Hearthpwn

Quote from Thex_ >>

I'm guessing that there's a meta difference between this site and my experience, as i'm playing on EU, but my recent experience in standard has been:

- For the last two weeks before the miniset: at least 60% of games were mech paladin, mech mage and naga mage; the rest being pretty much nothing but pirate warrior or quest hunter.

- For 2 days after the miniset: lots of very appreciated variety, shamans trying stuff up, warriors securing a steady place, priests getting the hang of their infuriating infinite wigs

- After that: very fast moving towards almost 70% of mech mages, mech pallies and thief rogues. The rest being almost entirely extinct.

Multiple days in a row this week, i literally had *nothing else* than pallies and mages opponents for like 5 games in a row. So reading the patch note today made me 1. chuckle at the "paladins are at a healthy place rn" and 2. cry at the complete absence of changes to any mechs at all. And with warrior nerfed to oblivion, i feel like shit is going to get even worse now..

At least rogues might get a little more manageable, without 2 4/5 rushes on turn 2 anymore, but then again, a deck that literally revoles entirely around randomly generated cards, making it impossible to play around (even from the mulligan, even... "play as another class" is fun in theory, but makes you mulligan around the wrong class too), should not be a top tier deck ever, it's just ridiculous (and honestly, i would need very strong evidence in order to get convinced that jackpot isn't using the same algorithm than zephrys, like holy shit)

 Have made similar experiences, also on EU. For me it's mind-boggling that they didn't nerf Amalgam of the Deep alongside School Teacher when the exact same reasoning would apply word by word. A card that slots into every tribal deck with a premium battlecry and a premium statline, enables Kazakusan without much sacrifice, leads to almost endless discover chains alongside Gorillabot A-3 and so on. But on a second glance, on the contrary to School Teacher, the Amalgams would give players a dust refund, so obviously School Teacher is the cheaper nerf for Blizzard. -.-

At least they have humor. Nuking an archetype by nerfing 4 of its cards at the same time with pretty substancial hits and still saying

We don’t want or expect these decks to disappear entirely after the changes

that's top tier comedy right there.

Quote from Yollowolf2 >>

No idea why people wanna make curse warlock good deck. It should be tier3 meme deck forever. Playing against unavoidable dmg thats might also burn your topdeck has to be one of the most un-fun thing to play against ever. 

 This. Better give us some tools to make a Fel/Zoo archetype work. Warlock lacks good agressive minions that don't pressure you to put tons of Murlocs in your deck. And every curse fetishist could maybe still run some of those as a finishing tool.

Quote from MagicKnight >>

Quote from Amaranthus >>

Quote from SirJohn13 >>

Destroy 60 minions with Poisonous spells:

I suggest playing Brann in Duels as it allows you to run Urchin Spines + Whirlwind. Can help make fast progress with this achievement, especially if you get the combo on a full board on both sides

 I just played two games of duels, where I did that in two games and it didn't give me any achievement progress at all. Does anybody know why that could be? Looked like a bug. The spells definitely were poisonous, otherwise some minions wouldn't have died.

 You mean Urchin Spines + Whirlwind combo doesn't progress?

 At least for me it didn't, no.

Whether your argument about the strength is true or not, the sheer fact that again it's mage that's featured in the mini set with a legendary is horribly annoying for anyone that doesn't want to invest tons of real money in the game and dislikes mage. These are the only legendaries you can easily buy for gold and then there are two of the same class in a short time while other classes get none? Did I miss something, is mage the free-to-play-class by design or something?

Quote from SirJohn13 >>

Destroy 60 minions with Poisonous spells:

I suggest playing Brann in Duels as it allows you to run Urchin Spines + Whirlwind. Can help make fast progress with this achievement, especially if you get the combo on a full board on both sides

 I just played two games of duels, where I did that in two games and it didn't give me any achievement progress at all. Does anybody know why that could be? Looked like a bug. The spells definitely were poisonous, otherwise some minions wouldn't have died.

Quote from P4dge >>

"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 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.

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from Amaranthus >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

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.

Quote from P4dge >>

"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.

Quote from Poghy >>

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.

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.

Quote from D_Lord >>

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.

Quote from suchti352 >>

No Patrick, Tickatus does not destroy the game

[raises Hand]

Mutanus does not either.

How constructive! Thanks for that interesting argument. Really brings a lot to the discussion.

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 t f do people always get that deal dmg + poisonous golem from Kazakus? I've lost so many games to that I can't count.

And why does every fucking casino mage get a giga highroll against me? I already hate that degenerate class, no need to make me hate it more.

Quote from BigDeal >>

Quote from Evil_B >>

Quote from Kinkyjohnfowler >>

Quote from Evil_B >>

Quote from Kinkyjohnfowler >>

Quote from Darksun200 >>

Call this what you want, but I have a curse when it comes to RNG in this game. I'm not losing my mind, this is for real.

