Hearthpwn

I guess this means we'll see another card banned from a format tomorrow? Or was it really just a coincidence that several times this brawl came up right after a card was banned?

The spell list is fairly small, but it covers just about all you need. Big minions or Deathrattles get polymorphed, lethal boards get frozen or roasted, multiple times if necessary, Ice Barrier if you are close to dying, Secrets generally slow your opponent down, and should your opponent get in lethal range, Fireball to the face. The only downside of this card is the cost, and even that is more than fair.

There have been several Mage legendaries that did less for a higher cost. There have been "no duplicate" cards with worse rewards. And let's be honest, the Reno faction will celebrate this card all year long, because why not just make a Reno deck when you get cards that effectively eliminate resource and consistency issues?

I guess it could feel a bit like a gamble to actively rely on Wisdomball, and play super reckless like it will take care of everything for you, but it's going to be much less fun to be on the receiving end of this thing and see it (in the worst of all cases) locking you out of the game entirely.

Sure, there will be other decks and classes, Mage might not even be at the top. Still, this card already frustrates me, as the class does in general.

I think it will be Zilliax, since he was the neutral legendary revealed together with the expansion, which in previous expansions oftentimes ended up being the free one. Not always though.

What can be said though, is that the relevance of a character to an expansion, the complexity of its effect or the power level has no meaning for which one ends up as giveaway.

• In Sunken City, Faelin was the central character for the Book of Heroes, revealed first along with Finley, but Azshara was more iconic and mechanically more interesting and more powerful - we got Faelin. 
• In Nathria, Murloc Holmes was the relevant Hearthstone character, shown as the first neutral, but Denathrius was the central lore character with the Infuse keyword, and arguably the most powerful neutral in the set (some might consider Theotar) - we got Denathrius.
• In Lich King, Astalor was by far the most powerful neutral, had Manathirst, while Invincible was the legendary for the new Undead tribe, and got revealed as one of the first neutrals, but along with Lor'themar - we got Lor'themar. 
• In Festival, ETC was the most iconic, the most complex, but we already got him on reveal day for free. Tony had the Finale keyword, Amalgam Band was tied to the menagerie theme and was the first neutral to be revealed, Fizzle had a unique effect - we got Pozzik, the least flashy, but still a very powerful card, revealed on the second day.
• In Titans, Ignis happened to be the most complex and most powerful card, and tied to Forge, the rest was very forgettable, Algalon was the first shown neutral - and we still got Ignis.
• In Badlands, Reno was in every regard THE most important, noteworthy legendary of the set (aside from Flint with Quickdraw), not least because 6 other legendaries kind of relied on having him, but Barrelbrim was shown on reveal day - we got Barrelbrim.

So... kinda hard to predict. But I would bet it is either Zilliax or Whizbang, regardless of what else comes up.

You'd be surprised to see what is viable in Wild when your MMR is sufficiently low. Should be the case for most people who never played Wild to begin with or haven't done so in a very long time.

Quote from IDBY >>

Quote from user-14560584 >>

Quote from IDBY >>

Quote from user-14560584 >>

The next expansion drops in just a few weeks.

 The next expansion will be at the start of a new year in Hearthstone. Historically that happens in April. So we are about 2 months away from the next expansion, not a few weeks.

 I see you aren't good at connecting the dots. Historically every 3rd expansion of the year used to drop in December and not in November like the last time.

It looks like you need a history lesson.

• The League of Explorers was released in November 12th 2015. The Start of the new year with the release of "Whispers of the Old Gods" was on April 26, 2016.
• Madness at the Darkmoon Faire was released on November 17th, 2020. The start of the new year with the release of "Forged in the Barrens" was on March 30th, 2021. While not in April, using it as an example still means about a month and three weeks.

So Historically we still have at least 7 weeks to go. Not the "in a few weeks" idiocy. You have a join date that suggests you should know what happened with the start of the new year in years past. Your posts are either willfully ignorant of the facts, or you just like posting nonsense.

