Hearthpwn

This is all just gross. 

I mean, unsurprising that there's always a percentage of people who just seem to think this is fun. But it's sad that it's so bad it's more normal to have requests be harassment than anything else. 

Also just a big ball of suck about Blizzard response. Getting really fed up with the lack of support options on this game w/ Blizzard. it's not like this is a totally free game. Most of us are paying in some way for this over time. 

I've been looking so forward to finally updating my old original Jaina, but after reaching the level, it doesn't work. 

It allows you to select the hero you want & confirm, and then just spits you back out w/ the reward still marked as unclaimed. 

Anyone know of any solutions or just need to wait? 

If it doesn't work before a new rewards track starts, will they still give it to me? 

It really is fun!

I don't think it's a very competitive deck to be honest. However, it DOES have a lot of fun play, so I still go back to it when I'm annoyed by a losing streak in my more competitive decks. 

Quote from Noncolodei >>

Hello, 

Maybe you can be inspired by Kibler's dragon thief : https://youtu.be/SQ9xdlpj9mk He's always doing nice things :) 

Personally, I don't think Drakonid Operative is a good card anymore. It was my favourite card back in the days (I always loved thief priest but it was not viable before this extension I think) but it's too slow now. I also tried the caravan, which is really fun but not viable either unfortunately.

I play a version without the dragon package and I have a really good winrate. I'm still not ok with every card but I love to play it :

### Mini set Thief Priest 
# Class: Priest
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Hydra
# 2x (0) Desperate Prayer
# 2x (1) Gift of the Naaru
# 2x (1) Psychic Conjurer
# 2x (1) Shard of the Naaru
# 2x (1) The Light! It Burns!
# 1x (1) Theft Accusation
# 1x (2) Condemn (Rank 1)
# 2x (2) Mysterious Visitor
# 1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard
# 2x (3) Cathedral of Atonement 
# 2x (3) Identity Theft
# 1x (3) Murloc Holmes
# 1x (3) Prince Renathal
# 1x (3) Rustrot Viper
# 1x (3) The Harvester of Envy
# 2x (3) Venomous Scorpid
# 1x (4) Incriminating Psychic
# 2x (4) Lightmaw Netherdrake
# 2x (4) School Teacher
# 2x (4) Shadow Word: Ruin
# 1x (4) Xyrella
# 2x (5) Clean the Scene
# 1x (5) Theotar, the Mad Duke
# 1x (7) Blackwater Behemoth
# 1x (7) Mutanus the Devourer
# 1x (8) Murozond the Infinite
# 1x (8) Whirlpool

[deck]AAECAd35Aw6e6wPU7QOm7wPQ+QOhtgSotgSY1AS42QTF5AT+7gSB7wSX7wS/8ASIpAUNlugDmesDh/cDvp8E8J8EiqME1KwElrcE8tsE+dsEuNwEutwEhoMFAA==[/deck]

 

Quote from Seshua >>

I would replace Pandaren Importer with Venomous Scorpid.
It's a bigger threat for your opponent in most cases and you can discover copies of cards you already run in your deck which is a big plus since you run many good spells.

I would also cut Faerie Dragon and Cobalt Scalebane from the list because they don't provide much value other than having the dragon tag.
Drakonid Operative , Incriminating Psychic and Murozond the Infinite are more than enough to fulfill the Kazakusan requirement.
Raid Boss Onyxia is probably even better than Murozond the Infinite because it always does something powerful.

Shadow Word: Ruin should def be on this list.
I would even run more than 2 copies if i could.

I also run TWO copies of Cathedral of Atonement because card draw is king.
Same goes for Gift of the Naaru.

Thrive in the Shadows is also very good if you need to find your removal.
Same goes for Illuminate.

Condemn (Rank 1) can also be quite good if you run into a lot of aggressive token decks (druids, imp warlock).

Desperate Prayer is better than Flash Heal if you run Xyrella.
One mana can make all the difference (especially against token decks).

I would also add another copy of Spirit Guide.

School Teacher is still really good.
I even run Brann Bronzebeard just for the combo with this card.

Speaking of Brann Bronzebeard.
He can be really good with discovered cards of your opponent or your own discover cards.

