Hearthpwn

Goya is the only card that can even be played in Twist, and no, it's not breaking the game there either. I agree that the changes are uninspired and lame, but they have nothing to do with balance. Reading developer notes instead of conjuring up your own fantasy truths helps sometimes.

"Dev Comment: The following cards are being adjusted not because of their power levels, but because they disproportionately cause bugs and other gameplay issues, which can be disruptive for players and time consuming to correct. These changes mitigate those problems and help future-proof these cards for updates going forward. These changes are going live with Patch 28.2, but they won’t be eligible for full dust refunds until our upcoming hotfix Patch 28.2.1."

I have also encountered bots again, but they were definitely not Blizzard bots. For starters, they had names written in Cyrillic. Blizzard recently said that they upped their game at detecting and removing bots, but it looks like the script kiddies got creative again.

To be honest though, considering how obnoxious actual players usually are, I don't mind seeing bots from time to time.

We want Twist to be a sandbox-like mode that lets us experiment with new ideas and makes you think about your collection in new ways [...] kind of like a giant Tavern Brawl

Yes, good!

Now, you just have to actually start doing so. When it's back in February, it will only be about half a year since launch date. About time you start having some good ideas.

So far, the biggest experiment that made me rethink my collection was expanding that collection with a new set of cards, like retroactively adding a mini-set to an old meta, only at a far higher price. And playing Renethal decks without including Renethal.

You know, I am the kind of guy who always orders the same pizza from the same place just about every single time. And I would consider myself more daring, adventurous and creative than their approach to Twist thus far. If you want to make a sandbox mode, rule no. 1 should be to stop playing Ubisoft games! 

On paper, I love the idea of Twist as a giant Tavern Brawl. But when Tavern Brawl has been completely ignored for years, why would Twist end up better? Especially when they obviously don't have the capacities for it? Or is Twist now suddenly getting as big of a Team as Battlegrounds, despite a botched launch that killed most players interest from the start? And despite the original project leader already out of the house?

Speaking of which, I have no idea how long Twist has been in development, but they launched the format with very few ideas, and also repeated several mistakes they already made with Duels and Mecenaries. When they want to take breaks to learn and improve, that's fine. But it will only do good if they actually take this stuff seriously (and no, this has nothing to do with "broken cards" and "the worst meta ever").

In theory, the lousy launch isn't too big of a deal since the mode's DNA is (supposedly) constant change and fresh starts every month. But if the mode cannot excite people, less resources will be there for new developments, and the mode will die. And that'd be a shame, because the idea is really good, I think.

One thing perhaps worth mentioning to some:

If you want to get the maximum of free cards, you should not open any Standard or Showdown packs until you have completed the Event which hands out additional Catch-Up Packs. As these packs hold more cards of an expansion the lower your collection completion of that set is, and will also contain Showdown cards, ideally you have no or very few Showdown cards before you open them.

That would basically mean to not play Standard (or at least no new cards) for another week (+ days/weeks it takes to complete the event track), but if you really want to get maximum value from your catch-up packs, that's the pill you have to swallow.

Nevermind. I thought they would also contain Showdown cards, but apparently only cards for previous expansions.

Quote from Ghostwaker >>

Quote from Dunscot >>

Quote from Ghostwaker >>

I have Countess. It can help if it gets to late game and you need that extra impact. But as with Lothraxion you lose a bit of tempo when you play her, so then you can't have too much threat against you.

 Huh.... skill issue, I guess? You sure you did your monthly sacrifice to Lord Yogg?  Have you accidentally disenchanted Zephrys? Legend says he grants the hidden boon to give you the "perfect" card on every Discover effect across all modes. Or so I believe.

I think I can recall exactly one game out of the last 30 or so against Paladins who had neither discovered lethal with Krush and/or Al'Akir nor the board reset with Gigafin nor anything that in some other fashion decided the game. Though it's usually Gigafin. In that one game, I don't know what my opponent discovered as they conceded when they were still selecting. So maybe they just had to answer the phone or something.

I'm sure across thousands and thousands and thousands of games, playing a 7 mana 7/7 can be risky once in a while, and occasionally, you are dead once you play it. But it's not on the level of Lothraxion. There's a good reason why Lothraxion is usually not included in decklists and it's that he won't produce instant "lulz I win" moments.

But as I said, if you feel like trying out something different, he can deliver, so give it a go. ;)

 So you haven't encountered a paladin who didn't get a good card from Countess? Must be a skill issue.

 I know. I'm not very good at this game.

Quote from Ghostwaker >>

I have Countess. It can help if it gets to late game and you need that extra impact. But as with Lothraxion you lose a bit of tempo when you play her, so then you can't have too much threat against you.

