Hearthpwn

Quote from swanky_tiger86>>

Blizzard should just make certain cards not draftable with certain cards, with restriction.

Hey, great idea. Imagine how much this could open design space! In fact, to make it easier for players to know what cards can be played together we should group them using different colours. Then we could make them all thematically similar and relate them to warcraft classes! Oh wait...

Quote from N7spectre >>

HA! Guess who's right?

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/6020-upcoming-hearthstone-balance-changes-giggling

 Why do you asume that blizzard is always right? They've taken some horrible decisions over the years and they never stop contradicting themselves. Heck, giggling was "fine" according to them a few weeks ago. 

Sure, those who wanted these nerfs will be happy but as to wether or not they're good nerfs that leave the game in a better place remains to be seen. Blizzard has gotten extremely lazy with nerfs lately, changing only the mana cost of cards to "not confuse" players and to "keep the card intact" because it has the same effect.

If you don't want inventor in even decks make it seven mana but increase the stats to 2/2 or 3/2 so it isn't garbage that no one's going to run ever. Plus it wouldn't affect quest rogue since the minions would be 4/4 anyways.

Regarding Mana Wyrm sure, it was powerful so it's not unreasonable to nerf it and changing the mana cost by one doesn't seem like a big deal compared to giggling. That is until you realize that you're duplicating the cost of the card. They should've either changed its health to 2 if you wanted to keep it a 1-drop or raised it to 4 if they're making it a 2-drop. Still, I'd have it stay as a one drop since mage severely lacks them now. I'm fine with mage having a viable 1-drop and 2 health would bring it in line with other neutral cards that work in similar ways like Lightwarden.

Finally Aviana has to take the cake for dumbest nerf on the list. Changing wild cards should only be done as a last resort since you don't want to kill off decks from the past in wild, that's what standard's for. Let's see the history of Aviana first before I reach my point:

Aviana's original purpose in TGT was to play it followed up by any expensive minion to essentially get a 5/5 for free that can snowball pretty hard if it isn't removed. Sounds good in theory but the card didn't find much success in that meta.

When Gadgetzan was released Kun repurposed aviana to its combo role. Did this "OP" combo ruin the game? No. Everyone was way too busy trying to deal with infinite big green men (Jade Druid) instead. Turns out that back when druid didn't have completely broken draw, sustain and survivability playing a 5 or 6 card combo after reaching 10 mana wasn't easy.

Throughout the years, combo druid got better and better with support cards such as plague, branching paths, UI, etc. and this made the deck a viable choice for laddering in wild. Then blizzard goes ahead and prints melon, a blatantly broken card for this deck that skyrockets its powerlevel to the point where it warps the wild meta. Now tell me which of the following things are bad for a card game:

1. A 5+ card game winning combo that can only be played in the lategame.

2. A card that single handedly draws said combo.

I think it's pretty obvious. New cards should be balanced based on previous cards, not the other way around unless it seriously limits design space, which this combo didn't do. It doesn't matter if you play aviana kun because it requires setup. If you managed to survive that long you should get the win asuming that you played with fair control cards and that's where the problem lies. Melon should never have been printed in its current state and I'm not a big fan of killing old cards (aviana's original spirit of playing it alongside something else now makes no sense) to allow for new designs. I don't want more nerfs in the style of warsong commander and raza... 

But hey, this way people that don't play wild don't get a dust refund. Yay!

Sure, I could be wrong as well. After all, I'm just a dude that plays hearthstone but blizzard isn't automatically right just because they have the authority to make changes to the game.

Hi, I'd like my name changed to HyperOrange

Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone. I'm currently ranked top 8 legend in wild so I thought I'd share my experience.

Star Aligner is NOT popular in the highest tiers of play in wild. This is true mainly because Togwaggle druid is a superior version of the deck in most situations. Let me briefly illustrate why:

1. Togwaggle is favoured agaist Star Aligner. You can easily out-armor their combo and then deal with the board with poison seeds. After that, you're guaranteed to win the resource battle due to your own combo. And that's supposing they get it before you. If you get it first you get to steal their hand and follow your combo with theirs.

2. Star Aligner requires more combo pieces, weakening its effectiveness against aggro. Aggro decks in wild have a crazy power level and the more cards you can put in your deck to counter them the better. Star Aligner druid not only requires more cards to do the main combo, but some of its combo pieces cost 4 or less mana, meaning that you can't run Oaken Summons in your deck. This WILL lower your winrate against aggro decks like odd rogue, odd paladin, mech hunter, secret mage or even shaman, which are all viable decks played much more than Star Aligner.