No Theotar, the Mad Duke ?
C'mon it's a thief deck after all.
And it's by far the most powerful thief card in the whole game.

Cards i would also cut:
Boon of the Ascended - too conditional and a dead card without a minion on the board.
Soothsayer's Caravan - only (sometimes) worth it if you play it on curve
Copycat - never paid off for me personally
Lyra the Sunshard - too slow, too conditional, too much rng and the discover pool isn't as good nowadays (still one of my favorite cards ever printed though)

 [deck]Deck ID or Code[/deck]

Thank you both so much! I'm on mobile right now, which makes this forum really difficult to navigate, but the info & advice you both gave is amazing & I didn't want it to seem like I'm ignoring it.

I'll go through it tonight & mix up a few suggestions when I'm on my laptop. Deck manipulation also sucks on mobile imo compared to laptop.

I am absolutely amazed at the time & effort people are so kind to share here. 

Oh, that makes sense & definitely takes away the annoyance. 

Thanks - I don't mind helping in that. :)

I'm coming back to play after a couple year break, so nearly all the current cards are very new to me. That means a lot of losses as I go through the process of learning & rebuilding my collection. 

I remember people sometimes refusing to kill you, but it seems to be more common now. It's always been really annoying to me. I've already played a few games today where I'm down to health of just 1 or 2, with no cards in play. But despite having a full board of high attack cards or spells, they continuously refuse to win. 

I hate conceding, though I assume that a concede is the same value as a direct win. 

Is there a benefit to the player who does this? Is it just a way to be annoying? 

@seshua: you are partly wrong and here is why (yet in my heart i hope the real reason is what you said and not what i believe).

They didn't make control decks unviable because of social media outcries. It was purely for monetary reasons and market targeting.

Oh there's no doubt in my mind that monetary reasons were the decisive factor.
But how did they come up with the idea that the majority of the playerbase wants these changes?
I don't even think that the majority of players wanted such drastic changes.
But unfortunately they kept listening to a very loud and uneducated part of the community and eventually gave in.
Some devs got massively harassed on social media back then and some streamers used their communities to create pressure because they didn't like to play against certain decks.
But i also think that it had partly to do with their inability to admit to their own mistakes.
Instead of admitting that some cards were poorly designed they just suddenly went with the irrational "attrition control is bad for the game" narrative which was coincidentally the same narrative some streamers were spreading beforehand.

@seshua: you are partly wrong and here is why (yet in my heart i hope the real reason is what you said and not what i believe).

They didn't make control decks unviable because of social media outcries. It was purely for monetary reasons and market targeting.

Most of the younger generations don't like slower games. So how do you bring them into HS and make them spend their parents' money? By making most games end before turn 10. What has that gotten us? 9-10 mana cards that either end the game on their own or make any comeback impossible. The design's focus is clearly "turn 10 at most".

That's also why there will never be control decks anymore. Also why a lot of classes suddenly got tools to draw a lot (what good is a turn 10 game if you barely see half your deck and get frustrated for not drawing properly?!).

I'm sorry but blizzard doesn't give a shit about improving HS overall nor the balance of the cards. If social media outcries mattered we'd have a much cleaner UI, lots of "tools/modes/etc" to have fun with, paying for an expansion would give you all the cards to play with, coming back into the game wouldn't be atrocious, etc.

Right now, the only semblance of a card game is the arena. Until they are gonna destoy it too.

it's not necessarily that I think Blizzard thinks, "This player is winning 6 games in a row w/ Mage. Let's stick them w/ a deck that is statistically Mage butt kicking." It's more it's just reasonable decks reaching a level are playing reliably good against certain other decks. So if Mage does great against most classes except say Shaman, then I'll progress pretty well till both I and Shaman are surpassing them. Then it's inevitably down to just me and shaman decks. So there is where it's the deck archetype (and that may be the wrong term as well?) or strategy. Yes, it's sensible, but it also sucks that there's always just one or two deck strategies that will always close out any TCG, whether it be HS or MTG or anything else.

Here's my take on the current HS game design:

The archetype balance triangle used to look like this: aggro/tempo>otk/combo/midrange>control>aggro/tempo
But many people (mostly aggro/tempo players) complained about the rock, paper, scissors aspect of it and demanded changes.
They also demanded to get rid of attrition type control decks because they were apparently not capable of conceding against them once they ran out of gas.

