Hearthpwn

It depends mostly on how you define 'bad player'. Several of my friends play hearthstone and out of our group of 5, I am the only one who reached legend. Of the other 4, 3 are definitely not great players and will never ever reach legend and probably not even Diamond 5. One of them could possibly reach it if he played more. So is the one who never reached it a good player (because he is definitely better than the other 3) or a bad player because he never reached legend? I.e. tons of players never even try because they are nowhere good enough. How many? No idea - a fair lot I'd say, but not the type of folks that come to sites like this.

So let's say you are in the group of 'serious' players and that you can reach D5 every month, yet never reached legend despite trying a few times. Is it because you don't play enough or because you don't play well enough? Well, there is a great simulator here that can help you answer this: https://www.primedope.com/number-of-games-to-reach-legend-in-hearthstone/ . It calculates the number of people reaching legend based of bonus stars, win rate, and games played. Let's assume 9 bonus stars for D5. 

If you'd have a 30% chance of reaching legend, then you'd be very unlucky not to reach it after about 5 attempts. So let's look at the winrates and games played required to reach this 30% chance.

If you play...

• 90 games per month (= 3 games per day), you'd need a 65% winrate to have a 34% chance of reaching legend
• 150 games per month (= 5 games per day), you'd need a 55% winrate to have a 28% chance of reaching legend
• 8 games per day, you'd need a 50% winrate to have a 28% chance of reaching legend
• 10 games per day, you'd need a 49% winrate to have a 34% chance of reaching legend
• 15 games per day, you'd need a 46% winrate to have a 28% chance of reaching legend
• 20 games per day, you'd need a 45% winrate to have a 31% chance of reaching legend

So,

• If you just play 3 games per day, then even if you are an amazing player (60% win rate), you most likely won't make it. You simply don't play enough and the solution is to play more.
• If you play 8 games per day, your winrate in the 'group of try-hards' is probably below 50%. Whether or not that makes you a bad player is up to you to decide. But in that group, it looks like you are in the bottom half.
• If you play 15 games per day, your winrate in the 'group of try-hards' is probably 45% or less. Again, whether or not that makes you a bad player is up to you to decide, but it looks like you won't ever reach legend no matter how hard you try.

I have played since GvG. There is definitely more RNG in the game now. It has been a gradual shift over the years and in fact, I think Blizz recently said that they wanted to reduce this a bit. But that will take some time because there are still many RNG cards in Standard for the next year, and probably still the one after that.

But I wouldn't say that the amount of skill required is less now. I would say that it is actually higher as matchups seem to be much closer balanced now. In the past, the rock-paper- scissors effect was much more pronounced, where freeze-mage vs control warrior was an insta-concede. But in general, it was agro beats midrange and combo, which beat control which beats agro. While there are still better and worse matchups, knowledge of how to play the matchup will now do a lot more for you than a few years ago. 

The extra RNG also gives additional options, which requires additional on the spot decision making to get the most out of them in the specific board state and matchup, makes it less curvestone than in the past. Patron warrior has been a very rare exception in the entire HS history, though last year inner-fire combo priest was a bit comparable and good players did a lot better with it than bad ones. But in the old days, there were also a lot of decks that required little skill, I'd say less skill than many do now: face/Midrange hunter, Mech shaman/mage, and 'combo' druid weren't exactly tocket science.  

No need to post the replay, I remember that game. You used your 2 mana to devolving missiles my Teacher's Pets into a Desert hare and a Twilight drake and Arcane Missiled them both.  I died before I could play another card that game. 

Yes, I had decent success (6-4) with it on my smurf-account with 3 changes due to cards I don't have on that account. That was mid-platinum (which isn't saying that much these days) but still with bonus stars and about half of my opponents have legend hardbacks, so I suppose its MMR is semi-decent. It's not a huge sample size, but it feels like a legit deck - probably not the next big thing, but certainly decent.  

Not quite sure about the first part of your prediction, but the second part makes up for that!

In the past, you got a cardback for completing a heroic adventure. I prefer a golden legendary even if it is a duplicate and you can't dust it. At least I see more of it than that slight strip you see of your currently used cardback. Not to mention that I have 80-odd other cardbacks already that I also only see when busting packs.

And remember that not everyone is able to complete the adventure challenges. Even though most of us here seem to be able to one-shot all bosses with their eyes closed and hands tied behind their back, a few of my RL friends who play casually get nowhere near. So nice that they still have the normal one for free.

I played Highlander hunter to Legend (VSlist), but up to D5 I played with the following changes

• Evasive Wyrm instead of Veranus
• Gyrocopter instead of  Siamat 
• Ursatron instead ofUnleash the Hounds. (Unleash isn't great even with Veranus IMO, and even worse without.) You could put Ursatron instead  of Zixor 

So you get cards with more or less similar roles and synergies (a mini mech-package with Dragonbane). If you want to try Highlander hunter without investing lots of dust, this is definitely a valid option. 

The new mechpaladin https://hsreplay.net/decks/GV7svxca4W2kfLfP6Sg1Df/#gameType=RANKED_STANDARD is T1 with only 3 legendaries that you probably already have. You'd only need to spend around 1200 dust, for 2 micromummies and  a few commons 

Icehowl Awful art, zero competitive value, zero meme potential, a pack filling common disguised as legendary. Absolute disgrace of a card.  

 Dunno about Doomsday but the winner didn't use a single card from RR in his decks...

Some gems of how the community rated cards in the current standard format (not talking about Varian Wrynn, Throg'zor times):

Ungoro: Highest rated card: Stampede, Highest rated legendary: Spiritsinger Umbra, lowest rated quest: caverns below (twice nerfed, still played)

KofT: highest rated DK: Uther, lowest Malfurion and Rexxar

K&C : Lowest rated card: To my Side

Witchwood: 3rd, 4th and 5th rated legendaries: Lady in White, Countess Ashmore, Chameleos

Boomsday: 2nd rated legendary: Luna's Pocket Galaxy (OK, there was not much, but Subject 9 and Mechathun got rated 18th and 19th Legendary

I'll wait 2 weeks before I start crafting...

Auto-Squelch is added to HS - affects even Ben Thompson!

The rotation is still more than half a  tear away isn't it?

Soon (TM)

As a F2P player I am very defensive when crafting legendaries, but I crafted Twin Emperor Vek'lor just before Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. C'thun Warrior was a real deck back then and I figured that even after the next rotation it wouldn't lose much so it looked a very safe craft. If only I'd  known that Jades would completely destroy any control deck....