Hearthpwn

Yo, I thought most of you on this forum just had bad opinions about Hearthstone, but it turns out a lot of you are just like, bad human beings. Like fucking awful. I really have no interest in discussing things with people as morally bankrupt as the majority of people on this thread are. Fuck all of you who think card reveals are more important than real people's lives - I wish you all the worst. For the (shockingly!) few decent people on here - it's been fun yelling at you about battle passes. Not gonna be stopping by these forums again.

And you? Yes, you, who's feeling angry that I called you a bad person and wants to reply "lololol no one knows who you are or cares loser bye" - you're unoriginal and dim. Try to have an original thought for once. Have a bad day. See ya.

For years dropping a Giant on 4 has been considered one of the game's most powerful plays, but is it good enough considering the insane powercreep that's gone on since Year of the Dragon? I guess it's still a good thing to do, but is it good enough to spend the first few turns doing nothing? 

Thus "original version". It was originally a 1/1 that gained attack and health, but was changed to a 4/1 that only gained health very early in the game's lifespan. 

Between this and the mount it seems Druid is getting a lot of flexible removal (specifically they're both Rush things that let you do two chunks of damage in one turn). You can either direct the two hits at a big thing or two small things. This is worrying since Druid's weakness is meant to be AoE and big removal, and this gives them both. I just hope it doesn't go too overboard. 

I don't get the hype. Isn't this usually like 2 damage? Like, sure you unlock your crystals, but it costs you a card and it's still a pretty situational effect. The Tradeable helps a lot, but you'd presumably like to keep this in hand until it does something rather than endlessly shuffling it. Like, best case scenario you like... Lava Burst x2, Serpentshrine Portal, Overdraft for 18 damage? That's strong, but it's 4 cards so it's not game breaking and if you're not killing the opponent your hand is probably almost empty next turn, so it doesn't matter that Overdraft cost 1 and cleared your Overload - you can probably still play out your whole hand either way. I don't know, I may well be wrong on this, but I just don't see it being that impressive. It's usually a conditional 1 mana deal 2 gain 2 mana, which IS strong mind you, just not bananas bonkers strong. 

I think this might go a long way towards making Priest feel less toxic to play against. Giving them an actual win condition is a win-win, because not only does it make Priest stronger, it also makes games against them not feel like trying to beat a boxer up with a wet sponge. I think in a lot of cases you just drop this card into a Control Priest - the one card disadvantage is pretty promptly made up with the Discover effects, an otherwise you just sit there doing Priest things until you happen to meet the conditions, and then you sit there doing Priest things until you happen to draw the Shard. It's bizarre that making a class stronger seems to make it more fun to play against, but here we are.

I expect at least one of the rewards to be a big, permanent stat buff effect on all your minions - something like Survival of the Fittest on a much more affordable stick - just because it seems so obvious. I'd guess Paladin or Druid, but Druid seems less likely since Survival exists.

I have no idea what they'd do for Demon Hunter. The only idea that seems even remotely plausible is "attack with your hero X times/deal X damage with your hero". The boring reward would be something like "Your hero has +X attack on your turn", the more interesting but riskier reward could be giving your hero Windfury (though not sure how powerful that'd be. Maybe a less demanding questline leading up to it?).

At least one of the questlines is almost certainly going to be a "wacky" one, with an objective that's less simple than just "play X minions" - something like the Un'Goro Rogue quest or Elemental Allies, basically not just a simple count-up type objective. It'll either cause a repeat of the Rogue quest problem (where the condition is easier than it seems and the quest breaks the meta), or the reward won't be worth the extra difficulty and it'll never see play.

There'll be a questline interacting with the Tradeable keyword. It'll either require playing or trading away Tradeables. The reward will also interact with Tradeable in some way - maybe buffing the mechanic in some way (it costs 0 and draws 2?), buffing the cards themselves, or possibly making every card in your deck Tradeable. This is probably the Rogue questline and has the flavor of them running an auction house scam/heist, or the Hunter questline, flavored after hunting for treasures.

This is all 100% accurate, it's impossible I'm wrong, my uncle, aunt, grandfather, and third cousin twice removed all work at Nintendo.

