Hearthpwn

I watch almost every professional Dota 2 match there is.  Everything about the scene is exhilarating.  From the players, the teams, the casters, the talent, the community members, the prize pools, the production value, the compendiums, the constant changes to the meta, to all the memes that have sprung forth over the years... everything is boiled down to complete and utter passion for the game.  

You don't have to take my words for it, but I know what the true esports experience is supposed to look and feel like as a spectator.  So many other games, so many other companies do it all wrong.  To say the least, despite how good of a game Hearthstone is, its competitive scene is an embarrassment to esports.  No offense, but anybody that claims to have a passion for video games and wants to go "pro" while they ladder for 12 hours a day practicing aggro vs aggro match ups all month long so that they can maintain a decent ladder finish honestly makes me laugh.

When I talk about the passion that circulates around Dota 2, I'm talking about underdog stories of teenagers starving in third world countries winning million dollar prize pools so that they can take care of their families.  I'm talking about misrepresented people in the middle east and Europe dispelling prejudices about the gaming community, making national headlines, meeting with their parliament, and bringing honor to their home countries.  I'm talking about people that have dedicated almost 2 decades of their life to learn and understand the moba and rts genres since the WC1 days so that they can one day make it all worth it and their fans proud.

When I think of the competitive scene in Hearthstone, I think of people in their 20's dropping out of school so that they can compete in a digital card game; which btw is 0 fun to watch considering the bullshit aspects of the game, not to mention how everyone tryhards with netdecks playing matchups that we've seen a hundred times over in our own Hearthstone clients.  Littered throughout twitch I see Hearthstone tournament participants, top ladder finishers, "pros" streaming their game play to perhaps a couple hundred or less people.  I'd honestly rather watch a personality with emotion like Kripp babyrage or 4 head whenever he screws around having fun doing whatever he wants than someone in monotone explaining to their audience how going face while playing an aggro deck is the right play as if their stream, commentary, or casting has any value.

My honest opinion is that professional Hearthstone is just way too easy to pick up, learn, and compete in which makes the entire scene far too unremarkable and also almost entirely unwatchable since the game often just plays itself out with 0 action and upwards of around 80% downtime thinking of what to do on your turn.

Quote from Jellyguy96 >>

By what do you mean by removal? Is silence not a form of removal? If not then please elaborate instead of saying half assed words.

Do people not run hard removal in their decks anymore?  The problem is evident and the solutions are there.  Just another salty meta slave netdecker complaining about a meta they don't understand and can't break.

World of Warcraft.

Pre-purchase the new WoW Expansion, Battle for Azeroth.  If you're able to save up another $20, you can even get the digital collector's edition which comes with a free level 110 character boost.

I crafted a golden version of Arugal and tried it out in my Kazakus mage deck in wild mode, but when I was building my deck I forgot to throw in a copy of Echo of Medivh.  It didn't take me that long to realize what my deck was missing, and in short let's just say that Arugal fills the same niche as Echo of Medivh but is far less versatile and weaker version of it, being forced into having to follow it up with card draw.  If you have any concept or grasp of how strong of a card Echo of Medivh is, Arugal is just a weaker version of it; so I just ended up cutting Arugal out from my deck after 3 or so matches.

As of now, I would say that this card is completely useless unless you're able to follow it up with card draw.  Even then, this card requires you to hold it in your hand in addition to holding the card draw in your hand and typically you want to be dumping mana on cards like Arcane Intellect whenever you have a chance.  Its a dead card that clogs up your hand, and vice-versa if you're holding onto Arcane Intellect.  You're holding off to play Arcane Intellect until you get Arugal, and in the meantime its a dead card that also clogs up your hand.  When you're finally able to cash in on the value however, you end up just clogging your hand even more with not enough mana to dump and might even mill a card or two depending on how unlucky you are.

I will however say that this card is absolutely crazy if you build a deck around it alongside Book of Spectres in a minion mage deck.  You can run 4 or so powerful secrets in a minion mage deck, use Arcanologist to pull the secret spells out of your deck, and then follow up with the value combo.  Arcanologist is used to rip the secrets out of your deck, and Book of Spectres is used to rip minions out of your deck to follow.  This concept and power level of card cycling is something that has never been seen before in Hearthstone.  The drawing consistency is unbelievable good, which is an advantage that it definitely has over any other draw engine in the game.  Top tier card for sure in the right deck.

I have extensive experience playing with cards like Forgotten Torch and Manic Soulcaster in a multitude of different mage decks.  I'll just start off by saying that there is a huge difference between control and grinder decks, and also that this is not something that you want to be putting into combo decks.  

A well built and polished combo deck tends to be extremely concise and straight to the point, and more often than not having a 30 card deck is a disservice to your win condition since you only need a very strict and select variety of cards from your deck in order to win. 