Unfortunately the devs gave in to these unreasonable demands after the Dr.Boom Mech Warrior disaster and made some drastic changes to the whole archetype design.
First they powercreeped the aggro/tempo archetypes while also neutering attrition control.
Then they came up with this "control needs a real wincondition" narrative to distract from the fact that they made real control decks unviable.
Every once in a while a decent control deck popped up (Barrens Pries & Kazakusan Warrior) but got almost immediately nerfed into the ground because of another outcry on social media.

And that's how we ended up with these op quest rewards, Denathrius and all these disruption cards which basically made the whole archetype system obsolete because these cards allow you to build a deck which can (in theory) beat everything.
That's the reason why you don't feel like you have good matchups anymore once you reach gold or diamand and beyond.
Because there is none.
If both players use one of these hyper optimised decks and know how to pilot their deck and know eachother moves, then the outcome of the game gets solely determined by RNG.
By eliminating the RNG factor of queueing into a bad matchup (if you play one of the hyper optimised decks) the amount of RNG in the game got actually reduced.
You can't deny that.
BUT the overall gameplay experience took a huge hit because of it.

For me personally the "rock, paper, scissors" era was way less frustrating because i had a much easier time dealing with losses.
The game as a whole felt way more balanced because every archetype saw play and you could always count on facing a favourable matchup.
It sounds weird but i think that the RNG of facing a good or a bad matchup and the RNG of draw, discover mechanics etc. somehow balanced each other out.
Because in a favourable matchup it wouldn't nearly matter as much how lucky my opponent got with draws, discovers etc.
And in a bad matchup you could always tell yourself that it was a bad matchup anyways so it didn't matter as much either.

More and more people seem to miss the old system without realizing that this is the real reason why they enjoyed the game more back then.

I'm definitely going to look at Rogue again. It was always one of my fave classes. I again should have phrased my statement that it sucks differently, and said, "Rogue right now sucks because of the cards *I* currently have," which is different than the options that are available. It all goes back to me coming in with ALL expired cards and dusting everything I own to get enough to get just a couple 'good' deck classes in current standard. Sigh. At least that was a lesson learned.

I'll also be working to build that wild collection back up again with purposely purchasing wild packs. Even if I do need to kick myself every time since I had so many wonderful ones and just poofed them all away like a dummy. But sometimes a good kicking when you deserve it prevents future mistakes.

No reason to be mad at yourself.
It was a reasonable decision to dust those cards back when you made it.
Just make the best of it and use it as an opportunity to practice radical acceptance.

Thanks again for all your advice. it's been absolutely priceless to a returning never-great player who now wants to be better AND have fun. Thanks for addressing both those goals, because the fun is the first priority and the second is getting better, but both are important. :) Your advice has brought up things I hadn't even thought about, and also showed me a lot about wild that I just never even considered and may save my love & patience of the game.

What saved the game for me personally was to stop taking this game too serious.
Virtual achievements only become important to you if you subconsciously try to compensate for real life failings which is extremely bad for your mental health.
That's why i exclusively play casual mode nowadays. I simply don't care about reaching a certain rank anymore.
But i won't lie, it's still frustrating from time to time.
I just immediately stop playing whenever i get frustrated or take a short break and do something else.

And yeah starting to play wild also saved my passion for this game.
Deckbuilding is a very important aspect for me and in wild you can be very creative.
In standard on the other hand most decks kinda build themselves nowadays because of the obvious synergy certain cards have with eachother.
It makes the game more accessable for new players but it took away a lot of complexity and the sandbox feeling i used to have when building a deck.

Since they've implemented this feature I'am adding everybody, albeit salty kids adding me to waste my time became noticeably less nowadays.

Once they drop their prepared Speech and quickly remove me, I'am reporting. 

Not that I expect serious consequences on their end, most likely they're getting blocked from using Chat for a couple months.

Activi$ion won't ban anyone for Flaming since they bring potential money. That's just the sad reality...

Best thing you can do is keep reporting these losers. I've personally probably reported 10-12 people for friending and then flaming me. (The most recent suggesting that I kill myself for the good of the human race!) If Scorpyon is right that it's based on number of reports and the severity of behavior (and I'd bet he is), the more frequently you report these guys, the more likely it is that they will (eventually) learn their lesson.