In all of my 3 years playing this game I actually cannot recall getting "the nuts." At the very best I get mediocre hands. I'm not saying this happens every single time, but this happens so much I cannot stress this enough.

Meanwhile, my opponent always has the nuts. Every single game is a struggle, honestly. I have actually broke down in tears at how unlucky I can be, it us really soul crushing,and everytime I get so close to winning my opponent mounts the most epic come back. This happens no matter which format I'm in..I just cannot ladder up not because I'm bad I don't think I'm great at spotting certain things but I know enough and I try my hardest...

Arena is really weird for me. If I draft a really good deck, I do poorly because my opponent just gets the nuts, and when I draft at least a mediocre deck it does surprisingly well.

TD;LR I have literally the worst luck imaginable when it comes to this game. I'm sorry I said alot but I just had to get this off my chest. Maybe it'll make me feel better if some of you share my experience...but least to say I think it's time I hung up my hat on this game. My luck has officially run out.

 Have you tried using mulligan guides? HSReplay premium is good as you can check the WR of cards with and without the coin and against each class at specific ranks.

Due to how linear Hearthstone is most game will be won and lost in the mulligan. You will probably be surprised by which cards should be kept or tossed.

If you follow a good guide for a strong deck there’s no reason you won’t climb. 

 The illusion of strategy was removed with the creation of ZTG. 

 I don’t care about your conspiracies. Crack on and moan about being bad at the simplest card game on the market in your own time, Darksun200 seemed to want advice.

ZTG is also an awful example, it’s the single most skill intensive card in the game.

And I don't care about your fantasies of skill still being a part of this game. If you want to believe more power to you. I'm not one to go around telling kids in line to see Santa that it's just a guy in a suit.

Oops! I hope I didn't ruin that for you as well!

 Skill?  In Hearthstone?  Maybe in Bronze it has something to do with game outcomes, sometimes.  But once you get to anywhere near Platinum or especially Diamond..... it is 100% purely based on matchup and draw luck.  The decks are too cancerous and brain-dead at those levels.  There are NO misplays.  You cant misplay when you dont  get the fucking cards you need.  Or your opponent barfs their hand on board with 40/40 worth of stats every turn.  Its way too polarizing.  I should know.  Im "stuck" at the D2/D3 level because I refuse to play cancer decks. so, I win the good matchups and always lose the bad ones. 

Skill my ass.  People just say that top make themselves feel better and to remove guilt about getting legend with totally broken and brain-dead decks.  Please.  We're not fooled there, big champ.  Idiots.

 Of course there are plenty of opportunites to misplay tier 1 or tier 2 decks. I know, because I regularly make them. And everyone who's being honest and perceptive will do too. That's even the reason I don't bother to climb further than Diamond 5. I know I'm not skilled enough to do the legend climb fast (at least not consistently), so it would be a long, painful grind. Of course you can have good or bad luck over a short period, but a good player will get a winrate above 60% with a deck that the average player gets 57% wins out of, while a bad player might even struggle to get way above 50%. And you notice the difference between those numbers? That means that a good player probably only wins about 1 out of 10 games more than a bad one. (Of course, this is a very rough estimate.) So yeah, a single game often won't be decided by skill on a visible scale. You have to look at larger numbers to see the difference.

I just got 0.3% lethaled in BG (where I had 92.6% to actually win), right after I got my second Hoggar, with two pirate triplets waiting for me next turn. Ain't that mode fun sometimes.

Quote from TheHiddenNinja7 >>

Quote from Amaranthus >>

 Actually, I never thought of minion battlecries this way. When it says "deal x damage", I always assume it speaks to the player, so I'm the one dealing the damage. Otherwise I would expect the wording to be "this deals x damage". But what you - and others in this thread as well - suggest makes a lot of sense. HS apperently always sets the minion as the default origin of the battlecry effect, the wording just isn't very clear about this fact. Too bad there isn't a rulebook where you can look such stuff up. Or is there?

 The main thing I would point to is the animation showing a small fireball, or a beam of light, or a potion, be launched from the minion with the effect. Same as Ragnaros the Firelord. It doesn't say "At the end of your turn, *this* deals 8 damage to a random enemy", it just says "deal damage", and we can see the fireball get thrown from rag to the target. Most of the game is pretty intuitive like this. I would say the most misleading card would be khadgar, and even more so when you have 2. His effect is better described as "Whenever your cards summon a minion, summon a copy"

 I get your point. But what is intuitive differs from person to person, based on their experiences, education and so on. In my line of work, I'm used to read premises thoroughly and literally and don't overvalue cosmetic stuff like animations. So for me, a card text like that is extremely counter-intuitive, even when used consistently throughout the game.

Anyway, I get that that's probably a problem only a small minority of players has, so I will just accept it.