For cards like Baleful Banker that are extremely low tempo, no matter how cheap this card may be, do offer a considerable amount of value to your deck; but playing even a single copy of this card is sort of like playing with a 32 card deck or taking 2 draws away from you.  First you expend a draw to get this card into your hand, and then its battlecry puts in a card that dilutes the remaining card pool in your deck.  Adding a third Sorcerer's Apprentice into your deck when you have yet to even draw Antonidas is going to hurt your win condition a lot for example in quest mage.  Despite the criticism that a lot of combo decks get, they actually require you to play your hand relatively fast amidst cycling throughout your deck and stalling the game.  Baleful banker does neither of these things.   

Shadow Visions is a perfect example as a counter to what Baleful Banker does.  Cards like Psychic Scream are extremely powerful almost non-conditional board clears, so it makes sense that you want to extend the power level of your deck beyond standard deck building conventions.  By this I mean that you would actually want 3 or 4 copies of this card instead of just 2 in a lot of cases, and Shadow Visions lets you do that.  In a scenario like this, its almost as if you have 2 copies of Psychic Scream in your deck, and 2 additional copies that cost 9 instead of 7, which is still ok.  A better example of this is that cards like Simulacrum and Molten Reflection can serve as a trade off for extra Sorcerer's Apprentices without requiring additional card draw or having to dilute your deck, or resurrecting Obsidian Statues with Eternal Servitude.

The same principles apply to playing a control deck.  Though control decks tend to be less concise and are more lenient in what you are able to use in order to respond to the opponent's board, drawing consistency is still a major key to success.  Unless you're hitting a true control minion like King Mosh in the ultra late game every single time with Baleful Banker, I expect this card to also be detrimental to control decks.

Grinder decks on the other hand are an entirely different story.  While control decks are proactive in trying to answer everything in response to whatever your opponent throws at you, grinder decks are all about setting up high board presence minions that are meant to bait out or waste valuable resources from your opponent.  Grinder decks are extremely slow and typically require little to no draw since in several cases since perhaps a single one of your cards may be able to take care of 2 of your opponent's cards all on its own, allowing you to stall out the game until your opponent inevitably runs out of cards in their hand and deck. 

Sludge Belcher and Sylvanas are sort of the epitomes of what a grinder card is.  For Sludge Belcher, it is a taunt minion with a decent body that spawns another taunt minion, which typically requires 2-3 sources of damage from your opponent in order to deal with this one card.  For Sylvanas, your opponent expends a card to deal with her, loses a minion on their side of their board from her deathrattle, and needs to expend another card to deal with the stolen minion.  With cards like Simulacrum, Molten Reflection, Echo of Medivh, Duplicate, Stitched Tracker, and even Faceless Manipulator, it is not uncommon to win games solely by simply dropping a Sludge Belcher or Sylvanas every single turn until your opponent is overwhelmed by this unanswerable board. 

In a grinder deck, it actually makes sense to build your deck around having 5-10 copies of a single powerful minion.  Take for example in Dead Man's Hand Warrior where N'zoth is potentially able to bring back 6 Direhorn Hatchlings if you are able to set things up properly.  This is an area where I can see Baleful Banker truly shine and quite possibly break the game if it finds its way into a deck like cubelock.  Otherwise, this card will see absolutely no play elsewhere so I would definitely not call Baleful Banker a sleeper card.

Half of the reason why the Un'goro meta 1 year ago was so great was because it was the first expansion to mark a new year and standard rotation, which got rid of a lot of the old along with introducing many new archetypes and deck building experimentation with quests and interesting value and on-curve cards.  The other reason why the Un'goro meta was so good was because it introduced a lot of extremely powerful taunt minions, which drastically slowed down the fast aggro meta-game that was present prior.

Un'goro in several ways was a means to an answer to the cancerous aggro-dominated meta that everybody hated by taking out cards like Tunnel Trogg and bringing in cards like Tar Creeper for example.  The beginning of the year of the Mammoth shifted the meta two-fold in the sense that exactly what we needed to get rid of was taken care of and exactly what we wanted was given to us.

With that being said, 1 year later starting off the year of the Raven I am led to believe that the meta to come will be without a doubt the worst meta that Hearthstone will have yet to experience.  This time around, we don't have anything polarizing for each of the classes in terms of identity through the means of quests, death knights, or legendary weapons, but still I feel like this time around Blizzard did an outstanding job introducing new class themes/archetypes and keeping them clean and concise by giving them all some sort of direction.

As a deck-builder and theory-crafter, I am rejoiced to see cards like Baku and Genn and am optimistic to try and see what I can figure out and try for myself before the meta truly settles; however we already know that the old trialed and true meta has already settled.  Cutting all the crap, I trust that everybody will be able to tolerate getting demolished by warlock giving them free ranks while experimenting new things and genuinely still have fun; but believe me, in a weeks time half the decks you will face on ladder will be against cubelock and you'll probably be playing the same thing.