Thanks! Yeah, I use two Deepwater Evokers in all my decks. The newer Sunwell also offers up a good assortment of spells that often gives cards typically in good heal/armor classes, and the price is almost always easily met with the whole mana mitigation against deck size. The other things I use a lot are the Solid Alibi to buy some time in decks that set up huge multiple big minions that I can't swipe off the board.

I'm still not sure what to think about Sunwell. It can be a lot of value for sure but funnily enough it seems to benefit hyper aggro decks the most.
It kinda reminds me of Renathal in that sense that it was probably designed for slower decks but ended up being way more powerful in aggressive decks (like Beast Hunter e.g.).

Solid Alibi is the type of card that i consider to be very good and helpful IF you discover it.
Some defensive spells deserve a card slot and some are just not doing enough to justify it.
I would always prefer removal over a card like Solid Alibi which only buys you one additional turn.
Unless you're playing an otk/combo deck, then they become incredibly powerful.

I agree that there's definitely work that goes into getting the Priest quest. I think I'm just so disgusted by ANY outright 'destroy the hero' with no possible mitigation whatsoever. I do understand and see it's silly to consider something as honorable or not, but it just feels that way. That's why I refuse to play that quest. If the result were something NEARLY impossible to beat, it's one thing. if it's something truly fully impossible, it's really frustrating. BUT - again, that's probably because it's usually like the algorithm seems to give me perfect paired opponents for great games 10x in a row, then throws 15 priest quests, abyssmal curse decks, & Jailer decks all at once. First time I EVER finally hit gold a couple weeks ago and then went straight back down to lowest silver after solid losses so many times without a chance to play or counter.

So many things have to go right in order to win a quest priest the game.
You need to hit a good curve with cards that actually help you to survive and even when you manage to finish the quest you're incredibly vulnerable to disruption.
Often times you can't even play the quest reward after finishing the quest because your opponent was smart enough to bait out your removal and saved some big threats to create board pressure.
This strategy is the key to win against quest priest without having to rely on disruption tools.

Abyssmal Curse/Implock is annoying but also has its weaknesses.
They can't deal with big minions.
If your deck can't create big threats you'll struggle and there's not much you can do about it.

All bad matchups you've mentioned would be a free win for the rogue list i linked btw.
If you know what to mulligan for and when to play which card, it's an incredibly powerful deck and beats almost everything you'll see on ladder right now.

So I am admittedly just talking from a place of deep frustration and probably being just snarky. I'll eventually have a deck that will be the most annoying deck in play and then feel offended when someone tells me that MY deck is the unfair one. Right now I actually hold back all the stupid freeze spells I can use, because I HATE going against them all the time but it seems like Mage is just way too loaded with them in either benefits with other cards or just overall too many freeze spells. If the opponent is being a rude or annoying person tho, I do unleash them.

If your goal is to climb the ladder you'll have to ignore your codex and preferred playstyle and play whatever has the most favourable matchups.
It sucks but your opponents won't have mercy with you either.

It's not some sort of algorithm which deals you a bad hand.
It's either pure RNG(draws etc.), your deck choice or your ability to pilot the deck correctly.

When people come up with these algorithm claims, i always ask myself: what would Blizzard gain from this?
Why waste tons of money for an algorithm that has no effect whatsoever.
People would have lose and win streaks anyways since RNG is an unavoidable factor in this game.

I'm so frustrated with the current standard right now. There are SO many cards that just destroy me as a Mage. I know how it sounds to complain & say that it's not fair when I lose, but I'm really struggling to overcome that.
It's not that I think I should or even WANT to win all the time. Winning is obviously good, but even when I am trying to work at building rank, I'd still rather have a fun game than just demolish everything in quick brutal wins.
Right now my mage is extremely strong. I have confidence that I'd be able to take it pretty far, if it was not for a few current cards. Priest Purified Shard, Jailer, Denathrius are all impossible to beat. It's especially bad when a purified shard is tossed out & despite having 20+ armor & full health, I'm done.
It would be at least fair to keep all such cards in classes rather than neutral, and then ensure each class has a one-shot or equivalent card.

