Hearthpwn

Paladin is OP and will be nerfed, but we've had way worse metas than this one

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?

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.

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.

1. Rexxar (regular)
2. Magni
3. Nemsy
4. Flowerchild Lunara
5. Snowman Thrall

Why don't you want to hear "just kill them before they can pull it off"? That's a perfect advice and exactly the way to deal with decks that are using 4-5 card combos at the time most of the Wild games are already over. The combo that is used after most of the games are already over cannot be OP. Priest has a quest that literally destroys enemy hero, it's not even a combo, still not broken for the same reason.

S tier: The best HS streamers for me are GrinningGoat duo, now they are too busy with their toddlers, but they have provided an excellent analysis of Arena for years and I prefer smaller content creators in general, they were definitely doing it for so long not for fame and money, but just for having a nice time and share their thoughts with a small friendly community of active Arena players. Also I just love ADWCTA's analogies, his takes like "Blizzard is a fascist company and that's not necessarily a bad thing" which totally make sense after he explains what he meant by that are so cool.
A tier: When I found Tylerootd he was streaming from a laptop and had a tiny amount of viewers, it's very nice that he made a good career and I still respect him a lot, but now when he is successful it's not that interesting and I rarely watch him anymore. ShtanUdachi is always calm and has godlike Arena skills. Hotform was also super calm and pleasant to watch, too bad that he made his biggest achievement in HS very early and move on. Same for JAB, maybe he was not as nice as Hotform (no one is as nice as Hotform), but still a nice guy and he was the best midrange hunter player in the world, the archetype I like the most to this day.
B tier: Thijs seems like a nice guy, when he becomes overly excited I actually believe he is excited unlike many others, but his decks are mostly not the ones I like, and, once again, stream size is an issue, I prefer when streamer is physically able to read his chat and answer if he wants to. DogDog has some insane APM skills, his transitions at BGs are work of art. Hafu is also quite strong, the moment she gain my respect the most was actually not about HS, she was preparing for streamers chess tournament and started to learn chess from scratch, she was learning rapidly and was very solid by the time the tournament started, almost at Dog's level despite Dog was playing at college and knew all the basics already. Alliestrasza is nice, with her amazing appearance I was initially afraid it would be "look at me, I'm a girl" stream, but she was not like that at all, just a normal streamer and a decent player, she is not just trying to capitalize on the fact that she looks cute.
Out of those in the poll I guess Reynad was fine, he was playing good decks like Zoo and used good Russian music sometimes which was a pleasant surprise since most of the Russian music sucks, but not the songs he picked. B tier. Kolento's biggest advantage was that he was a top player, definitely some things to learn from him. B tier. I don't like that Kripp constantly mentions his food disfunction (not a big deal, I have a couple of vegan friends, but we don't promote our preferences to each other much unlike Kripp does), but he is not stupid and his BGs strategies are way easier to replicate than DogDog's. When I climbed to top-200 I was watching his YouTube videos and he was #1 at Arena multiple times so I guess he is underrated as a player, he just has kinda low APM, always praises himself and deliberately saying wrong things about how unlucky he is, which paints a wrong picture. B tier. As for Trump, I'm thankful for promoting Arena and greedy way of playing it, I suspect that crushing valuetown citizens with much faster decks was very nice for my winrate at the time. C tier. Amaz was not tryhard enough to learn from him. D tier. Forsen's streams I actively dislike, he didn't act that bad himself, but the chat is always a reflection of the streamer and despite of bringing into the world amazing Kappa song Forsen's auditory was producing mostly stupidity and copypastas. That's very common for Twitch in general, but quite rare for HS. F tier.

The stuff I get from it is very understated most of the time. This is still more stats than you should normally get, but unknown amount, delayed and without initiative, it's not a surprise that it doesn't see any play in constructed. Still a decent card for Arena (worse and less consistent Cairne).

In constructed all three: red red red, blue blue blue and green green green are strong. Red red red is just the most popular.
In arena all the best cards sorted by winrate are green, so green/green/green or green/green/blue for extra card draw. It doesn't mean red/blue decks can't be crazy, but green is more consistent, since its strategy synergizes with arena playstyle (midrange) well.

I am so sorry to everyone playing Duels.

-Sidekick +Soulbreaker for Rogue purposes

I feel the same, I liked old BGs more too, despite some problems corrected by now. I liked how few patterns you had to remember and how low power level was. At some point (probably when quests were introduced) the amount of information and APM required to be competitive became overwhelming, so it was time for me to move on. Blizzard's decision to lock extra slots from F2P players helped a lot. Now I mostly come back only to complete tribe daily quests.