Hand druid, thief rogue, minion mage, inner fire priest, combo hunter, etc. are all very tempting and exciting decks to play; but in truth these decks may only be tier 2.5 at best, so long as cubelock is still around.  Mentioned in several other posts on hearthpwn as of the late, cubelock is the deck to beat going into the year of the Raven, and without trying to sound too cynical, its honestly laughable to even think for a second that what Witchwood has to offer is going to do anything close to hindering the utter dominance of this deck.  Given all the reasons why the Un'goro meta was so great, Witchwood has precisely none of that.  Cubelock gets marginally weaker losing N'zoth and slightly stronger at the same time gaining Godfrey, and the cubelock counters such as Dirty Rat and Coldlight Oracle that are meant to punish this disgustingly greedy deck are soon to be gone.

Un'goro completely flipped the switch on Hearthstone but believe me, this meta that we're already experiencing at the end of the year of the Mammoth is going absolutely nowhere.  This is neither regression nor progression; Witchwood is going to be stale as ever for the next 4 months unless something is done about Warlock.  So there you have it, the meta is going to be every other class struggling more than ever before to compete against warlock while the same deck that we're accustomed to and hate is going to continue to run rampant on ladder. 

But wait, there's more to this post!

If you really want to know what I think, my real prediction, the only sweet part of this entire post, the saving grace of Witchwood, the truly meta thing that is about to come to Hearthstone... is that Standard will almost definitely die and Wild will become the new go-to game mode.

This may sound pretty hardcore and extremely meta, but 2 years I have kept my mouth shut since the introduction of standard while I continue to play wild in a majority of my games, however here and now with Witchwood on the horizon with 100% certainty I can confidently say that wild is looking better than ever to overtake the standard format and I am adamant here right now to convince you to make the swap. 

I'm not just saying this because Witchwood is looking to be really bad, I'm also saying that because Wild is looking to be better than ever before.  Almost every theorycrafting and deckbuilding issue that I'm seeing pop up all over Hearthpwn will more than likely have all of its fixes and solutions available in Wild.  Real talk here, I will admit that deckbuilding in Wild has always been sort of clunky since its just way too easy to just stick with some super late game otk combo deck that is easy to pilot, but a large majority of what Witchwood has to offer goes hand in hand to complement what some of Wild was missing. 

One of the main reasons why shaman has always struggled in standard was because you were always forced to play a mid-range or aggro style due to lack of card draw, but in wild Ancestral Knowledge is what allows you to pull off insane Kel'thuzad and Malygos combos; which non-incidentally is also what Shudderwock will desperately need to pull of otk combos consistently.  Also, Brann and Rumbling Elemental say hi, not to mention that Saronite Chain Gang's effect is just a more expensive version of Echoing Ooze.  Rotten Applebaum is more or less on the exact same power level as Sludge Belcher, making it a competitor for the best neutral deathrattle minion in the game, which makes N'zoth stronger than ever before in any of the 9 classes.  Archmage Arugal alone is not enough to make minion mage even viable in standard, but in wild reno mage is already a tier 1 deck which will only become stronger with the addition of Arugal.  Speaking of which, Arugal and book of specters is what's going to make C'thun viable again at the high ranks, not to mention the likes of Baleful Banker which will almost definitely create viable C'thun archetypes for every single class in wild.  While it is true that you can't use Frostbolt or Fireball in odd mage, I believe that Arcane Blast + Black Cat will prove itself to be one of the most potent forms of removal in the entire game.  For how weak some of the new hand druid cards are despite how much card value they give you, Elise the Starseeker might even make a comeback now with how much control love druid has been getting.  There is a huge difference between having Old Murk-eye in your murloc deck and not having it.  Forget about Carnivorous Cube, you can just straight up play demonlock with Mal'ganis and Voidcaller; you can even play oldschool handlock with Molten Giant now.  Perhaps Emeriss is what hunter always needed to push dragon hunter over the edge.  Believe it or not, totem shaman isn't exactly that much of a meme in wild either.  Maybe with all of the new Hagatha and spell shaman support, Lava Shock may finally get the chance to become the card that it was always meant to be, the overload counter that everybody has been waiting for.  If you're upset that Stand Against the Darkness is rotating out from your silver hand paladin, have solace knowing that it will join the likes of Muster to Battle and Quartermaster.  If Baku reminds you of the glory days of control warrior, Justicar Trueheart is always still around.  There's simply far too many viable decks in wild that already exist and are yet to be experimented with; but if you really want me to tempt you, Loatheb, the best card in the game, is still probably 10x the card that Rebuke will ever be.