I do wonder whether Gibberling sees any play after this. My guess would be no, but Gibberling turns are still powerful slightly later in the game - the nuts Gibberling turn where they fill their board with 1/1s and then buff them on Turn 1 is still almost as powerful Turn 2. It may be one of the rare deceptively soft nerfs - I wouldn't bet on it, but it's a possibility.

RIP Renew. You shall not be missed.

"Blizzard doesn't update the game often enough! More changes more often!"

"Blizzard keeps breaking the game! Update less often, test everything a lot!"

There's really no pleasing this community. 

Quote from Andrei2007 >>

To be at the top of competitive (playing official tournaments), you really do need to have a full collection on day one of a first expansion

 I really don't understand what would lead someone to post something like this, in this thread of all threads, where people are specifically talking about how a lot of people will just pull really dumb claims out of their ass. You absolutely do not need a full collection to be at the top of competitive play. You bring 4 decks to a tournament at most. Even assuming you're playtesting every single card slot in every single deck (an incredibly generous assumption, since most decks run a core set of cards identical in every build) with an alternate card that's 240 cards you'll try out - not even two full sets when there's no less than 4 in Standard at a time, and a good chunk of those cards will be Core cards. I've seen pros who frequent GMs craft legendaries they were missing from two expansions ago. No pro player is out there despairing at the fact they don't own Moorabi or Flame Leviathan. Pros who haven't crafted Firemancer Flurgl in Barrens haven't suddenly seen their career crumble before their eyes. You absolutely do NOT need a full collection at the top level of play. You're not going to lose matches because of the sheer existential dread of knowing you don't own The Boogeymonster. Do you really think there's any pro prepping for a tournament out there who figures they need to try out a copy of Peon in their deck? 

The thing that really frustrates me is that I'm on YOUR SIDE. The game is too expensive, opening packs sometimes feels really bad - I've dropped 50 bucks on a preorder bundle and only gotten 2 Bolff Ramshields out of it, I've felt the pain- and I want more stuff. But people really need to chill out with the hyperbolic claims, because all saying dumb hyperbolic shit does is make it look like you have no argument. After all why would you resort to something as transparently wrong as "you need literally every card on day 1 or you can't compete at high levels" if you had better arguments? And then I find myself arguing against people who I agree with on principle because I care more about good points being made than I do the conclusion they're being made to argue towards, and this forum begins feeling like an existential nightmare. 

Quote from emicampo >>

its nice to see someone like 3nnu1, i always think that everything its rigged in HS , its logic and its common sense, no company will rely on luck his incomes, they need a 50% winrate to maintain everyone happy and playing (and paying)

When you're right you're right. They do have a system which keeps everyone at 50% winrate. It's this big secret, so make sure you don't leak it, or the Blizz police may come knocking on my door: It's called MMR. It stands for Match Making Rating, and it's a number which roughly tracks your skill. They match you with people of a similar number, so that if you're good your opponents are also good and they're more likely to beat you. When you're at the correct MMR for you, your opponents should be of equal skill to you, and your winrate is at 50%. It's a fiendishly clever way of not needing to do all the complicated work of programing rigged RNG into every card. 

As for your Felmaw streak - that is actually some data, and pretty suspicious data at that. Legitimately, good job, this is the best argument I've seen for the rigged RNG hypothesis. That said, I'd love some proof of this data, because it's truly extraordinary - the probability of it is one in several hundred billion. If the RNG for Felmaw was this heavily rigged it would be impossible for people not to notice - I've had Felmaw hit a single minion a few times, and I've played a little less than a hundred billion games where a Felmaw was up against one minion, for instance - which casts shade on the authenticity of the data. I'd be probably willing to take something that doesn't have such astronomically low odds of happening (and thus doesn't clearly prove your point) at face value more than this. It still wouldn't be definitive proof of anything because of the usual problems with stuff like this on forums - small sample size, a lack of control groups, possibly counting only the hits and ignoring the misses - but it would be enough for me to not see the conspiracy position as based on literally nothing. 