 Huh.... skill issue, I guess? You sure you did your monthly sacrifice to Lord Yogg?  Have you accidentally disenchanted Zephrys? Legend says he grants the hidden boon to give you the "perfect" card on every Discover effect across all modes. Or so I believe.

I think I can recall exactly one game out of the last 30 or so against Paladins who had neither discovered lethal with Krush and/or Al'Akir nor the board reset with Gigafin nor anything that in some other fashion decided the game. Though it's usually Gigafin. In that one game, I don't know what my opponent discovered as they conceded when they were still selecting. So maybe they just had to answer the phone or something.

I'm sure across thousands and thousands and thousands of games, playing a 7 mana 7/7 can be risky once in a while, and occasionally, you are dead once you play it. But it's not on the level of Lothraxion. There's a good reason why Lothraxion is usually not included in decklists and it's that he won't produce instant "lulz I win" moments.

But as I said, if you feel like trying out something different, he can deliver, so give it a go. ;)

Quote from exhem >>

who cares how many legendaries you have drafted, if every other card can discover one.

 That line sums up most of my arena experiences, only that you can replace legendaries with board clears and removals and big minions and whatever else is needed at a given moment.

Or to be more on point, Arena feels completely dominated by Discover. You either pick every single Discover you find, or try to build a deck that is fast enough to beat them before you inevitably get outvalued.

I haven't played much Arena in a long time to really have a better understanding, but this was almost every Arena run for me lately, and I just don't like it anymore.

I also have neither Kotori nor Countess nor Leviathan. I played the Silver Hand version and added Lothraxion the Redeemed and Stand Against Darkness. Can't say how it performs on higher ranks, but I can say that it has helped me with consistently setting up a board for Crusader Aura, Amitus, the Peacekeeper and Warhorse Trainer. which is usually when the game is won.

Just want to add that it can be very tricky finding a good moment to play Lothraxion, but against certain decks it really pays off that your board becomes much harder to remove, even if you fall behind for a turn playing it. Also, any Paladin deck is obviously better with the Countess. I lost countless games to this one card alone. I don't leave it out on purpose, I simply don't have it and hate it way too much to craft it.

The point of the deck isn't to play Rommath for a clownfiesta, but to power up Sif and nuke your opponent out of orbit. Play Arcane Naz'jar to make your Arcane Bolts and Flame Geysers cost 0 and your forged Molten Runes and Reverberations cost 2, so you can nuke with Sif even harder.

This is even more important when you are still on ranks where people play Discoverino Blook DK, Control Warlock, Control Priest etc. The deck is well capable of dealing 40+ damage and within a reasonable number of turns. Warrior can occasionally post a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Your should have a decent/good chance against just about anything you encounter that isn't fast.

To make the deck better, throw out all the cards you don't need, starting with Renethal, followed by all the stuff that is only in because of Ranathal: Rommath, Theotar, Vast Wisdom, Yogg (RIP), Rustrot Viper, Ignis, Watcher of the Sun, Rewind, Finley and probably Astalor also. Having 10 less cards in the deck should help significantly with drawing Sif more often. Allegedly, at least. I wouldn't know because my key cards are consistently in the bottom 10 or bottom 5 of my deck, but that's a different story.

It is not a pure combo deck that focuses on survival and certainly not a control deck. You don't need a ton of value and you don't need tech cards. You keep your opponent's board in check, get chip damage in, and blow them up when Sif can deal 15-20 damage, if not more.

Here is the list from the latest VS report, and it will most likely work.

I personally have played quite a different list due to budget limitations (no Wisdoms, no Elemental Inspiration, no Infinitize the Maxtitude, no Norgannon), and instead substituted it with the Nathria Burn package of Cold Case, Frozen Touch and Nightcloak Sanctum, and Aegwynn for good measure. I wouldn't dare say it is better than the linked list, but Sif is enough of a win condition that you can make a good Mage deck even with suboptimal choices. And turning it into more of a pure burn deck also works often enough.

If you want to only run Blackrock, yes. Fair point.

Eh, it only hits minions and is thus another board clear which Warrior wasn't really lacking. A decent card for the Taunt-buff archetype, but no gamechanger, I think.

Only or mostly including Taunt minions is a deckbuilding restriction as well.

The change is that Un'goro, with some buffs, is added to the format, and that's it.

My strategy, for the forseeable future, is to mostly ignore this mode until the developers actually choose to do something cool with it. So probably forever.

I sort of have to agree with people naming Demon Hunter as it really feels undercooked still.

When they introduced a new class for the first time after more than 5 years, I really was curious to see how Demon Hunter would feel different from all the rest. But Demon Hunter hasn't really evolved to the point where I feel like the class has a clear identity, where I could tell at first glance whether a card belongs into DH or not. Something that DK has managed in just one year.