Wild is at the point where there is enough powerful card draw found in neutrals and all classes to make whatever you want to play well... playable.  Standard is still far from that, perhaps even in a far worse position than it was while Coldlight Oracle was around and meta.  This is what I believe to be the main counter to warlock in wild, the ability to draw cards at a similar power level and rate in opposition to life tap.  Not only that, there are decks out there for other classes that can outshine even cubelock in late game value by a large margin.

Hate ez big decks?  Wild has a counter.  Hate non-interactive combo decks?  Wild has a counter.  Hate slow, greedy, and powerful control decks?  Wild has the necessary aggro cards to take care of that, something long thought to be dead in standard.

Let me start off by saying that Wild isn't all Naga Sea Witches like everybody makes it out to be.  The one downside to wild however is that you won't be able to predict and prepare for the meta, but the great thing is that almost every matchup you play against will be different, with representation from all 9 classes.  Taking a breather from standard and the usual netdecks isn't just about shaking up the meta, its about exploring the creative side of Hearthstone's player base and not feeling restricted and limited to a very strict meta.  I would strongly argue that playing what you want against a different deck/class every single game is far more enjoyable than playing against cubelock in over half your games.

I think that the biggest takeaway and most important thing to realize going into Witchwood is that if you have some sort of passion for hand druid, thief rogue, minion mage, inner fire priest, combo hunter, etc. but feel like you simply get demolished by cubelock every single game, I would encourage you to not give-in to the inevitable stale standard meta and give these decks a try in wild with your own twist and style.  Deckbuilding ability and creativity varies from player to player, but if you want hand druid, thief rogue, minion mage, inner fire priest, combo hunter, etc. to be a tier 1, tier 1.5, or tier 2 deck I can guarantee you that there is a fix and solution for you in wild.  I am just going to say right here and now that these venues will certainly not be available to you in standard.

Worst part about this card is that it would probably hands down be the best anti-aggro card in the entire game if it only targeted minions.

I did a little research and found this article right here https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/hearthstone/21534739/the-year-of-the-raven-soars-ahead from a couple weeks ago.  I don't know if its official or not but it could possibly hint at some new changes.  Is this the sort of news/changes you were hoping to find?  I don't know it could just be speculation for the new rotation since you were wondering if there were any upcoming changes for the new rotation.  Looks like they're going to be changing 3 cards.

Quote from Hable >>

 

Quote from Alexincoming >>

Does the op even know what a poll is?  Putting choices in both the title and the question with mention of the word "either".  What am I even supposed to be agreeing/disagreeing on?

 

 

"Poll: Either revolutionary or for the most part useless."

I mean further questions in the post shouldn't make this too difficult..... 

I don't understand why people jump in to be purely negative on a brand new topic? I'm just looking to get some feedback. Would you prefer if my post was just "Hey guys! New odd/even mechanic! What do you think?!" I tried to actually expand on the topic and start up a discussion, I'm not bashing it or praising it, I'm just thinking it's either going to be huge or non-existent when it comes to the actual meta. 

Can we either

- Read the entire post and comment that has something to do with the odd/even mechanic

Or

- Read the entire post/just read the title if you're a derp and then not comment if you can't/don't want to be constructive.

I'd be INCREDIBLY surprised if we don't see anymore of the odd/even mechanics which is the only way your "No. A post judging an expansion with the first 10 cards is always nonsense. " would have any merit, because it's clearly going to be somewhat of a theme in this expansion. 

 

 

Does the op even know what a poll is?  Putting choices in both the title and the question with mention of the word "either".  What am I even supposed to be agreeing/disagreeing on?

Quote from McNuss >>

 

Quote from cobra32755 >>

Maybe it's Luna(moon) + Ra (God of Sun), so like the moon and sun combined. Just an idea.

 The character has no connection to the sun whatsoever. They could have also called her Lunali or Lunala. It's just really lazy and cringeworthy name design.

Quote from RavenSunHP >>

The point is not the exploit per se. Even independently of the fact that only a nearly full legendary collection can do that, which means you are not really short of dust in the first place...

The point is, the absolute best of any new expansion is spending your time opening packs.

Not for legs, not for purples, but for the SURPRISE effect (which, granted, is much better if you get the legs you want).

It is not a pragmatic, numeric pleasure. It is the pleasure of opening packs, a surprise and "gift" (even if you pay for it).

So cheers for your exploit, it was definitely a success for you, and may be for someone else, but it is very situational and even subjective. For me, for example, i am perfectly fine without it, and better off with my saved gold, despite your numbers.

Added a third update.  When you use this exploit while actually having the 18/20 non Patches/Raza legendaries collected, the average dusting value of each pack you open beyond that point is 270-280 dust.  That's slightly over 2.5x the ~106 dust disenchanting value of any normal pack that doesn't have a chance of including nerfed cards.