 Part of the facts is, as it was pointed out several times already, entirely ignored by you thus far, that the season pass for Showdown in the Badlands ends on 11 March, making it rather likely that the next expansion drops on 12 March (which happens to be a Tuesday).

At least from what I can remember, there has been no instance where the date of a season pass ending has not coincided with the arrival of a new expansion thus far.

Historical observations are rather meaningless in this, since Blizzard can choose launch dates as it sees fit (as your "history lesson" actually demonstrates). They are not obligated to wait till April, or otherwise particularly inclined to do so. Keeping with "tradition" is not the strongest of incentives, as they have demonstrated multiple times on various issues, far too many that i could even bother to list them. 

Not exactly a position from which I would accuse others of ignoring facts and posting nonsense, but you do you. If you are so hell-bent on correcting others, maybe question whether 5 weeks can reasonably be called "a few" instead.

Quote from jjgamesworth >>

Blizzard for sure matches you with certain decks or starting hands that they know will cause a loss. It prevents ppl from going on 20 game winstreaks,

According to the game's records, my longest winstreak is 65 games.

I dunno. If the system is meant to prevent that from happening, it's doing a pretty bad job.

One thing that needs to be said, however, is that MMR in Ranked is not transparent, as are class frequencies, deck frequencies etc.

Once a month, when you get your star bonus, you can estimate in what bracket the game has put you for the time being. When Ranked was changed with Ashes of Outlands, Blizzard said that MMR would be the primary factor until your star bonus is used up (IIRC). But I have made plenty of experience tanking my MMR and powering it up again, and feel it is constantly shifting and the ranks are irrelevant.

Last season (January), I started with a star bonus of 5, which was not unexpected. That meant, after Gold 5, I should have only faced players who were at the same rank.

Throughout the month, I have played a lot of games. I cannot say how many, since I have no deck tracker, but I completed "Reliquary Relic Query" (save 200 mana with Tae'thalan), and that alone took several dozen games, of which I might have won about 5 to 10. I know that I made very little progress in getting 500 Mage wins. And this was just one of many bad decks I forced myself playing for prolonged periods of time.

From time to time, when I was fed up with losing, I would actually play a decent deck and rank up a bit, just to get to the next rank floor. Eventually, I was close enough to get to Dia 10, and then had the idea of going up to Dia 5 again. 

I can say that I have seen plenty of decks and opponents that should not be on the ranks they were, including the bot army that was supposedly on Plat 10. Many of them could not even play a single card. Whatever it takes to reach Plat 10 nowadays, I think even the worst of all players should be able to beat an opponent who cannot play anything. It is rather hard to believe that these accounts were actually on a similar rank as me, and more believable as this being all the game could offer me as my winrate went below 10%. Likewise, it was just as hard to believe when I would see decent decks among so many bad ones. But I guess I am not alone after all in my weird undertakings.

Even during my last few games (which quickly became a lot more than just a few, thanks game), I have seen players that made "interesting" choices. Of course it is possible that they chose to run decks like Elemental Shaman (yes, I lost that one) and Reno Renathal Priest on the last few hours of the season below the rank floors just for the challenge and fun of it, but an inactive DK bot on Diamond 7 is suspicious.

Anyway, the game now deemed me good enough to give me a bonus of 9 again, for whatever reason. I can only speculate where my MMR has been throughout the month, and how many games were necessary to push it up again. The least I can say is, it weren't all that many since I lost maybe two games between Plat 5 and Dia 6.

What I mean to say with this little anecdote: Saying that matchmaking is MMR based is good and all, but when you don't really know your MMR and the acutal matchmaking mechanics and key metrics are all kept behind a curtain (with 3rd party services slightly helping it), people will inevitably come up with their own theory of what is going on. I don't think the game is rigged, but I am not surprised (just disappointed) when people believe it is.

