Hearthpwn

Specifically, when someone who knows they've lost the game decides to leave the game idle, forcing the opponent to sit through a few minutes of inactivity before they can go in for the win. The idea is that, maybe, the winner will lose connection before they get a chance to kill you and thus the win will go to the roper, the person who otherwise would have lost.

Let's analyze this numerically a little bit.

Assume that 20% of players have a habit of roping every game they lose, meaning that 10% of games will end with the loser roping. Assume that, of these games, 1% of them will see the loser actually win as a result of roping (I imagine this is a high estimate, since in my 18 months of playing, I've only ever disconnected during roping once). Assume that the average wait time to be able to finish off the roper is 2 minutes. Assume that the winrates for all players are 50%. Assume the average game length is six minutes. 

Now, it's obvious that those who don't rope have nothing to gain from this, so let's look at those who do rope.

If you play 1000 games, you'll rope 500 of them, which means there will be 5 games won by roping that you otherwise would have lost, which would bring your total number of games won from 500 to 505. But since 10% of your opponents will rope you, that's 100 ropes you'll have to deal with, which will likely cost you one of your wins. Thus, roping will net you 4 wins out of 1000.

Now, consider that 100 of your winning games will be lengthened by 2 minutes, meaning that you've lost 200 minutes, the time it takes to play 34 games. Had you been able to play those 34 games instead of waiting on ropes, you would have gotten another 17 wins out of it.

In other words, if you rope 500 games, it could net you 4 wins, but the fact that other people are roping will cost you 17 wins. 

Moral of the story: there's literally no reason to rope. It hurts you as much as it hurts anyone else. Either fight to your last breath to get the win, or concede. 

I think Dragon Reno Priest is the most fun deck in the game. It gives you a lot of tools, it gives you a good curve, it gives you a fair amount of RNG to keep things interesting, and it gives you a huge amount of lategame threats, which are just so much more fun to play than Small-time Buccaneers. It has a good winrate, but not too good. I don't see the problem.

In the week since MSG came out, we've had a few days where no deck really emerged victorious, then we saw Jade Druid on top, then Pirate Warrior, and now Pirate Jade Shaman. All the while, variants of handbuff Paladin, dragon Priest, Renolock and Reno Mage, and old decks like Midrange Shaman and Secret hunter, have been viable as well. As far as I can tell, this is exactly what a healthy meta looks like. I'm sure it'll settle down soon, but think back to the last adventure, when Midrange Shaman became undisputed king from the moment the last wing came out to the moment MSG came out. I'm having a blast; just because a deck is trending heavily on the ladder for more than a day doesn't mean the meta is cancer. 

It's hard.

Like, it's REALLY hard.

There are 800+ cards in HS right now, each one having unique interactions with each other one. There are 9 classes, each with dozens of cards that play into a few unique archetypes. There are hundreds of decks you could run, each with varying degrees of success. Trying to balance every card in the expansion so that the old dominant decks are brought down to earth, but not nerfed into oblivion, and trying to bring a few new builds into use, each with class-specific variants, is insanely complicated. 

When you complain that the meta is cancer, what are you referring to? The fact that only 6 or 7 decks have 50%+ winrates at high ranks? The fact that f2p players only have access to a handful powerful decks? The fact that some classes are run more than others? I'm sorry, but all that's really just impossible to avoid. Look at MTG; they have over 10,000 cards, and only a handful of decks are run in major tournaments. That's because, no matter how balanced the expansions are, top-level players will always find a few decks to be the most powerful, even if only by a slim margin, and those decks will undoubtedly become the most common. The game designers aren't idiots - they're actually very talented, and if you go by revenue of the game they produce, they're the best in the world. The fact that they couldn't anticipate in a few thousand playtest games over a few months what millions of gamers could discern in millions of games within 2 days of the expansions's release isn't a testament to their idiocy, it's a testament to the fact that card games are really bloody complicated. 

I'm just rambling at this point. TL;DR if your idea of an "ideal meta" is one where the ladder is evenly composed of all 9 classes and all 50+ usable deck builds, well, that's essentially impossible. Sorry about that.

I'm to lazy to find out exactly how many common/rare/epic/legendary cards there will be in the new set, but I'd say that if you opened 70 packs or so, you'd have nearly all of them. Keep in mind that the dds of pulling a card you haven't pulled before decreases with each pack, so it will likely take 300+ packs to get every single common and rare if you're not willing to dust any.

How about control shaman with jade spirits?

I disagree I think Keleseth is masterfully designed concept wise and leads to intricate deck design, but the payoff is far to high. Noone thought keleseth would be any good and with enough experimentation became dominant. My opinion is likely anduin for likely self explanatory reasons where some powerful cards, like patches, are strong the difference anduin is a frustrating insta-win card which cant really be countered

Starting Hero Power is the only thing that gets upgraded.

This is 10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% pleasure
50% pain
And a 100% reason to remember the opponents name! 

Quote from KingSevault >>

"Guaranteed Turn 5 Max Quest Completion"

"100% of the time"

"turn 5 by max"

...

"usually"

If I counted right, it could theoretically take as long as turn 12 to potentially draw enough quest activators. Seems like a fine deck, but people typically don't like false advertising.

If it feels painful I can understand. Back when I was a noob I was being tutored by a Legend player in my Computer Science class, and I started talking to him about how I had got my first legendary ever from a pack: Leeroy Jenkins. But this was immediately after Leeroy had his cost increased to 5 from 4, which ruined the only deck that played him at the time, OTK Rogue. For that reason, my mentor, who was a massive meta-lover, told me to dust Leeroy and replace him with a different legendary. And not only did I have to come to the realization then that dusting one card doesn't give you the exact dust value of a card of the same rarity (my mentor just assumed I had enough dust for one already), but I had to look on for so many years as there were plenty of decks all over the place that started using the 5 mana Leeroy, sitting back and thinking about how I could have made one of those decks myself as a F2P. And then I realized my mentor was actually an asshole after he quit Hearthstone when apparently he fought some guy with two lucky MC Techs and then quit my Computer Science class.

The point of all that is, never dust any card you get until you playtest it for yourself and come to realize its true potential. If you have any Golden copies of a card you already have 2 copies of, feel free to dust it of course, but this is a game of endless possibilities that don't deserve to be tossed aside just so all the competitive league asshats can keep running around like they know everything about the goddamn game.