3. You might think that Star Aligner druid would be better than Togwaggle druid against disruptive decks such as reno warlock, control warlock or control warrior since they run more minions but if you think about it more thoroughly you'll realize this is not the case. If they get any of your 4 main combo pieces (Aviana, Kun, Medivh, Star Aligner) or brann your damage output is significantly reduced to the point where warrior can out-armor you (and it could anyway) and warlock decks might survive as well if they're at full health (which is likely since you have no other way of dealing damage). Togwaggle on the other hand can win as long as you don't lose Togwaggle itself. This is because of naturalize, which can allow you to switch decks even if you lost other combo pieces. Your opponents will know this strat as you go up the ranks but you can use others like holding to your melon with Aviana and Kun in hand. They won't use disruptive tools since they're waiting for you to play the melon but you can actually play everything in one turn and surprise them.

So once we have that out of the way, and seeing that wild has multiple viable decks in all 3 playstyles (aggro, control, combo) we can infer that no, wild is not dead and if it's dying it's definitely not because of Star Aligner. The only card that's broken in that deck is the melon, which I'll admit could be nerfed. Now what I don't want blizzard to do is to nerf the whole Aviana Kun combo and destroy a bunch of cool decks that existed way before Star Aligner. I've been playing Malygos druid in wild for a while and later switched to Togwaggle druid before Boomsday. Melon increased the power level of that deck but the same could be said about many other cards and decks. It is definitely strong to the point where you have to ask yourself how you're going to counter it when building your deck but not to extreme levels where it hurts the meta.

I feel that covers the topic quite well so thanks for reading and feel free to point out any discrepancies you might have with my reasoning.

Quote from Sudosev >>

Spell does X effect over Y turns, has the ability to stack.  Has anybody messed around with this idea previously?  Do you think there would be a clean way to implement such a mechanic?  We already have some examples in the form of totems i.e. Healing Totem.  This mechanic could also be branched out into damage spells.  For example Unstable Affliction could deal 2 damage to a minion every turn for 3 turns.  Death and Decay could deal 1 damage to 3 random enemy minions every turn for 2 turns etc.

Here's my quick example to help articulate the idea.

Rejuvenate

 

Edit: It's arguable that this would also require some new addition on the UI to track that sort of thing but, it's not mandatory in my opinion.

 I have a whole expansion designed with a mechanic that can function like that. It's called Resonance and it plays an effect x turns after you play the card (if it's a minion it needs to stay alive until it triggers.) You can use this to create cards that produce the x effect over y turns like these ones:

What's very interesting about these cards is that they do nothing when you play them so you're supposed to think ahead of time. You can check all the cards if you want by clicking the link in my signature.

I'm kind of tired of seeing how everyone uses the word "uninteractive" to describe any deck that they don't personally like. I feel like most people don't even think about what interactivity means in a card game so they just apply this term to anything that they find unfun, not realizing that other players might enjoy that playstyle. In fact, you've all probably heard these kinds of statements:

"Aggro decks are so uninteractive. They just dump their hand on curve and if you don't draw perfect answers you lose."

"Control decks are so uninteractive. No matter what I play they can always clear the board  and heal so I don't even get to attack with my minions."

"Combo decks are so uninteractive. They just have to find their combo pieces and then they win automatically, even if I'm at full Health!"

 To be clear I'm not hating on anyone. I just want to have a discussion about what uninteractivity should mean in a card game (please don't just copypaste the definition of the word, we all know that). Hopefully this will help you either change or cement your opinion.

Quote from swagfrog >>

How would Reno work with the priest legendary?

 Previously I stated that Reno and Tree of Life would restore 30 Health. However I feel like I've come up with a more consistent rule: Since your unlimited max Health is only temporary the game should use whatever max Health you had before playing Krall'ik when you "fully restore" your Hero. For example if you just played the card in a normal environment they would restore 30 Health but if you had transformed into Lord Jaraxxus they would restore 15 and 40 if you had used Amara. Even if more cards that change your hero's max Health are released this rule should still work in a consistent and intuitive way.

So I've been having a blast playing the new single player content from the Boomsday Project but I know that once I'm done with it there won't be much of a point to go back and do some puzzles I've already solved. I have a suggestion that would make this new way of playing Hearthstone infinitely replayable:

A PUZZLE EDITOR!

Now I know that it probably requires to much effort for blizzard to implement this (tournament mode and a replay system seem way easier than this and they're still not in the game) but I think it could be worth it since it'd unlock all the potential this mode has to offer. Just think of the possibilities: sharing puzzles with your friends, a new game mode were you solve increasingly difficult random puzzles created by the community with limited retries and time that offers arena-like rewards, you could even design 2 player puzzles in which they both have to collaborate to solve it.