Quote from user-14560584 >>

The next expansion drops in just a few weeks. Have you guys heard any rumours or have any expactations of what's coming to Hearthstone next month? 

For me, Showdown in the badlands have a cool thematic, beautiful signatures and a lot of cards that are really fun. The excavate and quickdraw mechanics passed the test. I think the game overall is heading into the right direction.

 I don't mean to be disrespectful, but in what universe has Quickdraw "passed the test"?

What was the test? How did it pass it? And where can I get whatever mind-altering substance or experience makes me come up with such a verdict?

Quote from Zizka >>

I’m saying this with respect and I don’t mean to antagonize but it doesn’t seem like you have a good understanding of the bot situation. 

Could you provide some official source about Blizzard removing their own bots? I find that very unlikely and most likely false.

Those DK bots are third party bots and Blizzard are fighting them off. The fact that Blizzard (allegedly) removed their own bots has nothing to do with you facing the DK aggro bots, there’s no correlation, no connection between the two. 

I might’ve misunderstood your message, so correct me if I’m wrong but based on what I’ve read, your speculations are off the mark regarding the states of bots.

Of course, Blizzard removing their own bots does not open a gate for others to get in, But I don't think it entirely implausible that, with Blizzard bots gone, third party bots become more prevalent: with less "players" around, the share of third party bots of currently active "players" increases. Especially in that specific bracket "Platinum league - abysmal winrate".

What I can say is, I see them far more frequently than I'd like to, and from my own perspective, feel free to take that with a grain of salt, the situation is worse than before the last patch. Perhaps that is a coincidence. I'm willing to admit that it is a bit hypothetical to see a connection. But that hardly makes the situation any better, does it?

Oh, and with equal amounts of respect, please read the full patch notes before trying to sound like a smartass.

Ok, I'll be honest, I struggle to be respectful when you'd rather question something based on your gut feeling that you can easily find out in a minute of research. But just in case you are the busiest person on the planet - no hard feelings then - here you go:

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-gb/news/24046221/28-4-patch-notes

Bug Fixes and Game Improvements

[...]

• [Hearthstone] Blizzard Bots have been removed from the Standard ranked ladder [emphasis added]. They are now limited to Apprentice (and new/lower-ranked Battlegrounds games), where they will continue to serve their role in smoothing out matchmaking for newer players. 

YMMV, of course, but I personally found the latest expansion rather dull and my playing experience currently is quite underwhelming, for a number of reasons.

Showdown in the Badlands wasn't all that interesting to me. It is yet again another Reno set on the one hand, and a lot of high variance nonsense on the other. Quite a few recycled ideas. Some of it is kind of ok, and a few designs in the set are actually cool, but all in all, it was not a set I had a lot of fun with.

As usual at this time of the year, I cannot wait for rotation day to happen. A number of cards from last year really overstayed their welcome for me and I want to see them gone as soon as possible. Sadly, this year also introduced archetypes I am already sick of seeing, fan favorites that I feel are going to remain popular for many more months to come. So, rotation day is likely not going to change much (as always).

I am mostly playing on "lower" ranks and rank floors, due to doing achievements that mostly cannot be realistically completed when you want to win games. Losing 10-20 games in a row is not fun, but it's fine. What I find unbearable are the "opponents" I face, especially the really crappy bots that have come out of the woodwork since Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, removed their own bots from ladder, which were boring to face but at least programmed not to waste your time needlessly, and spread evenly among all classes. On some days I see over 50% Death Knight, most of them bots.

I hope/expect things to be a bit better next month with the return of a Twist season that at least sounds interesting enough to give it a try.

Something I am a bit worried about: Showdown came out mid November, and this year of Hearthstone will (probably) end on 12 March. Some have speculated that with everything coming out one month sooner than normal, we might see 4 expansions in 2024, which could very well turn out to be too much for me.

Current state of the game for me: C-

Thanks for the doc! Will definitely look into it when doing the bottles for Priest (urgh!). 