Quote from Scorpyon >>

So are you saying that just because someone expressed an opinion you didnt like about your favourite low skill deck archetype, you felt compelled to argue about it with me? Because the fact is that it is just my opinion in terms of what I personally feel about it (I can have whatever opinion about it that I like).  

Was it someone else who said that aggro playstyle means zero thinking? Aggro is not even my favorite archetype, but I'm next in line as a midrange enjoyer and since you think that game shouldn't start before turn 10 when I want it to end, it feels like (maybe I'm wrong) that you think classic midrange is aggro too by now and your opinion about the inability of aggro players to think is directed at me too.

My opinion is fine as long as there is no “thinking” involved in it? I mean, I generally like to think about things before forming opinions about them. Not sure I can help that. 

Maybe my English is not good enough, but I have a feeling you understand the exact wording that made me want to argue. Low-skilled archetype? Ok. Zero thought to play? Makes no sense and insulting.

I think that maybe I missed the part where I directed an insult of any kind toward any specific person or even group of people?

So by saying that aggro players have zero thought you not intend to insult that group of people? Ok, fine, whatever.

Quote from Scorpyon >>

Ummm, no. 10 mana, 5 cards in hand and 30-40 cards in deck seems fine. I mean, not sure where you got 100 cards and 100 health from exactly, but certainly can't have been from anything I said?

Well, you said:

For me, turn 10 is when the game should really begin, when you have the full compliment of mana available. 
If something is killing you within the first 7-8 turns, there is a problem and this shouldnt be happening. It probably means heroes dont have enough health or options to stabilise.

So I was thinking, maybe it would be better to just get rid of those pesky 9 turns, give players more resources and completely remove the possibility to get killed by an early tempo-oriented deck.

I mean, that IS my personal opinion. So... yeah. I am honestly not really sure why you're being so defensive / reactive about it. The OP asked what  people's Golden and Nightmare meta's are. Plenty of others have posted theirs. Why is mine such a problem for you?

Because no one else said that some particular playstyle requires zero thought. If your opinion didn't include thinking part, I would be absolutely fine with it. "I love control! I hate aggro!" - that personal opinion is fine. "I love control! You aggro, tempo, midrange players are idiots who don't even think about your plays! Your playstyle existence is a problem!" - that personal opinion is not very nice.

And is that your "personal opinion"? Do you see where the problem lies now?

No, my opinion is that both statements are incorrect and most of the decks, regardless of playstyle, are hard to pilot optimally and should not be diminished to just "play minions", "remove minions" or "draw cards".

Quote from Scorpyon >>

Obviously this is all just personal opinion (which I believe is what the OP wanted) - so it's not to say this is what "everyone" wants, just me. :-)

For me, turn 10 is when the game should really begin, when you have the full compliment of mana available. 
If something is killing you within the first 7-8 turns, there is a problem and this shouldnt be happening. It probably means heroes dont have enough health or options to stabilise.

I never saw much need for thought when playing Zoolock. Just play minions, attack. Get wiped, play more, attack. Rinse, repeat. 
Implock currently is another version of just this. 

Would you prefer to start the game at 10 mana, 100 hp, with 10 cards in hand, 100 cards in deck then? To me it sounds like playing Civilization starting from modern era: same game, but the fun part is cut. Well, I guess, same argument can be made about the game that is not fun at the start and fun later on. Regardless, I was not going to argue about personal tastes. What I disagree with is that aggro requires zero thoughts.
Let's take the Implock example. When I play it, I rope with it quite a lot, especially in the early game. Just play minions? In which order? Turn 1, you have Imp, Librarian and Voidwalker, what to play first? Will it change depending if your opponent's deck has early removals? Will it change knowing that many of opponents are actually rogues in disguise? What if you have a coin and no 3 drop? What if you have one? What if your opponent played his own 1-drop? What if it's Trogg?
How many imps and board presence do you need to draw cards with Catastrophe instead of playing Imp Swarm? What if Imp Swarm upgrades next turn? What if it's two 1-drops instead? Do you buff Murlocula with Vile Library because you was pressured by opponent or do you buff Librarian because you want it to survive? Do you fill your board suboptimally or play Tamsin on empty board? Do you trade Shady Bartender when you have a demon board and 1 floating mana? What if you have lethal even without buff if board is unanswered? Do you play around AOE? Do you tap when you're at low HP and may put yourself in a lethal range? How much you can afford to go face instead of trading?
There are a lot of questions with an answer "it depends", therefore, a lot of thinking. As I said, if aggro is just play minions, control is just remove minions.