Hearthpwn

Hmmm . . .

It's a bit silly to complain about a lack of ladder diversity after admitting to only having played three games - judging by the HSReplays numbers, over 40% of the ladder is comprised of decks which didn't exist a week ago. The deck which the OP is complaining about happens to be one of them, though it has a play-rate only slightly above 0% - so if playing against Spell Hunter is somehow making him angry, I suppose there is a bright side.

I guess my advice would be - if you find yourself getting frustrated after playing a few games, stop playing. Chances are that you'll only get more frustrated if you continue, and you'll likely blame the game instead of your own foolish decision to play it when you knew you were already frustrated.

VS posts a Wild report every month or two. Big Priest has steadily fallen off meta for the better part of the current year, with an overall win-rate that has dropped by almost 4% since January - it currently loses more often than it wins at almost every skill level. The deck only dominates a couple of popular decks (Jade Druid and Renolock), and has slightly favourable match-ups against three others. The deck is even or worse against the remaining decks in the VS Top 20.

It can be argued that the kind of slow, value-based control decks that Big Priest would potentially dominate have simply been pushed out of the meta-game by Big Priest - but those kinds of decks are being pushed out of the format by just about every competitive deck in Wild. The format will likely always be defined by huge swings that need to be answered immediately, and decks which are fast enough to win before those swings can happen. That's pretty par-for-the-course with respect to the Eternal formats in just about every card game - attrition heavily favours win-now decks over win-later decks.

By the numbers, the Shaman Quest is about as good as the Druid Quest - both decks are about 51% on HReplays. The Paladin Quest is around 54%. Folks can decide for themselves how "OP" those numbers are.

Given how Blizzard has responded to the two most recent expansions, it's likely that we'll have an Uldum balance patch before the end of the month - any "old" decks with high play-rates that don't use many new cards will likely be nerfed (Control Warrior is the most likely candidate). Given the data, it's very unlikely that any of the new Quest decks will be under consideration. But, we'll have to wait and see . . .

Presumably, some of the new Quests are meant to be fun-tier, while others are meant to be more competitive. The devs have established that they go out of their way to design their game for Johnny and Timmy, as well as Spike.

Isn't this just another "I'm quitting HS" thread? The old team used to auto-lock these, since they violate the forum's posting rules.

If it isn't, and the OP is looking for honest advice - apparently, he's already uninstalled the game, so he intends to take some time off. I'd recommend that he shouldn't make such a big deal out of it - it's only a game, after all. Play it when you enjoy it, and don't when you don't. If he feels the need to announce his departure from the game, the decision is likely weighing on him a little too heavily already, and taking some time off seems like the best recourse.

Quote from Loomineyes >>

It’s not that it kills hype, the irksome bit is that it fast tracks the exploration. Before the set is even launched so many decks have already been seen and playtested.

There is a small window in this game where people are actually being creative before every deck becomes a carbon copy of each other and dull, and these streams shorten that window.

 

Hmmm . . .

I respectfully suggest that the opposite is much more likely. A handful of streamers aren't exactly solving the meta-game, after all - most of them are just having fun, trying out lots of new decks. If a bunch of folks watch them play, they'll see all the cool new toys - instead of just playing Secret Hunter on day one, they're apt to try out whatever decks they enjoyed watching on stream. At any rate, that clearly seems to be the purpose of the streams - if there was a six-day GM tournament being held prior to release, then you might have a point regarding the meta-game. But there isn't. The GMs who are streaming seem to be playing as many fun decks as everyone else - Trump just posted a video of his match against Frozen's "Infinite Worthless Imp" deck . . .

I was hoping that someone would surf all the HS fansites in every language, and post their update times on this forum - this important information would help community members decide exactly how "frustrated" they should pretend to be when they discover that one site posts the updates slightly slower than another.

I can't help but share how frustrated I am that the OP didn't bother posting this information in his shit-post. Christ.

To be fair, if you truly "dream" to be a pro, you'll have every card you need given the amount of time you'll be spending simply playing the game. If you think you can be a pro without playing at least four or five hours every day, and gaining 20+ gold each hour from laddering, you aren't being very honest, or realistic.

If I'm wrong, and you qualify for GM next year simply by completing a few dailies every week - I hereby extend my apologies.

Hmmm . . .

I suspect that the following statement is true -

If Shadowblade had been a 2-mana 3/2 weapon with the text "this starts in your opening hand, so you are down a card for the entire game, and you can't actually play this until turn five, or six, or seven . . . but to compensate, it will return to your hand when it's destroyed, and you are always Immune when you attack on turn five or six or seven . . ." no one would have played it.

I suspect many people will play the new quest, and then many people will not play the new quest.

The reward is much weaker than Kingsbane, especially pre-nerf, when the weapon had permanent Lifesteal. To compensate, once you get the new weapon, you always have it (sometimes, you would run out of tutoring effects to draw a game-winning Kingsbane from your deck), but to uncompensate, you start the game down a card, and the weapon is simply much weaker.

