Quote from Kinkyjohnfowler >>What’s the win rate and at what rank?
I might give the list a go but don’t have shadowy figures I don’t believe so would only craft them if the stats are positive.
Tempo and Priest are in the name, it has to be Bronze 10.
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This. Honestly 3 mana possible would have been fine.
A lot of players massively underestimate tempo in HS but people not understanding the difference between a 2 drop and a 4 drop is new to me.
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How can you put those two things in the same sentence?
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It's meant to see play in Casual mode when playing against friends, or at Fireside Gathering events etc I would imagine. I don't believe it was intended to be thrown into Standard lists in the hope you bump into another Noz player.
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It’s actually embarrassing that they believed Refreshing Spring Water was worthy of testing, nevermind actually releasing the card.
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Like me and many others have said many times, the issue with Tickatus is that he prevents proper control matchups from ever leaving the ground, they’re usually over before the interesting part even begins*. In a way Warlock does the job of a Midrange deck while playing as a Control deck.
A Midrange deck would usually look to kill Control by turn 7-10 by playing efficient minions on curve if possible and dancing around AOE and removal. Midrange is usually effective agai st Control. Warlock essentially does the same but instead of playing minions to apply pressure they spam removal or pass until Tick hopefully wins the game. The late game Control mirror (which many Control players enjoy) is largely irrelevant.
If the card was restricted to a specific combo/mill archetype then it would be fine, but for the next year any meta Warlock deck outside of Zoo is going to run the card which means proper control decks are going to find it rough.
* The usual response to this is “Fatigue games are too long and boring” but anybody who thinks this doesn’t need to play decks designed to go long. Midrange exists and is usually designed to beat that.
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I always disenchant golden cards so Blizzard now forcing me to have a load of disenchantable golden duplicates is really irritating. I would happily disenchant them for 0-dust.
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It probably isn’t anymore tbh, I came back after a 3 year break and play home-brew memedecks mainly. I’m (naively) hoping that some restraint is used post rotation and a dip in power level and decrease in RNG is seen. If not I’ll probably pop back in a few more years and see how it is then.
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Somewhere along the line fun interactions and crazy moments became preferred to sensible balancing. In Classic HS clear rules were in place regarding what cards could and could not do and minion stats followed a fairly strict format.
In modern HS broken tools are fair game and countered by other broken tools.
I really dislike it from a game design POV but I think it helps promote the addictive nature of the game to the masses.
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I completely agree, as a weakness 'no card draw' is just far too limiting, and replacing it with random generation just turns the class into a bit of a joke. It's replaces the most fundamental card game mechanic (playing your deck of cards) with a series of dice rolls. And I get that people enjoy the randomness in HS, in fact I LOVE it too, just keep it to the meme decks.
It's not just Priest's lack of card draw in a vacuum either, that might not have been so bad a few years ago, but in a time when other classes are cheating out 2-3 cards for essentially 0-mana it really stands out.
If Priest is not running meme miracle lists then they're pretty much stuck with running big cards with big effects in the hope they can outvalue their opponent with a few huge turns. So basically what Warrior and Warlock do only they can also draw cards.
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Before I begin I'd like to state that I realise this is probably not a unique idea, I imagine something similar has been suggested before and I would assume something similar has been done in other card games. Also, to keep this post relatively short, I'm not going to delve into every aspect of the game which would need to be changed alongside this (such as changes to monetisation) for it to work.
The New Mode
Currently we have 2 constructed game modes in Hearthstone and neither of them, imo, allow for the best overall ranked experience. So I propose a revamp (yes another one, let’s do it right this time Blizzard), this would involve removing both Wild and Standard from ranked play and replacing them with 1 game mode, going forward in this post I will just refer to this as Ranked.
Ranked would allow decks to be created using cards from the Core Set, the current Hearthstone Year, and 1 other Hearthstone Year from the past. So this year a player could construct a deck using cards from Gryphon and Mammoth if they enjoyed the Death Knight cards, or they could use cards from Gryphon and Kraken if they wanted to play with the OG Old Gods.
The Core Set would serve a very important purpose with this game mode as a tool for manipulating the direction of the meta, and for promoting the most recent card sets. For example, to promote the Forged in the Barrens several powerful Frenzy support cards could be added to the core set, pushing that keyword and any archetype it works with, however when the core set rotates, and a new Hearthstone Year starts, those support cards will be removed from the Core Set, and the power of the Frenzy archetype will fall.
This satisfies Blizzards’ need to sell packs for their new expansions and can ensure the most recent expansions are prominent in the meta, while allowing us to enjoy playing with our favourite cards from the past. It also ensures we will never be bored of those cards, as the decks in which we can play them in will have to change from year to year (a Mecha'thun deck from this year would have to be vastly different from a Mecha'thun deck next year).
Issues with Standard & Wild
So far I've stated what I would like to see, here I would like to show why by highlighting my issues with the current ranked game modes:
Standard: The main issue with Standard is the lack of options. This is highlighted by the recent card reveal where Priest players look severely limited in what decks they can play. Previously they had access to Death Knight support, Aggro Shadow Priest shenanigans, strong Midrange Dragon tools, Velen OTKs, the original C’Thun etc. Being able to play a class a certain way only for Blizzard to completely remove all support for it is frustrating. And when they add support back for something (as they will for Shadow Priest later in the year) it feels forced. Due to the small selection of cards it’s obvious which direction Blizzard wants us to go when deck building for each class, for anyone who enjoys the creative side of the game this is very disappointing.
Our new Ranked mode would ensure that each class is always supported by a variety of archetypes and ways to play the game, although certain ways of playing the class will be encouraged through the direction of the newest expansions and Core Set.
Wild: Wild is ‘broken’ and will only continue to get worse, it’s existence also limits card design (as we saw with Hysteria). Being able to play around with every card and every combination of those cards is a deck builders dream on the surface, however in practice the viability of any theory crafting is limited by the obscene power level of the best decks.
Our new Ranked mode adds great deck building restrictions that will both make designing future cards easier as well as harshly reducing the power level from what we see in Wild - ensuring more play styles are viable. Each class will have different strengths and weaknesses based on which year is chosen for each deck which adds a greater level of strategy to the game.
In any case this is my 'dream' vision of what Hearthstone should be, I assume there are downsides to a mode like this that more experienced card players than me are aware of, so please comment and let me know. Or if you can be bothered, tell me how you would like the games direction to be. Do you think I'm being too harsh on Standard? Would you be annoyed to see Wild removed from ranked play? Is the game perfect as it is?
Cheers.