Hearthpwn

It will leave Beta when they figure out how to make more money off of the mode.

And by that I don't mean they are boring, in fact in a vacuum they are rather fun. No, I feel the issue they create in the game and why they are so frustrating is that they ruin the play-around element of HS. I think playing-around is perhaps the most fundamental skill in Heartstone that sets apart middling from good players. 

So how do these two cards do that? Well in case of Hysteria it breaks the most fundamental play-around which is to balance between having few big minions and lots of small ones, having just a few powerful minions leaves you very vulnerable to hard removal, having lots of small ones helps against that but leaves you weak to AoE. Obviously the key is a judicious mix of both. Hysteria ruins that by having your big minion gobble up your small ones. And if you play around THAT you get wrecked by regular AoE. It is a double whammy, catch-22, screwed either way and it is why this card is so damn frustrating. And also why it is so good and why it is still run in all warlock and priest decks despite a 1mana nerf. This card on its own would be frustrating but possible to counter, in addition to AoE it becomes too much, and both priest and warlock have good AoE. Against All Odds does not help things at all, but from my current experience it is not nearly as bad and doesn't seem to be run as much, but another potentially problematic card.

Combustion is more mage specific but not entirely so. Basically there have always been cards that hit more than one minion but not all, lets call them partial-AoE. The way you play around them is you put your minions in a certain way, usually weak minions on the sides, strong minions in the middle, so the strong ones soak up the AoE. There are exceptions, like Combustion's partner in crime, Cone of Cold. With that you want it the other way, strong on the outside weak on the inside, so that your strong minions don't end up being the frozen ones and unable to attack. You can see where this is going, playing around CoC is exactly what you don't want to do against Combustion and again the player is caught in an impossible position. Not surprisingly both cards are run by all mage decks or close to it. Discovery only makes things worse in all these cases.

What is to be done? More generally Blizzard needs to pay more attention to cards they print, how they interact with each other and they need to consider the aspect of counterplay a lot more. Nothing is worse than when a card feels impossible to defeat, hitting your head against a brick wall, no possible solutions, etc. So Blizz need to make sure such cards are never printed or if they are... Well, the simplest way is more nerfs ofc. I would not mind if I never saw Hysteria again, it is such a pain. Combustion is not that toxic, it can stay if CoC is nerfed, those two are only super-frustrating together.

Thoughts?

Not only did they do it after this patch which is annoying and stupid, they by all rights should do it on Aug. 3 when the rotation happens. No they even contradict themselves since they urge players to get their achievement hunting done by Aug. 3 but they did it now.

Please note that incomplete Forged in the Barrens Gameplay achievements will no longer grant Reward Track XP once United in Stormwind releases on August 3, at which point the United in Stormwind Gameplay achievements will take over, so don’t forget to finish and claim those before you’ve left the Barrens.

Very fucking annoying. Can someone @ them on twitter or however the devs are easiest reached, I don't use twitter nor care to follow the Devs elsewhere.

Looking for those sweet sweet free tavern tickets. Will Duels and Arena be reset when the Stormwind expansion hits? Read that apparently there has already been an Arena rotation some days ago that I missed, which is a pity, but more important will there be another one soon?

Just looking to maximize packs and so free tavern tickets, any tips and answers welcome.

I think this is just the new normal, didn't Blizzard say they don't like super long matches. That pretty much kills control, the slowest decks will be control-combo hybrids or so I interpret their "we want all decks to have a win condition" comment. And the majority of decks will be aggro/midrange. Indeed they always have since such decks are cheap to make and most players are F2P or close to it. I don't things will change soon or ever.

That is why pretty much any meta has something annoying, usually some fast deck which hits less skilled players especially bad. I know that was especially true for me since while fairly good even in the beginning I liked slow, meme decks and you can guess how well those did against zoo and face hunter. Especially undertaker hunter /shudders. Weirdly enough I was not as bothered by mech mage and tempo mage, maybe because by that point I was usually having fun on higher ranks with meme decks, only going to lower ranks at the end of the season for rewards? I guess early highlander decks were also annoying given how disgustingly op they were with Reno, Kazakus, Raza in a meta that was much lower power than modern one.

Yeah Discover was fun during League of Explorers or however that adventure that added it was called exactly. By the time of Un'goro a year and a bit later it was very old. Now endless card generation is so old it coughs out dust when it speaks.

I am so tired of having to fend off infinite solutions, especially from priests. If you ask me I'd stop printing Discover cards and then in two years we can finally be free of this menace. So yeah pretty much anything that hurts that annoying playstyle is good in my book. This would at least warn us what to watch out for, fourth Hysteria? Grrr, ok, I guess if I play this it won't be so bad... you get the idea. Or maybe add a further limitation that each card can only be Discovered or randomly generated once per game, so you know 3 is the max you will ever face in one match, well unless they use more obvious duplication methods like Felosophy, Echo, etc.

I agree. They have been focusing on milking the whales for a while now. Also when you are not happy with a product you vote with your wallet. It is something people have forgotten these days. Blizz has shown, in multiple games, that not only are they money grubbing they don't even produce stellar gameplay as before. For HS in particular I feel the game is way to expensive to keep up with properly. But even then I might be okay with dropping some money on it if not for the fact I am unhappy with the state of the gameplay. Until Blizzard shapes up, either by slashing prices or improving the game I will continue to deny them money. Simple as.