I'm no UI genious but the way I could see this implemented into the game is the following:

When you access "My Collection" you have an option for creating a puzzle instead of a deck. If you click on it you get to first choose the type of puzzle you'll be creating (one of the 4 available right now or new ones that have been introduced later on), your class, the mana you have available, etc. Then you have separate deck-like columns that let you choose which cards you put in the hand, deck and board of both players just like if you were creating a deck. Uncollectible cards could be accessed through a filter not unlike standard and wild cards work right now.

A new option should be added to the main menu of the game (Play, Adventures, Arena, Tavern Brawl) called "Puzzles" or whatever. From there you can access your own puzzles to playtest them, upload them so other players can encounter them when searching for puzzles or play any new modes that are related to them. You should also be able to challenge a friend to solve one of your puzzles using the same interface that we use right now to challenge them to a normal game of Hearthstone.

These are my ideas so far but I'm sure that there are tons of other ones that I haven't come up with so please, tell me what you think about this whole thing, it's viability and how to improve it. Hopefully if enough people request this feature blizzard will take the time to implement it.

Quote from Angrier_Chicken >>

Charged reload is just a way worst arcane shot? Yeah, except in odd hunter I guess, but even there it's just 3 damages face for 3 mana, it's not really exciting. Plus it has a drawback.

Otherwise I like the other cards, I'd love to playtest your set!

 Now that you mention it it seems like the card is a bit underpowered. I could make it so you gain 2 energy instead of your opponent or I could think of some new card that benefits greatly from your hero power so that you would run this in your deck. I'll see what I come up with.

OPPONENT'S ENERGY MANIPULATION

I've designed some cards that interact in some way with your opponent's Energy.

Eerie Mist is very good when played before Mountain Ravager, Charged Reload could fit well into odd hunter and The Dark Punisher is an interesting way of countering energy decks although you could also just use it in a deck that gives your opponent Energy.

Quote from Angrier_Chicken >>

Very interesting, but it doesn't stop anything from attacking, and the cost and stats probably mean you are dead if you plan on using this guy against aggro. I would add taunt, or make it activate (2 Mana). Anyway very interesting card that would need playtesting to really get.

 I mean it doesn't "stop" your opponent unless he has more minions than Mana Crystals but it greatly limits what he can play to keep up the tempo. I thought about making it 2 mana but then it would be too polarizing of an effect so I decided to keep it to 1 but make it a druid card. This way if you ramp early on you can play this on turn 3 with the coin for example and it would be tough to deal with for decks like odd paladin.

Regarding taunt I think it's better if it doesn't have it because then you can protect it behind other taunts. For example you could play Oaken Summons into Ironwood Golem on 4 and then follow it up with this card.

I'M BACK

Sorry for the delay guys. I've been busy with exams but now I can keep designing. Here's a new card I devised a couple of days ago.

He is meant to be a good counter to decks that like to flood the board. Notice that it also affects heroes which makes it more interesting in my opinion.

From now on I'm back to designing more regularly so expect more cards soon.

Quote from KillTheCow >>

Alright good to know. Although in that case i'm not too sure about the Conductive keyword since it's likely your opponent doesn't even run Energy, and deffinetly not on turn 3 which would still probally be the best time to play the Current Wizard. It seems more like an option for tech against it. Mountain Ravager is such a perfect card in that regard, although i haven't seen the entire set and it might be more important then i think which could very well be the case. Regardless i really like the ideas you're coming up with so keep it up :)

 Sure it's more of a counter to energy but I intend to design cards that give Energy to your opponent thus allowing you to use conductive to your advantage even if your opponent doesn't run Energy at all.

IS THIS BROKEN?

I changed Natural Anomaly by making it only draw minions and increasing its cost by 1 but I fear it might be too powerful when coupled with this new giant. It's a combo whose consistency depends on how you build your deck and that's what makes me think it might not be broken but I'd like to hear your opinion.

Quote from Angrier_Chicken >>

I love your idea and your design, I've seen your previous set and it's well crafted I think. Now there should be a way to play it and that would be awesome :D

Concerning Resonance, I'm very curious if you actually though about how to represent it ingame. From the top of my head I cannot see a convenient way to do it.

 The way I imagine it could work is:

1. Minions and weapons with resonance have a small icon on the bottom (where the deathrattle icon would be) that has a number, that number being the turns left to trigger. Once the resonance resolves the icon dissapears.

2. Spells with resonance would have a special glow on the history and they would never dissapear from it until they trigger. If you hover over it you can see how many turns remain until it triggers.