FWIW - I'm currently Rank 2 in Wild, having gone 52-34 with Egg Priest over the past week. While I doubt that Egg Priest will become a meta-deck, it does suggest the kind of deck Wretched Reclaimer likely wants to be in - smashing a friendly 2-mana DR on-curve, like Nerubian Egg, or combo-ing with something groovy in the mid- to late-game, like Convincing Infiltrator, or Sylvanas Windrunner.

Really nice card, though there might not be enough 2-mana targets for this to really shine in Standard.

Hmmm . . .

Realistically, it's a 4-mana play that reads, "You just spent 4-mana." Imagine if Fal'dorei Strider were nerfed so that you didn't get the 4/4 body when you played it - how good would the three cards shuffled into the deck have to be in order for FS to continue seeing play? Whatever that answer is, this card is worse, since FS simply shuffles those cards directly into your deck - Shadow of Death requires a target already in play. What if you never draw and play that target?

Clearly, the upside is potentially great - I imagine there will be some kind of OTKish combos with Malygos - but that upside also seems unfeasibly inconsistent and slow.

Wouldn't the OP's problem be solved by simply making weekly TBs competitive? Give the TBs their own weekly mini-ladder, with weekly rewards based on how high you've climbed. Fifty new competitive play-modes every year - problem solved?

If not, I'd suggest that the OP simply reconsider whether his own expectations are remotely realistic - after all, his angry demand that a game he's played for six years should be "as amazing as it was the first time I started playing" is pretty ridiculous. The sentence barely even makes sense - he's six years older, and he's not a goldfish with a two-minute memory, so a lot of his likes and dislikes will simply be different. If he's finding out that he doesn't like HS as much as he did six years ago, that doesn't mean that HS is doing something wrong - the devs are doing more cool shit this year than ever before - it just means that the OP's preferences have changed. It's honestly no big deal - don't be angry about it, and just figure out where your new interests take you . . .

While the card isn't bad, I have my doubts that 47.3% of voters have correctly guessed that it's the best card of the set.

Ideally, Zoo doesn't want to play this card, since that deck wants to end the game before it can start cashing in on the value inherent in playing buffed Lackeys turn after turn -  in order for Dark Pharaoh Tekahn to be good, the game has to last long enough to draw a critical mass of buffed Lackeys, which ultimately help steam-roll most opponents. We don't know how big that critical mass needs to be - but I suspect it isn't one, or two or three.

On-curve, it's a bad play, and in order to recover from the tempo-loss of playing a vanilla 4/4 on turn five, a Zoo deck will need a very snow-bally turn six. Playing 4/4s for 1-mana is potentially a good way to begin that recovery, but if you don't have a couple Lackeys in hand that actually impact the board, then you are just playing more vanilla stuff - you'll lose to any faster deck, and give slower decks the time they need to draw into their answers.

FWIW - I voted "Playable," but if there was a button between Playable and Bad, I would have pressed it. We'll see in a couple weeks, I suppose . . .

It's likely worth mentioning that Heal Druid currently has a win-rate of 39% on HSReplays, with over 60,000 games tracked. If Combo Druid wants to use Overflow to draw into its combo, that deck currently has a win-rate of 34%. All of the Druid ramp cards have been nerfed, which is a concomitant soft-nerf to all the Druid class cards which cost 5+ mana. I don't know if Lucentbark would have been viable in the old days, when he would have regularly hit the board on turn five or six, but he is clearly a meme right now.

Slower Druid builds aren't really being squeezed out of the meta because of their lack of late-game card draw, or mass heals - they need to "un-nerf" all their late-game cards by receiving ramp that's good enough to see play. The new cards clearly aren't bad, but equally clearly, they aren't going to add 10%-15% to the win-rate of slow Druid builds, making them viable on ladder. 

Quote from Rino >>

Quote from Scorpyon >>

This thread's getting a little overheated.
Let's "reign in the flamin'" a little, please.
I'd prefer not to lock it and let the discussion continue.

Cheers! :-)

My intentions is to get others view on why Paladin has had no definition for a while now, not trying to troll or flame others. Thank you for letting it continue, I appreciate that.

To be fair, I suspect the reason that things became "overheated" is that you don't really appear to be offering anything other than aimless criticism - after all, we've only seen one-third of the set. In addition, you didn't really explain what you meant by "no direction" for the class, which further undermines whatever legitimate point you might be trying to make. Like every other class, Paladin has a few well-established decks - Mech Paladin, OTK Paladin and Secret Paladin are all pretty well-defined. The new set appears to be pushing Murloc Paladin and Quest Paladin - but since we've only seen a third of the set, complaining that those new archetypes aren't well-supported is clearly premature. Since you already know that, but don't appear to care, you come across as simply complaining aimlessly for the sake of aimlessly complaining.

If I'm incorrect, and you have something else to say - the thread hasn't been locked yet, and you can take the opportunity to make your case. Otherwise, it honestly appears that you are simply upset that we haven't seen more Paladin stuff, or neutral stuff that has synergy with Paladin stuff. No one can respond to that type of "criticism" - unfortunately, you just have to wait, like everyone else.