What I find funny is that the only thing the whole conspiracy crew has done is convince me that the RNG in the game is fair. There's so many people who are so passionate about the idea that there's this rigging going on, which is frankly not that difficult a thing to prove. Just log your games for a month and prove that your quality of card draw is not within reasonable distance of the expected average. The Minecraft speedrunning community got this done for Dream's speedruns. The fact that there's this batallion of tinfoil hatters who'll post the same three links over and over again like they've not been discredited and dismissed five hundred times and yet there's zero actual stastical evidence for their claims just makes it look like their claims are fake. Is this an argument from ignorance fallacy? Yes, and I recognize absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I'm not making the claim anything's been proven. Does it emotionally make me feel like the conspiracy crew is full of crap? Yes. You can prove this! It's not that hard! Most deck trackers log this stuff! Just do the maths and prove us all wrong! Be a 2 mana 2/2 that pulls a secret from your deck when it dies. I'LL SHOW THEM! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL! 

Queued into Kripp in Arena once, waaaay back in the day (It was either GvG or BRM era, I remember hoping for Clockwork Gnome to give me the switch stats Spare Part for a good trade), at 1-0. He completely stomped me, partially because my deck and my draw was pretty bad, but mostly because I was legitimately playing terribly due to being so nervous. Good times.

Luck is definitely a factor. Sometimes you generate the perfect answer with the perfect curve, sometimes you draw the 10 highest cost cards in your deck as your first 10 cards and can't play anything until turn 6. It's absolutely possible to win or lose games based entirely on luck, with no skill involved. These games are a tiny minority though, and most games have an element of skill to them with which you can overcome a luck disadvantage if you play well enough. In fact, playing around your opponent getting incredibly lucky IS an element of skill. As an extreme example, if you know there's one Mind Control Tech in your opponent's deck, they're topdecking, you have 3 minions onboard and 8 health then you don't play King Krush as your 4th because you're giving them an incredibly unlikely out if you do. Obviously that's ridiculously specific, but if you watch top players they think about stuff like "what happens if he Devolving Missiles and hits exactly these three things? Can I afford to play around exactly that?". The fact that luck is a skill-testing factor is something people miss far too often. I love this: it really raises the skill ceiling, and it makes each game unique. 

Thaaaat said, Hearthstone has historically relied too hard on luck, which means too many games are either unwinnable due to highrolls or require far too much skill to overcome said highrolls (and yes - this is a bad thing. You can't expect everyone to demonstrate world finalist level play every single game in order for it to be fun). It's a matter of scale. 

Quote from JoeByeDon >>

Moral of the story is: The “I need to win games of Hearthstone by any means necessary” crowd, will never agree with or understand the “I play the game for fun & nothing more” crowd. It’s like this in every game. There are people who play the game for entertainment, people who treat it like they’re qualifying for the Olympics, & the rest are somewhere in between & probably never post on these forums. 

Most of these discussions all seem to follow the same path of people simply sharing their opinions, followed by unnecessary personal attacks by anyone who doesn’t agree. So, in other words, there’s no real discussion to be had here. Everyone will feel how they feel & no amount of abusive ad hominems is going to change that.

 The thing I wish people would understand is this: the "I want to win games by any means necessary" people aren't some sort of emotionless robot. There's people for whom trying to maximize winrate at all costs is the fun of the game. They're not sat there grinding Face Hunter for four hours a day for an entire season and miserable about it. The same way tinkerers enjoy trying to find a way to OTK their opponent with Oil Rig Ambushers or whatever and find the idea of playing Face Hunter boring, power players enjoy playing the best deck and squeezing every single percentage point and find spending time perfecting Oil Rig Ambusher OTK Rogue boring. People aren't sacrificing their own fun to try to win - these are people just like you trying to have as much fun playing a videogame as they can, they're not weird robots who are willingly avoiding fun in their free time to make the ladder a worse place for you. I find this perception of "there's people who want to have fun, and then there's people who want to win" really bizarre and also really annoying. It's like somehow the way of playing the game that the game's structure actively disincentivizes - playing with sub-optimal decks when the game pushes you to maximize your winrate - is seen as the "correct" way by a lot of people. It's not, and neither is trying to win at all costs. Let people play the way they want, and don't expect people to change the way they play just so you can play the way you want.