Hearthpwn

Quote from Goebs80 >>

Quote from GetchX >>

I read the books first, then watched the series.  The series is struggling for the same reason the books are struggling: It can't figure out whether it is The Game of Thrones, a drama where kings, queens and commoners battle for thrones, or High Fantasy, with magic, evil and undead monsters.  The books and show would have been much better off just dropping the entire Night King plotline.

That being said:

The absolute lack of explaining any backstory of the Night King, who he was, how he came to be, what he wanted, etc. was a total failure in episode three.  Listen, I get that that plot line was in the way of what made the show great, but spending 15 minutes in the episode to explain that character would have gone a looong way to tie up the second biggest plot line of the series.  They had the time, we didn't need 15 more minutes of impossible-to-see battles. 

Westeros is a world where every bad person has a shade of good, and every good person has a shade of bad.  However, we get this one pure evil monarch who apparently was just bad, needed to be killed, but we don't know a thing about him.  The show hinted at his story, and so do the books . And we had Bran who knows the history of *everything* (another total failure of GRRM: You don't want Gods in your books or else they become entirely uninteresting), yet offers no hint of who this Night King was.  A 700 foot magical wall was created thousands of years ago to keep him out, entire armies protected it for those millenia, he has the ability raise the dead...  and then Arya appears out of nowhere and stabs him, and that's that.  OK, time to move on.... nothing to see here... what?!?

I didn't really like the Night King story line.  In the books, it felt like GRRM trying to stick to High Fantasy "standard", even though he didn't really want to write about it.  Who got this castle or who got that castle is insignificant when compared to this immortal undead army to the North, and he generally undermined any drama in the game of thrones.  However, he *was* a major character for the entire series, and should have been addressed.

However, the total lack of any backstory or any understanding that we were given to the character in episode three basically caused the show to jump the shark for me.  You have Bran, who *knows* the entire backstory, yet doesn't say a word about him.  You could have had his death somewhat dramatic, but instead Arya disappears for 30 minutes, and just appears next to him and stabs him.  It was the most anti-climactic, how-did-that-get-out-of-the-writer's-room moment in any quality show I've ever watched.  I really lost interest the show after that.

 wat?  they showed how and why the night king was created a few seasons ago.

 They showed how (in a very vague way) and why he was created by the children of the forest, but they never showed or told us anything about what HE and the other white walkers wanted. They just decided to make him evil for the sake of being evil, which is exactly the kind of villain George RR Martin wanted to avoid when he wrote a Song of Ice and Fire.

Just watched the episode. If I had to describe it in one word I'd say: 'meh'.

 Edit: oops forgot to put it in spoilers

Also I just remembered more things I wanted to talk about, so here we go!

 I also realized that my 'meh' was actually too high of a rating for this episode, so I'd like to change it to a big fat 'bleh'.

I don't necesserily want to see the card nerfed because I think other cards are more problematic right now, but I do agree with the OP. Anyone with decent Hearthstone experience can see that the card is insane. I just had a quick look at the stats on hsreplay and they support this: https://hsreplay.net/decks/0StdnCGITZFC8e0CnUrQ7b/#gameType=RANKED_STANDARD

The card has the highest mulligan winrate and drawn winrate by far, is kept the most after Murloc Tidecaller (which makes sense since murloc tidecaller is the best turn 1 play the deck has), and has by far the highest played winrate after Bloodlust (which is insane considering bloodlust is a card that is mostly only played as a finisher).

Right now murloc shaman doesn't have enough things besides Underbelly Angler to support it, but if more support is given throughout the next two years it will definitely be a deck to watch out for. Personally I hope it stays as strong as it is right now though.

I like the idea of giving minor buffs to some cards, but I don't think it's the right solution to bring down overpowered decks. ShadowsOfSense did a great job at explaining this, you can read his post below.

Quote from ShadowsOfSense >>

Buffing is not better than nerfing for changing the meta.

Let's say we buff... Betrayal. Nobody plays Betrayal right now, right? So what happens? People test out Betrayal in their Rogue decks, and either it makes the cut, or it doesn't. That's pretty boring.

Let's buff a different card, one for a class not in the meta much right now. I haven't seen a lot of Priest, what happens if we give them a buff? Well, now people try out Priest for a bit, and either it changes the meta up, or it still isn't strong enough to be Tier 1-2. Not much change, and either way the average powerlevel of the game has increased, which isn't good.

Now what happens when we nerf a card? Let's say we nerf Waggle Pick, since that seems to be one of Rogue's strong cards right now. Now we have a lot more interesting developments. First, we need to see how much of a hit this is to Rogue. If Waggle Pick is hit hard enough, what card do you replace it with? Do you need to change up your strategy completely? Then we need to see what Tier 2-3 decks can take advantage of this new drop in Rogue's powerlevel - maybe Zoolock becomes much better now? Or Midrange Hunter? What about Warrior decks, how does this affect them?