I guess every class had bad times. There have been entire years where people wondered what Shaman was supposed to be good at. But with Demon Hunter, I don't even know what the journey's destination is. Ok, I do have an idea, but I'm not sure if the devs see that too. The draw-synergy from Stormwind and Titans, along with cards like Dispose of Evidence and Bibliomite feels actually like something I want to see more of. DH could be a class that doesn't just have a ton of draw, but actually needs to draw cards for the sake of drawing. It needs draw to play strong cards, not just for the sake of finding cards it wants to play, like Rogue or Druid. That fits with DH as a swift, aggressive, agile striker, a bit of a hotheaded daredevil, not a scheming Rogue, not a patiently pursuing Hunter.

Throwing cards back into the deck is a cost for power, fitting for a class that abuses forbidden powers for (allegedly) good reasons. I'd like to see something like a 0 mana spell "Choose two cards to shuffle into your deck, then draw two cards" - a net zero draw that helps to set up outcasts and fuels things that want you to draw a lot. What they could drop entirely is the Big Demon theme. It really fits Warlock (or Warrior) better. Maybe have Demons that you need to sacrifice on your turn, or gain extra effects when you discard big minions. But summoning big, hulking, evil creatures doesn't really suit the class.

I want to say here that generally speaking, the last few years have been really good in terms of class development in Hearthstone. There have still been outliers but many sets had class design that was focused, innovative and sometimes even successful in creating a good metagame. Priest has finally found some way to use Shadowform effectively, and Overheal might turn all the healing stuff into a board-centric playstyle, while remaining a survival kit for the usual control stuff. Warrior is not just dumping Pirates or stacking armor anymore, and Fire looks like a fitting element to give the class some spell synergies. We got some cards that make Overload useful or less bad, and Shaman gets plenty of support for its many minion and spell types. Mage, aside from all the random crap, has seen dedicated support for Frost, Fire and Arcane over the last 2-3 years, though they don't quite translate to different playstyles yet (especially Fire).

That being said, my other candidate would be Paladin. You have a hero power that creates minions, so there's an endless reprinting of minion buffs and/or buffing Silverhands specifically. They tried to make a "Healing"-archetype and it never worked. Divine Shield is sort of class-exclusive, but not really and all minion-based as well. There were Murlocs, Dragons, Mechs, handbuffs, but it was always a different flavor of the same thing: Summon minions, buff them, hope for no board clears. There has not been much development how those minions interact with each other or the opponent's board, or any other element on the field, and it rarely ever feels like Paladin does something cool. It can be strong, and has been plenty of times, but playing minions and hope for no counters is almost all the class ever did, some odd OTK-decks or dumb combos like "Ham and Cheese Paladin" aside.

I really hope to see Paladin gets some more variety. Minion tribes are cool, but when you are always locked into a board-centric playstyle, at least find more ways to do something with it. Give them spell or damage resistance (already done in Mercenaries), have them boost weapon attacks, have them set up stuff for a big endgame explosion. Anything that Druid, Shaman or Warlock can't do just as well, and oftentimes better.

They write up an entire blogpost about Titans, all the special rules applying to Titans, with one of the key notes being: They can not be generated by random effects.

One expansion later: Get some RANDOM Titan, that RANDOMLY wins the game on the spot, be it a full boardclear Sargeras or Aggramar for the finisher, because no way will we ever let the Mage class be anything else but a clowncar of randomly random generated BS.

I have lost way to many games against RANDOM spells from Jackpot!, RANDOM discovered legendaries from The Countess (the chance for Gigafin is apparently near 97%, unless you could win with Charge of course), and too many other cards to mention. I am under no illusion that this will ever not result in the single best possible Titan my opponent could hope for (and fittingly, praying to Yogg might even get you Yogg himself).

I don't care if Mage's winrate is 2% in the upcoming expansion, I'll probably concede every game against one right away. I am SO done with this nonsense.

It's not even about winning or losing. Heck, when I do achievement hunting (most of what I do in Ranked these days), I know I will lose just about every game anyway. But it's just no fun whatsoever to play against this. When I try for over 3 hours to get 50 minion kills with Tiny Worldbreaker, already near impossible when half my opponents play no minions, the last thing I want to see is yet another RANDOM secret that always turns out to be Objection! somehow.

Every year I hope all the "do randomly random things" Mage stuff fizzles out with the Standard rotation. and every year the same sort of stuff gets added again with the final expansion. Deck of Wonders in Kobolds and Catacoms. Rune of the Archmage in Alterac Valley. Deck of Lunacy in Darkmoon Faire. Prismatic Elemental and Vast Wisdom in Lich King,.. Though to be fair, there was plenty of clowncasting in Titans already.

Priest and Rogue are no better. But at least Rogue gets an actual deck to play with every once in a while. Some even last a month before they get nerfed to dust or become irrelevant. 

I am just done with Mage. And Priest, but that goes without saying.

/rant