Of course it feels bad losing the game to one card but quest priest has to be the most fair otk deck i've seen in years.
If they somehow manage to reach their goal, they honestly deserve to win that game imo.
As someone who plays this game since 2017 i don't have the expectation of winning against an otk/combo deck in the first place if i play a slow control deck.
It's literally their job to counter my playstyle so it doesn't bother me at all.
I actually feel bad if i manage to disrupt their combo/otk because as a control or midrange player i shouldn't even be able to do that tbh.

Denathrius on the other hand bothers me a lot because he turns every favourable matchup into an unfavourable matchup.
If i face an aggro/tempo/midrange deck, i shouldn't be worried about getting otk'd.
Pure control was already in a very bad spot beforehand but now it's completely pointless to play this archetype because you can get countered by every archetype (that includes other "control" style decks which play Denathrius).

Don't worry about Jailer, he will be gone as soon as the KOFT cards leave standard.
Try to create constant high board pressure or try to steal him with Theotar.
I hate playing cards like Theotar but Denathrius alone justifies running this card imo.

And Mage needs to be given better recovery. With abysmal curses thrown in sometimes, there are too many ways to kill a mage without enough mitigation/defense for the mage. There are probably other classes that need more boosts, but I mostly only play Mage or priest.

This mage list is has a lot of dmg mitigation and can deal pretty well with early aggression:
https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/deckbuilder?deckcode=AAECAf0ECqCKBNjsA/uiBJfvBPqsBLjZBOWwBKneBPqsBPuiBA/U6gPW7APa0ATQ7APcuQTS7AOEkwXb3gSTgQTT7AOUgQT67ASSgQSYjgSogQQA
The Deepwater Evoker seems to have anti synergy with all the cheap spells but is mostly used for draw + board presence anyways.

It used to be Mage or Rogue, but Rogue sucks right now.

Rogue is actually still pretty strong. The good decks are just not that easy to play.
This Jalexander list e.g. is really strong but you need to know how to play it to make it work.
https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/deckbuilder?deckcode=AAEBAaIHBpafBPuKBPbdBO2ABPXdBJfnAgz3nwS9gAS3swTj0wSJ0gTBgwXr9gP8pQTT8wP+7gOh9AP2nwQA
Not my cup of tea tbh but if you like the miracle rogue playstyle you'll probably also like this deck.

So wild is a lot more interesting to me than it used to be.
When I came back to play, I figured I'd never play wild, because I hadn't before. Therefore, I dusted nearly ALL my old collection in order to catch up with the standard sets. I'm kicking myself for that. VERY hard kicks.

Same here. Dusted multiple expansions before realizing that i want to try wild (thanks to Danehearth btw).
A bit outdated (but still useful) guide on how to start a wild collection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLz8jwdlvaY

I personally started with crafting the one deck that i liked the most back when it was still in standard (burgle cutlass rogue) but Solem's approach is probably even better.
There are multiple legendaries which allow you to build multiple decks around them (like the highlander cards, Old Gods, etc.).
If you want to start right now and just want to have some fun, craft OG Yogg and toss in some spells.

I like that approach.
Having fun is what it's all about right?
I also don't think that it has anything to do with your skill tbh.
The pace of the game got so fast over the past few years and competitive decks are highly efficient at achieving their goal.
The abundance of cheap draw, tutor cards and mana cheat e.g. allows players to build highly consistent decks.
Decks which are build around RNG mechanics like discover etc. on the other hand are inconsistent by design.

But if you're interested in learning more about deckbuilding and the thought process behind it, i would recommend watching a Youtube creator called Chump.
He builds his own competitive decks and always gives insight in his decision making both for deckbuilding and plays.
If you want to learn how to build a competitive deck and/or want to become better at playing Hearthstone in general, he's probably the best teacher you can have.
Danehearth does the same but for the wild format if you're interested.
He's even more sophisticated and innovative when it comes to deckbuilding and makes the most awesome plays which will make you scratch your head.
It's actually well worth watching his videos even if you have no interest in the wild format.
If you like RNG mechanics and complete chaos decks then you'll start to play wild sooner or later anyways. ;)
Sometimes i play wild casual mode just to watch the world burn with cards like Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.
Some of these games provided the most memorable moments for me.

Fun deck! Thanks for sharing :D