In general, nerfing cards creates far more opportunities for change than buffing cards does. Buffing a card means you try out that card; nerfing a card means trying out a bunch of cards to see if they're better than it now.

 

 That said, I do think they could look at some underplayed cards that are very obviously below the powerlevel they intended them to be. Some examples could be:

Buff The Boogeymonster's stats, it's very hard to imagine the card becoming overpowered as an 8/8 in an environment as competitive as wild.

Buff Moorabi's stats or make his effect more impactful. Maybe instead of adding the minion to your hand he could summon a copy of it (which is still frozen, which allows the opponent more time to answer it). A buff like this might also require his cost to be increased.

Lower Harbinger Celestia's mana cost to 3. This is very unlikely to make her playable, but at least it will make her more playable.

These are just a few examples of bad cards that can safely be buffed. Besides these type of cards I don't think Blizzard should go crazy and buff all slightly underplayed cards. The main problem with this is that a lot of cards might not be a problem right now but can become problematic in the future as new cards are released. Everyone laughed at Hadronox when he was first released, but a few expansions later he became the centerpiece of taunt druid, which was a deck that could generate insane amounts of value. If Hadronox would have been buffed beforehand, the deck might have been unstoppable. Another good example is Bloodbloom. This card was pretty much useless during it's entire standard cycle but thanks to Darkest Hour it now allows an already pretty oppressive combo to be played as early as turn 4.

tl;dr: I think buffs could be nice but only for very underplayed cards that have very little to no chance of ever seeing play. If the aim is to balance the game, nerfs are the most effective solution.

Hi I'm a day later because the episode is released at a later time in my country. Unfortunately I have to agree with everyone that this was a disappointing episode.

I love playing with different cards and interactions. Whenever I need to make a choice between a card that will make me win more games and a bad but fun card, I usually choose the latter because it's really satisfying when you make those cards work. I also don't care about my rank at all. If I happen to reach rank 15 or 10 the end of season reward is a nice bonus, but at the same time there are a lot more people netdecking at the lower ranks which drastically lowers my enjoyment of the game.

I also like building up a large collection over time. I still don't get to play with nearly the amount of cards I'd like to try out but each time a new expansion comes out I like to look at my older cards and decks to see if they open up new possibilities.

Quote from YouthThunder >>

 Perhaps you did not notice but I posted first so...... I guess my turn to make request first?

 Guess we posted it at roughly the same time, oh well

Next: A spell or quest

Okay I'm really late to this thread but I'd like to share my thoughts.

About the quality of the show: First off I completely agree that the quality of the show has dropped significantly after season 4. I still really enjoyed parts of seasons 5-7 (like hardhome and the sequence where Cersei blows up the sept) but I also really dislike other parts (like the entirety of episode 6 in season 7). I think GRRM is definitely partially to blame since he should have given D&D more to work with (as far as I know he just told them the ending and a few other important things and left the rest up to them), but I also think D&D could have handled a lot of things much better than they did. The most notable things to me are Dorne (season 5 and 6) and the whole Arya vs Sansa bullshit and episode 6 in season 7. Ellaria Sand acted completely irrationally ever since Oberyn was killed and the sandsnakes are just a bunch of completely uninteresting angry girls who happen to be good at fighting. The Arya vs Sansa thing in season 7 was really difficult to watch, I can't remember other shows or movies in which I've seen people act so out of character as Arya did. And then we got the episode beyond the wall which was just one big fuck you to the logic of many things that had previously been established in the show. I just cannot believe that D&D where even trying when they wrote that episode. They probably just wanted to make sure the night king got an undead dragon and be done with it.

What I think about season 8 so far: That being said, I did enjoy the first two episodes of season 8 quite a bit. The first episode still had some bad stuff (I really don't like the romance between Jon and Daenerys) but a lot of good stuff as well (especially Sam's scenes where great, mostly thanks to John Bradley's amazing acting). I liked the second episode a lot more than the first one, I can see why some people think it was too slow, but I also think that was necessary as build up for the next episode. My main criticism with the episode is that I didn't really see anyone being scared of their highly likely death approaching within literal hours, it felt like everyone was a bit too chill about it. It did make me very hyped for the next episode though, this episode basically guaranteed that we are going to lose a lot of characters.

My thoughts on what the ending could/should be: Lastly I'd like to give my view on possible endings. I really hope the whole battle with the Night King will be resolved in the next episode or the one after that. I've always loved Game of Thrones because for its many grey characters, which resulted in me never being sure who to root for since there were always characters I liked at both sides. I feel like the white walkers kind of killed that whole idea. The premise of the good uniting against one evil is not a bad concept (it's used in the Lord of the Rings, and I fucking love the Lord of the Rings) but it does not feel right in Game of thrones. Of course Cersei is still around and she is definitely going to be an obstacle to whoever is left after the fight in the north. 