Quote from Adamantiem88 >>

You guys are so salty I've played this game since launch never playing top teir decks and I finally make it and wanna share the news and just get shit on. Keep playing in gold tier guys you will get there soon!

 Don't sweat it OP, some people are way too elitist about a fairly simple card game. Hitting legend with any deck is an achievement, it is silly to hound people for playing a good deck at the highest level of the game. Playing a bad deck would be the silly thing since you would take so much grief getting to legend if you get there at all.

I too am poised to go legend this season, I built a good deck, I am D5. The final grind begins tomorrow. I never bothered with legend even though I think I had the chops (and cards) for it exactly because it is a grind. If I do it now I will probably never bother again, getting D5 for rewards is enough.

Congratz!

I do not understand why they do this. I can think of no good reasons and a few bad ones.

In case it is not clear, I do not understand why they hide what they will nerf (or buff) until the last moment. What is to be gained from this?

Meanwhile I can see two downsides. The bigger one is that people will craft decks that will soon be ruined by the nerf, and then feel really bad about it but most of the dust they spent will be sunk in cards that are now useless but not directly nerfed. This is directly in Blizzard's favour since wasted dust = greater need for more packs for more cards and dust.

The second thing is that people won't be able to intentionally craft the nerf targets, seems counterintuitive after the last post but it makes sense. For example once we finally learned that Deck of Lunacy will be nerfed I crafted it, to have some fun with it knowing I will get my dust back. You can still do this since post-nerf you can craft the card and DE in the refund period without losing dust, but by hiding the nerf targets until the last second you narrow this window. Which if part of their reasoning is just petty, it is such a small benefit.

It doesn't even make sense if they are doing this on the fly and don't know what they will nerf. Because still they have some idea, they can say we will probably nerf Oh My Yogg, or just say that secret/aggro pala is on the table. That would be enough for people to know to avoid crafting decks that contain these cards or are this archetype. They can even add a disclaimer that they are not sure yet but this is their current thinking, it would still help a lot. And when they do know for sure what they will nerf, the only right thing is to announce it that very instant. Again for player benefit.

Just my 2c, it makes no sense to hide nerf targets like this and do everything suddenly

Quote from Animalcraker >>

What's P2W in this? No mention that you need an extra pass to unlock any of this 

 I heard that you can't buy pass with gold anymore that's why people says it's a lot more p2w (and it is because you can only have 2 more heroes with money)

check twitter they are aware of the issue

They did NOT remove Random card backs, and this is not a bug. You can now toggle multiple card backs as your favorites, which the game will cycle between and pick randomly each game. However, if you miss random among every back you own, you can still get that by selecting a deck --> card backs --> Untick "Favorites only" and it'll act exactly as it did prior to this change.

no that would benefit players and they dont want that

welp.. they actually went into effort and fixed it. this is a genuine good move. I take what I said before back.

but there are still some other greedy moves done by the blizz tho

Blizzard have halved the XP gained from PVE for the Rewards Track. Before the new expansion we can gain 168 xp in 30 minutes (without the Pass), now it's 84 xp.
This stealth nerf is so bad that people need to know...

Quote from FortyDust >>

Quote from a_name >>

Quote from kriszbacsi >>

You are missing one important rule:

"Each Mercenaries Pack contains at least one Rare or better Mercenary Card until all Mercenary Cards are collected from that rarity tier."

https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/hearthstone-mercenaries-packs

 It does not say that in the in-game shop, nor when clicking the info button, nor in any follow-up screen during the purchase. That is where I purchased, not in some other shop location. I would not have bought packs had I known that.

 

Absolutely false. The in-game shop has an info button (which you mentioned, so you clearly saw it), and that info button leads to a pop-up telling you to click MORE for full information. Clicking MORE takes you to the webpage mentioned above, with everything you need to know about how the system works.

There is nothing illegal about this. You were simply too lazy to research the terms of your purchase before buying. Get over it.

The way it is explained is certainly poor as I showed previously. 

"Each Mercenaries Pack contains at least one Rare or better Mercenary Card until all Mercenary Cards are collected from that rarity tier."

But portraits are depicted as cards before you turn them over and so if things were working as promised you should get at least get rare portrait cards until those are maxed and then get all coins.

Blizzard Watch in “Are you only getting coins in your Hearthstone Mercenaries packs? This is why.” explains the problem:

"For example, let’s say you have all of the Rare Mercenaries unlocked, but not all of the Epic Mercenaries, and barely any of the Legendaries. You open a pack, the card rarity is determined to be Rare, and the roulette lands on Scabbs Cutterbutter. You have all three portraits for Scabs, but not for other Rares, like Xyrella. You get five sets of coins."

But as explained before portraits are cards so if it was working as promised then Scabbs Cutterbutter would have been removed from the card pool but was not.  So this 'you didn't research the terms of your purchase before buying' excuse isn't going to fly because we were told it would work one way but it works another.

What I cannot possibly understand is why they felt like they needed to BUFF those three Pirates when they KNEW they were releasing Mr. Smite and Defias Cannoneer in the mini-set. Like wtf?