Hand space wasn't too big of an issue for me with Fossils. Sometimes I had to delay playing Fossils, but the bigger issue for me was that often enough I was forced to pick something that costs 6 or more. I can see the idea to have more consistent progress instead of maximizing progress, but getting to play the card was less a problem for me than needing to play expensive cards it regularly generated.

The bit about Therazane is really interesting. I played Hunter (as I said, far from optimized) and occasionally managed to get Yodeler on her, but I haven't always checked how much progress I made per game. Good to know that multiple triggers also boost the progress per Elemental. 

I am not quite done with Trogg Gemtosser, but made good progress while doing Dragon Tales in Druid (53 kills so far), Of course, you won't get much kills with him when half your opponents play big minions and all that nonsense. I remember playing against a Paladin and it was the only Paladin in the world to not even use Boogie Down. But the card is so easy to include that you get some small progress here and there, and when you keep a board presence it is oftentimes possible to weaken enemy minions and make Trogg kills more likely (80 is a BS number though). 

My only issue with Trogg is, I already did Sludge Barrels in Warlock before the mini-set. All that remains is a bit more Soulfreeze and about half of Furnace Fuel, so there is a good chance I have to do some overtime for Trogg.

As far as annoying is concerned, I think nothing will bother me more this expansion than the 200 active Quickdraws, my personal single worst keyword in Hearthstone history, and the achievement made me hate it even more. I considered disenchanting Horseshoe Slinger out of spite, just for how many times I drew it without being able to play it, or I was forced to play him when it was a complete waste of mana. There were annoying achievements before, cerainly no shortage in this expansion either, but forcing this shitbrick of a keyword for probably close to 100 games made me want to puke.

Sidenote: The Gyreworm combo I described above worked like a charm (unless you are stupid and accidentally press hero power out of reflex, like I did twice).

I haven't done many yet. I did Mismatched Fossils, and it took me several hours. Felt like an eternity. The best you can do is cast it twice with Twinbow Terrorcoil in a Spell/Naga Hunter (at least enough spells to reliably have Twinbow active), and hope you get a lot of 1 and 2 cost minions offered, since half the time you are dead before you even get to play the stupid cards. Just horrible. If you go all spells (bananas and monkeys) Mantle Shaper can be conventiently included. Otherwise, just put it in your typical Discoverino Mage.

I also did Therazane, which didn't take as long as I thought and the deck was far from optimized. Best approach is probably Rogue with Shattershambler and Scourge Illusionist to start playing Elementals as soon as possible.

My idea for Iridescent Gyreworm is a 10 mana combo in Death Knight: Crop Rotation + Gyreworm + Yelling Yodeler, but I haven't done it yet.

I could do Hidden Gem while doing other things, but there definitely was some luck involved. I'm sure you could do a setup do get the 12 safely in one turn, but I haven't looked into it.

Uhm... does anybody know if it's intentional that there are no new gameplay achievements for  the mini-set? I wanted to do them once the mini-set is out, and now I see that they didn't add any new ones.

 Edit; Nevermind, just saw that they are grouped into a "dual class" section at the bottom, unlike in Festivals.

Quote from Gorwik >>

There's currently a hack available where people can use Mercenaries, Solo Adventure, and Battlegrounds cards in Duels. Stay away from the mode until it is fixed.

 Or rather hope it gets fixed still. The mode will disappear in April anyway, after all.

Without asking for instructions or details: Do you happen to know if this an exploit or utilizing external software? I'm asking because I would find it quite alarming to learn that people can externally mess with the game rules.

Mostly, but the initial Silver Hands aren't Undead, which might be an inconvenience for DK, and the Ghouls are worse for Paladin. Also, if you want to limit the number of Deathrattles in your deck (when using Boneshredder), Reborn is the better mechanic.

it is the better card in most cases when you only care about stats, and the worse card when you are trying to build something more specific, in which case you probably wouldn't use either.

So... yes, it is better.