To be honest I have no idea how the show is going to end but I really hope the ending won't be 'Jon and Daenerys live happily ever after and rule the seven kingdoms together'. Luckily I think that's very unlikely to happen, especially since GRRM said the ending is going to be 'bittersweet'. An ending that I thought could be interesting is one where Daenerys eventually wins but at the cost of becoming a 'mad queen'. Maybe she will kill Jon because she knows he has a stronger claim to the throne, and after everything that happened we will basically be back where we started, but now with a mad queen instead of a mad king. I could be totally wrong of course but I think that would be interesting. I actually don't even like Daenerys but Game of Thrones used to not care at all about what the viewers wanted to happen, so in that sense an endin like this would be fitting for me :P.

I never expected to post something like this on a Hearthstone forum but I'm really passionate about stuff like this so I'd love to join the conversation :p

I think you balanced a lot of these very well. Since they are legendaries the balancing is also more flexible because you can only put one copy in your deck. That said, I'd still like to give some feedback on what I like and don't like:

Sophistella: I like the idea of an end of turn choose one effect, and I really like the new heal druid archetype so I would love more restore effects like this one. I think lowering her health to 5 would make her more balanced though. Since druids can already ramp a 5 mana 4/6 can be hard for the opponent to react to and minions with end of turn effects can snowball pretty hard when they don't get answered. We'd have to see it in practice to know for sure of course.

Lady wildheart: Cool effect for spell based hunter decks and it seems balanced.

Battlemage Telumis: Cool and flavorful effect. Also seems well balanced to me.

Baldur the Blessed: Don't have a lot to say about this one. Seems strong but balanced for a legendary.

Tessa the Tender: Interesting effect, I like it. Maybe you could give Tessa lifesteal as well and lower her health a little bit, I think that could make the card feel better as a whole.

Solid Darkness: I really like the flavor of this one, but I would make it a 3/7, since 2 attack feels a bit too low to really benefit from the effect (of course attack buffs can change this, but rogue doesn't have a lot of those right now).

Frostland Colossus: I appreciate any freeze shaman support (since team 5 seems to have mostly abandoned it) and this seems like a really cool (pun intended) way to give that deck more of the power it desperately needs.

Netherlord Cindera: Cool and flavorful effect. I'm not really sure whether this would be balanced or overpowered to be honest.

Olga the "orc": I think this one is way too strong. Can you imagine pirate warriors using this for unlimited SMOrc? *shivers* Maybe you could change the effect to give stealth or 'can't be targeted by spells or hero powers' instead and increase the mana cost to 6 or 7.

I hope this is useful to you :)

I haven't played much wild since the new expansion, but in my experience wild is a lot of fun in ranks 20-15, but once you go below that you start to see more and more of a select few broken decks. Rank 15 and 14 can also still be fun however (especially since the amount of stars required to get there was lowered). I love to play homebrew or meme decks in wild so I hardly ever reach rank 10 or below, but I prefer it that way.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/212005-group-therapy-need-to-blow-off-steam-mega-salty

Decided to try out the new arena, jesus christ it sucks. My first run was just okay, didn't have a great deck, didn't get great results. Fine, on to the next. In my second run I get an amazing priest deck with three northshire clerics, kabal talon priests, two auchenai soul priests, a circle of healing and prophet velen. Went 5-3 because in all of the games I lost I not only drew terribly but my opponents somehow had even better decks than I did. Great... Next run, I get an average midrange warlock deck. a lot of zoo cards but also a few good late game cards. I went 1-3, and my last game my opponent is a mage and it was absolutely ridiculous. (remember that this was at 1-2 by the way) Next to other really good cards he had fireball and flamestrike on curve (just like every other mage I've faced so far, I thought that card was supposed to show up far less often than most other cards?) and to top it off, he discovered Kazakus from a messenger raven, and it fucking activates... And to make it even more insane, he not only gets the perfect potion (board clear + 5/5 for 5 mana), but also had duplicate, and the next kazakus gives him that same fucking potion. Then I died from a pyroblast to the face. Blizzard, if you want me gone from arena, just tell me instead of torturing me with this bullshit.

Note: 'fights' means any minions it attacks or is attacked by. The spell is cast after the minions have attacked each other, so when another minion gains this effect the silence and lifesteal will not immediately trigger on that minion (but instead after all damage has been dealt and effects have been activated).

Quote from SneezingMeerkat >>

Very meh in my opinion, I was super psyched when I heard that they were gonna reintroduce some of the older mechanics, but then they didn't bring back the one mechanic I wanted.

So I'm just doing dailies and logging off, hopefully they'll bring it back in the next expansion (or make something that'll really excite me).

 So which is the mechanic you wanted them to bring back?