creativity, not vapid and repetitive combos that you get to just slam down mindlessly. Wild isn't exactly wild when you have to see the same boring stuff, the same hideously efficient combos over and over again. Honestly, Standard seems to be much more wild and creative than the actual Wild format in recent years despite having a small fraction of the number of cards that Wild has.

Quote from _KaptainHank_ >>

Why does Shaman not getting a new board clear that isn't a joke mean that Flurgal-Tox is fair?

Because that is Shaman's only board clear.

Every other class has cheap power crept board clears, including Hunter.